Seriously?

I am extremely fortunate to live in a small place known as Kansas City. Maybe you've heard of IHOP? No, no, not the pancake place, the other one. The one that prays 24/7 and sings worship music unceasingly.

Yeah, the one a lot of people call a cult. I pray for those people. A lot.

Moving on.

In this place, known as Kansas City, Missouri, and at this house of prayer, there have been, since november, meetings known as awakening meetings, from wednesday - saturday (Not through All of those days. though. Just from 6pm-12am.... Just thought I'd mention that)

These awakenings meeting have an amazing start, which you can read here.  And since then, God has been totally pouring out his heart over the people involved (And by involved, I mean anyone who joins in. Not just here, but also by webstream, etc. And small awakening meetings have started up other places too, I think...)

Every night is better than the last. Every night people go deeper, and deeper, and deeper.

But what of the teens?

Well, yes, they are people too. And a bunch of them have included themselves. A school here, called the Daniel Academy, has been "invaded" by the Holy Spirit, touching hearts, causing people to break out in joy and tears and various forms of manifestations (shaking, falling over, etc), and healings... The list goes on. Not just the TDA teens, but others as well.

So what is my problem?

The other, other ones. The ones that come just for friends.

Example:

Today I went for dinner at an awesome family's house, got home, got on FB. My friend tells me that she missed me tonight. I said yeah, I wish I'd been there, did anything awesome happen?

She says no, not really. (Just an added note.. This is the friend who, when the whole thing started three months ago, she texted me multiple times telling me to come cause God was touching people and it was amazing)

Now, a few hours later, and people are still tweeting and posting mobile uploads of the awakening meeting that went past 12. 

This isn't the first time, though it is happening more and more. And by the pictures uploaded, the videos taken by people....

One can see awesome stuff was happening.

So what's up with her answer, "Nope not really."

The problem is, a lot of kids are treating this like a social event. Great, (the) God (Who so happened to create the world) is here and encountering people... Wanna go hang out in the student lounge and drink soda? (Note, if it's in parenthesis, I added it. Just to throw it into perspective.)

Sure, for the first week or so kids came to touch God, but then they didn't really encounter Him, and so they got bored. Now it just makes a good excuse to hang out.

Ok, so you didn't get your heart broken open like a piñata, you didn't find joy unsurpassable, you didn't have an encounter with God that totally healed you of whatever emotional scars you may have, and you're not seeing feathers, gold dust, or finding yourself unable to stop laughing. At least, not in the first few weeks.

Does this mean you stop dedicating yourself to worship and prayer and being with God so He could meet you and heal you and all of the above stuff, and instead you wander off to McDonalds for an hour until you have to get back before your parents notice?

Apparently, it does.

And, confession here, I don't know what makes me feel worse; the fact that my friends all do this, or the fact that I can't say no to them when they ask me to come with them.

Yeah, so this all sickens me, this "Let's hang out cause we've all done this prayer stuff before" (Not that they say that, but if you break it down, that's really what they're saying...)

And I sicken me. Sure, I want to be in there, with the people who've found joy or who aren't stopping till they find it. But when my closer friends show up and say "Hey let's go to McDonalds I'm hungry," or "Let's go to the student lounge, cause it's loud in here..." Do I say no, I'm trying to find God? No... I say sure and follow them quietly as I fail to follow (and occasionally argue with) the voice in my head that's screaming at me to turn around, go back, and start praying.

Is this you? Yes? No? Maybe?

This isn't just with the Awakening. This is pressing into God in general. Picking God time over friendship time. Cause if your friends are against you spending time with the God who made not only their hearts, but the stars and, well, everything... Then they realllly need prayer... And maybe you need to back away from them a bit.

Not that I'm saying totally ditch your friends (I get the feeling of deja vu as I write this part, heh). I'm saying, make your life right with God, make it a flowering garden with God (see Song of Solomon, and I could add a few other references to explain that but I'm too lazy to find them...). Then hang out with your friends. Don't let your social life strangle your God life. You can still have friends and hang out with them. You should have friends. Jesus had friends, didn't he? But when there's a worship concert going on at your church, unless you Promised to go to the movies with your people, you'd probably come away with a lot more from the worship concert. Just saying.


If you're perfectly fine with just morning devotions, and going to church, then... well, idk I can't tell you how to live, I can only give you suggestions...


