The Final

I HAVE A NEW BLOG... THE LINK IS CHRISDUNBAR.WORDPRESS.COM

Twenty Fifth

I read this blog today about "gaining credibility", as a young person this was an awesome post, good encouragement.

http://bradlomenick.com/2009/03/19/gaining-credibility/

Twenty Fourth

So I created a twitter account today, which just officially means I am now owned by the computer and all it's crazy antics. Here is the link http://twitter.com/Dun86 . I wrote a devo that I will be sharing with a group of high schoolers in a week, in FLORIDA! Tell me what you think:

I am a whore. But it’s not just me you too are whores. Shocked?

If you read through the Old Testament you will find a number of times when God refers to his chosen people as ‘His adulterous children.’ In Ezekiel 16, this is most clear. The Lord refers to His nation as a child who was born and then cast aside. Squirming, covered in her own blood, the child kicked. Her death would be imminent without intervention. But the Lord passed by, took notice, and began to care for the child. He cleaned her and dressed her in fine clothes and jewellery. He watched her grow from a young child into a young woman. And the Lord entered into a covenant with her, and she became His wife. She was very beautiful, because the Lord had made her so. Yet she shared her beauty with others, instead of reserving it for her husband. She took the attractive clothing her husband had made for her and transformed them into shrines to worship. She remade the gorgeous jewellery given her by her husband into idols to revere.

She has become an adulteress. A whore. And so have I. I am that whore.
In the Jewish culture before you were married you entered into a betrothal period. This was a period where a husband and wife were considered to be together but they could not yet share a bed. The betrothal included vows, and for either person to break those vows would make them an adulterer. And the results of adultery were divorce, or worse, death. After a period of time the groom would come for his bride and then there would be a huge and celebration then they would be brought together as husband and wife and then they could live the rest of their lives normally.

As Christians we are betrothed to Jesus Christ. We have entered into a relationship with the Lord. We have made a vow to love Him and serve Him alone. We have promised to be faithful to Him alone. At our baptism, we forsake all others who may pledge for our allegiance, and we become His bride. As a bride, I am supposed to love and place Jesus, my groom, above all in my life. But I fail in this. I sometimes love to sleep in more than I love to get up and have a quiet time of reading the Scriptures and prayer. As a bride, I am called to be faithful to my future husband. But whenever money gets tight in my home, I often find that it’s much easier to put my faith in worry than in the God who can meet all my needs. As a bride, I am expected to remain pure both in what I see and hear, but also in what I think and do. But my innocence is lost so quickly in the age of the media, combined with my lack of self-control. In actuality, whenever I embrace somebody in my life as more important than Jesus, I am committing adultery. If my job consumes more of me than my Jesus, I am prostituting myself out. If I forsake Jesus in order to indulge in any sin, than I am a bride who sneaks out on her groom and sleeps with another.

But here is the great part about our relationship with Jesus. Ephesians 5.25-27, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing [a] her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.”

Jesus loves His adulterous bride. So much that He gave His very life up for her. Our infidelity has dirtied us and our disloyalty has blemished us. But this sacrifice by Jesus frees us, who are whores, to wear white on our wedding day. We are forgiven as we walk down the aisle. We are in His eyes, the most beautiful and most precious bride that the world has ever known. And He is the one, by His death and burial and resurrection, who has given us that beauty.

Twenty Third

So this is Anathallo- Bells....


So this post is brief yet full of intellegent information. (Of course non of it is from me, quotes from people I really look up to.)

Actually first I thought you would like to know that everyone on staff here at the church thought I looked like Fidel Castro..I wasn't sure how to take it, so I accepted it as a compliment.

"How can you be worried about changing the soul when you don't care about the body that holds the soul."
-Dr. Martin Luther King

"Strength is not measured by overcoming your weakness, but by bearing the weakness of others."
-Lenski

"You devolop unity by having a common goal and when that goal is the obsession of life, unity will just happen."
-Francis Chan

"You can gauge the value of a relationship by the level of discomfort you are willing to endure to make that relationship better. You can gauge the amount of value you place one someone who your leading by the amount of discomfort that your willing to engage to see their full potential."
-Steven Furtick

"We created a religion using the name of Christ and convinced ourselves that God's optimal desire for our lives was to insulate us in a spiritual bubble where we risk nothing, sacrifice nothing, lose nothing, worry about nothing. Yet Jesus' death wasn't to free us from dying, but to free us from the fear of death. Jesus came to liberate us so that we could die up front and then live. Jesus Christ wants to take us to place where only dead men and women can go."
~Erwin McManus

"Look here, you people say, "Today or tomorrow we are going to a certain town and will stay there a year. We will do business there and make a profit." How do you know what will happen tomorrow? For your life is like the morning fog--it's here a little while, then it's gone."
-James 4.13-14

Thirty- second

So, Common's new album was just released, and this song is awesome!


So Craig Groeschel and Steven Furtick recently posted a challenge on their blogs and that is "If you think something good, say it." I love this. When you think of something encouraging say it, don't sit around and assume they know what your thinking just come out and say it. Many times as a MAN (say that in a deep raspy voice, that's what real men sound like) I feel less manly when I tell another dude they sounded really well when they lead worship or spoke well or anything like that. Some people don't "say it" because they don't want people to think they are being fake.

It's a small yet huge challenge. When a compliment for someone comes to mind, say it! It builds unity between people but more importantly it could make someone feel very encouraged and that may be exactly what they needed to hear.

So just say it!

Love Loudly..Live Graciously..Be Conversational..

Thirty-first

Tell me what you think about this band...I can't make up my mind

Twenty-Ninth

One of my all time favorite rap groups: Jurassic 5


I realized today as I was reading through my past blogs that there isn't a lot of humor or light hearted topics. This is unfortunate, because I joke around a lot, probably too much. So on that note let's lighten the mood a little.

I'm a city boy through and through. But I love to be outdoors and fish. So I'm a city boy with country boy tendencies. Two stories come to mind, when I was a freshman in high school (before the country boy tendencies) me and a few friends wanted to go camping, fortunately one of my aunts lives in some remote woods so we asked if we could have our camp there, of course she said yes. Actually she and a couple of my cousins slept in another tent, well half way through the night my friends and I hated this idea of camping, it was cold and hard to sleep (plus there were ants), so we walked inside and slept comfortably. (while my aunt and cousins were still out suffering).

I love to fish, it's one of my all time favorite things to do. But when the flies come out, I get PISSED! I feel like all I do is swat at these stupid things. My friends laugh at me, they wont necessarily be looking at me but they can hear me smack my head and yell at flies, of course they don't have a problem with it, because they are true men. I haven't told anyone this, but I have actually missed some fish becuase I am to busy getting rid of these flies.

Maybe you could say I'm a pampered country boy...either way, I will always claim to be city boy.

It's only fitting to show a clip from the movie City Slickers:


Be Conversational and all that jazz...but more importantly laugh and have fun, it does a body good