The curse of God?

Posted this 3 years ago today on Facebook. Thought I would repost here.

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This is simply a rambling of my mind right now as I eat a grapefruit 

So amidst my healing from this nasty bug I was thinking about sickness and dis-ease. I was thinking about the fall of Adam and Eve. Something I was brought up with never really set well with me with the whole “fall” thing. It has always been back there in my mind that God cursed the ground and cursed Adam and Eve for things to be harder as a punishment.

But something inside was not ok with this thinking. It didn’t fit well with what I truly know of my God. He is not one to bring dis-ease to His children.

I sometimes think we make God the devil during our time of sickness. I know I have thought this . . . “Why did You allow this?”, “Why aren’t You doing anything?”, “Why God, Why!?”

It’s like God made me sick or is keeping me sick. For the most part I don’t think this way any more but my mind is constantly being renewed . . . transformed.

Anywho back to the whole God cursed this and that thing. So I went to the Bible and reread the fall in Genesis. I came upon 3:17-19. Nowhere does God curse anything. Our actions did or essentially we do the cursing.

So my brain likes to keep rolling with this stuff sometimes. Not to often but today off it went . . .

So here goes . . .

Before the fall Adam and Eve (we) have dominion over the earth and are called to be fruitful and multiply. So being in right standing with God, walking and talking with Him like a good friend and father with out a thought of Him not being there. We moved with God in all things.

I wonder what type of dominion and power we truly had over the earth? Must have been a lot. Enough to bring life because it was enough to curse and bring death.

I guess my point of the whole ramble is that God didn’t curse anything and we had so much power over the Earth. The power to bring life and the power to curse it. We now move in the same right standing as Adam and Eve did before the fall.

There is so much power given to us as children of God. We can either curse the things of this world with our words and actions or bring life and build up the world.

We see the turmoil curses cause from the beginning. I suggest we move out of that thinking and into the renewed thinking in Christ!

VidAngel Follow Up Part 1 . . .

After a bunch of movies later I think I can safely say that I really like VidAngel. It’s a little odd on how the whole sell back and buying process works but once you get the hang of how it works it’s actually pretty cool. You can find a “How to” at VidAngel for the “official” explanation.

Here is how it works from my experience:

1. Buy a movie for $20 or what ever the price is listed. So far its only been $20.
2. Watch the movie
3. Decide if you want to sell it back to VidAngel or keep it in your owned movie list.
   1. You only have 24 hours to make this decision. Once 24 hours are up and you have not sold the movie back to VidAngel, the movie is yours.
   2. If you decided to sell back continue to step 4
4. Sell the movie back for only $1 for Standard Definition (SD) or $2 for High Definition (HD)
5. The account is now credited $19 or $18 depending on if you bought the SD or HD version. Lets say we bought the HD version and the account now has $18 in credits. Think of this $18 as store credit that you can apply to any movie.
6. Buy another movie for $20 but since your account has $18 in credit you only pay $2 to make up the difference. This $2 includes the sell back if you so choose.
7. Watch the movie and choose to have the movie auto sell back if you like
8. Sell back the movie or keep the movie
9. Let’s sell it back
10. Since you now own the $20 movie you can sell it back minus the $2 and $18 is again credited to the account to be applied to another movie. You can now repeat steps 6 – 9 over and over and over to your hearts content and watch recently released movies like at Redbox for $1 or $2 dollars without leaving the comfort of your home!

So basically you are paying $18 or $19 bucks for a movie the first time and you will never get this back unless you contact them for a refund which they will do with no problem. After the initial $18 or $19 you pay to VidAngel all further purchases cost either $1 for SD or $2 for HD making it much like a rental if you so choose to sell back. The $18 or $19 is pretty much like a one time fee to use VidAngel’s services to filter your movie for as long as you want.