But the closer you get to God, the more you devote yourself to finding Him, the more truly alive you'll be. 

How about this. We all start listening to that pull in our hearts. The one that says PRAYYYY YOU NEED TO BE CLOSE TO GOD!!!!!
 I will if you will (I'll still try even if you decide to not to... just fyi...)

If you don't have this voice yet, that's ok. Go pray. Like, now. Get get off your computer, find your Bible, put some worship music on, and devote the next however long to God.

If you're not encountering God, don't give up. Seriously, if you fail 8th grade, or get fired from a job, you don't quit, you repeat the grade. You get a new job. You take the driver's test again. Study harder, try harder, if you're still not on dry land, the idea isn't to let yourself drown in the ocean, or starve to death on the tiny raft of boat. You keep going till you reach Lannndddd. (Yes, I did just used a cheesy metaphor. The raft or boat can be compared to life just believing in God, being a christian, and staying away from sin. But you knew that already)

I'm not going to point fingers at people. I'm not going to call anyone a bad Christian or a bad person. I don't judge people. But I will judge bad decisions and actions. And then talk about them here.

If you're reading this after coming back from praying like I suggested before, kudos.

Anyways. Please keep me in prayer... My family's going through crap (none of which will probably ever be discussed here, methinks) and thus it need peace, and I need willpower to pick devotion over having a blooming social life.

If you want, you can email me at endlesstunnels@gmail.com with prayer requests, questions, etc.

Also, if you're looking for good christian music, click here. I'll probably write some stuff about music sometime within the next month or so.. But other pressing topics keep getting in the way. (hehe....)

And if you want to see the awakenings, for free, there's that link from above, and if you want to listen to free webstream of the prayer room, here's a link to that one for you.

Now, goodnight, or good morning, or good... something to you all, my dears, and may you have a blessed day!

~Silver

Rules to Live By, Regarding Love

1.    You’re going to feel lonely.

2.    Your heart is fragile. Very fragile. Don’t give it away. Protect it.

3.    You can’t protect your heart. But God can.

4.    Just because you tell yourself not to fall for anyone, and not to want a bf/gf, doesn’t mean you’re not going to have that one person you can’t help but think about.

5.    Just because you fell for someone doesn’t mean they have or will ever fall for you. And you can’t interpret everything they do regarding you to mean that they do like you. (Or that they absolutely hate you.)

6.    You can’t stop yourself from thinking. You can, however, pray every single day and force yourself to focus on God. The more you do this, the better it will work.

7.    No, you and your person are not different from every other couple. There is no such thing as individuality, everyone is human and will make the same mistakes.

8.    You cannot love someone at first sight, unless that person is God. You can’t love at second sight either, and you really can’t “fall in love” with a person until you’ve gotten past mutual like and you’re very, very close to that person. This does not mean dating for a week. This means, steadily being together for at least a year.

9.    Always pray first. Always.

10.    If you haven’t had the chance to talk to God first, say no. And don’t convince yourself you heard God just cause you really, really like the person. If that was God talking, you’d know it.

11.   If you can’t decide what God’s saying, listen to your friends. If they’re all saying no, then the answer is no. If only most of them are unsupportive, the answer is still no. If it’s fifty-fifty, you should probably still say no, and you should press in really hard to God.

12.   Having a relationship with someone to prepare for a future relationship (or many future relationships) is an incredibly dumb idea. The best way to build a basis for a relationship is by having a good relationship with Jesus (Who is the ultimate Lover). Anything else will just get you hurt.

13.   If you were Romeo and Juliet, this means you would both die young. Keep this in mind.

14.   If you and this person are meant to be together, you will end up together on God’s timing. Cause your timing really sucks.

15.   The best way to get over heartbreak is to run to God. (Though, stuff like chocolate does help…)

16.   If a person has a bad history with relationships, you’re not The One to change him (or her).

17.   DO NOT be alone in a car with your gf/bf or someone who might soon be that. You don’t have as much self control as you think you do.

18.   Don’t go to movies alone with this person either.

19.   If you must break rule 18 but nothing happened, then you’d better have someone else picking you up so you don’t break rule 17.

20.   A relationship where one is (or should be) in college and the other is still a junior or lower in highschool is just begging for trouble.

