"It's a Revolution Baby!"

Hi everyone,

I recently read a book by George Barna entitles ‘Revolution’. What an amazing book considering Barna’s history – from statistician writing books about church growth, to statistician writing a book about a movement that his statistics have missed – a book about a trend of Christians who have abandoned the church to seek a true spiritual walk – he calls this the revolution – a word that he himself sees as being overused and watered down over the last few years. Anyway the book is an interesting read although quite short and probably overpriced… anyway at the end of the book he writes “The Affirmation of a Revolutionary” which I found quite inspiring, so here it is:

I am a Revolutionary in the service of God Almighty. My life is not my own; I exist as a free person but have voluntarily become a slave to God. My role on earth is to live as a Revolutionary, committed to love, holiness, and advancing God’s Kingdom. My life is not about me and my natural desires; it is all about knowing, loving, and serving God with all my heart, mind, strength, and soul. Therefore, I acknowledge the following:

• I am a sinner, broken by my disobedience but restored by Jesus Christ in order to participate in good works that please God. I am not perfect; but Jesus Christ makes me righteous in God’s eyes, and the Holy Spirit leads me toward greater holiness.
  God created me for His purpose. My desire as a Revolutionary is to fulfill those ends, and those ends alone. When I get out of bed each day, I do so for one purpose: to love, obey, and serve God and His people.
• Every breath I take is a declaration of war against Satan and a commitment to opposing him.
• God does not need me to fight, but He invites me to allow Him to fight through me. It is my privilege to serve Him in that manner. I anticipate and will gladly endure various hardships as I serve God; for this is the price of participation in winning the spiritual war.
• I do not need to save the world; Jesus Christ has already done that. I cannot transform the world, but I can allow God to use me to transform some part of it.
• My commitment to the Revolution of faith is sealed by my complete surrender to God’s ways and His will. I will gratefully do what He asks of me simply because He loves me enough to ask. I gain my security, success, and significance through my surrender to Him.
• I am not called to attend or join a church, I am called to be the Church.
• Worship is not an event I attend or process I observe; it is the lifestyle I lead.
• I do not give away 10 percent of my resources. I surrender 100 percent.
• God has given me natural abilities and supernatural abilities, all intended to advance His Kingdom. I will deploy those abilities for that purpose.
• The proof of my status as a Revolutionary is the love I show to God and people.
• There is strength in relationships; I am bound at a heart and soul level to other Revolutionaries, and I will bless believers whenever I have the chance.
• To achieve victory in the spiritual war in which we are immersed, there is nothing I must accomplish; I must simply follow Christ with everything I have.
• There is no greater calling than to know and serve God.
• The world is desperately seeking meaning and purpose. I will respond to that need with the Good News and meaningful service.
• Absolute moral and spiritual truth exists, is knowable, and is intended for my life; it is accessible through the Bible.
• I want nothing more than to hear God say to me, “Well done, My good and faithful servant.”

Thank You, Lord God, for loving me, for saving me, for refining me, for blessing me, and for including me in the work of Your Kingdom. My life is Yours to use as You please. I Love you.

Homesick for the future!?!

It was my mothers 60th birthday last Thursday, and to celebrate, we headed out to a Thai restaurant in Blackburn South. What an experience! – the smells, the tastes, they brought us back to Thailand.

One of the Waitresses was actually on holidays from Thailand and heard that we had just come back from there – teaching English. Not surprisingly she assumed straight away that we were Christians. We had a little bit of a conversation with her, and had fun for the rest of the night.

The amazing thing was that both Naomi and I were struck with this sense of – um – what could only be described as homesickness – not that we can call Thailand our home or anything – we only spent 3 weeks there – but our hearts truly are already there – and God willing, in a year and a half we will be there…

A whole year and a half – I am really feeling impatient, but then I guess patience is meant to be a character trait of a follower of Jesus. And who knows what the Lord has in store for us between now and then – for all I know Thailand isn’t even in God’s plans for us…

Pray for us – that the Lord will be with us, we are still searching for a rental property in Noble Park, the struggle is mainly due to not many houses being available in the smallish geographic area we have set ourselves. We have not had many houses that we could apply for in the time that we have been looking – but we continue to look – next weekend there are hopefully another handful of likely candidates, but we will see.

By Their Lemons shall you know them…

3 years ago you probably would not have found me talking about symbolism and things like that, but then 3 years ago you would not have found me talking about many spiritual things at all.

Spiritually, I think I was almost dead at that time, having gone through an eight year desert experience after Bible College & struggling with the mega church mentality where I worshiped. I was at the point where I nearly turned my back on the whole Christianity thing…

At the same time I did some pruning under the expert guidance of Don Burke; we had a dismal lemon tree out the back, that was diseased, and essentially growing no fruit. One Saturday Night, Don said the only way to deal with this problem was to ruthlessly cut back the lemon tree, so much so that only the trunk and major branches were still intact… remove all signs of life from the tree and just let it do its thing…

So we did.

For the next year it looked like someone had stuck a stick in the dirt, as our tree sat there to all the world dead…

Finally, miraculously, some shoots started to appear…

& the kids hacked them off with a stick …

But the lemon tree was not deterred, and a year later the shoots started to grow again… until it had lush foliage… A few months ago we noticed some flowers and finally little green fruit.

Today it is covered in bright yellow lemons, & we now get to enjoy the sweet lemony goodness of the fruit.

Ok, so maybe the whole spiritual fruit analogy thing does not work well with lemons – maybe if it was apples or oranges the story could have worked a lot better, but then the story would not have been true – however it is interesting how much of a symbol the lemon tree has been to Naomi and myself of our spiritual journey over the last 3 years. At the point in our life where we are ready to move on to follow Gods call, our lemon tree is as healthy and fruitful as it has ever been.

I know that when Jesus talked about fruit, he was talking about outward signs of a true spirituality, & I don’t know, maybe I have those… I guess that’s not up to me to decide.

However, I feel the fruit in my own life, the result of His love and patience, it is not the result of anything I did, I was near dead & he pruned me back… to the world I looked like a dry stick, but his tough love and nurture have seen new life spring up in me. There have been things that have hacked off this new life – attacks and trials, but he has persisted with me… And that is why I must follow where he leads, I owe him everything, & I thank him for allowing me to be used by him.

Ironically, when we move out, my parents are planning on doing an extension that will result in the death of our tree, but we will not let that affect my little analogy.

Peter

It's not as easy as it seems

We just found out that we didn't get the unit we applied for, and here I was thinking we were a normal respectable family, lots of stability, extremely reliable..........why wouldn't we get the first place we applied for??? There's nothing wrong with us!!!!!

Getting a big fat no, put me in a position of having to question my worthyness as a person, I feel pretty worthy most of the time. But the more I have been thinking and praying about it, the more I have come to see that God doesn't want us to be worthy on our own merit, our worthyness should come through him.

One other thing struck me too, here we are saying we want to live in solidarity with the people on the fringes and those struggling with lifes ups and downs - well I bet they don't get the first place they apply for either...........infact, I know it is really hard for some of these people to find a place to live. And here I am expecting it to be easy for me because I'm me!!!!!!!
Thanks God for bursting my bubble again.......and again........and again,

I know this is something I need to trust God in, he has called us to Noble park, he has been with us every step of the way with this journey, and it's time for me to let go of my need to control and plan it all and let God in.

Naomi