Faith, Love and Christ

So I was reading Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians about a month ago and have found that a couple of verses have really stuck with me...

1 Thessalonians 1:2-3-"We always thank God for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers. We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labour prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ"

I took three things from this that the Thessalonians were doing well:

They were

1. Working by faith
2. Labouring in love
3. Enduring because of Christ

What a great way to live!

Aberdeen

Hi all!

I'm now living and studying in Scotland doing a Bachelor of Divinity (theology) at Aberdeen university.

The course itself has been amazing so far. I have 12 hours of lectures and 2 hours of tutorials each week so it's quite a lot of work! Here's a breakdown of what i'll be studying up till Christmas:

1. Level One New Testament Greek- This has been great, quite a steep learning curve though!
2. Introducing the Hebrew Bible- This is basically an introduction to the Old Testament. Very eye opening!
3. Jesus of Nazareth Life, Teaching, context- Some good critical scholarly study on Jesus and writings about him.
4. Basics of World Religions- I'm really enjoying this module as it's blowing away some previous assumptions i've had.
5. The Rise of Christianity- We're looking at the first 4 centuries of Christianity and it's impact. Again, really interesting stuff!

And uni life in general is a lot of fun.

AND IT REALLY IS MASSIVELY WET UP HERE!

The Good Shepherd

Last night I was reading John 10:14 and was encouraged by its incredibly deep message.

V.14- "I and the good Shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me"

I see Jesus making three statements here.

(1) "I am the good shepherd"- Jesus shepherds us. And he is good! Shepherds will protect, look after and guide their sheep and I love how Jesus uses a term here which everyone in his day would have understood.

(2) "...I know my sheep"- A shepherd would spend so much time around his sheep that he'd know each one well. Jesus is saying that we're his sheep and he knows us completely! And I don't think this is a passive knowing. What I mean is that because Jesus knows us, we each have a unique relationship with him and not a one-size-fits-all relationship. If Jesus shepherds us as a whole body (the church) and individually as well it means that he calls us knowing what we can and can't handle. 1 Corinthians 10:13 "And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear".

(3) "...and my sheep know me"- When we say "I know Jesus" it doesn't mean "I know everything there is to know about Jesus", but instead it means that we're on a journey with Jesus. That means there's no room for religious arrogance! Earlier on Jesus says "But they (my sheep) will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger's voice" (verse 5). To know Jesus is to know his voice. I think this is done through the Holy Spirit by reading the bible, praying and being part of the body of Christ doing life together.

So those are just a few thoughts on John 14. I moved to Aberdeen in Scotland this week for university so now I'm off to find a church I can start going to!

Strength in weakness

Just a few minutes ago I saw a friend of mine's status on facebook...

"I thank God for my lack of perfection, room for improvement = increase in humility"

Recently I've been struggling with the knowledge that I have so far to go in my life. There's always more of the bible to read, let alone other books! More to pray about. More sermons to listen to. More love to give. And I get so much wrong. It's really easy to beat myself up about it all!

I need to breath in and think about what my friend put so well, "room for improvement = increase in humility"

It's interesting how the devil distorts that and changes it from a positive thing to a negative and destructive thing..."room for improvement = you're a failure, a screw up, and you'll never get anything right"

Maybe I need to stop beating myself up about my failures and instead remember what God said to Paul, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness'.

Anyone else need a bit of that?!

Feltham Young Offender Institute...

On Thursday and Friday this week I had the pleasure of working at Feltham YOI reffing at two football tournaments. It's the first time that they've had 60 offenders on their field at the same time playing in a 5-a-side football tournament. It went really well with only one incident on Friday after the matches had finished, which is really amazing considering some of these guys are in different gangs on the outside.

It impacted me a lot just to go into the prison and see the huge effort, through fences, barbed wire, guards and locked doors, to keep these young men from getting out. Feltham has got a bad press, and I understand why, but there is still a lot of good stuff going on there. Some of the guys in there are very dangerous but imagine if there was complete revial in the prison of people turning to Christ! It would be amazing. Imagine if the hours spent in cells were used for reading the bible, praying and worshiping God?! I think there is huge potential there. But it did feel dark in there knowing what some of the guys had done.

