Moving blogging site action.
check http://lifeblogchris.wordpress.com/
That's where I'll be
Holla
3.11.09
26.9.09
Smashing Fears
So with a face that said "Yeah boi!" but a heart that said "just sack this off, you're not cut out for it" I went down to Steel City Gym with Dan, Chris and a couple of none-Chrispys that we had met by random in Western Park (that is quite a sweet God-led missional story actually).
Some of the things that kept coming up in my mind were "you still have a really sketchy neck problem, you've botched your wrist up pretty good still and you are terrified of flips and being upside down in general, what on earth are you going to be doing for 2 hours other than listing better things that your £6 and 120 minutes could have been spent on".
But anyway I prayed it through and went. A bit like Jesus, the Steel City Gym has nothing to draw you to it in appearance but what it actually is, is something incredible (don't get me wrong, it was nothing compared to Jesus, although Jesus did do some incredible work in me whilst I was there). After a while of standing and feeling like a chump I got up and went for it and it was flipping amazing.
If anything, my passion and attraction to this stuff has just blasted its way to the top of my thought priorities. All I have been able to think about today at work and I rearranged books on shelves and carried boxes up and down the stairs is how I can improve my back flip, how I can improve my diet so that I can be more effective, what I can begin to work on next, what I can try out at Bole Hills, how I can train better in the week so I can do better next week. More importantly than all that I can see how God has been moving in me, challenging me and pushing me to rely on Him to sort out my fear and my unwillingness and I think the challenge (alongside the physical challenge) is to make sure that He remains the focus in all my activities, because I can only do these things because of Him and I can do more through Him who strengthens me.
All of this stuff has been a catalyst for quite a lot of thought and I have started thinking about my mountain survival qualifications again; I flipping just want to get out and start living. I am a child of generation that has been raised in front of some sort of screen, be it a computer screen, a TV screen or a video game screen. This nation in this century is producing a generation of people who grow up sitting down and I have to be honest, I've been no different, msn and facebook have been vices, computer games used to be, TV used to be, but something is stirring inside me that is rejecting all of these things like the body rejects bad food. I feel like I should feel awful at all the time I have wasted but I actually don't, I do however feel so thankful that God has stirred this inside me now; I can imagine that some people will grow to be very old when they finally realize that they never did anything they wish they had and that they lived their life through the actions of movie stars in films.
So I am resolving to press forward, with God as my loving Father and my eternal Saviour I'll go climbing, I will do free running, I will jump around and back flip, I will go out into the mountains and do survival again.
And all of this can sound fake and clichéd through a mere blog post. But most of you guys who read it know me well and are the closest people to me (...else you wouldn't have this address haha) so call me on these things, ask me how their going and if I am actually doing them. and pray for me, that I continue to enjoy these things, and get better at them, and allow God to be the absolute center and focus.
peace x
So with a face that said "Yeah boi!" but a heart that said "just sack this off, you're not cut out for it" I went down to Steel City Gym with Dan, Chris and a couple of none-Chrispys that we had met by random in Western Park (that is quite a sweet God-led missional story actually).
Some of the things that kept coming up in my mind were "you still have a really sketchy neck problem, you've botched your wrist up pretty good still and you are terrified of flips and being upside down in general, what on earth are you going to be doing for 2 hours other than listing better things that your £6 and 120 minutes could have been spent on".
But anyway I prayed it through and went. A bit like Jesus, the Steel City Gym has nothing to draw you to it in appearance but what it actually is, is something incredible (don't get me wrong, it was nothing compared to Jesus, although Jesus did do some incredible work in me whilst I was there). After a while of standing and feeling like a chump I got up and went for it and it was flipping amazing.
If anything, my passion and attraction to this stuff has just blasted its way to the top of my thought priorities. All I have been able to think about today at work and I rearranged books on shelves and carried boxes up and down the stairs is how I can improve my back flip, how I can improve my diet so that I can be more effective, what I can begin to work on next, what I can try out at Bole Hills, how I can train better in the week so I can do better next week. More importantly than all that I can see how God has been moving in me, challenging me and pushing me to rely on Him to sort out my fear and my unwillingness and I think the challenge (alongside the physical challenge) is to make sure that He remains the focus in all my activities, because I can only do these things because of Him and I can do more through Him who strengthens me.
All of this stuff has been a catalyst for quite a lot of thought and I have started thinking about my mountain survival qualifications again; I flipping just want to get out and start living. I am a child of generation that has been raised in front of some sort of screen, be it a computer screen, a TV screen or a video game screen. This nation in this century is producing a generation of people who grow up sitting down and I have to be honest, I've been no different, msn and facebook have been vices, computer games used to be, TV used to be, but something is stirring inside me that is rejecting all of these things like the body rejects bad food. I feel like I should feel awful at all the time I have wasted but I actually don't, I do however feel so thankful that God has stirred this inside me now; I can imagine that some people will grow to be very old when they finally realize that they never did anything they wish they had and that they lived their life through the actions of movie stars in films.
