The Christmas Vids

Here’s the Videos I had posted for Christmas 2007.
Merry Christmas

Trippiest Christmas video I’ve ever seen …

Good will to Men

Snoopy vs. The Red Baron

Guilty of Hate

Well here’s an interesting view of how loving your neighbors as you love yourself could one day be construed as hate.  Confused?  Then I recommend you read the blog the link goes to.
Guilty of Hate link

It’s time … (my Testimony)

It’s time for me to post what most Christians would call my “testimony” It’s basically the story of how I came to know Jesus.

I’ve hinted at it on and off of my blogs, but up until now I haven’t given the whole thing in one fell swoop.

I wrote it down part of it a couple of months after the events because I didn’t want to forget anything. I wrote the other part sometime this year. I know I still didn’t get all of it in there,l while I was writing it. And some of it is personal and doesn’t need to be online anyway.

This is about the second time in my life that Jesus saved me:

The death and Rebirth of Daniel

God still works. A lot of people can try to deny it. A lot of people may not see it, but it is true.
I went out with a girl in 1997-1998 my last year of college. God had told me that she wasn’t the one.

But I was stubborn so stubborn I convinced myself that she was who God wanted for me. In 1998 I graduated and moved to Davenport for my first full time job. My church attendance began wavering and eventually, it was more rare to see me in than out. Some of this was due to work and traveling between Osky and Davenport on the weekends. In Feb. 1999 I got a job with Musco back in Oskaloosa and I thought that this was great that me and my girlfriend could be close again.

In the summer of 2000, due to circumstances I finally opened my eyes and saw that God did not want us together. I reluctantly broke up with her. It was about that time I stopped going to church
altogether. I was angry. Ashamed. Heartbroken.

In 2002, I met up with another girl who I knew we weren’t meant to be, but it felt good to be with
someone again. She tried getting me back into church because she knew it was once important to me, but I also didn’t tell her that I didn’t mind missing as much. After all, I was still praying. Still calling myself a Christian. What kind of Christian would claim he didn’t want to go to church?
In 2004 I broke up with her because my previous girlfriend had called me. I didn’t want to go out with her again, but the string of emotions I felt brought me under conviction to break up with girlfriend number 2.

I’ve kept them anonymous to protect their privacy. So I gave up another girlfriend for the sake of
conviction? A conviction that I was slowly drawing away from. This was the beginning of hell for me. My life consisted of work and going home. At home I’d watch cartoons, movies or video games. I was alone.

In August 2004 my basement flooded. My furnace needed replaced. My dryer broke. So now I was
poor and lonely. I spent 2005 paying off debts and barely keeping my bank account happy.
As of 2006 it had been at least since 2001 since I’d been to church regularly. At this time even my closest friends were kept at a distance. They knew about my money crunch but they didn’t know the internal battle that waged on the inside. I agonized over being alone, but it freaked me out to bring anyone in. If I told people how I really felt, would they laugh. Would they distance themselves farther than I’d kept them? I had lost my one true love, or so I thought. I tried to love another and thought I did, but I couldn’t. Maybe I was now unable to love or be loved. Looking back this is very dangerous thinking. It leads to questioning and then doubting that God could even still love me. I was alone.

In February 2006, I believe it was then that God started to tell me to go back to church. Or was it then that I was only beginning to listen? My friend James got backstage passes to the Barlow Girl concert and invited me to go.

I said yes. A free concert is a free concert after all. When we got there I hadn’t realized it was one of those mega-churches. It looked more like a mall than a church, but still the strangeness of being inside a church after so long felt so odd. Would God strike me down for not being faithful? If he’d wanted to do that would he really wait until I was back in a church?

Two other things struck me while I was there. One we went backstage and had our pictures taken. One of the Barlow girls put her arm around me. Common I suppose in group photos to make sure everyone gets in, but how long had it been since anyone touched me? I mean I hugged my nephews when I’d seen them, and other family members … or did I even do that much? Human touch had been missing from my life for far too long.

The second thing was the song Rebecca St. James sang when we came back out from backstage. She said she wrote it for an old friend whose name was also Daniel. She said he had walked away from God, and this song would be the one thing she would tell him if she ever got the chance to see him again and could only tell him one thing and that was that he was loved.

Those girls will never know how much they moved my heart that night … Unless they ever read this, if you are, thank you for doing God’s work.

Still I was stubborn and didn’t listen to God to go back to church. Why couldn’t I just serve him on my own anyway?

