Prayer for my final semester

Today I prayed to God about some of the same things that David in the Bible prayed about in his psalms. I asked God to fight for me in the battles that are being fought in my life. I focused on the spiritual in my requests but then I recalled the physical. These battles may not be with sword and spear but I fight them none the less. In fact I do not fight them nearly enough, but my prayer was for God to rid me of those hindrances that keep me from the front line of my life. I recalled what a few people have said about my choices. But I ask would I be where I am without those choices? If I had not been a theater major I wouldn't have realized my love of art. Yet as a follower of Christ I received criticism for choosing to be an actor. If I am unwilling to spend time with these people then who is? Even now as an artist I feel Satan all around me. I have seen little to no art in my institution of learning that shows to me I am not the only Christian. This is why I have asked God to fight for me. I have made feeble prayer, half hearted prayers, to God to raise my spirits to proclaim His word, His gospel, in my school and I have not been able to (because of my own power not being remotely enough). If God is on my side, if he takes up bow and spear in my favor and fight along side where I am, where He indeed put me, then who will be against me? In the book of Job Satan himself had to ask God permission to do anything to Job. God even suggests it, without that Satan has no power over Job, me, or anyone. This way I know that God will never leave me out to dry. He will never place in anywhere I cannot escape.
I realize my original point has been lost.
I am an artist because God has given me these abilities and desires to be around these people. If I am not here this semester then I really believe that nobody in the school of art here would hear God's voice. The few whom I know to be Christians say little to nothing about God in there speech let alone there work.
I also choose to have a tattoo for the glory of God. It serves as a reminder to myself that I need to be this person God wants me to be and it also serves as an 'in' to a certain demographic that is often ignored by the older generations of Christians.

This is me telling anyone who is listening that I will be fighting for God. I will be doing my best in the arenas He has provided me. I will be a light to those covered in darkness.

Thoughts

How can you think ill of someone when you are just as rotten on the inside?

Verse

The wages of sin are death,
but God's gift is eternal life.

Passing

So I finally found out to day that I passed my Intermediate Spanish I class. This is good because I'm halfway through Intermediate Spanish II. Hurray. I'm only required to speak Spanish for three and a half more weeks, and then for the rest of my life its optional. Sweet.

Warrior for God

A few weeks ago we watched Kingdom of Heaven, and a few weeks before that I read Psalms 35.

Contend, O LORD, with those who contend with me;
fight against those who fight against me.
Take up shield and buckler;
arise and come to my aid.
Brandish spear and javelin [a]
against those who pursue me.
Say to my soul,
"I am your salvation."

It was then that it dawned on me that God is our King and we, Christians, are his knights. He is fighting along side or even for us as a king here on earth did. And we the knights must fight for Him for any reason against any odds. This doesn't always mean we need to literally be fighting. In the movie Kingdom of Heaven Orlando Bloom played a "perfect knight" named Balian.
In the beginning he if forced into taking his father's position as a lord and is given much by the king due to his faithfulness in some smaller matters at the beginning. He is quickly given favor by the king and given some land. With this land he turns it from desert to a garden.
There is one part when the king told him to protect the villagers. Everyone else went into the castle to wait for the kings army to arrive but Balian kept his small calvary out to fight the army of 200,000 coming. He ended up losing that battle but the fact is that he did what his king told him too. On top of that the opposing leader had run into Balian earlier in the movie and Balian has spared his life and even given him a horse. The opposing leader therefore let Balian and his men live saying, "Your qualities will be known among your enemies long before you meet them my friend."

The movie is not a perfect illustration of how we should exemplify our lives but it give a decent enough picture to get an idea. These ideas aren't even original. They are all in the Bible.

Matthew 25:21
"His master replied, 'Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!'

Proverbs 16:7
When a man's ways are pleasing to the LORD, he makes even his enemies live at peace with him.

This whole idea however has led me to stop and think if whatever I'm doing is preparing me to be a knight for God. What in my life is teaching me diligence and what am I doing in faith? Or in any situation, What would a perfect knight of God do. Would he choose this time to fight, talk, or is it wrong all together to become involved. Just like in a battle a knight fights along other knights as well as his king. We should never forget that we aren't an army of one. We are looking at an army much larger than ours but we have a King who is much larger than theirs.

My Portfolio

Here is my porfolio.
dexterjacobs.carbonmade.com

Andrew Bird. Wow that was awhile ago.

Andrew Bird Concert.
This was great. Andrew Bird played solo up on stage and with a sore thumb. Therefore he had to pluck the violin with his index finger. He kept telling us that he may need to restart some songs due to this but he only had to once. It was his mother's birthday that day so he played her favorite song. She was in the audience.

I sat in the fifth row on the left side middle. Andrew Bird used a violin, guitar, xylophone, and whistling to make his music. He talked a little in between songs and came off as nervous. I couldn't imagine why he would be since he has been performing for so long. Either way he was entertaining and quite humerous. The music was great. During two songs he played some video clips of short films made by a couple of (seemingly random) people. The films were from some institute that I didn't catch. I think it was out of Chicago. Andrew Bird thought the films were quite great. He played one song with the opening band (of which I forgot the name of as soon as we left the place, they're out of Chicago, consisting of two bassists and a drummer. They sang very little). He played a lot of songs from older CD's which I appreciated.

My brother came up for the show. Before hand we went to The Sanctuary. The first bar I've ever been to in Iowa City. The bartender seemed to know about as much about beer as I do about coffee. I can appreciate that.