I dated a girl...

I dated this girl when I was about 16 or so, we landed up dating for 4 years, it was one of those first love kind of things, or at least what we knew love to be and as far as that went, we loved each other. Her dad didn’t return that love at all and he really didn’t like me much and I wasn’t really allowed over at her house. The only two times I actually did crack an invite, was once to her Grandparents house for Sunday lunch. In those days I was wearing very low pants, and trying to find my way in the fashion world. I made it through most of the day, a little bit of small talk, I was super nervous the whole day. Some how it landed up with just the granddad, the dad and me in the lounge. I thought it would be a great time to get out of there, and the ladies had just started too do the dishes, so I thought “Let me jump up quick and go help them”. Little did I know my trust worthy belt had broken and as I jumped up in front of these two men my pants came falling down and not just to my knees all the way to my ankles. Needless to say looking back this is quite funny, but in the moment all I could do was grab my pants and run out. The other time I was over at her house during the day when her dad was suppose to be at work. He came home quick and I had to hide in the bathroom. But as fate would have it he needed to go to the bathroom and I got caught. He was trying to open the bathroom door and I was trying to push it shut. Was not a good day for me, but through it all we continued to date. It got really difficult the more and more we grew as Christians, because we knew we should be honouring her dads wishes but at the same time we loved each other and wanted to be together. I still remember the one-day we broke up because of the issues it was causing. The next day I felt as if I was Abraham. For those of you who don’t know who he is I will give you a quick run down else read the full story in Genesis 22. In a nutshell, God tells Abraham he is going to have a son, and it takes forever for the son too be born, everything in Gods time I suppose. When the son gets older, God decides Abraham must show his love for God by sacrificing his son on this mountain. So Abraham takes his son Isaac and leads him to the mountain, his son the ever inquisitive child is asking all sorts of questions like why am I carry all this wood if we don’t even have a lamb. Abraham reassures him that God will supply it. So up they go, they get to the spot where the sacrifice is going to take place, Abraham grabs Isaac and through tears and screaming ties him to the alter and picks up an axe to kill Isaac. As the axe is coming down to end him this angel calls out and says STOP! Now that is good timing, a little too close for Isaac I am sure, but Gods timing always has reasoning behind it. So anyway stuck in the bush is this little lamb that came out of nowhere, so Abraham and Isaac having a father son moment and kill the lamb, Isaac very happy about that. God was testing Abraham to see his commitment to him and how far he was willing to go. So this is who I felt like and needless to say by lunch time this girl and me where back together. We spoke to lots of people who all had different opinions and no matter how much we broke up because it was the right thing to do we never stayed apart. Looking back I think it was because although we had an idea of what was right we never really believed it for ourselves. We where living for each other and ourselves. Although we loved God and wanted to please him we felt the requirements were too much right then and there.

We never took ownership of our own faith; we just lived through the peoples around us faith. We where trying to be Christians but instead of worshipping Jesus we where worshipping each other. We did not take the call on our lives seriously. Instead we tried to feed off other people’s relationships with God and not develop our own.

The reason I think there is so many people that say they have tired Christianity and it didn’t work for them is that they tried someone else’s version of it. If Jesus is a personal God then we all should have our own relationship with him. In the same way if a friend and me dated the same girl, although she is the same, we are different and we will not share the same relationship with her. Just like in dating though there are things that will cross over for all relationships there is things that apply to all of us with our relationship with Jesus. There are black and whites, things that won’t change, but I think if we are honest and get into the bible and God’s calling for our lives there is a lot of grey. We must just be careful not to teach or preach grey as black and white, or to use grey as an excuse to get more grace! Taking ownership of your faith means asking questions about it and seeking out the answers.

How can we worship what we don't know

When I had just arrived in London, my friend was there on holiday having a good time. He organized for us to go see a band called Millencolin, my friend really loved the band, I knew then pretty well and too this day it was one of the best shows I had ever been too. Perhaps it was because it was my first show aboard, when we arrived at the show there was every type of person you can imagine, I had never seen so many punks and rockers in one place in my whole life, during the day in London you just saw ‘normal’ people and in the evening these people came out to play, maybe they where afraid of the sun or something. All I know is I loved it. It was one of the best sights I had seen up too that point in my life.