Hebrews 10:25
“not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one
another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching. “

Nice Biblical answer… I was about to receive my own answer, much more personal to me. For now, I still had my pain. My regret. My doubts.

In May 2006, I got inspired to go back to church again. I’d been battling the inclination to go back for a while, but this time I was really determined to go. But then I got a weird neck cramp and I could barely move on Saturday. By Sunday it got worse so I missed church yet again.

Sunday evening I could barely breathe when I laid down to sleep. I called Mom and Dad and they took me to the ER at Osky Hospital. The doctor on call told me to see the chiropractor in the morning and gave me some pain killers and muscle relaxants. He said the pain was what was making it hard to breathe.

Three days of going to the chiropractor and I still wasn’t any better. And now I could barely move at all. The chiropractor said, “You should’ve been better by now. You don’t look like you feel well, and you look yellow.”

I hadn’t noticed my color before that but I was starting to feel sick. And I ached all over. Went to
Family Medical after that. Dr. Hirl cleared his schedule to take some time to look at me and sent me up to Iowa City Hospital.

Mom and Dad took me up there. I was there for a couple of days with hepatitis like symptoms. My color had almost gone back to normal by Thursday morning. Except for when Mom and Dad visited me I felt so alone. I had gone so quickly to the hospital that almost no one knew I was up there. The question I kept asking myself was would they come if they did know?

I was humiliated in the hospital. For one you have no privacy. You are barely clothed and they
wouldn’t let me eat so they could run tests on me. I was so tired. so weak. so alone.
It was during this time that God made it clear to me why I needed the church. It was the support they give you. Even if they couldn’t be there it would’ve been nice to know that more people were concerned and praying.

I felt such a loss. For so long I’d been turned away from God. But here in the hospital, I was at my lowest. Alone. Guilty of lust, pride, selfishness, lying(after all no one knew what I was going thru all this time). I didn’t want them to know. I realized I had wanted to wallow alone. How was this possibly something I wanted? I definitely didn’t want anyone else to know me. I was disgusting.

I knew that if something didn’t change I was dead. Was this what God was telling me? That if I didn’t change I was going to die like this? I realize now that he was speaking spiritually, but spiritually is what matters. What good is it to gain a whole world and lose your soul?

It was how I described my nakedness and shame in the hospital, my life was now an open book to the doctors after I’d fought so hard to keep people out. It was like that with God. He saw thru my barriers, my lie. He saw into my heart and even then he loved me. No lie had been greater than the time I had concluded that I was unloved and unable to love. Satan had lied to me. I was LOVED! Looking back at what I’ve written here I realize that this is the greatest missed truth by most people today. That their Maker knows them and loves them Greatly.
Then the only place left to look was up. I know now that God found me that night. Figuratively, or was it spiritually, when I looked up I found myself at the foot of the cross. Sometime during all that I gave it all up to God. No more holding back I finally accepted what he did for me. I traded him.

His righteousness, for my disgustingness.

The Hospital released me on that Friday. I was weak all weekend so Dad gave me a ride to church and I’ve been going since. Jesus had saved me. I wasn’t not going to go.

I found that I tested negative for anything serious like hepatitis. The doctors never found out what I had. A month and a half later, God directed me to help with the youth. That night was prayer night and I was going to only pray for the youth, but then I remembered all the pain, joy, and confusion of high school.

This made me feel more than just a feeling. I had been wrestling with the idea a couple of weeks but I was still getting used to hearing the master’s voice again and he was basically putting his hand on me and not letting me go till I agreed with him. I cried uncontrollably. I asked Pastor Dave if I could help.

He said, “God has his finger on you, and you’re asking me for permission?”
We both agreed that God is king and we should do what He says.
God used my illness as a way of getting me to go to church regularly. He used my attendance at church to make sure I died to myself and then he rose me back up again with a new mission.

Over the last year God has been opening up new insights. I’ve been firsthand witness of his mercy and love. I’ve seen lives saved and changed. God has showed me that it is not what I do that changes lives it is what he does in me. He is the one who saves. He is the way. I only loved him because he first loved me and that is how it is for everyone else.

No matter how much I rewrite this I just can’t seem to capture it all. Why have I written it down? Lest I forget. I always wish to remember what God has done for me. And if anyone else finds themselves reading this, maybe this will point them to the Saviour. One thing to note looking back is that everything that we have is on loan from God. God has shown me that just as we have a physical body that we must take care of it, that when we get a new spiritual life that we must feed our spirit. Thru reading his word, going to church, prayer, and fellowship. Wonderful fellowship. God has restored my fellowship with fellow believers. With him in my heart and my brothers and sisters in Christ I am no longer alone. Even my relationship with my family has greatly improved. We do more stuff together now.

