a flawed man's journey in a world he will never understand..

Wonder

2012-01-21T19:01:00.001Z

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!

2011-12-17T17:09:00.002Z

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!!

2011-12-15T16:17:00.001Z

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

2011-12-08T22:21:00.001Z

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

2011-11-23T16:41:00.001Z

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.

Sick and SCREAMING

2011-11-15T20:46:00.001Z

I get close sometimes to exploding. I mean really exploding. I can have enough of people, have enough of little derogatory comments, sick of looks and traditionalist thought, sick of being told how to live, sick of rubbish football on TV. Just sick of it all.

I question life and it has no answers. I question my role in this world and the answers I get are nothing like what I’m living. Every day I get closer to who I meant to be but it means I get further away from the person I am. I feel disconnected from me, from people, from pretty much everything.

I’m frustrated, I’m shaking, crying out to God that He’ll help me, hoping that He understands. I’ve been like this before and it wasn’t pretty. Things are different now, I have my blogs. Sometimes I’m more personal in this blog than people like, so go read something else.

People read these and speculate on everything and think I’m hinting at things. maybe I am, or maybe I’m just being as raw as I feel, if I don’t throw this out there I’ll find another outlet.

I’m questioning now more than I was last month and I never thought that was possible. I’m also aware that people can get to this place, that people can despair and give up, and walk away and turn away from God. Don’t. When I get to this stage I’m left with a choice, walk away or walk to God and I always realise that I will not and cannot give up on God. I’ve been through to many scrapes with God, I’ve grabbed hold of His promises and I’m not letting go.

Yes it feels like I’m being destroyed but I’ll get through this and I’m not alone.

Stuff will be thrown at you, will scratch and tear at you but stand up and face God, don’t turn your back on Him. Find an outlet, pray, talk, scream if you have to but realise that things can happen and we’ve got the capability for rising out of it and changing things...

Service...what a boring word.

2011-11-12T16:15:00.001Z

I’m sitting in Starbucks, busting my brains, trying to understand what service is all about. i mean the whole Christian thing. Doing stuff for God. I’m speaking tonight about it and I’ve thought about it a lot but I’m struggling to make sense of it.

I love how some people can make Christian service sound so straight forward but I’m not sure that it is. i’m not sure it should be called service. In my crazy, post modern, unrational thinking when i think of the word service i think of slaves, I think of being forced to do something. Or if you think about the “services” you’re talking specialised jobs that not everybody can do. It almost alienates certain people.

Think about missionaries, people think it’s a specialised job, I’m not so sure. Yes you have to be called to go to other countries but it’s not for the chosen few. Is service just doing something in church? Is it a once a week thing and every other Friday or Saturday?

Jesus threw out a lot of stuff about going into the world, preaching the Gospel, doing miracles, ripping it up. That was to his disciples. Does that mean it was just specific to a chosen few? I don’t think so. He told a young guy to throw his life away and follow Him. Just a normal guy. “Give it up and follow me”. That’s scary. maybe that’s service. maybe we can try to rationalise and compartmentalise how we fit into a Christian sub-culture. Maybe we hide behind “service” so that we don’t get close to God.

I’m quite sure Paul’s life wasn’t boring, or compartmentalised. He just seemed to live life for God. He threw Jesus at people, he made them think, he prayed like crazy, argued brilliantly, even his day job was to facilitate his ministry for Jesus. We have this backward. We are part time Christians. We’re saved. Going to heaven. Yippeee dooo daaah! But how do we live? Do we hide from “service” because it’s old fashioned and makes us feel caged? I don’t like the word. It’s culturally uncool. Life start’s when we trust Jesus. It’s a life of listening to God and doing something about it.

When God tells you to do something BIG

2011-11-09T15:46:00.000Z

God tells us to do things all the time. Well He should. I’ll explain. When we trust in God He promises that His Holy Spirit lives within us, we connect to God, we pray to God, grow to love Him more and know Him more. I think that in getting to know God more we hear Him more, when we’re praying, reading the Bible, watching TV, having a conversation, watching people, events that happen in our lives.

Most of us ignore it and put it down to our imaginations. Most of us ignore what Jesus says about giving it all up and following Him. We have selective hearing. so when God blasts through our indifference and ear plugs it totally blows us off course, we feel derailed and scared. Maybe we shouldn’t.

God’s been prepping me for months. Little things, I’ve tried to ignore it but i know God’s speaking to me. I’ve started to listen and process what God is saying to me. Praying about it, reading chatting, praying, thinking. In the last month or so God has boom shaka laka-ed my life. I’m convinced He’s leading me into something massive. i don’t know what it is but man this is really big. It means big change, it means big reliance on God, it means going forward not knowing what’s round the corner.

So were do I start when God asks me to do something BIG with my life? I start listening. I unpack months of hints, some subtle most not so subtle and piece together what god is saying. i start seeking God and waiting on Him and pray like mad and realise that this is the most important thing in the world to me.

When God tells you to do something BIG and you haven’t a clue where to start or what to do, ask Him questions, you’ll find that most of the time He’s already answered them.

Christianity or just another lifestyle?

2011-11-09T15:20:00.000Z

I watched this show on TV the other night called Tribe. It was about this guy that goes to the deepest darkest jungley parts of the world and lives with the long lost tribes there for a while. some of these tribes are dying out, a way of life and civilisation that soon will be lost and forgotten. I watched as a guy from the Penan tribe in Malaysia told of how soon because of deforestation his tribe would die out and there would be nothing of them left. It was sad, even for me, I don’t usually get sad. but this guy was so passionate about his way of life, a way of life that is so far removed from any we could understand in our culture.

As I watched I thought of what would happen if someone told them about Jesus. I wondered what would happen if they accepted Jesus as their saviour. I was on a day dreaming role, thinking of how their lives would be better and cooler and safer and different. Then it hit me hard, but how? How would their lives change? I was thinking they would have hope and greater support and better housing and better technology and an introduction in “civilised’ society. How DARE me!!! I remember sitting in a missions class in college and learning of how in the early days of missions in Africa, the missionaries told the people about God but in actual fact these people became westernised and their culture came under threat by a regime of religious lifestyle and western theologies and philosophies.

I don’t think much has changed. I think we evangelise with the expectation that the person will change, and they will, God will do some mind blowing stuff IN people’s lives. but we expect people to change their lifestyles and attitudes and culture and mould into a dogmatic, narrow life view. We as the Christian Church are selling a lifestyle alternative, a religious system to the people of this world. Jesus just becomes a selling point, an enticement. We see people trust Jesus and we automatically want them to denounce who they are, their hopes and dreams, their style, their cultural preferences.

Jesus said “the truth will set you free.” But what is truth when it is mixed with our own western world view, were we think people are only happy with safety and comfort. Jesus is NOT safe, I am not preaching a feel good theology, I’m preaching the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the forgiveness of sin not a lifestyle, not a system.

God will change us from the inside out but the church demands that we change from the outside just so that they look good, just so it looks like they’re actually doing something. It’s time we did something about it. This is my start, my call, my cry.

Oh what a lovely tree

2011-11-02T15:08:00.002Z

Moses was walking along one day, minding his own business, playing chess with the sheep, whatever. he was walking along and boom he saw this bush on fire, it probably took him a while to realise it wasn’t being consumed or going all charred and black. It was God. It took him a while to figure that out too. Maybe there were warning signs, maybe he remembered his upbringing, maybe he remembered the God of the Hebrews, maybe he remembered the gods of the Egyptians. But there he was standing in front of this bush and God speaks, and God rips the very fabric of his life apart. He wakes him up, shakes him a lot and lets Moses know that He is God, the I Am, the everything.

I think we can and should have Moses experiences, I think maybe God expects it. Moses could have walked past and thought :“Oh, what a lovely tree,” and went on his way but he stopped and was curious. How many of us don’t stop, how many of us sit in our own little Christian cloud and think we’re there or are maybe afraid of where we could end up?

I think maybe that’s where I’m at, the point where I either walk past the burning bush or I stop and walk towards it. This moment for Moses changed the history of nations and thousands of people’s lives. This one man was used by God to rip it up.

I’m certain God has been using me and got me to this point but now I have to move to God and listen and have the guts to face things with God. It’s simple but it’s earth shattering. Are you ready to walk to God and talk with Him when the time is right? Or are you ignoring him?

Running

2011-11-01T21:52:00.002Z

I wrote a letter the other day. A goodbye of sorts. It seems that a part of me has left already. To where I don’t know. I went to bed last week and all night dreamed about the pro’s and con’s of throwing myself off a cliff! Don’t worry it was dreamland, but it made me think a lot about my place in this world and why I’m actually doing the stuff I’m doing.

People could read my latest blogs and think I’m having a bad time. I’m not. I’m very unhinged and thinking about so many things but I am not for one minute depressed or at the end of my rope. It seems that I have been awakened to the crap happening around me. I don’t know how to handle it all at once. Running seems a good option but not to get away, I feel that for the first time in my life that I am ready to run into who I was created to be. I was always afraid of me, afraid of who I was created to be. I feared that i was meant to be normal and I would lose my craziness and sense of humour. It’s only when I started to not give a stuff about all that and just let God drive me that I slowly began to just live. I know a little of who I am and I know that I’m not in the right place. I know I’ve moulded into something else, someone that’s not me. It’s not good enough. It’s wrong.

I’m on the blocks, ready to go but I suppose i don’t want to false start. I am where I am for a reason and I accept that but I know there is more and I need to allow God to help me be me.

No offence but i Don't EVER want to be like you

2011-10-26T11:59:00.002+01:00

I think realisations can slap you up the face sometimes, other times it takes a while to settle in. I think I just had one of those “taking a while to settle in but when it does it hits you up the face” moments. Here it is: I don’t, at all, ever want to be like everyone else. I can look at other peoples’ lives and be a little jealous, I can look at other peoples’ direction in life and drive and career and want what they have sometimes. I can look at stylish people and rock stars and successful church leaders and I can crave that sometimes, but when it comes down to it, I do not want those things.

We can be swept along sometimes by other peoples’ dreams and I don’t think it’s always a bad thing but it’s not always a good thing. I look at what others have and when i think about me in their position I get bored and slightly depressed. Why? I’m just not built that way. i think i’m stuck in a rut because I’ve never fully grasped the concept of me being me. I’ve talked it, preached it, blogged it but it’s had to come in stages. I was not created to be fit into a certain mould, I don’t think any of us were.

I look at people I knew years ago, crazy, funky, interesting people and then they settle. it scares me, I’ve thought for so long that I need to settle, that i need to become a respectable citizen, that if I don’t get more mature and manly and safe that I’ll never get anywhere in life. That’s what’s killing me, that’s what’s holding me back. I’m trying to be safe when I’m just not meant to be. It’s not that I don’t want to grow up, it’s that I think we’ve got this whole grown up thing horribly wrong. Where’s the spontaneity, the passion, the madness, the fun in life? Are we just so focussed on creating a good living for ourselves, or for other people that we miss who we are?

I’m more unsettled now than I’ve ever been, this realisation has made it impossible for me to ignore it. this is something that I have to deal with, pray about, cry about, blog about.

I wonder what my purpose in life is. I never wanted to be safe but I found that the older I got the more safe was the norm and expected by so many. Safe shouldn’t be the norm. maybe unpredictability needs to be. Maybe my purpose is to be unsafe, to rip it up, to make people think and get angry and annoyed and passionate and inspired.

It’s time to wake up and smell yourself, is it really you? Are you living the life you were created to or the life you thought you wanted? Don’t live a lie. maybe when Jesus was talking to the rich guy He knew this guy wasn’t living his potential, is real dreams, his real passions, maybe Jesus knew that this guy had to throw it away and rediscover himself. It seems the best way to rediscover ourselves is to give it up, follow Jesus and see the way we were meant to live.

Exhausted by my Imagination

2011-10-20T10:07:00.000+01:00

"I'm exhausted by my imagination..."

Sometimes you can listen to a song and it just sort of makes too much sense. I'm listening to a Joseph Arthur song on repeat. It seems to define me at this precise moment. I am deeply tired, bone weary, ready to drop and it's all my fault. My dreams are escalating out of control, I'm driven by visual stimulus and a strange longing of what could be and not what is.

It's funny. I'm not fed up with my life, it's really good in actual fact. Of course I get wound up by certain aspects of life in general and people can wind me up and situations can boil my head but I feel God's got me in a good place and blessed me very largely.

So it's not a 'hate my life' kind of phase I'm going through. It's a 20 million miles an hour thought process. I'm thinking of every scenario under the sun and when I finally sleep at night I'm dreaming my thoughts or I'm dreaming new episodes of whatever TV show I've watched before bed. It's been like this for a while, it's overload and it stops me from writing and communicating.It's as if I am in a thought coma.

I've always thought that I'll never really make much of myself because my mind never settles, I'm never in one place long enough to stick at a certain dream. I've been looking at me through everyone else's eyes and not my own and I seem to be very good at ignoring what God thinks of me, which is probably a little bit catastrophically stupid.

My long drawn out point is that I am so worried about my imagination curtailing and slowing me down that I'm not enjoying the ride! My mind is an active mine field for a reason and I'm quite sure it's a lot to do with God. I'm this way for a reason and I'm not going to be pigeon holed into thinking I'm dysfunctional in some way.

My dreams and imagination are exhausting me, but at least i'm thinking and dreaming and hoping and moving and maybe I'm living more the way I'm meant to than I have ever realised. I suppose it's just a matter of perspective.

Should I stay or should I go?

2011-10-19T11:21:00.002+01:00

I sometimes dream of another life. One where things are different but when I think about it I don't know what I would change. I can rant and rave and be so annoyed about everything and question my place in this world but I can see that a lot of crap stuff that has happened in my life has changed me and moulded me and a lot of good stuff too.

I've been vocal and very personal about my annoyances and pains and hurts and anger lately. It's no secret that modern day Christianity makes me sick. I've found it easy to throw out all that stuff and expect people to unpack it and do what they will with it. I give no answers, I leave it all open. I do this because I'm still living it, I have no answers, I don't know what we should do, I don't know what I'm doing.

One thing I do know is that things have to change. i don't think I'm in this prolonged mood for no reason and I don't believe it's impacting people for no reason.

God wants to speak, He wants us to listen. I feel like running away. I want nothing to do with Christianity sometimes, it's too formulaic and dead and same old same old and not too connected to who I read about in the Bible.

It would be easy to run away, it's a whole different story when we stand up and dare to make some sort of difference. do I go and start some new church somewhere where there are millions already or do I be the change right where I am? You can read these blogs, you can be inspired, you can say the right things but when it comes down to Sundays and weekly meetings what are you doing? What are you thinking? If we avoid them and sulk and wallow in self pity then change becomes a joke and a fluffy dream.

We might be stuck where we are, God has His reasons, but it doesn't mean we stay still and moan and groan and be all martyrish.

Halfway gone

2011-10-10T14:25:00.004+01:00

I’m halfway gone, maybe more than that. I’m halfway to a realisation but I’m not sure what it is. I’m halfway from throwing it all away. I’m halfway from running as fast as I can to a destination I’ll only know when I get there. I’m screaming inside, I’m shallow breathing, i’m out of breath, i’m confused and disoriented and reaching the end of any kind of tolerance I might have.

I’m holding on to a thread of sanity and i’m still just about holding it all together, my way. I’m stuck as to why I feel like this, unsettled, restless, wrong, confused, tired, afraid but then I start to think that these things I can’t fix, i can’t create some utopia in my life, I can’t be my saviour. I’ve tried to live life my way for so long, tried to listen to others and live a semblance of a life that people say i should have.

Maybe God’s having a go at me and throwing it all back in my face and making me realise that it’s not me, it’s not my mission, it’s not my Gospel, it’s His.

Maybe I’m halfway to realising I can’t live like this anymore because i was never meant to, I was meant to live the way God wants me to.

Sobering? Thought provoking? Annoying? Who are you. i don’t have much of a clue who I am anymore.

Confusing Christianity

2011-10-10T00:24:00.002+01:00

I read a bit if Acts earlier. It confused me a lot. Stuff happened, I mean tons of stuff happened. Miracles were flying all over the place, thousands followed Jesus, sold everything they had, devoted themselves to communicating with God. Hundreds were murdered for following Jesus, thrown in jail for talking about Jesus. They believed in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died for punishment of sin, rose again, alive with God in heaven and that was pretty much it. People were baptised and lived in community, focused on God and eternally thankful to Jesus.

I'm confused because the Christianity I witness in Christian Bubble northern Ireland is nothing like this. It doesn't really seem that much about Jesus. It seems about doctrine and systems and do's and don'ts and rules and regulations pretty much like what it was like when Jesus was around.

I'm fed up with restrictions and disagreements and people thinking they know better than God. Churches split and friendships end because people can't agree on what the Bible is saying.

Jesus Christ died and took the punishment for your sin and is alive today and if you repent and believe in Him you are saved, changed, eternal and in God's family. So why don't I take that and add doctrines and systems so that my faith and relationship with God is filled with obstacles and my service and life for God is hampered by other peoples interpretation of the Bible.
I'm frustrated because the God I pray to seems to be different
than the God others pray to.

Am I wrong? I don't think God should be limited yet we have put so many limitations on His power that nothing much happens in our society anymore. We blame culture and materialism for people not following Jesus. I think that's a cop out. Maybe we don't believe enough in Jesus. Maybe we don't listen to God.

I'm being strangled by a Christianity I can no longer accept it. This is raw, it's me, I'm hurting, confused and seeking truth, God's truth.

unHiNgeD

2011-10-06T15:37:00.005+01:00

Is there any sense in becoming something you’re not?

I’m convinced there are many people out there who are fake, who aren’t themselves, who have been driven into a corner and forced to believe the lie, forced to become what everybody else thinks they should be. Driven by society, pigeon holed, living a lie. I think I’m one of those people.

