Drop the pressure - what to do when it feels a lot like too much

Right now there is a lot going on, Natalie (my wife) and i are in the process of moving country which required moving out of our house to live with my parents for a while.  The move is a big step of destiny for Natalie and I so there is a lot of emotional turbulence, my work is full on, we are getting ready to pack everything up into the back of our small car and I have been ebaying and gumtreeing a lot to raise a few extra £...
It the midst of the chaos I can feel pretty isolated and overwhelmed.  When I loose a sense of God's hand in control, I become task orientated and start trying to do as much as I can to try and find some peace, which leads to exhaustion.... but then the alarm goes off and its go time again...
When Natalie gets overwhelmed, she freaks out in a more obvious way, and my desire to encourage and clam her down rightly encroaches on and takes priority over lots of the other tasks...
So on saturday morning when i sat down to have some time with Jesus, Papa and Holy Spirit there was more than a headful of tasks, and partial lists swimming around...

But somehow God in His infinite grace and general awesomeness broke in...

"But ill take the hand of those who don't know the way, who can't see where they are going.

I'll be a personal guide to them, directing them through the unknown country.  I'll be right there to show them what roads to take, make sure they don't fall into the ditch."

"I have taken responsibility for you, kept you safe"

"Do you feel like a lowly worm...? Don't be afriad
Feel like a fragile insect...? I'll help you.  I, God will reassure you.
The God who buys you back.  The Holy of Israel.
I'm transforming you from worm to harrow,
from insect to iron.
As a sharp-toothed harrow you'll smooth out the mountains,
turn those old hills into loamy soil"
(all Isaiah 41 msg)



From my perspective I'm not meant to have it all figured out, I don't have to have the plan, I can trust my Papa, my heavenly dad, and know without a shadow of a doubt that he has got us.  He knows what He is doing, he has blessed me so much and lead me step by step and He is not giving up.  I don't need to know what the future holds or have it all planned out to be at peace, to trust in Him.  I am just relax and know that it is going to all be ok.  No matter what.  As that revelation oozes into my brain and heart, i can breath deeply, i can just enjoy time with my most beautiful wife without the next task dominate my thinking.  i can feel like a human being again.

thanks jesus!

CS Lewis - why i believe Love is the answer

I have been reading CS Lewis,

He was a brilliant man and has heavily influenced modern western orthodox christianity and attitudes to evangelism and apologetics even more greatly than I could have imagined.

He expounded that believing in God is not only logic but the reasonable conclusion upon considering the human condition.  The foundations of this are based on the concepts that we all have a sense of right and wrong or morality, which we seem helpless to obey.  Jesus offers hope of deliverance from this dilemma and His love empowers us to live right.

I personally have enjoyed his books and he is indeed an excellent writer, explaining very difficult concepts with simplicity and humour.  However, he wrote in a time when men went to war, ( WW1 WW2) and a sense of honour and duty were understood and relevant to the average person.

Further and perhaps most interestingly, although, he wrote a book called miracles explaining the naturalness of a supernatural God doing supernatural things, he did not experience or move in the supernatural himself in the fullness that Jesus invites us to.

Finally, the nature of his argument for God and reasoning our way through his argument necessitates we start with widespread condemnation of anyone listening to begin a journey of considering they are sinful and in need of God’s rescue from their terrible state.

So here we are in 2013, I believe doing a dis-service to CS Lewis by maintaining his arguments specifically constructed to speak to the everyday man of 1940’s and 50’s England.

It is a new day and the operation of the Holy Spirit moving in miraculous ways in the church all around the world and western churches cannot be ignored neither can the attitude and prevalent mindset of current culture.

I believe our Western culture is desperate for love, desperate for attention, desperate for recognition and desperate for identity.  We live in a world of flashing lights and immediate delivery, where it is assumed everyone is looking out for number 1 (themselves) and concepts of right and wrong, honour and duty are no more than tools for manipulation or half the name of a video game.

