Messed Up

If we aren’t regularly messed up by the Word of God, we need to check our heart condition.

Happiness

Here is a question that God asked me after watching an anime that explored the same thing. “If you had one wish for happiness, what would it be for?” Let me rephrase that for you, ‘What one thing do you place your happiness in?’ the thing that once you get you’d be happy. I’m referring to happiness in the sense that once you get that one thing you’re set, that if nothing else went right you’d look to that thing and be happy, that if you were to die today you’d die happy. It’s one of those questions that if you answered honestly you don’t want to answer, that you fear to know what your answer is because once you say it you realize how self centered you really are, that the answer is rarely for anyone else but me. We can blame the world for instilling in us the culture of ‘me first’ that the culture tells us that if you had $100 million dollars that you’d be happy, that if you famous that you’d be happy, that if you had the girl/guy of your dreams that you’d be happy, or that position of power, or that you were the best in something. This is the answer for some people.

All these things are good, but if that’s the one thing you are waiting to come along to be happy then we need to take a long hard look at ourselves and rethink this thing through. Life is too short to be chasing these meaningless things, that all can be lost in an instant.

Intimacy

Just had one of the biggest wake up calls in regards to my intimacy with God. A sermon I was listening to said something that I’ve heard a million times then gave it an example that made me take a long hard look at myself. The thing was this; ‘Our Christian walk comes down to one thing – intimacy. Not the accomplishments we have reached, the tasks we have done, the people we have saved etc. it comes down to intimacy.’ Now we have all heard that before and they usually use David as the ideal example as he is described as a man after God’s heart. Here is where it really hit home, the example that was used not the typical David example but it was Judas. It went something along the lines of this, ‘Judas performed miracles, cast out demons, healed the sick, saved people. Judas stayed when people left, he gave up everything to follow Christ, he did so many things for Jesus yet he is in hell.’

 Will I be like Judas? Or like David?

36 … well now its 34

This is something that I shared with the PH champs last weekend. I got some pretty good feedback and thought that it would be good to post. NOTE: its now 34 from 03/05/09 to the end of the year not 36. Also regardless of what people say I’m not artsy it was a box + mentos + ribbon. That’s all.

I’ve only got about five minutes so I’m going to cut to the chase go into deep and meaningful mode and just talk about what I wanted to talk about. All I want to talk about is the number 36. God told me about this number on the Sunday night after LG after our discussion about stewardship. This number over the last week has really impacted and changed the way I think and do things and has really simplified LG for me.

The significance of this number is that in 36 weeks 2009 will be over. That from today on you only have 36 more weekends to grow, to nurture, to affirm, to encourage, to rise up, to make any sort of difference in your LG. That in 36 weeks we would have either let 36 opportunities slip by or we would have used 36 opportunities to the fullest. In 36 weeks 2009 will be no more. Since we are on the subject of numbers here are some stats that give the number 36 more impact. In this team there are 11 in total, three of which are planned to take a more supervisory roles for each university as we wish to rise up student leaders (Chris, Lisa and Leon), of the remaining eight there are five that are graduating at the end of 2009 (Rosie, Mae, Julie, Sop and myself), this leaves three (Tim, Trung and Tash). This means we really have to uses the remaining weeks to rise up the next generation. Whether we are champs, LGL, UL whatever we each have 36 opportunities to make a change in our LG

For each of you I have a gift. Under the cover of the box there is a note written there which reads ‘This is how many weeks left to make the most of every opportunity’. In the box there are 36 mentos. Each mentos represents one week, one opportunity. I’m going to ask you to do a really simple task and that is as each week passes by I want you to take one mentos out, eat it, bin it, I don’t care. As you do take time to reflect on how you have used that one week, that one opportunity to build something great in your LG.

There is a second part to the gift, a picture of your LG. Each week you take a mentos out and think about the week that just past it’s these people that you are analysing, critiquing, scrutinizing, examining, and breaking down every part of LG for. It’s these lives that we are using every week, every opportunity to grow, mature, rise up and build into something that will last the test of time.

As I said before there are 36 mentos in the box but today it has been cut down to 35, so take it home, take out a mentos and as you do, reflect, think, analysis how you used this one week, this one opportunity to build your LG into the Godly community that we are strive for and how you have invested into the people in your LGs.

Hope all this made some sort of sense usually I suck at writing and it was written as I would have said it.