Discernment

mmm

had a few conversations this week about discernment.
How do you know what God has planned for you. Is this just a sit and waiting game, or do we just do it and hope that God uses the situations your in?

Someone mentioned its about seasons. Chester has been a season, have I done, or has Gods will for me been accomplished for me here. Do I have more to do, or shall I move on?

mmm

Manchester is sounding great, and would be a wonderful opportunity, if I get the job ( watch this space for updates) Even if I do, I still need to find accommodation, and money to pay rent for a few months before I start my job!

Part of me does not want to join the rat race, I don't really want to be tied down with a house, family job. I want to be a free agent, travel the world, meet new people. I suppose that's what everyone wants.

but is it part of 'the bigger picture?'

I don't know.

current mood: sticky

Essay Essay Essay

who decided that 8000 words was enough for a undergraduate dessitation was enough??!! It's absolutely ridicule!! I'm so over my word count and its hard to cut things out.

not only that...

I have 3 3000 word essays to write all by the 8th of June, which sounds like miles off but its only 6 weeks.

6 week ago I was handing over to the new committee of the Christian Union.

my word, cant wait till its all over!

current mood: she's a maniac, MANIAC!!

time to move on?

well, the travellers have gone

not suprising, cos thats what they do.

i feel slighty perplexed. not sure whether we scared them off, or if they decided to just move on.

My housemate just asked 'why is it so hard to 'do the right thing?'

well what is the right thing?

to be contraversial, to challenge to encourage to be diferent, to feel safe?

current mood: jammy!

Mediocre Christianity

I may have mentioned this before, but I try to live a life that is different and does God justice, so that I am a reflection of who he is.

Me and my housemates (whom shall remain nameless for security reasons) we discussing whether or not we were 'arm chair Christians' meaning do we think we are ok with God, but not demonstrate it or do anything about it. Do we just sit back and not live a life that god wants us to live.

It got me thinking.

Do I?

I don't claim to be the best Christian in the world, and I don't think I am remotely close, but I do try. I don't tick all the boxes of what a Christian should and should not do, just because I am a Christian. I don't fast, just because I am a Christian, I don't read the bible just because I am a Christian I don't pray just because I am a Christian. Albeit, if I was not a Christian I proberly wouldn't do all those things. But I do them out of love for God.

we them got talking bout socially excluded people and how are we suppose to respond to the poor and the excluded. I said take Jesus example. He went out there and got to know them, showed them love that is unexplainable. So with that attitude, we did something that I never thought I would do, I wasn't really thinking bout it, we just did it. There are a group of travelers living in a field across the road from us. I thought it woulfd be a good idea, to go over and say hi. At that point there were no rational thoughts of safety, or what we would say, we just stepped out. We took a Frisbee with us and played near the caravans. We tried to knock on one of the doors, and wll we could hear from inside, is 'don't open the door!, get away from the door, just ignore them.' this scared me a little as all I wanted to say was, we are playing don't be alarmed, but it seems they already were.

Its strange how we can be stirred by motivational speeches, and be totally on fire, and ready to do for Gods one day and wanting to hide from the world the next.

I refuse to be a mediocre Christian

I refuse to be led by my emotions!

I want to live for God everyday, I want to pick up my cross daily and not just when it suits me.
but it is so pertrafying. We live in a society that tells us what is ok and what is not, and Christianity goes against the grain, its uncomfortable, its difficult.

so are you ready?

are you?!

Loss

Suffering the loss of someone we love can be the most difficult thing in life to deal with. One moment we have them and the next they’re gone. What are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to feel? The truth is, there’s no certain way we’re “supposed” to feel. Whatever we’re feeling, it’s okay. It’s okay to feel shock, anger, denial or whatever we may feel. It’s okay. And if we don’t feel anything at all, that’s okay too. It’s okay to have no answers and no explanations. Because sometimes all the reasoning and comforting words in the world just isn’t what we need. What might help us however is to understand how Jesus dealt with this kind of loss.

Are you in tune?

What does it mean to have a relationship with God? What does it look like? For a lot of us it’s a hard thing to fully understand. If God is an infinite spirit with no shape or form, how can we possibly relate to that? And what about Jesus? He said he came to give everyone life in its fullest. He came to show us how to live. Maybe it’s through trusting Jesus and living the kind of life he taught us to live – a life of truth, love, justice, compassion, forgiveness, and sacrifice – that we have a relationship with God. Maybe the way we live every day, every single choice we make, determines how in tune with God we are.

