Why I Chose to Support Ron DeSantis

 It is 60 days until the Iowa Caucus as of the writing of this piece. I haven’t blogged much in the past few years. I’ve been more contemplative in my approach to life. I’m still the firebrand activist when I need to be, but my heart has softened to the plight of the people the government treats as cogs in the system. 

I chose to jump back into the political fight last year, before the Iowa legislative primaries. I was pleasantly surprised by our governor, Kim Reynolds, and her choice to get off the sidelines and support primaries against a number of bad Iowa Republicans. I was part of several of those primaries on the ground organizing front. 

After that victory was won, I had thought the political process had started to find the N on the compass row. I was wrong. When Donald Trump chose to take swipes at the successful governor of Florida, I knew we were in for a mess. When the calendar turned to 2023, I chose to get back into the Iowa caucus organizing process. I met with and talked to several candidates. One stood out. That Florida governor…

In March, I went to the book tour event Ron DeSantis held in Davenport, IA. I listened. I digested what he was saying. It was policy rich and principled in a way that I hadn’t heard from anyone else even thinking about running. After the event, I greeted him and got a card from a staffer. I sent an email to that staffer that ended up being the start of a journey that has brought me to this point. 

I had heard that Governor DeSantis and his people were hard to get ahold of. I didn’t really expect anything from the email I sent, to be honest. I was wrong. A member of this staff called me a week after I sent that email. We had a long phone conversation about Iowa and about the political climate here in the state. That person, I won’t call her name, is now a friend. She kept in touch with me. We still exchange text messages and emails and she knows she can always call or text me if she needs prayer.

Fast forward to the campaign season and I have, through a multitude of public and private meetings, been honored to get to know Ron and Casey DeSantis. 

Ron DeSantis is focused, principled, and kind, but with a resolve I haven’t seen in any candidate for president. He conducts himself in a manner that places him above reproach, morally. He is a good husband to Casey. The way he talks about his wife and kids is the way any man should talk about his family. He deeply loves his wife and children. You can tell his little boy is the apple of his eye and his two daughters have their daddy wrapped around their little fingers. America needs more examples of a man doing great things while also being a good family man.

Casey…well…Casey DeSantis is a gem of a human. She’s a political activist at heart. She is truly her husband’s biggest supporter and his most important sounding board. For that, I am grateful. She’s a great wife and mother. She and Ron are meant for one another. I’m thankful that she’s someone I can call a friend. It would be the honor of a lifetime to be able to call her the First Lady of the United States. 

One of the great honors of the whole campaign season was hosting the DeSantis family at my church in Washington, Iowa on October 8th, 2023. I was glad we were able to be a blessing to them that morning and I thank Ron and Casey for their outreach to my church. 

There are many others in both the Never Back Down PAC supporting the governor and his campaign staff that I can now count as friends. As a volunteer county chair, I talk to someone in this fight most days of the week. 

I’m not so sure that our country deserves a man like Ron DeSantis in the White House. We’ve overseen the murder of 65 million babies since 1973, an ongoing crime that continues apace, even since the Dobbs ruling of 2022. We’ve seen the rise of the gender identity cult, seeking to mutilate the minds and bodies of young people across the country. We’ve seen the degradation of the natural family. We’ve seen the destruction of all cultural institutions, including most local churches. Mass immigration of people not seeking to be citizens is a massive problem. Inflation, medical tyranny, a bureaucracy seeking to control our lives…I could go on and on. 

One thing gives me hope. God says that as long as there is a remnant that haven’t bowed the knee to idols, He can work through those people. I believe we do have a remnant. That’s all it takes. 

I want to ask everyone who reads this to pray for Ron, Casey, Madison, Mason, and Mamie DeSantis. They surely need the guidance and protection of God in this season. Also, pray for his staff and everyone across the country who has devoted themselves to working to see Ron become our next president. Pray for needed generational change. Pray for competent and principled leadership. Pray for our nation to turn away from vain pursuits. 

