Jesus Loves Essex

I am still amazed at how our Jesus loves Ibiza bibles are received. People love them not only the design but the accessibility of the Message Version.

We dropped a drunk guy the other night and his friend stayed up and watched over him to make sure he was ok. Whilst he sat watching over his drunk friend he read the bible our team had given him.

He saw the team last night and quoted the beatitudes to them, because that was what he had read and it had really stuck in his mind. Now I don't know about you but it always blows me away that someone on holiday could emerge from a messy situation of looking after his drunk friend on a lads drinking holiday and come away having learnt the beatitudes!!!

I would still love to see this kind of thing happen in the UK, I think the bible is a powerful book, the word of God we just have to develop a better delivery and presentation system.

I want to do a "Jesus Loves Essex" version, because it's so much in the media and not all the press is positive wouldn't is be good to pop something like that into the hands of essex people. We could distribute it at Lakeside, a large shopping mall in Essex.

I used to live in Essex, for my overseas readers who don't know much about it check out this link Essex also Essex. Essex is personified in a UK Tv programme called The Only Way is Essex , british Tv's answer to The Hills or Jersey Shores.

I spent 13 years of my life in Essex! It would be great to get the bibles.

Light

In the Beginning was the Word and the Word was with God

God looked down on man and the broken state of humanity and enacted the plan, his heart was for his creation, his heart burst for his creation, he wanted to walk once again in relationship with humanity and he sent forth light, the light of the world, expressing the very heart of God.

The light shone in darkness, it pulsed with his heart beat, Jesus shone, he emanated light, he moved amongst the darkness and shone wherever He was. The Son of God, light bearing incarnational representative of God, lights of lights.

The darkness responded badly to the light, rejecting it. They tried to put the light out by killing the Son, but little did they know that at the moment they thought the light was being extinguished was the moment the light would be truly revealed and it's mission accomplished.

The light did not die, it rose victorious, it shone, salvation was revealed and a great light was seen by all men. That light rained down on others and they where filled with the same spirit as the light.

The challenge is now that we the light bearers will shine, shine in the darkness, transform the world fill it with bright God colours, revealing the glory of the only begotten Son who leads to relationship with the light.

You're here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We're going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don't think I'm going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I'm putting you on a light stand. Now that I've put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you'll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.

Massage

One of the things we have been doing this year is offering a lot of the dancers here a chance to get a free massage.

Every Wednesday our prayer room becomes a tranquil massage room and dancers from the clubs and bars come for a moments peace from the hustle and bustle of everyday life to sit in our prayer room and get some time to de-stress. Sara who is part of our community here had a great day on Wednesday doing this, we get about 8 girls dropping in every week for this.

In fact next year I keep wondering if we should have a dancer chaplain, some who goes into the various lap dancing bars and just befriends and cares for the girls as a specific ministry. A strip club chaplain.

We are already doing it this year but just wondering about stepping it up for next year.

One of the wonderful things about next year is the Abby who will be taking over from Tracy and I with her husband is a trained masseuse. In fact I would like more of our summer long girls to get little massage qualifications.

It's a great way to reach out and a great way to connect with people.

You lay on hands and whilst you are massaging you can pray for the person. Every body needs a little human touch.

Drowning

Well got back from holiday on Monday and was out on the streets last night.

 It was all going very peacefully until Louise and I spotted some splashing near some boats in the harbour. We walked over and realised it was a guy!!! he was thrashing about and in a bit of trouble. I am not a strong swimmer but as we watched a really great spanish guy jumped in and pulled him to the edge and we helped drag him out. Whilst we all thanked the Spanish guy, the drugged up british guy that we had just pulled from the water jumped back in. I ran up and managed to drag him out but just as he was climbing out he slipped and fell back in.

This time it got worse, he was on ecstasy and enjoying the water but kept going under, we were shouting at him and trying to get him to come close. He then went under for what seemed like an age and at that point I thought we were about to see a guy drown. So although I am not a good swimmer I started to give my stuff to louise and was about to jump in when along came spanish guy again he leapt straight in. I will be honest and say I was relieved, he got him to the side I reached in under the water and pulled the guy up by his hair and then with the help of a scottish guy who was just passing by we dragged him fully out. We had to drag him up the side of the harbour but at that point we were more concerned that he didn't drown than the fact he suffered bad grazing from being dragged over rough concrete.

We held him this time, it was easy he was out of breath and just lay panting and bleeding on the floor. We called the police because someone needed to restrain this guy until the drugs wore off or he was going to drown. The police came, they were brilliant we waited with them until an ambulance came and then the guy was taken to hospital, to sleep off the effects of the drugs. It ended well.

I was disturbed, he could have drowned, the timing was great that we happened to be there, but more importantly that the strong swimming spanish guy happened to notice us!

I was also deeply impressed by how local spanish helped me on the phone, how the scottish guy stuck around, how the police where so patient, I think by the end of the incident about 12 people all contributed to the situation which eventually got him to safety.

Humans are good, humanity is beautiful and people generally look out for people.

It was good to be back

Holiday

It's been an incredibly busy and fulfilling summer but this has come at the cost of my blog being somewhat neglected. I am about to neglect it further as we as a family gone on a two week holiday to the UK.

It's hard to put into words what has been happening here but it has been very good. We are on team 4 and they are from the USA, Ireland and England, all girls which is interesting!!


The weather has been unbelievably hot yesterday 36 degrees with close to 90% humidity, so I am seriously looking forward to going back to the UK for some cloud cover.


Both our boys are ill, which is a bummer, so we are praying that they get better quickly so that they can enjoy the break.


Last night we had over 50 people in attendance at our service 15 of which where either local spanish or local year round residents, this is good and we are loving the fact that this is growing. I'm enjoying preaching nearly every week which is probably why I am not blogging as much. I have to direct my mental energy towards communicating well on Sundays!


Anyway, see you all when I get back, hopefully refreshed and up for a whole new season of blogging.