Its a selfish person who says they don’t need Jesus, its not about you. Jesus looks at this world and sees all the pain and suffering and we look back at him and wag the finger saying well if you were real you would come and make it all perfect surly?
But Jesus looks back and says lets do something about it together, if your blaming me you must believe in me otherwise you wouldn’t be talking to me as if I was real, If i'm real then the only question why are you questioning GOD? Is it that you think you know better? Do you look at the whole world, do you see every human heart?
Have given your only son in the battle to make things right? Can you look the sick, doing, lame, blind, single mum, drug addict, suicidal teenager in the eye and offer hope for a future beyond what they see around them? If so then step up to the mark, create an organisation that can carry your message all around the world, every hour of every day constantly from this point on and forever. If your message is so good let it stand the test of time, would people die for it, would people build their lives around you, right songs, poetry, paint, build design amazing landmarks of beauty so that people can be drawn to the message of Hope and know that all this pain is not all there is that there is life beyond, their is justice, there is a reward.
If you cant, then turn around and look for someone else to wag the finger at, maybe Buddha, Muhammad, the American president, the coalition government, your dad! OR you could sit down stop complaining, stop looking for a scape goat, stop being angry at those who have a hope and try and figure out what your going to do about your world, country, city, school, work place, family...and you.
Saturday, 16 October 2010
why bother being bothered!
Worship is about creating an environment through planning, strategy and preparation that allows people to respond to God. Its like the road traffic system there has to be a structure within which people can move freely towards the destination which in worship is to towards the reality of God.
Its like your favorite sofa that supports, relaxes and comforts you a safe environment in which to experience peace and rest. Its NOT like a man draw! Everything just thrown together haphazardly when you don’t know where to put it! Man draw is for things that are left over out of place and don’t really belong! Worship is about intentionally creating an environment in which spontaneous praise can be given.
Its like your favorite sofa that supports, relaxes and comforts you a safe environment in which to experience peace and rest. Its NOT like a man draw! Everything just thrown together haphazardly when you don’t know where to put it! Man draw is for things that are left over out of place and don’t really belong! Worship is about intentionally creating an environment in which spontaneous praise can be given.
Tuesday, 21 September 2010
I love it when a plan comes together..or dosn't...?!?
God is constantly pushing me to a place of dependence upon him. He hates it when I become dependant on my own abilities. He loves to see me thrive but not to see me comfortable.
I used to think there would come a point when life slotted into place when all my ducks where lined up in a row but now I realise that life is life and it is ever changing! Just when life seems to settle something happens that throws a spanner in the works.
For the disciples it was the Jesus death. Everything was going well they thought they had found the promised and long awaited messiah who would call down heaven to earth to wipe away the evil Roman Empire and free the Jews as the chosen people of God.
THERE WAS A PLAN and there was a set way things were meant to happen and then SUDDENLY everything changed! Jesus died and their world was rocked, all preconceptions went out of the wondow and the future was uncertain the parameters of life had shifted and they did not know what to do! They all respond differently to this unexpected turn of events, despite the fact Jesus had been warning them it would happen for some time!
Our worlds are the same, we look towards a plan a future goal and then the horizon shifts what was clear is not so clear and we have to adjust. Change is the ever constant.
In the midst of daily life the thing that never changes or turns is the words on the page of the Bible, well actually, not so much the physical words, the ink on paper BUT the spirit of the word that is alive. When we doubt, when we fear, when our worlds are changed and we are not sure what to do or how to solve the problem to get to solid ground again...HIS WORD remains HIS NAME is still JESUS and he is still looking for ways to love you.
Wednesday, 15 September 2010
GET FRUITY!
Practical Christianity.(Galations 5)
So people say Christians are a bit fruity, to many fruit loops in the church!!! well... I agree...one can never have too much fruit.... but more of that later!
meanwhile back at the ranch...
here is a quick little blogg of some of the things I have learnt about how to do this thing called Christianity, how to become more like the person I am following when I cant 'see' him, 'hear' him, 'touch' him in the same way I do with my other relationships....
Fill your ears with his words and songs, Let your mind be filled with his promises:
1. Podcasts
2. Worship music
3. Listen to the bible
4. Discuss with friends
Surround yourself with people who know Jesus better than you, for longer than you.
1. Get a role model
2. Give others permission to tell you what to do
3. Be in church at as many events as possible.
4. Ask questions all the time.
Keep changing where you meet Jesus and what you do when you meet him.
1. Physical location
2. Read the word in chunks, in bits, sing, shout, lye in your back listening to music for an hour.
3. Walk, run.
4. blogg
Experiment with the spirit.
1. Pray for people
2. Ask for stuff
3. Ask him to touch your mind, body and spirit.
let me know how it goes as you put these things into practice...I guarantee your life will start to change and you will start to be a little bit more like the Christians that Paul describes in Galatians 5...CHECK IT OUT and get fruity!!!!
