(Some of) God’s Purposes in This Recession by John Piper

This was just part of a sermon given by John Piper on sunday...
Now what are some of God’s purposes in this recession? I will mention five:
1.He intends for this recession to expose hidden sin and so bring us to repentance and cleansing.
2.He intends to wake us up to the constant and desperate condition of the developing world where there is always and only recession of the worst kind.
3.He intends to relocate the roots of our joy in his grace rather than in our goods, in his mercy rather than our money, in his worth rather than our wealth.
4.He intends to advance his saving mission in the world—the spread of the gospel and the growth of his church—precisely at a time when human resources are least able to support it. This is how he guards his glory.
5.He intends for the church to care for its hurting members and to grow in the gift of love.

2. To Awaken Us to World Poverty
It’s astonishing how blind prosperity makes us to the miseries of the world. God has some remedies for that kind of indifference. For example, it says in Hebrews 13:3, “Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body.”
How does that work? He says that there are people that we should care about who are imprison and mistreated. We tend to forget them. So he says, “Remember!” And he says: “As though with them” and “since you have a body.” So how does it work? It works like this: You have a body and sometimes it hurts. When it hurts, remember that there are people right now who are being mistreated—who are hurting much more than you. Imagine yourself in their shoes, and treat them the way you would want to be treated.
Recession hurts us. It imprisons us. What is God’s aim? That we would wake up. Does this recession bother us? If it bothers us, we should be bothered by the fact that millions always live in recession. Only live in recession.
One billion people do not have safe water to drink. Sixteen thousand children die every day from hunger related illnesses. Almost eighteen million children are orphaned in sub-Saharan Africa.
Our family prays through the Global Prayer Digest each morning. For January 29, 2009, we prayed for the Afar people of Ethiopia:
It’s 3:00 a.m., and the Afar father is still awake. The desert night is cold. He snuggles up to his wife and newborn baby to keep them warm. Their stomachs rumble with hunger. Should he slaughter his scrawny goat to feed his wife, hoping she will produce enough milk for their baby? Or should he beseech the clan elders to move again, in search of weeds for the goat, or maybe even some fresh water?
They are fortunate; both his wife and their baby survived the birth. The Afar people have the highest maternal fatality rate in the world. Women give birth without benefit of sterile conditions, or even clean water. Of the babies born alive one-third die before age five. Afar people roam throughout one of the most desolate places on earth: the Ethiopian desert.
Drought and malnutrition make them vulnerable to diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, conjunctivitis, and other water-borne illnesses. Of 13 million Afar people, three million are infected with HIV/AIDS.
It is good to know these things. And to pray about these things. And to cultivate a radical culture at Bethlehem in which hundreds of people dream of ways that their lives can count creatively and long-term for the relief of suffering. Recession has a way of making us wake up to the endless recession of millions. It has a way of changing our priorities and releasing effort and money for others.
Part of our overall vision at Bethlehem called Treasuring Christ Together (TCT) is the Global Diaconate. The giving to TCT is over and above the $9.2 million budget for church and missions this year. Ten percent of everything you give to the vision of TCT goes to our efforts to help the poorest of the poor. Since 2005 when TCT started, you have given over $700,000 to this fund, and $593,000 of it has been disbursed. God’s purpose for this recession is to say: That’s good work; and now more than ever, don’t let up.

the world in turmoil

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,24892394-15084,00.html
For the last few weeks I have become completely dumbfounded in the world's response to the Israel/ Hamas crisis. That anyone would wonder why Isreal would continue to stage its air stikes in Gaza is beyond me. I wonder, If any other country had maliciously time and time again been attacked by a terrorist group would they be opposed? Was not 9/11 the act of a radical terrorist organization? But why has the media forgotten this? Why has only Israel been targeted?
And then I had a revelation...
Like radical islamic terrorists who have no logic to the actions, we american public has also found another radical group that has "no method to its madness." Both organizations are dictated by their irrational prejudices. The left wing, much like Hamas, long for the day they can continue the systematic extermination of the jews. The Israel/ Hamas crisis is not just about land, it is about unadulterated hatred. Whether or not Israel relinguishes an inch, these crazies could care less because they will not be satisfied until every jew is dead.

