Jonese's Blog

So yea by all accounts I was a normal kid growing up and doing all the right things in life. Everything seemed to be in place for me to continue growing up and become a great christian man.

So what happened?

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I've mentioned in a few post how much I love music and how I used to be a poet. This love of music and my feeble attempts at poetry actually got started in my early church days. There was a guy in my youth group, Chris, who was older and a very talented musician. He was a rocker who was really good at the guitar, song writing and even producing music. It was Chris who inspired me to first pick up a guitar and later to learn the bass guitar.

Chris along with a few other church members actually started up a praise worship band in our little church. This was a big deal because up to this point we were like every other church. We had a piano, an organ and sung hymns out of our hymnals. But on occasion they got to play during the service and even did a few concerts during special events. They weren't a great band but at the time I didn't know the difference. To me it was just so cool to see my kind of music, rock and alternative, being performed at church AND have a christian spin on it.

Now this was back in the day before the internet (yea I'm dating myself here aren't I), so I could not rush home to itunes and start exploring new music etc. So I leaned heavily on Chris to be my influencer and he did. He introduced me to lots of groups, both christian and non christian. He took me to my first concert, Joe Satriani - Surfing with an Alien Tour, and like I mentioned before got me interested in playing the guitar.

Chris was also an awesome Christian and probably one of my earliest influences. He always wore a silver cross around his neck, carried a Bible and wasn't afraid to quote the Bible or even ask tough questions of our youth leaders. The youth as a whole looked up to him and valued the input and time he put in to the meetings and the band. Personally if it wasn't for Chris I would have never started writing songs, which later turned into poetry and finally into full on stories and blog posts.

So keep your eyes open people you never know when a simple question, or a simple act of kindness will change someone's world. It might not be evident right away but give it time and it could grow into something amazing. For me it was that one question which launched me into a wonderful world of writing.

Thanks Chris, and yea I still play the guitar and I'm still horrible at it :).

So in six days I'll be getting baptized. June 22nd 2008 at the 6pm service for Buckhead Church. I'm so excited, even if it did take like 10 tries to get my video right.

Now my goal over the next 6 days leading up to my baptism is to blog about some christian experience or some other related experience in my past. This idea was actually my buddy Kris's, so I've got to give him props for challenging me.

Now if I think back, way back I can remember doing wednesday night dinner at College Parkway Baptist Church. We would all gather for some home cooked meal prepared by the mothers and fathers in the church. Stuff like hamburgers, or hot dogs, or even pork chops and meat loaf. Once dinner was over the kids would go off and do our thing while the adults would have some form of worship / bible study.

I can remember one night we had our little group bible study, my first small group I guess you could say, and we played a game. The game was simple. We all sat in a circle with one poor kid in the middle. Guess who the kid was? Yep I was the one in the middle. So here I am sitting in the middle of all my friends, absolutely clueless as to what's about to happen to me.

After we had settled down the leader pulled out a big blanket and covered me up. So I'm sitting in a circle, covered with a blanket. The leader then proceeds with the following:

Eric are you ok under there?
Yes
You can breath ok, and it's not too hot?
No it's not hot yet and I'm breathing fine
Ok I'm going to ask you a single question which doesn't require you to say an answer but does require you to DO something. Understand?
Yea I think so.
Ok, Eric you currently have something on which you do not need. Please take it off and put it outside the circle.

So you're young and posed with this question what do you take off? Me I choose my shoes, I figured I could walk around in socks and be ok. So after taking my shoes off and tossing them out the leader said to me again "You currently have something on which you do not need. Please take it off and put it outside the circle." Fine I take off my socks and put them out. Then he says it again and I remove my belt. Still he keeps saying this. Panic starts to set in because I'm done with my easy stuff and the next thing is for me to remove my shirt or pants and something told me that wasn't what he meant.

So I sat there thinking really really hard. I started to get a little frustrated and began tapping my head like some cartoon character going "think think think". I could hear my friends all starting to giggle as they placed bets on whether I would toss out my pants or my shirt next. Oooo if only I could see their faces I might be able to .......DOH! It was at that moment and at that half a thought I realized what I had ON which I didn't need.

The blanket.

So I took the blanket off and tossed it to the side. My leader smiled and then asked me if I knew the meaning behind this. Couple of more minutes pondering (no head tapping this time) and I came up with this.

"We all have something in our life we don't need. Something which is holding us back and preventing us from moving forward. In this case it was the blanket but in life it could be something else"

My leader smiled and he then asked "And what is it that we should be moving towards?" This was an easy one for me. I mean we were in church so I quickly shoot off "God". Which was correct and exactly what he expected me to say.

So what is it in your life which is preventing you from moving forward in your relationship with God?