Are we prepared to believe that extreme poverty can end in our lifetime?

Are we prepared to believe that in 2035 we are going to be throwing the biggest party the world has ever seen?

Are we prepared to believe that 26 can become zero?

If so what are WE going to do about?

]]> http://pinkpointeshoes.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/52-26-and-26-to-go/feed/ 0 Lolly http://pinkpointeshoes.wordpress.com/2011/06/18/missing-generation/ http://pinkpointeshoes.wordpress.com/2011/06/18/missing-generation/#comments Sat, 18 Jun 2011 21:41:25 +0000 pinkpointeshoes http://pinkpointeshoes.wordpress.com/?p=502 Continue reading →]]> Thoughts from Home Group:

We aren’t cute faced babies or silver haired ladies,

We can’t be won over with Sunday school crafts or flower arranging,

Our world is advancing faster than you can imagine.

If we want it we can have it with out having to wait.

The internet is in our pockets

The world is on our doorstep

The future’s in our hands

Or so they keep telling us!

We are who we are,

We create our identity, our labels, our world!

‘A generation of…’ can not define us

Because the metanarrative’s been lost.

This generation is missing.

Sure some of us are here,

Sat at the sides with our generational selves hidden.

I guess that before we can help find the rest we have to find ourselves.

Find ourselves from within the consumer led, celebrity focused world;

Find ourselves from within the stuck-in-its-ways, safe and comfy church.

We need to debunk the myth that success is everything,

We can’t be afraid of failure…

Not if we want to succeed!

It’s time to take risks, to be brave, unpredictable and a little bit crazy!

Maybe then we wont slip by unnoticed by the world anymore,

Maybe then we can introduce Jesus to our tribe.

It’s time to step out of the boat.

What if we shifted the focus from getting them in,

to getting us out?

What if we became a generation who was missing on Sundays?

Not because couldn’t be bothered,

But because we’ve  gone…

Gone to see His vision become our reality.

What if we stopped just being nice people

and became like the wide eyed radicals of the Bible,

In it for the failures as well as the successess?

All of us together, one step at a time,

Not dragging them back;

But moving the Church forward.

Maybe that’s what our dash is for…

(I’m definately not cut out for poetry…best stick to science!)

Here’s Mary’s Story

Hi,

I guess by now you already know most of my story; the angel, the stable, the shepherds, the wise men it all happened, I know it happened yet there are still times when I can’t believe it happened to me!

I was 13 the year my life changed. I’d been an adult for just a year and was engaged to Joseph. He’s the kindest most discerning loving man I’ve ever met and he was working hard to build a house for us at the time, one that not only I would like but also one that my father would approve of, little did he know we wouldn’t be returning.

Both Joseph and I had been brought up in the Jewish faith, we knew of the scriptures, we knew that the Messiah would be coming, admittedly I was thinking along the lines of rolls of thunder and chariots of gold but we knew that one day He would come. I

just didn’t expect Him to come during my life time or for Him to come as a baby and I definitely didn’t expect to find myself involved. I’ll never forget that night, the night the Angel came and told me what God’s plan for my life was, the joy in my heart as I chose to follow it, the feeling of life exploding inside of me; like I could feel the baby starting to grow the instant I agreed.

The emotions that followed were over whelming, the first coherent thought I remember having was ‘How do I tell Joseph?!’ Needless to say he was more than a little shocked, yet he seemed immediately more concerned that the divorce be carried out quietly so as to save me than he did about the fact that I was carrying a child and it obviously wasn’t his.

I guess he’s always been that kind of man. God however had different ideas and let Joseph know what was happening, he agreed to stand by me, that we would face this together as man and wife. Seeing the sacrifice he’d made, I felt bad about the need to go and visit my cousin Elizabeth, but the gossiping in town had got worse and she was the only other person in the world who had even a vague idea of how I was feeling.

God had, by his grace allowed her and Zacharias to conceive. When I arrived Elizabeth was glowing, even in her old age pregnancy suited her, I spent a wonderful three months with her and was sad to leave, but I was missing Joseph and knew that the time had come to return home. As it was I wasn’t back long before I had to leave again, this time with Joseph as a census had been called and we had to go to Bethlehem. It was there in a town where I knew no one, in a stable at the back of an inn that Jesus was born. It sounds idyllic I know, and as soon as I held him I guess I forgot about my surroundings but it looking back it wasn’t the ideal way to deliver a child.

Sitting there with Joseph watching Jesus sleep I started looking forward to settling down to life in the house Joseph had built for us, surrounded by friends and family, but then the visitors started arriving. It was the shepherds who first reminded me of just how special this little boy was, they had been told by angels that he was here and came from their fields to worship him.