God’s authentic, unconditional, selfless, supernatural love is, I believe, the most relevant message to a western world.  Which, like a stomach full of popcorn and coke, is restless and dissatisfied by a meaningless experience of reality, despite the flashing lights and unparalleled immediate access to more entertainment,  information and excitement that ever before.

My experience of God is a wild torrent of unconditional love which has completely overwhelmed my fears and insecurities.  His supernatural power and the demonstration of His love through miracles is a more powerful description of His character than any logical reasoning.  His passionate obsession with me and forming of a unique destiny makes every day exciting. 

It is I believe we should seek to communicate God’s insuppressible love and desire for friendship with every human no matter their sexuality, lifestyle, appearance or background.  

To present Good news rather than bad should be our focus.  Once we begin a relationship with Jesus, Holy Spirit and Papa, they will sanctify and transform us, leading us into all truth.  Repentance and the discovery of our own sinfulness will always be fundamental elements of this journey but I believe the context of God’s magnificent love must first be established for those steps to lead to true unity with Him.

Sonlight

The Sun shines brightly all over the world.
It is no respecter of wealth, title or situation
No matter who you are, it shines on you

You can pull the curtains and hide indoors
but once you step outside... BOOM
You are bathed in glorious golden rays
the sudden warmth brings out goosebumps
You stop to let your eyes re-adjust...

In that moment you are united
with all people everywhere,
past, present and future,
who were briefly arrested
in this bright shiny moment
all troubles, pressures & demands...
Vanish
We are
simply
human
alive
in glory

I love the son and the son loves me.

A massively distant and spectacularly huge
perpetual, cosmic,
explosion is positioned perfectly,
to remind me of life's simple beauty
however fleeting, it whets my appetite to discover more

An old middle eastern scroll promises sunlight's
instant of light and lightness is not a cruel tease
but a hint of a glorious light.

A supremely huge & tenacious power
who shines his light of love
just as indiscriminately on all people.

Not a distant explosion, He is a personal father
who counts the hair on your head,
excited and delighted
by the simple humanity each one of us possess

So step in that bright sonlight
let his love warm your bones
he loves to lift trouble pressures and demands
and set you free
to be
simply
human.

uncontainable love:

he is wild and free and cannot be held by anyone

his love is too passionate and true

it is the creative spark that birthed the planet

it tears apart nothingness and monotony

and births a universe of life, fun, vibrant and real

this cannot be fitted in the old ways

but comes into the new place and fresh revelation

memories are grace not to be lived on

always there is more always, there is more

tradition is death, there is no script

we cannot write one, to much changes always

he always wants to be in conversation

living out of us

dear near, dear deep,

learn to be the future

step forward into destiny

wild and free

wild and free

wild and free

Coming back from the wild

Its Seven years almost to the day from when I donated my last $200 to a charity in mexico and set off trusting that God would provide a way for me to travel 1800 miles in 7 days to make a flight home. It was an adventure that was taken alone, one at the time I felt was the only alternative to denouncing the reality of my faith...

I just read "Into the Wild" its a book piecing together the account of another young idealist who sadly died on an extended adventure in alaska.

However, romantic and exciting such trips away from normal life and civilisation seem, there always seems to be a necessary element of self-indulgant escapism, or maybe just simply running away. I think a perceived failure to live up to other peoples standards can leave a burning desire to prove "I can make it on my own" "I fear ill fail you in this relationship so Ill keep you at a distance"

but the cost is high as loneliness is the only possible outcome of avoiding intimacy and no amount of passport stamps of gigs to thousands of people can replace that...

So maybe its time to come in from the wild...
To trust people enough to let them close...
to realise that its relationships that really matter and that they are costly and hard work, but they are also the most beautiful gift God ever gave us...

God never plays it safe

From the mystery of the incarnation to his passion and now how we as individuals are challenged to be the love of God in this life, God has always been on a high risk strategy.

