6 Years

Been living in Ibiza 6 years today, although I am presently in Dubai visiting some friends, which is why I haven't blogged in the last week.

When we moved to Ibiza it was meant to be from 3 - 5 years! So we are already a year over the mark.


We have loved it, it has been the best time of our lives. Not been completely easy but as Bill Johnson says "It's hard to speak of the price we pay when we get Him in the exchange."


Sorry just a short post, but wanted to give God the glory for sustaining us, providing for us and leading us on our journey.


Also thank you for reading this blog and sticking with us as well. It has been an interesting journey for me to have done this but I look back at old posts and it's almost like a journal. Thank you for reading it.


It's time to get this book written, I can tell you now it's going to be called "Stumbling Journey" thats how t's felt in Ibiza for us!


"alla ysalmak"

Adventure! What next?

Ok, so say you embrace the adventure, whatever it may be, you decide to step out, to grab hold of a blank piece of paper and paint a new unique masterpiece with your life!

1. In the book of Nehemiah in the bible, Nehemiah gets permission from the babylonian king to go back and rebuild the walls of Jerusalem there is a lovely little line "and so I set a time" you will have to get practical and set a time, or you will forever live on "One day i'll"


2. "God responds to movement" In the book of Joshua in the Bible the israelites are about to cross the Jordan and enter into the promised land. The priests went before them carrying the Ark of the covenant and they had to step into the Jordan (which was in flood) before the waters parted. Once they moved and stepped in God made a way.


Actually that would do for now, read Joshua and Nehemiah they will help you.

Thinking of adventure

If you're thinking of adventure, if you're in that place of wondering about stepping out and doing something a little off the grid. If right now someone gave you a blank page and said "here you go, forget what is passed, start a fresh from today, draw a new picture with your life, here's a blank piece of paper, go for it"

Here are a few tips in no particular order:

1. "If you want to walk on water you have to get out of the boat", great saying, great book by John Ortberg, read it.

2. Ask yourself this "Whats the worst that could happen?"

3. It's only pride that will stop you from trying and failing, so what if you come back 12 months later saying "it didn't work out" at least you had the guts to give it a go.

4. What could be worse is sitting around when you are little older thinking, we had the opportunity to live differently but we didn't do it.

5. He who hesitates has lost

6. Fear will always hold you back, fear of failure, fear of mistakes, fear of how you look, fear of messing your children's lives up, fear of having no retirement fund, fear will hold you back....

7. You seriously only have one life to live, better to live it than just trying to preserve it!

8. If it's challenging remember "If it was easy someone else would have done it" 


9. "Security is a superstition that only exists in the minds of men"


10. If the adventure is children, don't wait until you can afford them, you will never be able to afford them.


11. Finally remember Terah, Abrahams father he set out for the promised land but it says in Genesis 11 "But when they came to Harran, they settled there. Terah lived 205 years, and he died in Harran." don't settle and die!

Why would christians go clubbing?

I have written about this before but just feel the need to keep addressing the issue in fact I had someone say they didn't agree with christians going to clubs this week and for the first time ever they weren't from N.Ireland!!. Whilst I am a respecter of opinions I find the logic and theology behind this kind of thinking very hard to understand. So here we go again:

Why do christians go to clubs?

Here's the main reason and it's exactly the same reason as everybody else: "To have a good time, to dance, listen to great music, to hang out with friends and meet new people".

I all honesty I am tempted to just stop there, but I won't.

What other positives do I see? Well like many other clubbers most christians I know who go to clubs do so in a drug free way, I think people need reminding that we are just as capable of having a laugh as the next man and we can do so without the need for any pharmaceuticals to keep us going.

Clubs are a great place to dance get lost in music and have a bit of a worship and a good old pray. No one can hear you! and during those anthemic moments when everyone lifts their hands up you can be lifting yours up to God!!! 


I have friends who would want to put they go to clubs to worship at the top of the list, in fact they find it easier to worship God in a club than during sung worship on a Sunday morning!


Going to a club is no different than going to a gig.


"Why do we have to make something spiritual to legitimise it?" and why do we have to make only certain things spiritual and other things it's ok just to do?

We have to argue the case for clubbing but no one argues the case for watching TV?

Jesus wouldn't have gone there! 

Nonsense... This is like that old pathetic thinking that says something like if you break the speed limit Jesus gets out of the car, or if you go to the pub don't expect Jesus to go there with you!! Not quite in line with such Bibles verses as "I will never leave you or forsake you"

By attending clubs we endorse the bad that goes on there. 

I was recently at a N.Ireland football match by attending was I endorsing the sectarianism that is highly evident in a reasonable amount of the crowd? It's here I would like to make a plea for some consistency amongst the objectors! 