My personal prayer is specifically for a space of grace from God whereby we might be able to see a revival in the civic realm of people taking their citizenship seriously and ultimately, a revival in local, New Testament churches across the nation where the Gospel will be preeminent once again. 

Lastly, I ask and pray that anyone who reads this will join me in this effort. Find me on Twitter/X @bigredmatt1011

Ideas over Identity

 Once Again, The National Pulse is after me. I don’t apologize. 

I wrote a blog post about campaigning in the South Carolina and Georgia seven and half years ago. I was bothered by the cultural dynamics of several southern states and rural areas.

I don’t apologize for my words. Here’s why. I grew up in the 90s in the middle of this country in a small city surrounded by cornfields and cattle. Now I live in a small town surrounded by corn and hog farms. My formative years in school were punctuated by being in a totally color blind society. My grade school was made up of almost 25% refugee families from the conflict in Vietnam. Laotian, Cambodian, and Hmong kids were my friends. I thought race issues were non existent. 

The same could be said for where I live now. My church has large ministries to Hispanic and African immigrant populations. We have black, white, Asian, and Hispanic people, and every combination thereof in church. 

I am bothered when I go to places like Chicago and Milwaukee, where people are siloed up by race. I am bothered by small towns in the south where people choose to live on one side of the town or another to self segregate.

Maybe I’m still naive, but I still strive for a colorblind society. I hate everything that divides by race. My bible tells me that there are only two types of people; saved and unsaved. The New Testament is a for ALL people and there is only one race…the human one. 

I have laments about culture in areas of our siloed up country. I have admittedly urged people to move, but that is based upon where people can be more free from state intervention in their church or business. I lament the fact that there are white churches and black churches. I lament the fact that we can’t have discussions on cultural issues, like fatherlessness without bringing race into the equation. I lament because our government has pushed to see men pushed out of the home to be replaced by the government. That’s not racial. 

I shed tears when I heard Larry Elder give his history and talk about issues of family and culture at a recent Iowa GOP dinner. 

Our only dividing points should be ideas and principles. We can debate those things. We can seek to change long held cultural issues plaguing urban and rural America. Growing up in an area untouched by these issues showed me that it is possible to simply debate ideas.

I have seen a continued push to lift up how people look or their physical traits over ideas and policies. I’m harder right on policy issues that nearly anyone I know, but I also don’t want to see people divided by immutable characteristics. You can’t change your color. You can’t change your sex. 

This is why I can’t stand BLM, the alphabet mafia, or people like Nick Fuentes. They all seek division based upon physical identity. It all ends in the same morally depraved ditch, regardless of the direction. Until we move back to debating and seeking policy victories, the right will be a hollowed out husk of a political movement. 

I see hope in people like Ron DeSantis and my own governor, Kim Reynolds. They have had success in actually governing. They have moved their states to the right without focusing on immutable characteristics or identity politics. 

We must be able to focus on ideas. I don’t want to see our country fall into the European model of all political parties being big government socialist proponents with only superficial identity politics separating them. This is not something I could be a part of. I have had many moments where I think of finding a piece of undeveloped land in the mountains and going off grid to escape all of this, but my conscience won’t allow me to. I have to be engaged in this fight or I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. I can’t leave a nation of disparate groups of people who are pitted against one another for reasons that don’t matter. 

If you want to see more freedom, liberty, less government intervention in small and medium sized business, and a focus on tried and true moral principles, I’m with you. I you seek to divide over color or sex, I am not.

I Don’t Apologize

 I Don’t Apologize. 

I was at the Iowa State Fair all day Saturday, August 12th. I was overheard by a reporter calling the cult around the former president degenerates, regarding an airplane banner being towed through the sky above the fairgrounds. I stand by my words.  Raheem Kassem, a foreign national, seems to think I care what he thinks. Alex Bruesewitz, a paid grifter consultant, seems to think I care what he thinks. I don’t. 