Why trust your son in the womb of an uneducated cultchie jew? there we're plenty more "developed" "civilised" options for how Jesus could have been born onto this planet.... why there? why those people? seems a bit irresponsible to trust the entire salvation plan for humanity into the hands of a couple of teenagers, especially when the king of the country is out to kill all the babies....

but who knew... it seemed to work out? but what about when he was a bit older, in his early thirties surely a bit of respect for the established church is what we expect from God's son? The envoy of love just seems to love a barney with his clergy. All well and good but when they turned nasty surely it was time to chill out. Certainly Jesus keep doing all that stuff with the poor, we all support that but how about you calm down on the temple confrontations? we don't want anyone getting offended do we?

and what about those people around him, since when did God's son wander into a tradesman's workplace and invite them on adventures? surely there would be some kind of official invitation to an application procedure, maybe after the 4th round of interviews you could carry Jesus sandals? Instead the guy who deserts him and pretends not to know him is trusted to establish a whole new way of doing church.... surely not God, surely there was someone with an MBA from rome who coulda made sure it all went off well....

so what about this christmas, where is our adventure? do you feel "useless" enough to appear on God's warped head hunting hit list? it seems He loves trusting clowns with impossible missions... high risk strategies....

that sounds a lot more fun that socks and mince pies...

ignorable failures awesome opportunities

everyday when we get up we can make a difference to the world by making a difference to somebody's world.

unfortunately we often fail to grasp these opportunities, which results in continued suffering for people who could really do without it and a little bit of our humanity ebbing away...

i just put the heating on cause im sneezing from the rain last night. we were out walking the streets of belfast and met a few people who were also soaking wet.

but with no home to go back to and our city's homeless service providers passing the buck of who should be trying to get them into a shelter it was looking pretty bleak. Jack was considering an industrial bin as his best chance of some sleep, the streets like us were sodden...

They may not have been angels, pauline had been evicted from a house, jack had been in and out of jail and colin didn't say much but from the way he flinched any time anyone moved around him im guessing his story wasn't so happy... but does that make them any less human? does that mean they should be left to rot on the streets. These were kind and generous people, warm and welcoming souls. Jack's brother had been found frozen to death and his sister murdered in 6months... they are real. I would say not just a statistic but belfast doesn't even bother to try and count its rough sleepers so their not even a statistic here...

and yeah its great to talk to these people for a few hours or give them some food or money or even take them home for a night but it does fuck all in terms of addressing the bigger problem... they still wake up with nothing to do, nowhere to go and huge addiction issues which are relatively simple and cheap to feed...
why do we tolerate it? why when the stockbrokers have a bad day do they get offered 700 billion when about 20 would give clean drinking water to the poorest of the poor?

i think we mostly tolerate it because we don't know what to do and our elected candidates don't know what to do and there are lots of pressing issues which take up more than the time we have. but thats not good enough, what are we going to tell our children when they ask us why we let the more vulnerable members of our society freeze to death outside our workplaces and shops?

human rights

A bunch of ppl are making a lot of noise about china's human rights policy etc around the olympics, and they're probably right, but i was out walking round the streets last night with a few friends and we came across plenty of injustice on our own doorstep...

first there was dino, who couldn't speak any english, so with only a very few words of romanian between us we'll didn't hear his story but there he was sat against a bin, holding out a crippled hand for some change, a middle aged man destitue in a foreign land...

next was gemma, she butted in while we were praying with her friend aaron, she had been having a few drinks with her friends in a park, well dressed quite pretty, cap pulled low over her face. "Are you guys really praying? Cause im getting mad panic attacks and i want them to go away" Then she pulled up her sleaves and there were about 30 little cuts the whole way up each forearm. She said it was the only thing she could do when the panic attacks were making so scared she couldn't even leave her room to sit with her mum...

