Movin’ On

It’s starting to feel like I should be getting ready to go. I have to book flights to Perth today, or sometime soon. It’s kind of sucky, Air NZ has one of the most inflexible fare policies I know of. They have three zones – domestic, tasman/pacific and international. If you buy the cheapest class of fare (smartsaver) you pay $125 to change it, and you can only change it to within the same zone. Means I’m stuck with close to $400 worth of travel which can only be changed to an Aussie-NZ or NZ – pacific islands flight for an extra $300. Problem is, to change it for coming home from Aussie after DTS isn’t worth it, cos I may not even use it, since my plan is to go somewhere else in the world, then come home… and by the time you pay extra to change it, you’re better off getting tax back, and losing the $300 that is non-refundable or transferable, and just booking another ticket.

The other option was to pay an extra $300 and go to Fiji or somewhere for a holiday… so so not worth it.

It bears thinking about.

Praise awaits You, O God, in Zion
To You or vows will be fulfilled
Oh You who hear prayer,
To You all men will come.
When we were overwhelmed by sins
You forgave [made atonement for] our transgressions.
Blessed are those you choose
And bring near to live n your courts.
We are filled with the good things of your house,
Of your holy temple.
You answer us with awesome deeds of righteousness
O God our savior
The hope of all the ends of the earth
And of the furthest seas

I think we’re getting down to business…

One of the interesting effects of being a blogger, and reading blogs, is that you tend to see a variety of people… many I’ve never met, but still consider to be acquaintances… and in some cases friends.

God seems to be doing a lot of… I’d call it finger-pointing, but really its not. I guess it’s conviction. But a lot of blogs I read, of people who are in some way involved in this prayer thing that God is doing all arond the world, have similar tones at the moment. The Lord isn’t going to let us continue living in compromise…

The same thing has been happening for me. I tend to lie to myself about doing well… especially in the prayer room… every month or 2 I hit a wall, go thru a rough patch, then get right back into my habits of distracting myself from the reality of what I know I’m called to, because most of the time it’s a hard and reasonably lonely reality. I do not find it easy to pursue the Lord at all without a community that’s pursuing… like, its crazy, but even 9 months later I find myself missing the time that I spent at IHOP doing nightwatch… didn’t have a lot of people connections, didn’t even necessarily have a huge God-connection… but there was a community of sorts, that was formed just by the fact that I was in the prayer room with these people, and we were going somewhere together. I didn’t know them, they didn’t know me, but we went somewhere.

So, every so often there’s divine grace… I was having a fantastic time with Psalm 65:1-5 this morning, spent an hour in the prayer room with the whiteboard and 4 coloured pens, and I haven’t even started to break the surface of it.

The reality of my life is that I KNOW beyond a shadow of a doubt that I’m called to this: I’m called to prayer, and to fasting and to knowing the reality of who the Lord is. But the thing is, that I’m incredibly weak on my own – I keep proving that to myself, and then I somehow manage to ignore that fact and continue to try to struggle on in my own strength. But I also know I can’t continue to live this way… because it’s taking me nowhere. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons that God doesn’t want me to continue on as staff here… I think that in some ways there’s going to be a whole lot more work he can do on areas in my life that currently He can’t really.

So, I’m “pushing delete and starting over.” I’ve got 6 weeks left in my flat, and another 2 weeks left living at my sisters… let’s go for it… let’s pursue the knowledge of God, with everything I have to throw at it…

What Americans believe

http://www.time.com/time/covers/20061030/what_we_believe/
I’m interested to know. Is this accurate or not?

Supposedly
31% of Americans believe in an authoritarian God, deeply involved in life and world events. God is also angry and can punish the unfaithful or ungodly.

23% of Americans believe in a benevolent God, deeply involved in daily life and world events, but is mainly a positive force less willing to punish.

16% of Americans believe in a critical God who does not really interact with the world but is unhappy with the current state of the world and will exact divine judgement.

24% of Americans believe in a distant God, who does not interact with the world and is not angry. God is more of a cosmic force that set the laws of nature in motion.

Hmm… my version of this:

I believe in a Man, Jesus, who is also fully God… He knows me better than I know myself. His interaction with me and the world is far closer and intimate than anyone else that lives, and He’s fully in love with me. Because of his awesome holiness, and the fact that He’s God, He will “come in justice to judge and make war” and He’s allowed to, because He’s God. He’s not angry, He’s not critical, He’s not waiting for me to slip up so that he can zap me from heaven… His dreams for me go far beyond my own.

