Winter Blast

Summer was a blast and winter is all set to be too!! Join us for our Resonate Winter Blast - 2 days in the amazing Queenstown filled with snow, God, coffee, mates and hanging out!!


Important Info

Dates 13-14 August 2011 (its a Sat/Sun)
Location Lakeland Park, Kelvin Heights Queenstown
Cost $60 (includes transport, accommodation etc)

What to Bring: We are staying in the GORGEOUS chalets at Lakeland but you still need to bring a sleeping bag, pillow and stuff to keep you warm.
Clothes (always a good start!), Bible, pen & paper, water bottle, toiletries, money for lunch on Sunday, coffee and snacks during travel & anything else that you may think you need:) Leave behind the drugs & alcohol. Also bring pizza toppings for our Pizza Fest on Sat night!!

Leaving Invercargill Christian Centre nine AM on the Sat (meeting at 8.30AM)
Returning Sun night (time dependent on coffee stops -but in time for the evening service)

Quick lowdown on events:
Sat - Leave for QTown where a meriad of fun and chilling out ensues
Sat Evening - Pizza making fest (bring pizza toppings!!) Resonate bonding, God time and craziness!!
Sun- Hang out in Qtown - go out for lunch (bring money for this!!) more fun and chilling!!
Travel home with plenty of coffee


Registrations and payment need to be into the Church office by Thursday 11 August. See Shan more for more info to register. Email to shannon@christiancentre.org.nz

Its gonna be a BLAST!!

Hearing Gods Voice

The voice of God is that secret voice unheard by any other ear,

which our own ear, opened by the Spirit of God recognizes with joy.

Charles Spurgeon

One of the things that I often have people ask me is how do I know if God is speaking to me? How do we know God’s voice?

Good question!

Hearing Gods voice is one of the things that I was so unsure of – what if it’s not God its just me? What if I get it wrong? How do I know its Him?

To be honest I don’t think there’s an easy one-stop-shop easy answer, but it all comes down to relationship. As I have grown closer to God and developed my relationship with Him I have come to learn how He speaks to me. Each of us are created uniquely so it makes sense that the way God speaks to us may be different to the away he speaks to someone else.

"My sheep listen to my voice;

I know them, and they follow me."

-- John 10:27

God knows the best way to speak to me. I am a visual person – images and pictures speak to me far greater than reading the Bible or listening to a preacher. But for others, reading the Bible can really speak to them. Neither are more right than the other – they are both just as valid.

When our kids were born, even as babies they recognized mine and Rays voices. They'd spent the whole time in the womb listening to us talk to them. They knew who we were and it would comfort them. When they were upset we could settle them just by our voice because they knew it was us.

As we get to know God more we learn to recognize His voice. I realize this sounds all too simplistic but its true.

There are many different ways in which God can speak to us. I would love it if God would just use massive sky-writing or a big booming voice from heaven like he did when Jesus was baptized but unfortunately it never seems to happen!! I know people who God speaks to them through impressions, a whisper, feelings, numbers - I even have one friend who God uses Physics equations! How crazy is that?

Benny Johnson from Bethel Church said recently at Manifest Presence Conference in Auckland that "God's not English, but English is one of the ways He can speak to us. God's not Russian but Russian is one of the ways He can speak to us." The same applies to pictures, numbers, feelings, impressions etc. They are all just a tool that God can use to communicate with us.

How awesome it is to know that God can to speak to us in a way that works for us - regardless of language!

I want to encourage you, as you spend time developing your relationship with God - it will become easier to recognise His voice. Take some time and chill with Him today.

Shan

SNOW!!!

We've been turned into a winter wonderland! Things are a little crazy at the moment - this is the 3rd day in a row I have been holed up at home due to the crazy weather! Snow in September - its a first for me after 8 and a half years living in Invercargill.

But what an amazing thing it is. I absolutely love snow and have always felt ripped off in winter here because we don't normally get anything decent here. I grew up with snow days from school, power cuts cooking on the fire in the dark and a tonne of afternoons in the freezing cold skidding round on the motorbike and sledging. But now we have it!! Wahoo!

Church has been cancelled all over the city because the roads are too treacherous for travel, the Stadium in town - our provinces pride and joy, had its roof collapse under the weight of the snow and more rough weather is yet to come in. With all this crazy happenings not only here but throughout our nation - flooding in the north island, crazy winds in Auckland, tornadoes and the massive earthquake in Christchurch many peopleit is encouraging to know that we do not have to be afraid or live in fear because we have Jesus.

It says in the Bible (yes I am actually going to mention scripture!) that God is our refuge and so we should not be afraid.

