OH NO!

My hair straightners refused to turn on this morning! Oh my gosh! What do I do?

I was hoping it was the fuse in the plug so I took them to work with me (I hate to say it, but I had to get the men to tell me what to do to change the fuse!) It turns out it wasn't the fuse. THey are just simply broken.

I guess it shows that I am addicted to my hair straightners!

What a weekend part 1

I have had a great weekend (which I am classing as starting on Thursday evening for the sake of this exercise)! I have been driving a lot but have had a great time, and in the process learnt a lot of lessons. I will share some with you now.

• A bunch of 20-something girls, really can put the world to rights with a bit of chocolate and diet coke! - and can talk ALL NIGHT without running out of things to say!
• Its easier to talk to people than I think it is!
• I am not alone in my insecurities and its ok to talk about them.
• The older generation might have many opinions and attitudes I don't agree with, but they have a lot to teach me and often the frustration is there partly because I don't take time to understand.
• Planning usually pays off.
• You can go back home without having to go back.
• The Salvation Army, for all its faults, is an amazing community to be a part of, and, in general, the heart of the movement is in the right place.
• Christians can be really cool people.
• The M25 is surely one of the most stress-inducing places in the world!
• You can't control everything - and sometimes you have to just shrug your shoulders and say - "Oh well!" Even if it means missing your friend getting married because the traffic will not move!
• People who I find quite intimidating are often the people that I can have the best conversations with when I get past worrying about what they think of me.
• I should embrace how weird my faith seems to people who don't know God.
• I love seeing my friends happy.
• Maybe I don't need to prove to people that I think or feel certain things - maybe its ok to actually believe myself without other people verifying it first.
• You can improve your life by putting lots of effort into a number of exercises, but that actually God's peace comes through rest - just knowing and loving Him.
• God works in mysterious ways!
• God works!
• Frinds are one of the best thing in the world.

"I am leaving you with a gift—peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don’t be troubled or afraid." John 14:27

Performance or Worship part 3

I just had some musings today. Usually when I write a blog it is because something has been weighing heavily on my mind and I need to splurge! Today, this blog is not like that. I had a few random thoughts and thought why not blog them. So I don't know how this post is going to end up! Scary!

My series on perfomance and worship (if you can call it that since there have only been two previous posts and they happen, like, once every 6 months or something) has created a fair bit of discussion in the past and so I recognise that its not necessarily that simple an issue. In the past, my thoughts have centred mostly around worship through music. Today they are about love. Loving people, I know, is a subject that is so fundamental and which a lot of people feel very strongly about, and I don't intend to squash its importance, or to suggest that I know anything about it really. I am very weak in this area generally, and I need to develop my love for others. In fact, it is because of this that I write this blog. I realise my weakness, and want to love other people more than I do, but the thought of that has sparked questions in my mind (as per usual).

How can we ensure that loving others becomes an act of worship, not a perfomance? We are always being reminded in church (rightly so) of the need to love each other. When this doesn't come naturally, what is the best thing to do? If you choose to try hard to love people, practically speaking, do you not run the risk of putting on a performance. Making it look like you love other people when you really don't?

I was on facebook today nd noticed that I had 11 notifications I hadn't checked. Most of them are rubbish I don't need to know, but today I had a notification telling me I had sent two people some 'Luv'. In all honesty, I don't recall doing that, and without meaning to be cruel, if I had intended to, there would have been others I would have sent it to fisrt (except for one of the people, who though I don't speak to that much actually is a really nice guy and I haven't spoken to for ages and it reminded me of him and I thought, 'yeah, I do want to send him some Luv; to all those out there who have tried in the past to matchmake me - I do not mean this in a romantic way - stop getting your hopes up!). So apart from being concerned that facebook was sending out 'Luv' on my behalf, it made me think - when I send out 'Love' as a Christian, mostly I should be sending it out without realising it - shouldn't I? Showing people I love them by my actions and my way of living, without first making a conscious choice to, surely shows them that the love is real.