It’s hit me lately that I’m becoming what I’ve feared the most, civilised, normal. I know that’s not me, I’m a little unstable, I think differently, I shake things up, I was born to be me.

It’s not easy being surrounded by normality, by ambition, by formality and tradition. maybe it’s wrong to be surrounded by it.

I’ve been thinking and feeling that i need to break away, that I need to begin to refuse to human voices and listen to God’s, listen and realise what I was created to be and I am convinced that I was definitely not created to be another nameless face in the crowd of normality and conformity.

I’m fed up with northern ireland, I’m fed up with a sickly sweet, self help, traditional, self absorbed Christianity that hits me up the face too much. Why am I fed up with it? Why does it make me so uncomfortable? It’s because I wasn’t made for that, I was created to live God’s way, to worship, to grow, to move, to be.

I’m feeling unhinged and at the minute i’m hanging on to normality but the more i think about it the more I understand that it is not my reality, I need to begin to listen to the real voice and maybe that voice is telling me to flip my world upside down and follow Him.

I’ve always said I want to change the world but who am I when i’m not myself? You are you, maybe it’s time to realise that, maybe it’s time to understand that when you feel uncomfortable it’s because you are uncomfortable, that something doesn’t sit with your spirit. don’t accept the norm, don’t accept other peoples’ dreams, don’t walk with a society that doesn’t know where it’s walking and don’t walk with a church just because it’s a nice thing to do. walk with God, follow Jesus, maybe it’s time to get a little unhinged, to let go of our defences and let god do something in our lives more than what’s happening now.

Jesus gave a diverse personality group like the disciples the chances to live the way they were created to, they could’ve just lived the way society always had, but He ripped their lives apart and many of those guys changed the world. Just a thought.

Buzzless

2011-09-21T16:03:00.002+01:00

I think it’s natural that we question ourselves a lot. We question what we are doing and why we are doing it. We question whether we’re happy or not, fulfilled, living to our maximum and probably everything else. I’ve been questioning my role in life, what was I born to do? What does God want of me? When I’m drained and not buzzing is it because I’m in a place I’m not meant to be or just on a learning curve?

When I’m buzzing, things happen, when I’m at camps and teaching and with like minded people I am on the edge, my brain kicks in, I become articulate and passionate and talkative and caring, I seem to connect with people and want to connect with people. I’m living the dream, I feel alive, I feel God has put me in this place and I love it. I wonder sometimes why I’m not like that all the time. I think sometimes that it’s because I buzz at events but ordinary mundane day to day stuff destroys me. Maybe that’s right but I’m beginning to see that maybe I’ve put the wrong people into certain aspects of my life. Maybe when I don’t buzz it’s because I don’t feel like I should be there, don’t think these people are on the same wavelength as me.

So what do I do? Do I listen to everyone who say it’s my fault and I don’t try hard enough or do I actually begin to understand me and that it is possible for me to buzz all the time I just need to be in the right environments and maybe that’s the clincher.

When you dip, when you question your faith and purpose and God’s will for your life who have you got around you? What do you really believe? What do you love to do? Who are you listening to? I find that for a while I listen to God but sometimes I start to listen to others and God’s voice becomes lost in a multitude of opinions.

Maybe God is teaching me to listen to Him and nobody else. Trusted friends’ opinions are good but when they put a wall up between you and God they’re very bad.

I’m not saying that if you’re not buzzing get rid of your friends and stop what you’re doing and do something else. I’m saying that we need to know our role, to be grounded in God, to follow Him. When we feel cold and isolated ask God why, pray like a trooper. It could be God teaching us to rely on Him or it could be God pushing us to do something more.

My thoughts are flying out of me in chunks, I don’t think it’s pretty but I know that I want God to move and inspire and challenge others but first off I know that God needs to inspire and challenge me.

Jumping the gun

2011-09-20T10:28:00.000+01:00

A few years ago, when I lived in Bolton, the big thing was that we should never listen to our emotions and feelings, that belief in God was about truth and when we just put everything down to how we feel it could be disastrous. That suited me because I was and still am quite emotionless and most of the time I’m not sure how I feel about anything. I’m coming to the realisation that it’s a defensive thing, I don’t show emotion but at times I just crumble and become sensitive to everything. when I get like this feelings and emotions rule me, I make decisions based on how i feel, I judge people a lot more harshly, I see the fake in people a lot more easily. It’s as if the goggles are off and I see it the way it is.

I don’t like me like this, but I realise that when I am stoic and emotionless I’m maybe a little worse. I ignore the world around me, I have no sympathy or empathy, everything is black and white. It’s not a good way to be. Both extremes are probably very wrong, it’s all about balance.

Jesus was pretty balanced, in fact very balanced. He seemed to know when to show compassion and mercy and love and empathy but at other times He was a rock, He knew where His stood He said it like it was He didn’t mix His words. It’s sort of cool that Jesus, who had it all together, had Peter as a follower and a friend. Peter was a rocket, he lived on His feelings and emotions, He blurted out everything, had little tact, was probably grumpy one minute and happy and hyper the next.

Peter jumped the gun once or twice, it’s brilliant. He lived on the edge of His emotions. Jesus loved Him, He rebuked Him but something inside me believes that Jesus liked to have this crazy emotion filled man following Him. people knew where they stood with Peter. As time goes on Peter becomes more respectful, he thinks before he speaks, but he still has emotion and passion and feeling.

I’m thinking out loud, I’m trying to understand why at the minute I just want to hide and not be around people, it’s almost as if i can hear their thoughts. It’s not personal, I’m having a mini crisis. But maybe, just maybe God’s pushing me to become more like Jesus, to be like a Peter and dare to be impetuous and passionate and emotional and full of feelings. i think the world and Christianity has almost become sterile and it’s just truth, that’s it, human feeling and emotion doesn’t matter, but it does. It’s got to be both.

There are times when we’re going to have to bite the bullet and jump the gun, and not think about whys and wherefores but just do it. There will be times when we wait and digest and see what happens. When was the last time you were impetuous and just did something? Have we become robots in an emotionless society? Are we willing to be human?

Scared into action

2011-09-15T15:11:00.002+01:00

I thought that after the summer deluge that my head would start to slow down and calm down but I have found that it’s worse. I preached on Sunday night and my wife described it as me spitting it out, forcefully. I’m finding it hard to be eloquent and think of stories and illustrations to make the Gospel easier to digest. I’m just reading the Bible at the minute and realising the urgency to get it out there, to communicate it in any way necessary, to be a little forceful and ineloquent, to be raw. I feel that God has stripped me down and is helping me become His preacher, not mine.

I’ve been around for a while, I’ve spoken all over the place. I’ve preached and challenged and inspired but looking back I question my motives sometimes. It seems sometimes I’ve done it for me, I’ve communicated with the sole purpose of people liking me and wanting me back. I’ve cared what people think. Christians can be a hard rabble to impress.

The thing is I’m not in this to make people happy or impress them. I’m here to see Jesus blow lives away, to restore, to save, to move, to be. I’m reading John at the minute and it is scaring the life out of me. I break out in a cold sweat when I read it. I’m reading about a Jesus who is controversial and provocative, who questions those who follow Him all the time. At one point He makes it clear that if you are sold out for God, you will be His mouthpiece, His preacher but that if you have other motives you’re speaking for yourself and that’s a really bad place to be in.

I’ve been questioning my motives lately and this definitely doesn’t help my mental state but it helps me too. It helps to realise my role in this world. To love God. That’s it. Once you focus on Him and love Him and see Jesus in everything, that’s when things happen. i’m thinking of the difference I can make if my song is exactly the same as God’s and not littered with my lyrics and tuneness.

So what hymn sheet are you singing off? Read John, it’ll scare the life out of you. Maybe that’s what you need. I know everyone has stuff going on and have one hang up or another but when you start to see the urgency and reality of what Jesus was talking about, of who He was, well all that stuff fades right away.

Today or never?

2011-09-06T11:51:00.000+01:00

Where do you go when you start to realise things need to change? It's so easy to know things need to change but it's another thing being able to get out of your cycle or rut or comfort zone. I've known for ages that I need to cancel direct debits but it's just a big faff and going into the bank and sorting stuff or phoning companies and waiting for an hour just puts me off. The thing is it was costing me quite a lot bit because I was happy ignoring it. I finally sorted it yesterday, it was easy and rather painless. I feel good today.

But it's made me think. How many of us know that things have to change in our lives? How many of us know we're just meandering through life and not doing what we want to or need to or know we were made to do? I've found it so easy to just chill and leave it and watch the world go by and not get overly proactive about what I believe and what talents I have.

I suppose over the last lot of months I've hit a cross roads and road block and I've had to question who I am and what I can do and am I actually doing it?

I've been thinking a lot about what I believe and what I'm doing about it. I know this blog is one way but there is so much more. The world is corrupted and sadly so is Christian culture and I can choose to stand aside and see how things go or I can stand up for who Jesus is and the truth of the Gospel or I can be terrified and forget who my God is.

I love how in Acts the disciples rip it up, they go crazy for Jesus because they know the truth, the world is turned upside down, they're bold and anarchic and challenge systems and beliefs that were wring to what Jesus stood for! They died for what they believed, they were passionate and creative and humble and empathetic.

What are we doing? What are we listening to? Who are we listening to? These guys saw Jesus and knew the truth. We should to. Maybe it's time to get ourselves sorted and do what we know we were born and called to do and have no excuses.

I find that when people do things they were born to do that they thrive and that things change and grow and move. So what are you waiting for?

Scandalous Meditations on Faith

2011-09-02T09:31:00.000+01:00

I'm reading this book at the minute: "The God Who Smokes", it's tag line is Scandalous meditations on faith. When I bought this book I was expecting another crazy out there thought provoking kind of book. there are so many books out there that try to reinvent Christianity with new ideas and twisting what the Bible says and I love reading these books because they make me think and dream and question my faith. More often than not these books have ultimately brought me closer to God because I've ended up disagreeing with them.
I was expecting the same passionate, thought provoking stuff that contemporary Christian writers throw out there. What I got was even more passionate than I could possibly imagine, it was controversial, in your face, scandalous, anarchic, life destroying. What I got was a guy who loves God's Word and just talked about it, and it blew me away more than any well intentioned post post modern Christian reformers ever could.
We search so much today for things to shock us and new ways to introduce the church to the world, we think we have to completely reinvent the Gospel and water it down and make God sound like a little lamb and diminish His integrity and the truth of Jesus being God's son and the ONLY way to God.
I read a lot and have some crazy mad thoughts most of the time and I intend to inspire and provoke thought and I am passionate about seeing God impact lives. but have I missed it somewhere along the way? I have been so focused in impacting the world for God with coolness and niceness that I've disregarded the Bible, the Word of God.
The Word of God, the truth of the Gospel shatters lives, it blows people away, it angers people, it causes division, it starts wars, it leads to God, the one true God and yet we treat it like a nice little fairy tale book. We preach it in our churches but do we believe it? Do we believe who Jesus is? Is He a lamb or a lion? Or both? what is God like? Is He just a nice patient grandfatherly figure or is He a raging, Holy, perfect, judging, gracious God?

What got me when I read this book is that I was thinking scandalous thoughts have to be new, man thought up ideas, but I was wrong. The Bible is scandalous, it's just devastating when the scandalous, unbelievable thoughts are coming from God's Word. We've lost our spark and love and passion for the Bible and we've missed how revolutionary it actually is.

It's about time we got a little scandalous and crazy and mad and lived a little bit more like Jesus, He ripped it up. Christianity today is safe and soft, I don't read much of that in my Bible.

A seasonal alternative to life?

2011-09-01T15:25:00.000+01:00

I woke up this morning, I couldn’t open my eyes, when I did they were too flipping heavy so I closed them again. I had a strange feeling that the rest of my day was going to be a stinker. My dreams all night were strange, I was feeling miserable and ready to hibernate and hide for the duration of the world. I feel like this sometimes. I feel like this shortly after things finish. This summer has been a massive bombardment, God has spoke, challenged, inspired, things have happened, relationships born and developed. Man, if only I could be caught up in mission and community all year round, if only there could be buzz in my life all the time instead of just now and again.

That’s my problem, I ride the waves, I’m an adrenaline junky of sorts but when the adrenaline’s not flowing I’m stifled, I’m afraid I’ve lost my mojo, flat, derailed. If life is like a box of chocolates you might get one or two of the most amazing chocolates ever that blow your mind and the next time round you get three or four that make you want to throw up. Christian mission can be like that. It seems we throw all our energy into a concentrated effort to blitz the world with the gospel then we crash and rely on others to do the mundane stuff the rest of the year. We treat summer missions as the real deal and relegate the things we do during the year as stuff we have to do or couldn’t be bothered.

I’m guilty of this, I roll with the punches, I love mixing with people and making them laugh, but why do I need to restrict this to the summer or to some week or two away? Mission is life, it’s every second of every day. We need to get our hearts in the place where we are enjoying life every second, knowing and living with and for God.

So wake up, blitz your school with what you did in the summer, make the winter better than your summer was, stop feeling sorry for yourself and lethargic and steamrolled. start to get bored with TV and stupid things and get passionate every single day about Jesus. our faith is not a seasonal alternative to life, it is life.

Unpacking

2011-08-30T20:27:00.000+01:00

Sometimes we can do so much that our brains and our emotional systems shut down and we go through times in our life on auto pilot and it almost seems surreal.

The last few weeks have been like this for me, so much has happened, camp, mission weeks, conversations, inspiration, my whole being has just seemed to shut down. I’m quite sure that I have been impacted in ways beyond my comprehension, I keep thinking I’m going to wake up and everything will make sense again.

We were in london last week, teaching children in open air clubs. Churches were excited to have us, children listened wide eyed, parents complained, it rained a lot, people looked at us funny, Christians were passionate, energetic. I didn’t feel much, which seems to be the norm for me in situations like this. Other people on the team were emotionally charged, excited, crazy, it was cool. I was not, I was pragmatic, optimistic bordering on pesimism, I questioned everything and questioned my own ability to tell others about Jesus, to lead a team, to be a Christian.

Even now I’m sitting here knowing that God was speaking to me every day and that somehow it stuck to my cocoon which is still around me and I am praying that it will shatter. but maybe it’s not meant to, maybe I have this filter because god knows what i would be like if I was emotionally overloaded!

I suppose what i’m trying to say is that I felt out of place, not worthy, not right, but maybe it’s ok to feel like that, maybe God’s helping me understand who I am and who he is.

I sometimes judge people because they’re not like me, or as switched on or clever as me or more emotional than me but they are them not me.

We look around too much sometimes that we fail to see who we are.

This summer impacted me, but it could be months before it all comes out. But that’s ok.

Knowing why.

2011-08-16T10:19:00.001+01:00

Something has snapped in me lately. I blog more than ever, I dare to dream, I take lots of pictures and put them up on instagram, I tweet, I read others blogs, I listen to peoples stories, I dare to hope.
I can't really put my finger in when or why it happened but I'm confident that God had something to do with it. I've known for years that I'm creative and love different types of communication, but I've had creative block. Maybe it's been confidence or something else holding me back.
I think I started to understand that what I want to do with my life is share God in any way I can, that I don't care what others think as long as people are brought to God.
I didn't have creative block anymore because I had a reason to be creative.
Sitting in Starbucks today I watched people, conversations, facial expressions and I thought about Jesus. Did Jesus watch people? Did He just sit in public places sometimes and just watch the people, who He loved, go about their lives. I like to think He did. I like to think He thought about them and the stories and teaching that would best suit them. I think Jesus was the most amazing communicator ever, He told stories, healed people, drew things, knew what to say and when to say it and who to say it to.
Jesus is my example. I want and need to communication, Jesus, way

Walking after God

2011-08-10T15:02:00.001+01:00

I love coffee, it completes me. For the last 2 weeks I’ve been off it, I’ve went from 10 cups a day to 4 cups in over 2 weeks. It’s not good. Not because of withdrawal, but because i now have more energy, my sleeping patterns are shot, I’m shouting and fighting in my sleep and that’s when i actually get to sleep. last night I scratched the whole night thinking I had fleas, I got up at 645 had a shower to get rid of these imaginary fleas and then I went for a walk.

I refuse to walk without knowing where I’m going, I need to have a destination, maybe that says a lot about my personality. Today I just headed out and I didn’t know where I was going, I walked about 5 miles or so, taking random photos, walking into the path of storm clouds, checking out farm land and rivers and people and trees and plants. I walked down a path and kept trying to close my eyes for prolonged periods of time, just to walk like a Jedi or something. I felt alive, when I breathed in i felt like i was breathing in more than air. I don’t mean drugs or anything, it just felt different. It almost felt like God was walking with me.

I realised that God created us, life, breath amongst many other things, and it felt for a little while that I could sense and see God’s stamp on creation, as if God had gone there before me and left a little bit of Himself. I’m no airy fairy kind of guy, I’m the opposite, but seeing a glimpse of creation I glimpsed God. I suppose it’s like in the Bible when God appears the people He appears to never see His face, but they feel His presence.

It made me think this morning of where God is and when He is. God said to Moses that He is “I am”. I like that, it just makes me think that God is, bottom line, no questions, no formulas, no add ons just that God is. I think we forget sometime who God is, maybe we need to remember and keep remembering.

Welcome to my world.

2011-08-09T19:48:00.000+01:00

Welcome to my world. The world where I’m not sure what’s going to happen from one minute to the next, the world where my relationship with God starts and stops and changes and moves and ducks and dives. The world where I question everything but the answers always seems to throw me towards Jesus.

I’ve a lot of theological views, maybe too many. I don’t agree with uber conservative Christianity all that much, well I don’t disagree but I think that so many theological ideas pigeon hole God and destroy the relationship we can have with him. I don’t care about end times, or hats or suits, one of the reasons being that if that’s what I need to make me righteous or suitable for heaven then I’m following the wrong God. So many of us follow periphery ideas and we become periphery Christians. We read what we want to read, we create the God we want God to be. We take all the nice things Jesus says and we cover over the rest or just simply chuck them away.

