Ok, so I've been VERY SLACK

Hello to all in Blog-land (or sphere or any other necessary suffix). I've noticed that people have started having their own conversations on the comments page, so I suppose I should have my 2cents.

Dave: the link should be done after this post.
Sam: Matt 4:19, perhaps I need to go back to the teacher to learn better technique
Donnovae: Your comments are always welcome. Wow, it sounds really cool about the swimmer, and it would be interesting to hear on what you have to say on serving, rather than "helping". Maybe I'll comment more later.
KT, Abbey, Louise, Bridget, Tda and anyone else: HI

So, what's been keeping me away from the net, and my blog.

i) Tues- I got slack.

ii) Weds- Youth group. my mate, and Youth leader Tuari is a very smart man of God. He's another who knows how to serve, and help. He has lead heaps of kids to Christ, many of whom would never had otherwise heard the Gospel. ok, so I admire him a lot, but he'll probably tell me off for putting the glory on the wrong person so I'll stop there. Anyway, I heard a new definition of worship on Wednesday. "To place value on something". I guess I had never thought about it like that before. That worship is an act of doing something, but I had never consciously thought "Wow, I place value on this" -I mean, I've always ENJOYED worship and praising God, but never thought about how much it mean to NOT be allowed to worship (publicly at least).

iii) My friend Liz invited me to go to the Cinelounge-luxury cinema, with Lazy-boys, and free popcorn, and drink. She had some tickets from work, and they were about to expire. Lucky me. My friend Matt also came. Unfortunately we saw "Kill Bill"- i don't think i'll see the second one. I didn't realise how much I've become resensitised to violence- especially guns, but how quickly I became re-desensitised. However I found I definitely don't enjoy it as much now as I used to. Matt was seeing it for the second time, and really enjoyed it. Adjectives like "brilliant", and "incredibly intelligent" were used to describe it. And I guess it was, from a cinematic point of view. But in the end I don't think I enjoyed seeing the blood and guts anymore. I'm not sure whether it's been my experiences with God or over the dissecting room table, (probably both), but I definitely value the human body and spirit a lot more. Both were throughly massacred in this movie.

iv) Cell group. We watched "Transformations", a video I'd gotten for my birthday. its all about the Holy Spirit reforming communities with real gnarly crime rates and poverty, etc into united, God loving communities. it was really inspiring and pressed home the idea that we need informed prayer for God to move. Makes me feel kinda guilty, that I've been shirking prayer on certain topics, but that's another post I think.

I'm having a BBQ lunch tomorrow to mark my 21st so it's all go around here at the mo'. About 50 people coming, so it'll be quite large.

Enjoy your Sundays

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Dictionary

Whooaaaa. I feel like I've just swum a mile, actually, I've never swum a mile, so better change that to run. I've been helping my parents make a big financial decision, and it has been STRESSFUL. Been using a "decision tree" that we learnt about this year.Basically its areally good way to brainstorm options and visualise certain outcomes using the format of positive and negative outcomes for each possible decision. And it seems to have worked, but Mum still has that pale look of death about her. Your prayers for her would be appreciated (even the smallest ones)

Happy Birthday J for yesterday, I didn't know you read. :)

And in response to Sam, who I am regretting leaving out yesterday, cos now it's just doubled.

1) I didn't even know there was an adjective for fallacy. You do learn a new thing everyday.

2) I haven't given up on Jesus, nor on the Holy Spirit, the reason I feel I should comment on this is a)partly on what I've been reading at the moment (The Jesus I never knew), b) I'm morbidly fascinated with the human condition - which God incidently cured. And if you think about it, didn't all the crowds constantly draw to Jesus, until the trial? Then they all fell away.

But personally, look inside (admittedly, without God's grace) wouldn't you turn away if didn't know the ending (like the All Blacks). One of the interesting things that TJINK raised was that the Jews never new the outcome of the crucifiction, until it happened.

3)What I was sent by the devotional:

"When we preach the word to others, we are sowing the word of God into them, and we expect to have a harvest. But if we only see the seed as the words of God, and not as people, we cannot work for God. If we only care for the words we preach and if we presume that as long as we are right in our fundamental belief and pure in our biblical exegesis, we can go forth to sow, we are wrong. God's work often suffers loss because the seed in our hand is merely objective truths. These truths have not brought about a subjective change in our being yet; they have not made us sons of the kingdom yet.

