The World According To Chris Brewer

Sorry I haven’t been able to update much recently. Life keeps getting in the way.

I’ve been working on redesigning the front page of my website and consolidating all my news stories into one easy to find location. Also I am finishing up my resume. Still trying to scope out jobs as a videographer or reporter for any station in Springfield, MO. If that doesn’t work then if God okays it I will become a cop.

Gotta get back to reading the Bible. I’m reading about some great kings of Israel. I didn’t know both books of Samuel and both books of Kings covered such a great time period.

This is unreal. Thanks to Pastor Gary Langley for passing on the link.

I bring you all some bad news tonight, and I request each and every one of your prayers for healing.

To keep a long story short, I took a nasty spill during a basketball game at Lakeside Church’s Family Life Center building. I jumped to block Micah’s shot from behind and I succeeded, but somehow I had my left leg out in front of him…he still had forward momentum going from his drive to the basket and I was still caught in the air. I don’t remember the fall that much but what I do remember is that my left leg got caught, and I landed HARD on my back and left arm. I also remember my teammates saying my rendezvous with the ground was pretty loud.

I tried to stay in the game but had to come out, and I went home only a few minutes later. When I got home, I checked out my injuries, and it’s a miracle I wasn’t hurt worse. It’s still pretty bad though…my lower back had a nasty blue bruise on it, and my left wrist was swollen horribly. My wrist popped back into place about an hour ago but I’m still keeping ice on it. Not to mention, I felt the back of my head and there was a nasty bump on it…after I removed my fingers, they had blood on them. I never felt my head hit the ground.

I’m going to the doctor first thing tomorrow after we do PT, and I can only imagine the first thing he’s going to say is to take it easy for awhile. Crap.

The thing that worries me most about this is that after I returned from Iraq, about three times a week my back will tweak and start really hurting, and now it feels like someone took me and body slammed me onto a basketball court. My wrist will heal, but if my back gives me problems over time this isn’t good. Never had a serious injury before…let’s pray this doesn’t flare up.

I saw Liberty Mutual’s new “Pay It Forward” ad while watching MSNBC at my office today. Take a look at it here and see if you take any sort of message from it.

Obviously over the course of the commercial, people are doing simple kind deeds for other people, an observer sees it, and goes and does a kind deed for someone else. Simple, right???

It has such a huge message that we as Christians can take home with us. In [bible]Matthew 25:31-46[/bible], Jesus tells us that if we even so much as give a cup of water to a stranger in His name, we have done it unto God. How huge is that??? Even the smallest kind deeds don’t go unnoticed by the Lord.

Not only do we bless God by helping our fellow man, but other people will also take notice and see our Christian witness. Not only does the old adage “actions speak louder than words” apply here, but Jesus also tells us in Matthew 12 that we are recognized by our fruits. What fruits??? The Fruits of the Spirit. Joy, meekness, kindness, temperance, and a whole host of others. If we show kindness, love and mercy to others, anyone around us will see that the Lord is working through us…and voila, we have just greatly enhanced our witness without even saying anything to anyone.

Incredible how God moves.

St. Francis of Assisi once said “Preach the Gospel, and if necessary, use words.” What wonderful words to live by.

Good morning from the geographical arm pit of the Virginia coast, Hampton Roads. I’m Chris Brewer with your news report for today…Thursday, June 15, 2006.

Last night was the Ring of Fire Youth Group’s banquet honoring the high school graduates in the youth group. There were eight of them, and it was great to see them all there. We ate dinner, played some music, and just enjoyed an overall good time. Delmar Gillette got up and offered a word of advice to the youth, some of the graduates’ parents came up to speak, and then…it was time for a dance.

Two problems presented themselves: (1) No one wanted to dance, and (2) someone smashed into the table I had my laptop, iPod and sound equipment set up on, which in turn damaged the miniplug jack on my laptop. So I couldn’t play any music. At first I was frustrated, but then I realized that no one was really dancing anyway and the people who were, were just goofing around. So today I’m only pretty irritated that someone damaged my laptop…if I knew who it was, I’d get them to buy me an external soundcard. Oh well, worse things could have happened. It was a good night other than that, though.