As a thank you for us coming in (there was three of us from Kick London reffing) we've been invited back to watch 'Ian Wright's Football Behind Bars' being filmed at Feltham in September. They even said they'll get all the Ex-England players involved to sign a top for us! :-D

Approaching Jesus

Bartimaues was a blind man who came to Jesus for healing. He'd probably been blind for many years and may have received a lot of abuse from the community because of his condition. When he approached Jesus, Jesus asked him "What do you want me to do for you?" (Mark 10:51). Bartimaues said "I want to see!". And in response to this Jesus healed him.

Bartimaues knew what he wanted Jesus to do for him.

Romans 8:26 is a great passage to help us in our prayer struggles

"In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express."

This verse is talking about those deep cries out to God through the Spirit when there is so much going on, that we just don't know where to start in our prayers. But I think there's a difference between that crying out to God, and general non-specific prayers out of laziness. It's not for anyone else to judge where you're at in your prayer life; only God knows where your heart stands.

I was fascinated by the passage of Bartimaues because I wondered how often i'd have an answer for Jesus if he asked me that same question! Do we really know what we want Jesus to do for us?

I don't think it's a bad thing to have general prayers, because at times there is an overwhelming amount to pray for and it's hard to know who or what to start with. It's probably even good to have times of general crying out to God.

But if our prayers are continually general because of laziness (not pain) I think it could come across to God like this: Imagine going round to a friend's house who you don't really want to see, but haven't spoeken to in a long time. You knock on the door and they answer seeming very pleased to see you. They next invite you in but you say you'd rather stay in the doorway. Then he or she asks if you came over to talk about anything in particular to which you reply "errrr i'm not sure to be honest. But do you mind if I just hang around here for a minute? Then I'll leave if that's okay".

That seems really strange to me but sometimes I think that my relationship with God and prayers are like that.

So i'm convinced that Jesus wants us to be specific with our prayers for both ourselves and others. Time and time again in the Gospels we read of people who approach Jesus knowing they need him to heal something specific. Or where people bring others to Christ knowing that they need him in some way. And the Holy Spirit will guide us.

The bible is clear in showing that there's no one way to approach Jesus. So for me, at the moment, the challenge is this.

If Jesus sat down next to me, told me to be quiet and looked me in the eyes right now and asked, "Don, what do you want me to do for you?"...would I be able to respond?

And it's only by the Cross of Christ that we are able to even think about a relationship with our heavenly Father.

Moldova- a lesson in humility and grace

I recently got back from an amazing 12 day mission trip in Moldova, Eastern Europe. It was so fantastic to be there serving alongside the Moldovans in their work. Whilst out there I learnt so much about grace and humility- how much I appreciated others showing me grace, and also how much grace I needed to show others. Especially when everyone is tired and stressed!

Most nights I found myself reading Philippians 2:1-11 which talks about Jesus' humility in being fully human and fully God yet not using this to push others down.

V.3 was a big challenge to me "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves". This really helped me to keep things in perspective during the trip. It's a great verse to have in the back of your mind when you know you should go and do something but really don't want to!

I never blog about my struggles

Why I don't like blogging: because my blogs aren't a journey of my life but a place to bust out some information.

But I want to give a small glimpse of where i'm at in my brokenness.

Recent struggle: Realising how much I am a slave to what others think of me.

Why it's a struggle: Because this sin spreads to all areas of my life. It's ironic and frustrating to realise that I now find myself deep in what I try to turn against.

I know that I can't work my way out of this. And I know i need to rely on God. But it's hard to get out of the mind-set that if I read my bible lots and learn lots i'll get sorted.

Music makes the people come together

Reading 'The Guardian' [first time in ages-thanks to Clare for keeping me humble!] at work today I came across a great story of restoration. For 40 years there have been restrictions which basically stop Cuba having any involvement with the United States. But both Britain's Royal Ballet and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra have been invited by Cuba to play two concerts over four days in the glorious Cuba itself! And team Obama has agreed to a special exemption from this 40-year nonsense!

According to 'The Guardian'...

"The visits will be among the most high-profile cultural exchanges with the West since...Fidel Castro seized power in 1959"

They've done this with the New York Philharmonic before in other places...http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/10/arts/music/10phil.html.

