I've heard Bono get slagged alot, because he doesnt preach enough of the gospel, because he doesnt live how fundamentalist legalists say he should like. Is U2 christian?



Based on psalm 40...
I waited patiently for the Lord
He inclined and heard my cry
He brought me up out of the pit
Out of the miry clay

I will sing, sing a new song
I will sing, sing a new song

How long to sing this song
How long to sing this song
How long, how long, how long
How long to sing this song

He set my feet upon a rock
And made my footsteps firm
Many will see
Many will see and hear

I will sing, sing a new song
I will sing, sing a new song
I will sing, sing a new song
I will sing, sing a new song

How long to sing this song
How long to sing this song
How long, how long, how long
How long to sing this song

all I can say is go U2... The fact that you've been around for over 20years suggests that you have something special... If this is what it takes for people to hear the gospel, then go you guys

"Just because some man in a red coat hands you a sword, it doesnt make you a hero!" Susan, Lion Witch and the wardrobe

There are many christian heros, christians are human and like humans not immune from pedestals, however I think in the christian world, when someone falls they have so much further to fall.

Grace something that the church is not good at showing to the world, is even more lacking within the church when a person falls. Is it because christians have this mistaken belief that we cant be real or honest about how we feel and it creates an environment that when things go to crap, we dont feel we can share about how bad that it is

One of the things I am thankful about for St Pauls, is leadership that can be real and admit they are human. That sort of stuff flows down from the top

Some more interesting discussions recently on christian forums. Mainly with one side going "if you give God will bless you and increase you. Dont you dare speak a word against tithing" and the other side going "lets see what the bible has to say about this "

2 Corinthians 9 6-8 Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. 7 Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.8 And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work

These verses kind of shoot a hole in the emotional and guilt laden trips used by my former church. If I am supposed to give in my heart what I have decided with God, where did they get off telling me if is not good enough.

What makes me cursious though, is tithing actually something for new testament christians, or is it something that churches have latched onto as a means of revenue gathering?

Galations 5 2-3`
Listen! I, Paul, tell you that if you allow yourselves to be circumcised, it means that Christ is of no use to you at all.3 Once more I warn any man who allows himself to be circumcised that he is obliged to obey the whole Law

Ok, so if a christian wants to tithe as in the new testament, then they are also obliged to follow all of the torah?

The tithes as defined in deteronomy

Deuteronomy 14:22-29 " Be sure to set aside a tenth of all that your fields produce each year. 23 Eat the tithe of your grain, new wine and oil, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks in the presence of the LORD your God at the place he will choose as a dwelling for his Name, so that you may learn to revere the LORD your God always. 24 But if that place is too distant and you have been blessed by the LORD your God and cannot carry your tithe (because the place where the LORD will choose to put his Name is so far away) 25 then exchange your tithe for silver, and take the silver with you and go to the place the LORD your God will choose. 26 Use the silver to buy whatever you like: cattle, sheep, wine or other fermented drink, or anything you wish. Then you and your household shall eat there in the presence of the LORD your God and rejoice. 27 And do not neglect the Levites living in your towns, for they have no allotment or inheritance of their own. 28 At the end of every three years, bring all the tithes of that year's produce and store it in your towns 29 so that the Levites (who have no allotment or inheritance of their own) and the aliens, and the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns may come and eat and be satisfied, and so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands."

Deuteronomy is good, because it speaks about how money can be used in place of produce, live stock etc. However it seems that when we bring it into the place of Gods choosing, we are supposed to by anything we wish and sit down and have a large party (deut 14:26)..... How far we have fallen from what was laid out in the bible

Went along to a St Pauls worship practice last night... we had some new songs to learn, however ran out of time as God showed up in a very real and powerful way. I've never known the time to go so quickly, there were a bunch of us praying and worshipping God, it was very cool... Sounded at a few points like the church was completely full.....

Babysitting for S tonight... That will be fun, hopefully it will give her and K a chance to have some them time, before K heads of to the UK

As you can see the lay out of my blog has changed... If you have difficulties in viewing it in your web browser, please leave me a comment letting me know which browser you use and what the issues are

Oh my gosh.....

