Week 13 Blog

God has gave me an amazing body to do physical labor and serve others. This intersects with my life of wanting to serve others. I have gone to Tennessee three times to help serve others and share God's love. I believe that God wants me to pursue a job that can help other people. So, I am going into education to teach little kids. As a teacher you provide a parent figure that some kids might not have. In today's age there are an increased amount of kids who are living in incomplete homes. As a teacher you can change people's lives and make them better. We can make people's lives better and begin to introduce them to God. Through service I feel fully alive in Christ and love what I do. As I work for these people I feel blessed with my life. I praise God with the life that I have been given. So often we overlook the little things and always want more. We have become so immune to what we have in our lives that we overlook it. So when we come across people who have nothing we begin to reflect on how awesome our lives are. It also happens that families with so little often have a stronger faith with God than people who have grown up with average lives.

Week 12 Blog

I believe that Christians should adopt success as a life principle. We should always try to do better in life and improve in whatever areas are lacking. So for me it would to be improve my worship. Success comes through being able to be a good Christian. We should strive to improve other people's lives. We should not settle for anything less than amazing. We should make changes to our lives that would please the Lord. When we sin enters our lives it the Lord is displeased with us and wants us to come back to us. From the point of view of God we should be successful just like Jesus. But, because of our sinful nature we are unable to be exactly like Jesus. So God wants us to be as close to Jesus as possible. God wants us to spread his word in whatever we do. As we share with more people than the Kingdom of God grows. Everyone has their own skills that they can use to introduce people to God. God does not say that we have to introduce people to the Kingdom of God but it makes him happy if you do. There are many ways to praise God such as singing, praying, physical labor, and athletic abilities.

Mark Charles Response

"Most Americans are not overtly racist, but we live in a systemically racist nation." this is how Mark Charles ended his speech on Monday. I agree with this statement for the most part. People themselves are not personally racist but the nation as a total is racist toward people that are not Caucasian. We see all the time in the news that White officers are seen beating or killing black people. This is often seen as racism because they don't give a reason for the abuse. I agree that racism has been around for a long time. I also agree that what we did to the Native Americans was wrong and that we should never let it happen again. But, at the same time Mark Charles did not seem to acknowledge when the Native Americans attacked American settlers. One example of this is the Spirit Lake massacre, which occurred on October 8-12, 1857. A Wahpekute band of Santee Sioux attack on scattered Iowa frontier settlements during a severe winter. Jesus says in the Bible to turn your other check to the enemy and not to fight back. I believe that we can change this system by talking and working together. We can learn from this experience and use it as an example so it doesn't happen again. We can come together as a community of Christians to learn how to better all of our lives. We need to learn how to reflect on our own lives truthfully and make changes after because of it.