God is always restoring and transforming. Maybe this landmark event will lead to a time of further restoration between Cubans and Americans? As Madonna would say...Music makes the people come together!

Left in the boat

In Matthew 14: 22-36 we read about Jesus (and Peter) walking on the water.

The thing I noticed most reading it this time was that there were 11 other disciples left in the boat when Peter decided to step out and meet Jesus.

12 disciples. Eleven left in the boat. One out with Jesus.

Who wants to be one of those left in the boat?

Turning on my community

So I haven't blogged about what's been going on since I've got back from Canada so I thought I'd do a bit of a double post; a quick update then move onto some other stuff.

Very soon after I got back from Canada I started working for 'Youth For Christ' with a project called 'Kick London'. 'Kick London' is looking to transform the lives of young people through sports. My role is to support the coaches with the sessions they run and also support them through prayer, bible studies and devotional times. The work is challenging but great.

********************************

Now onto what I really wanted to blog about!

I was reading Daniel and was struck by his prayer in chapter 9.

" I prayed to the LORD my God and confessed: "O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with all who love him and obey his commands, we have sinned and done wrong..."

This man has given up the royal food, been used by God to interpret others dreams, been willing to break the law by praying to God, and then got thrown into a lions den for refusing to bow down to anyone but God, yet he says "we have sinned and done wrong".

Daniel just isn't willing to turn his back on his community.

I am so quick to separate myself by saying to God "they have sinned, forgive them" rather than "we have sinned, forgive us".

I can learn a lot from Daniel!

Back in the homeland!

I'm back home in the UK! No more Canada, i'm afraid, but it's great to be back to the homeland. It looks like a fun summer ahead with job hunting, holidays, music and catching up with friends!

Last day at work!

I can't believe it's my last day as intern at Grindstone church! It's crazy how quickly this day has come around. It's been an intense time here, yet September 6th (when I arrived in Toronto) somehow feels like yesterday. What an amazing experience it's been! And I'm so grateful for getting the chance to come all the way out here to Canada to be part of this church. Thanks to Mark Bonam for sorting it all out for me! As the 'worship arts' intern i'm amazed at how much they integrated me into the team; they kept me so involved even though i'm young and not trained! Working so much with Eli, the worship pastor, has been awesome. I've learnt so much and feel this year has led me to a great place in my journey as a disciple of Christ.

What is blocking the release of your Spirit from flowing?

Yesterday in the 24-7 prayer room at Freedom House in Brantford, I read this on one of the prayer walls...

"What is blocking the release of Your Spirit from flowing in this city?"

To me this is a massive question because it can be asked on SO many levels.

"What is hindering You, Holy Spirit, from working fully in my life?"
in my/the Church?(local/global)
in this place?
in this nation?

On a personal level God is working in amazing ways but there are still things I do that may hinder God from moving more powerfully in my life. Just writing that seems crazy...can our stubbornness really stop God Almighty moving?! Surely God can just do what he wants?

The story of the Israelites, led by Moses and Aaron, in the desert comes to mind. If they were obedient would they have been in the desert for so long? Did God stop working? Or did it just take a bit longer?

I don't think we can STOP God in our stubbornness. However I think that sometimes God chooses not to work in ways he would have done if we were obedient. So when we're disobedient maybe God is still working and using us but it's a longer process.

Any thoughts on that? I'm still working through what I think about it all so i'd be interested to hear your thoughts. I think there can be spiritual opposition to what God wants to do as well but i'm not gonna write my thoughts on that now!

So to summerise this post here's a question I want to think about, 'What am I doing, or not doing, that is slowing down what God wants to do through me?'.


Daria (heads up 24-7 for Canada), Matt and I at Freedom House, Brantford.

24-7 prayer: Grindstone weekend of continuous prayer

Last weekend we held a 24-7 prayer room at the church offices here at Grindstone church in Canada. It was an amazing weekend with many people finding out about the 24-7 prayer movement for the first time. The feedback has been phenomenal. On the first night someone wrote in the guestbook when leaving that they were now inspired to pray. After reading that both Matty and I, who set up the prayer room, agreed that if the room closed right then it would have been worth it. But God still continued to do amazing things!

