31.8.09

Other People's Blogs/
My good friend Ben has just started up a blog as he prepares to depart for 5 months in Kenya. As I was looking up and down the few extras that adorn the side of his page I found myself idly clicking the links; first I clicked the link to my own blog and read through that as though I had stumbled across something both completely new to me and thoroughly interesting (well, isn't it!). Anyway, after having read through my own blog page I went back to Ben's and looked at some of the websites that he was endorsing and, having read through a few felt that I just had to give them a shout on here:

John Piper: Desiring God

Adrian Warnock
Mark Driscoll: The Resurgence

Have a look. Peace

30.8.09


So I'm back from Soul Survivor and Momentum. Instead of going straight back to Sheffield I have ended up at home for a few days. I have been back two days now and feel as though all the anointing that ever was upon me has been sucked out of me long ago, leaving me in a state of being spiritually: empty, dry, baron, void. Having said that, this is the feeling I have usually come to associate with 'being home'. It was a quick and heavy transition after having been slowly spiritually built up over a long, well planned 10 days to have it all undone so quickly in the less than 24 hours.


Like a tone of bricks.

Anyway, I did feel moved to write something down on a piece of paper on the first night that I was back from Soul Survivor and Momentum (while I was still "feeling it") and I made a point of remembering to blog it but I can't seem to see the piece of paper I wrote it on lying around anywhere right now. It was marking the page of a book I bought on the last day of the festival; it is an absolutely amazing book by the way, it is called Storylines, it's written by Andy Croft and Mike Pilavachi and it basically tracks theological links throughout the Bible. So each section of the book goes through the whole Bible looking at each event from the perspective of each continuously identifiable theme such as; Jesus, covenant, kingdom etc. I recommend it.
By the way, I will write up about my 10 days at Soul Survivor and Momentum but there is an awful lot to tell so will leave it till I have time to thoroughly enjoy writing up a lengthy blog (in a format that makes it seem really short; I find plenty of spaces between very short paragraphs a good tactic).
(pause...space...next line)

So this piece of paper, I'll just go find it...brbz...no, can't find it, which is a shame because I worded it so well when it came to it (it felt very divinely inspired actually). Anyway, I will paraphrase as best can (oh I wish I hadn't lost it!):


ok, not being able to let this go I have turned my house upside down for the past hour looking for that piece of paper. I am having a clear out of the loft at the moment, 70% of it is all my old school work which means there are just books and books and about 9 years worth of pieces of paper ALL over the house, and today most of that got burned in the incinerator so I feared the worst, but in one last act of hope I went through one more box of loose pieces of paper (due for burning tomorrow evening) and found it! I am SO glad. It reminds me of Luke 15:8-10; the parable of the woman who loses 1 out of her 10 coins and flippin' tears the house apart until she finds it.

Right, this vision; so yesterday, when I was back this came to me as though God just dropped it into my head and I felt prompted to write it down (read Habakkuk 2:2-4 MSG.) so I put pen to paper "and the words come out like this" (to quote "The Vision"):

Living for God is something you are, not just something that you are into. It is not as though when your friend says "I'm really into football" you say "football is good, but I prefer Christianity" as though it is a music artist that you prefer over another. It is something that you are. No more than you can help being human, or breathing to stay alive can you help being a Christian and having the Holy Spirit living inside you.

OK? So since being a Christian is what I am intrinsically then it should be the case that people can't help but see that I am Christian anymore than they can help notice that I am a human being. What this should look like in practice is that everyone we talk to should be given the chance to be invited to Jesus through exposure to Him through us. What this means is that if they do not come faith that on that final day when the earth and sky is moved away and there is nothing left between them and the Lord and they are asked why they did not choose Jesus, even despite meeting us, that their answer can never be that "they never gave me a reason to".

So this isn't a challenge concerning evangelism particularly. The point isn't about the final judgment or the unsaved. The challenge is to live so dangerously and undeniably for Jesus that we grow to be more like Him to the point that we are Christlike in the way that the Bible teaches us that we should be; in fact, that we conform more to the image of God's only Son Jesus than we do to the world around us. Eugene Peterson in his Message translation, in Romans phrases it like this:

Rom 12:2 Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

I think I'll finish there for the night. Peace and love to everyone x

16.8.09

I was just lying in my bed with my headphones in, listening to some really chilled, steady music and looking out through the large velux window in my attic room into the night sky. After a while the clouds cleared in time for me to see a meteor stream across the sky. It was a moment worth remembering.

