using Facebook for the Lord - usurping Facebook! (1 picture + 1 experience with the Lord) 30-day challenge

Yes, you have heard it right, I am speaking about Facebook, the website which some people love and spend a lot of time on (I wonder why and I wonder who...) and which other people hate and speak against! There are so many nasty and not-so-nice things going on on facebook, starting from poking and stalking people to the pictures of the parties and terrible things which you sometimes wish have never heard of / read / seen anywhere... But there is a way, and we all are learning how to do this, to USURP Facebook, that is, Use Facebook For The Lord! Before then though, here's,

1 Picture for Today - The Highgate School

This is Highgate School in North London, in an area called Highgate :) You can visit their website via, Highgate School. Apparently this school is for children / pupils ages 3-18, so it is quite a wide range of ages that are schooled there... This school, just like many other schools in the UK, have a "traditional style" building, with the tall metal fence, the red-brick wall, the old-style construction... - quite a stylish building. Sometimes if you see it at night it gives you the chills, so somber and dark... [Harry Potter style building...] Anyways, apparently this school is less than 20mins walk from where I live, and I discovered it once :)

1 Experience with the Lord today - Using Facebook for the Lord (even Usurping Facebook!)

I'm pretty sure all my readers are on facebook - actually, the way you found out about this article is on facebook! :) People spend hours every day there - it used to be that the young people would hang out in the park or in a young-people-style restaurant, but now everyone is on facebook! You put pictures online, play games, poke people, add friends or remove friends, comment on anything going on(from games to statuses and pictures), post statuses, say happy birthday, etc. For some people internet is just Facebook. [by the way, we can be friends on facebook :) - Stefan Misaras]

Some people condemn Facebook to the uttermost, and speak against it + try to convince others it's bad. And they are right in many ways - besides being a waste of time, Facebook can also accelerate the degradation of humanity if used "not with a vision". There's almost nothing useful one can do on facebook, they say, and the most common status is, I'm bored! Girls are being sought after and poked / friended / commented / etc by the boys, and vice-versa... It's a whole new world...

But can you use facebook with the Lord? Can you use facebook and be on facebook For The Lord? This is the question each Christian needs to ask himself - Lord, how can I be a Christian on facebook? Not just a human being seeking to connect with old friends or keep in touch with friends and family, but to have a proper testimony for the Lord! Not an extremist / radical for Christ, but how can we be proper human beings + proper students / young people / young adults / parents + at the same time having the Lord's testimony there? Well, I have some suggestions, which most of us know / practice...

Disclaimer: Facebook is becoming more and more a very personal, very delicate, and very private thing - no one can give others advice on how to do things on facebook, no one can tell others to take off a picture or re-arrange stuff, no one wants to be tagged in certain places, and many get offended if they are being either mentioned by others / tagged by others / not mentioned or tagged by others. It's strange how people "own their facebook profile" with such a passion... [tip: just wait, these days they are rolling out the New Facebook Profile, with Timeline... - so cool! You will definitely LOVE your profile... O, Lord!]

Being a Christian on Facebook

• Whenever I get on facebook to do anything, I turn my heart to the Lord(2 Cor. 3:16)! This is the first thing and the best thing we can do! Just turn to Him, call on Him, and ask Him about things! Tell Him to protect your eyes and your heart... - Lord, browse facebook with me!
• associate yourself with the right crowd of people! Yes, everyone loves their friends, at school or at home, etc - but the best friends we have are the saints in the church life! We take a stand for the Lord by associating ourselves (in pictures, statuses, events, facebook pages and groups, etc) with the saints!
• Be a fan of Christian Students facebook pages! Find the other Christian Students on the campus and associate yourself with them! In the UK there's Christians at Uni, Christians in Kingston, Christians in Central London, etc...
• Be a fan of other Christian content fan pages on facebook! Since you enjoy it every day, why not be a fan of the Holy Word for Morning Revival Page! And if you're in the Central Line of the Bible / Crystallization-Study of Psalms / other morning revival, find it on facebook!
• Share something about the Lord on your WALL every day! It's not much, and if you spend 2-3hrs on facebook, why not share what you REALLY enjoy with your friends? Believe it or not, but your friends are being entrusted to you by the Lord that you may minister Christ to them!
• Happy Birthday! + add a little prayer / a portion of enjoyment from the Word of God - on the wall of the birthday people... It is so encouraging to not just say "Have a good one" but also impart something of Christ...
• Join some Christian groups - like "The Universal Body of Christ", "Genuine Lovers of Christ", "Morning Revival", "Christian life is a life of living Christ", etc. Of course, you can create your own group with your companions to pursue the Lord together...
• Events - when you have some student welcome dinners, students meetings, young people events, home meetings, etc - create an event and invite the saints and your friends to these!

