Do you ever wake up feeling horrible and weak? For no real reason? I suppose there are always reasons, even if you can't find them at the time...but either way it's annoying. It affects everything about your day, your outlook, your decisions and the state of your heart, unless you do something about it.

Doing something about it isn't the easiest course of action..we usually prefer to get down to some serious self pity and feeling sorry for ourselves. No?

Last nights message at church was about Fear. When we fear anything we immobilize ourselves, we climb into a box and seal it up, stopping the blessing of God's promises being poured out into our lives.

What I do know is that God tells us to not be afraid. 365 times he tells us this in His letter to us. God knows that we have this tendency to fear, to be afraid, to feel weak, inadequate and hopeless. He knows because He made you, lovingly formed you, designed you with painstaking care and pleasure. God ached all through eternity for the time when He could bring you into existence. You are His joy, His pleasure and delight, constantly on His mind, in His thoughts and treasured in His heart.

We rarely catch a glimpse of the way God feels about us. So many of us suffer from feelings of low self worth. We spend each day wondering if anyone really loves us, unsure of ourselves, struggling with feelings of insecurity. We are needy, aching for intimacy, acceptance and belonging.

If we really knew who we are in Christ and exactly how our Father feels about us, these thorns we endure would fall away in a second.

Your God is crazy about you. He died for you didn't he? We say that so often, that Christ died for us. It's easy to take anything for granted, to become used to a phrase when you hear it so often. Examine your heart, vow to never take what Christ has done for you for granted. You were bought at great cost.

Go to the cross, think of what Christ did for you. Feel the cost he paid so that you could be His. When you begin to see the price that was paid for your heart, you begin to understand the value that you have in God, what you are worth.

I know all this. It's easy to write. It's hard to apply it to my own life. I don't always feel great about myself, I struggle with all kinds of things and I need to know my worth in God. I know God is showing me..but man, why do these things take so much time! Isn't there some instant version He can whip up? I guess not.

Here's half a poem I wrote about God.

You are my faithful friend
You never leave me
You never misunderstand me and get in a mood
When I'm horrible, you understand why
You give me the space I need, you know it's not about you
You love me
You support me
You enjoy being with me
You spur me on to grow into all I can be
You're honest about my feelings but you always encourage me
You lift me with your love
You don't condemn
You don't judge
You fill my life with hope
You restore me
You died to save me
You are my God
My King and my Lord
My savior
You are my friend.

This is an amazing verse, think about it for a while.

Hebrews 10:35 and 36
"Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised."

What do you do which removes your confidence before God? Stop doing it!

I'm listening to Tim Hughes.

It's weird. I love music to bits and pieces. (I was going to type 'I *heart* music' just then. If I ever do that will someone please kill me on the spot? Please?)

Anyway...yeah, I love music. Lately though I haven't been able to decide what I want to listen to. I can usually discern my mood and find the appropriate CD, artist, band etc to pop in the CD player and..sorted.

Lately I look through my CD's and I don't settle on anything other than worship albums. I'm not one of those people who listen exclusively to Christian music. I *heart* all kinds of...darn! I love all music, Sting is the greatest, Lisa Loeb, Pink Floyd, 80's stuff, oh yeah! Linkin Park coolio...and so much more that I can't be bothered to remember before lunch....Seriously.

But it's worship. I can only take this as a sign...a little hint from my God, a prod to show me what I should be doing for Him. Maybe. Maybe I'm just being 'Super Holy' and can't bring myself to listen to anything other than praise and worship. Um, no...I think not.

I've been leading worship in Church and lately I've been feeling like I want to do this more and see where God takes it. We'll see.. I know it's important to be right with God when doing anything for Him, I don't want stuff in my life that could get in the way. None of us should right? But then we're just human. But then we've been set free! But then we know what we're like in side right? But then God is making us more like Jesus! Ah, well, I'm sure it'll all be ok in the end.

The Bull Ring was coolio. An amazing contrast of new and old, traditional and futuristic. I like it, plus we ate chicken.













Birmingham is really cool.

I got to work for 8am this morning, I was first here. When other people started to arrive they neally dropped dead with surprise that I had arrived before 9. This tells me something about my Punctuality.

Need to sort that out. Anyway..!

You know God is at work in each of our lives more than we can know. Constantly actually. Things I've prayed for a while ago, which I've forgotten, are happening, or about to happen...God never forgets. The problem is we expect God to answer our requests in our timing and when He doesn't we think He hasn't answered at all. God's timing is perfect, we are called to be patient and to wait on Him.

Too often I worry about things which I have no control over. I allow my thoughts to be occupied by situations which don't even exist! I hate spending the present worrying about the future...what's the point? What can you do about it? Nothing.

Jesus is my future, nothing happens without Him knowing about it. He's in control. Why do I worry?