finally there was ahmed, sitting in a bit of town we dont normally find people, i would have walked past him but some of the other guys stopped. ahmed is 17 he's been seeking assalum for 3 years, during which time he has been bounched around from libya, italy, france, switzerland and england with no passport and only a basic grasp of these countries languages he has often ended up living on the streets. now here in belfast he was selling himself to men try and make a few quid...

we spent time with each person, giving them food and a hot drink, prayer and hugs, all of them appreciated it and a couple cried on someones shoulder. but what kind of a society do we live in where minors from war-torn states are forced to turn tricks for perverts to get by? somehow i dont feel so justified in pointing the finger at china or bush or anyone...

revival is hitting the fan

im not sure if anyone has heard about the stuff going on in florida, but basically a 3 day 700 people conferance has now been going on for 33 days! the reason it has continued is because God has been showing up and performing amazing miracles, people have gotten out of wheel chairs and healed from all kinds of sickness and disease.

all very exciting for florida, but this as they say is where the plot thickens. a few excited individuals from ireland have gone to see it first hand, they have had the faith passed on and are now kicking out the jams here.

last night i went to a fairly rough bit of belfast to a very ordinary elim church which is almost impossible to find! but when i got there i found group of people who were hungry and open to God. and when He showed up it all kicked off, in that meeting alone there were people healed from deafness (actual bones in the ear which had degenerated were replaced with new ones) arthritis, back pain and a couple of people got to know Jesus for the first time. i was with a guy who is partially sighted and i got prayer for my hips, neither of which were healed on the night, but man it was exciting.

it was so beautiful to a rough belfast accent talk about having received healing and being full of God's love and power, it was free and available to everyone, the main guy was totally honest saying he would have loved to have said they had all been praying for this for years but actually he was totally surprised by it and had no reason why God should have shown up there like that; "im just a skinhead from tigers bay who was a glue sniffer, why should God visit me?"

but its on its there and im feeling like this is the tip of a most awesome iceberg....

choose where you bleed

Life cannot be lived too far without picking up a few cuts and wounds. It shouldn't be surprising to sometimes feel like crap or a bit lonley. Instead of holding it in and having it brust out on someone find a safe envirnoment and express the issues. Choose where you bleed. For me it was going late to church even when i didn't really want to but on the floor in prayer and frustration, surrounded by beautiful music, i was able to let out and begin the healing... maybe its a group of friends or ur family but if your cut you have to bleed...

sometimes you best isnt good enough

i was working really hard to get some visuals finnished for a band last week, so i didnt have any time to promote our clubnight... the gig went well, but on tuesday night we had 5 people show up. i had been doin my best but it wasnt good enough....
got me thinking that sometimes life is like that, i have hung out with ladies in africa who work physically hard all day and still cant feed their children and when they can the food is so poor it still leaves them mal-nourished. sometimes your best is not good enough.
for all those jobs, positions and courses, there are thousands of applicants per place, there must be hundreds of people who do their best but it isn't good enough.
sometimes in a relationship you can make a mistake, and after it do your best but its not good enough, its still broken...
maybe thats what hope is for, to look at the same situation the next time and say my best will be good enough...

to live... ?

to live we must make a difference, we must attack the darkness and injustice we see in our world in our city, in our family, in ourself. A mindless pursuit of affluence, comfort, security and status will leave us restless, unfufilled and worn out. Each of us has a destiny and can radically change much more than we would ever dare to believe.

We are familiar with our desires and hungers and how to satisfy them but its temporal and shallow without understanding them in the bigger picture of who were made to be.

