Prayer Really Does Change Things

I work waiting tables at a Pizza Hut, and for the last couple of months I was really butting heads with one of the managers. For whatever reason she was always giving me the most distasteful jobs, busing my tables for me and claiming that gave her the right to keep the tip, and making me stay at least an hour late every single night. I responded by being a little butthead, and doing everything I could to make her job harder.

One night, after listening to me rant about it for the thirtieth or fortieth time, my mother had the audacity to suggest I pray for this manager, who I'll refer to as PHM (Pizza Hut Manager) from now on. She said also to pray that I would be nicer to PHM, because the Bible says

"But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in doing so you will heap burning coals upon his head." Romans 12:20 NASB

After much deliberation I decided this wasn't such bad advice, so I asked God to literally heap burning coals upon PHM's head. He told me that probably wasn't going to happen, so I did what I knew I was supposed to and actually prayed for her, asking God to change my attitude, and to help PHM in every way he could, which I was hoping would be a promotion to a bigger Pizza Hut far away from where I worked.

After a few days of praying for PHM whenever I remembered to, things started to get better at work. I was being nicer to her, and in return she was being nicer to me. And I just found out today that the big boss of this Pizza Hut gave PHM a talkin' to about some of the things she did that grieved me so sorely. Burning coals? Not quite but I'll take it. Today she actually did some of my work for me and sent me home a little bit early. Yay prayer!

Falls Creek

I just got back from Falls Creek, a huge Christian youth camp in Oklahoma, and it was an amazing experience. In addition to having a great time hanging out with friends and getting to worship God with 6000 other teenagers I learned some things from God this week.

The first thing I figured out is that I've been going about my relationship with God all wrong. I've got several atheist friends and whenever I was around them I would sort of hide the fact that I was a Christian, because I was almost ashamed of it. I wouldn't come right out and deny my faith, but I wouldn't come right out and talk about it either. I would tell them stuff like "yeah I'm a Christian, but I'm not like the other Christians you know, I'm not into church and most other Christians are stupid," or something like that. I looked pretty cool for my non-believing friends, but I almost felt like I was apologizing to them for what I believed, and I wasn't right with God. At Falls Creek I came to realize that being a follower of Jesus is absolutely the greatest thing in the world, and not something to be ashamed of. So I made a decision to not hide my faith anymore. It's going to be hard, and I'm kind of nervous about it, but I think it's what God wants me to do.

Another thing that happened to me at Falls Creek is that I felt called to be a campus missionary. What the people at Falls Creek challenged me to do was get people praying for the students at my high school and then share my faith at least once a month. From the minute I heard about it I haven't been able to get it out of my head, so it seems like God is pointing me in that direction. I'm scared to death at the thought of sharing Christ with my classmates, but I suppose that if I can help get one person saved it will be worth it.

-Ross

Check One Two

Welcome to Log and Speck, my blog about trying to be a Christian teenager in today's world. Here I'll be ranting and raving and posting incredibly deep thoughts on Christianity and religion and whatever other stuff pops into my head at the time. Hopefully if this blog gets any kind of readership (is that a word? readership?) going it could be a witnessing tool of some variety. Anyways, I'm just kinda getting to feel for this blogging stuff, so that's all for now.

-Ross