I stand by my statement. The only part of the record I’ll correct is that I do all of my activism as a volunteer. I take no money. I knock doors, make calls, and help in any manner I can. I know people in the Iowa’s House and Senate. I know people in the Never Back Down PAC. I know people in the DeSantis campaign. Everyone of them I’ve met have been genuinely decent people.

I’ve been heavily involved in politics on a grassroots level for my whole time here in Iowa. I’ve seen our efforts start to move this state in a better direction. The last 18 months have been a huge victory in this state that had long suffered under a regime of corporatist hacks and social progressives. We aren’t where we need to be, but we’re no longer running head long in the wrong direction. I credit our governor, Kim Reynolds, for pushing back against the federal government when they pushed for her to issue stay at home orders during the federal covid tyranny of 2020. After 6 weeks, she recognized the errors of their thinking. We had youth sports in the summer of 2020, before anyone else in the US. 

I traveled extensively in 2020 and early 2021. Iowa was the most free of any of the states I traveled to and through, including Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Alaska, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska. I was glad to be back home to iowa every time I left. 

I have never supported the former one term president. I saw his economic interventionism coming. I didn’t see 2020 coming, though. We were governed from DC for the last 10 months of his term by the medical industrial complex. The former president gave gave the nation over to Anthony Fauci. Previous to the worst management decision in world history, he governed as dyed in the wool Keynesian, pushing the non government/government central bank to expand our money supply at rates never before seen, to keep interest rates artificially low so saving was dissuaded and spending beyond means through cheap loans was encouraged, thereby creating a bubble that burst 18 months after he signed that disastrous CARES Act. That bill was the single most damaging piece of legislation ever signed in our history. Ask Thomas Massie about that legislation and our former president’s reaction to his objections. 

States, like California, were bailed out. People were paid not to work. Supply chains shut down worldwide. The massive amount of new dollars had nothing to buy after inventories were diminished. That’s what we’re paying for now. Too many dollars chasing too few goods.

This same guy who lost by his own doing in 2020, to a potted plant of a man, had the temerity to come back to my state at a dinner in front of a few thousand Republicans at the of July and tout his corporate welfare payments to farmers and his infatuation for ethanol production. The former president said nothing about the disaster that he left in his wake that allowed the forces behind Joe Biden to take over. 

 

When the RNC and our former president knew about a push to harvest ballots in certain states, no counter effort was put in place. The party and the former president gave up that ground, instead choosing to peddle grievance and “release the kraken” nonsense. Instead of looking inward to see where they had failed, that former president and his merry band of degenerates(I said it again) chose to fundraise off of the backs of baby boomers to “stop the steal” instead of looking at what they did wrong to lead to the mess that was the election of 2020. I believe there was malfeasance, funded by the CARES Act, that went on. That’s been going on in large cities for a very long time. Again, the RNC and the former president had no preemptive plan to deal with it. 

This was all happening while the former president also plowed forward with a planned transfer of wealth from taxpayers to big pharma, called Warp Speed. That will go down as one of the most evil decisions in world history. We’re still coming to grips with that evil decision. 

I say all of that to say this. I watched every leader in states and at the federal level over the last 8 years, since the former president rode down his escalator at a building he financed with funds from our societal enemies. I saw a few good ones, like my governor. I saw one great one: Ron DeSantis. I saw a guy who admitted his mistakes when he made them. I saw a guy who changed course when better data became available. I saw a guy who made his state a destination for people seeking freedom.

It was then I noticed Governor DeSantis’s pivot toward fighting back against the enemies of truth in the education, banking, and financial systems. He brought in Jimmy Patronis to help guide Florida financially. They divested from ESG companies. They fought Disney when Disney sought to make an issues of Florida’s proposed plan to protect young children from the religion of gender ideology being pushed in government schools. 

