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Square_Water
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Name: John
Country: United States
State: Maryland
Gender: Male
Interests: Everything. Especially living for my awesome savior and advancing His kingdom! Preparing myself for being a missionary sometime in the future.
Expertise: Not much.
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
4/15/2006
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| After much planning and hard work. And thanks to the help of many
friends (Dad, Mom, Ned, John, Caleb, and Mr. Branchaw) my headlamp (aka
MINOTAUR) in now complete.
Before I continue I would like to give glory where it is due. The
other day, when I was reading in Exodus, I found these verses.
Exodus 35:30-33 (ESV)
Then Moses said to the people of Israel, "See, the Lord has called
by name Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah;
[31] and he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, with
intelligence, with knowledge, and with all craftsmanship, [32] to
devise artistic designs, to work in gold and silver and bronze, [33]
in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, for work in every
skilled craft.
It was a good reminder that everything I have, including the skills
used to build this headlamp, come from God. This may seem like a small
thing, but I know my heart can so easily become proud when I make
something like this so I want to start off by giving God all the credit
and thanking him for the skills he has given me.
Overall, the headlamp probably took close to 20 hours of work and cost
$30-$50. The casing is made of an old aluminum saucer sled, the necks
of two desk lamps, and the chrome nozzle of two shower heads. Each side
of the headlamp is a separate unit with its own batteries, switch, and
LEDs. There are two 9v batteries on each side powering 6 LEDs. The
LEDs are among the brightest you can buy and are 1 cm across (that's
twice the size of a normal LED and much more than twice the brightness). According to our calculations, it should run for 6 hours before the batteries need replacing (and luckily we are getting 4 rechargeable 9v batterines).
Step 1: Design
Dad did most of the math calculations. All I came up with was the basic diagram.
Step 2: Build
...hope nobody wanted it. :)
um yea...I still need to clean that up.
and if this was a little kids TV show, the third step would be clean up...but it isn't so I'm skipping step three.
So here it is.
With the light on.
With only the headlamp.
Close up of the back. This is the part that used to be a sled. Thanks to my saw, my new rivet gun, and Mr. Branchaw's sweet paint job, it is now a headlamp (a much better use if you ask me).
John Schellhase and I after finishing it earlier tonight.
Note: For anybody that hasn't figured it out by now, you wear the metal box on the back of your neck held on by a strap over your forehead.
Overall, I am very happy with it. It is slightly weird to wear until you get used to it. The effective range is probably 50 ft. It can shine all the way across my back yard and light up about a 20 ft section. So yea...I like it.
Now that the main headlamp is done, I started on a normal flashlight made with the extra LEDs. That will hopefully be finished by the end of the week. And after that...hehe...John and I are finalizing plans for an airsoft grenade launcher. :) We will see.
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| I've been thinking for awhile about having a "theme verse" for my life. I decided on 2 Tim 2:4-8.
"No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him.
An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. It is the hard working farmer
who ought to have the first share of the crops. Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you
understanding in everything. Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of
David, as preached in my gospel."
Paul Wilson shared this with me at my baptism and I was struck by three specific things.
- The first part where it talks about a soldier not getting entangled in civilian pursuits was cool because I think God might be calling me to be a missionary. I want that image of a soldier on a mission to be a picture of how I live my life. We are soldiers for God in a hostile world and we must live accordingly, always on guard and never satisfied with "civilian pursuits."
- God has been showing me recently how much I can't understand his Word or anything else unless he empowers me by his spirit. The verse where God promises to "give us understanding in everything" has given me faith many times when I was confused and tempted to doubt God. I know that in the future, as I seek out God's will for my life and where I am to serve him, he will continue to fulfill this incredible promise.
- Finally, I want the focus of my life to never move past the cross of Christ. That is the reason for all we do as Christians and most problems in our lives and our churches are a result of not keeping the main thing, the main thing. If everything we do isn't based no what Jesus has already done, not only does it fail but it robs God of the glory due him. And that sorta defeats the purpose for being a missionary in the first place.
Soli Deo Gloria
John C
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| Okay...I'm tired of useless posts that waste my time in writing them and your time in reading them. So most of the stuff I post (at least for a while) will be spiritual stuff I've been thinking about.
The benefit is mostly for myself in writing it but I hope you are encouraged as well.
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| I was looking at some pics and I found these. They were taken in the vampire bat cave while I was in Mexico. If you read my blog or heard the story you may not have believed me when I said there were literally a million bats in that cave.
Seeing is believing. Can you see in the second picture how the ceiling looks textured? Those are vampire bats. And keep in mind that this cavern is easily 100ft by 100ft by 50ft tall. And pretty much the whole thing looks like that. The floor is 4-6 inches deep in dusty bat guano (poisonous if inhaled). From the main cavern, the bats' wings sound exactly like a river roaring somewhere in the cave.
Believe me now?
