An interesting week of ups and downs, and plenty of new music being played!!

On Monday at Growth Group, we continued on our perplexing look at Zechariah, with somewhat diminished numbers due to illness or uni/work, delving into chapter 11 which speaks of shepherds/leaders. I thought it was a really good study, cutting things right back to just looking at what was happening in the passage, how the readers at that time were to take it, and how we are to read it and apply it to our lives today.

On Tuesday morning, I got a lovely package in the mail: Trails We Blaze; the latest album by Jody Wisternoff, who is one half of Way Out West. So far I’m loving it, having had about 5 plays since it arrived. The rest of the day was tough, right from the moment I walked in the door. I didn’t get that time to settle into work, and I think that threw the rest of the day off kilter. It also didn’t help that I wasn’t able to get my lunch in until 1:30 either.
In the evening, Geoff came around for some Diablo 3 before the weekly server maintenance began at 8pm. We then headed off to Carlingford Court for some dinner at Wok-Inn-Roll and a chat.

On Wednesday afternoon Jason dropped in on the way back from somewhere out west. It was good to see him and chat as we did a few bits and pieces around The Flat. In the evening there was more Diablo 3 to be played whilst catching up on some tv that I’d missed.

On Thursday as I was working away, I decided to diversify some of the music that I was listening to, so I came across this site: 1,000 albums to listen to before you die. As I was looking through, I found a great range of albums, so it was over to Spotify to see which albums they offered on their service. I eventually came up with this playlist: 1000 Albums – A covering only the albums that I could find with the artist starting with A which is for Aaliyah, Abba, ABC, Rabih Abou-Khalil, Above The Law, Acoustic Ladyland, Adam & The Ants, Cannonball Adderley, The Adverts, Christina Aguilera, A-Ha, Air, Alice Cooper, Lily Allen, Ellen Allien, Amadou & Mariam, Tori Amos, Laurie Anderson, Aphex Twin, Aphrodite’s Child, A.R. Kane, Arcade Fire, Arctic Monkeys, Louis Armstong, The Avalanches, Kevin Ayers, & Aztec Camera….

Friday, as always, ramped up in terms of work, and I was glad to see 5pm come around. This week at touch, I got to give my new boots a run, they were pretty good, though I probably need to wear some slightly thicker socks with them. I didn’t manage to score any tries this week, blowing a couple of opportunities, and being robbed of a great sprint down the sideline when someone called touch..
SALT was a great test of patience for me, with the front end requiring tech things done for all sections of the night, and a fair amount of chopping and changing. In addition to that, I wasn’t able to get in and out of the tech desk easily with people gathering around there. I just had to walk away from it all and breathe, but I do wonder if I need to get over my non-confrontationalism and just say something. I do find it hard though, because when I do get to that point of speaking, people either think that I’m angry with them, or they don’t appear to listen and take action…

First thing on Saturday morning I headed over to the Everett’s place for the monthly worker men’s breakfast as we continue to work through the book Men of God, this month’s chapter being on sex, written by Tim Chester. It’s a bit of a taboo topic in our Christian community of graceat6, but that shouldn’t be the case. The chapter talked a lot about the relationship, union and service of sex, over and above the physical, which I think is the focus that we need to have in the church. It also addresses masturbation, pornography and homosexuality and gives some good tips on those, giving reasons and encouragements to not delve into them. I really liked the way in which he alliterated the problems with pornography’s promises and the counter we have with faith in God:

  • Porn promises refuge, we have faith in God’s greatness
  • Porn promises respect, we have faith in God’s glory
  • Porn promises reward, we have faith in God’s goodness
  • Porn promises revenge, we have faith in God’s grace

In the evening I ventured home to my folks place to have dinner with them for my sister’s birthday. There was plenty of tasty tasty food to be had, including pigeon, and fried noodles with lobster tail.

This morning as Nic and I met, we had to decide on what book of the bible to read next, having finished Hebrews last week. We decided that as we are going through Zechariah in growth group, and that it’s a hard book to understand, that we’d read a chapter and do some pre-work. So we read chapter 12 and nutted out some things from there. There’s some great war language in there, speaking of how the nations will siege Jerusalem and that God would use it at His cup – meaning wrath in apocalyptic language. The second half of the chapter speaks of mourning over the pierced one, one whom the people themselves pierce. It was very hard to work out that section, as it is very easy to jump straight to Jesus, but we have to remember that we need to read the bible in it’s immediate context as well as as a whole book. In the end, we could only work out that the pierced one is God, but nothing much more than that. I guess we’ll have to wait until group to see if there’s any more light shed.
Tonight at graceat6 we had an evangelistic service where James Davidson spoke from Luke 12:54-13:9 on Understanding the Time.
There were four main points to his talk, each with an application for us today:

  • Understand the time you’re living in

    • We need to understand that we are living in the last days, those before judgement

  • Settle your debt with God, before it’s too late

    • We have a massive debt to God, which we must settle, and the only way to have that debt settled is to trust in Jesus and the saving work that He has done on the cross.

  • Turn to God or perish

    • Each day that we have on Earth is an act of God’s mercy, if we keep pushing Him away, we will eventually face judgement

  • God’s patience will run out, so turn to Him and produce good fruit

    • We mustn’t presume on God’s patience as just to live the way that we are, rather we are to continue to change and work for Him, producing good fruit.

His summary of all this is that there is something important about the times we live in, those of the last days. Now is the time of God’s patience, it’s time to settle with God.

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