cool little video from a neat little website

http://www.marshillchurch.org/media/rebels-guide-to-joy/the-rebels-guide-to-joy-in-loneliness/william-cowper-bio

Sunday marked the beginning of a new season; I am now twenty-one and have been freed from the elementary limitations of my youthful days. No limits...no boundaries..only the world at my finger tips!
If only life were that freeing. It seems the older I get the more bound I become. The gravity of reality weighs down leaving me enslaved to so much. I find it ironic that the more I strive, the less fufilled I am. Like the child who tries so hard to reach the cookie jar only to have it tumble out of his grasp falling onto the floor in a million broken pieces. Its funny how the things that we desire and spend our whole lives trying to attain always break. We never can hold onto what we want fully intacted. Even when we seem to reach our goals, it seems that in the end the things that we fight for always unravel and fall apart leaving us empty handed in the end.

surprised by joy

Last week I read Surprised by Joy-Although it was not one of my favorite c.s. lewis books, his description of joy and his intellectual journey to Christianity is very interesting.
This is one of my favorite quotes:
"You will remember how, as a schoolboy, I had destroyed my religious life by a vicious subjectivism which made "realizations" the aim of prayer; turning away from God to seek states of mind, and trying to produce those states of mind by "maistry." With unbelievable folly I now proceeded to make exactly the same blunder in my imaginative life; or rather the same pair of blunders. The first was made at the very moment when I formulated the complaint that the "old thrill" was becoming rarer and rarer. For by that complaint I smuggled in the assumption that what I wanted was a "thrill" a state of my own mind. And there lies the deadly error. Only when your whole attention and desire are fixed on something else- whether a distant mountain, or the past, or the gods of Asgard- does the "thrill" arise. It is a byproduct. Its very existence presupposes that you desire not it but something other and outer. If by any perverse askesis or the use of any drug it could by produced from within, it would at once be seen to be of no value. For take away the object, and what, after all, would be left?- a whirl of images, a fluttering sensation in the diaphragm, a momentary abstraction. And who could want that? This, I say, is the first and deadly error, which appears on every level of life and is equally deadly on all, turning religion into a self-caressing luxury and love into auto- eroticism. And the second error is, having thus falsely made a state of mind your aim, to attempt to produce it. From the fading Northernness I ought to have drawn the conclusion that the Object, the Desirable, was further away, more external, less subjective, than even such a comparatively public and external thing as a system of mythology- had, in fact, only shone through that system. Instead, I concluded that it was a mood or state within myself which might turn up in any context. To "get it again" became my constant endeavor; while reading every poem, hearing every piece of music, going for every walk, I stood anxious sentinel at my own mind to watch whether the blessed moment was beginning and to endeavor to remain it if it did. Because I was still young and the whole world of beauty was opening before me, my own afficious obstructions were often swept aside and, startled into self- forgetfulness, I again tasted Joy. But far more often I frightened it away by my greedy impatience to snare it, and, even when it came, instantly destroyed it by introspection, and at all times vulgarized it by my false assumption about its nature. One thing, however, I learned, which has since saved me from many popular confusions of mind. I came to know by experience that it is not a disguise of sexual desire. Those who think that if adolescents were all provided with suitable mistresses we should soon hear no more of "immortal longings" are certainly wrong. I learned this mistake to be a mistake by the simple, if discreditable, processs of repeatedly making it. From the Northernness one could not easily have slid into erotic fantasies without noticing the difference; but when the world of Morris became the frequent medium of Joy, this transition became possible. It was quite easy to think that one desired those forests for the sake of their female inhabitants, the garden of Hesperus for the sake of his daughters, Hylas' river for the river of nymphs. I repeatedly followed that path- to the end. At the end one found pleasure; which immediately resulted in the discovery that pleasure (whether that pleasure or any other) was not what you had been looking for. No moral question was involved; I was at this time as nearly nonmoral onn that subject as a human creature can be. The frustration did not consist in finding a "lower" pleasure instead of a "higher." It was the irrelevance of the conclusion that marred it. The hounds had changed scent. One had caught the wrong quarry. You might as well offer a mutton chop to a man who is dying of thirst as offer sexual pleasure to the desire I am speaking of. I did not recoil from the erotic conclusion with chaste horror, exclaiming "no that!" My feelings could rather have been expressed in the words, "Quite. I see. But havent we wandered from the real point?" Joy is not a substitute for sex; sex is often a substitute for Joy. I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for Joy.
Such, then, was the state of my imaginative life; over against it stoof the life of my intellect. The two hemispheres of my mind were in the sharpest contrast. On the one side a many- islanded sea of poetry and myth; on the other a glib and shallow "rationalism." Nearly all that I loved I believed to be imaginary; nearly all that I believed to be real I though grim and meaningless. The exceptions were certain people (whom I loved and believed to be real) and nature herself. That is, nature as she appeared to the senses. I chewed endlessly on the problem: "How can it be so beautiful and also so cruel, wasteful and futile?" Hence at this time I could almost have said with Santayana, "All that is good is imaginary; all that is real is evil." In one sense nothing less like a "flight from reality" could be conceived. I was so far from wishful thinking that i hardly thought anything true unless it contradicted my wishes.
***
But a desire is turned not to itself but to its object. Not only that, but it owes all its character to its object. Erotic love is not like desire for food, nay, a love for one woman differs from a love for another woman in the very same way and the very same degree as the two women differ from one another. Even our desire for one wine differs in tone from our desire for another. Our intellectual desire (curiosity) to know the true answer to a question is quite different from our desire to find that one answer, rather than another, is true. The form of the desired is in the desire. It is the object which makes the desire harsh or sweet, coarse or choice, "high" or "low." It is the object that makes the desire itself desirable or hateful. I perceived (and this was a wonder of wonders) that just as I had been wrong in supposing that I really desired the Garden of the Hesperides, so also I had been equally wrong in supposing that I desired Joy itself. Joy itself, considered simply as an event in my mind, turned out to be of no value at all. All the value lay in that of which Joy was the desiring. And that object, quite clearly, was no state of my own mind or body at all. In a way, I had proved this by elimination. I had tried everything in my own mind and body; as it were, asking myself, "is it this you want? It is this?" Last of all I had asked Joy itself what I wanted; and labelling it "aesthetic experience," had pretended I could answer Yes. But that answer too had broken down. Inexorably Joy proclaim, "You want- I myself am you want of- something other, outside, not you not any state of you."