Rob Bell once made a comment on one of his Nooma DVD's - 'Sunday' (which by the way, whoever's it is, I still have - make me give it back!) which was that if a husband bought his wife some flowers, she would be so happy and so chuffed that he had thought of her. If he then turned round and said, 'well, it was my duty', it kind of takes the romance out of it. She didn't want his duty, she probably didn't even care that much about the flowers, what she wanted was his heart.

So when loving others doesn't come naturally, what do you do. How do you love them without it becoming a duty. How do you turn it into worship and not performance. I have thought about this a little, and the best answer I have come up with so far is that the more time we spend with God, reading the Bible, praying, and falling in love with Him personally, the more we are likely to naturally love other people, thereby avoiding this whole issue. But what about in the meantime. Is there a difference between 'choice' and 'performance' as in choosing to love someone as opposed to not loving them but making it look like you do. Can you tell your heart to do something? I know you can change your mind, can you change your heart?

WOW!

Look at this!

Spoken in our time?

I think you are all going to groan. I am seriously back on the, 'yeah, but...' wagon again. So what has triggered it this time?

We sing a really lovely song in songsters called 'Lights on a Hill'. I love the song, its gorgeous, but it has some really intesnse words. I think I have mentioned before that we are blessed to have a leader who makes us think about the words we are singing. I always think about the words I sing. I can't help it, its the analytical part of me, but sometimes I find myself wondering whether other people do. And if they do, why does nobody stuggle to sing them like I do? Why does no-one question their validity as often as I do? I have got myself all worried about it today - worried that my experience as a Christian is not strong enough to be able to justify what I sing about. Don't worry - its not me doubting my faith - in fact, that feels quite solid right now - its more about me having an answer for the things I sing. Since working in a non-Christian environment I have started noticing 'Christian language' a lot more and have become so aware of the need to be able to have reason behind the things I say I believe.

It was the following words that have inspired these thoughts today:

'You said that freedom was found in the truth.

You promised captives would find their release,

And chains are broken now, lives liberated now.

Your living word has spoken in our time,

You promised peace the world cannot know,

Commanded stillness to conquer the storm,
And hurtung hearts are healed, painful wounds are sealed.
Your living word has spoken in our time.

You said your love was a gift to the world,

A love so great you were willing to die

And guilt and fear have ceased, love and grace increased.

Your living word has spoken in our time.

So we will carry the truth, the truth in our lives,

And honour that truth in our lives

And we'll be lights on a hill for you, salt of the earth for you,

We'll stand and be strong and be bold for you.'

For me when I sing, I want to sing stuff I can really mean, and really feel. I sing the words, 'chains are broken now, lives liberated now, hurting hearts are healed, painful wounds are sealed, Your living word has spoken in our time' but I have to be honest and say that I can't sing these with a heart full of passion, and emotion. I can't give these words my all, or the emphasis they deserve, not because I don't believe them, but because I haven't had that kind of raw experience. Some people say they have had their lives turned upside down by the Christian faith, but for me, its something I grew up with. I connect more with the words, 'Lord you've been good to me all my life'. I don't know anyone who was right on the edge when Jesus came to save them - not someone I have a long-standing emotional connection with, where I can really see the difference in their lives. I hate reducing words like this to the small petty things I experience - God is bigger than that, much bigger and if I am going to sing these words, I want them to be honest and real.

I think the point that I am trying to make is that I feel like I am wasting some incredibly powerful words. I don't like saying things I don't mean, and when I do mean something, I am desperate for people to understand the depth of feeling that goes along with my statements, but with this - they feel like just words. They aren't empty because I know God does heal hearts and seal wounds and break chains, but they are not full of authenticity either because I don't feel it strongly enough for that. For the most part I am OK with singing these things when I feel like this because I believe that they are true...I just worry sometimes, how do I know we are not all doing that. How do I know for sure that God really really really is doing these things. How can I be sure His living word has spoken in our time. How can I know that it is not just generations of Christian language which gets us all hyped up and filled with emotion, but has no real basis?