DeSantis fired his surgeon general when that guy pimped mask policies against his administration’s policies, in favor of Dr Joseph Ladapo. Dr Ladapo is the only righteous public health official in government anywhere in the country today. After initially promoting the covid quasi therapeutics being peddled as vaccines, when the data started coming in, Florida became the only state to start recommending against the shots. Contrast that to the former president giving presidential commendations to the evil cabal of people involved in Warp Speed as one of his last acts in office. 

In combination with Florida’s Attorney General, Governor DeSantis has landed the only real blows for justice against the evil that has become the cadre of Soros backed district and state attorneys. His removal of two pro criminal prosecutors is one of the very few righteous deeds in the nation in the fight against violent crime, in total contrast to the First Step Act signed by the former president after a certain influencer waved her ample posterior in his face a few times. 

The paid grifters currently propping up the former president’s less than energetic personal campaign,  many of which live in Florida because of the Governor, were effusive in their praise of Governor DeSantis…until they got paid not to be. Three days before the midterm 2022 elections, I saw it. I’ve been watching and studying these people since 2015. They never change. They’re transactional quasi populists with no coherent worldview. Worldview is destiny.

Now, we have freaks like Laura Loomer, Steven Cheung, the Dilley losers, the two I mentioned at the top, and a whole host of other world class degenerates making things up to smear one of the only righteous families in American political life. I think Ron DeSantis and his wife, Casey, are a mirror being held up to our country and people in the cult don’t want to look at their own reflection because it says something bad about themselves. Strong marriages and strong families aren’t the norm now and can be intimidating for people with empty souls. I believe that’s why Laura Loomer accuses Casey of not going through a cancer battle. I believe that’s why they’re obsessed by physical appearances and clothes. I believe that’s why they make things up about the personal lives of this couple.

Ron and Casey love each other. That’s plain to see. When you meet them, they’re in sync. Spend any time around them and you figure out that it’s 100% real. They’re good parents. They support one another and they believe the same things about life, family, and country. As the Bible says, they’re equally yoked, moving in the same direction. They believe in being servants. Leadership comes through service. 

I don’t have children. I do, however, have a nephew who I would do anything for, up to and including laying down my own life. I have friends who have many children. I see a nation that is quickly spirally toward utter moral depravity. I don’t want to leave this nation on the path it currently is traveling for the sake of our coming generation. That path, on the cultural front, did not change or even slow down while our former president was in office. He would sometimes use inflammatory rhetoric to placate his fans, but then he would let his leftwing cabinet members actually set policy, controverting his rhetoric. we got all of the blow back with none of the policy victoires. 

Now, do I think everyone who voted for the former president once, or even twice, is a bad person? No. Most people vote defensively against the other side. I do, however, think that the former president’s inner circle and his outer organization are some of the worst of people I’ve ever seen. They deny all reality to prop up a man who is so pride filled, he still touts warp speed as his greatest accomplishment. He’s willing to destroy the man who governs the state he chose to move to. Make it make sense?

In closing, I won’t back down. Donald Trump must lose the primary for our nation to have any shot at a new birth of freedom. Our best choice is Ron DeSantis. His record of service is something we haven’t seen in a presidential candidate in generations. He’s not running to be somebody. He’s running to do the work need to help turn our country back from the precipice of decline we’re teetering on right now. 

Matt Wells

Just a few thoughts.

I haven't written a blog post in quite some time. Here are just a few thoughts. 

I am thoroughly disgusted with the direction our nation is taking. I'm not coming from the leftist Never Trump/Blue Wave Republican angle. I'm not coming from the progressive angle. I'm coming from a constitutionalist/individual ordered liberty angle. 

I have a visceral hatred for all things populist. I'm not a joiner by nature. I'm highly skeptical of large groups of people trumpeting the same cause unless it's the cause of Christ(something people have been willing to give their lives for), and even then, there are so many apostate movements, I try everything I hear through the lens of the Bible. 

I'm being spurred to write because tonight the Iowa Caucuses are going to start the 2020 presidential nomination process. The GOP side is currently working to cover-up all of Trump's failures and make him into something other than a loud mouthed braggart and carnival barker, all while adopting all of the Democrat premises for their own. The Democrats are currently trying to decide how far toward the Soviet system they would like to go. I will have nothing to do with either of those sides.

