Thoughts on a Amazing Friday!

Hey there everyone! I am so pumped for this weather! This is awesome. Anyways....

Today I have been getting a chance to talk with a bunch of people and plan for lots of things and its awesome, but there is a resounding tone in everyone's voice. Depressed. Everyone I talk to is like depressed because everyone is down about the economy and losing jobs. I was at the bowling alley last night and even though people were having a good time there was an under tone of sadness because many people there have been laid off for many months. They use bowling as an out for their sadness. I talked a couple people there that don't have any hope.

I feel for these people because they are so sad and out, but I know that even through the hardest times in our lives we can fall back on God and that is so amazing. Now I know that sounds like the stupidest and the worst thing to say to people that are losing their jobs, but I also know that sometimes when things seem their worst. That is when God shows up. Look at David's life, when things seemed to be so down and people were coming to kill him, God showed up in a mighty way. When He should have been weeping and mourning, He praised God, and people thought he was insane. I think that in these times we need to rise up and praise God even for the little things. We need to come together as a true Christian community and hold each other up.

During these hard times we need to come together and pray for God to show up in mighty ways. Why not instead of going out to the movies one night we invite our friends over and we hang out and play games, and we end the night in prayer. Just asking God to move in our lives. I believe that the crystal valley youth group can do this. I believe that we can start setting the culture in middlebury, and in the surrounding towns. That we can say even thought everything around us seems horrible, and people might be in a depression. I do not care. I will praise my God, I will love my God, and I will give Him my all.

I hope to see you guys this Sunday, We are going to be talking about Jesus life some more and learning more and more about the man we serve!

P.A.

Thank you!

Thank you everyone for your cards, and your really funny messages! I really appreciate them alot. You guys mean the world to me, and I love getting to hang out and talk with you guys, and help navigate your way through this spiritual journey. I am honored to be the youth pastor at Crystal Valley.

I hope you guys are thinking about what media you are watching and taking in. If you want to do a little experiment do this. Take a piece of paper with you when you watch a movie or TV, and every time they mention sex, lying, drinking, making fun of someone, and murder. Put a check mark down, then whenever they mention Jesus, God, Or religion mark it down. Its amazing to see how much stuff is put into our brain.

Please remember to slow down and pay attention to what you are taking in. God has an awesome plan for media and how to use. Lets use it to glorify Christ, not embarrass Him!

Can't wait to see ya Sunday!

P.A.

Hey there everyone! I hope everything is going awesome for ya'll.

Just a little reminder that we have normal youth group tonight from 6:30 - 8:30! I hope everyone can join us. We are going to be dialoguing about media tonight. I dont have a lot to teach but I have a lot of questions for you guys to think over. I am really excited to see alot of you tonight. I love coming together as a family and worshiping, playing games together, and chatting! Hope to see you all tonight!

Parents be looking for a blog on things to help with media, different media guides online to help you filter through all the junk that is out there.

Also keep up with my twitter on the blog! Also read some of the blogs that I am reading, all of them are really good.

See you tonight!

P.A.

So I have now joined the amazing Twitter next work.

My twitter name is AdamSharp5 look me up. Hopefully I can set up to work on blogger!

Some more media fun stuff :)

So as I am thinking and praying about this Wednesday some questions have risen up and so I want to hear what you have to say. So if you want to comment, Comment, if you want to just think about it thats cool too. My motive behind these questions is to make everyone start to think about these questions.

1. Does the media portray a optimistic view point of the world or a pessimistic?
2. How does the media portray success?
3. Do you believe the media portrays people being able to control their destiny?
4. What do you believe are they values media presents?

These are some questions we are going to try to answer through this series this month. I hope you all come ready to talk and discuss these things. I believe that our students are going to come up with some amazing points, and I am so excited to get to talk about these things on Wednesday night.

See ya then

P.A.

work out

So tonight as I was working out I was lifting weights in one part of the gym and I hear this guy laughing.....Loudly..... so I kept working out and he kept laughing louder and louder. So then I was like what is this guy laughing at. So as I was kinda watching him and waiting for him to leave so I could turn on his TV to see what he was laughing at. So finally he got up from the bike he was kinda pedaling, he was mostly just watching TV and laughing, so I snuck over there and turned on the TV and to my amazement he was watching the cartoon network. I almost died laughing because this guy was like 250 lbs and just a really large dude, not a guy that you would think would be watching cartoon network!

I just thought I should share this with you guys :)

P.A.

To all my homies

Hey there everyone! Hope you all had a great weekend. I know I did.

This next series we are doing is going to be a fun but yet hard one for all of us I think. Because we are going to be talking about Media. I love watching TV, I love playing video games, I love the internet.

None of these things are bad in and of themselves, but they can pose a serious threat to what gets number 1 in our lives. I know that when I need to unwind I go straight to the TV, I know when I get stressed I go straight for video games, when I am upset I got to the internet to just blow something up in a game or something. We are going to be looking at striking a balance in this media crazy world.

This month is going to be more discussion oriented so for the next month I am going to be posting questions up on the blog and I would like people to answer them, and then we will talk about the answers on Wednesday nights. So be checking everyday for some new questions or some fun facts about media.

So for this week we are going to be discussing TV. So some questions I have are:
1. How much TV do you watch either on the internet, actually TV, Box sets of old past seasons of things? How much time do you spend a week watching those thing?
2. What do you watch? Do you have shows you can't miss (e.g. The office, House, ER, ect...)
3. Do you think TV can influence your thinking or is that all bunk?

Let me know what you all think., parents you can answer too. Again this is just a discussion I want to know what you guys think!

P.A.