Does watching Sky TV mean you endorse their porn channels?


Does working for a bank mean you endorse a capitalist world view? 


Where do we draw the line?

If people see us attending clubs we could lead them astray and cause them to lose their faith.

If some young person who you are working with goes of the rails because they saw you going into a club, I would be absolutely amazed! Then I would question whether you had ever discipled them correctly in the first place. As a christian leader my job is not to teach people to stay away from the world but to teach them how to live as a christian in the world.

It doesn't look right!

I wonder if a prostitute washing Jesus's feet with her hair looked right? Or Jesus going to a tax collectors for tea looked right? People who have this kind of attitude are the sort of people who would be crying crucify him. 

Clubs are dark evil places.

No darker or evil than anywhere else! Anyway weren't we called to be light in darkness? There's probably more darkness in 50% of christians search history on their computer than there is in a club.

I could go on but the reality is that christians who object to going clubbing have arguments that are riddled with inconsistencies and attitudes that are pharisaical. 

Here's a dictionary definition of pharisaical: Hypocritically self-righteous and condemnatory.

Now thats the kind of christian I don't want to be........


Final thought: Jesus will go where we go and I am pretty sure Jesus would have loved clubbing. I can picture him now; glow stick in hand, arms raised high moving his body to some cool beats and giving it all up to God the creator who made life to be celebrated and music to be danced to.

Read the signs

I am hoping you like my flamingo pictures? On Sunday we went to the ibiza salt flats with some friends. We went through a little gate which leads to the walkway but I didn't notice that on the other side of the gate there was a sign saying that you where not allowed to travel along this path, because of nesting birds. Also the fact that there was a guy riding his bike along the salt flats also led me to believe that a nice morning walk would be fine! It was great I got loads of lovely flamingo shots, and had a generally nice time walking with friends.

Upon our return to the gate there was park warder standing there looking slightly annoyed, he pointed to the sign explained that what we had been doing was forbidden and fined us!!!

A slightly frustrating end to a great morning.

I guess you know where I am going with this? Do we read the signs? Ok I am not meaning the signs of the end of days because frankly I find that a hard one to call! When world war 1 started I guess people thought the end was nigh, the same for world war 2, the same for the gulf war etc...

The signs I am thinking about are the ones that affect you. Can you see when you are too tired? When you need to take a break? When you are being more irritable than usual? When your thought life goes a bit warped?

Do you know when to stop, when to go, when to turn right, when to go straight ahead, when to enter and when to stay outside?

Two factors: Listen to yourself and Listen to God.

The Deeper Magic

"Do not cite the Deep Magic to me, Witch. I was there when it was written."  what a great line from C.S.Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe;  reminds me of John 1 "In the beginning was the word the word was with God and the word was God". 


I also like the concept of a deeper magic, as Martin Smith of delirious once sang "I want to go deeper but I don't know how to swim". In fact you don't need to be able to swim if you want to go deeper. Just jump in and sink!


I am drawn to the word "magic" there is an element of mystery to it, the sense of the unexplained. Maybe we don't go deeper because we don't know how to swim exhibits a need for control. I'll go deeper but only if I can be in control of the depth, only if I can see the bottom, only if I can swim.


Giving yourself over to the deeper magic, to the mystical nature of God does not require the ability to swim, but the will to surrender.


I know that it's not such a catchy line for a song " I want to go deeper but I am frightened to let go and drown in God"


I read this by a guy called Richard Mouw 


C.S. Lewis's depth imagery is important for our present-day spiritual quests. Scholarly commentaries on our "postmodern condition" often make much of our fixation on the surfaces of reality. In such a context it is a good thing to be encouraged to go beyond the superficial, exploring not only the Deeper Magic, but also the other below-the-surface forces that drive our lives, even when we do not acknowledge their existence: our Deeper Hopes and our Deeper Fears-those Deeper Yearnings that we ignore only at the expense of our humanness.

Read more: of what he had to say here

Prayer for Dublin

This month 24-7 prayer in Ireland is praying for Dublin and the surrounding area, here are some of the areas we are specifically praying into:

Pray for our newly elected leaders - Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore as they begin working together as part of a coalition government.

Pray for a change in the atmosphere of the Dáil (Irish Parliament) as it reconvenes on Wednesday, 76 of 166 TDs (Members of Parliament) are new to the Dáil.


Pray against the growing number of suicides in Dublin over the past year as a result of the recession

Pray for a change in people's attitudes, pray that the Church would be bringers of hope in Dublin.

Give thanks for all the churches who are holding prayer rooms for the first time and pray that even more churches will come on board! Prayer will change this nation.

Also pray that no one gets uptight about these prayer requests! We know people and churches have been praying for years, we understand that we are part of the answer not the answer. We just want to see God touch the land.