Been playing with an idea inspired by Becky at "Theres more to life". She had a banner made up with a starving child from africa, and an anorexic woman on the other side. In the middle were the words "who suffers more?".

We see New Zealand as being a land of plenty, where young people have all sorts of opportunities that a young person in africa doesnt have, and while that is true for many, there are also many young people growing up in families lacking the basic essentials of life, they arent growing up in a stable home environment, they arent having nourishing meals, and they are being forced to grow up, years before they should have to.

Forget blasphemy against the Holy Spirit

The new unforgiveable sin, having a different point of view and not blindly swallowing the heretical tripe propagated by your church leadership.

Also a very major indicator, that you are in an unhealthy church, and need leave

Its been a fantastic week. The epitomy of wierd, but I think I've came closer to figuring out the root of all my issues. Growing up and not having steady relationships with my parental figures, caused me to end up being mad and unstable in my adult life.

So I know what caused the problem and I know how to fix it. Its a wierd feeling comming to the realisation of what caused the problem. Its like after 29years the penny finally dropped.
The funny thing is, the teaching of my old church told me that unless I was under the proper authority, unless I was giving up 10% of my income and unless I was in at least two church services on a sunday as well as being in various meetings during the week, I couldnt be blessed.

Lets look at the blessings on my life. I have the steadfast knowledge that God will take care of all of my needs, he has proven that more times than I can count in the last week alone. Having my sister and brother in law, and nephews in the same city. I will actually get to be around as the kids are growing up. I'm halfway through my BSW. Four years ago, I didnt think it would be possible to even get to university let alone to this point...

I managed to get away from an spiritually abusive church, which should have destroyed my faith, but praise God, it didnt

Labels: blessings, praise, Spiritually abusive churches

Thank the Lord God almightly, I'm finally free.

I had been going to City Impact Church on and off over the last few months because for all the doubts I'd been having, I wondered if maybe it was all a terrible mistake and perhaps City Impact church was of God and I was walking away from something amazing. For all the faults of the leadership, the fact that the rank and file members were lovely amazing genuine people also kept me going back.

Anyhow, I was standing in the back wondering why I'd come back again, and thinking how many times did I need to go to figure out how rotten the fruit was and Janet , one of the church elders came up to me and asked me why I was there. I was like "Huh", and she made reference to a website. As she walked away, I was left feeling like something had crawled over my soul. She continued to position herself where she could see me leave, and as I departed, I'm sure shes positive that she had gotten to me. The funny thing was that as i left, was absolutley shaking, however after I got out to the car, I relaised that I was free, and that no longer did I need to keep going back, and actually it was the release that I had been seeking for months, but didnt know how to get it.

So Janet

You may be thinnking that you won, and that I left
However you inadvertantly gave me the closure that I had been seeking for a long time
I'm free finally and it was you that gave me that freedom

But no, I wont be back.....

I bought a $2.40 ticket for the first time like ever today. I have this wonderful fantasy of what I would do if I won lotto, however the only catch with that was in order to win, I needed to buy a ticket.

Have just checked the numbers and what do you know, I'm a division six winner, which means getting the grand total of $28. Minus the $2.40 I spent on the ticket, this means comming out $25.60 ahead... I look at people like my sister, and people like the Mortlocks, and think alot of the time it would be really nice, to have a week where I dont have to struggle with my finances. Then something like this happens and it occurs to me that perhaps this way, God gets to keep me dependent on him for all my needs, and possibly by providing too far ahead into the future, I would start taking my eyes of Him and become reliant on myself.

How has God blessed me in a material sense over the past month.

Well there was the baby sitting for Y, that was $20bucks which very nicely took me through to payday and meant I didnt have to hit my savings to by milk and what not.

Then there was getting the car battery for $50, and installing it myself meant that I saved $$$ on not having to get a mechanic to do it. Also not to mention the fact, that the battery kept running into such a time when I had spare dollars in the bank to be able to afford the battery.

The trip down to Opoutere, had gas in the tank, so didnt have to put any more in. ZTook the day trip to Hamilton which G provided money for, and when we got back to Opoutere she filled up my tank again...

And now this small win, yes, it would be awesome to have more of a solid finacial base, however I like playing the game, the Kings way. The prosperity people can shove their gospel, "My God supplies all my needs", true, however he doesnt say in which way that he will supply them. Prosperity for many western christians seems to be having a house, nice car, all the latest electronics, those things are cool to have, but they kind of cheapen Gods provision if thats all we expect God to do.

