LetsMoveToTheMoon

photo credit: Swamibu

This is part three of three in a series of guest posts that I wrote for Jesus Thirst, a blog by Richard Morris. Check out this post on his blog: We Stink at Relationships – Part III: Encourage and find parts one and two here: We Stink at Relationships – Part I: Pray and We Stink at Relationships – Part II: Inspire.

I think that of all the sermons I hear (which isn’t that many compared to Richard who listens to about 37 sermons a day), the ones that convict me the most almost always involve speech. It’s not that I’m some crazy perverted mess; I just tend to notice ways which negative speech affects people.

In high school, I had a friend who would often insult with the intention of being funny. Soon this joking turned into actual insulting, in which I started to think he was incapable of doing anything well. I would get angry at him and use words I had previously intended for humor in a tone that said, “I don’t like you.” I’m pretty sure these things bounced right off him, but the words I used definitely shaped the way I treated him.

This relationship shaped the way I think about communication with our friends. In fact, I taught myself to remove that type of speech from my vocabulary. But I’m not healed of my problem. Like I said, I stopped saying mean things to people, I stopped being so negative, and I stopped putting down my friends. I willed myself into cleaning up my act. Unfortunately, though, it doesn’t end there.

The phrase, “out of the (overflow of the) heart, the mouth speaks,” is thrown around a lot. Considering it’s in the Bible, I tend to wonder if there’s something to that statement. This is the part that gets me every time: I was able to pretty much stop using negative speech, but as soon as my defenses are down, the gross hurtfulness comes right back. On top of that, I’m not very good at encouraging. I don’t believe that my willpower will ever be strong enough to control all of these things.

Here I believe our relationships break down. Because we do not bring prayer, inspiration, and encouragement to our relationships, we have no bond with our friends and our relationships fall apart. Although we continue striving, we cannot on our own change our hearts to properly value our friends.

Instead, only through the Holy Spirit changing us by the blood of Christ will our hearts be transformed to love well through prayer, inspiration, and encouragement.

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So thanks again for reading these last three posts. I’ve really enjoyed writing them. I hope they’ve proved valuable in some way, if even as small reminders.

Oh, and bonus points to anyone who noticed the “PIE” acronym. I love bad acronyms.

This is part two of three in a series of guest posts that I wrote for Jesus Thirst, a blog by Richard Morris. Check out this post on his blog: We Stink at Relationships – Part II: Inspire and find parts one and three here: We Stink at Relationships – Part I: Pray and We Stink at Relationships – Part III: Encourage.

photo credit: loomingy1

I can name several things in my life that have been influential to me spiritually. These include specific events, truths I have heard, and, of course, relationships I have had. I believe that many of the ways that I approach the Lord have been inspired by friends who were passionate about Jesus. Often I noticed my friends’ passion for the Lord and desired that same passion. But it doesn’t end there. I can also name specific ways in which friends have intentionally challenged me toward growth in relationship with God. I hope to learn to do this for other people, and that is why I’m writing about this topic.

I think first about the references in the book of Proverbs to “walking with wise men,” such as verse 13:20. Among other places in the Bible, the book of Proverbs emphasizes the influence our relationships have over our lives. The author repeatedly commands his audience to make wise decisions about relationships because of their powerful effect.

This post was influenced by a sermon by Andy Stanley entitled “Providential Relationships” as part of his “Five Things God Uses” series. In this message, Stanley talked about the potential in our relationships to inspire others to faith in Christ. He used an example of a young boy who pursued an adult couple and through his perseverance and God’s perfect leadership, this couple eventually became followers of Jesus.

I’m taking the idea further than Stanley did, though, and suggesting that relationships are influential for more than just evangelism. This is something I believe we often miss. We ignore opportunities to inspire our friends to a greater love for God. Instead of challenging our friends to more strongly pursue the Lord, we remain stagnant in our relationships and expect to receive inspiration without giving any. Think about this, and you will see that what I’m suggesting is something to which you can relate.

We must inspire our friends. As I suggested above, I have been influenced both by friends who simply were passionate about God and by friends who purposefully challenged me in a specific area of my life. We must do these two things: (1) We must live in such a way that others are inspired toward the Lord, and (2) we must intentionally speak to the places in our friends’ lives in which they could more boldly pursue Him.