in moments like these...

There is nothing so depressing as being home on a saturday night in bed with the flu. Sweating, coughing, sniffling, with chills is a splendid mix of weekend fun. Covers off- covers on. Blankets off Blanket on.
And all I can think about are the two massive research papers im suppose to be writing that got me into this mess. Anxiety and cold weather are a sure mix to land you with a box of kleenex.
I have decided to spend the night listening to sermons- something I have rarely gotten the chance to do lately. Its sad how we get ourselves so worked up sometimes it brings us to a place were we cant do anything. I feel so useless but I guess it is in these moments of humility I realize it is through Him that I am strengthened in my weakness.

My saturday night looks very promising: a night of chewing Hume's essay "on miracles" only to spit it back out into some kind of pseudo analysis (with sublime's Santeria shouting in my headphones). And this is my life.
I wish I could find more contentment in the mundane everyday tasks of life instead of grasping for thoughts and concepts beyond my reach. One words rings over and over in my mind: introspective. I shall pick apart abstractly then methodically categorize into something that will help me cope and possibly entertain me.
My saturday night calamity: boredom.
I am so fast to judge others- to label them mindless and shallow. But I wonder...maybe there can be just as much destruction in just sitting around blogging. Unless I create my own manifesto and have plans to quickly dominate and implement it- my words are empty.
Life demands such a balance between doing and thinking. Unfortunately the latter plagues me.