So what is a person who doesn't see a path forward on either of those sides supposed to do? If I'm being blunt, I'm not sure. I do know this, though. A person holding onto principles of individual natural rights and limited government has no real power in either party. All we get from Republicans is lip service (see Trump speaking at a pro-life rally while signing bills to fund Planned Murderhood), while they seek to adopt policies of the Soros backed left, like criminal justice reform(also known as letting violent felons out of jail early) and state mandated and funded redistribution of wealth like post childbirth government funded supplementary income. This is stuff  that Democrats wouldn't have supported 20 years ago. In fact, Joe Biden was a major player in getting landmark crime crackdown legislation passed in the 1990s. He now runs away from that victory, as do many Republicans.

You might ask why someone who trumpets individual rights, like myself, wants to be hard on violent criminals. I'll tell you why. I don't think we should lock up someone for petty theft or minor drug offenses for years upon years, but someone who assaults a child, traffics large amounts of illicit drugs(thereby funding violent transnational cartels), violently assaults a woman or child, traffics or uses child pornography, or commits murder(unborn or already born) should be put away until they are too old to have an effect on anyone. Frankly, I'd like to see pedophiles, child sex predators, and those who commit first degree murder put to death because they forfeited their right to liberty and life by usurping the natural rights of others. 

Another conundrum I find myself in is the issue of life, especially of the innocent and unborn. Trump speaking at the March for Life was just lip service. He signed every spending bill out in front of him that funded Planned Murderhood since he's been in office. Abortion is murder and should be punished as such, both for the person contracting for the murder and the person carrying out the contract. Pro-Life Inc says we should make abortion unthinkable, all while stopping every effort to actually do so. Abortion would be unthinkable if the consequences were the same as those of any other murder. The abolition of abortion is the only moral position. Regulating child sacrifice analogous to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Abolishing child murder it is the only way forward. Using the Titanic analogy, abolition is the fleet of life boats on the Titanic. 

The Republicrats, Trump included, have done precisely nothing to push back against the illogical and illegitimate SCOTUS ruling from 2015 that made up a non-existent right for anyone to marry anyone else. For over 2000 years, western civilization has been built upon New Testament biblical families and biblical marriages. The Trump GOP has caved on this issue. This isn't about liberty. It's about government redefining words and making things up. The left wants to destroy the family, much in the way the Chinese did, by limiting children born in wedlock. The reason they laud sodomite marriage is because no children can come from those unions. Children born to biblical families will likely be enemies of totalitarian states.  The GOP has done precisely nothing to combat this. In fact, Republicrats have made idols of out the courts, in effort to absolve themselves of from having to do anything about this issue.

I can't get along with parties that have no appetite for reigning in spending. Our debt, deficit, and overall size of government has not slowed in its growth since Trump took office. He's not a disruptor that so many though him to be. He's a typical Republicrat cog in the gears of big government. He's done nothing that will stand up to the next Democrat president in terms of limiting government influence in the business sectors or bureaucracies of government. He's done hardly anything to get decent people hired as the heads of the myriad number of federal agencies that come under his authority. In fact, he's done such a poor job of getting decent cabinet level secretaries confirmed that Obama and Clinton era bureaucrats are effectively running many cabinet level departments because acting secretaries can't hire and fire people without the Senate approving them. Trump isn't leader his cult thinks him to be. 

