Ben's Brain Dump

Todays Blog is all about MUSIC!!!
I've been counting down the days U2's new album "No Line in the Horizon" for weeks now!!
I got the single "Get on your Boots" the day it was released!
and have been waiting in earger expectation for the full album
so heres the Music Video for Get on YOur BoOtS
U2 - Get On Your Boots

Music for me is everything
i can't live without it!
i always keep my ipod w/ me!
i love it
it's good for every kind of mood.. sad.. happy... depressed.. crunk. crazy... funny..
whatever whenever
i can always have music
music i listen to varies a lot!!
on my ipod i have Eddie James black gospel music and UnderOath's hardcore screamo!
i can go from 80's rock U2 to steel guitar driven Brad Paisley
everything from Taylor Swift Lovestory to Demon Hunter Undying!!
from "Don't Worry About a thang"-Bob Marley
to "STORM THE GATES OF HELL!!!"-Demon Hunter

Music can be used for Good... Bad... Ugly... and the in between...

Music can be used to Glorify God and it can be used to Curse God

Music can make u happy... sad... depressed... emo.. hippy... the list goes on and on...

Music can control your emotions

My youthgroup oneEIGHT youth ministries worship band is putting out some new music
actually i recorded editted and uploaded it
but anyways it's awesome worship music that glorifys abba father

so check it out!



I hope u have an awesome saturday and an even more awesome sunday

wow i haven't blogged in a while
so here just some thoughts that have been flying through my metamorphic cranium

1. I can't wait for U2's new album "No Line in the Horizon" to release on tuesday!!

2. I am loving YouVersion Lately.. i've been reading in corinthians and psalms it's been awesome to see how awesome real and relevant God's word is!

3. I've been rockin the Copeland all day!!

4. This Chapter in Pslams has been wreckin me all day!!

So today is Packzi day here in Detroit!!
Packzi (pronounced pun-shki) are wonderful polish pastries
they're basically just deep fried jelly donuts w/ all sorts of fillings
from custard to my favorite Apple!!
i've already had like 2 today!!

growing up in the south Mardi Gras was always a day of Beer, Boudan(iam craving some DJ's Boudan), and Beads,
but here in the D-troit area they eat Packzi's on Fat Tueday

Fat Tuesday itself is a stupid idea!
i know from experience that over indulging on food before fasting does way more harm than Good!!
i don't fully understand why catholics even celebrate lent... or why they get wasted before they take 40 days to fast before easter!
it makes no sense to defile their bodies then starve them!
but anyways

Today i realized how awesome God is!
i was chillin w/ my friends @ school when my teacher brought in 12 Dozen Packzi's!!
and being the dude that i am i ate like 2 of emm and am feeling the reprocutions now!
but anyways today as i was eating packzi's God opened up doors for me to witness to my friends

it's awesome to see how God uses simple things like packzi's to show his glory and honor and pure awesomeness!!

so today enjoy some packzi's or if ur in the south some Boudan and always look for ways to bring to real LOVE of God to everybody!!

verse of John Mark Mcmillan's song How he loves is still ringing in my head!

So yesterday I got back from my youth groups Carpe Diem Winter Retreat
it was awesome and cold!!
God really moved mightily in the services!
the band was incredible
and pastor Ryan Elie brought a great word every night!

We also had an awesome time sledding!!
but now iam sore all over!!

The Band played a song called "How He Loves" by Jon Mark McMillan
and it WRECKED me every time we sang it!
so here's the very powerful lyrics!!

Today i came across this chapter in psalms on YouVersion
so i thought i'd share it with yall

Psalm 86 (The Message)

i am just gonna throw out some random thoughts that have by flying through my cranium
1) iam lovin Pandora it's my own personal radio station of music that i like and it's FREE!! u should try it

2) Today I saw Taken and it was pretty good... it lacked some action... but had a good plot...

3) I can't wait for our Carpe Diem winter retreat this weekend!!

4) iam excited for worship tomorow night.. we had practice tonight and i could already feel the anointing in the house

5) iam teaching myself to speak more "4 Letter Words"(Love, Give, Pray, Serve,)

6) i've been taking time to shut up and listen to God's whispers and it's been awesome!! U should try it for urself

7) I love StarBucks Coffee... I went to sBux after the movie today and it was so good!