The way of the Master is alot more scary, but did I mention, I like scary

Well the ExW forum is being shut down. Kathi Sharpe has gotten the word from the Boss that its time to take the ministry in another direction... The excitment of being in a relationship with the head Kahuna, ya never know which way he will take us. At the moment, I'm in the process of developing the concept of "real people". The site building is show going, but its kind of exciting transofrming a bunch of letters, numbers and codes into something that looks semi decent. I've gone from the ultra basics, to improving slowly and getting something that looks halfway decent

The holiday was good, it was a bit of a sod being sick for most of it, but went over to hamilton, to catch J, G's mum. Another J a parasite has hooked onto J and has taken her for like over $100k...Hopefully G has got her mum to sign the power of attorney, which means that J cant sign for loans and basically that her assets are protected, and while she may have no more money, still has her house and car and her income comming in each week. what I didnt realise was that power of attorney will also enable G, to put things into place that will stop parasite J being able to get his hands on any more of Js money.

Taking a trip to opotere tomorrow, I am dog tired and in the need of some relaxation.

I think I will head of about 6am, should get through dorkland early and hopefully far enough along before I encounter too much traffic.

The posts on here lately have been rather short and to the point. I lack the energy to actually say anything of sense, or coherancy. Am absolutley knackered. Think I'm getting sick again, would only be the third time in like a week.

The hits on my blog lately have trebled, and as I go through the hit counter many of them are from this thread on christian forums. Ok so I encouraged people to look, however its slightly amusing given the fact that about 15 of the last 15 hits come from that one thread

Christians are for ever saying, "we love the person, we dont approve of their sin". Usually in reference to homosexuality, which the evangelical church has a real hard on for. They are busy sniffing out every sniff of things they deem to be deviant while ignoring the gluttony, lying, backbiting, gossip that is rife within the church.

Ignoring the mind screwing that goes on in the penticostal churches like Destiny, and CIC

bleeeeecccch

I watched this show tonight, normally avoid it like the plague eg cheesy reality television. But for what ever reason I watched it tonight. The family was a single mum with eight kids, living in an 2 bedroom house, with kids squishes in the attic and in the mouldy basement.

Not only do these people remodel the house at no cost and in this case, build it from scratch, they outfit the house, fully with furniture, household items they also send the family on holiday for a week, while the house is built oh yea, and another company came in with a $100,000 grant so that the kids could kids could go to university.

Ok so sponsors get their names mentioned in the course of the program, which probably gives them some amazing advertising, but the amazing change it made for the family all at once... Ok, so yea, I'm a raging cynic, but programs like this, make me realise that there are some good people left in the world. The whole world isnt full of assholes

The double standards by christians is shocking. This article was being discussed on christian forums and the answers, well lets just say I had the overwhelming desire to go bang my head against a brick well.

The answers ranged from

I think that it is unacceptable for pagans to go around on PUBLIC property and preach tarot cards.... (while in the meantime...)

to have an evangalist arrested for freely speaking in a PUBLIC place is unacceptable.

If one guy gets arrested for freely speaking about his beliefs why didn't they all get rounded up?

to rhetoric about preaching the gospel. which is a fair call, however there are ways of witnessing to people and then there are ways of witnessing to pagans and occultists. The two are vastly different

Perhaps we could go back to the days of ww2 even arpartheid, and make all non christians wear yellow stars and forbid them from eating in restaurants, or using public venues.

I dont for a moment believe that pagan is a right path, however they deserve to be able to have a festival in a public place without obnoxious witnessing tactics from the guy in the article. The double standard is that if these people were having a christian festival, there is no way, that they would tolerate a pagan comming and preaching to their festival goers.

I was listening to a live destiny broadcast this morning as I studied. I had to laugh, Bishop Brian said that no one had to pay tithes when going to his church. Which in reality was probably true, he has never said, people must pay tithes. He does use guilt, fear and emotional manipulation to get people paying. And if its anything like City impact, a person must be tithing to be serving in the church.

He says that he will pick up a gay person and bring them to church, I wonder if thats true. Tempted to put it to the test

2 down and 2 to go... The only thing that stops me from crawling up in a foetal postion is the thought that it will be all over on wednesday. For better or worse, I will be done...

Came home after my exam and just had the rest of the day of. I'm not sure further study would have been possible, my brain just felt mashed. The exam wasnt as bad as I thought it would be. I managed to do 23 pages, admitedly the pages were double spaced,however I would have got about 6-7 pages per essay. Now hopefully its quality writing. Tomorrow I do some more study and have work in the afternoon. The exam on monday is social research and yes folks due to a Massey stuffup I still dont have all my course work back from the lecturers. The lecturer has been really good, however the pissing around on this assignment has been nothing but annoying.

Discovered another skill I can add to my bow today. My car battery has been in the process of dying for about a month. And the times of having to get a jump start was increasing, was down in devonport today it died. Having left my wallet at home, getting a bus home wasnt an option, luckily my sisters friend was home and I got a jump.

Anyhow came home and got my wallet and trotted off to buy a battery. Got home and very nervously looked at changing them over. It seemed straight foward, however the potential for stuff up and the damage it would cause was a touch freaky. Proud to say that I managed to take the old one out correctly reattach the cables to the positive and negative ends. Lost one of the nuts that held the battery into place but managed to find a spare....

So, the battery is in place, the car works. I'm such a clever lass