Prayers for Grindstone, prayers for ourselves, prayers of thanksgiving, prayers for others, prayers for our neighbourhood and prayers for the world just covered everywhere.

(All credit for how the room looks goes to Karen Hayes for letting us borrow all her lights, paper, pens, art stuff, table cloths and much more!)

So I move back home to the UK in a month. Time is going fast. I'm so glad I was involved with this before I leave. Now I gotta stay focused and obedient to what I should be doing before I go home. My time here isn't done yet!

The Hammer...

So last night I got back from an amazing five day mission trip in the Hammer (Hamilton!) which is where i'm living here in Canada. Yes you are reading that right, a 5 day mission trip in my 'back yard'.

When you're serving abroad you leave the place. When it's in your own city it's pretty intense as you carry on seeing the same places and the same people even after the mission trip has 'finished'.

I really did find that as we helped out at different shelters, soup kitchens and community centres we kept seeing the same people. It's quite odd walking down the street each day and seeing people that you gave food to, and who opened up to you, the night before but now finding that walking past them with brief eye contact is no longer enough.

Some people's honesty and lack of embarrassment/caring about what others thought of them was refreshing and a lesson to me. It makes me laugh but I'm starting to think that I know some of these people on the streets more than I know people I've had years of 'civilised' conversation with! This makes me think that to some extent politeness can actually stunt relationships.

So i'm back at work feeling kinda drained and challenged but finding it hard not to smile when I think of what God is doing here in the Hammer.
:-)

The beats have stopped

So I'm home now and we're done for the day with all the drum parts finished. We won't be back working on the songs till Tuesday now as Monday is mine and Eli's day off.

I'm off skiing tomorrow. I'm excited as it'll be my first time. It's warm (+8 degrees) so it could be difficult conditions. Eeek!

I guess it sounds like I'm living the high life...here and there, yes I am. But please don't be fooled. I don't write posts about those boring days where I'm sitting around the office doing nothing for 8 hours. Or the doubting days when I wonder whether I have anyone who really knows or cares for me here in Canada. As you can see I tend to only write about the amazing things which are happening and only show the glamorous pictures. Don't get me wrong though. This year has been a massive blessing and i'm so thankful for that.

But maybe I should try and share when things aren't going so good. Hmmm.

E.P recording-Lay those beats down my friend!

Ah guys! So far today has been amazing. Adrian, the session drummer I mentioned in the last post, is in recording drums for my 4 song E.P.

We've got through two songs so far and we're just taking lunch at the moment. After lunch we'll finish tracking the last two songs and should be out by 6 ready for dinner!

It's a lot of fun doing all this!

E.P on the way!

So i've been spending some time writing new material for recording here in Canada. I'm a lucky man. By the time I leave i'll have a four song E.P fully recorded and produced.

Recently Eli has been picking up some new gear for the studio (Allan&Heath ZED 16, Avalon pre-amp, SSL Alpha channel strip pre-amp) which is all sounding great. We've recorded some scratch tracks (acoustic guitars and vocals) and either this Friday or next we'll be having Adrian, a session drummer Eli knows, in to record some drum parts. As Adrian's a friend of Eli he's doing it on the cheap for me. What a nice guy!

This year has really humbled me. With all the things going on there's no way I could have pulled this off by myself. It really is all down to our amazing God and the generosity of others.

The weekend that changed the world

Well not quite the weekend that changed the world, but still...there was so much happening!

On Friday night and all day Saturday I was at the TrueCity annual conference here in Hamilton. TrueCity is a group of churches in Hamilton working together throughout the year to bless the city. This weekend there was worship, workshops, teaching and discussions. On the Saturday afternoon I went to an amazing discussion group about church planting. It was great to talk to people who had lots of years experience in mission and church planting work.

Saturday evening I went straight to a leaving party for the pastor of Grindstone and his family. He's moving on to another church after 8 years of amazing work at Grindstone.

On Sunday it was the usual church stuff in the morning, then in the evening it was SCRUM. This is a church meeting which happens a couple of times a year to discuss happenings in the church. It was pretty intense as there had been lots of changes here at Grindstone (which I may post about at some point). And I had the pleasure of leading a couple of songs at the beginning to calm down any congregants with hot heads coming into the meeting!