God promises to be with us, He promises never to leave us or forsake us. It's about trust. If you trust God's promises then you can live without worry, there's no point. Whatever concerns you, just leave it with Him and trust that He'll handle it and get you through it. I know the practice is harder than the theory, but maybe only because we make it that way..we need to trust that God says what He means and take Him at His word.

Whatever you're going through, trust God. Tell Him all about it, then leave it with Him, be obedient, stay close to Him and you can't loose out. Your God is faithful and has promised to never leave you. Believe it!

I was going to say something completely different to that..hee hee...ah well.

I'm going to finally see the new Bullring tonight with my babygirl...so that'll be cool...and I might take the camera too...so expect pictures people!

I get so much email...like at least 40/50 emails a day..and they're pretty much ALL junk! It's DEPRESSING!!

If you're bored, if you read this and haven't ever said 'Hi' or if you also get nothing but junk email, then drop me a note and say hello..tell me about yourself.

Either that, or someone tell me how I can get shut of all this SPAM mail!

Thanks, I'm done. That feels better.

Can't wait to see my girl, we haven't seen each other for...oh, about 22 hours or something.

Tonight we're going to make our young people worship God.

It's Friday afternoon. I'm tired and sleepy.

More goodness from coquita.

Again, most of this I've always known. But I've known it more with a sense of duty, and now I am beginning to see it as an answer to my needs. It's that amazing truth about GOD: what HE requires from us also happens to be the best for us. What brings HIM glory also brings us peace. They go hand in hand.

Ephesians 2:10
For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

God has something planned that only you can do. He prepared works and ministries for you to do, before you were even born, good works which will build His kingdom and help achieve His plans and purposes.

We are often discouraged. This discouragement can come from many places, often it's from within the church. I've known for many years that the church is not a body of perfect people who will all get along in complete unity. That's God's plan for us, but in reality we are all sinners saved by grace. If we are saved by grace we must live in that same grace and practice outrageous forgiveness.

1 Peter 4:8 says that we must love one another, because love covers and multitude of sins. The bible also says that because of our love for one another the world will see God in us. What we need in church today is a high level of maturity, strong leadership, a lack of personal adenda's, people who are seeking God and are ready to follow where He leads. We also need to treat each other the way Christ has treated us. We need to love one another, we need to practice outrageous grace and forgiveness because none of us are perfect and we will at times not get on. However Christ has set us free, He's set us free from bitterness, unforgiveness and jealousy so we can love one another, forgive one another and spur each other on to run the race set before us.

If you think that you have nothing to offer then you're wrong. Christ saves each of us for a purpose, with a plan in mind for our lives. You need to find out what it is that you've been saved for. You were saved because Christ loves you and is willing that none should be lost, you were also saved to play a part in achieving God's purposes.

Find out what you can do for God and do it. What is your passion, your desire? Start doing that for God!

Another thing I think it important is to dream big. You can dream small dreams and see God fulfill them. But how big is your God? If you dream big dreams do you think He is any less able to fulfill them?

It's sometimes difficult to think big and dream big dreams and be all that God wants us to be because often we have very unrealistic views on who we are as God's people. Maybe we think God can't use us because of things we've done in the past, maybe we're not very confident, maybe we think someone else will do what God is telling us to do, or that someone else will dream big dreams for Him.

The fact of the matter is that our past was dealt with at the cross, we were bought at great cost by the one who created the universe and our future is in Him.

1 Peter 2:9 says that we are a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

Joel 3:9-11 says this:

Proclaim this among the nations:
Prepare for war!
Rouse the warriors!
Let all the fighting men draw near and attack.
Beat your plowshares into swords
and your pruning hooks into spears.
Let the weakling say,
"I am strong!"
Come quickly, all you nations from every side,
and assemble there.

Bring down your warriors, O LORD !

We're actually in a battle, a war! We spend far too much time just 'getting by' in our lives, maintaining our current position in God, or even worse fighting amongst ourselves, when we should be an army on the attack.

You are a warrior. It doesn't matter how you feel. If you feel weak, then God says 'Be Strong!'. He doesn't say pray for strength, He says BE STRONG. It's something we must do, we have to get up from our position of weakness and stand in God's strength. When we do that we are very dangerous because God can use us to achieve His mighty things for Him.

Be God's man or women. Decide that you are no longer going to 'just get by' in your Christian life, refuse to struggle along in church, refuse to be hindered and pushed down...GET UP and BE STRONG, STAND in the place that God has prepared for you and ATTACK!

If you've been fighting for a long time and you feel tired and weakened then know that the fight isn't over yet. You are still required to fight, to press on in your ministry, to seeks after God and see His purposes achieved in your life and His Kingdom.

So do it! Don't wait till later, get up and do it now! Now is the day of salvation..there's a fight going on!

Be God's kid and do what He's got for you to do.

The Bungee run.



video clip 1 - me breaking my neck (3804kb)
video clip 2 - me victorious (2920kb)

The video clips are quite large and may take a long time to download if you have a slow connection.