So I am resolving to press forward, with God as my loving Father and my eternal Saviour I'll go climbing, I will do free running, I will jump around and back flip, I will go out into the mountains and do survival again.
And all of this can sound fake and clichéd through a mere blog post. But most of you guys who read it know me well and are the closest people to me (...else you wouldn't have this address haha) so call me on these things, ask me how their going and if I am actually doing them. and pray for me, that I continue to enjoy these things, and get better at them, and allow God to be the absolute center and focus.
peace x
21.9.09
14.9.09
Since when is getting a job offer a bad thing?
So, today I was working in the CLC Bookshop (which I love btw) when I felt my phone vibrating; I couldn't answer it then because I was on the shop floor so went downstairs later to listen to the voice-mail. It was a call from the manager of one of the Cafés I had applied to when I looking for work a few months ago before I got the job in the bookshop.
just to bring anyone who isn't already, up to speed; I work at CLC which is amazing and perfect along with doing Form this year but it is voluntary so I am living off funding for my gap year.
So I don't know if the job will fit around Form at all yet or what the pay is (I do know what the hours are; they are 7.30am-3.00pm or 3.00pm-7.30pm, the later isn't possible and the realistically the I don't know how sensible it is going to be pushing my mornings earlier and earlier when there is loads going on in the evenings atm). But, whatever it pays and whatever the hours are, money is money and it would make financial sense to take it.
Agh, I dunno what to do, I just got this job at CLC. I really don't want to leave, it is just so perfect for this year. I think I really need to seek God about what to do and I don't have much time left because the spaces are filling up at the café and they want me to start next week.
I would really appreciate prayer on this one!
I seems so strange a dilemma when so many people are struggling to get an interview let alone a job at the moment...
6.9.09
24 minutes and 49 seconds later...
So I ranted and vented my despair and hopelessness to Ben on the phone. And I think I've got my second wind.
I still don't feel great but as I look for ways that God might be working in all of this I can see that everything that I hate about the situation I find myself in at the moment (and will be in for an entire year) is a challenge, and for each of those particular challenge (which are mostly people related) I can see how overcoming them will get me closer to where God wants me to be to take the next step. And at the end of the day I wanted a challenge, but I guess we can never be too particular about the challenges that we want God to lay before us to change us and shape us in the people He wants us to be.
So with that in mind...
onward I go...
So I ranted and vented my despair and hopelessness to Ben on the phone. And I think I've got my second wind.
I still don't feel great but as I look for ways that God might be working in all of this I can see that everything that I hate about the situation I find myself in at the moment (and will be in for an entire year) is a challenge, and for each of those particular challenge (which are mostly people related) I can see how overcoming them will get me closer to where God wants me to be to take the next step. And at the end of the day I wanted a challenge, but I guess we can never be too particular about the challenges that we want God to lay before us to change us and shape us in the people He wants us to be.
So with that in mind...
onward I go...
No Peace.OK, I'm going to lay this out now at the very beginning. of the year and hopefully later in the year I can look back at this post and say how God has moved so much and changed me so much since this point. But right now I have absolutely no peace about the decision I have made for the coming year. This is Form I'm talking about.
I just have a really restless feeling of hopelessness about it.
I bailed on our first meal together today because I just felt so uncomfortable being there. All I really want to do what God wants me to do but I feel like I made the decision to do Form way too fast, didn't think or pray about it, just thought "I want to stay in Sheffield and my end goal is to be in full time ministry...meh I'll do Form" - a few months on from that train of thought the way I think has changed to a much more "your will be done Lord, show me the path and I'll follow it" direction. Had I thought and prayed a little more months ago I may well have ended up deciding to do something different.
Right, I really need to try and unpack my thoughts systematically and coherently. Here's where I'm at right now:
I can just think of so many other things that I would much rather be doing this year; I think about other friends, like Ben, going to Kenya to do his gap year, to learn about the Bible and how to apply it in some real faith situations I just look at the where I am at the moment and can't help feel that I am in the wrong place. I would go to Kenya in a second if someone offered me the opportunity right now. Things like Mike Breen's 3D Ministries 2 year course, Soul Survivor's course in Watford! (yes please!), WYAM, Oasis...
...ANYWHERE!
I just don't want to waste time, y'know. I only have one life and I want to use every second of it doing God's will, of course if it is God's will for me to be here then that is amazing and I will go into this year whole heartedly. I just hope this is God's will and that although I'm not particularly feeling it, that I am on the path that He wants me to be on.
I just have a really restless feeling of hopelessness about it.