I wish to feel "humanity"

"Bless those who persecute you.." Romans 12:14
Tonight as I was sitting down at church a high school girl who looked somewhat foreign came and sat by me. She introduced herself and quickly began sharing her story. She told me that her family had just recently moved to America from Egypt to escape persecution. Apparently in the last few years the persecution of Christians has drastically increased. "You know" she said " You Americans can change your religion every day, but in Egypt we die for our religion. If my family had stay in Egypt any longer my family and I would be dead. We have had friends who have been killed and one of my friends was kidnapped for two months- she was constantly raped- just because she was a Christian. You Americans are so lucky. Did you know that 80% of Egyptians are starving to death living in poverty ,( obvious seeing people starve to death on the streets was not uncommon for this girl) only 5% are middle class, and the last 15% own everything." "What?" I thought that Muslims were commanded to take care of the poor?" "Oh", she replied- only one day of the year" What a sick religion I thought to myself. "Isn't it beautiful" I told her "That christian put such a great emphasis on taking care of the needy?" He even went as far as to say that "true religion is this: that you take care of the orphans and widows." "yes" she replied and smiled as she slightly turned her head. "You know" she said " My family ...we would have died for Christ if we had to...we would have never denied Him."
What a beautiful and strong girl. How many families like this die everyday but we will never know their stories because their bodies will be burned and their ashes left sifted into the sand, but whose souls knew the richness of Christ- whose hearts were filled with joy,overwhelmed with such compassion that they even showed love to those torturing their children. What a testament to Americans- whose bodies will be nicely scented and stuffed like thanksgiving turkeys- bodies that are rotten from the worldly pleasures- whose souls are absolutely empty.

The Hollow Men
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw.
Alas!Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us — if at all — not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer –
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate roseOf death’s twilight kingdom
The hope onlyOf empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pearPrickly pear prickly pearHere we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
and the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
T.S. Eliot

We sit in the mud... and reach for the stars.
Ivan Turgenev

Walking to the bus this morning was beautiful. It was cold and the sun was coming up. Like I was having some freakin existential experience..unexplainable. Somehow I ended up in the park. The truth is that after my first class I decided it skip my other ones..something I rarely do but I knew if I had to hear anymore about nathaniel hawthorne I would vomit in my mouth. What a joke. All he did was frolic around rome with his sissy buddies talking about art trying to create ethical dilemmas like he was some kind of philosopher. I ended up on the bench watching the sun beam through the trees. Watching the leaves take their last breath before winter. I just wanted to lay there forever. Its funny to think about how we grow through cycles. Seasons and years. Time and space. Yet somehow it all just starts running together as if it just mushes becoming undefinable. Today happens again tomorrow like yesterday: and here we go again. Year by year. Thought by Thought. Everything the same but in different packages. All of it so beyond us yet we act like we somehow comprehend it- knowing the alternative would be insanity/ As if we are little children knowing our punishment is coming so we curl up with are hands over our heads trying to drown out the reality pouring down around us.
The other day one of my philosophy professors said "why do we all think everyone would go bad if we did away with morals? We havent always had "morality"
I almost fell off my seat when she said this.
I can just see her now in the jungles of the amazon trying to rationalize with the cannibals.
It made me think about this old russian film I watched a few years ago. It was about this young woman who fell in love with this man, and he was really fond of her but he thought he would corrupt her and such so he cut things off. A few years later he saw her at this grand party and realized that she was married to some hotshot duke. He instantly became infatuated with her and did everything in his power to get her in bed/ Of course, it was evident that she admired her husband but was still crazy in love with this guy. I remember this beautiful scene where they are both ice skating. They are in russia surrounded by snow. The beautiful woman starts skating around and the guy just stands there staring at her and you know at that moment he would give his life to be with her. The movie ends with her sitting down and him on his knees before her begging her to love him. Up until this point its obvious that she loves him back and everyone thinks they are going to get back together. But the end really surprised me : she started crying with him- you could tell she was in a lot of pain- but she told him that she made a commitment to her husband and would never dishonor him. And then the movie ended. It sounds kind of depressing...and trust me it was...but the point was that morality should dictate our decisions. The point was that regardless of how bad the woman thought she wanted the man, it was more important for her to honor her husband and I think anyone who saw this movie would be proud of her because deep down your greatly admired her.
There is something deep inside of us that wants morality- that wants boundaries. How is the married woman who goes around screwing any man she sees any different from an animal?
I dont think my professor really had any idea of what she was talking about. Its ironic how some of the most educated people are the most ignorant. It seems like they just sit around drinking cocktails discussing how they are going to stop world hunger in their ivory towers while in the meantime their are people down bellow in the gutters begging for food.
I just wondered as I sat on that green bench: what keeps driving us into such deep denial about the world around us?