I love when Jesus scares the life out of those following Him or those asking questions when He talks about death and war and heartache and destruction and that He never came to bring peace but a sword.

Jesus stirred it up, He never let His disciples and followers get comfortable, He made sure they knew who He was and why they where following Him. Jesus wasn’t safe, He was the opposite. I in fact many of His followers were murdered for believing in Him.

I think we find it easy to follow a safe Jesus, to make up our own theology, the theology that suits us, we go to churches that make us feel safe or wanted or challenged the way we want to be challenged.

I’ve said it before, I’m fed up with this in my life. This is where I’m at, I’m convinced that a lot of things we believe can be stripped away and hopefully when they are you will find Jesus, He’s the only thing. If we haven’t got Jesus right then our Christianity is broken.

We follow an infinite, complicated, loving, judging God who wants to keep us thinking, following, believing.

Singing with the windows down

2011-08-07T14:47:00.002+01:00

I sing a lot, I could've been a rock star, maybe. I love singing when no one's in the house, when no one can hear me. I make songs up, lyrics just fly out of me. Nobody's heard my sings, few have heard me singing. There have been a few times when I've got up and sang in front of people then I'm angry with myself a few days after because I think I'm rubbish.

I suppose it's another confidence issue. I can sit in my car and sing my head off and sound better than the guys singing the songs and nobody can hear me. It's great.

Today I was driving and the car was so hot. So the windows were down but I kept singing, I don't usually do that but it was so flippin brilliant! Like really, I don't know why I haven't done it before. People looked at me funny, people smiled, some even started singing.

It was infectious. For some reason I didn't care what people thought, I was just going to do my thing and stuff what anybody thought!

It made me think a lot about God and what I believe and how I go about living for God. I think a lot of Christians live for God with tinted windows, windows rolled up, sound proofing in the car and they mumble a little tune. They're stifled by what others think or they don't like or believe what they're singing or they think they can't live loud like a bit of a loon.

I'm a loon. I sing full blast with my windows down and I'm pretty sure I'm going to live my life with the windows down and soon I'll be a full blown convertible!

I love how in the psalms the writers are so passionate about God and the things if God. In a few they get excited about shouting for joy because God is so flipping awesome. I can imagine them getting excited and not being able to sit still. I can also imagine people looking at these guys going crazy and shouting for joy. They could've laughed, been annoyed or been inspired. We need to shout, go crazy, be a loon because we get God, we know Him.

Bring it on. Live screaming what u believe. Be a loon.

Salvation is here.

2011-08-06T22:38:00.002+01:00

Jesus came to seek and save the lost, He came to give life to the full, He came to take our punishment. Jesus came to bring salvation to every single human being.
Salvation is real, tangible, visible, audible. Salvation is here. It's not rocket science, we can be saved from death if we believe. It sounds simple, it is simple but we've over complicated things, we confuse people, we don't understand salvation, we don't believe, we create fanfares that distract from God, we build churches that use God's name but forget what salvation is all about, forget who Jesus is, leave out what Jesus was all about.

I'm terrified that I'll become like so many Christians today and take it all for granted and use all the same words and rhetoric that have been used for years. That I forget the passion and truth and phenomenalness of the cross and of the life and purpose of Jesus Christ.

God wants us to live amazing lives but that is always through Jesus Christ. Not systems, not worship songs, not church models, not pharisaical ideals but Jesus.

I find it funny when some pastors tweet things about being strong and positive and believe in yourself, that's nice really but don't believe in yourself, you can't do it. You can't live without Jesus Christ, you can't grow in God without salvation.

Salvation is here, all we need to do is grasp it, live it and point others to it. If we get bogged down with everything else then what has salvation become?

Our place in this world

2011-07-28T11:49:00.000+01:00

I envy certain types of people. People with an unwavering goal. I can't concentrate from one minute to the next, I could have a list of 10 things to do and do a fraction of all 10 in 30 minutes. I've thought about taking medication, going to counselling, but I forget about those ideas quickly.

I read a newspaper story today about a guy who was going to run 400 miles in 4 days to raise money and awareness for his son's autism. He wasn't a professional runner he just had a goal, a dream to do something. People joined him on his quest, probably inspired by him. He made his goal the goal of others.

It's taken me a long time to be happy with who I am and my limitations, that I'm not going to become some driven business man or caped crusader fighting for justice and the American way. I've given up my dreams of being a pioneer, a leader, a celebrity and simply started to be me and start to listen to God.

I love how Jesus was just Jesus. He just did it, He talked and inspired and challenged and annoyed and changed the world by just being Jesus. It seemed to be effortless, He knew his place in this world and lived! That's cool.

I suppose lately God has started showing me my place in this world, that I can be used to change the world, to inspire, to lead but never in a way I ever thought possible. I'm starting to live God's way. I still have no concentration and am hyper too much if the time but all I want to do is see God, see Jesus and bring truth and inspiration in whatever way I can.

I've found my place in this world, I've found the root of what drives me and it's only the beginning. I love being inspired by everyday people who just live. I don't need to be a rock star or celebrity to challenge or inspire, I just need to be me.

Transition

2011-07-26T19:51:00.000+01:00

Transition is hard. It’s almost harder than finding out what you’re meant to do with your life. I’ve been searching for so long, I’ve been fighting God on a lot of things, I’ve been becoming who I thought God wanted me to be and have been searching in too many wrong places. Lately I’ve stopped and listened to God, I’m finally moving in the direction He wants me to move in.

The searching was a nightmare, most of it my own doing, I’ve learned a lot from it but I’d hate to go through it again. The thing is, now that I’ve decided to go God’s way I’ve to go through a lot of transition. My remodeling job was rubbish, it messed me up more than helped me. Now? I have to rely totally on God, that He knows what He’s doing. I begged God this morning that he wouldn’t let me down. I know He wont but that’s how vulnerable I am.

Now I am in transition and I can do very little about it. God is ripping my self fabricated world apart. Everything I’ve had confidence in is being blasted away and I’m becoming a shell, exposed and open. It’s horrible, I don’t like being exposed, i don’t like people seeing me, the real me. I can’t preach the way I used to and i used to be pretty good, but it was me preaching and speaking, not God through me. I was relying on my talent and my skills and my own created talent. I feel like I shouldn’t speak any more, that it’s all gone, that I have nothing left and i am lost and in truth the person I was is gone.

Transition is awful, I sometimes wish I didn’t jump off the fence and run to God but I did and at the minute I’m a skeleton running flat out with God the only thing keeping me going. I still have dreams but they’re stripped down so that I haven’t sugar coated them anymore. They are simply God’s dreams for my life, un-diluted and un-prettied.

I sit here stunned, shell shocked and totally in need of God. I’m exposed but not alone.

Who we are

2011-07-24T15:33:00.001+01:00

I don't sleep that much. There are a lot of reasons. Sometimes I've far too much on my mind, sometimes I hear noises and people outside and my imagination goes wild. I can never settle, I'm restless, hyper, chaotic.

It's annoyed me for a while, I have this need to be normal like everyone else and sleep like everyone else. Maybe we've all got that need, that craving to be just like everyone else and not stick out and not annoy people.
When it comes to the crunch though, I have no need or desire to go with the norm, to be an average citizen.

I'm built differently, God has made me unstable for a reason. Maybe I'm not meant to sleep that much, maybe I'm meant to live a crazy, chaotic, happy existence living for Jesus.
So I can't sleep? Well I'll read more and blog more and think more and pray more, I'll not despair at my circumstances, I'll not wish I was something I'm not!

So today, thank God you're you and not someone else, live as you and not who you want to be or think you should be. Listen to God, talk to God.

I love how Jesus picked a bag of misfits to follow Him. They all had their quirks and they were all completely different. Jesus never encouraged them to not be themselves but He just asked them to follow Him.

Stop pleasing people, stop beating yourself up. Follow Jesus.

excuses and doubts

2011-07-23T01:15:00.000+01:00

I have a dream... but i keep forgetting it. I keep forgetting who I am, what I believe in, what I’m doing here. It’s strange, I’m all about inspiring but sometimes i find it hard to be inspired. I’ve read today, walked around the place, saw God’s creation, listened to great music, watched some cool things on TV but i’m still numb. I wonder what it is. Am I shutting down? Am I losing my mojo? Am I a couple of week wonder that writes a few good blogs and that’s it or am I something more?

I struggle with this stuff a lot, maybe it’s simply a confidence issue or maybe it’s more. maybe I am inspiring and doing something with my life and I’m feeling the pressure. But that’s it, it’s all maybes, I’m questioning my ability when I’ve already established it’s not about me and it’s so not about my abilities.

I’m throwing this out there tonight because I realise that people can read my blog and feel I’ve got some blogging gift, or I’ve got my stuff together, when the truth is that I’m all over the place, I have my ups and downs, my highs and lows, I’m human. God still uses me though and that’s the bottom line.

I’m passionately seeking to live my life for and with God, I’m not perfect, I mess up, I question myself and I doubt my abilities but here I am still doing it.

I’m nothing special, and neither are you. Get over it. But never let that stop you being you and seeking God and doing something amazing with your life. I’m 31 and I’m only getting it now after years of searching and ignoring God. Don’t waste your life because you can’t be bothered or you think you’re crap, it just won’t cut the mustard.

Peace out.

Creating something that inspires.

2011-07-21T13:48:00.001+01:00

It’s sometimes hard to throw down ideas when you have so many, it’s a nightmare to find some sort of stability when you jump from one idea to the next in record time and your dreams exhaust you. I find myself being swept along on a journey that is terrifying and beautiful at the same time. I’m opening up to who i am meant to be, I’m listening to God, I’m praying, I’m creating, I’m dreaming and it’s cool. That’s an understatement, it’s amazing. At times during the day I want to run around the place talking to people about God, I want to write award winning songs, I want to draw and paint and create, I want to write and blog things that blow you away and wake you up.

I need to do it. This desire has been thrown at me by God, it’s a challenge to keep moving and being and growing and fighting for truth. I accept that challenge. But there’s a danger, a big danger that with all this creative craziness going on in my head that i get information overload and the ideas I have stay ideas and the impact they have on peoples’ lives will diminish.

That’s scary. I wrote a blog the other day, saying I was going to go blogging crazy and a friend left a comment that blew me away and inspired me and challenged me. It was simply to do with quality over quantity, that everything I create and throw up here has to be from my heart, and from my passion for God and for you, anything else is just words, I refuse to just write something for the sake of it.

So how do I create something that inspires and lasts? By giving it everything I have and am. These blogs are me, opened up and cut open and thrown at you guys. Why am I going against my better judgement on this one? Because I believe in what i write. I’m passionate about it. i lose sleep over it. I can’t get these thoughts and dreams out of my head and I will fight to write them and communicate them any way I can.

This just isn’t my story. It’s yours too. God has given me a dream and a purpose and finally I’m grabbing it. What are you doing? What dreams do you have? What are you doing about it? Create something today that will inspire and challenge and bless others, you can, maybe you just need to get off your butt and move. This corrupt, crazy, out of control world needs Jesus, what’ve have you done today to give them what they need?!

Off the fence..aaaarrrrggghhh!!

2011-07-19T16:59:00.000+01:00

It’s quite scary when you’re sitting in a coffee shop, working, thinking, praying, hoping, dreaming then you look up and everybody seems to be walking in slow motion, their hopes and dreams and hurts and pains trailing after them. This does happen sometimes, the times when I let God speak to me, when I realise that all I want is God.

Journeying with God over the last few weeks has been a nightmare, tough, felt like quitting, crazy, fantastic, shocking. I’ve tried to share where I’m at, what God’s doing, with the hope that God will speak to you and inspire and challenge who you are and who you are meant to be.

I’m off the fence, I’m crying out to God and challenging Him to use me, I’m laying my well cultivated coolness on the line, I’m throwing my street cred in the fire and I’m challenging God to use me whatever way He wants. Really it almost seems like suicide. I’ve fought to become a stoic, hard to read rock that doesn’t show emotion or compassion, but it was never God’s plan for me to be like this.

I lay in bed last night for hours, not able to sleep, so i prayed, I chatted to God about me and my calling, if I actually had one. I prayed about my blogs and my hope that people will read them and find God or come close to God in an amazing way. I prayed for people, i prayed that God would use me and then it hit me, hard. God wants me to get in the mix, to chat, to make people laugh, to challenge people, to love people, to have compassion, to care above and beyond the norm, to lay my life on the line for anyone, to not judge, to be the light that so many people need. god wants me to be like jesus. Man, that’s not me. All those things I’ve listed are not me, no way, I have no intention to be hurt by loving people, stuff that, but then hold on a minute, it’s who God wants me to be and for the first time in my life i am actually excited about the man God is going to make me into.

I’ve missed out on life because i use the excuses that i have no emotion or compassion but God does and i’m His, so I might as well get over it if I want to live God’s way.

So here I am, sitting praying for people i don’t know and having a growing urge to go to strangers and chat to them about life, again this isn’t me but I’m beginning to realise it’s who God wants me to be.

This is another scary step on a journey that god started me on because i cried out to him, because i was fed up with apathy. the answer, simple, is to follow Jesus and live God’s way. the revolution, the future.

If you sit on the fence... what do you get??! Splinters somewhere...

2011-07-18T17:28:00.002+01:00

I’m fed up a lot lately if you haven’t already noticed. Everything seems to be winding me up and making me so flipping uncomfortable. I’m fed up with mediocrity and Christians saying one thing and doing another, I’m fed up with traditionalism and pharaseeism, I get angry at stupid drivers who think you’re out to get one up on them, I’m angry at me for getting angry at people. I’m fed up with trundling along in life and not seeing anything happen, I’m annoyed at the fact that my ministry isn’t as happening and on fire as i want it to be or as i thought it would be.

I know i’ve talked about this before but i don’t care, it means it’s still bugging me and I’m still working through it. I read a comment on facebook yesterday about sitting on a fence and getting splinters on your bottom (the word bottom wasn’t used, I’m just being polite) and i realised that’s why i’m getting so uptight about things, that’s why I can’t sit still, that’s why I’m running about chasing my tail, I’m sitting on the fence. i’m watching other people live, I’m working out wether I really want to dive in to life or not, I’m watching the world do it’s cool stuff and I’m watching God do His and I’m mixing both aspects in my life. I’ve preached against this for so long but I still do it.

So I have an extremely sore butt, it’s about time I got off it and made it not sore anymore but what choice do I make? Come on don’t make me think i’m the only one. the grass is always greener on the other side. Living life like they do on TV, having no inhabitions can look so flippin’ cool and the more cool it looks the more we think about God. The flipside is that God offers life, offers a way out of an existence that has no purpose.

What will I chose? I blogged yesterday and said that i was dedicating my life to doing what i feel God wants me to do and that is share me, share my experiences and inspire and help you, I suppose I’d made my choice a long time ago but was too afraid to step off the fence but the longer I sit on it the more uncomfortably annoyed I get.

So I’m jumping off it into a God’s will and calling, I don’t know where it will lead but I refuse to be another could have been, I refuse to lie down and let life pass me by.

Watch this space. God’s going to be doing amazing things, I just hope I’m not the only one who will decide to give Him everything.

When it all doesn’t make much sense.

2011-07-17T22:18:00.002+01:00

Sometimes I just want to hibernate, in fact it happens a lot, maybe too much. I get overwhelmed by traffic in my head and its easier to switch off than to keep thinking and losing sleep. usually things go out the window, certain tasks, I degenerate into zombie mode. Blogging is one of those things that comes in waves, it’s usually ok by me, I’ll blog when i feel like it.

Lately I’ve been questioning my relationship with God and my purpose in life and my mission. What is it that drives me? What really is my passion? What do I have a focus and a concentration on if anything?

I have attention problems, I’ve no concentration and I jump from one idea to another. For a while I’ve realised i love to write my thoughts down and share them, not because it makes me seem more human, or that more people will like me but because I have this deep down on fireness to see God move in your life.

Some days i don’t want to blog, i don’t want you to know my thoughts but what is bigger: my ego or my passion for the things of God?

I read tonight that if you want to see your blog grow and impact lives that you better be blogging all the time, 2 or 3 times a day would be good. Yeah right, could I be bothered? Usually no but today i’m realising that my life, my apathy, my zombieness can go jump off a cliff because it’s not about me.

God wants to impact lives and I really believe that he can use me, my wackiness, my experiences to help you to rediscover God or move further into His calling.

I’m making a massive step, I’m dedicating my life to serving YOU and pouring out every fibre of my being to see this world turned upside down in the name of Jesus. I’m going to write till I drop and seek God because my life is void. Be inspired to live for God, to seek what He wants you to do and to live it.

Missionary Dilema

2011-07-15T19:07:00.001+01:00

I’m worried. I’ve been really inspired to get networking and linking up with people on social networks and it’s cool to see what people are writing and what’s going on in the world but it also fills my head with more questions than probably should be there.

I read a tweet a minute ago by an evangelist dude and he was excited that all these young people wanted to be missionaries. i was excited too, I still am. I love mission, I love talking about Jesus, I love seeing God impact and change lives and I love seeing young people impacted by God and challenged to live for Him.

But I’m worried. I’m worried about how we see mission. I think over the years mission work has been seen in completely different ways and today mission is seen as an adventure, an alternative to a real job. I remember reading about Paul in the bible and how all he did was write and encourage and evangelise and work for his living. Missions today? Get supported, rely on God, be a martyr. I’m not saying this is wrong, I don’t think it is but I don’t think it’s the way we should look at mission.

Mission isn’t a job, it’s life. living God’s way is mission, sharing Jesus is mission but do we need to go to another country to do it? Do we need to go through years of training to be a missionary? I don’t think so.