All while the Republicrats are conspiring against their rank and file voters, the Democrats are actively searching for a way to find their vehicle to the October 1917 Soviet revolution. Bernie Sanders is now the default leader of the leftists in this country. The guy who spent his honeymoon in Moscow in 1988, lauding the failing Soviet system, is now leading in many polls. As I write this, he's likely on his way to winning the Iowa Democrat caucus and that will lead to a win in the New Hampshire primary. This will give the nearly 80 year old communist a leg up on the Democrat nomination for president. If this turns out to be the case, the nation will be left with a choice between a left of center nationalist statist in Trump and a radical collectivist communist in Sanders. There is no good way forward out of that situation. The GOP may retain control of the Senate, but if it does, it will be a 51/49 majority(Gardner and McSally are cooked). The House is lost for several cycles because Trump doesn't inspire people to vote for other Republicans. I know this a bunch of gloom and doom, but wait, there is hope. 

Start locally. Run for city council, county commissioner, or a local school board. If you don't, help find good people who will and help them campaign. Help recruit actual conservatives (not Trump sycophants or Romney types) to run for office. Go to city council meetings and lobby them to stop spending money on progressive issues and start standing for the right values. You have much more sway with locals than you do with a bought and paid for US Senator. Make sure your state house reps and senators know who you are. In fact, make them afraid of you. Bother them. Make their jobs difficult if they step out of line. These are all things you can do to have an actual impact. 

Lastly, and most importantly, know that you are a born again Christian, that Jesus was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, was crucified, died, was buried, and rose from the grave 3 days later to save you from sin and hell, if only you trust upon Him. Get rooted in a Bible preaching church with a biblical pastor. Once you've done that, start proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus. The reason the Chinese, North Koreans, Putin's Russia, Cuba, and many islamist countries ban the preaching of the Gospel and the Bible is because when someone is truly born again, they stop seeing the government as their end all be all. There is hope. It's just not found in the GOP or the Democrat parties. 

Political Free Agency

It’s been almost a year since I’ve written a blog post. The reason is surely not because I’ve haven’t had any ideas about what to write. It’s been more of a feeling of nobody having an appetite to see things through a lens not focused by the worldly tribe that they’ve chosen to place themselves in, but I think a few of these ideas need to be out there.
Many of you who know me personally, will know that I have left all party affiliations behind. Much like free agency has, for good team purposes or not, given players in professional sports much more control of where they play, I think voters need to approach their government in much the same way. I truly believe it is time for the party organizations to be left bereft of any sort of man power or financial support. Like the duplicity seen here in Iowa in the party leadership establishments, most states are in the same position with their party leadership cabals. The people in leadership are only concerned with their own power. This accommodation must stop. Policy outcomes don’t support their calls for joining one party or the other. I think we need to approach politics as free agents. We only give support, whether volunteer time, money, or both, to those candidates that have shown the ability and principles to stand for what we demand they stand for.
The election of the current president has shown that most voters are more apt to go with someone willing to say something close to what they want to hear instead of actually having the battle scars to prove their campaign rhetoric. The 2018 Republican primaries have shown a great slide toward the mushy middle, despite the partisan rhetoric coming from the White House. Actual, proven, small government candidates in places like Virginia, Missouri, and Oklahoma have been displaced by big government establishment picked Unibrow Party members or idiot nationalist cultists. I don’t care if Republicans win, if they won’t be discernibly different from the leftists trying to spend this nation into the Marxist poor house.
The greatest betrayals have been on budgetary issues. In March, President Trump said he’d never sign a bloated big government continuing resolution again, but just last week, he signed another omnibus style bill that funded every priority that the former Marxist in Chief sought to implement. Instead of showing leadership and using his veto pen, he made the establishment argument of “keeping the government open” in order to betray his campaign promises. Even with this betrayal, his cult keeps showering him with “at least he’s not Hillary and he loves this country” types of worship. The latest GOP written funding bill actually had more House Democrats support it than it did have GOP votes. Talk about #UnibrowParty.
I know the hand wringing over a judicial supremacist, who has been pulled through the progressive mud, has sucked up all the oxygen in the room as far as the news cycle goes. That doesn’t give voters the cover to ignore this duplicitous nature emanating from the GOP power structure. The reason they put so much weight on the Supreme Court is they need the Court to absolve them from governing in a small government matter.
We must step back from the short sighted “most important election ever” rot gut and start playing the long game. Only vote for people with the small government credibility and battle scars of standing for principles, even when it costs them an elected seat or position of power. Just winning elections is worthless if the people winning will capitulate to the Unibrow cabal as soon as they get into office. Sometimes winning means we stop playing the game. Be a free agent and only sell your vote to someone worthy of buying it.