Abortion is always wrong
The government should allow prayer in school
New Zealand govt. should increase military spending? Not sure. One day I guess the world’s military is going to be seeking me as a target anyway.
The NZ govt. should fight terrorism
We should look after the environment… but solely for the fact that the Lord gave it to us under our dominion. Conservation always seems to go hand in hand with liberalism… it’s humanism-based. Save the planet for me.
NZ govt…. not sure about wealth redistribtion.
Not sure about the USA war in Iraq either.
I have no idea about President Bush. I don’t like our Prime Minister, Helen Clark, but I know that God elects authority… therefore I have no idea why, but he wanted a prostition-legalising, civil-union-allowing PM in our government.

The weekend

Yes, much of this is a totally self-centred blog, but I’m not that worried. Hence ‘My journey.’ Note, not ‘Our journey’ or ‘Your journey’ or ‘Their journey’ but ‘My journey.’

OK, so staying focused today. Class, today we will be learning about My weekend. Which means, me and my flatmates and my church and my ministry’s weekend, simply because I am a human and I interact with other people.

Friday night, as I’ve said, youth church was good… Anne preached a fantastic first5. For those of you uneducated about first 5s, its something my church does… in both youth church, and now we’re starting them again on Sunday nights. One of the young people will stand up and speak for 5-10 minutes (or more) on a topic that they choose… Anne preached on the fact that ‘brokenness is wholeheartedness’ which is really true… and I know that its a message that is real to her… I saw part of what internship cost her. Internship cost this years interns a lot…

Then we ate like $20 worth of bulk bin lollies/sweets/candy at the leaders debrief after… came home, and all my friends went out driving and got home at 2am, being a nana I went to bed at 12am. Saturday morning I had a blood test, then the rest of the afternoon did nothing except stay at home… gave myself a fro again but washed it out… Saturday night went out for dinner and a movie with a bunch of girls from church, because its my flatmates birthday tomorrow and shes turning 22. Went to see Little Miss Sunshine, but I left early with another friend so only got to see the first hour. Weird movie.

Got home near midnight, looked at photos, then went to the prayer room. In the cold and dark and it was very windy and freaky, because I biked down, and central Lower Hutt, while not exactly dangerous, is still not fun by yourself. Had a good time there for an hour or so tho, came home, Tiffany was still awake so went and slept in her room on the floor…

Then Sunday, went to church in the morning, came home and had lunch with the girls, cleaned the house and went to the prayer room. Then we had the Factory – preaching academy, and we talked about different messages we’d heard and about preparing a message… then we went to evening church and Kristen preached on the parable of the wheat and the weeds. We had a really good Godspace at the end…

My church is pretty big on altar calls, which is fantastic… I just have noticed that at times it can get a little too much of being fed instead of learning to feed ourselves. In disrupt we do both… pray for people, but have Godspace… a time when the musicians minister to the Lord, all conversations are outside, and we just sit or stand or whatever and make space to encounter Jesus. Did that last night, and was excellent… except people didn’t take note of the request to take conversation outside the auditorium… oh for Hope Centre, and a courtyard/foyer that doesn’t freeze! Then we went to burger fuel… and people ate burgers…

Completely disconnected

I think I’m a hopeless blogger. I get so distracted when I come and blog that I lose what I was writing about. Which is why half my blog titles don’t actually match the content… for example ‘nzqa’ was meant to be a rant about immigration and trying to organise it for interns… desire to desire was going to be about the fact that I desire to desire Jesus…

I’m sitting in the prayer room… the door is open because everyone else is outside, making concrete for use in the Hope Centre… but I’m not actually meant to do any ‘heavy physical activity’ for a couple of hours… oh well… maybe I’ll jump into my work clothes and go paint with my other arm. There’s a funky red line on my elbow though, it starts just to the right of where they pricked me, and runs to the edge of my arm… and it feels kind of weird.

I’m going to miss this little room.

Desire to desire…

I’m hungry. I’m having a blood test done at some stage tomorrow morning. But of course the nice doctor decided to make me do it glucose fasting… only water for 12 hours… I mean, I know its not that hard. Really, it isn’t. It’s just Friday nights… they’re the time for late night meals and crap food after Disrupt youth church.

On that note, Disrupt has seriously taken off in the last 3 weeks. Tonight was our second? night in the Prayer Centre as a transition meeting place for the next 6 weeks… I’ll admit that it can get pretty frustrating at times though. I spent 90 minutes this morning trying to learn how to do OHPs (they’re so old, we were planning to get our MCs to refer to the OHP as a dinosaur…) because our sound guy said earlier in the week he didn’t want to get the video projector… then at like 7pm he decided to get the video projector… frustrating! But Jesus loves me, its okay.