On another note, I thought it was pretty funny to hear people keep complaining about how hard it was raining yesterday. It wasn’t really that bad…we had the remnants of Tropical Storm Alberto come through Hampton Roads yesterday and dump rain on us all day, but it’s nothing like what we would endure in Oregon for days and days. You wanna see rain, come to the Northwest. Portland, Oregon…where it rains 366 days out of the year, even if it’s not a leap year. Okay so it doesn’t rain there all the time, but we did get our fair share in PDX. Point being…as much as the folks here complain about rain, they’ve got NOTHING on the Northwest.

Friendly reminder this morning to join the FirestormLIVE Forum. We’ve had two folks join in the past 24 hours. THAT’S THE SPIRIT. Now if more would jump on board…

That’s it for now, Miami vs. Dallas Game 4 tonight. Let’s hope the Heat evens this series up…I hate the Mavericks.

I rarely come out and advertise the forum section of my website on this blog, but since I’ve been thinking about doing it finally, I’ll just go ahead and do it. About a couple of months ago I started a forum (you can find it at http://www.firestormlive.net/forum). I created it mainly so instead of people only commenting on issues that I bring up on the blog, folks who want to say something or just chit-chat can go ahead and do so, in a community environment.

That being said, if you’re a regular visitor to my blog, I would like to invite you to join the FirestormLIVE Forum. No obligation…it only takes a couple minutes to sign up, it’s free, and you can talk about pretty much whatever you want as long as you keep it clean.

Hope to see you in the Forum soon. Bookmark it!

It’s been an interesting past week and a half spiritually. God is really getting ready to do some great things in our youth group, and we need to prepare for it!!!

Last night while Pastor Tyler and I were riding in my car, we had a good conversation about how I am doing spiritually, and also about the current state of affairs in the youth group. Satan has been really coming against me over the last week and a half, and I’ll admit that I haven’t done the best job in resisting him as the Bible says to do. Not that I went out and committed some grave sin or something but I just let the devil play with my mind a little more than he needs to. After I told him this, he said that if I ever needed help spiritually, to just let him know and he will do what he can to help, pray, etc.

This was a huge encouragement for me. It spoke of something that, for me, had been lacking severely in the youth group — accountability. People we need to be accountable to one another, bear one another’s burdens as the Bible says to do in Galatians 6:2, pray for each other, and minister to each other so that we can become stronger in the faith.

All of the above requires an intense amount of commitment, prayer, courage and especially getting out of our comfort zones. It’s not easy to admit to your peers that you’re struggling, and it definitely wasn’t easy for me to tell Tyler last night. But that is where God expects each of us to step out of where we’re comfortable and minister to one another. Accountability is key…if we have no one checking up on how we’re doing spiritually on occasion, we tend to falter and struggle in our faith.

Another thing that has been laid on my heart is the fact that we have lost many people who were a core part of our youth group at one time. It’s their choice not to attend, but it’s our fault for letting them go and not keeping in touch with them. As the church and part of the body of Christ, it is the bare minimum requirement for us to simply stay in touch with those who are not with us physically. Many of us have not been doing that and we need to once again get out of our comfort zone, and minister to our hurting fellow youth. So many of us are set back by petty personal issues that we refuse to join our brothers and sisters at the place we need to be the most. It’s high time that we let go and let God fight our battles for us…life is MUCH easier when we do.

Notice a recurring theme? I’ve repeatedly used the phrase “step out of our comfort zone” throughout this post. It sounds cliche, but if we don’t go where we are uncomfortable and reach out to others, our faith can grow stagnant because we’re not doing anything that challenges us. We miss opportunites to genuinely reach out and be Jesus to our peers. We suffer every time we walk through the church doors because we go home the same way we came in. Jesus wants so much more from us, and it’s time we lived up to what he expects and desires! We’re all in this together.

As an example, when I was in Iraq on a mission in central Baghdad, we heard a thunderous boom not far away…a car bomb had exploded, killing and injuring many in the street and shops nearby. Reports that we read and watched later said that the suicide bomber was a Muslim extremist, killing himself and meeting his eternal destiny because he was so passionate about the belief that Allah wanted him to kill infidels and take him to “heaven.” That instantly got me to thinking, if these terrorists are so passionate about their faith, they put most Christians to shame.

It’s true. These people will give their lives, sadly, for a cause that is less than honorable, yet many of us are scared to proclaim the name of Jesus to the very people we hang out with. It boggles my mind and I’m sure it hurts the Father’s heart to know that we aren’t going about His business with everything that we have within us.

