Saturday, August 21, 2004

Don't just take hold of every inspirational thing you hear
Ever heard that gospel preacher quote which goes like this- "the word "Christians" in fact means "little Christs".

Well listen here- that's actually wrong. The ending "-ian" in Greek words tends to refer to 2 things:

1- being a soldier in the army of a particular military leader

2- being part of the company of a particular person

...So "Christians" does not mean "little Christs" but "Christ's soldiers" or "Christ's people". Depending on which you want to draw from.

As I said, don't take hold of everything you hear that sounds good. Particularly if it makes you feel all mushy inside but doesn't really move you to do anything about it.
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Hazel's Back, which means...
Gah.. I pretty much forgot exactly how hard it is to actually take the risk of being pro-active with regards to stuff like this. Earlier on my main thought was "leave it alone- she's only been back in the country a week, wait a bit". So when exactly is a good time to start actually doing something about it again?

Anyway.. once I'd reasoned that thought off, I was just left with a load of fears "what if", "what if", "what if". And so on.

I sent her a text message in the end- but it wasn't particularly easy. And now I'm just damn tired.
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Friday, August 20, 2004

Health warning: small amounts of nudity
My housemate NIck stumbled upon this video on the net earlier:

Heap of Trouble

Be warned though- the "health warning" is serious. However I'll bet 75% of you are thinking "HE'S LINKING TO PORN IN HIS MYOTAKU!!" which isn't quite accurate. It's more.. weird.. than porn..

*gives up trying to justify myself in vague terms*.. Let's just say the bulk of the video involves a chant "nine naked men just walking down the road would cause a heap of trouble for all concerned.."

What really disturbs me is that this was made in England, not in Germany or one of those less inhibited countries :p
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Thursday, August 19, 2004

Meanwhile in DanLand
4 days. 1 headache.

Never a good way to go through a week.

I've been through 16 Paracetamol tablets in 3 days.. and now I'm on both that and Ibuprofen too.

BUT I'm going to see my GP tomorrow, so I should have a better idea of what the actual cause is- rather than som vague idea of what it might be.
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The Book Revolution
Ever wondered why words like "book", "look", "cook" and "took" are pronounced "buck" "luck" "cuck" and "tuck"?

I'll tell you why!

COMMUNISTS!

JOIN ME! Dan Lucking, and the entire citizenship of the Staffordshire city of Stoke On Trent, in pronouncing these words the right way.

BOOK. with a "OO", not a "uh". Practice your "OOOOOOO"s for a second. Now say it "BOOK"

If everyone pronounced it right, rather than just us Stokies and the Scottish, the world would truly be a better place.

Now all I have to do is work on the southerners and their "Barths" and I'm sorted.

(I get horrendous amounts of stick from my friends up here because I pronounce words with an "ook" on the end differently from everyone else. Figured I should make a stand..)
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Wednesday, August 18, 2004

So yeah...
- Hazel's back now- which was a completely unexpected but great surprise when I went to cell group tonight. She's quite worried at the minute cos in Papua New Guinea she delivered a baby which didn't breathe- so she had to do mouth to mouth. Fortunately she saved it, but what she's worried about is whether or not she caught HIV from all the mother's blood/mucus that it was covered in at the time

- There is a massive long (but not very wide) crack running down my bedroom wall- another reason I'm thankful to be moving soon. It's a recent addition to my bedroom too, as I've not noticed it before in all the time I've been here..

- Our in-flat irrigation has been getting a lot of time to irrigate recently, particularly with the UK's "tropical" weather of recent.. "Tropical"..? The UK?.. I think people are just calling it that cos it sounds better than "WET DURING THE SEASON WHEN IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE". It's also kind of fickle in that one minute it's torrential rain, the next the sun's out and it's a nice warm day. Then it rains, then sunny, then it hails (apparently the East Midlands found hailstones of about 15mm diameter at one point) then it clears up again. Frankly I think the weather system needs to make a decision and stick to it.

- One of my workmates banged on the toilet door earlier on today (about 4:00 pm)- just as a kind of joke on whoever was inside. But it was actually a very good thing, because Paul, who was on the toilet in question, had accidentally fallen asleep and if Ben hadn't banged on the door he'd have probably spent the night in the warehouse..

- I've already started packing the boxes for the big move away from Langsett Road in one and a half weeks' time. The boxes being packed are from work- one of the big advantages of working at a warehouse is there's loads of spare empty boxes.

- Apparently I may have sinusitis- I've had one long throbbing headache since Sunday afternoon. It doesn't throb all the time, but when it does... let's just say it's a little intense- the throbbing is right under my left temple. My Dad thought it's because of the low pressure system in the weather at the moment, but my Cell leader, and Hazel (who is a medical student after all..) reckon it might be sinusitis..
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Sunday, August 15, 2004

New at 66: Irrigation for your flat
Where to start.. I live in a flat. For those who may not have heard the term "flat" due to nationality, it's basically an apartment. In this particular case, it's half a house- the top half to be precise. The other flat is the bottom half.
What makes it a little more confusing is that it's actually two terraced houses merged into one, split into two flats. but ours is bigger because we get the first floor and 2 attic rooms, where downstairs just gets the ground floor.

Another bit of background is that a guy called Jono Thompson is our landlord and refurbished the place after it used to be a Billiards establishment of some sort. He employed students who didn't know a huge amount about building- in order to fix the place up, and in many ways they did a shoddy job.

Aaaaanyway.. we only have one door, the back door, and there's a set of stairs leading down- whereas downstairs have 2 front doors and 2 back doors (because as I said, it's two terraced houses merged into one..)

