Sunnyside Pictures

I have made a new channel on YouTube where I will be making as many videos as I can. The channel is called Sunnyside Pictures. Click HERE to see it! I was hoping to upload videos to it a lot sooner, but things keep getting delayed. I am in need of people willing to help me! I also created a Twitter page for updates on the channel's progress. You can find it HERE. Follow me on Twitter to find out when new videos are coming out. Thanks again!

FOXHOLE

It has been 26 weeks since my last post.  I don't really know why I stopped, I guess I was just too lazy to write a lot.

Anyway, last night, soon before I went to bed, my sister showed me a video.  It was one of her friends from college that loves to make movies, just like myself.  He is working on a new, 26 minute film called "FOXHOLE".

It's about a man in World War II who doesn't have a relationship with God.  This guy went all out with this movie.  He has all the costumes for the films, and they look incredibly authentic.  He even has the WWII jeeps.  The effects look awesome.  I couldn't stop asking how in the world he was able to afford all this and be able to work on the movie and still keep his grades up.  He was blessed to meet friends that were so great at making effects look so real and people who were willing and able to be in the film.

I really hope and pray that I'll run into such people when I go to college, and we can work on a movie together.  I know that this is the sort of thing that God has in store for me, I just have to trust that it'll all work out perfectly.

Here is the link to the movie website: http://www.foxholemovie.com/

Answered prayers for OUR benefit?

I've always heard that God will answer our prayers in whatever way that will be best for us. And I got to thinking, does God really answer our prayers for our benefit? We aren't living our lives for us, we're living our lives for Him. So shouldn't he answer our prayers for His benefit? Whatever we pray for, He answers according to His will, so that His will will be done. I know that God knows what's best for us, He knows everything. But if we were to ask, for instance, that we wouldn't get hit by a bus and die today, if God answered for our benefit, then He probably wouldn't let us get hit by a bus. But if He answered for His will, and maybe your death would bring many others to Him, then it would have to happen. And getting hit by a bus isn't very good for our health. Now I know that He might work in a different way if He knows that He can and deems it necessary, but it would still be answering it to further His will, not benefit us. If we are supposed to be willing to give it all to God, then we shouldn't worry about our prayers benefiting us as much as our prayers working to do God's will. Not that you shouldn't pray for certain things, like Him helping you on your test or helping you in the next basketball game. But I think that in everything you do, you should be thinking about how it can carry out God's plans, rather than your own. Mark 8:36 says "What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?" Saying that God does everything to help us just isn't true. Sure He offers us some luxuries: a nice house, some sweet shoes. But our life on this earth is for Him. We need to stop thinking about ourselves and start thinking about God and what we can do to please Him.

Prayer...

I was listening to the radio tonight and the host asked us to pray for someone, and it made me realize that too many people take prayer too lightly. A lot of people just say "Pray for me" or "I'll be praying for you" and think nothing of it. They think that it's just kind of something you say. But it's for real. It can make a huge difference. Praying is huge. We're talking to God or asking Him for a favor. That's nothing to sneeze at. Even those who don't pray sometimes ask people to pray for them. They think "Well, it can't hurt." And sometimes that's what we think too. When we pray, we are having a one-on-one conversation with our Creator. So next time you pray, don't just pray because you feel like you have to, because you feel like you might as well, or just because you want things. But do it because you want to glorify God in everything that you do.

Christian Music...

I was listening to Way FM today and I realized that no music compares to Christian music. When you get a shout-out from a friend on the radio you freak out, right? Well Christian music is the only kind of music that is constantly talking about you. It is the only truly uplifting kind of music there is. It is always talking about God and His plan for our lives. What does other music sing about? Certainly not that. Christian music can teach us lessons, keep us strong in our faith, or even just preserve our minds from worldly things. It's the only genre that can help us in the long-run. It's as if listening to any other kind of music is just a waste of time. I'm not saying that I think it's wrong to listen to secular music, I'm just saying that we shouldn't expect to get anything out of it. As much as I love Frank Sinatra, he'll never tell me what I truly need to hear.

Death Scenes...

I was watching a movie the other day and it had a very sad and moving death scene in it and it occurred to me that if a movie has a sad death scene, it makes it seem so much more real. The audience gets attached to the character and when they die, they feel like they've known them and it's like they have lost a friend of theirs. It seems like the movie grabs you even more when you actually see the character die. Watching them breathe their last breath. Some movies are so moving just because of death scenes. People win Academy Awards for dying in movies. At the end of the film "Saving Private Ryan", we see Tom Hanks slowly die as he tells his co-star, Matt Damon, that he needs to live his life to the fullest and earn the sacrifices that his friends made to save his life.That is one movie that can make any grown man cry. One of the saddest cowboy movies isn't actually a movie at all. "Lonesome Dove" was a TV mini series that was made in 1989.In that show, we see many men die. The characters' deaths grab hold of the audience and make them miss the character that essentially doesn't even exist. In the Oscar-winning film "The Untouchables", Sean Connery was shown covered in blood and gasping for air as he bled to death. Connery played a police officer named Jim Malone who gained the love of viewers immediately. As he died, we saw Eliot Ness's (Kevin Coster) pain in knowing that one of his best friends had just been killed. In a way, the audience felt as Ness did watching Malone die.They felt as if Malone had saved their lives countless times. I really don't know if it's a good or bad thing, but all movies seem to be made great by a good death scene.

Christian Reputations...

I like to watch the show "Law&Order" every now and then. It is full of convincing actors and suspenseful stories. But sometimes there are criminals on the show that are "Christians." These murderers claim to have killed because God told them to. Every single episode that I have seen with "Christian" characters ends with the "Christian" locked up in the end. The people say some things that make Christianity look like a disease. They make Christians appear as crazy people who kill others who refuse to follow God's law. I just recently watched an episode where a man killed his mother because he believed that she would be forgiven of her sins by dying. His pastor encouraged this and it was later revealed that the pastor had been telling children to kill those who aren't Christians. I hate to think that this is our reputation. To think that this is how the world sees us.