Such sublte and complex issues require a deeper understanding, we are more than the sum of our parts, fate, hope, chance and gut feeling are much more than passing feelings. They are pointing us in the direction of spiriuality and beyond a maths equation or physics model. We need to be in touch with our creator, understanding his passionate love for us, His Son's passion and Spirit's inspiration... we need to do more than scratch the surface to journey into who we are.

understanding surpasses intellect

Intellect and knowledge are generally triumphed in the western world as being the best and most useful elements of humanity for reasoning, living and proving points by. But when it comes down to it I dont think they are nearly as important as we make out. How many times do we make a decision in our mind and then do the total opposite? Ill just go for one drink we tell ourselves, because logically we have to get up tomorrow and we're a bit skint. But then in the situation the connection of friends, the craic, the new experience of that night over powers all reason and we do what feels right.

In politics etc how many leaders state their manifestos on honour and caring for the working people and schools and hospitals, but when it comes down to it make choices out of fear and self preservation.

In the context of Christianity, i have recently been having a few discussions about particular theological points, which may or may not be that important, these people argue that we should strive to discover as much as possible intellectually, as if it was the highest form of human knowing.

However, I think it has to be deeper, it has to be more mysterious, behavoir modification through reasoning is powerless in the face of all consuming passion. The greatest acts of humanity, of bravery of hope of tolerance and love, flew totally in the face of reason. Therefore to limit knowing God to the intellect or claim these other aspects of humanity are not important or trustworthy is to live in denial of how we really live and are.
Jesus was alive he burned and hurt and raged, he wants to give us new hearts that will provoke us against our own intellect to act in love. To be in relationship with Him is an adventure that connects with every fabric of our being not just logic or reason.

sometimes we can all use a little deliverance

so this one is pretty far of the ricther scale. ill keep it vauge for the sake of all involved but basically on friday in a house in the western world i and a couple of others prayed for deliverance for a person from at least one demon who was in control to some extent of their body.

to give a little background on this seemingly incredulous event, its day to day for a lot of people to deal with in most of the non-western world, its spoken about over and over by Jesus and i have seen it over myself in africa etc. People can have a normal life and have a couple of extra passengers that rear theire ugly heads at times. God's supreme authority dwells in the form of the Holy Spirit in anyone who knows Jesus and that gives them the right and power to command a demon to leave.

Now although i believe all the above it wasnt till it was taking three of us to hold down someone under 10stone, who had a difference voice speaking out of their convulsing body that i started taking it serously. i was on the verge of freaking out as we commanded a demon full of aggresion, hatred and disgust to leave whilst reassuring out teary eyed friend, depending on who was in control of their one body at the time. this zoning out from one to another would happen in a matter of seconds and our friend would struggle to hold onto his concisousness or complete a sentance, whislt the demon would cause him to try and poke his own eyes, punch himself in the face or pull his hair.

We went through a number of prayers breaking unforgivenesss and other agreements he had made which might have given the demons power to stay, and fought with it for several hours, in which time it was weakening and he getting stronger, but in scripture Jesus tended to do it with a word, or the demons would just leave trembling in His presence, so I havent quite untied all the theological knots as to why it was so hard work for us. but one thing is for sure I havent prayed like that for the Holy Spirit to come and fill me for a while. this is a bit of a mad one so ill happily answer any comments as best i can peace g

suicide sucks

i was at a thing tonight in west belfast called solidarity against suicide. it was pretty powerful, a bunch of people from different churches coming together to talk about the issue, pray, give and consider practical steps to stopping the spiraling suicide rates in west belfast and ireland as a whole.
it seems really twisted to me that even the most broke person in belfast is like 1000s of times richer than over 2 billion people on the planet yet life can still get so hopeless they kill themselves. not that money = happiness but more suicide = despiration and dispiration means a lack of hope on job / life / money front. i dont know its a kinda deeper thing too i guess.

the question i have is how have we let our city get to the point where 26 of every 100,000 people would rather be dead?

its easy to point the finger and the "problems of the world" and moan about how powerless we are, but here i our city there is something really really wrong that we need to address. a part of our destiny lies in the hands and lives of all the people of this country and if we say just cause they wear tracksuits and have bad mostaches we dont want to know them, then we are missing the point of who Jesus was; we cant deny the humanity in another induvidual without losing a bit of our own.

