40 Acts Wrap Up 2018

I was really looking forward to engaging a lot more during this Lent season with the help of 40 acts.  At the beginning it was working really well, I had been doing a bible study on James a couple of weeks before and it happens that this 40acts year was based on James.

Then Life Happened.     

I started having more and more issues with my stomach.  I have been having some food issues for awhile now, but it seemed to culminate right before Lent started.  I finally decided to do some research and then made an appointment with a naturopathic doctor. She spent quite some time with me and we decided to start the Whole30 diet but without caffeine, chocolate, strawberries and all other things that have bothered me in the past: which are a lot of foods.  The first 11 days felt like torture.  I have never cried so much over food before, and I felt like a complete and utter baby.  Needless to say it pulled me away from 40acts in a big way.  I still read the emails, I still prayed(although not in depth) and I still tried to keep an eye out on opportunities that fell into the acting generously. 

As I continued focusing on myself, my food, my self pity- I focused less on God.

What is it with all consuming things in our lives that pulls us away from God and not toward him?  

It's been 37 days now on this "diet" and I am falling into a bit of a swing with how and when to prepare food for myself, while trying to feed my family as well.  When you need to make 3-4 different meals everyday it can be overwhelming and time consuming.  What I did learn is that although I wasn't eating poorly, I wasn't eating healthy either.  I will write a separate blog post about my experience in awhile once I can get my head around things again.  I am still struggling with this experience and trying to find some type of middle ground.


When life throws me in the middle of something like this, I have to ask myself, why do I run away from God instead of toward him?  I need to make some changes to my lifestyle.  Encourage better habits for myself instead of just running back to the old comfortable ones that can be destructive.

I know, I'm babbling a bit.  My brain isn't firing properly right now.  

What I have to say is that I am having some encouraging results right now with all the changes, however, there are a lot of discouraging things as well.  But, life can always be less than optimal.  When it comes to leaning on something or someone, I know it needs to be God.

This applies to any type of hill, mountain, pot hole, rut, ...inset weird metaphor here for what you are going through-no matter the size.

I implore you today to turn around, repent, do a 180 and turn back to Him.

Remember, that after Lent comes Easter.  He is Risen!  Without this, life would be unbearable sometimes. 

I have a hope, that someday all this pain will be taken away and we will no longer be strangers in this world but live for Him in eternity.  I want to try every day, hour, minute to focus on him. It's hard but I need to remember that it's worth it.

Things could be so much worse.

And Yes, I look forward to next year's 40acts.  I will continue to do this until it becomes a part of my daily life.

When Jesus rose from the dead, Death was Arrested.  What a powerful thought and image.

1 Corinthians 15:54-55
54 When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” 55 “Where, O death, is your victory?  Where, O death, is your sting?”

If you would like to know the back story of this song check it out below.  It's worth the listen.

Review of PureFlix & VidAngel Services

Pureflix

Some of you that read my blog might recall my post series called "Let's Talk-" all about forms of entertainment. You can take a look at them here: TV, Movies, Music, Video Games & Books.

Since then I've been trying a few things out.  One of which is Pureflix. I asked for a gift subscription for Christmas and I received money for a few months worth.  I am currently in my last month, after the free trial I had enough to get me through 3 months worth.

Pureflix is full of some really great movies.  They have some bigger budget movies that have some great acting.  They also have some lower budget movies that have some not so good acting.  But like any movie, I try to go into it without too many expectations and see what I can get from it.  I have started watching movies and not finished them because they were just too boring for me.  But, I've found some really good ones too.  

Often times when I watch a movie and like a specific actor/actress I will go to IMDb and see what else they've been in.  In this case, Pureflix is where I watched the movie Like A Country Song and when I looked up the actor in this movie I came upon the movie Priceless, you can read about my review for that movie here.

I've had some laughs, some cries and a lot of introspection after watching these movies, which doesn't happen as often in mainstream movies.

I think the Entertainment circuit is catching on though, people are realizing that there is a whole lot of untapped potential for Christian movies being put into the mainstream. There is a large audience for it.  I came across this article on this in particular which gives me hope that maybe the way things are now are going to keep going and getting better. 

