I’ve purchased my own domain name and hosting. That’s right Jesus Encounter is all self hosted and is one step closer to meeting its vision.

Now I’ve spent all night getting the blog moved over there and all set up and stuff and I got most of it done. There’s a couple things but nothing you guys will really notice. So to check out the blog visis the future blog home of Jesus Encounter.

http://www.jesusencounter.org/blog/

Now I’m in the process of designing the web site but I wanted to make sure to get the blog working.

So check it out and bookmark it cause that is the new blog. Oh yeah all those who have feedburner need to resubscribe to the feed for the new blog.

P.S.

Everything you see here is at the new blog. All the posts, comments and pages its the same blog with a new spin. So check it out.

http://www.jesusencounter.org/blog/

Thru all that He said to me that He needs his Culture Shakers to get ready and shake this Culture for Christ.

Now it may sound weird talking about culture shaker and what not but I’m going to go into detail about it cause its been running in my head all day and I believe I am suppose to share it.

Now I’m pretty sure I don’t have to explain the meaning of culture cause everyone knows what it is and we all are living in this culture.

Now our culture to sum it up is generally about self,sex,media,money,toys. Now Those can branch off into a lot of things but they all narrow down to those.

But that’s the worlds culture. What is our culture as Christians look like? Well its the polar opposite the culture Christians are in or should be in is about Others,waiting for the one,Prayer,Serving God and many others. If you look at our culture and then look at the culture of the world your going to see the opposites. But God said in the last days everyone will have the chance to know him.

Now how is that suppose to happen? Well in Joel chapter two God speaks and says “I will pour out my Spirit on all kinds of people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, and your young men will see visions”. Then you go down a ways to verse 30 and he says “I will show miracles in the sky and on earth: Blood, fire and think smoke”. Now I believe all this is prophetic to when Jesus was coming and to the days we now live in. All around America you are starting to hear stories of people getting healed, people giving there lives to Christ, People stepping out of the comfort zones to share the love that God has shown them with others. All this has to do with people seeking after God and doing what He wants.

The church has started running after God in a way they never have before. They are searching after Him and things are happening. Churches are stepping out into their communities and changes are happening in whole cities. The closest church that I know of that is doing all this and more right now is Bethel Church in Redding, California. That church has stepped out from church and into their culture and is making a change. That is culture shaking.

I believe it is time for all of us to submit ourselves to God so we can shake this Culture. It’s time we step out of our comfort zones and show people all that God has done for us and the love He has for us.

If we are to change this culture we can’t just sit back. It’s time to roll.

I’m going to make a pact right now in my life and I hope others do to be a Culture Shaker. I’m ready to press into God and I’m ready to get out of my comfort to listen to God and do his will. I’m ready to shake this Culture and my community and I hope you are to.

Much Love ~ Jeremy Newton

Blog Communities

The Blog Experiment

The blog experiment is a site that has a great forum with great people on it. You can get your blog reviewed by the community and just drop in and talk blogging. When you get a certain amount of posts in the forum they offer you free wordpress blog themes for your self hosted wordpress.

Blog Rating

Xinureturns

Xinureturns is a great place to check your overall blog statistics. You can check your page ranks, how many links you have on the internet, how you rank in search engines and stuff its great to help you learn more about your blog.

The Blogs

Rend The Heavens

Rend The Heavens is an awesome blog written by a man named Chris. He has gotten my head thinking a couple of times and he is always ready to share what God has been doing in him and his church. It’s a great blog if you want to see what God is doing outside of your community or you just want to think a bit. Check it out.

Awesome Purpose

Awesome purpose is written by a young man that last year God changed his life dramatically. God grabbed him and turned his life completely around. I’m not going to tell you what happened you will have to read his testimony on his blog which I highly suggest you do cause it’s amazing.

