i am a boy

I am a boy in the middle of a mountain range living in a cave, although the cave has most more luxuries than most houses, like mattresses and running water and it was only for one night on a retreat.  I found myself at 27 years old exploring the surrounding mountains all alone with my stick jumping from rock to rock not thinking of the perils that could await me. Perhaps a big snake, or even a loose rock that will send me bellowing down the mountain side to my death or at least a sprained ankle. Perhaps so server I would be left there with no cell phone signal all alone to be destroyed and eaten by giant baboons.

How did I find myself exploring such wonderful surroundings with all this head knowledge of the dangers that await me. Off I went wondering cheerfully and excitedly from rock to rock, the answer was simple, I was exploring from my heart. I was looking for something greater than myself and was not worried what my head was telling me. I am a boy craving adventure. It struck me though that as I was wondering head down and smile on how often we loose the passion for our relationship with God because we allow our head to do the leading. Imagine I listened to my head and allowed it to stop my heart from going out on this adventure. My heart would become dead with despair and boredom. How true of our relationship with God, we live from our heads and not our hearts. Our hearts are very seldom used anymore, we loose the it that makes us alive and instead go on living good safe “Christian” lives instead of living the life we are called too.

In my wonderful adventure I found myself getting o so wonderfully and joyously lost, at times so lost I had no idea how to get back to the cave. But I was living from my heart, so all I had to do was find the biggest rock and up I would climb and I would be able to see my way again. Again God revealed to me that when we live from our hearts sometimes it might feel like we getting overwhelmed by things and that is when we need to stand on top of his word, for his word is a lamp unto our path. God will continue to show you the direction to where you need to go if you live from your heart.

When we live a head sort of Christianity we loose out on the adventures God has for us. Sure you can still can to heaven being a head sort of Christian but when we start too live as heart centered Christians and by heart I mean a God centered heart full of passion and compassion then we start to bring heaven to earth and start to live a life worthy of living. 

Pray for cars and it will rain

Once back when I was 18 I had borrow my moms car, she had just gotten it back from the garage where it had just had a major service. It cost loads of money and also gave issues so she was always a bit reluctant to let me or my brother use her car, but of course with our puppy dogs eyes and boyish charm we always got to use it. It also always broke down with one of us using it. More of a coincidence than anything else really, my car was this old black beetle. I loved the car because it was my first car and got it super cheap because my cousin owed my dad some money and was selling his car so I landed up getting the car. I was stoked and my friend Alan and I would spend endless hours working on the car and making it cool. Or at least what we thought was cool.  One night we took the car out to the movies, it was the middle of winter and that’s when we figured out the vents in the car don’t close, we where freezing and our last resort was to put my girlfriends jersey (she left it in the car, this never happened again after that night). In the dashboard through where the radio should be. We had the radio in the cubby-hole, as it was easier to install there. So we shuffled the jersey in nice and tight and it was working well until it decided to rain. As it was raining we needed to use the windscreen wipers, it was only drizzling so nothing too bad. When we got to the movie place to meet everyone including my girlfriend, she sent me a message to say “please bring my jersey out the car. So I went to grab it only to find that the windscreen wipers had tangled up the jersey and it had gotten caught that I couldn’t get it out and it ended up getting ripped and broken. It is funny how we all have gaps in our lives that we try fill with whatever we find laying around and appealing? It always goes back to having a God space inside of each of us that we just try fill with whatever is around whether girls, booze, or even sports.

 

So this night it was raining and cold so I got to use my mom’s car for legitimate reasons. I cant remember where me and Alan where going, but we where going out none the less. When I got to his house the rain had stopped and the roads where slightly wet, just wet enough for some fun. So Alan gets into the car and we reverse out of his drive way, as we are going backwards I quickly throw the car into first and do a wheel spin, however the wheel spin is cut short because the car just cuts out. My heart starts to race and I start thinking up excuses to why the car just stopped working. We manage to get the car under some trees outside of Alan’s house. The rain starts to pour down again and Alan and me are just stuck there in silence. Rain is dripping through the trees and falling on the windscreen. Then it was almost simultaneously that we thought back to Sunday’s church service about prayer and how this guy prayed to God and he got a wife. We both thought wow, what we are asking for is way easier than that. 

So I preyed for us something along the lines of “Father God, we love you and just want you too fix the car, we wont wheel spin again and will try be better people”. I thought it was a good prayer, we where bargaining with God, giving him what he wanted to hear and in return we would get our small miracle. At that moment our faith was huge, I mean it was either faith or the wrath of mom. After the amen we tried to start the car and to our surprise it didn’t start. No what, we almost felt a little betrayed by the whole deal, we had done our part, had faith and prayed a sincere prey and nothing. We felt cheated out of a miracle and also new the trouble that awaited us because of the unanswered prayer. After a while it stopped raining and we figured that God would answer our prayers if we met him half way, so Alan jumps out the car and starts to push, we try a few times and Alan can’t feel his arms anymore. I just feel the sinking feeling of surrender coming over me. I have nothing left to try, its time to face the consequences and phone my mom. Just before I do that though I pop the bonnet in the hope I can see what the problem is. Even though I have no real clue, I thought 5 more minutes won’t hurt. The whole time everything is going on I am still praying in my head asking God for help. When I pop the bonnet and look inside I notice that the box for the airflow straight into the engine has come off. So I clip it back on and away we go. Turns out the guys that services the car didn’t put it on properly.  

