On Friday the 12th of October, I had a very busy day. My day involved taking the GRE, a flight for IFS and going to see the Newsboys in concert. It was a long day but I managed to get everything accomplished. I did well on the GRE, I am waiting for my official scores but overall it went well. The flight for IFS went well but I still have somethings that I need to work on. After, my IFS flight I meet with some of the other members of OCF at McGuire’s before we went to go and see the Newsboys in concert. Dinner at McGuire’s is always good, but I was not impressed with the Prime Rib, but everything else I have had from McGuire’s has been awesome. I highly recommend the New Your Strip Steaks, Yummm. After dinner, we went to the Civic Center to see the concert. Let me say the Newsboys were AWESOME!! They played some of my favorite songs by them and just being with other Christians singing songs to the LORD was simply moving. Some of the highlights of the show included the old school Newsboys songs on a vocal synthesizer, the dueling drummers and the vertical spinning drum set. After the concert a group of us went out to get ice cream from Sonic and then came over to my house to play Halo 3.
On Saturday, I went to a bonfire hosted by Ken Viechik, the leader of OCF. It was a great time of fellowship with the people in OCF. We all brought our own food to grill on the grills and it was interesting to see what each person brought and how the prepared their food. After eating our dinner and sharing fellowship around the table, we took the party outside and started the bonfire. It was great to just interact with other people around the fire and there were some great inside jokes shared around the fire such as “The sun is hot” and “Like the sun, fire is hot.” Additionally, some of the members took a vote and said, jokingly, they were not satisfied with the bonfire party and that I should jump off the dock. So I jumped off the dock. It was a great night full of fellowship with other believers.
On Sunday, I went to church and then went to a sports bar to meet up with Ken and his wife to cheer the Minnesota Vikings to victory over the Chicago Bears. Afterwards, I came home and relaxed and went to the new church service at the base chapel. Additionally, Ken continued his message at the service about trusting and being intimate with God which made me think and I will make a post about that in the near future. After the service I tried to socialize with the enlisted who came to the service and talked with them. After, the service one friend from OCF and I got together to play the campaign for Halo 3.
Yesterday, I have another flight for IFS and lets just say that it was not a great flight. For one reason or another I was having the hardest time flying around the traffic pattern of the airport and gently landing the airplane. I got a chance to ask some questions about landing to my instructor and they helped me figure out what I need to do to improve landing. Please pray for me that I can improve in my piloting skills. I know I have only begun but the expectations are high and I feel that I am not able to accomplish them at the moment. I have to be safe to do my first solo flight in a couple of days and at the moment I feel that I am a long way from being able to safely land the plane much less solo. The other thing I could use some pray for is that I stop trying to assign my self worth based on how I am doing in IFS. I know that my self worth comes from the fact that I am a child of God and that he sent his Son to die for my sin so that I might be able to spend the rest of eternity with him. Yet, I forget this and try and assign myself self worth based on my performance at a task. In the evening, I started preparing for the FAA Private Pilot Written Exam, hung out with some OCFers and played Halo 3 some more and watched Evan Almighty. I highly recommend renting Evan Almighty, it was a semi-clean movie with a good message. Also, Morgan Freeman plays a convincing God.
Today, I continued studying for the FAA Private Pilot Written Exam and prepared for my flight late this afternoon. I also got a chance to do some reading and play some more XBOX.
Hopefully, I will get an update later this evening about some thoughts on what the Lord is teaching me about the Christian walk.
Just wrote you my first ever blog entry, it was long and insightful and well thought out. The amount of work one puts into writing something is directly related to how easy it is to push the wrong button and it all goes away. Bionic bit dust.
Maybe in a short amount of verbiage, just know this. God doesn’t place his value of you on your abilities. You are HIS son and it does’t get any better than that. I hope this message goes through this time because your thoughts on the church cut very close to my own. I wrote you a big response and it blew up. “When I hurt inside, why does it seem odd that no one else does?” I am right by your side on that one. There are hurts inside that are so deep that it feels like my faith has mostly bled out. THE ONLY THING that matters is that God is there and that his value system doesn’t depend on how good we are or what we can accomplish. Maybe it’s more like the more we hurt inside, the more healing his love can do. So many words to say I feel – so often – the same way. No one would want to know the darkness that lurks down inside. We are supposed to forgive and offer grace and yet feel inside that “this is how I’m supposed to be and tell others it is the way, and I just feel hurt and can’t forget?” How must God look at us when we aren’t worthy of much “sonshine?” Just believe, Matt. Faith is a mystery but often all we have.
By: Mr. Jack on 16 October 2007
at 3:23 pm