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TommyLewis1425
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Name: Tommy
Country: United States
State: Ohio
Metro: Lima
Birthday: 3/30/1981
Gender: Male
Interests: I have a king sized bed. Now, I dont know any kings, but if one ever came over, he would be comfortable..."Oh, so your a king you say? Well you wont believe what I have in store for you...it is to your exact specifications."
Expertise: I walked past a dry cleaner at 3am, and they had a sign that said "sorry, we are closed." You dont have to be sorry, its 3am, and your a dry cleaner. It would be ridiculous for me to expect you to be open. Im not going to come back at 10 and say, "I was here at 3 and you were closed...somebody owes me an apology."
Occupation: Supervisory
Industry: Other
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
MSN: willwrite4food@journalist.com
Yahoo:  tdl033081
Member Since:
12/18/2005
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| Has anyone heard the song "Captivate Us," written by Charlie Hall, performed by Watermark? I heard it recently on the radio and fell in love with it. The words are just so passionate, so powerful, so full of feeling, so full of meaning. It is in many ways more of a prayer than a song. It seems like today more and more of what we consider good music is nothing more than a catchy hook and bland generic, recycled lyrics. I love when I find a song that has passion and meaning. These are the lyrics:
Your face is beautiful
And Your eyes are like the stars.
Your gentle hands have healing
There inside the scars.
Your loving arms they draw me near
And your smile it brings me peace.
Draw me closer, oh my Lord.
Draw me closer, Lord, to Thee.
Chorus:
Captivate us, Lord Jesus
Set our eyes on You
Devastate us with Your presence
Falling down
And Rushing River draw us nearer
Holy Fountain consume us with You
Captivate us, Lord Jesus, with You
Your voice is powerful
And Your words are radiant bright
In Your breath and shadow
I will come close and abide
You whisper love and life divine
And Your fellowship is free
Draw me closer O my Lord,
Draw me closer Lord to Thee
Repeat Chorus
Let everything be lost in the shadows
Of the light of Your face
Let every chain be broken from me
As I'm bound in Your grace
For Your yoke is easy,
Your burden is light
You're full of wisdom, power and might
And every eye will see You
Repeat Chorus
Hebrews 13:15 tells us to offer a sacrifice of praise continually, to constantly carry with us an attitude of praise, to create an atmosphere of praise. When Jesus, in Luke Chapter 11, taught on prayer, He begins by saying "Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name." The American Heritage Dictionary offers this definition:
Hallow: To make or set apart as holy; To respect or honor greatly, revere.
We find then that the ultimate scriptural example of prayer opens with praise. It seems safe to say that Jesus, being God incarnate, would know the best way to approach God, the best way to invite God's presence. Read back through the verses of the song. Lines like "Your face is beautiful, Your eyes are like the stars," "Your voice is powerful," and "Your full of wisdom, power and might" provide the perfect introduction of praise to the powerful prayer found in the chorus.
We read the chorus then as a prayer to God:
Captivate us, Lord Jesus
Set our eyes on You
Devastate us with Your presence
Falling down
And Rushing River draw us nearer
Holy Fountain consume us with You
Captivate us, Lord Jesus, with You
I love the choices of words and the imagery presented here. The song asks God first to captivate us, to set our eyes on Him. Captivate can mean many things, including to attract and hold the attention or interest of, as by beauty or excellence, to enchant, fascinate, bewitch, charm, subdue, capture. When we ask Him to captivate us, to set our eyes on Him, then, we are asking him to capture us, to subdue us, to attract us, with His beauty and excellence, and having done so, to set or fix our eyes constantly on Him. In this day where so many influences and images are attracting our attention, trying to pull our focus, our attention, our eyes from Christ, it is a powerful prayer indeed to ask Him to capture our attention, to keep our focus ever on Him. As the scripture tells us in Isaiah 26:3, God will keep us in perfect peace if our mind is stayed on Him.
The song then asks Him to devastate us with His presence falling down. Devastate also is a word that can mean many things, including to lay waste, render desolate, to overwhelm, to overpower, to confound. In asking god to devastate us with His presence, we ask Him to fall in such a powerful way that it complete overwhelms us, completely overpowers us, that we lose ourself in His presence. It is reminiscent of when the Ark was placed in the Temple in 1 Kings 8, when the presence of the Lord so filled the Temple that the priests could not even minister. We pray for that overwhelming, overpowering presence of the Lord to fall down on us, and to then lay waste, render desolate any part of self that might remain, so that it be not us, but Christ living in us. We want that overwhelming, overpowering presence with us, and in us, not just at church, not just in our prayer closets, but always. We want to be so overwhelmed, so conscious of His presence, that everything we do and say be based on acknowledging His presence.