So people say Christians are a bit fruity, to many fruit loops in the church!!! well... I agree...one can never have too much fruit.... but more of that later!
meanwhile back at the ranch...
here is a quick little blogg of some of the things I have learnt about how to do this thing called Christianity, how to become more like the person I am following when I cant 'see' him, 'hear' him, 'touch' him in the same way I do with my other relationships....
Fill your ears with his words and songs, Let your mind be filled with his promises:
1. Podcasts
2. Worship music
3. Listen to the bible
4. Discuss with friends
Surround yourself with people who know Jesus better than you, for longer than you.
1. Get a role model
2. Give others permission to tell you what to do
3. Be in church at as many events as possible.
4. Ask questions all the time.
Keep changing where you meet Jesus and what you do when you meet him.
1. Physical location
2. Read the word in chunks, in bits, sing, shout, lye in your back listening to music for an hour.
3. Walk, run.
4. blogg
Experiment with the spirit.
1. Pray for people
2. Ask for stuff
3. Ask him to touch your mind, body and spirit.
let me know how it goes as you put these things into practice...I guarantee your life will start to change and you will start to be a little bit more like the Christians that Paul describes in Galatians 5...CHECK IT OUT and get fruity!!!!
Tuesday, 31 August 2010
Church is an exact science.
Most of science is stumbled upon, discoveries that have changed our understanding and our very existence have been accidents, serendipity, discovered on the journey when looking for something else.
This is what happens in church, people discover something new....
When we encounter God that part of our being that is called spirit gets a jump start, it gets a shot of red bull, it has its muffler taken off! Suddenly your mind can’t figure out the feeling and your body can’t explain the emotion and is thus left with an odd sense that all your being thought it knew for fact has now felt something that it has never felt before and that does not fit inside a known box!
So what do you do with this? Like any good scientist who has discovered something new by accident he tracks back to see if he can define the parameters and boundaries with in which this reaction occurred. He does this to see if he can control those parameters and then to recreate them in the HOPE that he will be able to recreate the same response, to create the same results. In other words you seek to know if it was a one off or was is this something you can do again, and again, and again. Thus with church and this feeling that your mind can’t figure out and your body can’t explain that you have accidently stumbled upon you look to find the way to capture that experience again to see if it was chance, a one off or was it ‘real’. A good scientist looks to replicate the experiment to define the parameters and to set a control!
The experiment called ‘church’ can be repeated, it can be defined and it can most defiantly be repeated! You can pick yourself up every Sunday and walk into church; you can meet people who exude this feeling, who use words that make your spirit jump such as Jesus and eternity. You can sing the words on the screen, you CAN raise your hand when asked and you can laugh when things are funny, you can listen and take notes as others do around you as you hear words from the Bible and you can open your mind and heart to something beyond the control of your knowledge and to-date experience.
so now you have repeated your experiment and event pushed the boundaries of it, developing it, adding a few more elements and find that the results are the same...a feeling of peace in your mind that you can’t explain, a buzz in your heart that is untraceable, a sense of acceptance amongst relative strangers who somehow feel closer that brothers!
Experiment complete you walk out of the door, but then you stop, turn, and look back into church and all of a sudden tears fill your eyes, it’s like your bathed in light that exposes all that you hate about yourself from your physical appearance to you dark hidden thoughts anger and inadequacies but theSe are not tears of fear, or rejection or of a broken heart they are tears of joy. even though you feel completely exposed you feel completely whole! You know that you know that it matters not what you have done or will do ever again but that you are loved with no stringS attached.
It is this sudden rush, this exhilarating high that causes you to run back into church again, and again, and again. You have found that the scientific method applied to church has proven more reliable than any other experiment in the known universe.
This is what happens in church, people discover something new....
When we encounter God that part of our being that is called spirit gets a jump start, it gets a shot of red bull, it has its muffler taken off! Suddenly your mind can’t figure out the feeling and your body can’t explain the emotion and is thus left with an odd sense that all your being thought it knew for fact has now felt something that it has never felt before and that does not fit inside a known box!
So what do you do with this? Like any good scientist who has discovered something new by accident he tracks back to see if he can define the parameters and boundaries with in which this reaction occurred. He does this to see if he can control those parameters and then to recreate them in the HOPE that he will be able to recreate the same response, to create the same results. In other words you seek to know if it was a one off or was is this something you can do again, and again, and again. Thus with church and this feeling that your mind can’t figure out and your body can’t explain that you have accidently stumbled upon you look to find the way to capture that experience again to see if it was chance, a one off or was it ‘real’. A good scientist looks to replicate the experiment to define the parameters and to set a control!