Hopefully this makes sense as it can be a little confusing but I think it is worth it due to the ease of use to watch recent and newly released movies for $1 or $2 with the option to filter out the crud 🙂

One of the draw backs I am currently finding is getting the movies to play easily on my big screen TV. I will be going into more details about this process in my “Follow Up Part 2” blog so stay tuned!

Let me know your experience with VidAngel in the comments below!

VidAngel and Me :D

I came across this streaming video site the other day that boasted $1 and $2 video rentals even on popular new releases . . . I decided to take a look, https://www.vidangel.com/

So I bought a HD movie for $20 to try it out.

What really got my attention about VidAngel was the ability to choose what you want to see and hear in the movie by selecting or deselecting from a list of filters that govern all the movies you watch or just a single movie. I thought that was pretty cool because some movies can have some great content and concepts to discuss but the language, sex and blood and gore distract. So with VidAngel filters you can choose the level of language, sex and blood and gore you want to see.

The other interesting part is that it does all this legally. You simply buy the movie in its unaltered original form at the original price. Yes, you will pay upwards to $20 but don’t bail on me yet. I’ll explain that below 😀 Once purchased, VidAngel applies the filters to the movie. It would be sort of like fast-forwarding the movie through scenes that have content you don’t want to see or muting the TV when there is a lot of language. I am not 100% sure if it mutes the language, bleeps it out or skips over it as I have only watched one movie, but the movie we watched I censored the language heavily and I don’t remember hearing a bleep or seeing mouths move with no audio so I think VidAngel just skips over it. Either way, VidAngel just automates all that so you just see the content you want. Once you are done watching the movie you have the choice to KEEP IT or RETURN it. VidAngel calls this return a sell-back. If you choose to keep the movie it is stored in your account like a DVD in your entertainment center and your account receives zero credits. If you choose to sell back the movie within 24 hours you get a credit towards future movies minus the $1 or $2 fee for watching it. So it works sort of like a rental.I rented the HD version for $2 and returned it shortly after watching it to see what would happen. VidAngel credited my account $18. I can now search through their site of movies and choose ones I want to watch or click watch later to save a list for future viewing!

But what if you forget to sell it back? Is there a way to prevent this? Yes, VidAngel offers an automatic sell-back option that handles the sell-back process. If you are like me you get dinged left and right because you forget to return the DVD from places like Redbox or you pay a higher price for streaming content for 24 hours to avoid all the hassle of DVD pickups and returns. All this is a thing of the past with VidAngel! I can now pay the Redbox price without the lines, return process and overage charges while filtering out the content I don’t want to see . . . I like that 😀

Of course this is a super new thing for me so I will keep you posted on this new adventure in the digital streaming, content filtering, jungle of movie things!

So Right, So Wrong, So Loved

I seem to run into the topic of what’s right and wrong all the time. Came across it again today on Facebook. Got me thinking a little and this was a comment I left on the share.

It’s interesting that the fall begin with us eating from the tree of good and evil. Knowing what’s good and evil requires one to judge. Before the fall those things didn’t even enter into Adam or Eve’s minds. It wasn’t apart of who they were. It’s amazing that all this division comes from people’s knowledge of what they think is right and wrong. If we actually listened to Holy Spirit more He will guide us into what is best and it may look very different then what we all think . . . sort of like when Adam walked in the cool of the day with God 🙂 He does say He will confound the wise of this earth . . . Kinda fun to think about 🙂

If we really believe God has the best for the people of this planet we have to trust that He knows how to encounter and love these people on a unique and personal level for each. It will look as different and unique as the person.

Let’s not forget God is about relationship. He wants you to have a relationship with Him and that relationship will again be as unique and personal as you are. It’s really quite a beautiful thing if you think about it. There is only one of you and He didn’t create you to be someone else . . . He already made that someone else 🙂 He desires you!

God is Love. He knows no limits and is not afraid of darkness no matter how hard we try to fit Him into our box.

Let’s trust that Love knows how to bring us into who we are created to be. After all not all relationships are the same or at the same leve 🙂

So go tell someone how much you are Loved! It will change the world 🙂