Ben's Blessing Blog

Check out the blog lvbcsummer08@blogspot.com to find out how camp is
progressing. Keep praying!

BenH

My Mom had the random idea of going to park and having icecream. I absolutely love when she has those cool sporadic ideas =) My Mom, Dad Sisters and I ended up playing Volleyball afterwards.

My Dad chasing the Volleyball. That was a reoccurring activity. 

Selena attempting to wave hi to me, but the camera made it look like she lost her arm or something :)

Hudson asked to lead family devotions that night so we let him teach us from his Patch the Pirate book.

Today we celebrated Titus and Selena's Birthday which will be during Camp this next week. Selena made and Awesome Chocolaty Cake
Doesn't it look good!

STOP DROOLING ON YOUR KEYBOARD! =)

Well, I'm looking forward to being a camp counsellor next week. Please pray that God will do some great things in camp.

Another opportunity to preach presented itself for me today. I wasn't really ready for it since I wasn't called upon to preach until late the previous afternoon. I'm going to take this as a lesson to have more messages ready :)However, Praise to the Lord I felt like He gave me a pretty nifty message which I enjoyed preaching. The title was "Who is Giving the Water?" and it was about the story of when Jesus encountered the woman at the well in Samaria. Without going into the message with detail, the basic gist of the message was that woman was thinking she was going to have to give water to the Lord when really the situation was the opposite, Christ was offering her living water. The conclusion was that those that are lost think that they need to give Christ their water, or in other words they have to live a good life. They look at it grudgingly like the Samaritan woman did, but then she realized that the lesson was not upon her doing anything, it was upon her receiving the living water of salvation.

No matter how many cups of water that women gave Jesus, if she never asked for that living water she would be in hell today. But, because she realized that the lesson being taught her was not about religions, Jews verses Samaritans and it wasn’t about her being a good person and giving Jesus a drink. It was about her realizing that she needed to receive the living waters and that is the only way she would never thirst again. Today she is in heaven rejoicing not in that she gave Christ water, but because Christ gave her living water! Who is Giving the Water?

I liked the lesson, and I found it so awesome how God can bring bring a lesson like this to my mind even when it was on quick notice :) . Another blessing I had today was that I had a headache all day, ok, that was my blessing, but it was a blessing that now I feel like my headache is gone and I can enjoy writing this blog to ya'll. :)

Oh, Oh, I almost forgot, another blessing. It has been really great playing instruments, singing and stuff with my family because we were all able to go together to the nursing home and be a blessing to them. Needless to say the people at the Nursing home enjoy that stuff and quite a few of the staff came out to hear the song "Touring that City" until the song was interrupted by a loud beeping sound which all the nurses went running to answer and turn off the buzzer a couple minutes later... :( lol Anyway it was a great time. Enjoy your day and Thanks for reading my big blessing blog, haha :)

BenH

This past Sunday Pastor covered in his message the popular question, "Why do bad things happen to good people." This can be a hard question to answer a person who is grieving after a tragedy has harmed someone who they cared deeply about.... Pastor had good answers for that question and I couldn't remember if he covered another answer which I just uncovered in my devotions. It's not an uncommon answer, but I think it could be good answer/verse for Christian who is wondering why a tragedy has befallen them.

The verse is John 9:3 says, "Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him." This man was born blind, this blindness wasn't just a recently acquired problem, but was a thorn in his flesh for his entire life until this point. Most likely his parents were quite grieved when this situation arrived. However, this tragedy in his life turned out to be an amazing miracle which if it were not from the blindness he would never have witnessed first hand.

This mans life became a manifestation of a miraculous work of God in his life. When people from around the town saw him they would no longer recognize him as the "sinful" man begging for alms, but would glorify God because of the amazing miracle. All of the normal people of that town would never experience something as great as he experienced.

When I think of a hard situation I think of what Josiah and Tiffany Kuenzi have to face with taking care of Dillon. Though Jesus doesn't physically walk through our streets healing people today, I think we can biblically pray that the "works of God" would be manifest in Dillons life. It may not be healing, but God can still manifest his power through their lives. If you don't know who Dillon Kuenzi is you can read about him through his mothers blog at http://dillonsmommy.blogspot.com/ Josiah and Tiffany have already had some great opportunities to reach out with their testimony tracks and such. I Thank the Lord for the Kuenzi Family, they have been a godly Example of how to turn something which seems to be bad into an opportunity to bring God glory!!!