Seems God did answer my prayers but the way he wanted to answer them not the way I wanted them answered. He gave me the insight into the problem and I had to go and fix it. I think a lot of times we sit by and want God to fix everything and do everything for us. But if God has answered our prayers the way we wanted him too. We would not have developed a dependence on him, we would have properly in all honestly developed big heads because God answered our prayers on our terms, instead he taught us everything in his time. Everything his way, we don’t always have to understand that but the more we know the easier it becomes.  

Good deeds suck sometimes

Good deeds and noble lives sell books, it is almost as if God gifts people with the ability to write books once they lay down there lives for the true teachings of Jesus and go out full hearted for him and make a difference and get people saved. What happens to those of us that are stuck trying to do the best we can for Jesus but all it seems to add up too is heart ache and day light robbery. There was this guy, I could tell you his name but I forget it. Not an uncommon thing for me, I know remembering someone’s name is meant to give them more worth and allow them to feel at ease and more sociable accepted, but I really suck at remember names. I can tell you what Vicky had a fanta orange and nachos on our first date but not the name of the restaurant. 

So here is this guy, he kept coming to our house to look for work or money. I would also chat with him and listen to his long stories about nothing, ironically it would always be during a meal or when Vicky and I settled in for a movie. So I landed up giving this guy some work, chatting with him. Giving him some of my clothes and really being what I felt was Jesus to the guy. Let me just make this statement though, if as Christians our giving does not actually cost us anything it is not really giving. It cost me nothing to give away the old clothes at the back of my wardrobe that I never wear, actually it gains more wardrobe space so I have more place to put my new clothes I can now buy. We are called to share all we have, so when someone asked you for your shirt, give him or her the one you are wearing.

That will cost you something. I have a friend that is a missionary and has been for 15 years. The other day we where talking about money and how we survive. He said that we (missionaries) live off other people’s exposable income. That is true, but a sad truth. If we call ourselves Christians we should be sharing all we have, this is hard when you have a family and between you and God you need to come to terms with that. So this guy kept coming back week after week and I really didn’t have any more money for him but I would make him a sandwich and we would chat, or he would tell me more stories. This went on for months until the one day we had friends visiting and Vicky worked half day so we could go to the Dutch Cheese factory just down the road. This guy saw us leaving and decided to break in, and steal my computer and camera and a whole bunch of my clothes. He tired to steal our cheese but thought it more appropriate to just leave it out on the counter to defrost. The friends all staying with us had all their laptops and ipods in the lounge but the guy left everyone else’s things and stole just mine. Does this mean that we stop being Jesus because of one bad experience? Or does is mean we judge everyone that needs help? To fear everyone stops us from being Jesus to anyone. We cannot fear based on stereotypes or even previous experiences. Each individual is an individual regardless of colour or social standing.

Why do we believe we believe what we believe?

One night in London a friend and I headed down to Covent Gardens for skate, or to scout for girls or just to get out, cant really remember. I do however remember that my friend was telling me stories about how if you can to a place just before closing they sometimes gave you free stuff. Like any normal individual how could I believe him without actually experiencing it for myself? And further more free stuff was at hand. So we looked around for a possible target and ended up going to this pizza place, the fact that is was pizza was  a bonus. The real reason we went there was because there was a cute girl working behind the till. 

My friend was quite the charmer and landed up speaking to her for a while, needless to say we got two slices of pizza for free. Maybe because it was the policy maybe because it was because my friend was a hotty, either way free stuff. 

As we walked out of the pizza place with our new found treasures this guy came up to us. He could not have been much older than us. Asking for some money or food, as from the above story and us hassling for food, we had no money but we did have food. After some conviction and sadness we decided to part with our pizza, after all it didn’t really cost us anything anyway. As my friend was handing his pizza over to the guy he mentioned it was a bacon and banana pizza, still not sure why. But the guy responded by say “I don’t eat meat” but before he could finish his sentence he stopped half way and took the pizza and began to pick the meat off. I don’t know if you have even had meat on something and tried to take it off, you cant really get it all off. Why was this guy a vegetarian? 

Personally I think as a society we just believe things because they are the in things to believe, we don’t know why we believe things. If we stand for nothing we will fall for anything. I not picking on vegetarians here, I am asking a serious question, what makes a man go against what he believes and even practices to some extent? Some may say hunger; I would rather like to suggest that rather not knowing why we believe things is the leading cause for us giving up and not standing up for what we believe. If I believe in Jesus and don’t know why, I will be willing to call myself a Christian but when it comes down to acting out Jesus in everyday life I will rather give up, because I haven’t dealt with the questions as to why I believe in Jesus.