When we preach the word to others, we are sowing the word of God into them, and we expect to have a harvest. But if we only see the seed as the words of God, and not as people, we cannot work for God. If we only care for the words we preach and if we
presume that as long as we are right in our fundamental belief and pure in our biblical exegesis, we can go forth to sow, we are wrong. God's work often suffers loss because the seed in our hand is merely objective truths. These truths have not brought about a subjective change in our being yet; they have not made us sons of the kingdom yet. "

www.emanna.com

This is an except of what the good people at Emanna sent me, and I posted a couple of posts ago. I thought it was cool.

Finally I have confession; I've sold out. I hate to admit it, but I've finally gone and done
it. I brought a Hillsongs album. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, Hillsongs is a big church in Australia, which produces great worship songs and has basically mass-saturation in most churches. The music is good, but the mass saturation is a bit off a turn off. But I'll admit, I do like "Hope"- it is like being at Elim again(nostalgic sob)

Better cruise,

Bing

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If only technology was as faithful as God-sigh

I tell you, it's not my fault that my blog hasn't been updated. Our net connection (with paradise, which are normally very reliable) has been acting up lately, so it has been hard to do any interwebbing at all. Oh well, do you reckon that in heaven the net would be better, or no net at all? Don't comment on this, I'm sure you've all got better things to do with your lives anyway.

Firstly, thanks Gus for picking up all my shoddy formatting- i will check out that site (1 day!!!), i've also added Gus' website to my links so you can see how much Gus is wasted on medicine. if you can understand any of it that is ;)

Next, I would reply to Sam, but am currently working offline, so I'll write about the Abster instead. Abbey is one of those people who are quite honestly diamonds. She always has such wise things to say, yet can also come out with classically silly things. Her perserverance with 12 and 1 O'clock prayer has to be honoured, because I know that without her it would never have continued beyond the first couple of meetings. She also started the Women's bible study, and while I can't comment per se', it really is something very cool, and I wish that the guys had one too. finally, she's probably the first one to say what everybody is feeling but too scared to say. I know that it's really encouraged me, and to not feel so stupid about my own issues cos I know that someone else is there feeling pretty much the same way. Finally, and most importantly, this chick has something serious going on with God, which is pretty darn fine if you ask me.
Congrats on leaving the teens Abbey, and I hope you had a great day.

So what have I been up to? I've decided that I never want an office job again. You come out feeling pretty blah, and I just spend so much time either at my desk staring at a computer screen, or on the phone, being told what you can get in a gift basket (Trust me, it's A LOT) Although, in saying that, this is an awesome opportunity to have some cool experiences, like the intranet site, reading policy and contracts, and just understanding what goes on. I am realising just how much the "adminstration" plays and how the system is fully reliant on it. It does scare me what happens if the job doesn't done and how the whole system is held upon a very simple crutch, but I'm sure this realisation is useful, or will be for something later.

Whoop England won the world cup for Rugby. Stayed up and watched it, thought that England would have lost it rather than Australia winning it. Good on Jason Robinson (born again Christian) for scoring a try and generally getting amongst it with the boys afterwards. Also go Johnny, England has another David Beckham to celebrate. He missed a few droppies, but got the one that counted.

Speaking of rugby, David (my vicar/priest/pastor) drew an interesting comparison this morning. John Mitchell, and Robbie Deans were umm crucified by the media after Saturday night, where as pre-Saturday they were being hailed as the saviours of NZ rugby. Isn't the public turn around very similar to Jesus in Jerusalem? Ok, so it is kinda cheesesy, but it does make it more real, and it did make me think how little humans have changed in the past 2000 years. I would probably call for Mitchell and Dean's heads for their perceived mistakes, so would i have called for Christ's head 2000 years ago. Most probably.

Wellington Cell. It is going to go off. Preferably like a bottle of champagne rather than a pop-gun. And it wasn't just me and Sam :), but Nicola and Kristy as well. Wow, I just came away feeling really excited by what we had discussed, and where God was leading us. But again, you'll have to be in to win. Sorry to Rach if you didn't understand the reply txt- I thought i sent the first one off, but didn't. Meh.

Maybe I'll reply to Sam tomorrow.
Better cruise, dishes are wanting to be cleared

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Out of the frying pan and into the fire
Ever had one of those days where you've done heaps but have nothing left to show for it at the end of the day. it feels really tiring, yet I can't exactly say that anything extraordinary happened. Just processed more orders, and looked at more stuff for the intranet site. And that was 8 hours of my life.