In conclusion, remember this, sometimes bad things may come up in order for us have the privilege of manifesting the works of God. We need to change our perception.

Keep Living for God Everyone :D

Benjamin

This is my official 50th post. Woohoo!!!


Ok, I'm over it, There is a this book I've been reading called, "The Valley of Vision" and it is a collection of Puritan Prayers. I'm pretty sure I will be reading this book for the rest of my life :) Not because I'm a slow reader, but this book is SOOOO good. The prayers written this book are so meaningful and very often express in the most eloquent words what I'm trying to express. Thankfully we have the Holy Spirit that speaks for us with groanings that cannot be uttered, but the words these guys use really "paint the picture" so much more vividly.

It would be hard for me to narrow down one prayer which I love so I'll write one of them which i just read recently... I hope it is a blessing to you and a challenge as it was to me.

God and Myself

Lord God Almighty,
They understanding is unsearchable and infinite,
Thy arm cannot be stayed,
Thy agency extends through limitless space,
All works hand on thy care,
With thee time is a present now.

Holy is thy wisdom, power, mercy, ways, works.
How can I stand before thee
withmy numberless and aggravated offenses?
I have often loved darkness,
observed lying vanities,
forsake thy given mercies,
trampled underfoot thy beloved Son,
mocked thy providences,
flattered thee with my lips,
broken thy covenant.
It is of thy compassion that I am not consumed.

Lead me to repentance, and save me from despair;
Let me come to thee renouncing, condemning, loathing myself,
but hoping in the grafce that flows even to the chief of sinners.
At the cross may I contemplate the evil of sin, and abhor it,
look on him whom I pierced,
as one slain for me, and by me.
May I never despise his death by fearing its efficacy for my salvation.
And whatever cross I am required to bear,
let me see him carrying a heavier.
Teach me in health to think of sickness,
in the brightest hours to be ready for darkness;
in life prepare me for death.
Thus may my soul rest in thee, O immortal and transcendent one,
revealed as thou art in the Person and work of thy Son,
the friend of sinners.


Isn't God so good, the Love of God is so amazing!

Enjoy your day and live it for God!
BenH

WARNING: Those of you who are not techy probablly won't find this post
very interesting :) but for those who are understand I've been giving
my computer heart attacks of gig after gig of video.

Now you may be thinking, just get a external hardrive. Well, I have
two and they are both basically FULL. My laptop has 100GB of space and
my extra hardrives hold 160 and 500. I'm trying to burn an ISO image
and my computer is telling me I don't have enough room. :( I think I
need a terrabite drive or something...lol

Well, on top of the other video projects Mr. Anger told me how busy
his schedule and asked me if I could get the videos together for the
graduation and as always I couldnt resist a video project :) Mr.
Anger has been such a help and encouragement to me through the years
and so doing the videos to help him out is quite a blessing.

Blessings: A blessing is that the guy from the UK promised me more
paid work :) Also, I did finish the project for the other guy and he
left me nice feedback on Elance. I have a fairly nice looking
reputation on Elance now which is really nice and helpful.

This day was really nice, Its been great having Tim Reeder at our
house. Its great to see him again. While Tim, Titus and the other guys
were running around outside shooting each other I was able to get
quite a bit of video work and such done at the church while being
serenaded by someone's excellent piano practice. :) and when I got
home my mom had an awesome supper... don't get me wrong my Mom makes
the most awesome food in the whole world, but after working hard and
having a good day it made the food even more enjoyable :) I have no
idea why I am actually still feeling awake right now, but at least I
was able to update my blog and finish the DVD ISO so I can upload to
the web tomorrow for the guy to download.

Have a Wonderful Day to whoever reads my blog :) lol

BenH

P.S. I'm going to get something together more spiritually minded soon,
recently video has been clogging a lot of my time so most of my
blessings have been pertaining to this life...I'll get something
together for ya soon, I've been getting some good things from my
devotions so I'll see if I can post a yummy tidbit soon, hehe