My friend and I were waiting in the cue to get inside, the cue went around the corner and as we where getting closer and closer to getting inside we where talking rubbish and saying how stoked we where to be watching famous bands. We went past this alley and looked down it and saw the best Millencolin sweater we have ever seen. This guy was wearing it who looked a little funny as far as we where concerned. We joked about jumping him and stealing his sweater. The cue moved on and we forgot about the whole thing, until the band started and behold before us was the funny guy in his sweater rocking out for the band playing guitar. We laughed, but looking back cant help but wonder if we had known more about the band, had more of an understanding and knowledge of who they where, who that guy was. Would we have run down the alley like fans asking him to sign our chest or for a stand of hair so something thing like that?

I can’t help but feel that it’s the same with God, when we become Christians we are told to worship this ‘person’ and give them all we are but we know little or even nothing about Him. The more we know about something the easier it is to worship that thing, we don’t worship bands that we just hear, we buy the cd, or illegally download it and listen to it and develop a love for it. The more that love grows the more our desire to know more about the band grows and we start doing google searches and stuff.

The more we start to love God the more we desire to know more about him, the more we know about him makes it easier to worship him. The responsibility rests on us though to get to know God. We can get to know him through the life of Jesus. The bible is a crucial key in understanding the way Jesus lived, and how we should be living. But it also highlights the character of God which makes our worship easier. It shows worship as more than just singing songs

A lot of people say they don’t believe in the bible? I want to know what they don’t believe? It is easy to say you don’t believe in something you know nothing about. But in order to fully say you don’t believe something you need to know about it. What don’t you believe in the bible? The same is true though about those of us that believe in the bible. What do you we believe about the bible? Why do we believe that? Are we pushing ourselves to know more about the bible?

Open my eyes God!!!

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 prayed 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.

Fear of Praying

I don’t know about you but I have always been afraid to prayer out loud, and I have not even really been sure how to pray when I prayer by myself. I went to Sunday school a couple of times and all the prayers I heard literally made no sense to me. They people praying used big words, prayed for what felt like forever and left me feeling like I would never be able to prey due to the fact I can’t even think of the words they use, let alone pronounce them.

When I was in grade one, and they still allowed you to prey in schools, I had my first run in with the law so to speak, I was sent to the office in tears. I was sent not for punching anyone, or for back chatting. But rather when we closed in prayer and the teacher said AMEN, I promptly followed by saying AMEN, AMEN, AMEN, AMEN, AMEN, AMEN. To which the teacher jumped up, ripped me off the ground and threw me outside and sent me to the office. I was in tears, crying myself to the office, taking the long way around of course, I was distraught not stupid. I could not understand what I did wrong, and to this day I still don’t really know, I was honestly not being disrespectful, I just didn’t know any better. No one had taught me anything about prayer. AMEN AMEN AMEN was all I could do to express myself to God as a child.

Following on from that experience I became very weary of prayer, like if I did not do it properly I would get in trouble, and thrown out again, maybe even thrown out of heaven. I thought I would be better off taking my chances not praying at all than upsetting God through the wrong prayers.

Prayer becomes easier the more you do it, but what in our head stops us from praying.

Firstly I think it all ties up with our understand of who God is and who we are in him. It is easy to pour your heart out to someone you know without a shadow of a doubt that they love you no matter what. This is two fold because it means us taking the time to find out whom Jesus is.

The idea of prayer is that we as finite humans can communicate with an infinite being God, basically meaning we can chat with God that lives outside of time and space that we know. Our Motive is very important when we prayer, do we prayer so the people around us can hear and go WOW, that was great or do we prayer for an audience of one, Prayer is about God… not the people around us! We need to exclude others and ourselves as the reason for prayer…

We must not trust in the prayer but rather the person to whom we are praying… If you run to someone for help screaming, “help friend playing fell off roof” is the person going to say… hold on that was not the correct way to form that sentence. In the same way God wants to hear our hearts, not our intellect.

Prayer should be honest… it is an important thing that praying is sharing your heart and being honest with God about what is going on in your life! Psalms shows true prayer, we should prayer with our heart and not our heads.

We need to have faith that God will answer our prayers; it says in the word that God is gracious and generous and if we ask in accordance to his will for our lives we shall receive! Are we in line with Gods will??? Must remember sometimes God says no or answers in his own way or a way we didn’t want him to answer so we ignore it and say God never speaks to me… you know when God is speaking…

Faith that God hears us…

It is a dependence on God, submitting to him and his work in your life… our prayers should be in the impossible, praying in such a way that if God doesn’t step in our prayers will be useless!