Don't Shoot the Messenger

2 Timothy 2:15 (NASB)¹⁵ Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.

2 Timothy 2:15 (KJV)¹⁵ Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

I have to say, it's not easy preaching and teaching the truth!!  I see friends on facebook growing in their relationship with the Lord, learning the truths of the Bible and throwing out the teachings of man that they have grown up with their whole life and I am so THANKFUL.  I thank God for each and everyone that will pray, study, fast, read and pray some more for God to reveal the truth to them and then accept it when HE does!!  Many times God plants a seed through some small something that another person says or HE plants a thought in our minds.  Because of free will, it is then up to us to do something with it.  My heart breaks for those who follow after men, whether it be t.v. Evangelists or their own church Pastor, OR their dad or granddad or uncle etc.  No one, let me repeat, no one will make it into the Kingdom of God based on their relationship with their pastor or any other man.  You cannot follow man and God, you can learn some things from man but if it doesn't line up with Scripture, it's not correct. 

Here is why the title says, "Don't Shoot the Messenger":  When God lays it on someone's heart to pray and search the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit teaches them something, IF they obey God, they do not keep that information to themselves.  IF they have the love of Christ in them, they do not keep that information to themselves.  IF they are truly concerned and love their neighbor as themselves, they do not keep that information to themselves.  They are a messenger, they are the person at that moment that the Holy Spirit has pointed towards truth.  Our job is not to immediately discredit them, slander them, destroy or expose them, etc.  If we are truly a Child of God, we will search the Scriptures, pray and ask God if it's truth, not toss it out because our Pastor doesn't agree or didn't preach it.

Now listen to me carefully, please.  I am not saying that you should be "tossed about by every wind of doctrine".  I am saying that everything we have been taught from childhood is NOT necessarily the truth.  We HAVE to pray, search the scriptures and make sure what we are hearing or reading lines up with the Word of God.  IF what you are reading or hearing does NOT line up with the Word of God, then you can expose false witness, BUT be careful that you search the scriptures and make sure it doesn't line up with it.  Make sure you aren't kicking against something you've just "always been taught".

If we are going to get anywhere in our relationship with God, we have got to "come out of the world".  We have got to get out of doctrine and into God's truth.  We've got to stop believing everything we hear and read and study to show our own selves approved.  Sometimes learning the truth will also be backed up with other research materials, i.e. Sunday observation, where did it come from?, Easter, Christmas, The Pre-Rapture theory.  Not only are these NOT Biblical but you can find through History where these things began and how they came about being celebrated.  I am just listing those few but there are many more things we have been taught to believe come from the Lord only to find out if we study them out that they actually were created by man.

I am just a messenger, but shoot me if you must!  Until then I will keep revealing what the Holy Spirit reveals to me.  To those who are willing to learn, God bless you, continue your search and prayer.  To those who are not willing and get angry when the lies are exposed, I will pray for you and I still love you, so does God. 

All I ask is prayer, that I will continue to pray, fast, seek God and be led by the Lord and the teaching of the Holy Spirit.  Prayer that I will stand for the truth and not fall for anything!  I pray the same for you.

2 Timothy 2:15 (NASB) ¹⁵ Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.

2 Timothy 2:15 (KJV) ¹⁵ Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

Love you all and God bless you all,

Another Messenger

So You Want to be a Blogger

This may be the first blog you've read or this might be the 1000th. If you are just starting out this is a good place to start. I don't claim to know everything about blogging but there is one thing I DO know-there are a lot of sites that want you to pay to buy products to teach you how to blog. They want to charge you to show you how to do something that quite frankly you can figure out on your own. There are lots of "free" blogging tips on the internet. Since you are here I can tell you, this is one of them. Don't waste your money buying products that claim to teach you everything you need to know about blogging when you can research the internet and get the information for free.

The first useful information I found was:

Find your niche. The first time I saw this, I thought, what the h*** I don't even know what a niche is! What do I know that I can write about? Quite simply this means think of something you enjoy or something you are good at and start writing about it. Pick subjects you know and just start writing. Or, pick something you yourself would like to know more about and then research it. It may seem awkward at first but just write. Your first blog will probably be your hardest after that it does get easier. You don't have to be a great writer to blog. It helps if you can have someone to look over what you have written and help you with punctuation, use spell check etc. You don't want to put people off by having a tremendous amount of misspelled words but most people will overlook a few.

Get your facts. If you are writing about a particular subject and you aren't sure about something you are saying, research it. You can write about anything, even subjects you aren't real familiar with if you do your research and get all the facts about it.

Don't settle for one source. There is tons of information on the internet and not all of it is necessarily true (given). Check several resources before you settle for just one source. If you quote that source or use material from that source, be sure and give them credit, you don't want to get in trouble for using someone else's material. Watch out for copyrights.

Add pictures or captions to illustrate points. Just make sure again that what you use is free to use and that you give credit where credit is due.

There are a lot of places that offer free blogs, once again you can search the internet to find those. Blogger (where you are now) is a good place to start. It's easy to use, easy to set up. Some of the navigation might seem a bit confusing but start out simple. If you know html and want to use it that's fine but if you are novice start out with simple posting. You can navigate anywhere from your dashboard or customize. The one, two, three of blogging is Posting, Settings and layout. Those three are your main keys in blogger. Under posting you can create a new blog or edit an existing blog. Under settings you set up the way you want your blogs displayed and a few other key items. Under layout you can add items to the right side of your blog such as links to your favorite sites, pictures, adsense ads, there are tons of add ons. However, keep in mind that whatever you add to the right side through layouts will continually stay at the top of your blog. So it will move up with each additional blog you add and doesn't anchor in place. If you want to add pictures to stay with your blog the easiest way is to put them inside each individual blog.

Be sure and add some good keywords from your blog to the bottom under labels, these are search terms people use to get information which most likely if you are reading this, is how you stumbled upon my blog. For instance for this blog some of my keywords will be blog, blogging, niche, adsense, etc.

Once you've mastered blogging in blogger you can tackle one of the other many blog sites like Web 2.0, Bravenet etc.

One more tip I might add is to copy your blog and paste it in a word processing program on your computer, Microsoft Word, Notepad or something just in case something unforeseeable happens and blogger loses your blog you will have a copy of it. The worst thing to me that can happen is to spend all this time writing and then have it completely disappear, there is no way I could rewrite it word for word.

Blogger saves as a draft regularly but it doesn't hurt to save it yourself.
Once you are done, check it over thoroughly, hit publish post and you've created your first blog. There is an option to view blog so you can see what everyone else is going to see. Seeing your first blog in print is pretty cool and will most likely be inspiring. Once you've done your first one and see it in print it's pretty exciting and you'll be ready to think of your next subject. :)

That's it for this blog, I'll try to add more later and I'm working on resources for getting your blog out to the public. Good luck and happy blogging.