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| As you already probably know, I think blogging is usually a waste of time but since I typed this out to send to Brew I figured I might as well post it so you all can praise God with me for what he's doing in my life. And if you have anything better to do than sit here reading blogs, go do it and come back later when you don't.
Anyway, here goes
I came to the retreat really excited about what God was gonna do
through the messages, ministry night, my small group, baptism, and just
hanging out with all my Godly friends. God met me in very powerful
ways none of which I expected. Just as background, God has been
showing me just how prideful I am but I was struggling with just not
knowing how to fight it. I felt like I knew how but I couldn't seem
to be humble it. God also was showing me that as I move to the "upper
half" of the youth ministry, I am naturally becoming a leader among my
friends and just the great responsibility that comes with that. And
that of course didn't help me be humble.
So I came to the retreat with all this in the back of my
mind. The first evening was great, you message was awesome and I think
God used it to reveal to me more of the depths of his love. My small
group that night went much better than I had thought I would. I am a
debater so I tend to take pride in my ability to think and ask probing
questions. In my group that night though I was having trouble even
following what people were saying. I felt like God took away my
ability to think almost and spoon fed me what I was supposed to say as
I needed it.
Tuesday morning during the meeting I was having a whole lot of
trouble focusing. I couldn't really think about God and wasn't really
able to enter in at all. I felt like I couldn't understand what I was
hearing. And I don't mean comprehend, I mean I couldn't even think
about it. I left the meeting very aware of my own failure and pretty
depressed. That carried over all the way to the baptisms. Even after
I got baptized I felt cold and not effected by what was happening.
After my care group prayed for me, Paul Wilson came up to me to share a
scripture. (his Bible had about ten bookmarks with people's names on
them)
He read 2 Tim. 2:4-8, "No soldier gets entangled in civilian
pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. [5] An
athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. [6]
It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the
crops. [7] Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you
understanding in everything. [8] Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the
dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel."
In that moment I felt God speaking to me so directly that I
started to cry. It was exactly what I needed to hear. I'm considering
being a missionary so the part about the soldier not getting entangled
was very applicable. Verse seven though blew me away. As I was having
so much trouble processing what we were learning I felt God telling me
through his promise that he will "give me understanding in
everything." Since then God has brought that promise to mind countless
times. Finally in verse eight, I felt God drawing my eyes off myself
and my failure to his unchanging love for me.
For the rest of that day and Wednesday, God gave me a joy in
my salvation and a trust in his promise to give me understanding. I
was able to share scriptures with several people who got baptized on
Wednesday (something I hadn't done before) and just bask in God's
goodness.
On Wednesday night I came to the ministry night early with
great expectation of what God was going to do. As we started praying I
asked people to pray for me that God would baptize me in the holy
spirit. As we started praying though I felt like once again I wasn't
able to focus on God. My eyes were riveted on myself and my failure
and pride. I was so keenly aware of how desperate I was for God. Over
the course of the night God met me in a very....shall we
say...."uncomfortable" way. I felt like he simply let me try on my
own. I wasn't affected by what was happening. I couldn't even pray.
Like I literally couldn't put words together in more than a couple
sentences. I felt so empty and I had no idea what to do.
Finally as worship started again, I found myself at the back
of the room, head in my hands, completely desperate. I didn't know
what to believe. I was terrified at the thought of leaving without
encountering God. At this point we started worshiping again and I
began to sing with everyone else. I knew that even if I wasn't
affected emotionally, I could still honor God with my worship. Over
the past two hours, God had humbled me and brought me to my knees in
desperation. As we started singing the second to last song (My first
love..) God gave me understanding. He helped me take my eyes off
myself and fix them on him, the God who never changes. I broke. In
those last five minutes, God poured out all the emotion, all the
understanding, and all the Holy Spirit that he had kept back for two
hours.
I left that night focused more on God and less on my pitiful
self. It was tempting to be discouraged when my friends were talking
about receiving gifts of the spirit and other ways God blessed them but
I can see how God met me so perfectly. He gave me understanding, and
he taught me how to be humble by taking it all away and showing me that
I'm helpless. I think he was starting to prepare me for when he puts
me in positions of leadership.
It was also really cool to see how, instead of giving me a
big emotional experience at the retreat, God worked in quiet ways. I
came home on Thursday excited about my devotions on Friday. Since
then, by God's grace, I have been able to have awesome quiet times
everyday. I felt like at the retreat God didn't so much meet me once,
but instead he prepared me to meet him everyday of the year. Praise
the Lord!!!
Oh, and one last thing. Even though I didn't receive a new
spiritual gift at the retreat, God showed me that he has already given
me the awesome gift of being able to memorize scripture. And since my ability to memorize has nothing to do with me, I would encourage you all to quit wasting time reading blogs and pick a book to start memorizing. Memorizing Eph and James has been like the best, most awesome thing I have ever done and that is because it is the word of God. So it can be that awesome for you too.
Anyway, the moral of that long story:
1) Its all about God, not me
2) I will think very carefully next time before praying that God would make me humble :) | | |
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