A Nation at a Crossroads

Our nation continues to slide into moral decay. Everyday, I see stories of people openly mocking the source of our rights. So many now reject objective truth. The Bible was held as the standard for morality and instruction in our nation until about 75 years ago. In the last 75 years, we’ve fallen so far, but the rate at which our culture has decayed has accelerated to a point in the last 10 years, that I see no point of return on a national level without a true spiritual revival. 

I truly believe God has taken his hand of blessing off of our nation. A nation that endorses the murder of babies, openly mocks God’s design for families and marriage, and a burgeoning entitlement state that replaces God with government will be the downfall of this country, if we don’t push back. 

My goal is to fight back on a local level. I intend to explore running for mayor of Washington, Iowa in 4 years. The mayor elected last night is onboard with the current progressive plan of cultural decay and decadence. We can’t continue to mock God if we seek revival. The Body of Christ needs to rise up.

I am frustrated at churches and pastors who won’t speak up. In my research, there are only a handful, a small minority of churches in all of southeast Iowa that actually preach the whole word of God. Part of the cultural decline is a culture of churches selling out to the world and tickling ears instead of preaching with conviction. You can do your part, no matter where you live. If your church doesn’t preach and teach the whole of God’s word, leave that church and find one that does. 

To this end, I will also continue to reach out and work to see souls saved. We have to get the word out that we are living in perilous times and without Jesus, things are going to continue to get worse. 

It’s time we choose. We must either choose to let the forces of darkness win, or we must fight back. I choose to fight. I hope you join me.

I normally use links in my text, but I’ve chosen to cite a few stories below to illustrate my points above. Check them out and let’s continue the discussion.

 A Blue Wave.

Seattle Continues It’s Slide Into the Sound.

The Texas Church Shooting and it’s Sick Perpetrator

We can’t approach people from a place of hate, but we also must not be afraid to proclaim truth in love and we mustn’t be silent. We must proclaim the Gospel and all that goes with it. I’ve been guilty of being lax in following God’s law in the past. If anything, the slide our nation is in has prompted me to draw nearer to God and to pull back from a culture seeking to destroy all that is good and true.

It’s time for Christians to stop fellowshipping with forces seeking to destroy them. It’s time for people of faith to pull their kids from public schools. It’s time for people of faith to shut the TV off. It’s time for people of faith to stop going to movies made by people who wish to see us destroyed. It’s time we stopped supporting musicians who wish to see the Gospel minimized. It’s time to stop dressing like the world. It’s time to support the right kinds of businesses and to remove our support from businesses that seek to do us harm. We need to stand up and make our light be seen. 

Authenticity

Odd, I know. Two posts in a day. I just had to get this off my chest.
My pastor said something last Wednesday that stirred this up and continued to challenge me today.

Too many people aren't real. Too many people have public personas, all polished up and sanitized, yet at work they are nothing like their home or church personality, or their church personality is different that their personality away from church. I gravititate toward those that are the same in all areas, so that I can know them for real.

Be open. Be who you are. People who put on a face for church or for work or for guests in the home bother me. I can't tell if they are sincere or not. I don't want to have to read your mind to know if you are being who you are, or who you think I want you to be. Don't be plastic. Be you, flaws and all. God made you and as long as you aren't trying to be something you're not, I'm good. I know my strengths and my weaknesses. If I stink at doing something, I'm ok with saying it. If I don't have experience in an area, I'm glad to ask. If I am an expert in something, I'm glad to lend a hand or teach someone.

Be joyful because you're a Christian, but don't over sell it. Don't be someone you aren't. Just be yielded to God and your true joy will shine through.