So I offer this challenge…let’s be “Christian extremists.” Let’s be so bold with our faith that people can’t help but notice. Let’s get our youth group clicking on all cylinders, and let’s make the song we sing “I took back what the devil stole from me” more than just simple words we repeat over and over. Each one of us is an integral part of the ministry, the new beginnings at Lakeside Church. Let’s catch the vision in our youth group and go places we’ve never gone before!!!

Folks I am tired of seeing my friends struggling as Christians, and it’s high time that we all

First off, thoughts and prayers tonight go out to Ben Roethlisberger. The Pittsburgh Steelers QB was severely injured in a motorcycle crash today in Pittsburgh. News reports say he T-boned a car in an intersection near a bridge crossing the Monongahela River. Before you blame him for anything other than not wearing a helmet, remember that we don’t know if he caused the crash, someone cut him off, or exactly what happened. It’s just a bad wreck and he suffered some pretty serious injuries from it. Looking at various photos of the accident (especially a nasty one on ESPN.com), there is no doubt that he is very blessed to still be alive.

This from ThePittsburghChannel.com:

According to a police source, Roethlisberger suffered a broken jaw, broke his left sinus cavity, suffered a 9-inch laceration to the back of his head, lost many teeth and has severe injuries to his knees from hitting the pavement.

Roethlisberger was not wearing a helmet, according to the Tribune-Review. In the past, he has publicly said he prefers to ride helmetless, which is legal in Pennsylvania.

First Jay Williams, then Kellen Winslow, and now Roethlisberger. It’s sad how many people take stupid chances with their lives and no one really pays much mind until it happens to names we all recognize. Just the same, no one deserves to be involved in a auto accident and prayers are with Big Ben at this time. Thankfully the woman in the car Ben hit wasn’t hurt as well.

That all being said, tonight we all hung out and played some pool and watched The Ringer. Of greater importance was the fact that Tyler and I got to talk about some major issues that had been bogging me down for the past week, and I got a lot of stuff off my chest. (It also helps that I prayed about it too…) To make a long story short, we had a good conversation about my spiritual state, the state of the youth group, and also I’ve been put back on the Youth Leadership Team — a position I held until I deployed but for some reason, probably just a snafu, was mysteriously removed. Oh well, I’m back and I hope to help the group out however I can.

That’s it for now…God bless!

As is being heavily advertised on the Ring of Fire Worship blog and promoted at Lakeside Church, we will be holding the “Dance of the Decades” to coincide with the graduation banquet this upcoming Wednesday.

Being the “resident” DJ, I’ve been asked to provide music for the dance. No problem, right?

I’ve got about half the music picked…I scrapped a few tracks here and there after deciding they didn’t fit, and now I’m asking for your help in choosing music. I need some good danceable songs from each decade ranging from the 50s to today.

So it’s your turn. Help me come up with the other half of my playlist!!! Leave a comment with any suggestion you may have. Or if you prefer, you could just email me at chris @ firestormlive.net.

I’d like to apologize for anyone I may have offended with a previous post I had made (now deleted for obvious reasons) regarding not participating on Jude 2 anymore. I worded some things improperly in there and I probably shouldn’t have posted what I did at all, considering I had been having a horrible day, hadn’t really thought or prayed about what I was going to say, and just posted it without thinking.

I have talked with Pastor Gary Langley tonight and we’ve both cleared the air regarding the post as well. I had typed a lot of things that should have been worded differently and it really upset a few people (esp. Pastor Gary). I’m sorry for any hurt I may have caused especially with the quote that read something similar to “I won’t be communicating with anyone on Jude2 anymore.” What I meant to say by that was that I wouldn’t be using Jude 2 to communicate with anyone anymore. Bad wording on my part, I know, and I should have taken a look at what I typed before it went live. I know there are many on J2 that read that and had felt somewhat betrayed, given the fact they had been praying for me during my deployment. I apologize for the wording in the afore-mentioned sentence, it caused a lot of unnecessary heartache.

You’re all good people and we’re all brothers and sisters in Christ. Once again please accept my apologies for a stupid decision on my part. I won’t be coming back to Jude 2, but I DO want to keep in touch with everyone. God bless.