Blessed Be...

Blessed Be Your Name
In the land that is plentiful
Where Your streams of abundance flow
Blessed be Your name

Blessed Be Your name
When I'm found in the desert place
Though I walk through the wilderness
Blessed Be Your name

Every blessing You pour out
I'll turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say

Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

Blessed be Your name
When the sun's shining down on me
When the world's 'all as it should be'
Blessed be Your name

Blessed be Your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there's pain in the offering
Blessed be Your name

Every blessing You pour out
I'll turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say

Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

You give and take away
You give and take away
My heart will choose to say
Lord, blessed be Your name

As we were singing this in church today (Thank you Leah and Anna) the words were made new to me. I have sung this song countless times before and never was impacted the way I was today. After a long time in the desert and a long trip on the road marked with suffering I realized that I, for the most part, am a fair weather Christian. When my life is good I can praise everyday and truly mean it, but as soon as life got hard and everything was taken away from me I lost my ability to praise him. And it struck me today as we were singing this song (and I don't want this to sound bad or be taken the wrong way because I truly do praise him for this) that he left me in that desert and on that road for so long because of my inability to praise him during that time. I have no doubt in my mind that if I had turned the blessings that he did given me during that time back into praise he would have rescued me sooner. He wanted me to learn that even when I am at my lowest, when I feel that I have nothing and that I am all alone, He still pours out many blessings that I choose to ignore or am to selfish to realize. And as I stood there singing that song I realized that He is truly worthy of praise in the good times and the bad because he never stops blessing us. And the very least we could do is praise him for that. So to rap things up I just want to say that in this time between suffering and plenty, I will praise the name of the LORD. I will turn the blessings that he has given me back into praise.

The Old 9 to 5... Well 10 to 6:30...

So I started my job and I have been here for a month today. And I like it, it has its frustrations but I still like it. I work for a company called W.S. Live, which is a call center type business. They offer a certain number of agents to a client that needs call center type services. The program that I am on is the Intuit QuickBooks ProAdvisor. I am ProAdvisor Customer service. I walk people through the website, change their account information for them and help them with their certification on the website. It is a good job and I am apparently doing a good job at it. So even if i stay here or go somewhere else it is going to be a great experience for my professional life. So thank you all for your prayers.

Thank You Note...

Today I was sitting in church and the theme for breaking of bread service was "Being thankful for the love of Christ." And one of the men that shared a thought was my friend Sam Carl. He shared from Romans 5 (Romans, always a good choice) and as he was tying it in to being thankful he used the illustration of writing thank you note after every birthday or Christmas. One if his thoughts was, "how do you write a thank you note to God?" The answer of course is by living your life for him. But that did get me thinking about a thank you note to God and what that would look like. So here is my version of a thank you note to God.



Dear Heavenly Father,
Thank you for the gifts you have given me. They are numerous and undeserved. Some times they are taken for granted, but when it comes down to it they are truly appreciated. I would like to take the time and thank you for each of the gifts you have given to me. First and foremost I want to thank you for your son dying on the cross in my place. For that the is no way I can ever repay you. No amount of praise or thanks can ever equal the love of that sacrifice. Thank you for the breath that you continue to lend me day after day. Thank you for the loving parents and family that you have given me. Thank you for my job. Thank you for my car. Thank you for my friends. Thank you for you protection that you show me every day. Thank you for my apartment and the shelter that you have provided for me. Thank you for the love that you have shown me. Thank you for the grace and mercy that you show me. Thank you for my bed and a warm place to sleep. And I know that there is so much more that you have given me or have done for me and I don't think that I can list it all. But thank you for being you. For being a loving, merciful, gracious God. And thank you for having patients with me, for loving me when I forget all you blessings and fail to acknowledge you in every moment of my life and in all the things I do or have.

Thank you,
Your undeserving son,
Jake

None Did I Deserve...

When I think upon the love of Christ I come to realize that none did I deserve. A lowly sinner, not interested in the things of Him. He who would give his son to me. The love that is displayed in that very act reassures me that none did I deserve. This seems a thing not of joy. But to me this is the most joyous thing I know. To not deserve but to receive freely the most precious gift of all, the love of Christ. The love of the all powerful, most high, glorious, worthy of praise, infinite God of the universe. Freely given to me, for nothing I did or could ever do, but for the simple of fact that he loved me. None did I deserve but freely I received.