Someone put me onto the web based calling company called Jajah. Basically its cheap web based calling, and if the other person is registered with Jajah then the phonecalling is free. The only "catch" is that people are not to exceed the fair use policy of of 1000mins

Anyhow, was on the phone with my mum tonight, trying to explain how she signed up for it and what she had to do... All I can say is oh my goodness... I love her, though heck she is a technophobe

Luke 10:25-37
25On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

26"What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?"

27He answered: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'[c]; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'[d]"

28"You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live."

29But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"

30In reply Jesus said: "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 31A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. 35The next day he took out two silver coins[e] and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.'

36"Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"

37The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him."
Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."

How many of us have read this stopry and understood that it means as christians we are supposed to be nice to everyone, including those that are not like us.

Jesus example of this story, was something that was completely counter cultural for the time. Many Jews if asked who their neighbour was would respond another Jew. Some would only acknowledge the good jews, those who tryed to keep torah, as their neighbours. No Jew would have ever named samaritans as their neighbour. Samaritans were the untouchable people of the time, in todays sosciety we could think of people with aids, gay people, people that dont fit into our world view

He used the priest and the levite, and rather than just making the third person a nice ordinary Jew, he talked about a samaritian. People who the jews would go out of their way to avoid having any contact with. Jews would detour around Samaria when they traveled, to avoid having to spend any time with the Samaritans

So what was Jesus point? The talk on sunday morning mentioned, as christians not only do we have to be nice to people, but we have to be prepared to let those who we may find completely wierd, different and scary love us.

I did most of the disipleship course at St Pauls...

It radically altered how I look at disipleship. We examined the jewish system of learning that was present in Jesus day. There were three houses of learning. All young boys (and some girls) started in Bet Sefer (house of the book). During their time in Bet Sefer, they were required to memorise the first five books of the old testament (known as the torah). Boys attended Bet Sefer from the age of 6-10years of age.

Entry to the next house of learning, Bet Talmud (house of learning) was restricted to those students who were considered to be the cream of the crop. Children who did not go on to Bet Talmud, usually began learning the family business. Students attended Bet Talmud from the ages of 10-14. During this time, they were required to learn and memorise the entire new testament.

The third and final house of learning was called Bet Midrash (house of learning). For students to advance to this stage, they had to be the best of the best, and the rabbi personally chose those who he thought capable of learning his yoke(interpretation of the law) with a view of teaching the rabbis yoke to others. A disiple usually began their public ministry about 30years of age

Jesus, a man who many called rabbi, went completely against the culture of the time. rather than picking educated young men, he picked fishermen, tax collectors, people that likely never got higher than Bet Sefer and certainly never would have graduated from Bet Talmud. Jesus picked his disciples, not because of who they were, rather because I believe, he say who they would become. He wants to be in relationship with us, not because of who we are, and how educated we are, but because when he looks at us he can see the type of people we will become

As christians we often talk about having faith in Jesus and trusting him. I wonder how many of us, actually stop to consider that Jesus picks us, because he has faith in us?

Mathew 14:24-32 32and by this time the boat was far out in the lake, tossed about by the waves, because the wind was blowing against it.25 Between three and six o'clock in the morning Jesus came to the disciples, walking on the water.26 When they saw him walking on the water, they were terrified. "It's a ghost!" they said, and screamed with fear. 27 Jesus spoke to them at once. "Courage!" he said. "It is I. Don't be afraid!"28 Then Peter spoke up. "Lord, if it is really you, order me to come out on the water to you." 29 "Come!" answered Jesus. So Peter got out of the boat and started walking on the water to Jesus.30 But when he noticed the strong wind, he was afraid and started to sink down in the water. "Save me, Lord!" he cried.
31 At once Jesus reached out and grabbed hold of him and said, "What little faith you have! Why did you doubt?".32 They both got into the boat, and the wind died down.

We all know the sotry of when Jesus walked on water. And most people assume that when Jesus rebuked Peter, he was rebuking him, because Peter had not trusted in Jesus. How many of us ever stopped to think that Jesus wasnt angry because of Peters lack of trust in himself, Rather Jesus was angry because Peter was not trusting in his own ability.

Jesus was completely counter cultural, he chose his disiples based on who they were, not how much they had studied. He associated with the tax collectors, prostitutes and the other assorted people of the day.