Weird tonight tho… first time I think public mention has been made of the fact I’m going away. Like most people know… at least, my crowd knows… but Kristen was talking about the fact that we’re going to pray him out when he goes on another preaching trip to the States next month, and we’re praying him out of youth church instead of Sunday night… I think the intention is to do the same for me, and Tiffany and Hannah who leave about the same time as I do. But it’ll be fun, because our last night of Disrupt is when Cindy is down… and is the weekend before my last Sunday…

Diamonds are icing on $20m cake

LOS ANGELES: A confection billed as the most expensive wedding cake in the world makes its debut on Monday night in Beverly Hills, but is likely to cause indigestion.
The extravagant $20 million diamond-studded wedding cake, created by Mimi So Jewelers and cake designer Nahid La Patisserie Artistique, is the star attraction of the Luxury Brands Bridal Show and will be unveiled on exclusive Rodeo Drive.
“Where else would you debut a $20 million wedding cake but on Rodeo Drive?” said show organizer Ilona Sherman.
The cake is protected by a team of uniformed security guards at all times, she said. And there’s no way it will ever be eaten.
“I think diamonds are too hard on the stomach,” Sherman said.

NZQA

DTS will be good for me.

However, my aim is definitely to be ’sent’… and I want to be sent from our young adults ministry here. It makes a bit more sense to me than being sent from the church-at-large… because, to be honest, this thing is my life.

Jason Upton sings about a ‘nameless, faceless, placeless tribe.’ And Pete Greig wrote about them as well… “they are mobile like the wind, they belong to the nations, they need no passport. People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence.”

It’s a whole new concept of community… not formed by location, but by a like-minded pursuit of Jesus… and it introduces a whole new level of questions… more to come

Walking on water

Last year one of our favourite internship speakers was Jeni… actually, all of them were awesome, she was just our favourite prophetic lady… actually I think she was the only lady… no, wait, we had Teena and Sue as well… Jeni was my favourite prophetic lady anyway. Where was I going with that… oh yeah, in the first class she did with us (where we all got slightly fried about keeping short accounts… put it this way, I had 2 girls sleeping on the floor of my bedroom for a week, and there was one other room in the flat where they could go… haha) she talked about sometimes you gotta step out of the boat and walk on the water before God will respond. Like, it takes faith to see a response.

So that’s what I’m doing. I’ve decided not to get a second job. Which is rather crazy considering I need at least $8000NZ for DTS, but that’s okay… Jesus will provide. Plus, I was praying, and I really didn’t want to get one, and God said don’t… so I’m quite happy about that! Means I get to spend the next 2 months in the prayer room and doing onething stuff as opposed to in some small poky little office in the centre of the city.

I wonder if there are legal issues in me mentioning names on here… I got kind of frustrated at church last night, the speaker was a prophetic lady from Australia… the funny thing was, we had the Factory, and we’re doing a preaching intensive till the end of the year (despite the fact I did preaching academy last year.) We talked about stuff we don’t like… and came up with this list:

• ‘Christianese’ – Hallelujah! I’ve been redeemed and sanctified by the blood of the Lamb!
• Repetitive ness
• Lack of prep
• People trying the whole guilt trip thing
• People who preach in a monotone
• Fire and brimstone, all the time (some is okay)
• Bushbeating – if you’re gonna say it, just freaking say it like it is
• Slobbering – ever sat right near the preacher and seen little flecks of spit sparkle in the sunlight?
• Halitosis – brush your teeth!
• Vagueness – again, say it like it is
• Patronising – Now there, dear young people, one day God will use you mightily if you love Him.
• Dissing people…

Funny thing is, last night, within about 5 minutes, the speaker managed to diss her husband, men in general, and her two kids. Like, she was joking, but it just wasn’t funny… and it wasn’t honouring to her family. So we were all like, yup, there you have it.

On the other hand, this is what we do like in preaching:

Not too long (subjective, depends who is preaching)
Suspense – i don’t understand either. Matt is a special wee chap…
Humour
Reality – be real. Don’t lie or hide or exaggerate.
Enthusiasm – one word. passion.
Anecdotes – let us into your life.
Prophecy
Interaction
Honesty
Stuff from the heart
Love
Stories
Integrity – preach on what’s real for you.

So, all you preachers out there, that’s what a bunch of young people in NZ came up with…