Then after a few months the Maji came, they had travelled hundreds of miles just to see Jesus, they’d brought gifts and wisdom and through an Angel a warning. I thought that we’d been anonymous here that no one knew of what had happened but I was wrong, Herod had not only heard but he planned to kill my son, to kill God’s son! As we started life in exile I started to realise that this path I’d chosen to follow wasn’t going to be easy, as I write this we are in Egypt, I don’t know when or even if we’ll ever get to go home, I don’t know what difficulties are to come, I don’t know the rest of the plan but I do know that the life of this child is more important than anything.

Yours Mary

www.natwivity.com

is the twitter nativity…doing what it says on the tin, the nativity story over 25 days in 140 character burst, with thoughts from everyone from Mary to the Shepherds, Herod to the Wisemen it’s a great way to remember what happened in the build up to Christmas.

Everyones different, it’s one of the things that makes Creation so fantastic! If we were all the same things would get pretty dull pretty quickly, there’d be no new advances in science, technology or the arts. Ok so everyone thinking seeing hearing and feeling the same may lead to there being no arguments, no anger, no wars but that’s not how God created us!

Something I’ve always struggeled with is the question of ‘Why did God bother to create me?’ I often find myself looking around at other Christians and thinking

‘Yeah I can see why God would have created them to be that way, they’re brilliant at leading worship, they have such a heart for mission, they are perfect for that role…That one made sense God…But what about me?’

I just want to bring to you somehting that someone said to me recently:

You are here, on this Earth because when God looked there was noone like you. You were created because when God was creating the world and planning the designs for His people, you were the sort of person He wanted to love and be loved by.

So I guess what I’m saying is don’t get hung up on  panicing about what other people see or how other people think…it’s not going to be the same way you do, not because you are wrong but because God created you to be different!

It’s ok to wonder what the world would look like through someone elses eyes, but don’t try to become them, you are you for one very good reason….that’s who God wanted you to be!

And just incase you are wondering here’s your chance to take a look at life through my viewfinder, and see the world the way I see it.

Enjoy being the person God created  you to be

Ps the link to Life Through my Viewfinder can also be found on the ‘My View’ tab up there at the top of the page.

The big issue lately is that my heads been so full of worries about university work, talk preperations, friends who are ill, people who need me, that even though I myself have been physically fine and as mentally ok as I ever am, I’ve felt like I’ve been drowning.

I love the fact that people talk to me about their worries and problems but it does limit the number of people I feel I can offload to and over the past weeks my already short list became even shorter.Maybe that’s why I feel more comfortable talking about this stuff on here rather than to my friends…or maybe it’s just because I have a sneaking suspicion that noone out there in cyberland actually reads what I write!

My head became a battle ground with tens of things all vying to get my full undivided attention. Each worry, concern, task trying to convince me that it was the most important, the most relevent, the most necessarry, resulting in nothing getting the full attention it deserved due to me trying to divide my energies between them all.

On top of all of this there’s been a feeling of stirring, a knowledge that the storm is being caused by more than just my head, a real feeling of being under attack. The Devil saw my distraction, he saw his chance and he took it. The battle got fiercer, the storm got stronger and a sense of failing started to creep in.

Sometimes things have to be said twice before I start to take notice of them, and it’s not just things that other people say to me!

Last Thursday a friend and I joined 1400 others at a Casting Crowns concert, my friend had just had a really tough and emotional week and whilst at the concert I had a real sense that she just needed to know that she was on the winning side. As the band played ‘Voice of Truth’ the lines:

The giant keeps on telling me … you’ll never win, you’ll never win … But the voice of truth tells me a different story …  the stone was just the right size to put the giant on the ground … I will choose to listen and believe the Voice of truth

kept going round in my head, and I realised something, something vital, something important, something that I knew my friend needed to hear. I realised that we so often talk of a battle with the devil that’s ongoing yet we forget one key thing …

God’s already won!

That night I went home thanking God that He’d given me something to tell her, something exciting and revitalising, and yet as I shut my eyes the battle in my head started up again and it didn’t stop. I knew the truth behind what I’d told my friend yet here I was fighting what seemed to be a loosing battle against the one I knew had already lost.

It didn’t make any sense, but as so often turns out to be the way, I wasn’t listening to my own advice! I’d got so caught up in what God wanted to say to my friend that I hadn’t listened to what He was trying to say to me. Infact I didn’t start listening to what He was saying to me until tonight when that same friend asked me to read through a draft blog post for her.