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds

Hebrews 10:23-24, NAS

This is part one of three in a series of guest posts that I wrote for Jesus Thirst, a blog by Richard Morris. Check out this post on his blog: We Stink at Relationships – Part I: Pray and find parts two and three here: We Stink at Relationships – Part II: Inspire and We Stink at Relationships – Part III: Encourage.

photo credit: digitalart

When Richard asked me to do a few guest posts while he was on his trip to Denver, I immediately came up with several topics which I he would never let me post about, knowing that he’d be gone for a week and had given me complete control. Unfortunately, I discovered through his last post that he has at least some sort of Internet connection this week (which I guess I should have expected considering he’s in Denver and not some third world country), so that ruined my fun. Instead I’ll write about something a little more acceptable: relationships.

I chose for this first post the topic of prayer. I chose this for two main reasons regarding relationships: (1) it’s important and (2) I’m not very good at it. I also love this idea because it’s applicable to anyone at any age in any stage of life. I’ll therefore focus on the importance of prayer in relationships, but I’ll skip over general things about prayer since most would be boring and repetitive.

Two thoughts from the Bible: (1) Paul mentions his prayers for his friends in almost all of his letters. Examples of this include Romans 1:8, 1 Corinthians 1:4, Ephesians 1:15-16, Philippians 1:4, Colossians 1:3,9, and numerous others. Furthermore, Paul frequently requested that his friends pray for him. Paul certainly saw value in praying to God on behalf of friends. (2) In Luke 6, Jesus commands His followers to pray for (and love) their enemies and those who hurt them. In the past I’ve thought to myself, “If we’re to love and pray for our enemies, what about our friends? Should we not do the same for them?” This is huge. I’d wager that praying for our friends is pretty high up on the list of loving things we can do for our friends.

And here’s one thought from me: I have found that I am most stirred up with love for the people I know when I am praying for them. I think there’s something about passionately asking for the Lord’s total reign in the life of a friend that creates a deeper love for that person. And don’t get me started about praying WITH friends. Talk about getting to know someone.

I confess that I have presented nothing revolutionary in these few paragraphs. I am satisfied with that, though, as I intend for this post to serve primarily as a reminder of something that we already know: we must be praying for our friends.

Thanks for reading, and I’ve got two more posts coming. Get excited.

This is part 3 of 3 in a series on ideas to create or improve web and desktop applications. See also ideas 1 and 2: “Idea #1: Font Scheme Generator” and “Idea #2: Two iTunes Features That Should Have Been There a While Ago“

A few weeks ago, I Googled my name, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I appeared somewhat near the top of the results. Unfortunately, I realized that lots of other people have the name Steven Rossi. This gave me an idea: what if Google (or anyone, I suppose, but it would be easiest for Google) developed a tool to categorize search results by people. This tool would be simple; Google could apply a system like the recently-reviewed-by-TechCrunch MyID.is which validates people’s identities based on real-world data to catalog individual people, who could then identify all content related to them that appears in Google’s search results. Of course this system would be moderated by peers and paid employees, and I think it could be fairly secure if certain algorithms and guidelines were put in place.

It may sound weird that I suggest Google do this, but if you think about it, it makes a good deal of sense. To try to convince people to submit their information to a little-known 3rd party would be quite an undertaking, but since Google already knows everything about you, what could this hurt? This service would simply gather all of your online activity into one location which would be searchable and editable. And yes, I recognize fears of loss of privacy in that statement, but if you’re concerned about people stalking you based on the information found through this method, you’ve probably got too much information online already. Google’s People Search would be helpful reference to one’s online activity, and it would most certainly create more interaction within search in general. Tell me your thoughts on this idea.

This is part 2 of 3 in a series on ideas to create or improve web and desktop applications. See also parts 1 and 3: “Idea #1: Font Scheme Generator” and “Idea #3: Google People Search – Convenient or Just Plain Creepy?“

Two ideas for the price of one in this post. Both of these involve small features that would substantially increase my appreciation for iTunes. First, I’d like to see a link to YouTube for a live performance or music video of every applicable song. I’m not sure how this would work practically, but perhaps users could moderate which specific video gets matched with a given song. If a song goes untagged, the link would go by default to a simple YouTube search. I can’t think of any reasons that Apple would have as to why this would be a bad idea, other than their loss of music video sales. They could work around that, though.

Second, and perhaps much simpler, iTunes should come with an ability to download song lyrics automatically. Right now I’ve got an application running in the background to download lyrics for songs as they’re played, but unfortunately it does a mediocre job and could certainly be improved. If iTunes would download lyrics like it does album art, I’d be a happy man. Of course, this would be optional, as some users would want to forego lyrics in their songs to save drive space on their computers or iPods. For people like me, though, this would be an invaluable tool.

Thoughts on these two ideas?