So I see now that when I fell away I was starving the spirit man and feeding the old man. Just before the old man finished choking the life of my spirit man, God supplied me with a can of spiritual spinach and it was my choice to eat the stuff. When I did the spirit man clobbered the tar out of the old man.

So does God still talk to people today? I say yes. He’s talked to me. And he’s talked to every other Christian out there. To give your heart to God you must first be called by God.

John 6:44
No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.

Revelation 3:20
Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.

This is the account of my new testimony.

A ragamuffin,
Daniel Job Birch

Love, Relationships, and Marriage

Be warned this is long, but there is bit of me in there somewhere.

I’ve been putting this one off for a while. So many people have so many ideas on love and marriage that it sort of makes me sick.

Sick in the dizzy sort of way, not in the I’m really angry sort of way.

If I ever had to name a weakness of mine it would be my “dating”

So why write now? 1. why not? 2. release. 3. to actually write down my feelings in an effort to formulate my own ideas in what seems to be shifting sand.

I’d pick number 3 if this was multiple choice, cause it would make me look/feel more mature, but all three are equally valid.

One thing that gets to me is people asking me, “So how long until you settle down and get married?”

This does two things to me. Anger and regret. I get angry at them for bringing up a sore subject. Of course I don’t blame them, they really don’t know. Angry at myself for not being married because I would kind of like to be. This brings up the regret feeling. I regret not being married because, I would love to know someone so well who knows me so well, that we can be ourselves around each other, and if there was a misunderstanding we could just talk it out, instead of assuming things and becoming angry with one another. I want to share my life with someone.

I’ve dated women that I’ve fallen head over heels for that couldn’t seem to either fall for me or kept getting distracted by other men. Then there’s the girls I’ve dated where it didn’t click for me but it did for them. Then there’s the girls who will never know my name, because I somehow was magically invisible to them.

I don’t see a point in dating anymore. If both people don’t fall for each other then it is fine. This is the only good scenario I’ve ever seen with dating and it is both ironic and stupid. Stupid because it only works when it doesn’t. (Ok i consent, that this has worked for some people, as it has ended up with marriage for them, but this is from my shoes)

If one person falls for the other but the other one doesn’t fall for them, it stinks for both. One feels abandoned in their feelings without the one they wanted to share them with, and the other feels like a jerk for not sharing the feelings, because they don’t want to hurt the one that falls for them, because having someone fall for you is rare enough in itself, but they can’t be untrue to their own feelings either.

I’ve decided on a few things. I want to become friends and only friends with more women. Preferably hang out in groups of friends so that we can get to know one another as friends with no pressure in having a special relationship.

This would allow me get to know women and them to get to know me and to have more friends at the same time, when I do meet the right one, we should both know because our friendship is extra special to each other.

Here’s my problem. Almost nobody I know thinks like this. I don’t hangout with clusters of friends anymore, most of them are married. I don’t know that many women that are single and just want to hang out. or at least hangout with me….

I also see so many people throw away their relationships or marriages so easily. Don’t get me wrong there are times to end a relationship or marriage like in abuse, adultery or constant lying. You don’t want to be in a spot that puts you or your children in danger.

What I’m talking about is when people end their marriage for “irreconcilable” differences or they simply don’t feel the same way about them anymore. I got news for you, if you base your marriage on feelings alone, then it is probably best you don’t get married. The relationship will end. The purpose for marriage as far as I can tell is to promise to be together no matter what.

I’ve been in a relationship where my feelings ran away with me. I loved her so much. I wanted to get married. Her not wanting to get married should’ve probably clued me in … ah but being in love is blind.

I think I’ve decided that being in love is different from actually loving someone. Actually loving someone is a lot of work and a lot of forgiveness.

Being in love, feels great, one of the best feelings I’ve ever had, but in the end it ends. One can’t thrive in that state of feeling forever. That’s not to say that those feelings don’t rekindle now and again, but I want to love someone and be loved by someone that I can be free and let her be free to be in love with each other.

I haven’t dated in 3 years. Until recently I thought finding the right girl and getting married and having 2.5 children would make me happy.

(Ah that being happy thing I’ve blogged about before)

What I’ve decided is that dating and marriage may be a foretaste of an overall happiness, but they can not make you permanently happy in and of themselves.