9.8.09

The Lunch Box Challenge

5
Guys | 4 Peaks | 3 Counties | 2 Charities | 1 Mission


So here's the idea: You remember those school lunch boxes you used to have as a kid or those Tupperware boxes you get to put your sandwiches in? Well, armed with just one of those each we'll get a train out to the far end of the Peak District and walk back to Sheffield across the 3 districts that the Peaks covers in 3 days. The idea will be to live on as little as possible and to walk as far as possible on what we have. Across the 3 districts we will cross 4 different trig points in the Peak District and sleeping in the forests (the exception to lunch box rule will be sleeping bags, bivi bags and emergency gear (med kit etc)).

on illness.
I got it! I thought I had escaped. For the past 4 days 3 of our house have been ill, only Rom and myself seemed to have dodged the bullet. But sure enough it got us today. Really not too cool since I'm supposed to be stewarding at Soul Survivor in a few days. Ah well, will have to see what happens. Worst comes to worst I will be forced to take it easy for a week (a burden which I am sure I will bare tolerably well).

Well, just wanted to throw the Lunch Box Peaks Challenge plan out into the universe. Heading out to the Midlands tomorrow without laptop so will blog from wherever I can connect.

Peace and Love

6.8.09

26So I do not run aimlessly; (1 Corinthians 9:26)


What's New?
What's up y'all. I just got back from staying in Liverpool with Dan. Had a great few days - got up to loads of cool stuff, seeing what's popping in a city that I didn't think an awful lot of before I actually saw it. Liverpool is a sweet city and has some pretty sick stuff to see and look at.

Actually, on site seeing I saw something that was pretty amazing. Near the center of Liverpool is a church that was bombed out in the war which is open to look round. Inside (and from the outside looking in especially) it looks just like the cathedral that Cloud lives in in Final Fantasy VII Advent Children. Check it out
:


...maybe you can tell better when you are actually there.

Training.
So a while ago I started up this blog with the idea of tracking how my training is going. As I went back to Birmingham I pretty much slacked off the training and threw myself back to square one which is a pretty poor show but since my few days in Liverpool I have started a 3 day training plan which looks a little like this:

Mon: Push
Tues: Pull
Wed: Run
Thurs: Push
Fri: Pull
Sat: Run
Sun: Rest/ Play/ have fun

I'm going to carry on climbing on the side of this, perhaps on the pull days, I dunno yet. I'm sure I'll work out a good way of working it. Pretty much I would rather climb with other people so I'll probably work my training sched round when others climb.

So here's what I'm doing for the push days - and I've noticed an incredible difference already - I'm sure all of these have names but I don't know them so I'll just explain them:

(1) normal pushes; feet and hands at about shoulder width
(2) hands together in the center of the chest (these are flippin' hard atm)
(3) one leg up in the air with the other still at shoulder width (after set number reps repeat with other leg)
(4) again, one leg up in the air but on pushing down lean to the right hand looking left, then on the next push down lean to the left looking right (swap which leg is raised after reps)
(5) every push down, bring the knee of one leg up to over the elbow then again on the other side; alternating for set reps

I think that's about it, I don't know about the science of it but it works out a whole bunch of stuff in the upper body.
Climbing.
Yesterday Dan and I walked out to Hilbre Island at low tide and did some climbing there for a few hours. Was an incredible place to work a few routes. There was an old Lifeboat station which was kinda empty and roofless so that was good to mess around on. Here are some of the photos we took out there.

Hilbre Island; between Liverpool and Wales (that's the Welsh coast in the background)

Iron ladder in the cliff next to the old Lifeboat station

Cave climbing - hold broke off in my hand inside the case, ended up flat out

Sand stone was pretty sketchy but some swei routes

This side of the island was the best for tricky little routes

I liked this route - like a mini Matrix overhang

This is my climbing face
...oh and this is my tan.

Neat little arch on the side of the island

So after 5 days of training, climbing, site seeing and watching the Fire Fly series (which should never have been canceled btw!) I'm pretty whooped.

Peace in d' streetz

1.8.09


Melancholy.
China.
Then to Alaska.