Pearls & Sundae Lovin'

We are relaunching Resonate Girls connect on a new night at Jess's sweet new pad and its gona be awesome! If you are between the ages of 18-30 years in Invercargill and are looking for an amazing young adults ministry then you should check us out! Resonate Girls is an awesome place to come and meet other like-minded crazy cats who are on fire for God and discovering what it means to walk out their journey as the incredible and beautiful woman God has created them to be!

Pearls and Summer lovin' is going to be a fun night of ice-cream madness and girlie goodness, so bring along your friends and some ice-cream toppings! We have the gorgeous Carol Chin Poy sharing some pearls of wisdom - she has an incredible testimony and has a heart to see women empowered and embracing who God created them to be. She runs the Eve-olution Womens Ministry at the Invercargill Christian Centre and is not to be missed!!

For more info about Pearls & Sundae Lovin' or Resonate Girls feel free to email me @ shannon@christiancentre.org.nz

Bourke - a few thoughts & a broken heart.....

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........

Its all in the attitude

Pray without ceasing. Have you ever thought about the implications and impracticalities of this scripture? (1 Thessalonians 5:17) I mean lets be honest - does God really expect us to pray every second of the day? how does that affect our lives ? Can it actually be done?

There is actually more to that scripture than is often looked into - 1 Thessalonians 5: 16 -18 says "Be joyful always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is Gods will for you in Christ Jesus." (NLT)

God is not asking us to spend every moment of our day on our knees in prayer, but He encourages us to have a prayerful attitude. This attitude affects our reactions to the stuff, good and bad, that occurs in our lives. It determines whether we will be atmosphere takers or atmosphere makers. A prayerful attitude recognises and acknowledges our need for God, our dependence on Him, and takes the focus off ourselves. It means that even in the crap times , in the darkness when we think no one cares, we can have an assurance that God is there, He cares and we can turn our focus to Him.

Over the past few months I have had an illness that had the potential to take over every part of mine and my family's lives. Everything turned to crap (am I allowed to say crap on the blog? Oops crap I did it again!) and I felt I was in a downward spiral there was no escape from.. Now I don't share this to gain your sympathy or to shock, but out of this experience ( and I still have a long way to go) I have learned a very important God perspective that keeps me going.

John 10:10 "The thief comes to steal, kill and destroy, but I have come that they may have life in abundance." This is a scripture I have heard countless times but whenever I have considered abundant life I have looked at it from a vantage point of Gods provision - paying my bills, meeting my physical needs etc.. What I didn't consider was (and God gave me revelation of this) abundant life is more than this.

Abundance of life includes the experiences we go through and the lessons we learn. This changed me in my situation completely. I know that God is with me in my situation, and while He did not cause it, He is allowing me to go through it because the lessons I learn and the reward I gain on the other side are far greater than if I did not walk this journey.

Even though my situation sucks, knowing God is there and walking with me makes the pain easier to endure, and dare I say it, I am even thankful. Not that I am sick, but thankful that God has a plan greater than I can currently see, thankful that God is bigger than my situation and thankful for this experience because its enriching and strengthening me- as a person, as a wife and mother and as a woman walking a journey with Christ.

By developing a prayerful attitude ( and believe me I'm a work in progress!) when things get tough I can turn to God and take the focus off myself. This a conscious decision, a choice I have to make continually, and some days the choice is far easier than others and sometimes I don't succeed at all. But thats the amazing thing about Grace - God still reaches out His hand to pick us up and set us on our feet time after time, day after day. (and thats a whole new post on its own)

Be joyful always, pray continually and give thanks in all circumstances - I might not succeed in this all the time, but I am going to make a go at it. I want to encourage you - embrace God no matter what your circumstances are and be enriched and amazed by what you learn and the experiences you gain.

Reson8rs Podcast: Christianity as a Counterculture

Hey,

As promised, here is a podcast of the Christianity as a Counterculture message which I preached @ a youth service late last month. It's a little raw, but hopefully you get the overall idea. Any feedback greatly appreciated (how else am I going to get better?). Anyhow, here it is...


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Response to Christianity as a Counterculture.

Hey guys,

Here's just a couple of comments from a couple of other Christian blogs in response to the Christianity as a Counterculture post. I thought they made some valid points so reproduced here.

written by alban-acim

Exactly, nothing could be more alien to this world than the teaching of Jesus Christ. Who wants to forgive and love his enemy? I think, for example, the majority of people still favors death penalty and wants their offenders being killed only to continue the conflict and its resulting misery.

What an insanity.

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Also, here was another eloquent post.

written by TitusOneOne

You're right, sirgawayne. According to Jesus, we are the salt and light in this dying world. He has called us to be different from this world and different from those who don't believe.