But, I also came across this article from last year that speaks to faith based films in a different way.  I can see where the writer is coming from although I don't completely agree with her entire article. But I do agree especially at the end of her article where she says " "Christian" shouldn’t mean "safe." "Faith-based" shouldn’t mean "ham-fisted." Audiences shouldn't expect to leave the theater comfortable. Movies should change our lives and expand our imaginations. If it just reinforces our prejudices and lines in the sand, then it’s just a feature-length infomercial."

Back to my review of Pureflix... I think it depends on the person really.  I liked a lot of the movies on here and I think I am going to cancel after the end of this month.  But, that doesn't mean I won't ask for another gift subscription for my birthday or Christmas to watch some more movies to get my wheels a turning.  Give it a whirl for yourself, it's a free trial to start, just don't forget to cancel before the trial ends so you don't get charged, unless of course you wanna keep it.  I like companies like this that want to give us "clean" entertainment at a small cost, some of the movies aren't for everyone, but some are those gems that really make you think.  And some help you have sympathy or empathize better for people in situations you would probably never find yourself in.

VidAngel

Onto VidAngel review:  This is a really cool service.  You ever wanted to have your kids watch a specific movie but it had too many swears or those unnecessary nude scenes? Yeah, that's me.  What this service does is use your already existing subscription to Netflix or Amazon Prime and allow you to filter out all the things you don't want. They are still ramping up there services as they are currently under a law suit. Along with Netflix and Amazon Prime they also have HBO subscription.  I tried both Amazon Prime & Netflix through the service.  I signed up for a free trial and canceled before it renewed into the new month.  

I thought this is one of the coolest ways to handle filtering. You link your accounts to VidAngel and then when you go into VidAngel you can look for a movie or show you want to watch and filter out whatever you want.  They break it down for you a lot!  For instance I wanted to watch a Sci Fi show that looked really good on Netflix.  Of course it's rated TV-MA.  Now this rating can mean a lot of things, but without watching it you really don't know until you get in there.  In fact, this show is what prompted me to start the free trial at VidAngel.  

I watched the first few episodes through Netflix. I was hooked.  However, I was disgusted by all the nudity.  I can handle the swearing for the most part, but the nudity was just gratuitous, uncalled for. It was, as my husband would put it, "putting a wet blanket on the whole thing".  So I signed up for VidAngel. I had watched part of an episode through Netflix the previous day and so this was the perfect way to test it. I started watching that episode through VidAngel from the beginning to see how it went. If I really missed out on anything.  I filtered all Nudity and all the F-words.  I found that I was able to watch the show without any distractions. I really enjoyed the story line so much more. I wasn't irritated or disgusted at the end of the episode. This is a big deal! There have been so many great story lines out there that have had so much over the top nudity and the like in them that I just had to stop watching them, it was disturbing and irritating because I really enjoy entertainment. I like to watch a show, a movie, read a book and really engage in it. I love story lines that are thought provoking and intentionally get you involved with the characters. It can cause so much introspection.

The technical part of this service is super easy. I didn't have any issues linking the accounts, or finding out how to filter. And they did a superb job with the transitions from scene to scene.  Sometimes, when you filter something out it can seem like it's choppy or cut, but this almost seamed seamless to me.  As to removing the profanity, it just blanks out the words, no beeping - just silence where it would have been.  Of course, that also means that if you have a large amount of dialogue with a lot of profanity in it , most of words won't be there.  However, in this case because the writers only used the profanity in a way that could make sense in those situations, it didn't seem strange. The reason I haven't told you the name of the show is because I don't want anyone to watch it unfiltered.  I don't think it would be a good idea at all.

I am hoping that over time we can see more subscriptions for filtering available through VidAngel.

Another nice thing is that you can get a monthly membership or can just buy credits through them to use as you like.

I also used the service to watch a movie on Amazon Prime and it did well with that one too. There wasn't all that much nudity in the movie, but there was a decent amount of profanity that I filtered out a lot of it.

Some of you might want to argue about creativity here.  That isn't the way that the director or the screen writer intended the film to be. Well, to you I say this: This world we are living in today isn't the world God intended. I think enough said on that subject.

Wrapping it up

So, if you are looking for some good clean movies or you are looking for a way to watch movies and TV shows a little more filtered, then these are definite good services for that.


Philippians 4:8

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.