do you see yourself as rich? i would imagine probably not if i had to put myself on a wealth scale i would probably rate myself as below average i would compare myself to the people i know who have so much more than me - own houses, better cars, holiday house, huge screen television, able to fly overseas on holiday (or even have lavish comfortable holidays here), more impressive toys and so on would [...]
so i have been feeling quite far or distant from God for quite a while – for the second half of last year it was cos i was caught up in sin and most particularly time wastage but i sorted that out – confessed and made right with God, and people – just before Summer Camp - and have been trying to get into a place of spending more time seeking God and resting in [...]
it is important for us to realise just how insulting and offensive the son’s attitude towards his father is, because otherwise we will never fully ‘get’ just how incredibly over-the-top ludicrously insane the father’s response is. the father hands over to his son the inheritance (and if it is half of everything he owns then it must be at cost to him and to his lifestyle and comfort/luxury) and the sons heads off and wastes [...]
“Sometimes i wish i was dead. Wait, not me, you.” [Jack Handey] ah, one of my most favourite darker deep thorts by JH. and never true in my life in that i ever wished someone else was dead but on thursday nite i did want to walk down into the audience and slap a few people in the head (i didn’t!) i was asked to provide some entertainment at a herschel-and-other-schools christian union pizza and [...]
this is an article/letter by one of my modern day heroes - a guy called shane claiborne who wrote one of my top three books 'The Irresistible Revolution' which was basically a search for any Christians who actually believed and lived out the stuff of the Bible - highly recommended if you have not read it yet - and who i got to hang out with for a bit at a surfers conference two years [...]
another excerpt from Erwin McManus 'an unSTOPPABLE force' - just buy it already! 'And though i'm advocating our need to become a movement, I would like to encourage you to give up on keeping up.' then a little later: 'The first-century church didn't keep up with its time, didn't spend its energy keeping up with its time. The first-century church changed time. It rewrote history. It radically impacted culture. The church was the forerunner, not [...]
that i am grappling with lately: one of them is taking the incredible life-transforming simple-gospel stuff we are reading about in books like Shane Claiborne's 'The Irresistible Revolution' and Erwin McManus 'an unSTOPPABLE force' and Rich Stearns 'The Hole in the Gospel' and even going back to the legen....dary Keith Green's 'No Compromise' story and not just being excited and 'challenged' and 'changed' by it, and not just talking about it and maybe looking down [...]
so i guess in some small part it was thankx to a stalkery type australian girl that me and tbV started thinking about what we eat and then started No-Meat-Thursdays which has actually been quite a rad extension of our lives and only occasionally interfered with 'normal' life - so every Thursday we don't eat meat just as a small small step in terms of meaning one-day-a-week's less meat needing to be there i guess [...]
'"We're looking for a church that meets our needs." It seems like I've heard this one a thousand times. The phenomenon of church shoppers has profoundly shaped the contemporary church. The entire conversation is not about relevance but convenience. The focus is not in serving the world; the church itself became the focal point. Our motto degenerated from "We are the church, here to serve a lost and broken world" to "What does the church [...]
so i have decided to try and be less judging of people this year - i think a couple of times this last year it hit me how judgemental i have become - i don't think i used to be that way but definitely an area i want to work on - i guess this last week nailed it home as i attended a funeral (my best mates mom in law) and a wedding (our [...]