Hey guys, how're we doing? Some of you may know me. Actually, none of you know me. None of you at all. But, that's a good ice breaker so I'm sticking with it.
Anyway, my forum name's Remiel, real name's Jay. And, I'm here today because God's laid a passion on my heart. Here's the deal, my entire life I've willingly shackled myself to a computer and as a result, greatly prevented God from working in my heart or doing anything. I would waste ten hours a day peddling around on video games and the internet the majority of my teenage life. But you see, God, being rich in mercy, came to save me about a year and a half ago from my sins and from myself and from some deep idolatrous things in my heart. However, I'm a work in progress and since then God's been working, pushing, and forcing me to pull up the deep-rooted weeds of idolatry in my life. So far, I've made a lot of progress but I'm not out of the blue or as spiritually mature as I'd like to be at this point in my life concerning idols and a few other things.
You see, Facebook, video games, and general slacking off are my idols in my life right now. The thing is, I can glorify God with these things in my life in a small amount of time; but if I give them an hour and try to keep it in moderation, I end up spending 3 or 4 that day and not getting any of my real work done and only feeding my idolatry. And, I've known this for a while and have known God's been calling me out of this because it's led to bigger sins in my life flourishing. So, I dedicated more time to Christian study. The thing is, that can't fill up all that time and end up slacking off again as I need breaks. And guess what I go back to? One hour leads to four. Four hours of slacking off means Remmy can't read his John Calvin because he has to go to sleep. Remmy then stops studying Christian stuff and is back to square one. God's Spirit is quenched and guess what? Temptations start arising again because my heart's idolatrous again.
So naturally, I'm sick of this. And, I've been doing a lot of thinking on this lately and some praying. And, I just was convicted that I need to honor God with my entire life and not compartment him to my quiet time in the morning, my prayer at night, and the volunteer work I do occasionally. You can't just be "spiritual enough." It has to be the entire thing. Jesus didn't die for part of us. Mark 8:34 says: "And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me."" Jesus isn't after us to just arrange and manage our time better. He's not after us to make room for Him. He wants us to take up a torture device for Him. We lay down our lives for Him- not just our spare time, comfort, or entertainment. We lay it all down and say, "It's yours. Do as you please!"
Which begs the question: why the crap am I here? God's put in my heart a desire to spread His Gospel in my free time and reach out to
"save others by snatching them out of the fire" all the while "hating even the garment stained by the flesh" (Jude 23). And throughout my years squandering thousands of hours of time on the internet, I've seen a great need for Jesus Christ in many people. However, at the same time, God's calling me to branch my life out more in the real world, so, I have to keep anything I do on the computer in check. In short, I can't do it all by myself. That's not a Biblical model and that won't be effective. I and the lost people on ther internet need a Biblical community to reach out to them- not just one person they talk to every now and then but someone they can socialize with, relate to, and encourage them to expand out into the real world as well.
My goal here is basically to find Christian people interesting in missioning to the internet with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I'll be honest, I actually dislike anime. XD But at the same time, I love JRPGs, which is essentially anime in game form. It doesn't make any sense, I know. But I relate to people who watch anime on every other level, just about, so I get along great with them. But, whatever the case, I see a lot of lost people who're attached to their computer screens with my same interests and your same interests. And, I'm unsure that conventional methods of reaching out to them will work. But at the same time, they need the same Gospel. So, I'm going to be touting a few of those ideas here in a bit, and would now save for the fact that it's 3 AM and I have church at 9 tomorrow morning.
So yeah, expect to see me around and expect to see me talk about Jesus. And, possibly video games. I know that God's got a plan for me here- I felt specifically called to make an account here and relate to some of you guys. So, here I am. Wooh!