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