Junk, dont you love it (!)

A lot of us have done things in our lives that we’re ashamed of. Some are small things, and some of us have really big and devastating things. Some of us even have things that people close to us don’t know about. Personal junk that we keep to ourselves so we don’t have to deal with it. Because we don’t know how to deal with it, do we? We’re afraid that if we try it’s just going to make everything worse. But no matter how big our junk is, no matter how much what we’ve done has impacted the way other people feel about us or how we feel about ourselves, it hasn’t changed how God feels about us. God loves us, he always has and always will, and there’s nothing we can do to change that.

love each other, you what?!

God loves everyone, so a Christian should, too. In fact, Jesus said that the most important thing in life is to love God with everything we’ve got and love others the same way. But it’s not always easy to love everyone around us, is it? Sometimes we strongly disagree with other people’s political views, religious beliefs, behaviors, or something else, and it makes it hard to love them when we feel like we’re right and they’re very wrong. But Jesus doesn’t separate loving God and loving others. So maybe the best way for us to show our love for God is actually by loving other people no matter how hard it sometimes is. Maybe it’s the only way.

I believe in you (according to Kylie)

Believing in God is important, but what about God believing in us? Believing that we can actually be the kind of people we were meant to be. People of love, compassion, peace, forgiveness, and hope. People who try to do the right thing all of the time. Who act on the endless opportunities around us every day for good, beauty, and truth. It’s easy for us to sometimes get down on ourselves. To feel “not good enough” or feel like we don’t have what it takes. But maybe if we had more insight into the culture that Jesus grew up in and some of the radical things he did, we’d understand the faith that God has in all of us.

Forgive and be free!

Maybe a friend turned their back on you. Maybe someone you loved betrayed you. We all have wounds and we end up carrying around these things that people have done to us for weeks, months, and sometimes even years. It isn’t always easy to forgive these people and after a while these hurts can get really heavy. So the only way to feel better seems to be somehow getting back at the people that hurt us, to get revenge. But does revenge ever truly satisfy? Maybe forgiving isn’t something you do for someone else to let them off the hook. Maybe forgiveness is about you. God didn’t create you to carry these wounds around. God created you to be free.

happiness more or less?

We always think we know what’s missing from our lives in order to really make us happy, don’t we? If only I had that car, or that job, or if only I could lose those 2 stones, then I’d be happy. Really? How often do we want something only to find out that it wasn’t that great after all? Sometimes we ask God for things and if he doesn’t deliver right away, we start questioning whether God really understands or even cares. Do we really trust God? Do we trust that God is good and sees a bigger picture than we ever could? It’s easy to want what’s right in front of us, but maybe God knows what’s better for us, and sometimes we just can’t see it.

Empty Hearts?

Why do we do the things we do? Why do we go to church or give money away? Because we’re supposed to or because we think God needs it? Do we honestly put on our best clothes for an hour once a week, stand and sit at all the right times, and sing all the appropriate songs for God’s sake, or because it’ll make us look better to the world around us? We’re tired of all the empty rituals and routines. And so is God. God hates it when we call ourselves Christians but ignore all the things he really cares about. He hates it when we go through hollow religious routines out of some feeling of duty or obligation. God doesn’t want the meaningless rituals. God wants our hearts.

How can I Make ADifference?

We want to know why we are here. If our lives really matter. How our religion is relevant to this life. Today. We want to understand what significance this minute, hour, week, month, and year has to our lives. To our world. We need a God who cares about this life, in this world, right now. We want to understand why everything we think, everything we say, and everything we do matters. We don’t want to just sit back and wait for something to happen or someday to come. We want to know if all the choices we make now will shape our world and lives for eternity. Because we want our lives to have meaning today, and our lives today to have meaning forever.

LOVE??

I love those shoes. Really? The same way I love my parents? What’s up with the word “love”? It doesn’t have much meaning when we use it so loosely. Maybe we don’t really get it. Maybe we don’t understand what real love is. What it involves to really love somebody. What it means to give yourself to someone else. We mistake things like friendship, commitment, or lust for love, but God made us a certain way to experience all that love was really meant to be. Not to hold us back or to make us miss out on the best that life has to offer. God created love, and wants us to feel it all in the way it’s meant to be felt.

any thoughts?

Where is God when it hurts?