The Dino Andreadis Story

A solitary figure stood on a dark, deserted hilltop, high above the City of Angels. Overhead, a myriad of stars twinkled in the beautiful night shy as the blazing neon lights below beckoned intensely... I was the lone figure on the Los Angeles hilltop. It was 1978. I was 19 and at last I stood on the threshold of my dream becoming a reality. The dream had gripped me since boyhood - that of becoming a Hollywood actor. Grasping for the slightest chance to make a connection in the movie industry, I visited the posh Woodland Hills mansion of movie actor Telly Savalas, known especially for his TV series "Kojak". Being a Greek like myself, I was certain Telly would be my link with Tinsel Town's big league. Every nerve ending in my body was tensed with a strange mixture of energetic excitement and fear as I knocked on the massive door of the Savalas home. In a few moments the door to fame and fortune would be opened wide. The door swept open with expensive ease. "Good evening. My name is Dino Andreadis. Is Mr. Savalas in?" In spite of my jolting nerves, I managed to sound cool and collected. "This is it!" I told myself. "My ticket to the stars!" The stranger standing in the brightly lit doorway stared at me for several seconds, then he laughed. As the ornate door was slammed in my face a few moments later, all I could hear was the stranger's laugh as he looked at my shocked face, and told me that Telly hadn't lived there for at least ten years! My fascination with show biz went back to my childhood when, at the age of four, I was already a fan of the fabulous Chubby Checker. Once, during a trip on a cruise ship with my parents, I heard the dinner orchestra strike up a familiar Checker tune. Before my parents knew what had happened, I bolted onto the dance floor to a round of applause. That night I stole the show. In my teens I lived for the dynamic night life of Montreal. Entertainment paid good money. I was earning about $400 a week and that was quite a bit of cash for a seventeen year old back in 1976. One day my vice principal told me I should consider going to Hollywood. The idea caught hold of me with a passion. With high hopes and nearly empty pockets, I arrived in Hollywood in 1978. In a morass of eight million people I began to pound the pavement earnestly along with thousands of other hopefuls.....in search of stardom. Each night I returned home to my tiny, humble apartment with tired swollen feet and not a break in sight. Every night as I went to sleep, I looked up at the ceiling crying out to an unknown God, "If You're up there someplace, please help me!" As long as I can remember, I always had a longing for truth. I didn't go to church and I didn't know God, but as I cried out night after night to the lonely ceiling in my L.A. apartment, I was crying out for help, for truth, for reality. There was something missing in my life......perhaps stardom was the key that would fill the void. Several long months passed. Still no hope of a breakthrough. I decided to sneak promotion photos under the doors of casting directors at the major film studios. Out of the blue, my telephone rang. My hearty pounded with inexpressible excitement. It was the casting director of a major studio. He wanted to see me. At last! We met for a forty five minute interview, which is a long interview in Hollywood. The man wanted to meet me again later that evening. I could hardly contain the thrill inside of me at this dynamic turn of events. At precisely 8:00 p.m. a white Mercedes sports coupe arrived to pick me up. The casting director took me out to a popular night spot. After fifteen minutes with him, I began to feel uneasy. I couldn't explain it. But I was not totally naive about the lifestyles of people in the entertainment world. Bluntly, I asked the man what he wanted from me. With sickening horror, I realized I was face-to-face with the Hollywood casting couch. The casting director said that he would give me part in his next film if I paid the price.......sexual compromise. Much later, I discovered just how many are willing to pay that price of the chance at stardom. I asked the casting director to take me home immediately. What he was asking me was out of the question. Then an acting tryout came through from NBC studios. A script arrived by messenger. What a sensational feeling! A chance to do Harvey Korman's lines on the Carol Burnett show! Arriving at the studio, I saw Tom Snyder finishing a show on my left. Further on, I saw Bob Hope finishing a Christmas special. I couldn't believe it! Suddenly my knees began to shake. I stood in front of a monstrosity of a camera and heard the director say "Action!" I froze. Not a line of my memory work came to mind. I ran out of the studio, terrified and embarrassed, a scared 20 year old kid. Yet a windfall of calls began pouring in after that! My dream was unfolding