Space Of Reality

I’m a regular reader of Space Of Reality and today I was mentioned on the blog for some blog awards. It was really cool to be mentioned on someone else’s blog and even cooler to be given an award. So check it out and see what I received =)

See as Christians we are suppose to love everyone as Christ has loved us. I know for a matter of fact that tends to be really hard at-least for me. When I’m driving down the road and someone cuts me off on purpose the first think that rages thru my system isn’t love or when your computer starts doing things it shouldn’t the first thing that runs thru my head isn’t love.

In both circumstances the first thing that comes to me is a way to project harm. Why is that?

I can’t really answer that well but I think alot of it has to do with the culture that we are surrounded by. I mean we live in a time in the last 5 years I think almost every news cast you watch has to do with violence. If it has to do with someone dying in the war or of violence in the middle east its all violence. We have gotten to the day in age were kids are bullying other kids on the internet and mentally torturing them and making there life’s a living nightmare. I’ve heard story’s of kids that that has happened to and the first thing that runs thru their head is harm. There have been kids that have been tortured so bad online they have gone to the extreme of taking there life or planning to take the life of the person that destroyed them and those around him.

It’s really sad to say we live in a culture that violence is so immanent. But almost any situation can be turned around with Love.

In Matthew 7:12 we read the golden rule which is “Do to others as you would have them do to you”.

There’s more meaning behind that then just treat others how you want to be treated. The deeper meaning is that if someone is treating you badly or is making fun of you, you almost always have control over the situation by how you react. Now are you going to react in the way they are treating you or are you going to treat them as if you were in their shoes. I’m reminded of a story John Maxwell told about him and his little girl going out for breakfast one morning and they ended up getting a really snobby waitress. She didn’t treat them the best and by the end of their meal he asked her if she could split a 50 so he could make sure to give her a good tip for the help she had been. Her mood immediately changed. She had acted rude towards them but he changed the situation but treating her like he would want to be treated.

Now see to be able to do do others how you would want to be done to you there has to be something deeper in you. That thing that has to be in you is love. You need the love for people and that love you need is God’s love for people.

As we live our life’s we need to be showing God’s love to those around us. The biggest thing I can think of is that we love God and what he has done for us. Well if we love God we need to love what we created and He created people. See we love God and we treat Him as good as we can, but we tend to not love people and we put them down. If we say we love God we need to love his Creation and that is people.

If we love people your going to see them as God sees them and your not going to point out fault. Your going to encourage them and help them when you can. There are to many people already putting each-other down in this world and it’s caused a high rate of depression and insecurity which leads to acting out in violence and harm. This is one of the reason’s I believe the culture has ended up the way it has. It’s because there are so many sources out there telling people they could look better, they could be better, they can be smaller , skinnier you name it. But then you add the church on top of what the world is doing and its adding to the judgement that people already face.

As Christians we need to love and love more than ever to show people that Christians aren’t what we tend to be perceived. We need to work on being all the better at loving people cause there have been to many people that have already messed up are image and its going to take work to changed the image of the word Christian.

So I challenge you today to start loving. Pray to God to help you love those around you and to give you his love for His people. I know I’m going to ask Him to cause I know I’m not great at this but with God’s help I can be better.

If you have any more you would like to add feel free to discuss it in the comments. I don’t want to start rambling and dry out my point.

Much Love ~ Jeremy Newton

Why is it that your a Christian? Is it because you were raised in church? Is it cause you were made to go to church? Is it because your friends are?

I know for me for the longest time I was serving God because he was my parents God not mine. I was raised in church so I just believed what my parents and everyone else did.

But I challenge you to pray about it and ask God who he is to you. I finally had to come to the place were I dropped God as my parents God and took Him as my own.

I believe if we are ever going to do amazing things for God its requires us knowing who he is to us. Yes we need to know him and know who we are in Him but it also requires knowing why we believe in Him and for what reasons.

So take the time and ask God to reveal Himself to you and to help you grow closer to Him.

If you have accepted the challenge and want to post who God is to you feel free to leave a comment and I plan on after getting some submissions posting another post on who God is to other people. I will take what you guys have given me so people can see who He is to others.

Feel free to contact me via email if you would rather email me your submission than post it in a comment.

Good luck and God bless ~ Jeremy Newton