In the middles of the post (entitled ‘Fixing Things‘) is this paragraph:

A great friend of mine taught me something last week, she said, ‘You know Claire, the devil wants us to think we’re failures, he wants to stop us from doing God’s work. You need to stand up and tell him that he’s failed already! We so often talk of a battle with the devil that’s ongoing and we forget one key thing, God’s already won!’

To start with I was too busy trying to check that the lyrics written at the start of the post were correct to realise what she had said, it wasn’t until the third read through that I stopped and went ‘hold on I said that!’ And then as I read through the post those same lyrics came back to me,

The giant keeps on telling me … you’ll never win, you’ll never win … But the voice of truth tells me a different story …  the stone was just the right size to put the giant on the ground … I will choose to listen and believe the Voice of truth

and I realised that yes, God had wanted to let my friend know that her side had won, but (and this is an important but) He wanted me to know it as well! It took someone else saying it back to me for me to realise the full meaning of what I had said…not just for their life but for mine!

He wanted me to know that He was there, right at the eye of the storm standing strong and He wanted to help me to stand with Him. You see that battle in my head doesn’t need to be a battle! God doesn’t want a people who are just treading water. He wants us to be walking on it, with our steps guided by faith and our heads held high in the knowledge of His victory!

The battle has been won! Nothing we go through now can ever reverse the victory Jesus claimed when He died and rose again, nothing can nullify that! nothing can take it away!

So you know what, no matter how many times I hear the words ‘You’ll never win’

It’s time to start believing in the Voice of Truth when He says ‘But I already have’

As Peter watches a figure walks towards him across the waters of Lake Galilee, as the man draws nearer Peter begins to wonder what the heck is going on. I mean he’d grown up on the shores of Lake Galilee he knows that the only reason anyone would get out of a boat in the middle of the lake during a storm was to commit suicide or to try and rescue a drowning friend, and surely if that was the case they’d be sinking, fighting the waves, crying for help. But this guy, this guy’s just walking calmly across the surface, not even an inch of rising damp in his robe! In all his experinces people don’t walk on water…they just don’t!

As his mind jumped to the next logical conclusion, that what he is seeing is a ghost, the figure on the waves calls out to him saying ‘ Take courage, do not be afriad.’ It’s a voice Peter recognises, the voice, Jesus’ voice, calling out telling him everythings ok but that can’t be right! Can it? Before he knows whats going on Peter is calling back ‘Lord, if it’s you tell me to come to you on the water.’ Jesus replys ‘Come.’

Let’s pause there in the story, just for a minute…

Peter, was one of Jesus disciples, he had walked, lived and worked with Jesus he knew the miracles he could do. But this was Peters home, this was a familiar place. All of his life he’d seen the lake and never once had he seen anyone walking on it. He had probably played in the shallows as a child and sure enough everytime he’d jumped or stepped into the water his feet had passed through the surface and had touched the bottom. That was how it worked here…maybe in a far distant land there was water that people could walk on but here, on the shores of Lake Galilee, it didn’t work like that. The only time you got out of the boat was when you were sure you were on dry land! And now Peter had found himself in a situation where all his beliefs of the familiar were being challenged, somehow he’d found himself being called to step out of the boat, in the middle of the lake, during a storm and every cell in his body was telling him he would sink.

So lets see what happens next…

‘Ok deep breaths, it’s Jesus He’s got me covered, I trust Him’ Peter’s heart starts to race as he swings one leg over the side of the boat, followed by the other. He steady’s himself, looks over his shoulder at the other disciples, smiles slightly uncertainly and lowers himself to the water…Jesus told him he could do this, so there’s no need to worry and sure enough the water holds his weight, he’s standing on water. ‘Wow ok this is different yeah wow!’ It’s all he can do to stop his brain from going into melt down. Now to walk, slowly but surely Peter lifts a foot and takes a step, and then another and another. He’s walking on water, he turns to look at Jesus, sees a smile on his face and carrys on forward. Then suddenly…Slap…a wave breaks nearby and showers him with spray! ‘What was that?!’ he asks panic rising in his voice, Peter looks around, the waves are getting higher the wind is getting stronger. He starts to doubt, he starts to panic, he’s afraid. ‘Help! Help me’ he calls out ‘Lord, save me,’ Peter’s trust has gone, swallowed up by fear and he starts to sink. With out a moments hesitation a hand appears, Peter clasps it and Jesus asks ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’ Peter’s face is red from panic, the water and embarrasment, as he and Jesus climb back into the boat the wind died down and the water was calm.