8) i really want an iPhone... i was playing w/ them this afternoon in the Apple store

9) I really need a job... so i can get an iPhone and buy more sBux coffee!!

10) i am thinking about moving my blog from blogger to wordpress... and maybe getting my own seperate website name

11) i saved the best for last!! i found a link for FREE STARBUCKS COFFEE!!
sBux has this new "instant" coffee... it's suppose to be good
click here to get some for urself!!

Today I've been thinking about LISTENING
I think that often times when we come to God in prayer we give him a long list of problems and say fix them good bye
we don't give God any time to speak
we need to SHUT UP AND LISTEN
it's like we need God to send a pillar of Fire before we listen
we need to be like samuel and say "Speak LORD for your servant is listening"
we need to come before God humble and silent and just say SPEAK LORD IAM LISTENING
we gotta shut up and listen

Tonight find u a place in ur house.. maybe ur bed before you go to sleep and just shut up and listen. or maybe it's the Shower... Yeah ur shower God can speak there
God can speak anywhere as long as ur ready to listen!
Let's listen to God's still small voice!
Ellijah was on Mount. Horeb and he didn't hear God's voice in the earthquake or in the thunder or in the wind he heard God voice in a WHISPER!!
we gotta listen for his WHISPER

learning to shut up and listen

Tonight me and my youth group went on an outreach trip to Eastpoint
i think we doubled the size of the church w/ our group of 27!!
it was this small old church of maybe a max of 150
and we did some drama's for them
anyways we started service and we began to sing worship
at first i was distracted by the sound of an old keyboard that was out of tune and playing the song in the wrong key and the drummer who only knew like 2 beats!!
although the sound wasn't great we began to sing "Here in your Presence" and the spirit just hit the place
it was a pretty awesome feeling
u could just sense the presence of God in the house!!
as we sang "Wonderful, Beautiful, Glorious, Matchless in every way"
the spirit began to move
we were singing that one chorus for like 10 minutes and the glory moved all over us!

it was awesome to watch the power of God move in a small church like that
earlier today i was wishing and wanting to have a church w/ mulit campuses and a HDTV live video stream to different campuses and a starbucks in the church
and God slapped me in the face by showing me that i was getting away from the meaning of church
i was getting consumed in making things look cool rather than being consumed w/ gods love for people

Today I was in the mood to take pictures.... so i did
here's a few of em.... tell me what ya think....

here's a few thoughts that have been flying through my crazy cranium today!

1) lets speak more "4-Letter Words".... not the kind ur thinking of.... words like LOVE, PEACE, LIVE, PRAY, FAST, GIVE, LEARN, TEACH,

2) Damon thompson rocks my boat!! today i listened to a sermon from him on living life in the spirit that recked me!!

3) I can't wait for Carpe Diem next weekend!! iam believing for signs wonders miracles and revival!!

4) the words of jesus messed w/ me today "So you want first place? Then take the last place. Be the servant of all."

5) iam lovin "The Afters" album "Never Going Back to OK"... i've been rockin it all day

hope u have a great weekend
speak some "4-letter words"...

Today I was on the bus and started talking to one of my friends named Dustin
I've been trying to witness to Dustin all year long
he has his own personal philosophy filled with all sorts of interesting things!
so for the past few months i've just been lovin on him everyday on the Bus
and today he brought up Jesus into our conversation and i jumped on it!!
we started talking about heaven, hell, ghost's, Jesus, Preaching, Faith,
he asked my questions like "Why do bad things happen to Good People"
and "Why would God send good people to hell" it was awesome!!
about halfway into our conversation the bus started to get quiet and right before we got off i stopped talking for a second and looked around and all the people on the bus had stopped talking and were listening to our conversation!!
it looked like it made them stop and think about God and religion and if they were going to hell or not!
right before we got off the bus dustin told me that he would say the sinners pray with me!
we couldn't do it then cause his mom was already screaming and swearing at him to get in the car!

man it's been an exciting day!!!!
hope ur days been as awesome as mine

Today in science we watched Discovery Channel's "Planet Earth" it was an amazing T.V. show.
from a film perspective it was an incredible feat to capture all of those shots in high definition..

as i was watching i began to think of it in a different perspective
instead of just seeing a tree and a monkey i started to think that God created that Tree and God created that Monkey and God told both of them what to do and how to do it
i started to think about God and Creation
that in 6 days God created all of these amazing things!!
i began to truely understand how awesome, incredible, and Amazing God really is!!
i think that the True Majesty of God is revealed in Nature
it's awesome to see all of the amazing things that God created!!