I guess I am just sighing over the fact that once again, I have never been in an environment where people really need God because they have literally nothing else left. Where God is absolutely everything to them. Here, in this Country, people live their whole lives without ackowledging God and don't in general look or act that different from me.

For me the key word in the song that gives me trouble is that word, 'so'. 'So we will carry the truth'. Why? Because he has healed our hurts, our pain and broken our chains? I think it has to be more than that. If thats the only reason I carry the truth in my life, then I wont be carrying it that enthusiastically, because I haven't had so much pain that I am literally bouncing off the walls for joy at the healing I have received. I carry the truth because of the things I believe about who God is. Not just because of what He has done in this world, or this life. I believe in an eternal God - not one shaped by my experiences, but one who just is.

I don't want evangelism or sharing God's truth to be reduced to the point where we are just offering another option. Something that will make your life easier to bear, or more enjoyable. Thats a materialistic 'advert style' evangelism. God is more than that. Its not like we are selling something. God's truth goes way beyond this world. That's the main reason I have joy in it, because it is about that which is beyond this world. Otherwise how can we make sense out of suffering or harm or evil in the world?

I guess it stems from guilt (as probably most of my questionning does). I feel guilty that I don't sing those words with tears running down my cheeks at the sheer incredibleness of what God has done for me - the wounds he has healed or the chains he has broken. He has done soooooooo much for me - I don't deny that - He gave me hope - eternal hope, because He has saved me from my sin. He has opened up the way of eternity with God for me when I just simply don't deserve it. That I can sing about with tears running down my cheeks because it means something. Its real, its honest, and I mean it with all my heart. But healing my hurts? Not so much. I guess that feeling guilty that I haven't had enough hurts to be healed from in order to be able to sing that song with meaning is a bit backwards. Am I weird?

Wow!

What a Sunday! I feel like I came away having experienced every emotion under the sun! Well not quite but you know what I mean. It was such a joy to share with Ruth and Chris as they publicly declared their faith and their commitment to God and to our Church by becomming Salvation Army soldiers.

Every time I witness a new enrolment, I come away feeling challenged. The articles of war Salvation Army soldiers commit to are big and tough to live by. Richard got it right today when he said its about being sold out for God. Literally, if I took those articles of war as seriously as I should, would my life look the same? I will let them speak for themselves:

Having accepted Jesus Christ as my Saviour and Lord, and desiring to fulfil my membership of His Church on earth as a soldier of The Salvation Army, I now by God's grace enter into a sacred covenant.

I believe and will live by the truths of the word of God expressed in The Salvation Army's eleven articles of faith.

I will be responsive to the Holy Spirit's work and obedient to His leading in my life, growing in grace through worship, prayer, service and the reading of the Bible.

I will make the values of the Kingdom of God and not the values of the world the standard for my life.

I will uphold Christian integrity in every area of my life, allowing nothing in thought, word or deed that is unworthy, unclean, untrue, profane, dishonest or immoral.

I will maintain Christian ideals in all my relationships with others; my family and neighbours, my colleagues and fellow salvationists, those to whom and for whom I am responsible, and the wider community.

I will uphold the sanctity of marriage and of family life.

I will be a faithful steward of my time and gifts, my money and possessions, my body, my mind and my spirit, knowing that I am accountable to God.

I will abstain from alcoholic drink, tobacco, the non-medical use of addictive drugs, gambling, pornography, the occult and all else that could enslave the body or spirit.

I will be faithful to the purposes for which God raised up The Salvation Army, sharing the good news of Jesus Christ, endeavouring to win others to Him, and in His name caring for the needy and the disadvantaged.

I will be actively involved, as I am able, in the life, work, worship and witness of the corps, giving as large a proportion of my income as possible to support its ministries and the worldwide work of the Army.

I will be true to the principles and practices of The Salvation Army, loyal to its leaders, and I will show the spirit of salvationism whether in times of popularity or persecution.

