Man !!! What  a fun advent that was! Totally manic, thought provoking, knackering and great fun !!!  I will blog more about my reflections on the whole escapade in the new year when i have had chance to unwind and think through everything that happened!  In the mean time i shall continue to enjoy my Port and Meat !!!

Merry Christmas !

B

take a moment to think about it…..

Here is what i have been up to recently Click Here

for they loved praise from people more than praise from God.
John 12:43

I wonder what your image means to you, both physical image and reputation?  I wonder if your image, or fear of loosing your image stops you from being truly free?

I believe that when we know we are loved, become truly free.  That when God says to us ‘I love you!’ our response either brings freedom or restrictions. We either say  “He cannot really love me, not fully.”  which then binds us to be a better person in order to earn love.  Or we say COME ON!!!! I am loved now let’s get on with loving other people…..

True freedom comes from a God who loves wildly and recklessly, and demands the response to do the same!

This week lay aside your image, your reputation and take a risk in loving, and showing love in a way that goes beyond you.

This is a poem about a solider from WW II. i found his name on a memorial in a local village, i don’t know anything about him other than his name, it got me thinking and this is the result…

Lonely by he sat longing,
For home that seemed to far to walk.
It was the power taken from the
Power given that seemed to sore so much.
With his gun in hand and soul in his pocket
He looked around at the dead pocketed souls
Standing by to find the holes to slip through,
It wasn’t long.
But a name still stands in a small home
Back where its not to far to walk.

The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him,
to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly

for the salvation of the LORD.

Lam 3

I wonder what you are like at waiting?  I am rubbish ! I was speaking with a friend who is seeking faith recently, who told me that they want to know God, but whenever they ask him to prove that he is there, nothing happens…..

This scripture tells us that to wait on God means that there is something deeper going on, I believe that it is through waiting that we receive salvation….

because to wait takes us beyond ourselves, it stretches us to the point that we have to ask “is this really worth it?” which is the question we have to ask about the gift that salvation is!

This week, spend some time asking God a question and let your response be to wait.

For three years now i have sent out a Monday morning e mail called Espresso Scriptures.  I idea was that people who don’t have faith would be able to access the bible in a real and relevant way.   Well i have a confession to make, here is today’s espresso that i wrote but didn’t send because i felt it too self indulgent, but thought it needed saying somewhere out loud so this is why it’s appeared on hear….

I wonder if you will indulge me for a brief moment this morning?

It has been playing on my mind now that these espresso scriptures, may have fallen foul of an inherent Christian disease.  That of a quick fix and easy belief system.  The whole idea of these e mails was that people who don’t profess to having faith would be able to access scripture in a way that they would be able to understand and relate to their everyday lives.

But i have found that i may have been writing in a different way just recently, and that rather than writing in that way, i have tried to write to a Christian audience, and offering teaching on the scriptures rather than giving an access point.

I guess what i am trying to say is sorry…..  i know its not up to me what you do with these e mails how you read them and how you journey with God.  But i just felt that i had to say this

thanks.

Ben

we have a very, very long way to go when it comes to both fresh and inherited models of church within the church of England. there are always going to be rubbish fresh expressions and rubbish inherited models !as well as amazing ones of both ! the worrying thing is that they feel pitted against each other !!! not good at all.

they are both becoming church and will always remain doing so !! long may those who led either or both have the humility to say i need to learn from the other so that we can more fully become church!!! which is easier for me to say because the expectations of what i do are not conformed by tradition (yet!) there is nothing new under the sun and no fresh expression is a brand new thing ! it might be more culturally relevant but the message and principles remain the same and so they should. after all we all come from this amazing Body that is Christ’s !!!

This blog has been decidedly pants just recently…..

mainly because i have not sat down with the time to write anything opinionated!  However there has been much to provoke me into thought, outrage and quite contemplation, so i will give it a quick bash and see where we get to…..

over the summer the USA have been talking about health care reform, and i am not going to get into that debate at all, but one thing that i did see that absolutely floored me was the people disagreeing with Obama’s plans painting a Hitler tash on a poster of his face !!!!  Just unbelievable!!!   are these people seriously allowed to vote and have children?  lets just have a quick check list here one of these leaders caused the death of over 56,000,000 people the other is trying to improve the lives and health of a nation!!!! seriously i ask you ! words fail me…..

i have also been learning a lot about myself over the past few weeks, learning that time out allows me to work better, that down time should not always be filled and that chaos is to be embraced and not feared.

I am someone who actually needs chaos and disruption in order to work efficiently and productively, but there must always be an end to it…. this time last year i began a gentle slide into depression, mainly because of feeling that the circumstances i was surrounded with were totally out of my control, which to all intents and purposes they were.  In many ways chaos seemed to exist at every turn, without let up.  But through this i learnt that life sometimes is just crap.  But it is always temporary, today will pass and there will never be another day like it, tomorrow will come and although the situation may still be the same it will not be the same as yesterday.  For me God is in the Chaos, sometimes he is the Chaos !  but i know that either way and every way he is also the embrace….