Acts 4:31
After this prayer, the meeting place shook, and they were all filled
with the Holy Spirit. Then they preached the word of God with boldness.
Want to know the definition of boldness? Here it is:
Oh, and random link for your viewing goodness:
Manscaping 101
No real reason for giving it - I just like the title.
Peace out.
Tee hee... I'm currently trialling a new web browser which could mean there's a few more posts than before. Oh, btw, Shannon and Jo, your posts were awesome. Heidz, hey man, thx for the link, it pretty much made Shannon a mess for an hour...
Oh, and sorry bout the inappropriate title...
Oh, and we've had some pretty amazing stuff happen at church over the last couple of weeks. Clarke Taylor was off the charts, and I'm excited to see what the next while will bring...
Peace out
Ray
My cousin sent this to me - it is a moving story of a father's love for his son. As far as I know, my cousin isn't a Christian. I shared the Gospel with him when he was a teenager and am praying for him to this day. I don't know why he sent this video to me out of the blue, but I believe that he too has been touched by its message.
I am both humbled and grateful that God our Father loves us enough to fight our battles and win our races every day, however big or small. It is something that I haven't reflected on quite enough from day to day - I hope that that will change.
May you be moved by His love today.
My heart has broken. Well and truly gut wrenchingly, utterly shattered, and broken so much that the usual cure of sticky tape and super glue will not do. My eyes have laid witness to a dispair, a hurt, a brokeness that run so deep it was bred into the very blood of generation. It was a sight I never would have believed in a nation so beautiful and similar and "civilised" as ours, but my eyes did not deceive me, what I saw was true.
But no matter how deep my grief, God's is deeper. No matter how badly my heart breaks, God's breaks more. In the places and people I see brokeness, despair and pain, God sees HOPE.
Four of us from Invercargill joined with the guys from Highway Christian Church in Ulladulla (Australia) to help at REACH 08 - a conference with a complete missions focus and a desire to see God to move in a new way. We were equipped as the army of God to go into the community and show love as Chirst loved us in a real and practical way.
Bourke, NSW Australia is a beautiful outback town and to look at it I really wondered if what I had been told was as bad as what I had been led to believe. But closer inspection showed me a deep level of dysfunction and hurt. Almost every house in town was surrounded by high metal fences, with an almost as big dog, the main street at night looked like an industrial area with big garage doors and windows barred and then in the Aboriginal "missions" the houses were nice and normal but then you saw the smashed glass and boarded up windows.
And the kids. The beautiful children who knew no different from what they lived in everyday. 3, 4, and 5 year old children who are on the streets at all times of the night, abused and taking drugs and alcohol like they were lollies, whose idea of a good time was stealing cars and then burning them.
But despite it all, God is in that place.
You could see Him in the smiles of the children, in the fresh greening of the ground that had been drought-stricken for years, in the passion and perserverence and faith of the Christians in Bourke who had been faithfully praying for and serving in their community.
God was seen on the lives of young children, as small as 4,5 and 6 years old, as they stood silent and still in His presence. He was there in the midst as 200+ young people from throughout New South Wales, wider Australia and New Zealand stood and worshiped Him freely, separated not by race or circumstances but united in love as the whanau of God.
God was in the riverbed as the drunked, just released from prison, wandered aimlessly with his bottle of booze. He was there when he was struck by the power of the Holy Spirit and set free from his sin and pain, and came into the Kingsom of Heaven.
My time in Bourke has shown me a fraction of the heartbeat of God. Jesus died for these people, each and everyone of them, of us, saved or unsaved, black or white, male or female, old or young. We are not different. We are all seen the same through the eyes of God - His children.
I am still processing what I saw, what God has done and is doing in Bourke, and in me. It is beyond our comprehension to know how deeply God mourns over the blood shed there in the name of "civilised people" and government policy. How His heart aches for the children of Bourke, many who have never known a fathers love, a tender touch or a kind word.
But God IS in that place. And He is moving. Heaven linked with earth during the time Reach 08 was in Bourke, and even though we have left there, God hasn't.
Heaven hasn't.
Hope hasn't.
God is in that place, and He is moving. It begins with HOPE........
How come we scream out 'I love you' to people completelyunknown to us, but say 'I hate you' to those who care for us?
How come it takes until they're gone to realise how much we need them?
How come the God of the Universe is on our side, but we act as if we go it alone?
How come humans are so smart, yet so stupid?
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