Coqui posted a questionnaire which was fun to read. Two of my favorite questions/answers were:

what denomination are you? Southern Baptist. I know: sad.

do you like to fish? I don't like to personally kill animals.

Both pretty funny.

Saturday was our company bbq. Every year there's something inflatable to break your neck on, this year it was a Bungee run.

It was great fun and I actually got to the end of the run. I also got whiplash, but it was still a good laugh. Someone took some pictures and a video clip or two so when I get hold of them I'll post them here.

We also went to Stourport-on-Severn where there was a bit of a festival on, with fireworks! I've never been so close to fireworks, all the left over firework bits a pieces were falling on the crowd, I don't think that's really supposed to happen. hmm?

Sunday, Natalie and I chilled and went to church, watched Mannequin and ate fried chicken.

Natalie starts work at a school today, training as a classroom assistant. Exciting stuff, can't wait to see how she's got on.

That's it for now...what did you do at the weekend?

On the way back from the Dominion prayer meeting tonight Natalie told me how a worship song has been going through her head for a while now.. part of the lyric is 'Jesus You're all I need" and how this is constantly on her mind.

Earlier I blogged about Jesus and how He needs to be our hope and future..how anything less than Jesus just isn't going to cut it.

Jesus really is all we need.

I don't want to settle for any less than God's best in my life. I don't want to be anything less than what God had in mind for me to be. I realize that I make mistakes and that I'm far from perfect, but through Christ's power working in me I can be what God wants me to be.

Part of tonight was about stepping out of your box. Realizing that God is so much bigger than we can imagine. There is nothing our God cannot do, all things are possible with Him! Why do we insist on limiting the things we let Him do in our lives?

Someone once said that no one has yet seen what God can do with one man who is totally sold out for Him. Don't you want to be that man, that women? God has an amazing perfect plan for each of us..we all have a divine destiny and we are the only ones who can stop God from achieving these things in our lives. We do that by staying in the box, the cage, our sin, our embarrassment, our anxiousness...whatever it is that keeps us locked out of God blessing.

Decide right now to KNOW that you are free in Christ. That if you believe in Him and have been saved by what Jesus has done for you then you are no longer captive to anything! Nothing can hold you anymore because Jesus has set you free! Then break free from habits, sins, attitudes, anything that boxes you in. Live in the freedom that Christ has bought you.

I don't want to be held back, I want to jump for my God, life my hands, run for Him, be a fool for my God because He has set me free and given me a hope that can never be taken from me, a future that is certain!

You're all I need
Everything I'd ever hoped for
I've found in You
Everything I'll ever need
You're all I am
Everything I've ever hoped to be
I found it all in You
And all I see
Everything I've ever searched for
I've seen in You
Everything I've dreamed
And Your Spirit leads me on
In the Grace of Jesus Christ
This hope it fills my soul
All glory to Your Name
All power to Your Name
All majesty and all honour
All glory to Your Name
Your Kingdom comes to reign
In the glory of Your Name
In the power of Your Spirit
The glory of God
All glory to Your Name

You can put your efforts and energies into all kinds of things in life. You can place your hope and future into other people hands, into your own plans and dreams but really, if you're hope and future isn't in Christ and if you don't seek Him above everything else, then you're going to be disappointed.

Right now I can see that, I wish I could always see it with this much clarity.

God's plans and His timing is always perfect.

Jesus, all for Jesus,
All I am and have and ever hope to be.
Jesus, all for Jesus,
All I am and have and ever hope to be.

All of my ambitions, hopes and plans
I surrender these into Your hands.
All of my ambitions, hopes and plans
I surrender these into Your hands.

For it's only in Your will that I am free,
For it's only in Your will that I am free,
Jesus, all for Jesus,
All I am and have and ever hope to be.

Copyright © 1990 Word Music / Adm. by Copycare.

The pros and Cons of being a lego individual.

Go and read Donna's blog. Be encouraged and encourage her.

I bring it all
Lay it at your feet
My hopes my dreams
My sin and shame

I long for more
Of your touch in my life
Your healing power
Your amazing Grace

I bow down to you my God
For you are the King of kings
Father , you've made me your child
Through the sacrifice only you could make

I'll live for you
honor you with my life
My worship to you
My sacrifice

I bow down to you my God
For you are the King of kings
Father , you've made me your child
Through the sacrifice only you could make

This weekend Natalie and I bought some fish.

I wanted to get a picture of them, but I forgot, maybe tonight I'll snap the kids for you.

We have a boy and a girl, Gordon and Cindy. Actually we're not entirely sure what sex either of the fish are but one is pretty, we called that one Cindy. Cindy is pretty chilled out, she's quiet, calm, pretty...Gordon is a maniac, he swims round the bowl at high speed and he didn't start out being much of a gentleman as he always grabs all the fish food before his missus, but it looks like he's learning some manners slowly.

So, do fish really have just an eight second memory? How do they know that? How could you prove it anyway?

Anybody got any fish facts?