I hope u have a great wensday

Today i was once again rockin the Demon Hunter
i was listening to their live in nashville album and right before they started to sing "Storm the Gates of Hell" i heard "Tonight we dine in HELL"
which i know is not an original but when i heard it i thought of a quote

The song "Storm the Gates of Hell" has really become my anthem lately so here the powerful and awesome lyrics

During my Devo's today i heard this song and it really got me thinking

Today i was doing my YouVersion daily reading and as i was reading Mark 2 these verses really got me thinking

15-16Later Jesus and his disciples were at home having supper with a collection of disreputable guests (Bad People). Unlikely as it seems, more than a few of them had become followers. The religion scholars and Pharisees saw him keeping this kind of company and lit into his disciples: "What kind of example is this, acting cozy with the riffraff?"

17Jesus, overhearing, shot back, "Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? I'm here inviting the sin-sick, not the spiritually-fit."

This statement by Jesus is very profound and simple. I think that we often times forget in church that Jesus didn't come so that we could build bigger churches, have nicer facilities.
He came to SAVE THE LOST AT ALL COST!
I think that we as christians loose sight of that vision.
the vision to save the lost at ALL cost

I also find it interesting that the followers of Jesus were "Disreputable" according to their society
they weren't to kind of people that would typically hang out at church
they were people who didn't fit in with the religious crowd but they fit in with Jesus!
i love how Jesus peeps were the misfits!! the freaks!! weirdos!!
the people who were tired of religion and wanted a relationship!!
those were the kind of people that jesus rolled with!
it didn't matter where they had been it mattered where they were going!!

Lets save the lost at all cost
and lets love the lost at all costs

Have a great weekend weekend

Today at school we had did a "career profile" so we took this long personality test and after we finished the test it told us our top 3 career choices and mine read
1. Clergy (Pastor)
2. Disc Jockey (DJ)
3. Camera Operator

so i started to research my career choices
i looked at the overview of Clergy and for income it said $10,ooo which doesn't sound bad for a guy who had no job but compared to my friend who was next to me who's job was lawyer and income was $100,000 i looked like a crazy idiot!!
I love how sometimes god uses the simple things in life to show us our destiny... like a stupid personality profile at school

I also love how random my careers were everybody careers were in the same field buy mine were in completely different fields!!
i gues that's just my crazy random personality!!

Have a great thursday!!!

Tonight i have done absolutely nothing... and i've loved every moment of it!!!
it's always good to take a night off and do nothing!!
So iam just gonna write some stuff that's running through my crazy mess of thoughts called my cranium

1) Iam lovin twitter!! cause i can finally post status updates on my blog!!
2) I can't believe the ridonculous power of the SMILE!! you can brighten up somebody's day by just smillin and saying "have a great day"!!!
3) i love YouVersion!! i love the online journal it's like my own study bible in like 10 different versions!!
4) iam diggin the Fray's new CD
5) i can't wait till tomorrow night... can't wait to enter in to the throne room of heaven w/ oneEIGHT!! and worship the king of kings and lord of lords!!
6) I wish i had super powers!! being able to fly would be pretty freakin awesome!!
7) I can't wait for U2 to release theyre new album "No line in the horizon"
8) this list is getting longer that i thought it would!!

here's a verse i came across today that really jacked w/ my mind!

I was doing my reading on YouVersion today and this passage really stood out to me

14 Wish good for those who harm you; wish them well and do not curse them.15 Be happy with those who are happy, and be sad with those who are sad.16 Live in peace with each other. Do not be proud, but make friends with those who seem unimportant. Do not think how smart you are.

To me the main part to this passage was Be Real, Love REAL, Live REAL,

Have a great Monday
I hope that it is blessed