Look, don’t get me wrong, I’m a missionary, I rely on people to support me financially, I’ve been pretty certain I would be a missionary from I was 8. But maybe my understanding of it was a little mixed up, i also wanted to be an archeologist like Indiana jones because I wanted adventure. I wanted to be a missionary because I wanted adventure not because I was passionate about the lost.

I suppose I’m asking you, what is a missionary? What does it really mean to be one? I’m still asking the questions, I’m still wrestling with some of my own life decisions. We need to seek God on this one and read God’s Word and start to understand things for ourselves and not rely on what people think mission is. Just a few thoughts to wake us up.

Stories 'R' Us

2011-07-15T01:11:00.001+01:00

Ever wonder where all these ideas for tv shows and movies and books and comics come from? I mean I know they come from minds of people I'm not stupid. But really why does it have to be somebody else other than me and you? I'm creative, I'm sure you have ideas. I'm currently writing a book about an ex secret agent who runs a coffee shop in Portstewart and reads the Bible. it's going to be explosive, world changing. Then there's my fantasy novel and my children's books not to mention a revolutionary new devotional type thing.
See I'm full of ideas, some might call it different than that, but what makes me an average or below average Joe and them superstars?
I don't think it's luck, don't believe in it, I'm like Alex Cross on that one and he's a Dr. in psychology. Maybe it's drive, maybe it's pitching to the right people, maybe it's personality.
I've been thinking about all that stuff a lot lately, I think about ways to make my blog more widely known and used. I don't want to be famous, I want and have this strange need to inspire and help people.
I see all these people talking and writing what seems to me to be rubbish and boring yet they sell millions of books, have millions of followers on twitter or their blogs. It's just weird that's all.
Getting to my point (well done for getting here by the way It's been a rough ride) I'm convinced that you have at least one story in you that can change lives, I'm convinced that Christians, or whoevers have something to share, wether it be on the bus chatting to some old lady we've never met before or talking to friends or whatever.
TV shouldn't have the monopoly on blockbusters, we need to wake up and smell life, for many life stinks, for others it's odourless, and for others it smell sweeeeeet! But whatever life is for you start to search for stories. Plenty of stuff happens to me and it's only lately I've thought of that stuff and started to blog and write and share stories and if these stories and thoughts help to change one person's life then all this is worth it.
Create stories, record, video, write, scribble, draw, do whatever you do but start capturing life and share it!!

Diminished hope

2011-07-09T10:45:00.000+01:00

I love movies, sometimes the crazier the better. I love the ones where you need to use your imagination and not take it literally and that it takes you away from reality for an hour or 2. Imagine my delight when I watched “Scott Pilgrim”! It’s far out, crazy, changing from normality to a computer game to a movie to a rock concert to a computer game and it goes on like that. i found myself laughing and getting excited and wishing I lived in a world like that, where if you had a beef with someone you would fight game console stylee. Where life jumped from one interesting plot to the next and there was no boredom.

I kept thinking about it and about life and about how life can be rubbish and how I need more. Movies give me that release and that hope that my life could be so much more. But hold on, what the...? I’m putting my hopes and dreams in what? Yes I know it’s crazy. I want my life to be like a Mario game. My life’s not rubbish. it’s different than others, I could say I make my own fun and crazy time and sometimes I do but I should be putting my hope in the ultimate creator, the one who created this whole shabang. Yes, you guessed it, God! Come on, God has it going on, the creativity of human minds and movie makers and book writers is limited, their creativity was created by a creator!

Get it? we set our hopes on things sometimes, other people, other ideals and we still call ourselves Christians. Christianity has lost it’s way. Why? Because they’ve lost the very thing they should put their hope in. I’m at a place now where I’m questioning my love of movies and books and crazy stuff because they are taking away my focus in God.

suppose it’s something to think about.

I really love myself....

2011-07-04T11:01:00.000+01:00

I have this t-shirt, it says: “ I really love myself.” I find it hilarious because it is so over confident and silly and tongue in cheek and it just makes me laugh. The thing that makes me laugh the most though is peoples’ reactions to it. Most people laugh, it sparks conversation with strangers, it makes people that know me smile. Some people though wouldn’t know a joke if it came up and slapped them on the face. Some people frown and ask why I would wear a T-Shirt like that, others just mumble and crack snide remarks and think I mustn’t be a real Christian.

Whatever. They can take the planks out of their own eyes before they come running to me with their self righteous babble. They can back stab all they want, they just must really not like themselves that much!

All this has got me thinking though, do I really love myself? Do I have a right to say it or joke about it? Or does being a Christian mean I hate myself and wear sack cloth and ashes and look like a miserable toad and beat myself when I think of my own well being?

It’s no secret that for years I really didn’t like me, God has had to do some crazy job on my life to make me actually like my own skin, to enjoy my own personality. For so long I hated everything about me.

I’ve had to look into who I am and ask God to sort me out, and He has. It’s been such a long drawn out process that now I can actually say that I do love myself, I love the person God has created me to be, doesn’t make me perfect but it makes me God’s. Why should I mope about? I am perfectly aware that we are called to be humble but I am also aware that we are called to be salt and light, we are called to be an example of Jesus.

We need to die to self. that means we give all our desires, our hopes, our dreams to God. We get rid of our hurts, hang ups, annoyances, traditions and we look to God.

I know that people that are a bit different can be marginalised, but I know that God wants to use you, whoever you are, whatever you think about yourself, whatever your humour.

God has spoken to me a lot about humbleness but not in a cut off from the world kind of way, in a I’m everything I am because of God kind of way.

I am everything I am because of God, He’s not finished with me yet, I’m still going to wear thought provoking t-shirts and I’m still going to passionately seek God’s will and make sure i do all I can to help people like me and not like me.

Don’t listen to the blind people with trees in their eyes, listen to God.

Enough is enough.

2011-07-03T09:34:00.002+01:00

I’m fed up with the mediocre, it bores me.

I’m getting increasingly angry at my descent into normalness and tradition. I’m becoming disillusioned with life and purpose and truth and reality. I’m questioning my existence and my relationships, my likes and dislikes, my relationship with God. Maybe I question too much or maybe I know there’s more.

Truth? I’m struggling to believe in myself, I don’t think I’m all that, I feel I’ve lost my mojo and it’s time to hang my boots up, retire to a little village in some far off country and live out the rest of my days.

Real truth? I’m not talking to God as much lately, I’m focusing on ministry and throwing my relationship with God onto the back burner. I’m feeling burnt out because I’m trying to do what God has called me to do...me Chris McCune am living God’s calling without God’s help! It’s highly stupid and it has knocked me for six and messed me up.

I can’t live without God. I’m sure of that. I can do very little without God. I need to become dependent on Him, live like Jesus, be passionate, shake this place, not stop, shun tradition, laugh at mediocrity.

As always I know I’m not on my own. Christians live like this everyday and wonder why life aint great and others are having more fun like them or wonder why they struggle to get up in the morning. The answer? Relationship with Jesus. Reliance on God.

I’ll find my own way home.

2011-07-02T21:30:00.003+01:00

Watched Transformers 3 a few days ago and loved it. To be honest it could’ve been the worst movie ever but Optimus Prime wins out every time. I think if you put him in any movie ever it would be a great movie. Let me have my moment.

In the movie every thing goes to pot, the world is going to end, the world as we know it is stuffed, it seems all is lost, there are a few marines left. They are told all the usuall stuff about them being the world’s last hope but in all truth this was probably going to be a suicide mission. the main dude tells them he can’t offer them a ride home, one guy replies,

“I’ll find my own way home ,sir!”

He was sold on the idea for fighting for his country, no matter what, he believed he could make a difference. he didn’t know if what the outcome could be but he was still up for it.

I haven’t heard many Christians talk like that lately, I don’t think I’ve heard many talk like that ever, even though Christians know the outcome!

Think about it, this world is corrupt, messed up, full of death and hurt and hate and many of us let it happen. we meander through life ignoring hurt people, ignoring situations we should be standing up for. We’re not even willing to stand up and be counted for God even though we know with God we have the victory. I’m not one for war rhetoric, it boils my head, but I’m certain that those that love Jesus need to make some sort of stand.

There are a lot of people out there who would and have died for their country, something that will ultimately fade away. They’re heroes, passionate.

What am I willing to risk for the glory of God? Jesus’ disciples left it all to follow Him. We’re hanging on to our money, our pride, our traditions and God gets the short end of the deal.

I want to take the plunge whatever the cost. that could be to take up my cross...

Change

2011-06-10T10:51:00.001+01:00

It's funny how things can change. Ideas, hopes, dreams, ideals, annoyances, likes, dislikes.
When I was small I loved fish, any type. I ate prawns before I would entertain even the thought if sweets or chocolate. Then I hit a certain age when fish made me throw up. I don't know what happened, maybe sweet things won the battle of my taste buds but it happened. Lately I like fish a a lot. I can't work it out, things just seem to change in my head.
My taste buds aren't the only things that change, I used to believe I'd be alone for ever, a nomad, a lone crusader roaming the planet, changing lives here and there. I don't believe that anymore.
I used to think God didn't really care that much about me or the world or people. I don't think that anymore.
I suppose what I'm saying is that things change. Traditions get weathered away, the way of life our grandparents lived is not like ours, not by a long shot. Yet some people cry for the good old days and watch the world pass them by. There are many people who just live, change happens, roll with the punches, sit in the fence see what happens, live an ok life and die. Sounds crap. It is.
We are afraid of change. What if we decided not to be? What if we changed our mind sets from one of fear to one of faith, believing that change is a good thing, that change is something that we can embrace. So what if that's not how we have done it before, so what if elephants become the new domestic pet of the western world?!!
Maybe it is time to change, to wake up, to grab opportunities that come our way and not discard them because they're not what we're used to.
Too many people do things the way they have always been done because they're comfortable, they hate change and they are afraid their status in society or where ever would suffer because of change.

Jesus changed the world. In His lifetime some followed and many hated Him because they hated change. I know who I want to be like.

I'm back...

2011-06-08T16:06:00.001+01:00

I read somewhere a while ago that a writer should write even when there is nothing on their mind.

For the past month or so I’ve been bombarded with stories and adventures and life changing experiences but haven’t had the want or need to write them down. Maybe I’ve wanted to keep them to myself or maybe I’ve just been plain lazy or both.

Don’t get too excited, I’m not going to throw them up all at once here but I’ve realised and not for the first time that we live stories, we live our lives differently than others, that we experience things differently and react to things differently. We pray for things that impact us but different things impact different people. There are activists for everything under the sun: child poverty, famine, war, dolphins, donkeys.

Humanity is diverse, organic, alive and maybe it’s about time that I embraced the craziness of life again and threw up my perspective on things, told my stories and shared other stories that have impacted me.

I don’t think we can afford to be selfish with our experiences or our lives. This blog is my way of sharing a little bit of me but i hope and pray that you will be inspired to share you in whatever way you can.

Forgiveness ramblings...

2011-03-22T10:45:00.003Z

I sometimes get flashbacks of it seems a previous life. Some people think I have an attitude problem now but a few years ago I was a nightmare. I took offense at everything and everyone and was quite outspoken about my thoughts on people. I’ve talked about this before and sometimes I bury it but lately I’ve realised I’m not that man anymore, I refuse to be bound by my dislike of people because they annoyed me or talk a way I don’t like or don’t have the same sense of humour as me.

I’ve been burnt, I mean some people have messed me up, left me hanging, made my life a misery, but i think my reactions to them were wrong. Backstabbing, snide comments, ignoring them. Time is a great healer but so is forgiveness. I’ve noticed lately that those people I used to bad mouth and take annoyances at are great people, I just didn’t let them in to see that myself.

A lot of people have helped me on my journey and sometimes it seems that I have neglected them and left them by the wayside.

These things weigh on me and at the minute I’m hurting, at the minute I’m angry at myself and close to shutting it all down and burying it again. Maybe I need to start with forgiving myself. I’m aware that I had problems with people that had no idea they’d annoyed me.

It’s dangerous to be like me, the way I have been, the hurt and neglect i have caused. I know I’m not a monster but if i am to be a man who loves crazily and wants to see God bamboozle lives then I need to forgive myself and others and maybe even apologise to those I’ve neglected or slandered. This isn’t going to be a nice process and I’m not doing this to make myself feel better, I’m not doing this to change the past, I’m doing this to live now.

This is a glimpse into my pain, but I know i’m not the only one, I know we have regrets we can’t change, but I also know that there is no room for resentment or hatred or slander.

I want to change the world, I want to look after orphans and see Jesus change lives and I refuse to do do it with a hard, hate filled heart. God is changing me, softening my heart and it hurts.

All

2011-03-19T01:12:00.000Z

I hate money. Maybe it's a phobia. I've seen what the love of it can do to families, it can tear them apart. I've seen what lack of money does, it takes lives. I have no respect for it and refuse to look at my account to count my money. I know I should, that I need to count the pennies and be careful. I wish I didn't have money, didn't need to use it, didn't need to need it, I wish I could be free.
I used to watch the reruns of "The Good Life" and loved how the main characters wanted to live by growing their own food, making and mending their own clothes and not rely on money to get them everything. I think I loved the concept because money very nearly destroyed my family and at that time we were practically praying for every meal yet it was one if the happiest times I've had.
Being a missionary I have to raise my own support and rely on people giving me money to live and to do my work. I've never been comfortable with this, I know it's a necessity but I don't have to like it. It's amazing how kind people can be and I'll never be able to express my gratitude to those who support me financially. I don't get anywhere near what I need to get by every month and it doesn't bother me, probably because God's always seen me through and I've never wanted for anything, God's got my back and always will.
But tonight I got annoyed about it. I started thinking about what bills I paid and how I could cancel them, how I could sell my car and start to give all my income to feed the poor, to buy medicine and hospitals and water and life for those that don't have them. I hate money but it can change lives. I watched comic relief tonight, laughed a lot and cried a bit, but was hit by the simple things that could save lives. 80p could save a child's life, instead I go out and buy a chocolate bar.
I realised that although I need finance to continue doing what I do, there are children in the world who need it more. I want nothing more than to sell all I have and follow Jesus, I just might do that.
My point is: support me, not for my work with CEF but in contacting agencies and orphanages around the world that are giving hope and life to so many, give a tenner or more a month and pray that it makes a difference. Do research, get in touch, do something. A few of us went to Haiti this year, children there need sponsored. Children around the world are dying because they don't have antiseptic or malaria tablets or love.
Jesus said to a guy once that he should sell all he had and follow Him(Jesus), the guy didn't do it. I wonder if that guy ever regretted that decision. I'm not going to have regrets.

The unanswered

2011-02-21T12:17:00.000Z

Sometimes my head is a jumble, nothing seems to make sense, goldfish walk past with more concentration than I’ll ever have. I can concentrate on 4 things: reading (if I’m in the mood), watching movies, playing football manager and drawing. They seem to disconnect me from life and i like that, a lot. Conversations, writing, relationships, normal everyday tasks are next to impossible for me at times, solely because of concentration. I get hooked quickly but soon after something else comes along that hooks me and i leave that last task and go on to another, so in the space of a few hours I could have at least 20 projects on the go and by then I’m wrecked and my head is melted. To do lists don’t work, the amount of programs I’ve downloaded to help my focus is stupid, they don’t work.

I’ve read leadership books, been to leadership seminars, been taught leadership at Bible college, been taught time management and I’ve failed with every aspect of these lessons. I feel like a failure most of the time, I feel like a third rate, useless human being because I can’t do the things others do. It makes me feel pretty trashy. I know that we can’t dwell on our feelings and need to suck it up but it’s not just how I feel, it’s the truth, when it comes to being like everyone else I am an epic failure.

So for years now I’ve created the Chris that I think others want me to be and who i think God wants me to be. Oops. So here I am with my superior knowledge of everything to think that I need to create the person God intended me to be! Oh, I am laughing, my ribs hurt, I can’t breathe. I’m basically saying God didn’t know what He was doing when He created me, that now I have seen the light and turned to God that I know who I need to be and am becoming my version of God’s perfect servant.

I’m increasingly aware that the more I try to fix me, the more I fall back to the real me, the messed up, emotionally flawed, hyperactive, attention deficit, dreaming me. i despair, I lose sleep, I beat myself up, some years ago I even cut myself because I hated me because I thought everybody else did including God.

A big part of all this is my inability to concentrate on relationships. I don’t contact my friends and still expect them to be there after a month or year or decade or two. out of sight out of mind is my built in motto, it’s never anything personal, it just seems to be the way I’m wired. This links directly to my Relationship with God. I hear so many people saying that we need to be connected in prayer all the time, absorbed in God’s Word, connecting to God more than even your best friends. Some of my best friends I see yearly, some monthly and maybe weekly so in my reckoning God should get 2 or 3 days a week, that would put Him head and shoulders above the rest. When I fail to read my Bible or pray to God some days I feel guilty, I feel like i’m not a real Christian, I feel like I need to take the advice of everyone else and treat God differently than my personality allows. maybe I don’t. If my best friends got annoyed and told me to go jump off a cliff because I didn’t contact them all the time they wouldn’t be my friends. So do i need to change my personality, the essence of who I am to be a real christian or does God understand?

I don’t have the answers, I know there are two sides to the coin, I also know that i am so passionate about God, but sometimes my mind wonders.

Sometimes I think about David in the Bible, a man after God’s own heart who seems almost as sporadic and messed up as me, yet God used Him to do amazing things. Is this just a one off? Is it different today?

I really dislike things that don’t resolve, yet this subject has never resolved in my head and maybe never will. All i can do is live for God, love Him and hope that somewhere along the way He’s changing me into the man he wants me to be, not me changing me into who i think i should be.

