Come and get me.

My name is Chris, I'm 32, wasted a lot of my life, love Jesus, try to preach, mustn't be very good. Beat down, washed out, sceptical,  honest enough, deliberately awkward, hyper, passionate.

I try hard to live the way I should, Gods way. I try hard at trying hard. I pray now and again. I know a good lot of the Bible. I'm as far from perfect as you can get. I mess up more than clean up. I have trust issues. My emotional state is ice cold most of the time. I can't stand idiots, I get frustrated, unhappy, unhinged when people don't keep promises. I say what I feel God wants me to say. I'm passionate about people living the most amazing lives ever, I believe that's with God. I'm unpredictable, unstable and unsafe. I'm me.

So come and get me. Who wouldn't want this fine specimen to speak at their church or youth group or school?

Haha. That's how I feel a lot. I've obviously let myself down. Look I'm nothing, I find it extremely hard sometimes to see what people see in me. I don't understand how I can be loved.

So when I speak about Jesus, it's heavily reliant on God impacting every fibre of my being and giving me the guts to say what He wants me to say. I will never apologise for what I preach or teach.

I think we tend to wait till we're a little bit better than we were before, a little bit more "Christian". We expect our pastors and speakers and leaders to be better people than us. I'm not better than you.

Maybe you think about you the way I think about me. Get over it, I have to every day. The reason I do is because I know I'm called, I know it's my destiny to communicate and speak and see things happen. Things might be stale and slow and the hardest they've ever been at the minute but I won't stop. So get on with it, don't wait to be a better person, don't be afraid to live.

Raw, on the edge.

I'm spent. Drained. Empty. Emotionless. I sometimes try to think that I'm not the only one who feels like this but maybe I am. Maybe people are happy, maybe people don't like to ask questions, maybe people have the capacity to wonder and life is just one fantastically wonderful box of chocolates.

Good for them. I wonder sometimes if I've missed the point of life and of Christianity. How can I feel like this? I feel a little like Solomon might have. He thought too much, understood the futility of life too much, the nature of man and it wrecked his head, made him pensive and depressed. Me too. Because of this he understood the awesomeness of God. Me too. Doesn't seem to make things any easier!

People say we need to follow our dreams and just live life and blah blah blah. People try and fail. People's dreams get shattered. Others dreams become true and more. I've followed mine and I feel hollow. Is it my fault?

All I want to do is communicate my relationship and passion for God, the reality of an awesome God, the truth of the Gospel. I've spoken in a lot of places, raw, open, crazy, passionate. I never get asked back. I'm a preacher without a platform. Am I doing something wrong? Have I got it all disastrously wrong? Have I wasted the last 11 years of my life?

I need answers, sometimes just doing isn't enough. This is raw. It's me. My struggles but ultimately my hope. A hope that I am doing the right thing. So many times I've decided to give it all up but what for?

Wonder

Sometimes I wish I was somewhere else. It's not that I hate my life but there is a massive need for more. I have this deep need to be fulfilled to see the world change to inspire to do what I was created to do.  I find myself dreaming of different scenarios, I write great stories of wonder, excitement, fantasy that never come true.  I find myself crying out to live in my dreams because reality sucks, literally. It sucks the life out of me.  I'm better than this. I realise that's life. Everyone feels this way. Fantasy novels, movies, vampire mania, spiritual books and tv programmes are massive. We need fantasy and wonder from media because we can't generate it in our own lives. I'm writing this on my iPhone, something I'm certain I'll be getting rid of. Technology has made us numb and driven the idea of community and society away from us.  I look back at church history and some of the great revival movements and the main ingredients where truth and wonder. Simple as that. But logic rips apart those ingredients, it creates a mindset where we question and rationalise everything. Christianity becomes a logical liturgy with rules and regulations.  Jesus wasn't logical. In fact he was the opposite. Miracles flew out of Him, compassion changed lives, truth was wired into Him. We try so hard to fit in to society's idea of normal when we're not. Truth and wonder are things we should have that those that don't know Jesus do not. But do we? I need to believe in miracles. I need to believe in truth. In Jesus. 

This is Gonna be fun!

There is something about the excitement and innocence of children that I want back. I fought for so long to not lose it but life happens and we slowly listen to the lies of reality and reason. We've lost our wonder.

I'm sitting in a coffee shop, reading, listening to the world go by and this little boy comes in with his mum. He would be 3 or so. He looks so excited, asking questions, happy, secure. His eyes are dancing. He looks around and says: "this is gonna be fun!" his mum didn't hear him properly so she kept asking "what?" and he repeated it in the same excited tone.

It really made me smile and dream and wish and hope that there was still wonder in the world. He felt the buzz of the life around him, he was just drinking everything in and it amazed him! It was like sitting in a coffee shop sipping his smoothy with his straw was one of the coolest, fun things ever!

When did I last get excited? Actually, last night. I got my birthday present from Helen. Dr. Martens! Flippin' right on. I danced I laughed and smiled and wanted to buy more. I wanted to sleep in them, I felt they were made just for me!! Excited is not the word!

Then I came for coffee and took in all that mundanity and lost that excitement. But maybe there is still wonder in the world. Maybe we just need to forget logic and reason and stop listening to everyone else and live and listen and watch everything around us and get excited.

I love how Jesus talked about child like faith and not worrying and just living and going and doing. We've lost that. Church is a shadow of what it should be because we've logicised God and put Jesus in a box that sits well with our understanding.