I admire pastor Dave and the elders. They were getting grilled by some people and yet still held it together to give solid, calm answers. It will be quite a few years till I could hold myself in a situation like that.

On a slightly different note. HOW GOOD IS THIS PICTURE!

Live music is so intense

Live music is so intense.

I've just got back from the freeway cafe. Me and a friend went tonight to see what was going down. There was this one band playing called 'To Tell' who were great performers and musically very talented. They sounded very much like Ben Folds, so if that's your thing check out www.myspace.com/totell


They come from London as well! Well, London Ontario. Fail.

Let's talk strategy

Well it's fantastic weather at the moment here in Hamilton, Canada. It's raining and about +5 degrees. It really does make me feel like i'm back at home in the UK! It's funny how poorly Canadians deal with rain...but maybe slightly better than how we deal with snow in the UK!

Last week here in Canada it was -25 degrees and blue skies. Beautiful weather but just a bit chilly! It's meant to stay warm for a while before getting colder again in the next couple of weeks.

I've been back at work for over a week now after my trip home to the UK. Having some time back at home allowed me to think about the things I should be doing in my final few months. I want to be more strategic and assertive with my time as if I'm not I'll easily fill my days with things which aren't worthwhile doing. There's still plenty of things to be doing here so i'm excited about this final leg of my Canadian journey.

I'll keep you updated.


(I took this picture last week. No jokes. It was that cold!)

Snow Flake 2009...

What an awesome weekend. On Saturday I was down at Niagara falls for the second time. This time it was for a conference called 'Snow Flake' and not for the 'maid in the mist'! Snow Flake is an annual weekend youth retreat with teaching, worship and lots of other fun stuff. Several people from Grindstone were involved in planning and leading the weekend so it was great to head down for the day and see how it was all going.

The weekend was titled 'Snow Flake 2009-SHIFT' with the theme of the weekend being shifts and changes in life. Great idea for a theme, however, having a big red t-shirt with SHIFT on it can be easily mis-read! When I got offered one for free though I wasn't gonna turn it down!

The location was obviously amazing. From the conference centre you could see both Niagara falls and the Canadian falls. Everyone there took no notice, of course, as if it was the local corner shop or something like that. Oh Canadians!

(That's the Canadian falls in the background)

Fresh Expressions

I've just been checking out a great website called Fresh Expressions. "Fresh Expressions is an initiative of the Church of England and the Methodist Church. It has been going since September 2004. It aims to help Christians of any denomination think about ways of starting and growing fresh expressions of church in their area."

Yes I did just copy and paste that from the website...well I'd just ramble trying to explain it.

It's really fantastic to see some of the stuff going on. I'd highly recommend you checking out the website (http://www.freshexpressions.org.uk/). You know what. Go to www.freshexpressions.org.uk/mixedeconomy RIGHT NOW and download their magazine (free of charge) and read about all the amazing things going down.

'Mission is finding out what God is doing and joining in'...oh yes.

Time to head back to Canada...

Well it's been a great trip back home to the UK. I came back about a week ago and was meant to fly out today but we (me and a friend of mine from Canada) missed our flight because of the aweful weather conditions. Luckily we've been able to book a flight out for tomorrow night though.

We spent this past weekend at carotty and had a great time as you can see below..well I did anyway!

Hiking...

Just looking through some of my pictures I found a couple from when me and my Dad went walking one 'summer' back in the UK. I love hiking! That's one thing I really miss about Britian. Don't get me wrong, there's places to go hiking in Canada but it's just not the same. Maybe it's because it's like -15 degrees outside at the moment (-20 with the wind chill)!

A picture of me standing on striding edge as the misdt comes over

Royal Botanical Gardens...

I just got back from a visit to the Royal Botanical Gardens, a short bus journey from where i'm staying here in Canada.

I ended up going on a long walk through some woodland flood planes which are looked after by the RBG. It was a beautiful, crisp, sunny day as i'm sure you can see from the pictures!

It's only $8 for an adult to get into the RBG so it's very cheap! And it happens to be the biggest gardens in Canada so it's definitely worth a visit.