The aftermath

2011-02-04T02:55:00.000Z

Haiti blew our minds, ripped our controlled hearts and emotions open and threw us in God's direction. Most of us got up earlier than usual, watched the sun come up, prayed, cried, hoped, felt useless and unworthy and through all this understood our need for reliance on God.
I suppose mission can do that, can make you see things differently, can expose you to yourself and your inadequacies and expose God to you. We felt alive, I felt beat up, ripped apart and then put back together by God. I vowed life at home would be different, I'd get up early, pray more, learn a trade, learn guitar, write more, dream more, hope more.
I've been home less than a week and I haven't really done those things, I thought I was slipping back into the old routine, losing the passion I had in Haiti, losing my grip and closeness to God. I'm not. We're not. Mission can make you feel like that. On a high. Our lives were changed. God made sure of that. We were top of the world but now we're home we think we aren't as close to God because we don't think like we did 5 days ago or pray as much as we did. I am not the same person I was, I'm a little different. The difference being that I've realised we can't beat ourselves up for not going all out like we did in Haiti but we can trust that God knows what He is doing and that even in our weakness and lethargy He loves us and values us more than anything.
We've all come down from a high of watching God move, feeling God change us but maybe we don't see that God is still changing us. Haiti wasn't about me, it was about God. My life isn't about me and yours isn't about you. It's about God. That's a WOW moment right there. Praise God for what He has done and live what He is doing.

Maybe I got it wrong.

2011-01-27T20:46:00.000Z

I'm not often lost for words, but over the past few days I've been close to speechless. Inadequate would not be a word I would use at all, but over the past few days that is the word that has described me. There is too much to take in and it hits you from all directions and you dont have time to breathe.
Yesterday I laughed, prayed, cried, despaired, felt sorry for myself, sang and hoped. I felt useless, sorry for myself and just plain wanting to go home. Construction?! Killing me. I kept asking myself why i came here and what use I was to the children or the people here. Before I came I thought I was coming for them, coming to help in any way I could, to bring God's hope and love, to bring Jesus in any way I could.
It's funny how we can totally get things wrong, I think God's got a great sense of humour, I had my motives and He had His and they are so cooler.
I was walking into the boys orphanage yesterday with a huge heavy box of colouring books, i had just stepped in the gate when one of the olderboys stopped what he was doing, ran out, grabbed the box off me "let me help you." It wasn't a question, he was doing it. So I grabbed a case off one of the girls in our team, I got to the steps and he was back grabbing the bag off me. Then he proceeded to ask me how my ankle was and if I'd be playing football later. Backtrack to Sunday, we're playing football and this guy from the orphanage comes out to play against us, he looks 25, scary, cool, built like an athlete, didn't smile and was one heck of a football player. As the game went on it was obvious this guy had a sense of humour but a sense of honour aswell, courteous, helpful, funny, polite. Then we looked around and realised all the boys had this passion for life and respect for each other and visitors that is alien in our "civilised" culture back home. Scary, coolest guy ever was the guy who helped me with the box and bag, who showed concern. At this stage I was in high feeling sorry for myself mode wondering why i was here, what good i could do. It was at that moment that I started to realise that God didn't send me to Haiti to help these people as much as He sent me for them to help me, to maybe save me from a downward spiral of apathy, and passionless faith.
Last night we headed over to the boys orphanage for a praise and worship night, the boys and girls where there and they led the worship all by themselves, it blew me away.
I'm typing this just about holding myself together, their passion and love and everything else was intoxicating, they sang worship Haitian stylee with Scary, coolest guy ever leading the singing. At that moment I questioned my faith in God, my deep down walk with Him. Last night I prayed that God would make me more like those kids at the orphanage, that I dont want to be me anymore, that i have found a better way to live. These boys and girls have taught me how to live God's way. I came to help a broken people but they have helped to rebuild a broken man.
The work that Child Hope have done here and continue to do is amazing. They've given these children and young people God, have taught them to live His way and have been there supporting and praying for them. This is not only the future for Haiti but for the world. God changes lives, inspires lives, heals lives, gives hope, gives grace and gave us Jesus.
This is a place of hope.

The journey continues.

2011-01-25T02:16:00.000Z

I don't know how to describe our first few days here. A few on the team have been brought to tears, have said they want to live here. I feel at home. And it's not pity or feelin sorry for the people, this place just is. It's not moping about, it's alive. I'm sitting at 8 at night in the grounds of the girls orphanage listening to them praise God singing simple songs that send a tingle down my tingleless spine.
Church yesterday wasn't mind blowing or spectacular it was more. The packed building was full of people who genuinely loved Jesus and when they sang they meant it. I nearly fell off my seat when the pastor started talking about giving to missions and praying for other countries who have suffered devastation. What? Have they not enough to pray for and think about?! They certainly didn't think so. Amazing. Happy, thinking of others, missional despite tragedy that would destroy most of us. Maybe it's time for us to learn a dew harsh lessons.
Today was spent helping to plumb a sink and make shelves in a new guest house for Child hope. that's a miracle in itself, me and manual labour. There's a team of American guys here working on the project and man watching them work, be passionate and make time for the children is so cool. It puts me to shame. This place makes me feel like I'm in the wrong job and then I realise maybe that's my problem I don't have a job I have a duty and privilege to serve God. The guys that run Child Hope get it. It's life not just a job.
Next was the feeding programme giving food and Bible teaching to the children from the neighbourhood. They get about150 in 3 times a week. It capped off a crazy day that couldn't help but shake me a little.
Then when I thought it was over we end up here listening to girls of all ages praise God. I wish we sang like them at home.

Haiti.

2011-01-23T11:33:00.002Z

Sometimes I try to hide from myself my ability to enjoy beauty, my capability for wonder. I prefer to let other people show emotion. Some say a place like Haiti could break you. I'm beginning to think it could make me.
6 in the morning, the noise is a steady buzz of roosters and dogs and the faint sound of music and people brushing and talking and cooking.
The world expects devastation here and they get it in bucket loads. We just stared for most of our journey here. I think I was expecting to see devastation on people's faces, see the pain and feel sorry for them. I didn't see it. Yes the airport was one of the scariest experiences ever, it was a miracle we got all our bags. Walking outside we were confronted with men wanting to help us, grabbing our trollies, following us desperate to help to get a little money. But even then this didn't seem like desperation it seemed like a force will to live.
It's something I will try to explain later but people have excepted it and moved on as best they can. It's a scary place, some of the stories from the missionaries here are horrible. Some of the children of the orphanage have been through things nobody should go through.
Yet it's not pity I feel for Haiti, it's hope. We could throw all the money in the world here and it would disappear but love can rebuild lives and is rebuilding lives.
This is the start of a weeks journey in one of the most beautiful countries I've ever seen.
Pray for us as we give ourselves this week to help build, cook, play with the kids, help in the clinic, help in the school and anything else we can get involved in.

Jumbled thoughts on apathetic Christianity.

2010-12-11T02:08:00.003Z

Ever think so much that you can't think?
Ever dream so much that reality becomes a little foggy? Ever live too much that you forget why you are alive? Ever live for God too much that you forget who He is? Ever live for God?
I love Jesus, I want to live for Him, I want to see the world changed, I want to see God move in peoples lives, I want to see God use me astronomically, I this, I that, blah blah blah.
I've become a freak and not because I want all the above but that all the above has become my rhetoric, my apathetic statement of intent. I've said these things so many times that they lose their meaning and maybe a little of their truth. I think that if I keep saying those things that it's ok, that if I think these things then that's enough. They become my mission statement but without the action. I've refined a pretty awesome mission statement but I've over thought it and over lived it. I'm burnt out, a shell of who I dreamed I would be and who I hoped I would become. I've taken the truth and promises of God and made them into my way, my system, my statement.

The point is, I've slowly become apathetic, not because I'm doing nothing but because I've taken my ministry and my relationship with God for granted. maybe I have taken my calling too seriously and destroyed what humanity I have to become a machine for Jesus. Maybe we do that. Maybe we try so very hard to become a great Christian when all we have to is let ourselves be loved and called by God. Not to over analyse but to let our relationship with God grow and change and to let our calling be revealed to us naturally, not us forcing it. Maybe working too hard to impress God has made me apathetic when all I need to do is let Him love me.

Drowning in Me

2010-11-26T17:48:00.001Z

“You'll never find peace of mind in your pool of self”.

I used to think that people who thought they were the big cheese, the arrogant, the pain in the backside were the ones who were selfish and full of it and drunk on their own self worth and didn’t care about anybody but themselves.

I proudly put myself in the outsider, hate myself bracket for years but that was the problem, I was drowning in me, in my hang ups, in my annoyances and grievances. I was creating a ME that I thought would be heroic and cool and awesome, impervious to the discriminating gaze of others. I was going to create someone I was happy with.

Bottom line is: I was drowning in me. Me, me, me.

There world is falling apart and all I’m concerned about is My welfare, My health, My faith, My salvation. I’m not an over selfish person but I’m careful with my feelings, I don’t show them, I refuse to show compassion because it might hurt me too much. If I could be a robot I would.

Maybe the world misses out on us. Maybe the world misses out on being that little bit more enriched by our lives because we don’t want to open up because it hurts, we don’t want to tell the world about Jesus because it might cause us pain.

How selfish are we? How much peace is in you? In me?

I’m pretty much convinced that my life would be a lot crazier, more fun, more fulfilling, more peace filled if I let people know me, the me who I was created to be. Not my creation.

I want to change the world but I never will if I try to be a man of steel.

Stuck with God

2010-11-24T13:03:00.000Z

Realisations seem to be my thing, I seem to have one every other day. Maybe I'm a realisation junkie! Maybe I need signs, maybe I need God to speak to me all the time, maybe I need to know that God actually does give a hoot about me. Maybe I'm not the only one.

I'll not lie, the last few days have saw me return to that feeling sorry for yourself stage. All I want to do is hide from the world, it is a struggle to even go out for coffee and that is so not me, I love being around people, but not lately. Maybe I'm feeling sorry for myself, maybe I'm struggling with where my life's at or where my ministry is at. It's all me me me really.

So I was lying in bed last night and prayed and asked God to help me, to be with me and this was pretty much the reply: "What do you think I've been doin'?" That reply made me laugh at myself and realise I'm not alone, even when I want to be. when I want to hide from the world I can't because God is there all the time. I can't get away from Him, from His love, from his promises. Basically I'm stuck with God. That is so cool.

We all get down, we all get despondent at times, we want to run away, we feel the need to be somebody else but in all that God is God.

I couldn't sleep last night, I still woke up this morning feeling tremendously sorry for myself, sore head despair at not being a wonderful human being as I should be. it didn't take me long to remember that God is working in my life even when i'm on self destruct, auto pilot mode. I'm stuck with God and it feels good.

Epicity

2010-11-14T16:22:00.002Z

If it's not a word it should be! I've been thinking a lot lately about our relationship with God, our calling, our purpose. Little things really.
Are we called to be epic? Are we called to create epics? Are we called to be great in the eyes of people and God? What are our destinies, our callings? Why am I not as uber awesome as other Christians? why am I not called to be a superstar for Jesus? We ask these questions, well I do.
I think the problem might be that we listen to dynamic preachers and watch stars in tv and see big churches with popular leaders and think that that is what it's all about, that being epic, that being cool that having all the plaudits is when you've made it with God.
Jesus made it pretty clear that the only calling that matters, the only thing WE need to do is "love the Lord your God with absolutely everything you have" I've paraphrased but that's the biggie! We are not called to be epic or be big strong branches that give out loads of awesome fruit and change lives all over the world and have massive churches and heal the sick and feed the poor. They're all brilliant and right in their own way but maybe we've missed something. First off we are called to love God. Period. Thing is, there are plenty of amazing humanitarians out there and peace prize winners, there are many Christians busting a gut to do the same because they think it defines them. They talk the way they think they should, they do massive missions in their towns yet sometimes they do it because they think they should not because they love God.
When we love we become devoted, we start to think like those we love, we want to please them, protect them, never leave them. When we realise it's all about loving God our lives will be epic, epicity will be flying out of us, not because we've made it happen ourselves and forced our calling but because we've loved God.
In John 15 Jesus says that we need to abide in the vine and then stuff will happen not the other way round.
So here's the challenge: stop trying to do stuff to please God or think you should because it keeps you looking and feeling like a Christian, love God and then the things you do will impact nations because it's coming from a life that is interwoven with God.
This is where I'm at, I'm fighting my own ideas and striving to love God with everything that I am.

Me

2010-09-08T19:48:00.002+01:00

I used to wonder who I was and who I was meant to be. For years I have struggled to give God everything, to give me, my personality my sense of humour, my ideas, hopes, dreams. Mostly because I'm terrified God will take them and make me like other Christians. That paralyses me with fear. Maybe there's something wrong with me thinking that. Either I just dint want God to work in me because I like what I'm like more than what Gid could make me or I'm looking at so called Christians who live half baked rule and regulation lives that they can't do this and that. I don't want to be a Jesus follower that isn't following Jesus but following what man has interpreted.

My point is that I'm me. I've been drawn lately into a world where I need to please people and their sensibilities and they're religion and i have found they my beliefs and passion for God have been dictated by others. It's killing me.

This summer has been strange. I love my summers they're hectic, lots of camps, mission, speaking. God has been battering me from all sides, laying my faith bare, asking me what my life us about. Is it about ministry or is it about Him. I'm I living to please others and become what others make me or am I finally going to give it all to God and let Him move me His way?

I'm beginning to realise that I need to make a choice a manifesto a creed that either leads me into pleasing others or into living a life with God and for God, pleasing none but Him.

I'm not preaching rebellion against Christians and church, I'm screaming at you the need to be God's and nobody else's.

I refuse to be broken

2010-08-10T14:56:00.000+01:00

So we got it, we grab hold of God, we realise our lives are no longer the same, we are now God's, linked to the creator if everything, loved by Him enough to send His son. Enough.

So many new Christians are mental, gung ho for Jesus then they go to church and slowly calm down and "grow" as a Christian, become more mature in their walk with God.

I'm throwing my hat in the ring and shouting that's crap. Yes I used the word crap. Is maturity stifling who we are, stifling our creativity, not being who we were created to be? If it us I want none of it.

I watched a cartoon yesterday about a horse who could not be broken, who was born to be wild and free, to run and run in wide open spaces, to not be risen by man but to be what it was created to be. This horse refused to be broken because he knew who he was and what he wanted.

What do Christians want? If it's not got something to do with glorifying God then what have you become. Christians today strive more to seen as a nice person and dress nice and not do bad things and join up with the other Pharisees. Oh I go too far. Or maybe not far enough.

For so long Christians have tried to break me, make me become what is acceptable to the church, make me fight against who I am. They call my hyper activity l, my fun loving, questioning nature wrong. It is just short if sin. Maybe I'm too passionate about God and need to calm down.

Maybe you feel like this. Maybe you are beating yourself up because you are not what everyone tells you you should be.

What has God called you to be? Near the end of that horse movie, the stallion has been captured by the humans, he is so close to seeing things their way, that it is easier to serve. But then he remembers home where he was free, remembers his family, realises he will not let the humans capture and break his family. He fights against them, goes all out to live what he believes.

Are we living what we believe? Living for God. Making Jesus real, seeing Him move every second of our existence. Or are we becoming less than we are and listening to institutions and formulas rather than listen to God?

The horse was named by an Indian "Spirit who could not be broken"... Don't let your spirit be broken by people who were broken and think you should be too. Let God take over and build your spirit and live.

A realisation

2010-08-06T11:32:00.000+01:00

I don't think anybody would be surprised if I said I had an attitude problem sometimes, that people can wind me up by just being them. Maybe I think they're legalistic or proud or whatever. It annoys me, in fact it makes me angry. They're idiots, they're wrong, they should take the tree out of their own eye before they say anything about me. I feel judged, I feel like people don't think I'm much of a human being never mind much of a Christian. It consumes me, it tears me apart, at times it leaves me contemplating a life without God.

But then I look in the mirror and see a forest of trees in my eye ( not literally, although that would be well cool!!). I'm not perfect, in fact if I stood back for a second and looked at my life I'd see that all those annoyances I have about people and what they think or do are nothing. I'm not perfect, I'm most likely worse than those guys. I have no right to think anything bad about people who love God. It's their walk, it's their life.

So this is a manifesto, a cry, a call for me to live a life Christ driven, a life hooked on Jesus, loving Him, passionately seeking His plan for my life and not trying to sort everyone else's.

Those people I get annoyed with I've been judging maybe more than them me. Maybe I'm the one with the problem and for that I apologise. I want to love. People may be different than me, some Christians may annoy me but who am I? I refuse to be petty anymore, I refuse to let my annoyances rule me and shape the ideas and mindsets of others.

Maybe it's time for us to live our lives passionately for Jesus, and to celebrate our passion for him and not fight over our differences.

I'm on a journey, at times it hurts me and at times I hurt others. I'm sorry. I hope that I can grow in relationship with God and with you.

Not my life

2010-08-04T10:50:00.000+01:00

I'm aware lately that my faith in Jesus isn't just a thing, not just a lifestyle, not just a sub-culture group, not just a bubble but is life.

I exist because of God and I live because of Jesus. My life isn't mine and for many years I struggled with that, we all want control of something it's easier to live our way sometimes than God's.

I'm becoming convinced that I don't have the right to be in control of my life. That idea used to terrify me so I ignored it. But the more I slowly understand God and infuriatingly slowly love Him I find that I want him to control me. I find that when I preach if I've thrown everything at God and understand that it ain't my brilliant speaking skills that impact lives but it's God, then things happen, lives either visibly change or God is challenging them.

I'm me and I'm quite happy with that fact not because I'm amazing but because I know that as me and through me God can and will speak.

Be you, let God use you, the real raw you, not the person you think you should be. Do it. Live. Let God move you. It could just change the world.

Different isn't always a bad thing

2010-08-02T12:06:00.000+01:00

All journeys are different, people have different experiences, different highs and lows, people have different tolerance levels and patience levels, they see beauty in different things, some may think the sunset is the most amazing thing ever, some may think various wildlife they see is the most amazing thing ever. Some people will love stopping at Madonalds, others will do nothing but pic nic it with organic foods and fruit juice. Some will hate flying, others will love it.