I always loved Christmas because it gave a sense of wonder. We lose that after a while and become cynical and flat and hard. There is wonder in Christmas, Jesus coming was miraculous, it was destiny and grace and hope. There is wonder in love.

I think it's time to look at everything and see the wonder and amazingness in it.

In the film Elf, Will Ferrel is so excited about everything, it's infectious. People tell me I'm immature sometimes. If finding wonder in simple things and getting excited about the mundane is immaturity then bring it on. Maturity is over rated and wrong.

Let's start a revolution.

BAH Humbug!!

Over the last few years I have become increasingly fed up with Christmas, I’m becoming a scrooge of sorts. Christmas has lost it’s sparkle. it’s consumerism, running about, not seeing friends that much because they’r so busy or you’re so busy. It’s crap. I watch movies just to get some semblance of the Christmas spirit because I’m not getting it in my life.

I question why people get so excited, how movies can make such a depressing time so magical and amazing and awe inspiring.

I’m bombarded by a Christmas ideal that sucks the life out of me. I don’t need presents all that much, I buy myself enough junk the rest of the year.

I’ve lost the wonder because I’ve missed the point. Christmas is amazing because I’m alive. I mean alive. Jesus alive. I’ve got drawn into the consumerism and selfishness of a season that is just there to make people money and others broke. i don’t make the link between Christmas and Jesus that much anymore. I take Jesus for granted.

This Christmas is a kick up the teeth. It’s not the same as others, maybe that’s a lot to do with this being the first year i’ve been married and the closeness of family becomes even more real, maybe it’s a realisation that this Christmas I can be miserable or I can grasp the fulfilment of a promise made thousands of years ago, grab hold of a love that doesn’t make sense but is mine if I want it and live instead of hiding from feeling.

i listened to a radio station earlier, a Christian one, and a woman emailed in and told a story of how she was paying off some bill in a walmart and this old lady, another customer, started asking her about her family and Christmas. So the woman told her about her kids and all that stuff. When the sales woman person told her how much she owed on her bill, the old lady just said, “that’s ok, i’m paying for that.” It was a hefty ransom apparently, but this lady paid it. Happy christmas.

This made me think of me this Christmas and of the transformation of scrooge and how He started to see the world differently and became an amazing person. 

We can get so tunnel visioned and wrapped up in a lie that we forget who we are and what we can do. i’ve been closed, but this Christmas I need to open up my heart, search for my Bob Cratchet and Tiny Tim and make a difference in every way I can. To enjoy friends and family and strangers and remember that I am really alive this christmas bcause a promise was kept.

Sledgehammer

I met a friend the other night, well one of the young people I have had the misfortune of meeting on my travels!!! I jest of course! He was telling me how he started a blog and how many hits it had in it's first couple of posts. I was excited and surprised and for a split second I thought: "oh crap, he's better than me, his blogs are better". I suppose it's a natural reaction but God very kindly reminded me that it was always my intention to inspire others and to inspire them to be greater than I could ever be. 

After that split second past I got so excited, restored in a way, refocused on why I'm on this planet. I read his blog and it was brilliant, it was so him, so personal, so true! Flippin bring it on, I now pray and hope for more young people to be inspired and I hope that he inspires hundreds and thousands more!!

This got me thinking and hoping and praying. I was pushing God to tell me what my purpose was, why I do what I do. Then the Peter Gabriel song "Sledgehammer" came into my head, it wouldn't leave. "I wanna be, a sledgehammer". Strange? Yup. But I've come to realise that God can speak whatever way He wants.

Bottom line is, I'm a Sledgehammer, I shake things up, knock them down, change the status quo. I make people think. I help them dream. This is what God wants me to do. Simple.

Check out Chris McNaughts blog, write your own, start a charity, leave home and serve God, start making things that make God famous, start a band. Stop for a minute and let yourself be sledgehammered!!

bLInk

I curled up in my swivel chair in my office the other day and pressed my head hard against the cold wall. At times I moved my head back and banged it against the wall. I think I might have been losing it. It felt good. i think I need to do that now. I think we can think and question too much. I think it can turn some of us into full time thought artists and we lose touch and understanding of real life.


For years I watched movies and TV and it caused release. Those things are so much better than life. Life's boring. I used to model myself on characters from my favourite shows. I'm beginning to wish I my life was just a fairy tale, not real, not hurtful, not confusing. 


Maybe we can dream too much. I've been so fed up lately, so down, so depressed that I've been thinking of what it would be like to be in a better place, but it has become a hope, a dream. In the back of my head I've convinced myself things will get no better.


Sometimes we need to blink. When I go swimming I open my eyes under water. everything is blurry, but I see. When I come out of the water, I blink a lot and sometimes wipe my eyes and I see different. Some of us are living under water. we've let ourselves drown in thought and dreams and self pity. Our prayers become inward, our outlook insular. We've become insomniacs of sorts, our lives and outlook are so focused that we forget to breathe and blink and we miss the positives, we miss the bigger picture.


This week I did a crazy thing. I blinked. Things are still a little blurry, but slowly things are changing. I don't feel as close to the edge of the cliff as I was. I'm still struggling through a mudslide, drowning but fighting.


I think God can bring us to this point sometimes. God forces us to blink and see what He sees, even if it's only a glimpse. We can be down and out and depressed and boxed in but when we blink we might just see a small flash or hint of light and that's what we aim for.