Ja wateva

Had an interesting last few weeks, between leading the services at Church doing the childrens talks, (thankfully for the congregation not preaching ... much) doing the usual worship song and mission focus presentation, quite a few bicycle 'problems' flat tyres, bent hangers, slightly buckled rims not to mention running into a pedestrian this morning and needing 3 stitches on the bridge of my nose (bike is 100% though) and I'm not sure where the pedestrian went he was walking away rubbing the back of his head the last I saw him, I hope he's allright. Computers at work with failing hdd's and blown (lightning?) motherboards and network switches, corrupted pst files, the beginning of a software license evaluation, and audit of DRP and IT policies, new pbx installation to deal with too.

Hey ho it's all part of the fun, as usual the end of January birthdays in our family will probably be minimally celebrated, paying for my nose repair this morning swallowed any spare cash we might have had.
One good thing though I've somehow managed to consume a book or two that been sitting on my phone/tablet for a while and one paper book, and I'm currently working my way through John Pipers 50 Reasons Christ came to die and AW Pink's Divine covenants, and listening to a series of sermons by Kim Riddlebarger on eschatology

In all this apparent busyness some things have come to mind that I find concerning and that is the apparent lack to dedication in Christ's service that I see in my own life and of other christians around me. I say apparent because I don't know all the reasons but suspect that many of the reasons are just excuses that boil down to one serving oneself instead of God. I observe my own sinfulness and know that similar sins beset many of those around me, if I wasn't so involved in the services at Church I may have skipped some too out of pure laziness, and desiring to do the things I want to do, instead of desiring God and the good things He has for me. I'm not particularly close to the non immediate family around me, so maybe what I am about to say should be salted with that in mind, but it strikes me that all too often we fall into the track of family tradition and celebrations seeing them as more important than our service to our christian brethren, in other words we will skip church so we can have a party with friends and family who are not christians, we will be lazy all week when we should and could be working and suddenly panic on sunday night when we have to catch up on work needed for monday morning, and then skip church to do it. We indulge ourselves in sinful unhealthy addictions of many sorts and as a result become too ill or tired to serve as we should, or our sinful addictions cause illness in those around us and leading to unnecessary time and effort caring for these needs. I'm not saying that even when we don't indulge ourselves with these sinful 'pleasures' we will always be healthy, we live in a sinful and broken world, but we plan to fail when we continuously please ourselves with foolish unhealthy behaviour.  In addition we tend to spend way too much time on entertaining ourselves with activities like games, and watching unwholsome TV and a whole bunch of other things, instead of reading, meditating on, and praying through God's word and other books and media which can help us understand it. We make ourselves unprepared to defend our faith in this way, we lose out on oppurtunities because we are not confident in our understanding, or we lack knowledge. What is more is that many outside the church look in and see gluttonous, bad habited, complaining, ignorant, sometimes negative people in the church and want to have nothing to do with it.

I'm not judging anyone when I wonder how many 'holidays' Paul had while he was on his missionary journeys or chained to Roman guards, or being whipped and beaten numerous times, or how much leave did Peter have while he was feeding the sheep of Christ. Yes times have changed and we live in a different society, but I think we sometimes exaggerate the differences in order to feel less guilty about pleasing ourselves and not doing the work God has called us to, instead of witnessing on the beach, we lie on it, instead of visiting our families to share christ we visit them to revel. On the other hand it isn't any good hiding in the church and never spending time with family and friends and acquaintances sharing the good news, and being salt and light to them in our behaviour and our words. The christians of the first century turned the world on it's head, do we not have the same Holy Spirit of God in us. I think the main difference is we allow too much of us in us and not enough of Him in other words we show our weak and soft and scared selves instead of His strength, His solidness, and His power over all things..... we fail to surrender completely to Him.

If like me you find yourself described in some or all of the bad behaviour described above, allow me to beg of you as I battle with my own self, it doesn't have to stay that way, if you are a Christian you are in a process of sanctification, continually pray and ask God to change you and when (not if) He reveals the next step, take it in faith. All things work to the good for those that love the Lord. It only takes one simple decision and acting on it at a time to walk the path of righteousness, in the slogan of a famous brand of sports goods 'Just Do It'.