The beginning

I recently began a journey. After talking with an old friend, I am now on a mission. This friend is one i have known for quite sometime. She is Catholic. She is like many Catholics, in that she feels as if her faith has transformed into a ritual, rather than a personal relationship with God. She is looking for something more to it all. A close relative of hers recently found Christianity. She is amazed at the happiness that relative now has. She is pursuing this happiness. She has also observed the immense amount of change in myself, and also wants the common happiness.
In her Catholic faith she was never encouraged to read the bible. This is a common place within Catholicism. There are a lot of Catholic traditions, and practices which have little to no biblical backing. By biblical backing I mean they are not mentioned anywhere in between the covers of the worlds number one best seller. Purgatory, confessions, and being baptised at birth are just a few examples of this. The argument can be made that they could be mentioned in the old testament. In Hebrews we are told on 3 occasions that because Jesus came, died, and arose we no longer need to observe the old testament.
If we observed the old testament we would be walking around in robes with a sheep following us. Some old testament rules include: not being able to wear clothes of mixed fibers, not cutting your hair, or even something as crazy building a prayer hut the first week of every month. If we observed the old testament and sinned by not following one of these rules we then must offer a burnt offering. This means sacrificing an animal. As you can see when Jesus came and died it made our lives ALOT easier.
Back to my journey I encouraged my friend to partake in a quest. A quest for Christ. i told her i wanted her to read the New Testament. I wanted her to learn about Jesus and how EASY it is to find him. So we are going to read a chapter or two of Luke and have a bible study every night. In this journey I'm going to teach her what i know, and hopefully learn just as much about my faith.
If anyone is curious enough about what changed me, or simply want to talk, or maybe even join us in our reading I strongly encourage you to email me at keirshcochran@gmail.com. I really want to hear from you. Some initial problems you may have is the simple one of not being able to understand the bible you have. I suggest that you find a translation that is good for you. If you go to biblegateway.com it has just about every translation that is out there. I suggest and I read out of the New International Version, the New Living Translation is just as good, both are very understandable. The next problem she had was a complete loss in how to pray. I gave her this suggestion, break your prayers down to 4 simple steps:
1. STEP 1: PRAISE!! It says in revelation that God created a creature in heaven that says "Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God Almighty, Who was, and is, and is to come." If God created a creature that says that all day everyday, don't you think he like to hear you praise him, tell him who he is. This is also a great way to just get in the mood of prayer.
STEP 2: REPENT!! Ask God to forgive you of your sins. Ask him to completely erase everything you have done wrong. This will make the next two steps effective.
STEP 3: THANK!!!! Think about all the things you HAVE...not want, HAVE. Thank him for it. You come into this world with nothing, you leave this world with nothing, so in theory any thing you have is profit. Even if you have nothing more to your name than a pair of socks. That's one more pair of socks that you came into this world with.
STEP4: ASK!! This is the best part. You can ask him for anything. If you are sincere, and its in God's will you will receive it. It can be anything from strength, to compassion, from knowledge, to a job.

Thanks for reading,
Keirsh.

A NEW DAY

Lets face the facts keirsh: the only reason that you ever converted to Christianity is because some one either scared the **** out of you into believing that there is a god and you became so scared of the prospect that you are going to go to hell that you decided to rank up with your bible or that you were full of **** from the beginning and you only said that you were an atheist to be cool, but once you realized what claiming that there is no god to Christians meant, you decided to take up on the good lord. but what strikes me as interesting is how someone can go from being completely atheist to a person who carries around a bible in his back pocket at school. and now that you have taken up religion you have turned to a conservative view on matters and somehow it makes you feel special to make fun of people who actually stick by their views even though they are different from yours at this given moment. its weird how during the election you went from being a god hating liberal to a god fearing republican. does that not seem like ******** to you? were all of your values just ******** and you just said what you thought was cool? i think thats how it is, but now on your quest to separate yourself you have turned yourself into this bible banging ********* that no body in their right mind has a single ounce of respect for. no body takes you seriously anymore. its like everything you ever stood for was ********, i mean aren't your values what your suppose to hold dearest to you and be unchangeable regardless of the current situation, but your values seem to change on the notice of a whim. your the kid that nobody can stand. no body wants to listen to your conservative close minded ******** or your beliefs. so why don't you shut down this blog or don't talk about things that you really have no idea about, cause like always your full of ******** and run your mouth about things that your close minded mind can not grasp. stop trying to be what you think everybody wants you to be. i would at least still have some respect for you then.



This post to my entry about religion, along with a message i recieved at a sermon i heard tonight challenged me to change the entire reasoning behind this blog. I want to reach people who would write something like that.

The only point im going to make about it is how can you call someone who admits the way they were living, the things they were saying, how they treated others around them was wrong closeminded. How is that possible. I believe that a greater power, created this earth and everything in it. i believe he sent his son. I believe that son died. I believe that he rose from the dead. An atheist person believes that there is nothing more to what you see around you. Who is the close-minded person here.

From now on this blog will be about religion. I am not doing this to make anyone mad. I want people to talk to me, ask me about my faith. I want people to question me. I will be quick to answer you. I will be even quicker to admit when I dont know something, but will DO MY BEST to find an answer for you.

All God ever asks from us is to DO OUR BEST. To strive to be like Jesus. He doesn't expect perfection. He just wants you to do the best you possibly can with the situation at hand.

I dont know who wrote the above post, but I am sincere when I say thank you, and I want you to email me or let me know in school who you are.

March Madness As I see It

Recently I have been writing for XL950.com. I have written two articles of what was supposed to be a six week MLB Preview. You can check out the articles at XL950.com scroll down to the intern lounge both of the articles are there. With that said I would like to get to today's topic. As the tournament is winding down I cant help but ask where did the excitement go?





This years tournament had all the hype of past years, with everyone printing off brackets, throwing in five bucks for an office pool, studying up on the latest bracketology, which in my mind is nothing more than some over-payed writers (which is my dream) making some random predictions loosely based on some statistical averages of the regular seasons. I think most of these stats are void anyway considering the vast amount of difference in the toughness of schedules the teams in comparison have.





The excitement quickly cooled off in the second weekend, when it set in the the probability of a Cinderella was astronomical. The argument could be made that Cleveland State could have filled that void, but in my mind a true Cinderella must show she can even make it to midnight my reaching the sweet sixteen, the Vikings couldn't do that.





It was all chaulk from there. The teams that were supposed to win won. I don't see number one seeds losing as a huge upset. As you can tell i am very disappointed in this years tournament. I think the greatest thing to come from it is some closure to Tyler Hansbrough's college career. Athough he did win in one of the most boring championship games in sports history. I can count on one hand the number of times I have turned off any important game early, let alone a National Championship. I even watched all of game 7 of the 2004 ALCS...and i'm a Yankees fan.

With that said March has come and gone and it seems we are ushering in the summer with a empty feeling. Like we missed out on a big part of the year. Hopefully Baseball will fill that void...