Basing a marriage on temporary feelings would have led me to a temporary marriage. This is against what I’ve always wanted. I’ve always wanted to stay married once I’m married. This is not a glutton for punishment type of thing, this is keeping my commitment to love and be loved to the one I make a promise to stay with thru better or worse. After all, why get married at all, if you really don’t plan to keep the commitment you will make when you do.

Ehh… a pain it is … I guess in the end I can’t speak on behalf of married, people, since I’ve never been married, so once again I’ll remind myself that these are things I’ve observed and can see from my shoes.

The other thing that gets to me sometimes is that some women don’t want to date me because we’re too different. I don’t really want to date someone like me, that would be boring. I want to date someone that will introduce me to new things and someone I can introduce to new things.

This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t have some things in common. I’d like her to know God, and share some things of interest because we can’t always be introducing each other to new things, and I’d like for each of us to enjoy some of the new things we are introducing each other too.

The reason I’ve come to appreciate the differences in a relationship, is that my best one was with someone who was always showing me new things.

My conclusion thus far is that I do believe there is someone out there for me. I believe that my inability to find this person is really that I haven’t met her yet, or that one of us isn’t ready yet.

The attempts of mine that I once counted as failed aren’t really failures because I didn’t end up with the wrong person.

If one of my relationships was so great that I wanted to get married even though she wasn’t the right one for me, then I can’t wait until I meet the one that is meant for me, because that must be even better.

Then I also believe that whatever my attempts, I will always fail. This sort of thing will require God’s timing. His intervention. As I said before that I believe that when I meet her, that both me and her will recognize our relationship as extra special. And that will be a God-thing.

And if I never marry?

Well then so be it. If I’m right, and my inability to find the right one is because none of the women I’ve met are the right one or one of us wasn’t ready, then marriage despite these reasons would only end up in unhappiness. Then it would have been better to remain single after all.

Besides, my happiness is no longer in whether I am dating/married or not. My happiness is based on hope of things to come.

*I’m not sure if that makes sense the way it is written, but it makes sense to me, so if I come up with a better way to say it I’ll edit this later.

Saviour Machine – End of the Age

From what I understand, this song is part of a larger project that tells a story and is of yet still unfinished. Part III has 2 parts which I guess means a second Part III is on the way. But either way this song on its own is awesome.

(Update 12Dec2007)Here is an interview with Eric that should help explain some of what I tried to: http://artfortheears.freeservers.com/interviews/saviour.htm

Hope

I’m still pondering what will make people happy.

The American Dream says something like the pursuit of happiness. Most of us chalk that up to being the pursuit of education, money, friends, and a spouse to love and then kids.

If money made us happy, then why isn’t everyone in Hollywood already happy with the money they have? Instead they buy things like cars, houses, and party.

They end up bruised and battered by drinking too much and getting hooked on drugs. Some people buy so much looking for something to make them happy they spend all their money away.

If education made us happy then why aren’t smart people happier? It seems the more you know about the world and all of its pains the sadder you are.

Do family, friends, or the stuff we can buy make us happy? If this makes people happy, then why do some parents run away? Abuse, or do something else that could only be born of something other than happiness?

All in all, the very things we think will make us happy, if they make us happy at all, only do so for a while and then that happiness fades.

If true lasting happiness can’t be found in this world, and we are all so desperately seeking true happiness, then perhaps it lies beyond the skin of this world.

Hope.

Hope is a weird thing. It causes anticipation and a giddyness like none other.

A pregnant mother eagerly hopes and waits for the arrival of her newborn.

A bride hopes and waits for her wedding.

A child eagerly hopes and dreams what might be resting under the Christmas Tree on Christmas day.

In each of the scenarios above as the day of birth, wedding, or Christmas grows near the Hope gets bigger.

But as I mentioned before the things of this world don’t bring us lasting happiness. What if these particular stories of hope reflect true hope for true happiness? What if we look beyond the skin of this world?

What if we really do put our faith in Christ? Believe that the One who made us, Loves us and has really opened the doors of Heaven to us?

Then I would say I am beginning to see that the only thing that can give us lasting happiness comes after this life and thru the veil and that we can enjoy the temporary happiness of this life knowing that it is temporary and is only a taste of what is to come when we finally see Heaven with our eyes.

What if it is our hope for what comes after this life that makes the difference in whether or not we are really happy?

My thoughts on this are a bit incomplete, so I’ll try to build on this later. for now it is getting late. Sleep beckons.

Romans 8:24 and 25 describes hope this way:
For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has?
But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.