He broke down sterotypes and completely blew peoples word views to smithereens. Talking to the samaritan woman at the well, when confronted by an expert of the law, who asked him "who was his neighbour". Instead of giving an example that was nice and comfortable, he pounded on the point that not only do we have to love people who we may have issues loving, but we have to be prepared to let them love us. Jesus told the story of the good samaritan, the samritains were considered by the jews to be unloveable and people they didnt want to associate with. In a contempory society, that could mean homosexuals, occultists and prostitutes...

All my life, I had desired a relationship with my father, knowing that he would love me and protect me. However the reality was that my Father was a drunk, who couldnt handle communication and chose to ignore me. I discovered in my heavenly father, someone who loved me and wasnt afraid to show it. A wee while back, we had a soak service on the love of the father. I sent my Dad a card, being honestly blunt. However G rang me specially to tll me how much the old man was floored by what I wrote

There is a father who cares about you, more than you can comprehend. Ok so the following clip is a tad corny, but the scripture is true

These guys played at parachute music festival.....



as did these guys, a very cool band

Its really funny, it seems to be a christian characteristic to bait and and then when a person bites back to feign offence as if the person responding is the one with the problem

And I would ask you to stop judging me, as you do in just about every post I make....

I have no "high horse".... YOU have been coming against the Lord and His will and His goodness in post after post after post...

soooooooooooooooooooooooo You don't want to tithe... You choose to rationalize and twist scripture to accomodate YOUR will... so be it.

QUIT hassling the rest of us.

This was after I had queried about how often abraham tithed, as for hassling them, I respond much of the time to her sanctimonious posts with biting sarcasm. However usually then God convicts me and just as I was about to reply back to this post, I realised that to respond would be feeding her matryr complex, and above all else would it be edifying. As I would be fighting very hard not to call her a santimonious whinging matry, probably not

This woman is from the word of faith denomination. If this is the fruit of WoF, I for one want no part of it. This person regulalry twists scripture, talks down to people who dont agree with her, and when all else fails she tosses out the "comming against the goodness of God and twisting scripture".

Even when people post scripture straight from the bible with no additional opinion, this woman accuses them of twisting scripture

A few days back, the world was stunned to learn of the terrorist plot, to bring down 9 UK p;lanes over american soil. Surprisingly enough with the exposure of this plot came the inevitable security clampdowns including not being able to take hand luggage on board, vital stuff allowed, but no water bottles, moisturisor, toothpaste from the sound of it the list is huge....

I thought people would be accepting of this, as its needed to ensure that we dont have another 9-11. However have been a little bit gobsmacked at the amount of whingers who have whinged and moaned about how OTT it is, and it wont happen to them. I'm sure those killed in 9-11, Bali, indonesia never thought it would happen to them either. After some random internet surfing a wee while back, I found a website that gave recipes on how to make nitroglycerine and plastic explosives out of basic household substances

So to you whingers, suck it up. Ok so its a complete pain in the ass, but sheesh, who wants to go through another 9-11. I dont

Seven days clean. The emotions are slightly more under control, although this damm arythmia is driving me slightly mad..... Its happened before, but it hasnt been as bad as its been in the last seven days. Hopefully as I go on, it will get less severe.

The brain fuzz is a little bit less as well which is always good

At the moment 5 days clean. apart from the brain fuzz, I'm being forced to acknowledge feelings I had kept aenaethatised for years

I'm thinking at the moment, that active addiction was far eaiser, because I wasnt required to think and deal with all this emotional yuckiness. Went to an NA meeting tonight. People were very cool, but listening to one of the Ladies speak, she was really speaking into my own situation.......

Right now I'm having all these emotions I havent had in a long time and dam it I dont like it

Its been 2 days since I made the decision to stop using food and sex in the same way I'd been using pills. Right now I have an overwhelming desire to stick food or pills in my gob, at least I've not indulged in the sex stuff for ages, but it would have been good to have been able to stop the food as well

Hi, my names M and I'm an addict

Its funny how we justify things in our minds, minimise them to make them seem less bad. I came to the conclusion today that I'd minimised my addiction, with "well it was only benzos, not as bad as the P addict."