The song then calls on the "Rushing River," the "Holy Fountain," to draw us nearer and to come consume us. To consume is to "eat up, devour, destroy completely, absorb, engross, engage fully. Jesus says in John 4:13-14 "Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: But
whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never
thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of
water springing up into everlasting life." Revelation 22:17 says "And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say,
Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him
take the water of life freely." Christ offers the living water of His Word to us, we ask Him to come, draw us to Himself, and just overtake us, consume us, to let us be submerged in, lost in, overwhelmed by the rushing river of the water of His Word, the "pure river of the water of life" spoken of in Revelation 22:1. We ask Him to absorb, to engross, to engage us fully, until our very essence, everything we are, is wrapped up in Him.
I can truly say that that this song represents my prayer to Christ. I want Him to take me, to overwhelm me, to consume, to wrap me up completely and entirely in Him, to consecrate me, until every ounce of me fades away, until it is, as Paul writes in Galatians 2:20, "not I, but Christ (who) liveth in me."
God bless you...
Tommy Lewis
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This is an amazing sermon that I feel would be beneficial
for all of us to hear. It was very sobering for me, and has really gotten me
thinking about my life, how I live, what I do, what I say, what I watch. The link was posted on YQ Forums, but I wanted to post it here for anyone who doesn't get on there. Thanks
to Trevor for the link...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuabITeO4l8
It's about an hour long, so it may take a few minutes to load, especially
for you dark-age dial up people ;p
A few quotes from the sermon:
"And I want you to know that, when you take a look at American
Christianity, it is based more upon a godless culture than it is upon the Word
of God."
"What you need to know is that salvation is by faith and faith alone in
Jesus Christ. And faith alone in Jesus Christ is preceded and followed by
repentance . . . aturning away from sin, a hatred for the things that God hates
and a love for the things that God loves, a growing in holiness and a desire
not to be like Britney Spears, not to be like the world, and not to be like the
great majority of American Christians, but to be like Jesus Christ!"
"But if you profess to have gone through the narrow gate, but yet you live
in the broad way, just like all the other people in your high school, just like
all the other people who are carnal and wicked, the Bible wants you to know
that you should be terribly, terribly afraid because you know not God."
"And what is the fruit that you’re bearing? Do you look like the world?
Act like the world? Do you have and experience the same joys that the world
experiences? Can you love sin and relish it? Can you love rebellion and relish
it? Then you know not God. You will know them by their fruit. God has the power
to change them."
"I wish––you know what a move of God would be in this place? If all of you
came under conviction, if I myself came under conviction of the Holy Spirit, we
fell down on our faces and wept because we watch the things that God hates,
because we wear the things that God hates, because we act like the world, look
like the world, smell like the world, because we do the very things, and we
know not that we do these things, because we do not know the Word of God.
Because, even though we claim as a denomination that the Scripture is the
infallible Word of God, basically all we get is llustrations, stories, and
quaint little novels. Oh, that God will glow on this place, that we would turn
away from our sin, that we would renounce the things that are displeasing to
God, and, then, that we would run to Him and we would relish Him and we would
love Him."
There is alot more...but if I quote everything...what point is there for anyone
to go listen to it?
One more thing...doesn't the fact that this is called a "shocking"
sermon illustrate just how far we have fallen? It's all straight from
scripture...we all, message people included, myself especially, need to get
back to the Word...
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| Five Things I Like This Summer:
1. Cleveland Indians Baseball:
One of the top three records in MLB, season long fight for
the division, and $14 dollars gets you into the left field bleachers. You also
get to see all of the hilariously improbable Mrs. Sizemore shirts on woman
wanting to date the Indians center fielder. "Ummm, excuse me ma'am, I don't
think a 6'2" 200 24 year old multi-millionaire with six pack abs and a model's
smile is in to 46 year old soccer moms
with bleached-blond hair who are 45 lbs overweight, wear their daughters
clothes and preclude every sentence with a high pitched "OHHH MY GOOOSH!!!!""
2. Beckhamania:
Greatest ball control and passing most Americans have ever
seen live...and finally some real marketability for the American version of the
world's favorite game...and we get to see how long it takes for us to all want to
kill all of the snooty British media types following Posh and Becks with a
rusty pick axe...my guess...about 2.6 seconds. Yes, snooty is a word...I promise...I
think...
3. Transformers:
Giant robots from outerspace. The special effects are absolutely stunning. Did I mention the giant robots from outerspace? The cars are sweet...oh yeah, I can't remember if I mentioned this...there are giant robots from outerspace in this movie...
4. Stargazing:
Laying on your back in the grass pondering the nature of the
universe is one of life's true natural treasures. It's not necessarily a "summer only" activity...most places. It's just that the negative 47 degree
temperatures and 12 inches of snow kinda take some of the charm off of it
during your typical Ohio winter. 5. Sand Volleyball:
Without the sand...in the grass...or an air conditioned gym... | | |
| This is amazing...watch the video on the right hand side...hit play, you will get a 30 second advertisement, then the video...
They are wrong about one thing...George Finn wasn't the inspiration for Rain Man...according to the guy who wrote the script for the movie, his inspiration was actually Kim Peek...
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/26/60minutes/main2401846.shtml
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