One for the road...

a mighty fine pair of 30 somethings...

After a great party, ft top tunes (and no proclaimers!), my beautiful wife joins me on tues as a 30 something! i think we still scrub up rather well ;)

happy birthday beautiful!!!

Florida revival...God, the flesh or the devil..?

Jason Clark recently wrote about he navigates supernatural renewals of the Spirit, when God seems to show up and do supernatural aka "weird stuff."

 It got me thinking about how i believe in a God who is not just talked about but experienced, who is present not just in ritual (helpful as they are) but in reality.  My own tag line for my blog hints out how the experience of the divine has changed me

I have to admit that I had not heard of Todd Bentley or John Crowder until Jason mentioned them.  I kinda felt good that my charismatic name dropping ability has dropped through the floor but my ego was swiftly brought under control when someone teased me for having Brian McLaren as a friend on facebook! (no he didn't request me as a friend lol :) 

Laying my colours on the table...

A long time ago in a stripey jumper far far away from anything worldy, I used to believe in a God who had showed up and will show up but not one that is continually present (so that would be 1994).  All that changed for me with my own dramatic God encounter, I asked, he showed up on his terms and pretty much convinced me that either I'm a loon or that he really is present.  

Now I've got no proof per se, I'm acting on faith

Maybe I'll write about it sometime as it is an event that had major ripples in my life - the funny thing is that it didn't make me a better person overnight (or even over the next decade), it did make me immature in the whole world of emotions/experience/God but getting hooked and then weaned without getting cynical about the whole experience of God.

So when it comes to watching youtube clips that might seem a little weird to me on the outsideand hearing that this is the latest renewal etc my main frame of reference is my own experience. My overall caution would not be to throw the baby out with the bathwater, take a long term view and try and avoid feeling all jaded (of here we go again) or smug (God don't do that...)

Keeping the baby in the bath...

How do I avoid cynacism, smugness, overhype etc.  These are the kinda Qs I find myself asking...

Where is Jesus in my reaction? it can easily, and often does, offend me that Jesus is not where I want him to be, doing what I him to be doing. God would never use them, or do that etc is often just my pride being offended. Where is Jesus in me in my reaction? Where is my grace and graciousness? Where is my generousity? Where is my hope that this is real and my desire that people are blessed?

I know I want to ask the Q where is Jesus in this event, how is he being treated etc but this includes me! 

Spectator vs experience: It is very easy to become a spectator, to view an event from the bleachers and enjoy some entertainment or not as the case might be.  I can do this at church as well or indeed in any other part of my life like my family or work.  This is a lot different to an experience, opening up, actually being part of something, interacting, giving and receiving etc. 

As a spectator I can sit as judge, jury and executioner, remote.  In entering into the experience I get to be involved with others. What am i doing in this case?

Whole body faith - when i find myself getting over analytical and critical that can be just as sign of me retreating into my God shaped box. When i get all about emotional, exstatic that can start getting be hooked on the experience. The challenge for me is how to use my mind and open my heart up - if i’m just approaching this from one part of me maybe it’s not healthy.

God woz here I don’t want to set up shrines to “God woz here” - in my life i have had some amazing, life changing, dramatic encounters with the Holy Spirit - i’m tempted to try and stay in that place and repeat the formula but I also feel that God wants me to sufficiently changed by the encounter to lead me through the mundane as well. Where is God? What/where is he leading me to next? How am I doing that in community with others?

Pilgrimage i don’t want to be a spiritual tourist chasing around the globe (or even local churches) from one spiritual high to the other - then again do i want to be committed to life of service in a community, finding not only the “experience” of God in intellectual and emotional tremors but in finding God in serving and loving others? in the mundane?

But sometimes a pilgrimage to a place of God is good - a chance to leave my comfort zone? a journey there and back again - to seek God but then return to bless and serve others? I don't feel a desperate desire to go to  Florida but maybe some folk do, maybe they want to see for themselves or are hungry for a blessing to bring back.  If so I say go for it.

God fruit ripens on God time when i look back on my own experiences of dynamic supernatural experience i can honestly say that the fruit of those experiences has taken a long time to ripen. I want immediate change, an all or nothing God. Either the person i am praying for is out of their wheel chair and running down the aisle or there is sin in their life and God just can’t work etc…

I want God to work to my timescales when often God uses something big as simply getting a foot in the door. The stone that is hitting the pond not all the ripples that will run across my entire life as a result…

God, the flesh or the devil? my final guidepost is to remind myself of the helpful response that John Wimber gave on the Toronto blessing.

When asked: “John is this a work of God, the flesh, or the devil?”

He replied: “yes”

So how do make the difficult balance of avoiding that smug cyncial spectator stance yet at the same time not getting all hyped and latter days?

What's on your party jukebox???

My apologies for it being so quiet this month and my thanks for the folk who have dropped me a line to see if i have dropped off the planet!  I've been having one of those crazy months, altho I can now run 8 miles with out collapsing :)

One of the things i've been doing is sorting out music for Deb's big  30th bash this saturday.  I've got some electic tunes on the ol ipod lined up from string quartet to some personal tracks like van the man's brown eyed girl (guess Deb's eye shade??:) to a few get down 90s classics like saturday night (ah showing our age now)! 

So what are the tunes that get your parties pumping???