Our door leaks big-time. We've had massive downpours of rain in the last week or so, and whenever it's rained in the last year or so it's always seeped in. This last week it's poured in. There's really no better word for it than poured. There's a light bulbjust inside the porch, and the water even runs across the ceiling and drips off that. Which isn't all that healthy. The area around the door is even starting to smell, presumably from all the damp-ness from the rain.
We've called Jono many times but he never does anything about it.

Thankfully I'm moving out in two weeks.. much as I don't want to load anything on him, it's purely Jono's problem after that. It's his house (we just live here) and he doesn't do anything about it- if the place is infested with wet rot in a short time then he can't really blame anyone but himself.
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Saturday, August 14, 2004

My housemate Nick's Record Company
Tiny Salmon Records

I have to say it's quite amusing for me to look at this website from the perspective that I know Nick.

There's a part on the website somewhere that says "The office will be closed from such a date til such a date"- but I know for a fact that he has no "office" :p. Unless he's on about that room which he's transforming into his studio up in Crookes.

If you look closely enough on the website you can find our adress (and really, you don't have to look that close at all)..

I've only got two weeks left in this place anyway so it's not as if I should be afraid of stalkers or anything like that..
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Wednesday, August 11, 2004

The Kingom of Heaven is like this..
So when exactly did Jesus tell the Parable which symbolises people coming to faith by praying "the sinner's prayer"?. Or when did he first meet someone and insist that they think about becoming "saved" by accepting him into their heart and praying the prayer of repentance. When exactly did he force people to make some outward symbol that they would follow him? Well, I guess he kind of did from time to time- but what we often seem to forget is that he did that a long time after people started following him. Look at Peter's confession of Jesus. Really look at it. At it's context.

At the time Peter confessed who Jesus was (Matt 16:16; Mark 8:29) He had already been sent out with the other 11 Disciples (Matt 10; Mark 6:7-11), and according to Mark's version they had seen many miracles and deliverances from demons (Mark 6:12-13), Peter had walked on water (Matt 14:29) even if he slipped up after a few seconds. He spent a good deal of his time with Jesus himself. And yet up until that point, he hadn't even confessed who Jesus was. Let alone prayed some prayer by which he would accept God into his heart. And yet he was Jesus' disciple.

And what did Jesus say? "Go and make disciples of all nations". Somehow when we insist that people accept who Jesus is, that they are really a "sinner", and ask for forgiveness all in one, I get the feeling we're really missing something. Jesus did not say to everyone he encountered "your sins are forgiven"- to some he said "come follow me", and others "I have not seen faith like this in all of Israel". And yet the primary message we always seem to give to people is "you are a sinner but we forgive you". Well let's get this straight here and now- Jesus didn't just come to forgive- he came so that we would repent. He didn't just come so that we would realise how bad we are- but that we might live better lives. FULLER lives.

He said he would give us life, and life to the full at that. He brings us on a journey into a great battle. He provides all we need. He heals, He delivers, he does all sorts. He doesn't just forgive.

Don't get me wrong on this- forgiveness is an important part of what Jesus came for. But what is equally important is that a lot of the time, we're meant to give out the forgiveness generously, not try to get our "evangelees" to beg for it.

We pray for our own forgiveness, and the forgiveness of those who have done us wrong- just look at the Lord's prayer. And a lot of the time, people can be more touched by us forgiving them, than us trying to conceptualise God's forgiveness that they seem to have to ask for.

Many people came to the Lord in acts, and it is expressed in many different ways- but to my knowledge, not one of them is recorded as praying the Sinner's prayer. In fact, Jesus gave us THE example on how to pray, and he didn't say "Weeeelll.. first you start off with the SINNER'S prayer, and then after that you move onto the Lord's prayer".

Now I'm not saying the Sinner's prayer isn't useful.. all I'm saying is that it's not as vital a thing as we make it out to be. We need to stop stressing about whether or not someone has prayed some prayer which is supposed to get them into heaven and instead do what Jesus did- make disciples.

Of course, in Acts things all go a little bit haywire and we get droves of people coming to the Lord all at once- but the question is, did they even pray that prayer, or did they simply come to know Jesus so tangibly- be so touched by his spirit that there was no doubt whether they had encountered him or not.

The truth is that however they encountered him, we have become far too restricted in the way we evangelise. We think people have to become "Christian" in order to know Jesus- that they have to have prayed some sinner's prayer in order to be saved. In previous times I'm sure the model that we have today actually worked- but today it is no longer a completely effctive way of bringing Jesus to people.

Lastly- that's exactly it. We're bringing Jesus to the people. Not the other way around. We are sent out to spread the message, not told to draw people in to recieve it. Seeds which are not scattered far and wide will not grow fruit far and wide.
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I'm baaa-aaaack!!
Technically I've been back and able to post since Monday, but what can I say.. I didn't really have the will-power.

See, I got back from New Wine on Saturday afternoon, to find a two page note from my housemate Nick, which can be summed up as "I think I messed your computer up. SORRYSORRYSORRYSORRY" When you bear in mind that I let Nick and Joe use my PCs for e-mail and internet, and that's what Nick was doing at the time, it's probably a little more understandable that I wasn't really that annoyed at him.

Anyway, my Dad's still at New Wine til next Sunday, and my standard way of getting something like this sorted would be to get him involved- so it looked as though I was going to have to wait a week and a bit, or even longer, before I'd be back online

But then on Monday, lo and behold my computer did the weirdest thing. Rather than continuing to say "Operating system not found" when I turned it on, it actually worked.
I kid you not, it just happened out of no-where. Once I was in windows I could do a disk-check, I found the problem on Norton Disk Doctor and then had it fix it. And now my PC works fine again.

So all that was a minor miracle in itself.

And now I need to be off to cluster meeting, so I'll update on the rest later.
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