The experiment called ‘church’ can be repeated, it can be defined and it can most defiantly be repeated! You can pick yourself up every Sunday and walk into church; you can meet people who exude this feeling, who use words that make your spirit jump such as Jesus and eternity. You can sing the words on the screen, you CAN raise your hand when asked and you can laugh when things are funny, you can listen and take notes as others do around you as you hear words from the Bible and you can open your mind and heart to something beyond the control of your knowledge and to-date experience.
so now you have repeated your experiment and event pushed the boundaries of it, developing it, adding a few more elements and find that the results are the same...a feeling of peace in your mind that you can’t explain, a buzz in your heart that is untraceable, a sense of acceptance amongst relative strangers who somehow feel closer that brothers!
Experiment complete you walk out of the door, but then you stop, turn, and look back into church and all of a sudden tears fill your eyes, it’s like your bathed in light that exposes all that you hate about yourself from your physical appearance to you dark hidden thoughts anger and inadequacies but theSe are not tears of fear, or rejection or of a broken heart they are tears of joy. even though you feel completely exposed you feel completely whole! You know that you know that it matters not what you have done or will do ever again but that you are loved with no stringS attached.
It is this sudden rush, this exhilarating high that causes you to run back into church again, and again, and again. You have found that the scientific method applied to church has proven more reliable than any other experiment in the known universe.
Friday, 27 August 2010
Remain risky
Jesus mixed things up, he came against the status quo, he redefined the rules and environment he was in. He is our ultimate example of freshness!
Jesus was never NICE, he was good! Jesus was not a safe person to be around you never knew when people might rise from the dead or pigs might jump of cliffs or water would turn to wine! You never knew when he would accept the crowds or walk away you where always glued to the TV set of Jesus radical life style, the mystery of God on earth in human form walking talking and redefining the way to do life.
He kept moving from place to place releasing fresh words and actions, fresh ways of doing life for all to see. He was a risky person to walk with. And unsurprisingly his followers became like this. I think of the women at the well who risked all to run back to her home that she was rejected from and shout Jesus fame at the cost of death.
I think of the prostitute who crashed an upper class dinner to break a year’s worth of wages all over Jesus feet and to cry and weep and wipe the dust with her hair with little regard to the high class society of religious leaders stood on staring, judging her, condemning her, wanting to reject and remove her! These women risked a lot to shout Jesus fame.
I think of the new church who ran out into the streets shouting his name, of Paul who could not be contained in preaching Jesus, and Peter who traveled all over the know world to plant churches! These followers of Jesus kept it fresh by not being afraid to master the art of risky living for a greater return in heaven than on earth. Using this as the measure how fresh are you?
But their lives were filled with the freshness of the adventure of abandoning all to a cause.
Someone once said you’re not really living until you find something worth dying for!
Jesus was never NICE, he was good! Jesus was not a safe person to be around you never knew when people might rise from the dead or pigs might jump of cliffs or water would turn to wine! You never knew when he would accept the crowds or walk away you where always glued to the TV set of Jesus radical life style, the mystery of God on earth in human form walking talking and redefining the way to do life.
He kept moving from place to place releasing fresh words and actions, fresh ways of doing life for all to see. He was a risky person to walk with. And unsurprisingly his followers became like this. I think of the women at the well who risked all to run back to her home that she was rejected from and shout Jesus fame at the cost of death.
I think of the prostitute who crashed an upper class dinner to break a year’s worth of wages all over Jesus feet and to cry and weep and wipe the dust with her hair with little regard to the high class society of religious leaders stood on staring, judging her, condemning her, wanting to reject and remove her! These women risked a lot to shout Jesus fame.
I think of the new church who ran out into the streets shouting his name, of Paul who could not be contained in preaching Jesus, and Peter who traveled all over the know world to plant churches! These followers of Jesus kept it fresh by not being afraid to master the art of risky living for a greater return in heaven than on earth. Using this as the measure how fresh are you?
But their lives were filled with the freshness of the adventure of abandoning all to a cause.
Someone once said you’re not really living until you find something worth dying for!
Keep moving.
In the desert when the Israelites came up across a barrier such as a big sea, Or later when they ran out of water Gods command was to keep moving! When something that was bigger than themselves threatened to contain their growth and stop them from advancing God stepped in through the power of his spirit within mosses to strike the water or the rock that parted or broke to release fresh ways in the desert and fresh water from dry rock.
Hope city church Liverpool is in miracle territory as we move to the Black-e GOD HAS MADE A WAY! He is the author of this BIG MOVE he is not wanted us to stay contained in a local area or as a church of 150 his desire is to break the dry ground to lift the lid and to release a freshness over us and thus has opened the way to the Black-e and to the heart of the city.
Hope city church Liverpool is in miracle territory as we move to the Black-e GOD HAS MADE A WAY! He is the author of this BIG MOVE he is not wanted us to stay contained in a local area or as a church of 150 his desire is to break the dry ground to lift the lid and to release a freshness over us and thus has opened the way to the Black-e and to the heart of the city.
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