21.   Your body is about as precious as your heart. Don’t talk yourself into or let yourself be talked into physical stuff that you know you’ll feel guilty about later. Cause if it makes you feel guilty, then it was probably most definitely wrong.

Ok so, that’s my Valentine’s update. Yeahhh it’s a little late and I’m sorry about that…

But this isn’t just for Valentine’s day/Single’s Awareness day.

This is kind of a very, very brief “guidelines to your love life.”

Please feel free to leave me feedback, or email me at endlesstunnels@gmail.com… And of course… you’re always more than welcome to share this with your friends.

Peace out and Goodnight!

~Silver

I have returned! Now let's take a look at your imagination...

So, over the past month or so, my (new) computer has been breaking, and about two weeks ago it died. That's what you get for buying refurbished, I guess.

We sent it off to Apple since it was still under warranty, they basically had to replace every main system, and they sent it back. 

We thought we'd backed everything important up, but somehow the two most important things, the music I've recorded and Everything I've Ever written, failed to copy. So I lost almost everything.

The good news is, an auto-save of my book managed to copy elsewhere. So I still have that. But pray for me, please, cause... Well, I did lose a lot. And not only does it hurt, but I have a terrible memory so pray I can remember so I can re-write it all... Thanks =]

And now moving on to stuff I usually write about. 

Where do books and movies come from? Where do writers get the intricate (or dull and useless) plots for our entertainment? 

Well, the greeks had an answer: the muses. Humans in general can take inspiration from anything, from their friends to leaves in a park. But almost every story follows the same path as the rest in its genre. Nothing is truly 100% original. 

Actually, that's not true. There was a first, a precedent. And everything, absolutely everything, is branched off somehow from that.

The original can be found in the Bible. It's the story of God and Humanity. 

This story has everything; it's a love story, with Jesus as one main character and you as the other. Sometimes you ignore him, or maybe you think he's stupid, or whatever. But he still loves you and thinks you're perfect. 

It's an action story, with cool epic fight scenes. Jesus comes back with a gigantic army and slays everything that stands against him. Plus it's an action/love hybrid, since he's coming back and epically destroying everything to save us (you) whom he loves. 

It's even a horror story, if you're one of those that stands against him (Which seriously isn't a good idea.)

Of course few read the Bible and then run off and write Romeo and Juliet or Transformers (Though I must say, with the Fallen, and the transformer's heaven, and Optimus rising from the dead and all, they may have read the Bible first...)

So how does this answer the question of where inspiration comes from? It doesn't, not directly anyways. Inspiration comes from a built in longing in the human soul, from the world we live in and the typically ignored story of it.

We were built for love, we were made to be rescued. Humanity has written stories that are only a poor re-telling of truth, because that truth is inescapable. Mankind has humanized an eternal tale of true love and true glory many times over in attempts to satisfy this longing in people without them having to turn to God.

Not that christian writers don't do the same. There really is no other kind of story to tell. Even real life follows similar patterns, though not usually to the same extent as the books would have us believe. There is only one truth, whether it's written as a story darkened by sin and wrought with things to capture the heart of man, or whether it's written in an attempt to give Christians books they can safely read. 

What do we do about this? Is it bad? Am I saying to stay away from entertainment, and relationships, and pretty much everything?

No, this post isn't to tell you that all entertainment is evil and horrible (though, there's a lot out there that is...) 

But yes, you should stay away from it all... To a certain extent. 

Similar to relationships, stories can capture your heart. Not in the same way, obviously (then again, maybe it is the same way. Which is why people stalk actors and wish they could marry book characters. Or even game characters.) 

If you're going to spend your time in the beautiful world of books, or the fantastical world of tv, or even playing computer and video games a lot, make sure God has your heart first. Spend at least as much time in the Bible and talking to God as you do with fictional characters. As humans we are so easily caught up in the things of the world, and with so much out there the more we let ourselves go the harder it is to find God when we need him. (Which, we really need Him all the time but that's a matter for another post)

And, naturally, try to stay away from stuff that encourages immorality and glorifies sin. And after you watch or read something, as yourself was it really worth it? What did you gain from that tale? What did it teach you?

I'll hopefully post again later this week. Oh and hey, if you read this, comment! I would love to know that people are out there listening... And if you read this and like it, suggest it to others too... And read the other posts... Yeah. Anyways. 

Have an awesome day!

~Silver