"God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging" Psalm 46:1-3
"He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High, will rest in the shadow of the Almighty I will say of the Lord, "He is my refuge and my fortress, My God in whom I trust" Psalm 91:1-2

Even when the world around us is falling down and unpredictable we can rely on God. Place our faith and our trust in Him and we do not have to worry - we are in Gods hands. I'm not sure about you, but I would rather place my faith in the One who is unfailing than anything else!

O week 2010

Hey guys,

If you are new here (in Southland or on the blog), click to find out what we're all about! We've got some exciting activities planned for SIT OWeek 2010 in Southland. Hopefully you saw us around @ the SIT Market Day and grabbed some info that obviously led you to here!

On Tuesday we'll be on campus providing a free barbie ( the sausage kind not the doll) during the chilled music festivities and generally hanging out being cool.!

This week we have some awesome things happening in the life of Resonate - Tuesday connect is up and running, 7.30pm at Shan and Rays. If you are aged between 18-25ish and are looking for a place to connect with other Jesus freaks then we're the place to be!

Wednesay night Resonate Girls kicks off for the year with a coffee and dessert night at the Invercargill Christian Centre. This is going to be an awesome chance to hang out with some really cool chicks, as well as have a great munch on YUMMY food. Resonate girls runs fortnightly on a Wednesday nite so come along this week to find what we're all about!

PLus on top all that we have amazing guests Ps Clark and Ann Taylor from Brisbane speaking this weekend at the Christian Centre. These guys are legendary and are definately worth coming along to hear. Service times are Fri 7pm, Sat 7pm and Sunday 10am and 6pm - all at the Christian Centre Leet St Campus.

Anywho hope you have a fantastic and blessed 2010 and we here at Resonate look forward to catching up and hanging with you!!

Shan

Revival Weekend

Wow what an amazing weekend we just had with the amazing Roy andMelanie Fields. If you ever doubted Revival was in the air then those doubts should be well and truely gone now!!!

For those of you who aren't aware, Roy and Melanie led the worship at the Lakeland Outpouring and are a phenomenal couple who carry an incredible passion to see God move in miraculous ways transforming lives and seeing Revival break out across the globe. These are just a couple of pics from the weekend and we will have testimonies and stuff coming soone:)

Shan

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........

Reach out!

Missionary.

For me this used to conjur up images of little old people with grey hair, dressed in brown wrinkly stockings with brown knitted cardies giving a really long and incredibly boring slide show. (Crazy but in fact none of the missionaries I have ever met fitted this description - they are all awesome funky people with a fire in their belly and a passion for Jesus and the people they serve)

But lately my perspective is a little different. As you leave our church there is a sign above the door that has got my attention and started me thinking.

"You are now entering your missionfield."

Your missionfield. My missionfield. Does that mean that I am a missionary?

Now for those of you who know me, I would really hope you don't see me as the above desrciption of a missionary. (I don't have brown stockings, haven't worn a cardie since I was 12 and am reluctantly embracing the digital age.) Do you fit that description?

We are all missionaries. We are called to be salt to the world, making people thirsty for Jesus. As christians we carry something that the rest of the world needs whether it knows it or not. We don't have to go to a third world country or a diaster zone to do this. I am in no way discrediting overseas missions, just not all of us are called to serve in this way. But we are called to be missionaies in the place we find ourselves now. This may be our university, workplace, home, town or wherever.

Reaching out to those around us - it may be our family, friends, workmates, classmates, neighbours, or that random chick at the supermarket checkout. They may be broken in need of healing; lonely in need of a friend; hungry in need of a feed or lost in need of a direction. Whatever it is they are looking for, because we have Jesus, we have the answers that can satisfy them.

Matthew 28:18-20 – the great commission. Jesus basically told us to go to all the world and reach out to those around us. If you don't reach out in your world who will?

The ultimate example of a missionary is Jesus. He reached out to the misfits of society – prostitutes, murderers and thieves. (eg Woman at the well, Zaccheus in the tree, etc) Jesus quite literally was a radical – he didn’t conform to the bounds of society or focus on being seen as 'proper'. Instead he was a living example of the love of God. It says in the Bible ‘there is no greater love than to lay down ones life for another.” This doesn’t necessarily mean we have to physically die (although sometimes this can be the case) but to die to our own desires, wants, dreams or fears for the sake of another.

This could mean putting aside your own embarrassment to eat lunch with the school weirdo or instead of buying your usual latte on the way to work, put that money aside for a week and buy groceries for a hungry family.

I just want to challenge your perspective a little. Do you see yourself as a missionary? Are you reaching out to those around you, or is that up to someone else to take care of? Ask God to show you the outreach opportunities that surround and take a leap of faith and act. You never know what will happen!

(And when you do let us know what happens! We would love to hear your experiences!)