Sinner's in the Hands of an Angry God

     Today's sermon was a bit harsh. Growing up with him as my best friend I always knew he was a bit cynical. As a fellow pastor and good friend I feel that he was demeaning and rude about his wording of the sermon. He should of used "wrath of God", "pit of hell", "angry God", and "gone to hell" less frequently in his sermon. The phrases may have offened some of the congreagation and they were unusally harsh. Pastor John said that "The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one hilds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you... his wrath toward you burns like fire; he looks upn you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire" he offened some of the congregation they might not come back because they now feel that God hates them and they feel worthless in everything they do for him and in him.  God is not angry with you, he forgives you for any wrong doing you have done to him or others. God praises in every breath you take you are his creation and he takes pride in that.
        If Pastor John's point of the sermon is that you have to personally experience some sort of change in you before you are allowed to go to heaven he may have needed to try to get the point across differently. He could have told them about the time he had a transforming time when he perosnally experienced God's grace.            Like a time when we were younger, we were sitting in church together as our families usually do and we were praying. After the prayer was over he looked at me and said that God had told him to become a pastor  and to help the people in a time of need. I'm pretty sure he didn't mean by telling them that God hated them for sinning all the time. God meant for John to give loving and inspiring sermons to encourage the people to come back to church, he didn't want him to give frightening sermons that made people feel inferior about themselves especially after the trials. I hope when we meet later today we can talk about how he could help inspire the congregation more.
   

Writing Views

When writing I always have trouble with what I am trying to say. I enjoy writing papers that are more scientific or persuasive. I do better with writing about facts than having to create stories.  I feel like I can never put what I want to say into the correct wording or it just doesn't sound correct when I am trying to say it. With long term writing papers I try to keep myself on task and finish my drafts by certain deadlines I give myself but that usually doesn't happen because I am not very confident with what I write.   I would mainly like to improve upon the ability to keep my paper flowing together nicely in my writing. I feel that my strengths are having a large vocabulary and good sentence structure though I would also like to improve upon that as well.

For the portfolio will we only put final products in it?  How will the portfolios be graded? The units I am the most excited for are; realism, naturalism, and racial issues in america and modernism, post-modernism, and the 21st century. I am looking forward to these units because they have to two novels I have been looking forward to reading. The unit I am least excited for is the poetry. Poetry doesn't appeal to me because I don't like how the poets hide the meaning of their words. I think I will do well on most of the units the only thing I am worried about is the poetry out loud I don't recite things well in front of a class.