JohnnyBGamer

Given Over

Read an interesting article this morning in the New York Times. The article, which talks about a prominent gay writer turning away from homosexuality, can be found here. The article reminded me of two things:

1. Romans 1:18-32 (NIV) –

¹⁸ The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, ¹⁹ since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.²⁰ For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

²¹ For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. ²² Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools ²³ and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

²⁴ Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. ²⁵ They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

²⁶ Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. ²⁷ In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. (bolded emphasis added)

²⁸ Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. ²⁹They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, ³⁰ slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; ³¹ they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. ³² Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

2. The article reminded me of the moment in my life where I decided to take God’s path and not my own. Let me explain:

Sin = Death

Though there have been many instances in my life where I have felt God talking to me (never audibly), the night I decided to turn away from my sin is one of the greatest. There I was, alone in the car, wrapped in guilt over the sin I was slowly sinking in. I knew that I had been doing was wrong. Over the course of the years I had dealt with this sin, I always remember Him telling me, “you don’t have to do this.” That night, God showed me two paths:

The first path was a continuation of me living out the sin I was in. Ultimately ending in my destruction and death.
The second path was what God had in store for my life. It was my now-wife and our life together pursuing God. “This is what I have for you…”

I knew that I was at a junction point, I needed to make a decision. I could continue down the path I was on, indulging my flesh, and end up dead; or I could choose God’s path and accept the good things He had planned for my life. Why would someone choose death over life? Seemed like a no-brainer to me. So I aligned myself with God once more and walked away from the sin I was in.

Walking away from sin is never an easy task. Memories still exist… I have learned to call upon Christ in times of weakness, to walk Him through the memories and ask Him to be Lord over them. Alone I cannot overcome…but with Him anything is possible.

To the gentleman in the article that has walked away from his sin of homosexuality, I wish him the best. I hope and pray that God will use him to speak both love and truth to those that have been blinded and lied to. Just because culture says that something is “normal” doesn’t mean it is. Trying to make the issue of gender identity into something equal to the Civil Rights movement doesn’t disguise sin either.

Random

Working the front office of an architectural firm, I don’t often get the opportunity to talk to many people. The fact is, besides the phone, not too many people walk in the front door. Coming from a customer service background, this minimal contact with the public has been a shock to the system.

Today I had one of the contractor’s assistants come by, a female, to pick up some drawings. In the course of conversation, she started telling me about how her and her husband play Call of Duty Black Ops. This made me smile. As a gamer since the early NES days, I am not the best player at shooters on a modern console. Shooters are complicated controller messes that require far too much finger agility. I’m just not game. She went on to tell me that sometimes she schools him with a higher kill ratio. Made me laugh.

Gamer’s are everywhere in today’s world. Never know if you’re talking to one.

Little Big Lunch

Over lunch I had a chance to sit down and play some Little Big Planet. Ended up getting stuck on a level where I was flying with a jetpack and having to transport dynamite. Let’s just say that I didn’t pass the level and my wife and I were left laughing over the explosive results. Notice that the word “results” is plural. 🙂

Below is some music from the game to enjoy.

Titan

There is a place that I have always wanted to visit just south of Tucson, Arizona, the Titan Missile Museum.

As a student of history, especially The Cold War, I can think of nothing better than being able to visit one of America’s destructive atomic silos. Just imagine what would have happened had the United States had to actually fire against a Soviet target:

World War III
The End
Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)

Kind of puts life in perspective, to think that everything we know could ended at the push of a button. Thankfully, we had leaders with cool heads that prevented us from going to the brink.

Anyone out there visited the museum. Is it worth the trip for a history buff?

A Night with inFAMOUS

Last night, my wife told me to sit down and play some video games. So I listened. Without losing time, I quickly launched inFAMOUS on my PS3. In the hour and a half that I played I:

Liberated hostages/ parts of the city
Fought massive onslaughts of Reapers
And restarted power stations below Neon City

All of the above contributing to the awesome feeling of being a super hero. Towards the end of my play time, I ended up fighting the games first boss, Sasha. She came across as a bad ex-girlfriend… Below is a video of the encounter uploaded by someone on youtube. Please note that I am not playing through the game as evil, as the person in the video is. Instead, I am the people’s champion, a good guy.

Sasha put up a pretty mean fight!

Note: One thing that bugged me about this encounter was the amount of language coming from both Sasha and main character Cole. The cuss words seemed out of place.

After the fight, I decided to call it a night. My left hand was slowly starting to go numb and my index finger (used to hold down the targeting button) wasn’t working like it should. Funny, I haven’t played a game that has caused both of my hands to hurt like that in quite sometime. Minus the occasional language, inFAMOUS is proving to be a fun game that really makes you feel like a superhero.