father than I would keep up with! Experienced actors were utterly amazed when I told them about the calls I was getting. Finally a major breakthrough. An offer came in from the casting director at 20th Century Fox for a part in a series. There was one slight hitch. The director said hewanted to hire me but he couldn't. "What?! Why not?" I exclaimed. "Because you are Canadian," he said. "Canadian? What do you mean, 'I'm Canadian?' So is William Shatner. What does it matter if I am Canadian?" The problem was simple. I was an illegal alien. I couldn't be hired for a legal job in the U.S. without a green card or working permit. "How do I get a green card?" I practically shouted. "I'll get one! I'll do anything!" "This has to be it!" I cried out to the ceiling and to my unknown God that night. How many hundreds of nights had I cried out like this? Not for a minute did I realize that in all of those heartrending cries, I was searching not for my dream of stardom ... I was searching for God. The next day I handed over $96 for a five minute appointment to a lawyer who presented me with two options for getting a green card. I could invest $65,000 in a business in the U.S. or I could marry an American girl. What could I do? I didn't have a quarter to buy a bag of candy! How could I invest in a business? There was only one option. I began to search for an American wife. The very next day, amazing as it seemed, I met a man who introduced me to a lady who would marry me to get me my green card. The fee was $500. I paid a deposit on the five hundred and two days later, I called to check the progress of the arrangements and I discovered that I had been had. The woman and her "business manager" had disappeared. Frantic to get my green card, I began combing the L.A. night clubs in search of a woman who would marry me. A few days later, I met a beautiful young woman who told me that she had fallen instantly in love with me. When she heard about my dilemma, she said she was willing to marry me. In reality, I later realized that since she knew I was to be an actor, she just wanted to marry me to get a cut of the pie. Elated, I headed my way home and began making plans. Things were falling into place. A wife! A green card! An acting career! Then as I waited for the bus, a young man slipped a piece of paper into my hand. Perplexed I looked at the paper and saw words stare right up at me. "Jesus Christ is Coming Soon. Are You Ready?" The message pierced through my cluttered thoughts like a lightning bolt. I had heard about Jesus Christ. I had gone to church only when I had to .... sometimes at Christmas or Easter when my mother pulled me by the ears to go. But something told me, "This is the truth. I believe this!" Suddenly I felt confused. In my desperation to get home and put my thoughts in order, I jumped off at the wrong bus stop. Standing there was the same young man who had given me the tract. He mentioned he, too, had somehow landed at the wrong stop. Coincidence? Unannounced to me, it was providence. Discussing the "coincidence" we began walking together for a short distance. Theyoung man's name was David. I decided to invite him into my apartment for a cup ofcoffee. I had some questions about the tract to ask him. David began sharing the message of the Bible with me. He told me about God's love for me, and that God has a special plan for each person's life. Suddenly, I wanted David to get out of my apartment. I didn't want to hear anymore. "What's the matter," David asked. "You wanted me to tell you these things!" "Yes, David, I did. I know I can't live the way I would have to live if I gave my life to Jesus Christ as you're encouraging me to do. I know if I did that, I'd have to give it all to Him. There's too much at stake in my life right now. I can't do it. Get out! Get out!" David left. The next morning at ten, I had an appointment with my bride-to-be. I pushed thoughts of David and his message about Jesus Christ out of my mind. It was nine o'clock and there was a knock at the door. I thought my bride-to-be was early. A kindly, tall, black lady stood at the door. She introduced herself as David's pastor, and said that he told her about him. "When he told me about you, I felt compelled to pray for you throughout the night. Dino do not do whatever you are about to do," she said, and with that she turned and left. I was flabbergasted, and for the first time a real holy fear came over me. Somehow I felt a warning in my heart to do as she said. I did not realize it at the time, but God had led this woman to my place at the right time. If she had not come, I would have married this woman I hardly knew and God's plan for my life would have been shattered. When my bride-to-be arrived an hour later, I told her I couldn't go through with our plans. Deep inside, I had always wanted to marry and build a life with a special