I spoke again at church today.
It is the third time in about two months and I was really confident in what I was going to say (smug, if I am honest) as I had my sermon written last week. However, God had other ideas. During the week I had an increasing sense that what I had written was wrong. My wife had read it and gave me the remarkable feedback of "it's ok". I had a couple of re-reads and then began chopping away at it. Eventually I had to bin it and start again.
I didn't change the passage, that was something I was sure God was ok with. I went from 14 pages of typed notes to two pages of scribbled bullet points. I have rarely felt so nervous but the feedback was good and I got into it.
I don't like it hot. Never have. Never will
I sweat too much, I get grumpy and I most definitely do not look good in shorts.
The only good thing about the Summer is the holidays. As a teacher the Summer Holidays are amazing.
This year, one of my children is having her first summer holidays. Day 1 and we have already been for a swimming lesson and she is currently in the local library doing craft stuff (saves me having to clean up the mess).
As it stands I've done 108 minutes of walking today and well over 10,000 steps. I've got more to do in a bit.
Church is going well. I'm back preaching and will be doing so again in two weeks. Having the time off work to give more thought to sermons means I am more relaxed and careful about what I write. It also gives me more time to read and digest what others have said about the passage.
Next sermon will be on Ephesians 1:3-14. It isn't an easy passage to get into but I hope it'll lead to some great stuff. The Bible usually does ...
Here are the last two sermons that I have given. I was not very happy with the one on James 2. I think I tried too hard to give a sermon that I have heard before. This never works for me. The one on David and Goliath, I was much happier with. Please, if you listen, leave me some feedback.
I remember a while ago, posting some songs that were helping me in my personal worship time and I thought that I would add a few more. There are some really good ones that have helped me connect with God in a deeper way this year and that is, obviously, a great thing.
They are simply personal preferences and I make no comment on the theology of them.
Here is the first one. It is by Mercyme and is called Greater. It has a fun and simple quality about it. Its message speaks to me, particularly when it tells us that the cross has already won the war. Enjoy.
This next one, by Casting Crowns is another nice one. It isn't deep and it isn't ever going to trouble the charts but it tells of God's Plan and how He wants us to trust him. A worthy message. Unfortunately I could only get the lyrics video but it is still well worth a listen.
The third one I have been spending a lot of time listening to is one we sang at Spring Harvest this year. This version is, quite clearly, not from Spring Harvest but is a really good on. It tells us about how Jesus called our names. It is upbeat, relentlessly positive and incredibly catchy.
The Final one is called My Beloved. It is simply a good tune and a great performance from Crowder.
Now, I know that there are not an awful lot of readers of my blog and that's ok. However, I have been very poor at posting this year. I have not posted since January and that is very bad of me.
It has not been a great year and it has been a great year!
Not long after my last post, my beautiful wife had a nasty accident. She fell over while taking our kids to school and badly broke her leg. She had to have a big operation to fix it and spent many weeks in rehab. I was able to get my mum to come up (cheers mum!) to help look after her but it was tough to see her like that.
We had recently started attending a new church (after all the bullying at our last one), I mean I had literally been three times before the accident and they stepped up and were amazing. Lifts were offered, money for taxis given food brought round (which was especially helpful after we also broke our oven!) and just amazing levels of support. They shone with the light of Jesus. Thank you lord for their support.
Since then, work has been incredibly busy (I shall not say too much here) and it has been a lot of pressure for me. I am still maintaining my sabbath which is great but I am not feeling the love of the job as much as I used to.
Who am I kidding? I have never loved this job. I just do it.
I have been praying about and thinking about what God wants me to do and, as yet, no answer!
So, you can see why I haven't written anything for a while but hopefully, that will change in the next few weeks as I have the Summer Holidays coming up and loads of stuff planned.
I realise that it has been a long time since I wrote anything on here and I would like to apologise for that. It has been an incredibly busy few months and, sadly, it has not been an altogether good few months.
I was ill in December and my father in law was also very ill. Lots of prayer and some miracles from a gracious God have meant that he is now, thankfully, safely back home. Work has also been hectic with some really difficult things to do and get done.
The biggest problem has been church. As you know, I was a leader at church along with my wife. I am no longer a church leader and am, in fact, without a church at the moment. What happened was simple, some of the other leaders bullied out pastor and his wife into quitting the church and my wife and I decided we could no longer be in fellowship with them.