I reckon i should also clarify that prayer for self thing. I reckon its ok to pray for yourself (but not overly often.) It is not ok to pray for things like people getting saved (as an example) for your own glory- ie wouldn't it be easier if "so & so" was saved cos my relationship would be better with them etc. Or "How cool would it be if WE prayed for you and (God) healed you." I guess it's just where your focus lies, and mine hasn't always been on God. So thats why I was convicted on selfishness. It is quite hard wanting someone for someone with no benefit for yourself. (Especially, the one that says "I'm right")

Hey Bridget, would definitely be keen on the get together- are you keen on organising it next year?

Gee, I hope that Dan gets that message about Wellington cell out. It would be really cool if it would get up and running, but in saying that 'His (God's not Dan's) will and not mine. It would suck if it was just me and Sam though. Oh yeah, my reasoning for it being early was cos last year it did take awhile to get ready, and I personally can't handle late nights at the moment. Omigosh, 11pm is late at the mo' : ( Sorry if it inconvienient).

Life is getting busy again...

Interesting thing that I received today: you reap what you sow, so if you sow objective biblical truth, then you reap objective beings. its a pity that most human personality is subjective though.

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Mission Imbloggable

Wow, has that weekend just shot past, admittedly I spent most of yesterday sleeping which could explain a lot.
In reply: welcome to Bridget, Kev, Donnovae, Gus, and the regular crowd (who need no introduction).
Gus: cheers for the links, will look later (so prob end up like most of the other links you've given me this year), and definitelyget going with the guitar
Kev: book sounds interesting, I'll keep an eye out for it when next in Manna.
Bridget: Woohoo. I like it when people pass stuff, especially nurses, cos they're so going to cover my behind in future years so the more the better!
Abbey and Donnovae- how come its just the Americans who like Achey breaky heart? ;) -how do you get smileys?
Sam: meh bout the weeds.

So where have I been? Church was cool yesterday. Our new vicar is a really strong preacher, and it looks like I'll learn a lot. Also I (re)learnt an important lesson yesterday. We were praying (as you do in church) and we split into pairs to pray for each other. Went with one of the older guys-Norrie, and I asked him if he had any prayer needs. He said no, cos there were people out there who were far worse off than he was. Then he asked me, and I asked if he would pray for my summer and my relationship with my family. He stopped, and asked me how many times it was recorded that Jesus prayed for his own needs- not that many. Yes, he did go away to spend quiet times with the Father, and there was Gethesame, but not too many others that I could think of, off the top of my head. It really was a good reminder about how easy it was to be a selfish christian (paradoxical really if you think about it.) And not just a christian, but a selfish person as well. I know that we are allowed to ask for things for ourselves etc, but I wonder if we as Western Christians often focus too much on ourselves, and our wants and desires. Even things that seemed "Godly", like for peace in our relationships etc. I think that it ws good for me to hear that cos, as far as prayers go that was one of my better ones for awhile. (not that I rate my prayers or anything- but you kinda know when you're doing better.) I'm definitely more conscious of being less selfish now, which is a good thing in any person.

I won't comment on the rugby because I think enough has been said, but watching it did make me tired, and I slept most of the early afternoon. I did however get to do a lot of driving (chauffeuring Mum) which made me happy. I really am enjoying driving at the moment.

Work today was slow, but I have been given a project developing an intranet site-gulp, Gus I should have paid more attention this year. Nah, there's enough support there to see it through, and it will be a great challenge.

Achey Breaky heart is coming along slowly, its really hard to get the change in one hit. My B7 also sounds really tinny when I change. Also 'learnt' another song today- "Before you accuse me", more chords, but easier to play. I actually have no idea who it's by.

That's all for now, anybody who's in Wellington over summer would also do well to be in at Wellington train station on Thursday 20th Nov @6:30pm for the first Summer Cell '03.
Peace out

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I've forgotten how fast the weekend goes when u do nothing

Well, that's pretty much it. Slept in this morning, and just pottered around the house. Stayed up late last night playing computer games- My bro's "spiderman" game is really cool. Do you like the changes made yesterday? I haven't finished so never fear if I haven't linked sites- I'm just taking my time in this.