Things don’t always work out the way we want them to, or the way we think they will. Sometimes we don’t even see it coming. We get hit with some form of pain out of nowhere leaving us feeling desperate and helpless. That’s the way life is. Still, it makes us wonder how God can let these things happen to us. How God can just stand by and watch us suffer. Where is God when it really hurts? Maybe God is actually closer to us than we think. Maybe it’s when we’re in these situations, where everything seems to be falling apart, that God gets an opportunity to remind us of how much he really loves us.

Judas

so Jesus came to fulfill the law right?

and he did as well as abolishing it right?

So his disciples knew this, and knew that he was here to restore the kingdom.

so why does Judas always sound like the baddy in the crucifixion stories?

you know... 'the one who betrayed Jesus'...

but did he?

As far as I am aware Judas wanted what all the disciples wanted, to see the kingdom restored.

so Judas thought, well lets just speed this restoration thing up a little, lets get Jesus to bring the kingdom down right now. I'm going to tell the pharasees where he is so that he can prove himself to them, prove that he is the Messiah, and everything will be fine.

he, in his mind was doing the right thing, helping Jesus out.

that's why he tried to give back the money, that's why he killed himself, because he thought, 'ok any minute now.... Any minute now.... Ok Jesus NOW! But it never happened.

Judas was confused... What is going on. Why hasn't he done it?!

it never happened, but Judas didn't stick around to see that Jesus had actually done it!

that he did restore the kingdom, the he had done what he came to do.

poor Judas.

The Last Temptation of Christ

I've just watched one of the most 'controversial' films of the 20th century. Martin Scorsese's 'The Last Temptation of Christ'. (some of his more well know films are Casino, Goodfellas, The Aviator) )Now if you haven't seen it I would advise it, ignore the critic's and just watch it as a piece of art, like you would any other film.

Unfortunately for me I need to be rather critical of this film as I am studying it for one of my modules at uni, The Bible and Film. This is a wonderful module where we get to watch a film every week, some of them have been a little strange, but do have good themes and wouldn't hesitate showing them to a group of young people.

I thought this film was good. It was a little confusing at times but so well directed and acted. William DeFore (Spiderman, Body of Evidence, XxX 2) played Jesus, and Harvey Keital (Resivoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, The Piano), as Judas. The opening credits mention that it was not a biblical representation of the gospels and that was evident from the opening scenes. The film is based on a book of the same name and the writer, Nikos Kazantzakis, wrote it because, he wanted to understand the dual nature of Christ. He says,

'The dual nature of Christ, the yearning, so human, so superhuman, of man to attain God, has always been a deep inscrutable mystery to me. My principle anguish and the source of all my joys and sorrows from my youth onwards have been the incessant, merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh and my soul is the arena where theses two armies have clashed and met.'

That sums up something that I had thought but never really expressed.

The bible says that Jesus was tempted in every way yet did not sin. And when Jesus was in the desert for 40 days he was tempted and still did not give in. Now to me that sounds superhuman! How on earth am I suppose to be like Christ and do all of those things. It is so hard to resist temptation! So hard, so how on earth did Jesus do it?

Well, he knew his purpose and he knew his destiny.

Throughout the film you really engage with this battle Jesus had and it seemed like a real struggle. There are so many times he seems unsure of himself. When he questions whether this is actually the will of God. Whether he should ignore his calling and lead a normal human life. That was his last temptation. To be just like everyone else.

How many times I have I said, 'oh this is way too difficult I give up!' well too many to mention. Up until now I didn't realize how much of a struggle this must have been for Jesus and his disciples. There were time when he would open his mouth and no words came out, or when they did they came out with a stutter! This under confident man from Galilee speaking the word of God! Jesus almost couldn't believe it himself.

Sometimes I just want to lead a normal human life

Not to give up things, not to have to struggle and battle everyday, not to pick up my cross DAILY and follow him.

but...

I'm called too, just like Jesus.

I know my purpose, just like Jesus

If there was another easy option then sure, absolutely I would take it, Just like Jesus,

but...

I won't.

I don't want to be an ordinary person. I don't want to disappear in the crowds, I don't want life to just pass me by.

Life is something that happens to you when your busy planning it.

Well, I'm busy living it!

Jesus was a man, lets not forget that. He didn't sometimes wear his god cap when he was healing, or speaking, or changing lives. He was a man, but a man who knew the will of God and a man who knew his destiny. A man who was willing to be controversial, willing to change things, willing to speak up, but, was absolutely petrified inside but spoke with boldness, and words that would cut straight to your heart!

Jesus battled

So do I!

Do you?