We used to meet monthly to discuss the church and pray about what was going on but for the last year, our meetings have been dominated by money. We were a small fellowship and our pastor was unpaid. We, the other 4 leaders that is, decided that it was biblical, moral and ethical to pay the pastor. We got the agreement of the congregation (or at least there was no disagreement) to go ahead and then the problems started.
We tried, again and again, to sort out a payment process and a salary. Unfortunately, several in the leadership and amongst the trustees (the church is, of course, a charity) were shocked by the amount that pastors are paid. It was a fair salary that they were asking for but unfortunately, some thought it was too much.
This was the start of the problem. We kept coming up against the same blockage and eventually things came to a head in early November. We were at a meeting of the leaders and trustees and it was an awful meeting, I was taking minutes and was as silent as possible during it but I was witness to some horrendous bullying. Much of the questioning was directed at the wife of the pastor and was downright rude and some was inappropriate. I have never (even in my job where I work with kids) seen such vicious bullying.
To my shame, I did not say anything there and then. I have prayed to God about it and he has forgiven me. My pastor and his wife have also forgiven me but I do still regret my inaction. What I witnessed was selfish, jealous and mean-spirited. It was clearly not of God.
It led, to us leaving the church which was tough for us. As it was swiftly followed by the bouts of illness, we have hardly been to church since. We have, however, found a new church that we have been to a couple of times and we hope that this is where God wants us to be.
Long story short, please pray for us that we do get settled in a new church as soon as possible. I will keep you posted
When you were younger did you have any Christmas traditions in your family? Our Christmas day was always the same. Wake up (early, thanks, Sis!) open all our presents, go over the road to my aunty's, open more presents, come home, change out of our pyjamas and then go to the pub until dinner.
Every year the same until I left home. Sometimes we would pop into Gran and Taid if we had time but the pattern was the same. That was what we, as a family did. I, however, had another tradition that I did. Religiously. Every year. Always. Until I was at least 20 and I still do it every other year now.
It involved reading and it involved looking for something. If I found it, my Christmas was made. No matter how many sprouts I was forced to eat, no matter how rainy the day, no matter how early I broke my new toy. One thing was guaranteed to make me ecstatic.
What I used to do was wait until about a week before Christmas. The newspaper (always The Sun in our house, feel free to judge me I don't care) came with a bumper listings magazine for the Christmas period and I used to sit and scour the films that were on. I wasn't interested in the latest blockbuster (although I would, of course, watch them). I wasn't interested in any films my parents would want. The one I wanted was usually on early in the morning on Christmas Day or Boxing Day. It was about ninety minutes long, animated and came out in 1979.
The film was a version of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and to me, it was the greatest film in the world. It was crudely animated and the sound didn't always sync but I simply adored that film. I still do. That's why I always looked for it. I could happily sit and watch it again and again.
Nowadays, it is rarely on TV at Christmas and I am sad about that. However, it is on YouTube and I am thrilled by that. Now, I can watch it again and again and again. I watched some of it earlier today in fact.
I love Narnia. I loved Narnia before I knew Jesus. I loved Aslan before I realised that he was known in this world by a different name. I devoured the books as a child, time and time and time again. I know the stories of the Narnia Chronicles inside out and back to front.
Lewis' words captivated me as a young man. They made me feel things. I felt thrilled, I felt scared, I felt clever and I felt safe when I was reading them (apart from the dead bluebottle which confused me as a young lad from North Wales but that's another story).
As I grew older, I kept looking for the film. Then the BBC did that wonderful adaptation of four of the stories. They're available on YouTube as well! Then came the films of the last decade or so. They're not that good. They have better effects, are flashier and have higher production values but they lost something in the telling. It's great to have a lion who looks like a real lion but I wanted a lion who was like Aslan. I didn't need the backstory of a dad off at war and a troubled boy in an air-raid shelter to help me know what motivated Edmund.
As for the Hollywood adaptation of Prince Caspian with its tacking on of a love interest between Susan and Caspian! My goodness me they ruined that story. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader missed out all the important bits. I nearly left the cinema it was so bad.
You see, the crudely animated, badly synched and cheap 1979 production has enough of the right stuff. It has a beautiful musical score. It has heart and it has joy. Most of all, it has a story that's true to the original. It is redolent with the love and power of Lewis' book. It is as close to watching a book come to life as I have ever seen in a film.
That's why you'll have to excuse me, I have some popcorn, I have some drink and I have a film to watch. Catch you in ninety minutes or so ...