... these are just some of the many things one can do on facebook to be both a proper human being (catching up with friends and family) and a proper Christian. Also recommending a new Facebook Fan page - Christian Students in Central London :) [see more such facebook fan pages with Christian students via this list online]

about the article lists on stefanm on wordpress.com

I truly apologize for not writing on this blog for a while, but "I'be been busy", as they say. Check out the Cool Articles and the Social Media Article series on my other blog! Though I dodged the twitter thinggie for a while, eventually I gave in to so many of my friends who use it, and I'm on twitter also, writing every day about stuff, especially about website design, website programming, SEO, internet marketing, interesting stuff....(I hope).

Now about the collection of the articles in my link collection(there's also an archive of cool articles/twitter-facebook related ones): There are so many sites out there that write about interesting things related to different niches, and I was thinking to compile them, even to express an opinion about them, and list them! This becomes a more difficult task as the list of such sites increases. Some of them are:

• techcrunch, mashable, smashingapps, readwriteweb,
• engadget, thenextweb, smashingmagazine; sbwire; tech blorge;
• programmable web; seo scoop; webdesign booth; search engine journal; css reflex;shoemoney; 1st web designer; instant shift; blog oh blog; graph paper press; web design dev; design reviver; noupe; doshdosh; seosmarty; creative SEO; outlaw design blog; SEO design solutions;

and many others! Anyways, since so many other people on twitter and their blogs mention these articles, I was thinking even to introduce the most interesting ones of them here, on this blog, with a few words, at least with their main topics. Believe me, some of them are really interesting!

So, in conclusion, follow me on twitter here, or the business account, or the account where u'll get some spiritual nourishment.

Misaras Stefan - challenge - get my name back

right now, if you search on google for Stefan Misaras, you get.... 1410 results, and this blog is not even on the 1st page! The same, if you search for Misaras Stefan, same number of results, just the order changes a little. The results I get are mainly:

• stefan misaras at blogflux - my previous blog, while in Romania;
• misaras stefan at linkedln - business connections and profile;
• misaras stefan at facebook.com - though I don't really like it, I have this listing also;
• stefan misaras at american chronicle - tried once to become a writer, they accepted me, but it didn't quite work. Guess what: I still have a link there with them!
• stefan misaras personal blog at tehnorati.ro - indexed and still there in tehnorati.ro, though the blog does not exist for more than 2 years now....
• misaras stefan profile at tutoriale.ro - I wrote some tutorials, SEO related, in romanian;
• stefan misaras at shoemoney's blog - SEO geek(I hope he still is one) that once made some interesting SEO grey-hat contests;
• stefan misaras at stilxxi.ro blog - I used to manage and post there at my previous job, and I enjoyed it; it may be said that it was there that I got a "passion" for blogging, whether thematic/corporate or personal;
• misaras stefan at globe of blogs - by birthday or by name;
• misaras stefan at live blogs - that's a surprise, but it looks like I'm there too;
• stefan misaras at seopedia blog - recommending the blog I managed, stilxxi.ro/blog;
• stefan misaras comments on spam - a anti-spam mtg we had in Romania once, trying to cure this problem....
• stefan misaras at sparksdirect - in yahoo I'm no 1!

and the list can go on and on. I may add some more links, especially the interesting ones, as I find them - as I find myself online. What's the point? Let me see.... I would like to "claim my name back" - it is in several places online, and so I want now that, if someone searches for

• stefan misaras in google,
• stefan misaras in ask,
• stefan misaras in live,
• misaras stefan in yahoo,

or in any other search engine, my blog, that is, this blog, would be the first result. Let me see: do you think I can do this? We'll try.... organic results and not too much SEO, but just gradually building....