Peter was called to have a radical faith…he was asked to get out of a boat, in the middle of a lake, in a storm and then walk across the water! It went against everything he understood, everything he knew. Everything except what he understood and what he knew about Jesus! He knew that Jesus was capable of performing miracles, he’d seen Him feed the five thousand, cast out deamons, heal the sick, but was Jesus capable of performing them here. Would Jesus want to perform them here, in the most familiar of places, where there was noone to feed, no deamons to cast out, noone to heal?

We often hear about Jesus moving in Africa, through mission work in India, amongst tribes people in the South Pacific…how often do we hear about him working in the places where we live? Now I’m assuming that you don’t live in Central Africa, India or any of the other ‘traditional mission’ locations. People expect God to work there, but do we expect Him to be working here? Do we expect to see miracles here? Peter was called to have faith and take risks in the familiar place, and so are we. The more we take these steps of faith the more we are expecting to see God work, and the more we expect it the more we are looking for it and the more we are looking for it the more likely we are to see it! It’s not easy to have a radical faith in familiar places, the risks are less obvious, the need for faith is less obvious, at times the miracles are less obvious, but the risks are there, the faith is needed, God is working!

We are called to have a radical faith in a familiar place, to step out of the boat and on to the lake.

Where is your Lake Galilee today?

My list of awesome things is getting progressively more random as time goes on and I realise that whilst yes walking in the rain (Day 23) is awesome, I can’t put it down every time… I live in England, I walk in the rain alot! So far some of the highlights are:

Day 7 – My Best Friends Wedding

Days 11 – 20 – Soul Survivor 2010, unsuprisingly it was exceedingly easy to find the ‘Awesome’ whilst I was at SS, even amongst the cold showers, even colder nights and the 8 hour face painting shifts!

Day 31 – Blowing the lights out…it seemed like magic when I was 6!

Day 35 – Eating pudding for dinner.

Day 50 – Birthdays, in this case mine!

Day 52 – ??? Who knows, it’s only 9.45 still plenty of time for something awesome to happen!

A number of my moments of awesomeness have come from things I’ve learned whilst reading the Bible in A Year passages and listening to the online commentary.

I’ll be honest this one isn’t going as well as ’365 Awesome Days’ it’s a lot easier to write a sentance or two about the good things that happen then to make make time to sit down and read a chunk of Genesis. Still I’m getting there, I’m back up to date after a bit of a catch up last night and am hoping that now I’m back at University it will become easier and my readings and quiet time will become part of the routine.

So far we have been reading Genesis, Matthew and a mixture of Psalms and Proverbs. We left today half way through Josephs story, with Peter having got slightly damp trying to walk on water and with a challenge to have radical faith in the familiar place. Even passages I’ve read time and time again are conitinuing to challenge and suprise. If you are doing the BIOY as well then in the words of Crofty and Mike P – Keep going, lets do it together.

My next couple of blog posts are still in the works, as I’m hoping to adapt a couple of talks I’m writing and so in the mean time here are a few of video’s which are forming the basis of them.

Enjoy!

1)      Reading it; Ok so not the literal reading, I had that bit down when I was 5, I mean finding the time and actually sitting down to read it, free from distractions and with my heart and mind ready to learn about the God who created saved and loves me.

2)      Applying what I learn; It says in James 1 v22 that we shouldn’t just read God’s word but we should do what it says. Wow! That’s a pretty big call… I mean sure there’s the well known commands (I’ve blogged before about how bad I’ve been at keeping those) and then there are those commands which are slightly less obvious. For example in the Gospels Jesus calls us to be the lights of the world… we should shine like stars so that people may see our good deeds… Man that’s tough!

3)      Getting through the tedious bits; It might seem a bit extreme for me to be calling parts of the Bible tedious and before I go any further I’m in no way saying that they aren’t important, I just find it really hard to read books like Numbers and Chronicles where there is just list after list of people and objects.

Still if I was going to find it easy it wouldn’t be a challenge!

But why am I telling you about it? Well there are two reasons…

1)      Accountability; There are over 6000 people taking part in the challenge and whilst I’ll be able to keep up to date with how everyone’s doing and receive notes on the passages read via the Soul Survivor website it would still be ace if you guys could ask me how it’s going occasionally.

2)      In case you want to join in; the more the merrier, ever wondered what it says in those little books at the end of the Old Testament or what happened after Noah got out of the ark? Well here’s your chance to find out! Check out http://thebibleinoneyear.wordpress.com/ for more information on how you can join us!

We start on 1^st September 2010 with sections from Genesis, Matthew and Psalms and I for one can not wait!