thoughts, plans, goals, dreams, aspirations....

As I was sitting in church today, listening to the testimonials and watching the video and hearing the reports of our church's team that went on a mission trip to Russia, I started to think back to my own experiences in missions, with Teen Mania. I especially started to think about when I went to Panama, and our team went to the island of Acuadub. As they talked about the kids in Russia, I started to think about one kid in preticular on that island. His name is Abar. I started thinking about how when we got to the island, and we were playing with all the kids, how he sat out by himself, until I grabbed his hand and started playing with him. I started to think about when he looked at me at the end of that first day and asked me, "¿Tú es mi amigo?" and how big he smiled when I answered, "¡Si! ¿Tú es mi amigo?" I will never forget on our last day of the VBS we were doing on that island and as we were doing the craft, I got to share the gospel, and watch as this 7 year old child give his life to Jesus Christ, knowing at it is going against his family's traditions.

I really hope that this year, as God has called me back to Panama, that I get to go back to that island, to once again talk to the boy who really changed my life, when I went there to help change his.

In regards to my status

Right now, my status is set as, "Liberal Christianity is far more dangerous than hypocrite Christians. STAND FIRM IN THE BIBLE AND ALL IT SAYS!!!!!!!!!" I wanted to expand on what I mean by this.

First off, I mean not attacks on anyone or their beliefs. I am writing this because I care and I do not want anyone to have happen to them what is described in Revelation 3:16. I am not being judgmental. I am stating from the Bible and it's warnings.

The word liberal has been married to politics, but i can assure you that I'm not talking about who or what to vote for.

When I say Liberal, I mean someone who will pick and choose parts of the Bible to follow, and others to ignore. I.e., Someone who loves the that Jesus preached love your neighbor, and that He died on the cross to take our sins and our shortcomings from us, but will ignore that Jesus still wanted us to uphold the law, even though we are free from it.

I believe we need to take a stand on the foundations of the Bible. The Bible is our rock. We need to dig deep into it for it will protect us from the wrath of God. If we lay our foundations anything else, it's like building a house in the sand. Jesus said in Matthew 7:24-27 "Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it."

I pray for those who find my status offensive. I pray that the LORD will move your heart in such a way that you will become an unstoppable force for Him, by first convicting you to dig your roots into the Bible.

"Trust in the LORD with all your heart, Lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight." - Proverbs 3:5-6

A Thursday with God

Everyone knows times are tough. It doesn't take a genius to figure that one out.

As followers of Christ, we know its sometimes hard to follow the way of the Lord in the middle of the week. Let's be real with ourselves, we're nowhere near perfect during the week, most of us are less Christian than we would like to be. But that's when things are going alright for us personally.Praising God is hard enough during the week.

But what about when you've just had a crummy week, and things aren't going well at all at school, and you can't find a job, and your car breaks down, and just the world all around is conspiring against you, waiting to make you miserable. Where's God in all of that?

God is in all of it. I know it sounds crazy, and you might even be thinking "How can an ALL-LOVING God do that to someone?" God is in control of all things.

God allows us to go through things. Things that are too much for us to handle by ourselves, or even other earthly people. We must rely on God, that He will not allow anything to come before us that we cannot overcome with Him at our side. God allows us to go through trials. It's explained in James 1:2-4. "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish it's work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything."

So God develops us so that we can grow up. So that we might be Mature and COMPLETE, NOT LACKING ANYTHING! We can be full in they eyes of God. How awesome is that?

God is with us, through the good and the bad. He's got our back. Though, in times of trouble, we forget to look over our shoulders...

Consumed by the call

Setting foot down into the earth,
I turn and look around
I see the world
broken
hurting
in need of a savior.

Though some don't know it, they all need Jesus Christ.
Christ has so radically changed our lives,
taking out hurt, guilt, and pain,
shouldn't we wish it for others?
No. We shouldn't WISH it, we should SHARE it.

People say, "But if God is Love, how come he sends people to hell?"

God doesn't send people to Hell, they choose it for themselves to be separated from God by not following Christ. My heart breaks for those. My heart breaks for the lost. My heart breaks for those who will have to spend eternity apart from God because nobody shared the word of Christ with them.

I know my assignment. My life has a purpose. I'm supposed to be one of the people who makes first contact with the tribes in Peru and Brazil's Amazon. I will stop at nothing to see these people see Christ. Yes, it's going be be a long time before I'm prepared to fulfill my mission, but everything I do is in preparation of that day. I know while I'm here, God had a purpose when He decided to put me in one of the most under-churched areas in the USA. That needs to change. We cannot afford to have where we live be under-churched. We need to reach out, conqure our fears, and share our faith with others. THEIR ETERNITY DEPENDS ON IT! Swallow your pride. I say that because it's something I need to do to. It's a continuous battle. To live for whats right. To strive for purposes greater than yourself. All for Christ. We NEED TO BE CONSUMED BY THE CALL! WE CANNOT AFFORD ANYTHING LESS!

Peace be with you.
In His Grip,
Joe Diaz-Romero

The Challenge

So, I created this video a couple of weeks ago. I want to provoke the upcoming generation of Christ-Followers to live life all out, full force for Christ.