Life

For the past year I have been near dead in my faith. It has been a depressing, overwhelming and hard year. In the past month I have truly felt the Lord's blessing. It started when my cousin offered me the chance to drive out to Iowa with her and her husband. When I got out here I started feeling that the Lord was calling me out here. As I was spending a great evening playing Halo with my friends out here I was praying that the Lord, if he wanted me out here he would provide me with a place to live. As the night went on my friend Micah told me that I could stay with him rent free for a few months well I got back on my feet. So I had a place to stay but I had nothing to sleep on. As my friend Kyle and I were dumpster diving I found a brand new mattress. Brand new still in the plastic Sealy posturepedic. Best night of sleep I have had, ever. So now I have a place to sleep but can I make a living. A few days after I got here I started hitting the streets looking for jobs. I turned in many applications and just a few days after I turned one in to a company named WS Live, I got an interview. I went into the interview and they gave me a second interview right away. 3 hours later they called me and offered me the job. I start on Monday. So in the week before I started work my loving parents flew me back out to Colorado so I could pack up my stuff and drive back. I returned safely from Colorado Wednesday. Thursday I woke up feeling like I was on deaths door. Throwing up, body aches, chills, and fever I thought for sure that I had the swine flu or H1N1. And just like that I felt Satan's attack on me. This was definitely not a good thing know that other companies were making people take a week off if they had any symptoms of the flu. After much prayer by many wonderful people, I was completely back to normal by the end of the evening. So to sum up everything I moved, got a place to live, a new bed, a job and an over all better quality of life. The Lord has truly blessed me in these past few weeks. So thank you to all of those read my blog and have been praying for me.

A new chapter

Ok so I came out to Dubuque, Ia just to visit for the weekend. While I was here I decided to stay, with just a few changes of clothes and not much else. So just like that I now live in Iowa. I am looking for a job, lets just hope I can find one soon. I already have a place to live, thanks to the kindness of a friend of mine, Micah Young. But for any of you that would do me this favor, i could use a lot of prayer. Prayer for a job, a change in attitude, a drive and the discipline to get the things done that I need to do and that I could figure out a way to get all of my stuff out here. So here's to a new chapter in my life!

Why.!.!.!.!

Ah! You got to love Nebraska. Oh wait no you don't. The empty, god-forsaken, boring, waste of everything Nebraska. In case you can't tell I really don't like Nebraska. The only thing that makes it bearable is good music, but sadly there is none of that when you cousin is listening to Britany Spears, (Jason playing it, not Erin suprisingly). So yes here I sit stuck driving through Nebraska. But it will all be worth it when I get to see my friends in Dubuque.

ZOMG SNOW!!!

I love snow. I really do. I can't fathom how people don't like snow.

My brother...

Today is the 8 year anniversary of my brothers death. As I look back on these past years, there has been a lot that has happened. There has been new life that has joined us and some that have gone to be with their maker. But the thing that I still can't wrap my mind around is the fact that it all has seemed like a dream. Now when I say that I mean I can't seem to differentiate between whether or not before or after he died is the dream. I have my distant memories of the 14 years that I spent with him, but those are sadly fading. Not fading to the point that I will ever forget him but fading to the point of not being able to remember the sound of his voice. Now the dream as I start to think about it, is after he died. The reason being is that it has gone by so fast. I mean 8 years, where did it go? It all seems like a couple of weeks or months at the most. Now on to the important thing about this blog post, my brother. He was a handful for my parents growing up, but with the grace of God they did it and they did an amazing job. Although, finding out that he had A.D.D was a huge help. Now picking on his little sister and brother that was probably one of his favorite things to do, not as much as basketball, but he still enjoyed it. And as bad as this sounds i think that was (with his A.D.D) his way of showing us that he cared. But once he got his A.D.D under control, he showed us he cared the right way. He was loving and caring and will be missed by a lot of people as long as they live. But the on thing that keeps us going, and gives us hope is that we will see him again, when we go home to see our maker as well.

In loving memory of,

Joel Michael Koenig

6-16-79 to 10-20-01

You Will Never Know


You will never know how much I miss you
Every day I think about you
Even though you are in a better place
It's hard for me to forget your face

You will never know how much I care
Now that you are not there
The pain is almost to much to bear
Now with with all the times we will not share

You will never get to see
What the future will be
All the good times and the bad
All the times we could have had

But you will always know what you mean to me
And as I cry and wipe my eyes
I remember that you will always be
In heaven smiling as you watch over me

Standing up for myself

Why does it seem like all of my friends think that I owe them something? Or that they can just use me and get away with it? I want to stand up for myself, believe me I do, but I just can't find it in myself to stand up and say "Knock it the hell off." Or "Stop making excuses, be a man and take responsibility for your actions." Or "When you say you are going to do something FREAKING DO IT." But sadly I can't, as much as I want to I can't. The funny thing is that a lot of the time my friends when I do confront them they turn it around on me and I'm the one who ends up apologizing, thinking to myself "What the hell just happened?" I think that it is time I cut a lot of ties that I have in my life, get rid of these one sided friendships, if you will. Now don't get me wrong there are two sides to every story and you are more likely to side with yourself, but come on I know when I'm in the wrong and I would just like others to realize when they are and actually admit it and deal with it, instead of writing me off or making excuses.

First post woo hoo...

This is just a test. I'm seeing if I have what it takes to write a blog or if anyone will read it... does anyone really care what I have to say? Well any way we'll see. You may now return to your regularly scheduled program.