It's so cool that everyone's different, diverse, creative amongst many other things.

It's amazing that the Church has it's pick of these creative, diverse mix of people that we all can contribute in unique ways and that we can think differently and keep the focus of the church fresh and the passion of the church fresh, that this diversity grows and changes and people will be sharpened and challenged by each others personality, character and faith in God.

So why has Christian faith and church gathered in personality groups and stifled creativity and passion with uniformity and rules and regulations? The New Testament doesn't seem to me like a life stifler. God created you yo be you I can't believe that when you become a Christian that He wants you to be somebody else who is ruled by secret handshakes and archaic speech. God wants us to be us. the early church was littered with people who were themselves who lived passionate God focused lives not church, rule based lives where they were more careful with what people thought than what was glorifying God.

maybe we need to get back to God and what will glorify Him rather than what is politically correct.

Seek God passionately, know Him personally, remember who Jesus is and what He has done, know God for yourself, personally and not through other peoples eyes. Be sharpened and challenged by people but be moved and guided and loved by God.

Big Fat Failure

2010-07-16T20:05:00.002+01:00

I’m a big fat failure. It’s taken me a long time to admit that, I’m human after all and I need to seem like I’m making something of my life. I don’t dwell in the past yet sometimes it comes to haunt me. I’ve thought about a lot of stupid things I’ve done and realised that a lot of the things I’ve tried in life, a lot of the relationships I’ve had, have been riddled with failure. I’ve hid this truth from myself for a long time but lately I’m working out that I’m stronger than I’ve ever been, that my emotional state is stronger (wasn’t hard many of you will say!!!), my communication is better, my passion has developed and grown.

I remember praying years ago and apologising to God for not being what I thought He wanted me to be. I was hurting big style, my life was a mess, I’d messed a lot of people about, my studies weren’t going well, I’d lost contact with a lot of friends. I felt like a failure and if anybody was watching me they’d have thought: “loser”, “failure”. I was a failure. But as I prayed and read the Bible that week, God made it clear to me in a few ways that well actually I was a failure, that I’d messed up but that I would never be who I was created to be if I wasn’t a failure, that I was exactly where God wanted me to be.

If I could put a list up of my failures and my successes I’d have pages and pages of fails and a page of successes. I’m beginning to like this. The friendships I have now are the strongest I have ever had, the focus I have in my life and ministry is stronger than ever yet there’s millions of miles to go.

I’m going to fail at something later, I’m maybe going to fail at the same thing many times but somewhere along that depressing line I turn in a new direction.

We all fail, we are all afraid of it yet failure needs to be seen as a positive rather than a negative. If Dyson had stopped the first second third fourth fifth sixth time he’d failed he wouldn’t be a multimillionaire, innovative genius, we wouldn’t have cool vacuum cleaners and well cool hand dryers, if Edison had stopped with the first failure of the light bulb then we’d be waiting on some other dude to fail a few hundred times.

I’m a big fat failure.

Ourselves

2010-05-18T22:05:00.000+01:00

Lately every thing i watch on tv or read or hear in conversation draws me to the realisation that we need to be who we are meant to be that we need to be ourselves. It seems to be the buzz "lifestyle" of our post post post post modern culture. I realise that i try so hard to be somebody else, somebody cooler, somebody who would be the coolest movie character ever. I'm not alone. We all try to be different than what we are, there are not many of us who are totally satisfied with who we are or how we look. We do not under any circumstances want to be just plain us yet I watched Glee last night(can't believe i'm admitting that) and a conversation between father and son went something like this...

"It's your job to be you and my job to love you". That was the dad talkin to the sun who was havin identity issues. In other words just be you and i will love you whatever.

God created me. I believe that. It keeps me sane. God made me, my personality, my quirkiness, my faults, my weaknesses, my strengths and He loves me. Lets face it i can look at me and think i'm a grade A plonker, God looks at me and nearly explodes with love for me. That's amazing.

We try too hard sometimes to please God, to make God love us more, to be the amazing Christians we think we should be, but God wants us to be us.

God wants you to be you. Period. I think we destroy parts of ourselves because WE think we are disappointing God with who we are. maybe that's our sinful nature talking. God loves us.

I'm beginning to think that if we started to realise who we were and started to enjoy who we were that we would enjoy life more and enjoy God more.

It's ground zero, it's the beginning of our relationship with God, it's realising our place in this world.

I believe that when we love God we change, we focus on different things, we become who God wants and created us to be. We cannot become who God wants us to be on our own.

Too many of us try too hard to impress God. We can't. I think the closest we come to impressing God is when we relax, be ourselves and let God be God.

I'm on a journey, a place where i'm fighting with myself and with God, maybe it's time a stopped fighting and realised that to be me is the bravest thing i could ever do.

What's life?

2010-05-13T01:06:00.000+01:00

So stuff happens that we can't control or otherwise can control and alot of the time we say "that's life."

What's life? what do we mean? So we stuff up...that's life, we get back stabbed...that's life, we get looked down on...that's life, we hurt people...that's life, we get hurt..that's life..etc. etc. etc.

Maybe we've sold ourselves short, maybe we're trying very hard to breeze on through life and not confront why things are the way they are. we can throw so much down to human nature, say things that throw it down to the feet of fate and forget that well life could very well be so much more than we claim it is.

What if we took responsibility for the things that happen? What if we made things happen more than we already do, what if we stood up and made a difference instead of letting politicians get into power that shouldn't or let people walk over us? What if, what if, what if..

So what is life? Is life what we make it or is it something more or should it be?

I'm ranting cos i'm slowly realising that we've created a matrix style world were we accept everything as the norm and meander through our existence, but i'm sure that there is more than that, that we are all here for a purpose...

That's life.... maybe it's not but we accept it that way cos it's easy...

Elect me....NOT!!!

2010-04-29T21:20:00.000+01:00

Election election election, it's all we hear, it's all we see, it's all we smell. I was sorta thinkin today that every politician in my area will definitely not get my vote because it seems to me that most of them are cowboys and haven't a clue what they want or what they believe that maybe they've bought into some lie and are riding on fumes and smoke and no substance.

I'm being very personmal in my view and i'm very aware that if u don't vote the wrong people could get in but then i also realise that they're all the same and could very well be a waste of space...

As i was thinkin these things it hit me that that's what church and Christianity has become. We fight for position, we say we believe things to get people to like us and accept us, we become a shadow of who we are and whon we should be. Not all of us but maybe it happens to more of us than we like to admit.

i work for a missionary organisation, i need to raise my own financial support, canvas support so to speak, sell myself, say the right things for people to like me and support me and frankly it's the most terrible thing in the world. I've never fought to make people klike me by becoming something that i'm not. i do hide the real me sometimes but to create a new persona just to have people support me is beyond who ni am yet sometimes it seems to me that's what church has become: who says the right things, dresses the right way, represents God the right way????

I wonder how John the Baptist, Paul or even Jesus would have got on in church politics today. they wouldn't. bottom line is it was simply about the gospel, the truth, the light, the way. Have we lost it? am i becoming the very thing that i dislike incredibly?

I want and need to see the world changed for God, turned upside down, flipped on it's head by the gospel of Jesus Christ but do i need to become a politician to do it?? No.

Jesus was the antithesis of political, He just lived, He didn't make a song and dance about it.

This is my journey. It's hurting a lot lately and i'm questioning everything, but i never want to become a political Christian and i don't think i need to.

a scary move forward

2010-04-22T01:22:00.000+01:00

For well over a year a had a dream of creating a blog, of sharing my thoughts of seeing lives inspired and changed by sharing what God is doin and has done in my life... I didn't have the guts to do it, but somethin snapped, nerves disappeared adn i had a passion to throw my thoughts down and let u guys read them...

For as long, maybe longer i've dreamed of young people being inspired by God's word, by moving, by dreaming by hoping, by knowing who God is and what Jesus was all about... but i never had the guts to read the Bible and throw my thoughts on it out there.

lately i've been aware that i need God. I need the Bible. I need truth. I need hope. and i'm not the only one. so here it is my dream mark 2, to create a blog that is a daily look at growing and hoping and living and knowing God and changing this world and living as part of God's story, to realise who God is and who we are...

it's a big thing, i know that. I'm no theologian but i'm gonna throw out my heart, my prayers my meditations on God's Word and then see where it goes.

So watch this space, there'll probably be a link to a new blog, spread the word, let's see God move.

Whose story?

2010-04-22T00:36:00.001+01:00

i haven't writen much for a while but my mind has been on overdrive for weeks. i'm still obsessed by story and what my life has become and is becoming. But my story hasn't been great, the way i'm living my life, my outlook my attitude has alot to be desired.
it's funny that just over a month ago i was optimistic and happy and looking forward to living mad crazy stories but now i'm just floating along letting stuff happen andc not making stuff happen.
i got annoyed about that but then i realised that sometimes i'm trying so hard to make my story be really cool and epic and awesome that i totally forget God's story. it's slightly bigger than me, hold on... it's well bigger than me.

the thing is that God and His story makes my story look like the tiniest speck in the universe. let's face it, God is awesome, creator, amazin, love etc. and, well, i am not. I can have delusions of grandeur and think i should be a rock star and think that i'm the greatest communicator in the world and that i'm hot and funny and loads of other stuff but i'm not. I love God and realise that His story rocks and that for some reason He has let me into His story so what am i goin to do?

here's the thing: i could live my story and it could be alright, i could mke my life seem cool and have loads of tales to tell but it will always suck compared to being even the props guy in God's story.

I think i want to be the props guy or the 3rd grip. what does a 3rd grip do in a movie? i dunno but i don't care. To be in God's story in whatever capiacity is living out a story that makes the ones we could only dream of look like cheap magazine articles.

what story are you goin to live?

the first thing that comes into your head

2010-03-16T22:38:00.000Z

Me and my house mate Mark write songs, he grabs his guitar, starts playin a few chords then i start singin and puttin words in as i think of them. It's hilarious. we'll be rock superstars soon. We've tried writing words then addin music or vice versa but it just doesn't flow, it feels too forced. when we just sing and play the songs they seem to come alive and mean something, it's pretty cool.

Ever notice that when we stall sometimes because we overthink, overplan, over worry.

People get flustered if their lives don't have meanin or if they don't go the way they planned. We seem to need to write our stories or our songs before we live them. That limits us.

What have we become? We don't write our stories as we live them, we write them before we live them and we're always disapointed.

So here's an idea... what if... what if we woke up in the morning and did something without thinkin. maybe throwing fairy liquid in our cornflakes instead of milk. It would be disgustin, maybe make us sick, but what a story, what an idiot! What if we loved without thinkin of the consequences, whether we'd get hurt or loving someone would be a waste of our time. We're afraid to do things because we've thought about them too much and analysed everything that could go wrong.

Over the last few months, a few of us have started living our stories, not creating them then living out a script but living and enjoying the ride and enjoyin the life God has given us. Jesus' life was pretty full on, as i read the Gospels i realise that Jesus could've sat up all night workin out His day and what miracles He was goona perform and what pharisee He was goona make a fool of, but i don't think he did. Jesus lived his story, He sang the song as He lived the song.

So this short disjointed blog is a call to those who want to live a little more than the rest of the world does...

It's easier to be the bad guy than the good guy

2010-03-01T14:45:00.000Z

The Joker in Batman, Sanchez in License to Kill, Terminator 1, Terminator 2. All fantastic bad guys, i love a movie with a great baddie, they make the good guys have to work harder and be better than your average good guy.

A lot of times i want to be the bad guy, want to be the evil mastermind that wants to take over the world, because in movies the bad guys are against the grain, they're crazy and different and mental, in many cases twisted revolutionaries. I connect more with the bad guys than the good guys, good guys can be so one dimensional. Batman aint one dimensional but the bad guys are so much more complicated that it puts him in the shade.

I've thought about this, why i connect more with the villians. It's because it's easier to be the bad guy, it's easier to give in to the desire in us to take what we want, to hurt people, our need to survive. Bad guys seem to have all the fun while the good ones have to fight all the time and their lives fall apart.

Looking after number one and wanting to take over the world is in our nature. I'm convinced of this. I love movies where the good guys are fighting themselves everyday as much as they are fighting the bad guys, it shows that they no they could be the bad guy but there's something in them that refuses to live like that.

So on this journey i have realised that altho to be the good guy is fighting against an almost unstoppable force that maybe that is the way to live. The goodies are in the minority, they have all the odds against them, yet they keep moving.

Jesus was a good guy.

Who are we really?

2010-02-17T15:47:00.000Z

When i was at Bible college remember saying in one deep and meaningful conversation in a chinese at New year that the thing i wanted to be remembered for was being a man of integrity. Someone who was trustworthy, who was transparent, someone you relied on. I wanted to be that kind of person because i wasn't that kind of person and desperately wanted to change. I was all over the place, secretive, hot headed, blunt amongst many other things.

I've prayed a lot that God would make me perfect that He would help me forgive myself for the idiot that i was and sometimes still am. That's the hard part. To put it bluntly I've messed people around, most notably girlfriends. I think i was one of those guys who messed with people's feelings and then jumped ship, who didn't care about anybody else but myself.

I'm now the oppossite. i refuse to like anybody, to even try likin anybody. Yet everybody assumes that i'm the kind of guy that's gonna take advantage of some girl, that there's only one thing on my mind. Well if there is it aint that.

It's got me thinkin of the type of person i am. Most of what people say about me and think bout me is complete lies, yet everybody accepts it. I've had to fight the fact that many people have a pre-conception of what i'm like and so they judge me on it and i become to them someone i have never been and have no intention of being.

I don't get annoyed because of them, i get annoyed because of me. What have i done to create this persona? Why is it so hard for me to become a man who has integrity? Why do girls just assume that i fancy them just because i talk to them or want to hang out with them? i don't. Why do people think i'm gonna be controversial and troublesome all the time? i'm not.

I haven't explained myself overly well because my mind is in a jumble, but there has got to be some way for people to see what i'm thinkin so i don't have to hide who i am or maybe it's better i hide who i am because it's easier to be alone than loved for who you really are. Maybe it is.

Maybe this is just a small cry to the world to stop living their lives on first impressions and here say and to start getting to know people. there are gonna be some guys out there who just want to talk to u cos they fancy u, there are gonna be far more who just wanna talk cos that's what they do. Some of my best friends' first impression on me weren't good, infact they got my back up, yet i realised there was more to them, and that's a good thing.

Let people get to know you, i have to learn to do that, and in turn have the decency to get to know other people without listening to slander cos really that's all it is. Maybe Jesus would've listened to rumours and based His relationships on first impressions, or maybe He didn't, maybe He just let people be people.

Pobody's Nerfect.

realising it aint as bad as we thought

2010-02-15T14:22:00.000Z

it's funny how we can be in one mood one day and a completely different one the next, sometimes it takes only a song or a word or a whisper, a sunny day or a memory. We're emotional beings wether we like it or not, some maybe more sensitive than others, but we feel.

I don't want to feel but at the same time i want to feel. I can't explain it better than that. The Goo Goo Dolls explain it pretty well when they say:

you bleed just to know your alive.

Life blindsides me and i pretend i can't feel it, i don't want to feel it, i want to feel like a zombie, life seems easier that way. But there are times when we need to feel alive, when we need to stop drowning, put our feet on solid ground and take a deep breath and feel.

I love when Jesus talks about giving life, it fills me with a hope and an energy that inspires me to live, to dare to feel.

Last week was a crappy week, there where one or two occasions where i punched walls many times, just to feel pain, just to vent my frustration, then i went out into the world and smiled and joked, all the while breaking inside, i couldn't see infront of me, everything seemed hopeless. The weekend was auto pilot me, just living zombie style, with glimpses of the life Jesus promised flashing for a while, then gone.

This morning i woke up wanting to be awake, that was a good sign. Then i put some music on, a new album by a band that probably shaped my life more than i ever realised. I hadn't heard it before, i was excited. It's funny sometimes how the little things can excite you more than the big things, but anyway, this song came on and hit me, the simple words and melody broke me and made me want to feel and live my story and have the guts to continue on my journey of learning how to feel. Here's some of the words:

woke up and had a face to face

guess my reflection had a lot to say

why let my worries steal my day

it just brings me down

does the song you sing

have enough meaning?
inspire us to sing along

does the song you sing

keep echoing?

inspire us to sing the song you sing

what’s wrong with the world today?

tell me what’s all the talk about

lately I’ve been in a real bad place

can’t let the world bring me down

does the song you sing

have enough meaning?

inspire us to sing along

does the song you sing keep echoing?

inspire us to sing the song you sing

[Creed - The Song You Sing Lyrics]

Sometimes it takes unexpectated things to wake us up and realise that things aren't as bad as we maybe thought. It's easy to bacome insular and inward thinking all the time but there's a lot going on in this world and some of it good, we can make it better y living our stories and singing our songs.

Does the life we live have the power to change the lives of those around us for the better?

It should.

Wading through mud

2010-02-14T15:17:00.000Z

i want to run away.

i mean really run. run and not look back. my mind is clouded, my motives suspect, my dreams floating away from me. I don't want to write, don't want to dream, don't want to do the things i love to do. I feel too numb to be indifferent. i'm beyond that.

my story is becoming something close to a melo-drama mixed with a tragedy mixed with some coming of age drama. it's interesting if nothing else.

It's hard to explain but my relationship with God is the best it's been for ages, it's not as if i'm feeling this way because i'm neglecting to spend time with God, it seems like the opposite is happening and that's just plain wierd. I'm unsettled and struggling with who i am and who i am meant to be. maybe i'm thinking too much or maybe i'm staring over the edge of where i'm meant to be but haven't had the guts to get there. that's the scary bit.

i think God sometimes gets a litle fed up with our waiting, our procrastination. We wait on God and when He turns up we keep waiting. I think we sometimes become "waiting" Christians. We pray for God to do stuff and we wait, we don't have the gumption to do something about it.