I now call upon all present to witness that I enter into this covenant and sign these articles of war of my own free will, convinced that the love of Christ, who died and now lives to save me, requires from me this devotion of my life to His service for the salvation of the whole world; and therefore do here declare my full determination, by God's help, to be a true soldier of The Salvation Army.

Its very easy to read these through and think yep, yep, and yep to them all. But when I really read them and think about my own life as supposedly mirroring these standards, I have to question my commitment as a Salvation Army soldier. In all honesty, I don't do all these things. I don't try hard enough to live a sold out life for God. Whats more, I don't often see that as a big problem - why? Because they are hard to live by so its ok if I fail a bit. Take for instance, 'I will make the values of the Kingdom of God and not the values of the world the standard for my life.' What a bold statement that is. Another; 'I will be a faithful steward of my time and gifts, my money and possessions, my body, my mind and my spirit, knowing that I am accountable to God.' I find it so easy to think of some of these things as almost seperate to my faith. I can have God, and still do the things I want to do with my time, or let my mind wander away from God or treat my body however I want and not consider God, or let my spirit become focussed more on what the world thinks than what God thinks. It so easy to make excuses for these things because we live in that sort of culture. But we were also reminded ... 'So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.' Romans 12: 1-2

The point is, have I really been keeping my commitment to soldiership in the Salvation Army? I may be in the minority, but I actually like the military terminology we have in the Army. Why? Because the term 'soldier' suggests a battle - a war - a fight. That is what we are part of, like it or not. When I think of myself as a soldier, it reminds me that I am part of a mission, that there is a purpose to my life beyond that which is right in front of me. But that mission needs me to be committed, to not let other stuff crowd it out. It needs me to take these articles of war seriously. Actually take them seriously - like making it my mission to live them out. I am convinced that if I did this - the passion and motivation in my life would show other people that I am serious about my faith. That my faith is worth being serious about. That it is more than just something I choose to do, or an added extra - it is all my life and it is purposeful.

The response I should have to all this is to repent and start to purposefully make it my mission to live out the articles of war. It would be so easy for me to say I want to and I try to live these out, its just hard, and then I could get away with it. But in all honesty, sometimes I don't try to, or even want to. I feel disappointed in myself that when I go to the enrolment of some good friends, I can't stand with them and say - yes I am fully commited to this too. I feel like a hypocrite - I am a soldier, and yet I am shocked by the articles of war - I have forgotten what they say and what I am meant to be trying to live up to.

I want to say this is a turning point - that I will now be purposeful about living out these articles of war - but will I? I don't want to just say it and then not do it. I want to mean it - but I know that tomorrow I am going to wake up and want something different. That I am going to want to live by the standards of the world. That I am going to want to become all that they ask me to be - and that it is likely that I will be more scared of not meeting the worlds standards that I am of not meeting God's.

Um - to post this or not to post this...that is the question. I guess it looks like I need some lovely friends to pray for me. Sorry for the bleeuurrgghh! I just needed to be honest and get it out. Thanks for reading. Love you all.

What a disappointment!

Don't you hate it when you watch a brilliant advert, and then are disappointed with the product being advertised, or when the product being advertised doesn't quite seem to match the advert itself! Well I just found a new frustrating one!...

There was this great advert - which showed a scene of a woman walking around her bedroom at night holding a baby, whilst a man was asleep in the bed. A man's voice stated "I promise not to pretend I'm asleep when our baby wakes up at 3am or 4am or 5am. I promise never to say 'My Mum thinks you're holding the baby wrong'. I promise not to mention that sometimes when I kiss your beautiful neck it smells of perfume and baby sick. I promise not to join in if my mates sing the theme tune from the Omen, although it is quite funny. I promise to do at least my fair share of nappy changing and night feeding. I promise to tell you often how proud I am of you and how you've made me the happiest dad on the planet. All this I pledge without any pressure from you, my lovely, lovely missus".... Then a voice-over stated "Understanding parents, understanding babies. For infant nutrition trust the experts. SMA, we know."

...And there was me waiting for them to tell me where to find a man like that!!!!!!!