but more, much more than this, God's heart is for hope and freedom and destiny, and he longs to use his people to set the captives free and let the down-trodden know God is on their side (see luke 4,18> for details). and its on these adventures we discover who we are and see him move in power to do miracles and bring that freedom...

so maybe the restless middle class church goers, myself included, that seem to overrun this city / country should stop watching dvds and drinking coffee and start getting involved with the least of these on our doorstep....

a non performance based realationship

fresh hard rain, ran down the back of my neck, as i sauntered back across the road with a warm coffee. sipping the steaming brew as rain water fell in sheets its amazing how much on can become aware of in a reflective mood on a sunday afternoon...
after spending the dregs of a night on half a tiny sofa with a friend I had been much more than friendly with, the strange reality of Jesus love took me by surprise.

the sofa having been preceded by a day including praying for healing and vjing at a christian event, there were definitely a few hypocrisy alarm bells ringing. but then in church having told all to some unsuspecting member of the prayer ministry team, the guilt trip i was probably twistedly hoping for failed to kick in, instead they encouraged me to realise how much Jesus delighted in me and who i was...

and that is the truth of grace and why Jesus death on the cross produces this most beautiful non-performance based relationship. he understands we will continually make mistakes and break any rules our society or religion might suggest. these disasters are almost irrelevant to how much he completely loves us.

design pain and some grade a junkies

i did this today which im pretty pleased with...
i also got two wisdom teeth out, it was pretty brutal the guy had the slice my gum open and drill the mofo to pieces, lots of winching, trying to be a man and listening to loud dance music and top volume....

the junkies is reference to sunday morning and hill street fellowship, i use the term in the holy spirit sense of the word, ie they loved Jesus and werent afraid the get blasted. it was cool, a disused warehouse on the way to being a music venue, old rickety wooden seats, a shoddy amp and single guitar, hardly enough people to form a huddle... and BAM! the spirit of God falls and the little group of average joe's are singing, laughing, prophecying and generally hopping on the good foot and doing the sunday thing... thats what im talking about...

ps went surfing yesterday with claire, nail and ruth anne, it was a fine days craic... if you really want to see the pics she's ruru on bebo.

4talent and a festival

Yo bit of shameless self vj promotion but sure... click here to see my artical on 4talent, also got booked for this festival:



yo!
tekumah on tuesday went class next one 14th of june...

opportunity

i was on my way for a bacon soda this morning and bumped into ben. he's a homeless guy i have met a few weeks ago. as he chatted about the state of homlessness in belfast and the way in which the system, intenionally has him jumping through hoops and sat in catch 22s it seemed a bit ridculous. here is a diagnosed manic depressive forced to wake up soaking wet cause it rained last night. is this the society we are proud to have created?

its all great the assembly is up and running and we're all moving forward, but ben reckons belfast has gone from one of the best cities at providing advice, care and support for those without a home to one of the worst.

why do we accept homelessness as a part of our countries? there are many parts of the world where it simply does not exist, where people are prepared to do what it takes so that any induvidual can be housed.

i do think the governement has a role to play and indeed it has the greatest power when it comes to delivering serivces, but what if we had a more creative attitude to spending our money.

what if a holiday home in spain was a bit passe compared to having you own 4 bed mini hostel for down and outs? forget a jag and bling bling, i fund a support worker who has helped 20 people find housing this year... oh really well my peanut factory in madagasgar recently won a national award for health and safety...

i dont think we should feel guilty for enjoying the wealth that we have been given, instead we should get excited about how much potential there is for good in all our wallets.

i know we're not all at the point where we are buying second holmes or even one, but 50p can stop a child going blind, and you ask the next homesless person you buy a coffee for if that 1.80 wasnt worth it.

the world is only as we make it to be

sweet video about the worlds cultures

check it out here and be inspiried