I bailed on our first meal together today because I just felt so uncomfortable being there. All I really want to do what God wants me to do but I feel like I made the decision to do Form way too fast, didn't think or pray about it, just thought "I want to stay in Sheffield and my end goal is to be in full time ministry...meh I'll do Form" - a few months on from that train of thought the way I think has changed to a much more "your will be done Lord, show me the path and I'll follow it" direction. Had I thought and prayed a little more months ago I may well have ended up deciding to do something different.
Right, I really need to try and unpack my thoughts systematically and coherently. Here's where I'm at right now:
AGH I don't know! But what can I do? I have a house in Sheffield now, I have a new job that I start tomorrow morning and I have a year long commitment to the Form course!
~I want to serve God
~I want to serve God in a way that glorifies Him
~I want to serve God using the gifts that He has given me
~I want to be lead by God completely in all decision I make
~At the moment I feel that full time ministry is the direction that God is pointing me in but I need training and preparing
~I am itching to get abroad and see what the Lord is doing elsewhere in the world
~I want to live the radical and extraordinary lives that the people we read about in the Bible lived
~I want to be trained and prepared and practice in the right environment
~I want to help and love people
~I believe I am in Sheffield by God's leading and right now there aren't any other options
~It is impossible to get a job at the moment. Period
~I have some really good friends in Sheffield and it is probably right to stay for at least one more year
~Finding St Toms in the first place was no accident
~I can listen to easily to the opinions of others and have perhaps taken on board more negative advice and negative opinions than are healthy
~From most angles it would seem that Form is a door opened by God as the next step...but if that is the case then why do I feel so uneasy about doing it?
~At the end of the day I just can't see that they can teach me anything that I haven't already read in some book!
~I feel like I am going to spend the year disagreeing with other people on the course
I can just think of so many other things that I would much rather be doing this year; I think about other friends, like Ben, going to Kenya to do his gap year, to learn about the Bible and how to apply it in some real faith situations I just look at the where I am at the moment and can't help feel that I am in the wrong place. I would go to Kenya in a second if someone offered me the opportunity right now. Things like Mike Breen's 3D Ministries 2 year course, Soul Survivor's course in Watford! (yes please!), WYAM, Oasis...
...ANYWHERE!
I just don't want to waste time, y'know. I only have one life and I want to use every second of it doing God's will, of course if it is God's will for me to be here then that is amazing and I will go into this year whole heartedly. I just hope this is God's will and that although I'm not particularly feeling it, that I am on the path that He wants me to be on.
2.9.09
Quick Summary of Push Day Training (let's go mental and call it PDT)
(1) Normal push-ups
(2) Diamond hand shape to the chest
(3) Right leg elevated (4) Left leg elevated
(5) Right leg elevated and leaning fully to one arm on rep looking across (alternating the arm each rep) (6) Same again with left leg elevated
(7) Bringing knee up to meet elbow on each rep (alternating leg)
(8) Some mental capoeira push that Danny taught me for one side of the body (9) same again (mental capoeira push that Danny taught me) for the other side of the body
(10) Clapping push-ups
At the moment, doing about 10 reps for each position that brings it to about 100 push-ups which for the moment is probably about right. I'll try and stick to it rigidly for a while but I'm sure I'll work out new little adoptions and stretches that work for me.
The best thing I have learned is leaving each set of exercises for 72 hours to let the muscles heal before training in that way again; it works so well and also, I think I'd die if I was trying to cain 100 push-ups a day - I'm not Spartacus!
So the 72 hour rest (although it probably works out less than that) is working in pretty well with the rest of the training sched:
The best thing I have learned is leaving each set of exercises for 72 hours to let the muscles heal before training in that way again; it works so well and also, I think I'd die if I was trying to cain 100 push-ups a day - I'm not Spartacus!
So the 72 hour rest (although it probably works out less than that) is working in pretty well with the rest of the training sched:
Monday Push
Tuesday Pull
Wednesday Run (which by the way I am rrrrub at right now)
Thursday Push
Friday Pull
Saturday Run
Sunday Sabbath boi!
I didn't train while I was at Soul Survivor or Momentum, which was a flipping good choice. Stewarding turned out to be a 16 hour day so I was rinsed most of the time, and after a long 3 or 4 hour shift of standing dead still there was nothing less appealing than pushing out 100 reps. Instead I had the flipping longest shower in the world! As an aside, here's a tip should you ever find yourself stewarding; a well showered steward doubles his productivity! Period.
So quickly, on running; I'm finding this to be a much tougher challenge than I thought it would. Just to put you in the picture a bit without bragging; I have flipping ace credentials for walking and hiking long distances over days, but I don't talk about that *cough*mountain training expedition leadership*cough* lolz, Anyway, turns out running and walking are not cut from the same cloth, which surprises me, I mean, it's legs innit. This is a long wided way of saying I suck at running and a short jog up to Bole Hills from my house just about finishes me off the day. So that can be an area I can work on a bit.
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