Well a few great things have happened since I started to really try and devote myself to God a few weeks ago.

a) My sister, who has chronically hated going to church and wavered on not believing in God at all, has apparently begun praying every night and trying to clean up some of her bad habits.  This change followed soon after we all went to see Passion of the Christ, so that may have had something to do with it.  Either way it's a big Praise God for me.  For a minute there I thought she was going to hell and didn't even care.

b) I always listen to the contemporary Christian radio station when driving somewhere.  One of the kids I drop off at the bus stop everyday just started singing along with some of the songs one day.  Now his parents are Christians, but I still find it inspiring that someone his age (about 7 or 8 years old) has a heart open enough to praise God (even if it's just because the song had a catchy tune) in the presence of someone not even related to him

Anybody know of some good Christian emo pop punk bands?  I don't know if that's a real genre or not but I wasn't sure if it would be frowned upon for me to actually mention the bands that sound how I like since they're secular.  I guess the mods will edit it or let me know if it is, so here goes anyway.  I'm looking for sounds like Box Car Racer, Jimmy Eat World, The Used, The Smashing Pumpkins, Finch, Live, Bush, The Foo Fighters, etc etc I guess that carves out what I mean pretty well

Thanks for the welcome folks and the encouragement.

MDean, I have to admit that I was quite blessed to have the relatively church-saturated upbringing that I did.  It's made things a lot easier once I have come around to accepting the truth.  It would definitely be great if we could strengthen and support each other's faith.  Look forward to chatting with you around the boards!  

Ha wow, your art is quite radical.  I draw too, but I'll have to scan my gallery to sift out the stuff that might be offensive to God then I may post the link.  I don't color much/very well though.  The bands you mentioned interest me so someday when I'm not on dialup I'm gonna have to check out your songs!

Hi I'm Brandon, I'm 23 and I guess I've been a Christian all my life except for like a 7 month period a year or so ago where I decided I would live like I didn't believe in God to see if things went badly for me as proof that my Christianish lifestyle was in fact helping me live a happy and relatively successful life etc.

Pretty much I'm here because I like talking with people on message boards and I've decided recently to try and devote myself fully to the things of God, so I figured I could channel all my message-board-posting energies towards some spiritually edifying discussions and stuff.

I don't know how active I'll be though, because I've never really been interested in the things of God, just kinda raised in the church and generally came to the conclusion that either God is real and I don't wanna go to hell, or God is not real and I really don't know what will happen after my time on earth has expired but everyone else who has ever died that I know of subsequently doesn't get to participate in life on this Earth anymore, so living a life of worldly pursuits is pretty pointless anyways.

I personally would not say that I "love" God or Jesus, because it seems like all the mess and confusion that exists in the universe was originated by Them, since everything including the universe itself was originated by Them, and I was involuntarily thrown into the middle of it by the combined will of Jesus and my parents I guess.  I say this with an apologetic and humble disposition though, since I'd hate for Him/Them to send me to hell and I do appreciate the dying on the cross stuff and I guess once I get off my lazy behind and break my worldly habits and get into the Bible and fellowship with Him more I'll realize that His love is infinite and wonderful and stuff and I'll understand the meaning of it all. (heh, I'm about 8 chapters into the purpose driven life So far I've been too lazy to continue though it was a really eye-opening experience so far )

So right now, pretty much I'm kind of re-evaluating everything in my life to try and let all of the things I do glorify God, and it's really only been about 4 weeks or so into it, so I'm still in the habit of basically living for my next violent magical samurai gunslinging soldier comic book/manga/movie/video game fix.  But my discipline is getting better every day and I'm beginning to think living a Christian life might not be so boring after all.