Thoughts on Loneliness

"two are better off than one, because together they can work more effectively. If one of them falls down, the other can help him up... Two people can resist an attack that would defeat one person alone. A rope made of three cords is hard to break." Ecclesiastes 4:9 (TEV)

"Real spiritual growth is never an isolated, individualistic pursuit," -Rick Warren, Pastor of Saddleback Church in southern California

Often time I feel alone. I feel as if no one will ever take me seriously. To be quite honest, it's been difficult and it still is difficult adjusting here at home from this summer. I yearn for companionship. I cry out for fellowship. I turn to my one and only source of life, who will never ever leave me. My Father, my Redeemer, my Savior. But still, I cannot seem to shake off this feeling of slowly drowning, dying. I have nobody here. I have no one to work more effectively with. I have no one to help me up. Slowly suffocating. All of my friends are too busy always, or have something going on where they can't do anything. Slowly, dying, from the inside out.

So there I am, sitting by myself. In my room. I can scream out what I feel without ever making a sound.

I finally saw my accountability partner today. After two weeks of trying to get together with him and no dice, I finally got to just hang out with him, for only a couple of hours. But still, things did not seem the same. It's not like how it used to be.

The Lord did says He does not want us to be alone. But why am I so? I continue to spend time with the Lord, but I cannot shake of the fact that I am alone in this world. That I am alone in my world. I feel as if I am expendable to people, that I always have been.

God created more people than just Adam so that we may live together, do life together. I feel as if... blahh. I feel like the older people in my church look at me and say to themselves, "well that's cute that Joe's doing that." and as if the people my age don't really care. And those that really seem to care try to keep it to themselves in their own little protected group, letting very few in.

I am alone in this life. Is everyone too busy with themselves and with each other to notice? Am I the only one? Will anyone listen to me?

I'm alone, and falling, and there's no one there to catch me

I am alone. I can say that. God says it's not good for man to be alone. But then why am I so. Why am I surrounded by the dreams of the fake? Give me the pain of something real.

I don't know.

I need real friends. Not friends that I can do something for them occasionally.

I am tormented by this demon. Pray for me, please.

Maybe this has gotten you to think about some of your friendships. Really evaluate your friendships. Watch people. If they're like me, just bouncing around from group to group, that's usually a sign that they're like this.

I really don't know anymore.

I think I'll Start with my own Personal Story

I grew up in a Christian home, I went to Church almost every Sunday of my life. But it wasn't real to me, nothing was real to me. That's probably the reason when I was 16, and the two strongest influences in our Youth Group got hit and killed by a drunk driver, I started smoking and drinking and getting into the party scene at my school. As time went on, I only got worse and worse. "It's okay," I told myself all the time, "everyone else is doing it. Therefore it must be okay."
But it wasn't okay. my friends would only encourage my behavior and I would blissfully indulge into it. Things got so painful emotionally, I started cutting myself, in which I mistakenly found refuge. I had never told anyone about it. I kept doing the things I did before, but as time went on and on, I began to cut myself more and more. Until finally one day, I was sitting in my truck before Saturday in February wrestling practice, and I had decided I was done living. So I grabbed my piece of glass that I used to cut myself, and started slitting my wrist. But after I started, I felt something pulling on my heart. "There's got to be something better than this," I said to myself. So I pulled out my glass and bandaged myself up (thankfully I didn't get too far).
The next day I ran into one of my friends from the Youth Group that I had gone to in the past. She invited me to go back to the Youth Group, so I was like, "Sure, why not. I got nothing else to live for. So when I went back they were talking about their trip up to Twain Harte. The Youth Pastor came up to me and asked me if I would like to go, which I did want to but didn't have the money. So he asked me if I would go if money wasn't an issue and I said for sure. So he got me a scholarship for the trip and I went on it.
A week before the trip, was wrestling finals for the league. I made a deal with God by saying, "God, if you exist, help me do well in this tournament and I promise to go into the trip with an open heart" (this was when I was still questioning his existence). I ended up taking 1st place in the tournament.
Then, on the trip, God did wonders in my heart. I broke down crying and told accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. I felt a joy come over me that I had never experienced before in my life. But finally, it was the first thing real I experienced.
But the story doesn't end there. As soon as I got home from my trip, I went right back to doing what I was doing before. Nobody had told me that I had to give up the thing I was doing before. But there was one crucial difference that made it all bad, I was using the grace of Christ as an excuse to do what I was doing.
March 24, 2006. AT&T Park. Speakers Blasting, everyone going insane. This was BattleCry. This was my first experience at a Youth Conference. And this was their first Stadium Event (it was put on by Teen Mania who usually did smaller events called Acquire the Fire or ATF for short) and it was packed. It was here where he CEO and President of Teen Mania Ministries called us out as Christians to, "Stop living in the pig pen." To stop living in the gunk of this world and step out of it and live for Christ. This is when I realized how I had been living was wrong and was presented with a choice. I could choose to continue living as I had been in this world, or I could live completely for Christ. Seeing as while living for this world almost killed me, I thankfully took the second choice.
July 2006, after only slipping a little and given up on smoking finally and working on giving up on drinking, I go to Lake Shasta with my Youth Group. The theme for that trip was Heaven in your head but Hell in your heart. I didn't really understand the theme until early this January, after I totaled my truck.
Last year, God sent me to Peru on a Mission trip with Teen Mania, and it was the poorest conditions I had ever been in, but it was the most fulfilling thing I have ever done.
Since then, I've gotten the amazing opportunity to share the Word of Christ in Mexico and Panama. God is so amazing, and so good to me. Pray, and you shall see.


And that's my story. it you want any more detail, just message me and I'll try to see what I can dig up.

In His Grip,
-Joe Diaz-Romero