person. To marry now and divorce three months later suddenly seemed like such a sham. Hurt and angry, the young woman cried, "Dino! What about your green card! Don't throw everything away! Don't be crazy!" "Go! Just go!" I told her. "Dino, you have a television series in the palm of your hand!" I told her I was sorry and asked her to leave. However, the next day I decided I was letting go of the chance of a lifetime. It is amazing how when God does something in our lives how quickly we forget about it. All of a sudden, I had to find a wife again. All of my convictions of the day before were forgotten. I called up an old girlfriend whom I had dated in Montreal, at the time living in Wisconsin. When I explained my situation and the need for a green card, she said she would be willing to marry me. We made our hasty plans. The day she was to arrive, I had a strange feeling she wouldn't show up. I placed a call to her home in Wisconsin. Sure enough. "Dino, I can't explain it, but I just couldn't go through with it." My plans were falling like a row of dominoes. In my anguish, despair and confusion, Iturned to reading the Bible David had given me ... searching for answers ... any thread ofdirection to show me what to do. I began to read the Word of God and something was happening inside of me. I foundmyself not just reading, but soaking and immersing myself in the Word. The words spokelife, and I was reading day and night, not being able to put it down. I realized that I needed more than stardom to fill the emptiness in my life. It was then that I asked Jesus to be my personal Savior. I didn't understand it, but God was breaking the walls of pride in my life so I could open my heart and draw close to Him. One day, I sensed a quiet urging within me. "Go and preach the Gospel on the corner of Western and Wilshire." I thought I must be going crazy! Then God's Holy Spirit prompted me again. But how could I go preach in Hollywood at 1:30 in the afternoon? Nonetheless, I followed the prompting in my heart and off I went. "Shut up you idiot" "You're out of date!" The insults flew fast and thick as I went on the corner of Western and Wilshire and preached the Gospel. People laughed and jeered. "God, what do You have me doing this for? What's the purpose in all of this? Show me!" I cried silently. Then it happened. A man came up to me. Humbly, he asked me to tell him more about Jesus. As I began talking about the Bible's message of salvation, hope and new life in Jesus Christ, the man got on his knees right in from of me and asked Jesus to be his Lord and Savior. I was so excited, that I asked him if he wanted to be baptized because I had read that in the Bible. He said yes, and so I took him home and baptized him in the bathtub of my apartment! Walking the streets of L.A. and the skid row areas, I began to share the Gospel, dayafter day. But I hadn't forgotten abut my quest to become an actor. Even though I wasserving God, I still wanted to pursue my long held dream of stardom. A call came through for a part requiring a six-foot two inch blonde guy with blue eyes. I'm five-foot nine, with brown eyes. I had a new agent and I quickly phoned him asking why they would be calling me when I didn't even fit the description of the part. They had torn up the script and put in my characteristics. It simply does happen for unknowns like me. You see as God does things in a person's life, you can be sure the enemy is right behind trying to trick, trap and ensnare. And so, with this new offer, the things of God began to diminish in my life. Hollywood began to consume me again. I stopped reading the Bible and praying. It was the first sign of Christian back-sliding but I knew nothing about falling away from God. Instead of praying and seeking God I became desperate and really wanted to know if I was going to make it in Hollywood. So I decided to see a fortune teller near my home. I needed some answers again and had forgotten all that God had done for me. As I entered the fortune teller's, I was greeting by terrible, hideous screaming. "GETOUT OF HERE!!!" I couldn't understand why the woman was screaming at me. I had never seen her in my life. Trying to make some sense of the situation, I drew closer. She raised her hands in front of her face, pulling away from me, unable to even look at me and screamed andbellowed even louder: "GET OUT OF HERE!!" I high tailed it out of the fortune teller's completely baffled. I had no clue what hadhappened. When I got home the Lord lead me to a scripture I had never seen before in Psalm 91:11 "For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways." I was amazed! What the fortune teller had actually seen even though I did not see it were angels protecting me, and all the demons within her were screaming. Although I was going my own way, doing my own thing, God in His mercy was protecting me, not because