Been reading Phillip Yancey's "The Jesus I never knew". I've just finished a chapter on Jesus' love and how possiblely his second biggest miracle was restraining himself from just doing it all with God's power ie mass heallings, followed by choirs of angels, smoking clouds and thunder etc. Instead he did it "the hard way" where hard=God's. He also wrote about how he would have reacted if he had been in early 1st century palenstine. This made me sad, cos I probably would have been the same as him and thought of Jesus as a great teacher, but definitely not Son of God. Makes me wonder if we do often forget that Jesus is the Son of God. Not deny, and if anybody asked we'd give the right answer, but having that thought that Jesus is GOD. Familiarity and complacency are funny things aint they.

Very cool quote: "Being blessed is simultaneously the best and the worst position to be"- unknown (TJINK)

I lost my phone today. thankfully it had slipped down the back of the lazy boy.

Right, I'm now off to learn my first song on the guitar. OK so its "Achey, Breaky heart" it has 2 chords, and a basic strum, but its still my first song

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Hmmm...
Well, it's Friday. I've been working two days and I'm already glad its Friday. I really do wonder what summer is going to bring. Cool news thanks to KT (who really is very clever), and standing over Gus while he does his thing all year I've managed to get the comments going. It's scary- some of the script actually makes sense. (For those in the know I wasn't sure exactly where to paste the "haloscan" script- obviously viewing the source of my blog wasn't the way to go...)

There is some cool stuff happening in my life at the mo' though. I have a job : ). God doesn't do things half pie either, for you see I was praying about work, and asked God for a Christian colleague. Was talking to one of the team leaders today after a training session today and he asked me about what I did/was doing etc. Got on to my research for next year, and as it turns out, He has rheumatoid arthritis so we had a good talk about that. Then he asked me what else I did in my spare time- mentioned church and it said, "you're joking me". As it turns out he was at Howick Elim for about 7 years before he came down here (was involved with building the new building for you Aucklanders), and has down about 30 years of youth work etc, etc. So that was very cool, and it is nice to know that I am meant to be there. (sometimes its so easy to be disbelieving of stuff that you know).

and finally... It was beautifully sunny today, and I could enjoy it :)

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Hey, to all the cool people in blog land. Thanks for all the encouraging comments. Well, day 2 of the blog, and its going strong.-Sam can you please send me some detailed instructions for haloscan, it appears spending all year looking over Gus' shoulder didn't work. Meh, whatchu gunna do?

Started work today as a Purchasing officer. It involves using this crusty old computer ordering system which uses all the function keys and numbers to select commands. It is very slow, and I don't think that I'll ever abuse windows again. I also learnt how to use the fax machine REALLY WELL, as that's how we do our orders. Although it is very cool to be back, and to definitely not be a stranger.

Exciting news! My church has a new vicar! Apparently he's a member of the National male choir, and has been fitting in well. Should be so cool. Not that the old vicars weren't, but there was some issues between them and the congregation and God's been doing a lot of healing over the past year in the congregation.

I've also started reading "the Jesus I never knew" by Phil Yancey, as well as Billy Graham's biography. I like being on holiday : ).

Better cruise, all those still with exams, go hard and God bless.
I'm out. (hopefully comments going soon)

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Well, here it is. my first post from HQ in Upper Hutt. Great you all say, someone else to waste another 15 mins of my life. Well if you read it you must enjoy it right?

About me: 21 (today -thanks to everybody who wished me Happy Birthday=> ), western chinese ethnicity, and studying Medicine in Otago. Work at Schering Plough Animal Health, and have decided that life is better with more people and less TV. Reckon Jesus is the MAN, yet don't have any pics of him on my wall (possibly thankfully). I'm addicted to Coke, Extra Gum, Starcraft, and computer soccer- all of which are taking a break at the moment.

oh, and the title- reference to Adrian Mole, a fictional character of British origin. Apparently I have an affinty with him. Well that and Chandler (Bing, off Friends). funnily enough thats not why I'm called Bing, but because I'm Brendan Ng->BNg, geddit?

Spent the morning at the Optometrist and the doctor (whoop), missed seeing my aunt and uncle cos the doctor had to attend to possum bites and things in eyes before me. Ah well, they were dropping off a present anyway- a clock-thermometer-hydrometer combo, its very cool. I got taken to lunch by my folks amd my bro (Andrew-who has bursary English tomorrow), and also brought a guitar (and tried to learn). Can play an E, D, C, A and E maj with some confidence. Ah, the only way is up. Much to my horror, my brothers (Andrew, and Gregory who was at school during lunch) have taken up the starcraft addiction. Opps.

Better cruise, work starts at 8 -yawn

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