I've been creating a new story lately, doin crazy things, things i would never have the guts to do, like do a 30 minute set singin in a coffee shop with lots of people listening including my friends. I would never have done that before cos i never thought i was good enough, and maybe i aint good enough but i'm gonna live the life God has given me. Maybe it made people smile. It was worth it.

I love living for God, it was why i was created, i love talking about my faith but lately it's been a struggle to just get up in the morning, it's a fight to smile and be my bubbly self. That's life i suppose. Job had a hard time of it, i understate, but he kept his trust and love and faith in God. I will too. Even if it is almost flippin impossible.

the moral of this story is:

"keep on keeping on".

Keep living even when it feels God is taking a break, He isn't. Keep going when it seems God is giving you a hard time, He probably is. Listen when He's calling.

Quit waiting and start living.

A glimmer

2010-02-07T20:05:00.000Z

I went on to urban dictionary the other day and typed my name in, not that i was being self absorbed but it was a facebook thing so i decided to type it in. This was what one definition said:

Maybe when you first meet a Christopher they'll seem like a jerk, and hurt you emotionally multiple times, or possible make the lamest jokes but one day he'll make up for it all, the best he can. Christophers will eventually realize the love that they've stored in a safe place for you. Christophers usually have the most gorgeous smile out there, and the most seductive voice. They're someone you wouldn't mind spending the rest of your entire life with. They have a tendancy to spend more time thinking of what to do for someone else than themselves. Christophers love adventure, new things, something to get their blood rushing and heart pounding.
Take a deeper look at your Christopher before you let go, he might be the best thing that will ever happen to you.

A load of rubbish right? yes alot of it sounds like me but alot of things sound like us when we want them to. But the thing is, this made me want to be that, this made me not want to be alone anymore, this made me want to hope for something more.

I suppose it helped me realise things about myself, the kind of person i have moulded myself into, the lone ranger, michael knight character who needs no-one, yet deep down i need someone.

My story is all over the place at the minute, i live in fear of moving forward, of rejection, of hurt and pain but slowly things unfold. We can get stuck in a rut and feel overwhlemed, but we get thru it. God never lets us down. I believe that. I believe that when we're at the end of the rope God is waitin to catch us. That's a good thing. I believe that God has a plan for us, a life He wants us to live. I need that.

This was just a quick thought, a wondering, a need, a hope that maybe one day i'll be the man i was created to be.

When things slow down

2010-01-30T00:07:00.000Z

my story stalls sometimes.

It annoys me to think that i'm takin 2 steps forward and 2 steps back. I feel cheadp sometimes, i feel sluggish and my brain feels dead. But i'm alive, breathing, not at the end yet.

I still want to change, i still dream and i still hope. I'm aware of my flaws and my abitlity to shut down and lose focus but i'm also aware of the fact that God hasn't finished with me. He's given me dreams for a reason, He wants me to dream and live and create a story that could never be contained in a book.

That keeps me going.

I think we all get to that place sometimes, maybe we think we're not doing enough or being who we are meant to be or maybe we're trying to be something we were never meant to be. We can listen to everyone else and their dreams and can give them to ourselves, we can look at society and give our selves the same ambitions as they have, we can dress the same way, draw, write songs, write books or blogs the same way and we become clones of a forged and falsley formed society.

Maybe that's why we beat ouselves up sometimes, we don't hit the standards we think we should. God's standards are different than society's. Completely different, they don't deserve to be in the same sentence. We're called to love, that pretty much means we need to be love, we need to love ourselves, who WE are, our personalities, our weknesses, our strengths and stop trying to be super human.

I've started writing a different story, but the more i write it, the more i ask myself what i want from life, the more i find who i really am from the negative to the positive and it's the most refreshing thing i've ever done.

when we decide to live, i mean really live, the way God intended,we'll want to invite people into our lives, we'll want to brighten people's days, we'll want to feed the poor, we'll want to do the stuff that makes us feel alive.

Try it, it just might work.

Confused about who we are and why we are...

2010-01-25T00:32:00.000Z

Why are people such idiots? Why do all the ignorant people work in coffee shops and restaurants? Why in most Christian book shops the staff are the most depressed and unfriendly you've ever met? So here i am spending money to eat or drink or buy books and i'm treated like a second class citizen, like a nobody. It stinks, is it just humanity or has somethin gone wrong? Why does humanity stink? We have to force people to smile. People don't give second chances anymore, they demand too much and give no leniency. This at least is the way it looks. Kindness is in the minority, happiness is only a whisper in a few corners of people's minds. The world is falling apart and we don't care. Maybe the world has always been falling apart...

Isn't it refreshing we have church and Christians and christian book shops? mmm.. sorry, sarcasm is one of my gifts. Shouldn't church and christians be the exception to that rule? We have God, the gift of Jesus Christ, we should be the happiest, most understanding, most gracious, most kind people that have ever walked the planet and yet church lacks love and grace and peace and patience. Yet you can go into a christian book shop and be treated like an animal. these people are selling Bibles and books that will change peoples lives, they are for some people a point of contact for the gospel and they are misserable people. well most of them, there are always exceptions to the rule.

I'm being harsh, truthful but harsh. We preach the gospel of Christ yet we don't live it, we have our politics and our likes and dislikes, our hang-ups, our annoyances and we bring them to church. I know church wont be perfect in this lifetime and i know that people aren't perfect but what are we doing? who are we?

I've watched immensely tallented people get pushed out of church and faith because people have been jealous or just downright proud and pompous. I've seen people turn from God because the church doesn't care, or has handled a situation badly.

Our world is falling apart, the ideas of society and community are crumbling. Enter shakiri say in one of their songs that the idea of community will end up in a museum. That scares the life out of me because that's how we are wired. To live together, to grow, to love, to hope together, to share life, to share God, yet these things are dying in front of our eyes and what are we doing about it?

The church has this amazingly beautiful opportunity to save our existence, to create culture, to share love, to banish shame and hate and envy and jealousy but are we doing it or are we too wrapped up in our different thologies and buildings and leadership models and ways to eveangelise and ways to impact our culture instead of letting God be God for once.

Where would living by the sermon on the mount get us if we lived it out to the letter? nowhere? it may get us nowhere but it might just change the world around us.

I'm not giving up on church because i'm the problem too, i just need to be what Jesus wants me to be and that's someone who has the Holy Spitit flowing through them and people notice, as Paul writes about the fruit of the Spirit. If we've got problems with people in church or don't want certain people in our churches cos they look or smell or act funny or we go to church with our own agendas or we don't show understanding or compassion to those who have stuffed up then where is jesus in all that? Is there fruit showing or are we christians by name but nothing else.

God wants to use us. maybe we're to caught up in being leaders and agenda seekers that we've missed Jesus.

The fundamentals of me...

2010-01-21T01:05:00.001Z

Purpose.

Faith.

Hope.

Truth.

These are the words that drive me, that challenge me and that shame me to my core.

Purpose has haunted me over the last few weeks. I feel i have none, no drive, no need to succeed, no need to even be. It scares me. But sometimes you've just got to look at your life, glance back and realise somethin just isn't right. It's not about regrets. I think we need to look forward more than we do and back alot less, but maybe we need to understand where we're coming from.

I've thought alot about my purpose lately, my hopes and dreams and they're foggy to say the least. My life has been clouded by life, by people, by movies and music and hurt and pain. It's as if i've given in sometimes.

For a long time i hated myself, it seems to be the "in" thing with teenagers, but i did. I tried for so long to be somebody else, to wear a mask, to live a lie. The real me only came out sometimes. I still struggle with me a lot. I struggle with my inability to organise, my inability to motivate myself, my inability to talk one on one with people, my inability to concentrate.

I've realised though that my annoyance at these things has disabled me moving forward than anything else. I've become introspective and refuse to look at what's happening outside of me, at what God is doing.

That is what's kicking me in the teeth, God's grace, in my face. Me, flawed, nothing, useless, or so i think, but to God i am something. Something to be used as a blessing to others. truth is it's not about me, not about my flaws but about God.

I've prayed for a long time about purpose, about having one, about needing one to live a great life for God but maybe my purpose is just that, to live, to stop having hang ups about who i am cos let's face it i could live my life with hang ups about my flaws!!

It's time we took our flaws in hand and walked down the narrow broken road of life with Jesus and laughed in the face of our short comings. God builds a bridge over our flaws and walks it with us. We're being changed and transformed one step at a time but the thing is, we think we need to be perfect to serve God, na, we just need God.

Watched the Book Of Eli tonight and realised it was all about purpose, faith, hope and truth. About a man who believes he hears from God and goes on a journey for 30 years because all he has is purpose, faith, hope and truth. He did amazing things, because he believed, he trusted, he obeyed, he lived.

Our mission as people who believe in Jesus Christ, our purpose, is to share the gospel, the truth of what He has done, the hope that He gives us.

Maybe that's all the purpose i need.

"Life's simple, you make choices and you don't look back."

2010-01-18T23:32:00.000Z

Maybe life is that simple.

Maybe that's all life is about, making choices and getting on with it, having no regrets, no past hurts or pain, no bad memories, just the future. maybe when Jesus said we shouldn't worry bout stuff that's what he meant. Just live now, choose the best you can and live it.

I don't have many regrets, sure i've messed up and done a heck of a lot of stupid things but i don't think i'd change much, those things have shaped me and they keep shaping me because i keep lookin back. When i look back it stalls me, it slows me down, it stops me from wanting to feel from wanting to make any mistakes at all. It parylises me. My past fills me with fear and because of that my future is filled with uncertainty and a massive want for the future not to happen.

The present is filled with me worrying about yesterday and tomorrow. I live a life that's birthed in failure and i let it happen. i refuse to grab hold of the life God has given me and i wallowin fear and self pity.

Maybe it's time we made choices and just lived and refused to live with the idea of what if i chose somethin else, what if it worked out better a different way, what if i could have a "sliding doors" kinda life and live all my choices and choose what life was better.

We have become "what if" people, we do something and always think that it could've been better, well maybe it could've been but it wasn't so enjoy what it was.

I'm moving into a point in my life where i am restless, searching, needing more, dreaming of more and realising it's all in my choices and whatever choice i make that i should enjoy it, not worry about the consequences but live the moment, trust in God and change the world.

What if we changed the world..?

free

2010-01-16T18:32:00.000Z

"...and right now i wish i could follow you, to the shores, of freedom where no one lives."

I think we're all looking for something, wether it be love, or truth, or peace, or answers to why we're here, we need purpose. we need people to like us, we need people to acknowlege us. i think maybe we feel alone sometimes because we think we need something or someone other than ourselves.

i feel empty alot. empty because i don't want to be me, i want to be somebody else and i'm actually really good at it. sometimes i wish i could be somewhere else, away from where and who i am. I've let my insecurities dictate my relationships and especially my relationship with God. i've been aloof most of the time, knowing what i should do but not wanting to do it because it cost me too much. cost me me. i've refused for so long to admit i need love even tho i preach it and it's integral to my faith.

I've discovered that God is breaking me, tearing apart my fears and ideas of who i am and this is partly happening because i'm letting it happen. It hurts to let go of everything i've held on to and let God and love in, yet it's beautiful and i breathe different.

What i'm saying is that we all have a tendency to hold on to lots of things, even tho we have a faith in God and a saviour in Jesus, we hold on to our fears and insecurities, our hopes and dreams, our justifications on why we do things we're pretty sure the Bible says we shouldn't. We hold on to them because we're human and that's what we do, we hold on and hope that we will be able to carry on in relationship with God without hurting and breaking and growing.

instead of running from God, even in the little decisions we make, we need to run to him and crave everything God is. We need to embrace the truth of what Jesus has done and who he is.

makes you just want to go over and do somethin'

2010-01-14T14:26:00.001Z

it's up to us. that scares me, paralyses me with fear. us. you and me. we watch stuff happening all around us, see natural disasters, are thankful it wasn't us, maybe do a little prayin for the thousands dead and the thousands maimed or orphaned or lost entire families.
haiti is devastated and i'm not. my life's pretty cushy, nice, fun, i can watch the news reports in a detached state and that's what i usually do. I detach because if i thought about it too much i would show emotions and not be able to control my anguish. to me that's unacceptable.

lately i've been speakin alot about livin out our lives for God, compassionate, passionate no holes barred yet i sit and watch and keep myself numb. i watched a presentation once about children treated horribly in one of the cruelest countries in the world and i couldn't handle it, i broke and i cried for a long time and i prayed that God would take my life instead of these children's lives being taken in the name of cruelty. i meant it.

That was a one off. i didn't want to feel that way again because it made me feel too vulnerable yet i'm reminded of that now, i'm reminded that to change the world i need to be compassionate all the time i need to live on that and give to the needy and help those who need help and be passionate about people who need help now. Jesus just did it, he loved and was compassionate just because he was.

Maybe it's not even about strategies, maybe it's about compassion and a deep desire to do something, anything and i can safely say that i never react on those impulse cos i'm too afraid that it will consume me or people will think of me differently. But it's not about that.

My mate's Jay and Deb are pretty radical, they see stuff happen and they want to do somethin about it, they've been to loads of places that really need love, they've raised money, taken teams out, raised awareness about issues that need to be known and i love them for it. i can't organise for toffee but Jay can, and he does. that's the difference he does it, just does it. Even toay he's workin on ways in which the church can fundraise and help churchs and aid organisations over in haiti to make a difference.

when he brought haiti up in coversation i said: yeah it makes you just want to go over there and do something.
i had no intention of doing anything but what does that make me? if i sit and do nothing, if i just watch while others help, if i just watch people die, what does that make me.

Maybe God is teaching me a lesson. maybe this is the start of makin me live outside me. i don't know what i'm going to do but i'm going to do something, even if it means just helping Jay and seeing something happen.

Livin life Jesus' way is about living compasioately always, every moment. maybe it's time for us to throw it all down at His feet and dare to love indiscriminately.

these are just thoughts. i'm sure there'll be more.

Breaking out of the lie we live but don't want anyone to know we live

2010-01-10T14:43:00.001Z

when you go around speakin alot and talkin about the Bible and faith and your belief in God, you can take it all for granted. take your faith for granted, your love for God, your passion, your gift as a speaker and can become a shadow of what you proffess. you just become a mouthpiece and sometimes you stop living what you're preaching and it starts to become a sideshow.

That's how i feel anyway, sometimes i feel like and actor or celebrity just throwing out the lines, just saying what they need to hear and not really listening to what i believe. i have become a professional christian and it makes me sick.

It's easy, to get caught up in all that rhetoric and look the part, yes i seem a little different and a little controversial at times but i fit into the mould, i know what not to say in certain places and what to say. This could be seen as being sensitive to the audience or it could be seen as seeling myself out. that my relationship with god doesn't grow because i am trying to fit into a mould that God never intended me to fit into.

what i'm trying to say is that we need God. Bottom line. we need to know God, to have that personal relationship with him, so that when i get up to speak or any of us have the chance to share our fith that we are sharing our personal relationship with god and not a load of jargon and principles we think they need to hear.

I was speaking last night on living fixed on God, on focusing everything on Him and who can say they live a totally focused life on God? But that's what we need to do. that's who we need to be. i realised last night that if i'm going to speak and inspire people that my life needs to be organicly living for God, not just in words and knowing what to say, but living it and pushing to live it everyday because the bottom line is that the god we follow is the creator of this world and the saviour of this world.

jesus is more than just a name we use to help people have a better life, jesus is the reason we live and will live forever. the rest of the world fades into insignificance.

What do you mean i'm not an alien??!!!!

2010-01-07T22:04:00.001Z

Something amzingly profound hit me lately: i'm like everyone else, that is human. i used to dream and hope that i was actually an alien, impervious to human emotion and pain, that i was super human, that it would be revealed to me when i became the right age to understand my alienness...

It didn't happen, or it hasn't happened yet but i don't think it ever will because i've got to face the fact that i'm human. I'm just like you. I'm not imortal, i feel, i hurt, i dream just like everyone else.

To be honest, i find it hard to adjust to the reality that i'm just human, that i have the same physical, emotional and pschological needs as everyone else. For so long i didn't want to be like everyone else, not in an outcast of society, social rebel, wear whacked out clothes and be anarchic kind of way but i didn't want to be me. i didn't like me. didn't want to feel, didn't want the capacity to be hurt or the capacity to hurt others.

I've never been perfect i've messed up and hurt far more than i've been hurt, at times i've thought i was a tyrant. this stuff has shaped me into not wanting to get close enough to anyone that i could hurt them, it's why i've found it so easy to believe that i'm meant to be alone, because i'm poison, anethema to any sort of relationship.

lately i've had to face the fact that i am in fact human, not an inhumane tyrant. i've got human needs, frailties, fears. the need to love and to be loved, the need for comfort, for safety, for belonging. i feel that my disregard for my feelings have pushed people away, have built a wall between me and God. I've missed out on friendships and experiences and happiness and closeness because of my fear to be me.

over the last few weeks i've discovered story: living, doing, creating, being and i'm slowly realising that to live stories and epics i need to let people into my life and want to get into theirs. I'm amazing at going cold, at cutting ties, at feining no remorse, at closing up. yet i find God battering away at the walls i've built, that if i'm to live then i have to be a little (or a lot) more like Jesus and just love because that seems to be what it's all about. Jesus changed alot of lives just because He had the guts to love. He had buckets of compassion for a lot of people, most of them outcasts, dirty no-hopers. He opened his heart, invited them in and in turn they let Him into their stories.

I vow to live. i'm broken at the fact that i have hurt alot of people, that i have been selfish and down right horrible and to those i ask forgiveness or maybe i need to forgive myself, those things i never forget.

i vow to write you into my story, i can't guarantee that i wont hurt you or that i wont be hurt but i promise you will get all of me, not just the part i want you to see, maybe i'll have a lot less friends if i share all of me or maybe i'll get some more!!