of my goodness, because there was none, but because of His goodness. Something deep within me still wanted God's way and I know that He saw that and rescued me from my own follies. About this time I had an unusual experience. Before I went to sleep one night, I sawsomething that I will never forget. In a vision, I saw a man preaching the Gospel, withpeople all around him. As he preached the Gospel, in the midst of his preaching, I heard a loud sound like a trumpet and above me in the clouds, I saw Jesus, clothed in a white robe, His face brighter than sunlight. Suddenly, we were all rising up to meet Jesus together in the air. Shaken and startled, I opened my Bible and read these words which I had never readbefore: "for the Lord Himself will come down from heaven with a mighty shout and with the sour stirring cry of the archangel and the great trumpet call of God. And the believers who are dead will be the first to rise to meet the Lord. Then we who are still alive and remain on the earth will be caught up with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and remain with him forever. So comfort and encourage each other with this news" (1Thessalonians 4:16-18). Everything began to make sense to me, as though the pieces of a puzzle were beingfitted carefully into place in my mind. I recalled the tract from David and the conviction of its words when I had read it. From that point on, my desire to preach the Gospel wasrenewed. Once I went to the skid row area of Hollywood. It is a sad, pathetic gathering of destitute, homeless people. Jesus had made himself so real to me. I felt that I had to preach the love of Jesus to others. I began preaching wherever I went. People were giving their lives to Christ as I shared. Another call for a screen test. I had no green card, but the studio was willing to sponsor me. Another thing that doesn't happen for nobodies in Hollywood. The enemy was trying his best to keep me as far away from God as possible pursuing my own interests and desires. Then, in a large studio, filled with a group of attractive women, one lady spontaneously asked me: "What so you think of common law marriage - modern marriage? Prompted by the Holy Spirit, I began preaching the Gospel to those women. I realized only later what I had done. I was preaching in a Hollywood studio! I can't remember what I had said, but within minutes, most of them had tears running down their faces as God's conviction took hold of their hearts. One woman was so convicted she ran out of the studio. Being young in God, I thought I hurt her feelings and ran after her. "You didn't hurt my feelings," she said. "You see I once served God whole heartedly, but I backslid to become an actress." That same woman I was able to lead back to the Lord and bring her to church. The battle was strong in my life for wanting Hollywood, but I finally got down on my knees and put all of my life into God's hands. I realized that I had to give God everything. Hollywood was not fulfilling me although it looked promising. I realized that when I was after my own pursuits and out of the will of God I was the most empty. That's when I realized I had to surrender everything to the Lord, as hard as it was to give up Hollywood. I realized that as the Bible says, I cannot serve two masters. I called my agent and asked him to tear up all of my files for acting roles. "Don't call me anymore," I said. The chapter was closed, and the quest was ended. I felt God's direction to let go of my Hollywood quest once and for all and to return back home to Montreal. I ended up working in my mother's boutique as I took time to sort out what God wanted me to do with my life. A terrible salesman because I was more concerned about sharing the gospel withcustomers than selling, I soon found out that God had other plans. Before long, it wasbecoming more like a church than a boutique. I had such a compulsion to share the gospel, and in the church I was attending they reserved the front row every Sunday for the people I brought off the streets. It was then that I was told by a pastor that I had a tremendous call on my life and should go to Bible College. Bible College? How could I do it? I had cheated all my way through high school. With the help of the Lord and spending the first 2 weeks in Bible College on my knees for His help, I graduated with Honors and was chosen the Baccalaureate Speaker. I beganpastoring in a church in Montreal, and later was involved in full time evangelism inMontreal. Reaching for the stars hadn't brought the fulfillment I'd been seeking so long. But finding Jesus Christ, knowing and serving Him with all my heart brought me to the fulfillment of my quest for true happiness. God has given me the greatest life there is. The wife that I sought, God so sovereignty brought her into my life in 1986, and together we serve the One who created the stars!