When people who are not believers look at us they should see Christ in us! Sure they may see us physically and see the personalities that God gave us, but beyond these they should see Jesus in us.

But is the average Christian today really that different from the culture they live in? I ask this because I see people who say they're Christians whose lives just don't match up. In fact, statistics tell us that divorce rates among Christians are just as high as non-Christians and pre-marital sex among Christians is growing higher every year. You are right, we have a wonderful opportunity to stand apart, to be the living counterculture, but are we letting that opportunity pass us by?

We need to make the choice to pickup our cross and follow Jesus. Come on believers! We've all made mistakes and messed up big, myself included. But 1 John 1:9 says we have a God that will forgive us of our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness when we confess our sins to Him. So if there's anything between you and God, repent of it. Ask for forgiveness. And then make the choice to be that salt and light, that counterculture to a dying world.

We are the body of Christ. Let's live that way!

Joe

http://titusoneone.com

Promoting and encouraging Biblical faith in God's people.

If you'd like to continue the discussion you can either leave a comment after the Counterculture post, or in the blogs4god discussion thread. I think these Christian bloggers have identified some extremely relevant examples and it would be a shame to let the discussion stop there.

Ray

blogs4god is awesome!

Hey reson8rs,

The recent Christianity as a counterculture post has just been listed as a popular post on the blogs4god website. In their own words they are:

a semi-definitive aggregation of of Christians who blog. This 'democritized' user-based ranking system differs from a 'Yahoo-like' hierarchical system in that submitted posts are then voted on by other blogs4God registrants. It is the hope that this free, 'digg-like' service will provide the Christian blogging community with a showcase of the best content that can be heard above the white noise generated by the blogosphere on the whole.

It's exciting because it means that some of the stuff here may actually be worth reading and sharing :). Anyway, if you're looking for quality Christian content, and a useful networking tool, go and check blogs4god out, and join. While you are there, add me as a friend, and if you dig what's being written, then vote so we can keep gaining exposure.

Reson8rs @ the ends of the earth, changing the world around them...

Christianity as a counterculture?

Hey guys,
So just doing something different... here's a copy of the notes I used for a talk I did at church recently.

It may be useful for life groups, school groups, youth groups, or just to have a bit of a yarn with anyone you want... If nothing else, maybe it may make you think about what you believe.

Will podcast the mp3 when it becomes available, and hopefully you'll get a better idea of where I was going.



Counterculture

2 minutes – Brainstorm - What is Normal Teenage culture?

What defines us as a culture?

What influences us?

From Wikipedia:

In sociology, counterculture is a term used to describe a cultural group whose values and norms are at odds with those of the social mainstream, the cultural equivalent of political opposition.

Today, counterculture is used to describe moving in a theological or material direction that is not the accepted norm in society; this is most easily seen in its manifestation in the media. However, it can be strange to see the co-option of counterculture movements as they quickly become the spearhead of commercial pop campaigns; once taboo ideas (men wearing a woman's color - pink, for example) can become popular trends.

Examples of counterculture:
Hippies
Rock n' Roll
Punk
Alternative
Emo!
and many others...

In all these movements, the counterculture became so popular it directly affected mainstream culture.

We sometimes think of Christians as the “square” mainstream people. If you think about it, this is NOT THE CASE.

Christianity directly opposes many of today’s cultural values and beliefs.
Examples of this?

Jesus was not a mainstream leader. He spent his entire ministry shaking the current mainstream beliefs of the Pharisees and society.
e.g. performed miracles on the Sabbath. Called the spiritual leaders of the time a pit of vipers and so on…

AS Christians, we are NOT mainstream.
What does this mean to you?
We live to different standards. What is acceptable in the world may not be acceptable in our eyes. In many ways we, shouldn’t fit in…

We need to add some new phrases to our vocabulary.
Why?
I don’t agree with this because…
I believe that…

We need to start standing up for what we believe in…

We shouldn’t be afraid to be different. God has already marked us so. We do not need to conform. In fact, in order to be going for God, we have a completely different mindset:

2 Corinthians 5:17 If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come!– What this means is that those who become Christians become new persons. They are not the same anymore, for the old life is gone. A new life has begun.

This means we are called to be in the world, acting as Christ, not of the world.

We have an opportunity to stand apart.
We have an opportunity to create a positive counterculture which opposes the things in mainstream culture which may be morally or spiritually wrong.

Challenge: Think about how as a Christian, you are different to mainstream culture. What ways are you able to be an example of Christianity as a counterculture?

...
Hope this is useful to someone. If so, great! Let me know...

Ray