God wants us to live His way- transparent, beautifully flawed and full of god's grace.

We were meant to live... get with it.

2010-01-06T12:04:00.002Z

I love starbucks,i love coffee, i love sitting for hours reading and thinking and dreaming and drinking coffee. I've had some of my best converstations in starbucks, some of my favourite stories come from people i've met in starbucks. Some days in my "local" starbucks there could be up to 10 of us sittin, talkin havin' a laugh. It's cool.

I think my love for starbucks stems from one of my favourite movies "You've got mail" i know i'm strange. In the movie starbucks is so prominent it's a cool place to watch people to get hundreds of different types of coffee and whatever else you want, i fell in love with starbucks watching that movie and when i went to my first starbucks in York, cos they didn't have them in belfast yet, i wasn't disapointed.

My mate Richie works in the one i go to. The conversations we've had are flippin off the wall sometimes, just discussin our faith, our hope our dreams, we dare to dream out loud and express our fears and failures and hope that God stil loves us and will continue to change us, and He will and that's a good thing. But Richie, well he's a legend, a good guy, likeable, fun, a bit like myself but not as awesome, he's younger tho so he could use that excuse...

I bring the richmeister up because yesterday while i was sippin my Christmas blend, he came over and asked me a question with a big grin on his face: " see that cute girl over there? i know she's a Christian, should i go over and give her my number?" I laughed and started grinning and just said, "live the story man". "yeah, that's what i was thinkin', i'm doin it".

He did it. He actually did it the crazy cat! He was terrified but he realised he wanted to live a better story than the one he was livin', that he wanted to have some pretty sweet memories, so he did it!

I thought that was brilliant i couldn't help smiling, i couldn't help but think that this guy lived out what i want to live out, not giving random girls my number but having the guts to dream a story and then to live it.

We can so get caught up in what we want to do, what we dream of doing, who we want to be and we're always disappointed when we don't get there. We usually don't get there because we're to parylised to do something with our lives, with our dreams. I've always wanted to open a coffee shop but for so long i've thought it was just a dream, just a story that would always be fiction and never reality. But what if? what if i dared to write my story now, my coffee shop may never make it, it could be the worst in the world but a least i lived my story.

We all crave happy endings but we're too afraid to not get them that we don't chase them. and really what is happiness is it getting it or is it the pursuit of happiness? In the Book of Acts in the Bible, the disciples of Jesus could very well have lived on His legend, have soaked in His dreams and sat in all day and stayed in their bubble but hey dared to write their story, because that's what living is all about. Most ofthem died, did they have a rubbish life? i think not! they ived it big style, a happy life, hard? yes.

If my life could be half the story of some of the guys in the early church it would be mental and amazing and blessed by God. It just takes a lot of guts and a lot of desire to live!

In the words of switchfoot:

"we were meant to live for so much more, have we lost ourselves?"

Just another manic monday!!!

2010-01-04T02:27:00.001Z

It's funny, most of us crave the weekend so we can have a break from the normality of our weekly lives and end up doin pretty much the same things, livin the lies, dreamin the dreams, then we get depressed on Sunday night because we've got to go back to our lives the next day. It's as if we've created 2 lives, one for the week and one for the weekend.

Are our lives so bad or is it something inside us that craves something better than we are? Is there a way to do something about our tediously boring existence or is this it? Is it not enough to dream of a better world? Of course we can't live our dreams that's just ridiculous, life is full of pain and disappointment it never gets better, it just gets worse. we look forward to Christmas and other holidays because they bring us closer to fantasy and away from the reality of our true lives...

Here's a thought... maybe we can live our dreams, maybe we've been listening to the lies, maybe life is worth living, maybe there are happy ever afters, maybe we just need to stop looking at how rubbish our lives are at times and realise there's good suff in there too and live in that and expand that and grow in a life that's full of twists and turns and hurts and pains but one that we will always want to wake up to and grab hold of our day and live it out.

I'm convinced we were created to live. to grab hold of everything around us. to dream, to do, to be. we are here to grasp hold of God, to enjoy Him, to see His creation and to be over joyed. Jesus made things possible, made it possible for us to know God, to live a life and not a tedious one but one with hope, one with crazy optimism but a crazy optimism founded in God, so surely that aint optimism that's truth.

The power of unspoken dreams

2010-01-03T15:19:00.001Z

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

William Butler Yeats

Sometimes i wish i was like Yeats, not because he was an amazing poet and thinker but because he had the guts to spread his dreams under someones feet, maybe someone he cared about, maybe someone who needed the comfort of his dreams to get through that stage of their lives.

For so long i have been terrified to share my dreams, to speak them out, to make myself vulnerable. i feel that if i open up my self and share my dreams that i've lost something of me, i fear that my dreams will be shattered by those around me and when that happens i'll not even have my dreams left and i'll be nothing.

Writing this blog isn't easy, infact it terrifies me. I'm sharing me with you and although it terrifies me it makes me feel more alive than i ever have. I struggle with stuff, i'm human, but lately God has been challenging me to open up, to share me, to not hide behind my personality and suposed indifference and craziness but to let the world see me exposed, real, raw.

Not many people know me, not really. I hide behind a mask and become a shadow of myself, it's easier that way. When you're not really you then you don't really get hurt as much as you would if it was the real you.

I'm convinced i'm not the only one. I'm convinced there are so many of us that are afraid to share our dreams, our hurts, our pains and hide behind our walls of indifference. the thing is that when we share us with other people we feel more alive and so do the people we share with. my life has become richer the times i have opened up to people and i hope so has theirs.

When we don't share us we are selfish and deprive others of a new story, or a smile or a hope that they never knew they needed. Jesus never deprived anybody of His story and his dreams. Jesus changed a heck of a lot of lives and continues to do so and always will. Jesus was never araid to open up to anybody and i love Him for it. Imagine what this world will be like WHEN you open up and let people in and let people dream your dreams with you. I imagine it'll change the world.

I'm sharing my dreams and thoughts and mostly everything else with you hoping that some how my dreams and your dreams can change the world forever. That's what God made us for.

If we leave our dreams unspoken they have the power to debilitate us and those lives we're meant to touch will never be. Speak your dreams. it wont be easy, but where's the fun in that?

Batteries not included.

2010-01-02T14:40:00.000Z

Something's missing. I've never been able to put my finger on it. Yes there's conjecture and excuses and reasons and various answers as to why we're searching, why we're looking, why we need something bigger and something more than ourselves.

Sometimes i feel like some sort of robotic machine living on a back up power supply, working but not working the way i was made to function, made to be full capacity and being dynamic and powerful. it's as if something has been ripped out of me, the main power supply is missing, gone, maybe as if it was never put in. In essence, my bateries were never included. i have this capacity to dream and to want amazing things to happen, but i wake up and get caught up in wether i want a coffee or not and where to go to get it or if i should do some work and by the time i've sorta worked this stuff out it's time to go to bed. i let life pass me by and i can do very little about it.

I remember years ago feeling like there was no point to life, that it was meaningless and i feel like that sometimes still but something hit me, i needed something more than me...there was so much out there, so many supposed answers, so many ways of doing life. i thought they sucked and most of them actually did suck.

for some reason the Bible made sense, the fact that there was a God was what i needed, something bigger than me, but the fact that God cared, that was the clincher, God cared enough to give me hope to do something about my batteryless existence. God got stuck into humanity when He didn't need to. that's pretty cool. I suppose it's the reson i am alive, to seek God to realise that life can be more than it is, that i don't have to be without batteries, Jesus did something about that.

A month or so ago i was speaking about Jesus wanting us to live amazing lives and i believe He does but is it possible for us to live perfect lives? I don't think so, we can srive for it, but maybe we need to strive to love God to be passionate about life, to be excited about the small things, to wake up in the morning and be dumbfounded by the beauty of our exixtence, to stop being wrapped up in how perfect we could be to others and how much better a "christian" we are than somebody who doesn't use as much thee's and thou's and christian rhetoric than we do.

In the film "Batteries not included" the building at the center of the movie get's burnt down,destroyed, not much left, the residents are gone but one because he's nowhere else to go, then the littlest robotty alien thing comes down from the sky, looks up at his friend, grabs a little miniature tile and moves it into place. It seemed like an extremely futile gesture but then the camera flips up and appearing out of the sky are thousands of robbotty things. the next day the 4 storey building is rebuilt better than ever. Earth shattering stuff.

thing is, it takes those little tiles to get us moving, to get are batteries installed and working. sometimes we think that we trust God, have Jesus as our saviour from sin and we've made it, we expect to be perfect pretty soon. Get over that. I'm hooked to God, i'm powered up, i feel like i'm starting to perform the way i was created to perform, and i've been trusting God for 10 years.

I'll never be there, but at least i'm living the way i was designed to, finally.

Is it all I ever thought it could be?

2010-01-02T00:57:00.000Z

I know people say it. Most of the time they say it because they want people to see that they're fed up with their life, or maybe to show themselves that they've been kidding themselves all this time that in reality they are not what they always wanted to be.

Is everyone disapponted with life? Maybe to an extent. maybe there are times when all of us will question if we are where we dreamed of being. Or maybe we remember our dreams and think that dreams are for wimps and that they're just fantasy and that a dreamer never lives a true life.

i've been thinkin lately that i love life, i'm alive and that's good, God is real and loves me and that's a good thing too, but i'm not satisfied. i feel there is more in me than people see or that i see. i feel there is more things that i could and should be doing.

We'll probably never be satisfied in life, not in the way we think,but maybe we'll be satisfied in our searching. our searching for who we are and what our role is in the story of the universe.

I need purpose and truth and reality and dreams. I need my life to mean something, i need to use who i am to create a story that's worth reading or watching, n epic, not some low budget soap which is what i have lived for so long.

it's ok throwing these thoughts down but it's another thing making these thoughts into actions. i don't know what the answer is but i know that this wrestlessness is growing and that if i am to live the life God has gifted me then i nneed to wake everyday and just be...

Scrooged completely...

2009-12-17T02:12:00.000Z

Watched scrooged tonight.

haven't seen it for ages but i remembered i loved it, that it made me think that it even challenged my thinking and my life. Half way through i was thinking: "Why did i love this movie so much??" by the end of it i realised why... this guy, his life lived his way, doin his thing, being who HE wanted to be had stuffed up, he knew it but would never admit it. it took a weird supernatural encounter to wake him up, to give him the guts to be the man he was supposed to be not who he thought he wanted to be. at the end he hijacks a primetime, live Christmas Carol on TV and in his own special Bill Murray stlye bigs up Christmas eve and truthfully if i had been watching that show on tv in film world i would be moved, challenged to be a different person...

i was challenged tonight. Motivated to live life everyday, not just Christmas and not just for me.

I go shopping before Christmas... for me, not anyone else, i have a birthday just before Christmas i don't expect presents and if i get them i feel uncomfortable. I hate affection, it freaks me out, i feel that if i'm compassionate toward people that i lose a part of me, of my manliness. I have become a rock that will let nothing out and no-one in. Sometimes i feel like scrooge, sometimes i am scrooge.
But it's not about me. people need to be loved, fed clothed, housed and what am i doing? nothing. I preach the good news of Jesus but i do nothing about it. I'm just one big fraud most of the time and that's the thing that rips me apart and leaves me broken.

Life, faith, truth are to be lived in every single way. I'm an ebeneezer scrooge Christian, i keep my faith tight to me and only share it when it suits me.

There has got to be more than this.

Here's the dialogue of the final speech:

"I'm not crazy. It's Christmas Eve.
It's the one night when we all act a little nicer.
We...we smile a little easier. We...we...share a little more.
For a couple of hours we are the people we always hoped we would be.
It's really a miracle because it happens every Christmas Eve.
And if you waste that miracle, you're gonna burn for it. I know.
You have to do something. You have to take a chance and get involved.
There are people that don't have enough to eat and who are cold.
You can go and greet these people.
Take an old blanket out to them or make a sandwich and say, "Here."
"l get it now."
And if you give, then it can happen, the miracle can happen to you.
Not just the poor and hungry, Everybody's gotta have this miracle!
It can happen tonight for you all!
If you believe in this pure thing,
the miracle will happen and you'll want it again tomorrow!
You won't say, "Christmas is once a year and it's a fraud." It's not!
It can happen every day! You've just got to want that feeling!
You'll want it every day! It can happen to you!
I believe in it now.
I believe it's gonna happen to me, now. I'm ready for it!
And it's great. It's a good feeling.
It's better than I've felt in a long time.
I'm ready.
Have a Merry Christmas. Everybody."

Caught up

2009-12-17T01:52:00.001Z

I get caught up in life.

Past is past yet it creeps up in me and claws at who i want to be. I'm haunted everytime i look in the mirror. i see a reflection of indifference, stupidity, idiocy and pain to name but a few. I see what i wanted to be and what i have become and sometimes it rips me apart and want to stop life, want to go back, want to be diferent. I cry out to God, craving direction, needing something more than me, than what i have become....

we all crave more than we are, to change, develop, grow, to just be. i feel that i can never be who i was created to be without God, without the reality and sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Jesus gives me hope, i have no problem stating that.

I have established that i am nothing, a lot of people will testify to that, but the little faith that i have gives me hope that there is something in me that God can use. He is a God of miracles after all.
Mayebe i'm a miracle.

Have we got it wrong or are we just idiots?

2009-11-18T21:45:00.000Z

It's true that when we focus on God and the things of God, when we are constantly preaching the cross and the truth of Jesus Christ, we feel and are closer to God. We can't help but see our prayers answered because we're in the thick of it. We can't help get excited about Jesus 'cos that's all we're talkin about and studying.
It's sad sometimes that as Christian workers we need an excuse to get closer to God. We study because we have to, we pray because if we don't we feel bad when we're preachin or teachin or we feel we need a little strangth boost and of course God gives us strength. I sometimes feel like i'm a carreer Christian, it's more a job or a thing thatn life itself.
How can we combat that? Or is it just me? Is this just my struggle? Is the world populated with sold out for Jesus Christians? Is it my inability to form real relationships or is it that it's just hard at times to hold on to the Invisible God?
We can look at the usual answers:- read your Bible, pray. Do, it's good, but why? Come on, t.v. is more fun, Playstation is easier to do, comics are easier to read, talking on the phone to a hot chick is more appealling tahn throwing up thees and thous to God. i'm not trying to be irreverant i suppose i'm just throwing out how i feel at times, maybe i'm the only one but maybe, just maybe, i'm not.
There's got to be something deeper that stops us: our "human" condition maybe, our need for aesthetics. Maybe the fact that we are broken masterpieces mucks us up.

Do we try hard enough or too hard? Is relationship about trying or simply doing? Maybe we've got it wrong, the whole relationship with God thing, maybe we treat God too much like a seargent major or a grandad figure who gives us Werthwer's original when we visit and makes us feel safe. Maybe we haven't worked out that we just need to think of God as God not just one aspect of His character.
Sometimes we slip from our "daily Christian walk" 'cos we're annoyed at ourselves for not prayin' or readin' our Bibles and lettin' God down, we don't seem to get that it's a 2way relationship- we slip- God holds on. Is God angry at us slipping? I don't know. I think sometimes hegets upset and annoyed when we slip and think we can't go on and that we have to stop being us if god wants to use us...
God wants to use us.
God wants to use you even though you are a prat, self obsessed, insular. God can use you despite of yourself, so get over it.
I suppose we just need to let God be God, us be us and together be each other. Instead of getting a job to stay close to God 'cos if you don't you're afraid if you don't you'll slip and instead of preaching paint over, selotape tactics we need to rip down the foundations of our relationship with God, be truthful with him and listen when God is truthful with us. It's not rocket science it's just a relationship borne from faith. Nice.

These are my thoughts, my journey, my struggles. I'm sharing them because i'm hoping i'm not the only one who needs a deep relationship with Jesus and who wants and needs to love Him more than life itself.

Tainted, twisted and they know it...

2009-10-26T00:19:00.000Z

It's funny. You can spend so much of your life tryin to make people think you are worth something, that you can be loved and admired, but then it just gets thrown back in your face and you realise that it's the real you that people see, the person who loves in their own way, who jokes in their own way, who talks differently than others, who thinks a little bit differently, who is maybe louder than most, or quieter etc. etc. etc....
Truth is, I'm me and you're you, you my not like me that much and i probably don't care much for you and sometimes i can live with that, but sometimes i need to be loved, admired, needed. i can say i don't care what people think but i'm only human... i want people to think the truth, not what they've heard from some screwed up, messed up person who think they have life wrapeed up.

I'm bulldozing through this life, alone, scared, fed up, confused yet clingin to the promise of hope through God. Sometimes it's my belief in God and Jesus that keeps me goin'. sometimes it's sheer laziness to do anything about it.

I suppose maybe i live so people can laugh and smile and realise life is worth living and well if that means tht some people don't get me and who i am well they don't and they can just han out in their own world.

Maybe i'm alone...

yuck....

2009-10-21T16:58:00.000+01:00

i feel sick, don't know if it's a physical thing or a mental thing. I dream when i sleep and constantly wake myself up feeling scared and alone, i look around and see that life just seems to be pointless... i know many would say it isn't pointless but sometimes i wish for something more.
Maybe it's me. maybe i haven't got the ability to enjoy the life i have been given, maybe when i hit this melancholy phaze it's just to remind me that life can be flat and dead and nothing.
Life is beautiful. Twisted, but beautiful. people are flawed and they terrify me. we all think different things and see different truths and believe in different things and grab hold of diferent gods, we are all searching and when we find it we are still not content with what we have. we always want more.
sometimes i'm content. maybe i'm an illusionist. decieving myself, and others.

this isn't a critisism of anybody it's just the way i feel right now, this minute. i'll be on top of the world tomorrow. maybe i'm the only one in the world who feels this way, so just ignore it.

I suppose at times like this i hold onto my faith in God, but it's easier to feel sorry for myself than talk to God.i'm just being honest...