Addicted to comfort

Steve left this as a comment yesterday, it deserves to be a real post. It's a quote from Graham Cray:

"Once upon a time there were people who lived in Scarcity
After many adventures, they met the Affluent Society
The two married and had lots of needs

When we live beyond scarcity, the wanting never ends
Affluenza is fatal – personally, spiritually and socially

We care how we feel, our happiness, our success, not what is true

The West identifies itself as Free – our core value

But in God’s image, Humans shrink when freedom prioritises our needs over others – Consumers rather than Citizens

As we consume, others drop deeper into Scarcity

Scripture after Scripture says Christian Growth comes through sacrifice and suffering in the cause of the Kingdom of God

Is our giving to Children in Need and Sport Relief really what Jesus meant when he said leave your stuff behind and follow me?

Can we learn to trust God for what our families genuinely need, while giving preference to those whose poverty breaks God’s heart?

My name is Steve and I am addicted to comfort and I need to be released in Jesus’s name for the sake of God’s Kingdom come....

Thank you for sharing Steve

Christian world scares me

I have just spent a month covering for Bob the Anglican Vicar of Ibiza. It has been challenging and hectic but I have really enjoyed it.

It's a hard job because it's massively pastoral you spend a lot of time meeting with elderly people and just generally looking out for people. As we all know this can be demanding, I would imaging long term you could find this frustrating as you spend most of your time with elderly christians, although I do know that Bob is fantastic at reaching out to others.

In fact thats a challenge for most people, a friend of mine has recently moved to Northern Ireland and I was speaking to him a few weeks ago and I asked him if he had met anyone who wasn't a christian yet!!! His answer was No....

Christian world can absorb us, we are guilty of creating a christian sub culture, that has it's own music, it's own authors, it's own celebrities, it's own holidays and it's own secret language.

Materialism and media in the hands of christians appear to have been succumbed too rather than resisted. We are always in danger of becoming ineffective God TV watching christians.

Honestly, God TV does anyone not just think the name in itself seems wrong?

Why are there no fat ugly worship leaders touring the world right now? Tell me if pretty boys and pretty girls don't sell records and really thats what it is all about.....

Thats why I like Godfrey Birtill, not his music just what he stands for... "No more pretty boy worship leaders"

Honestly went hill songs in London once, the light show alone could have kept a small african village in food for a year.

The church I go to in Diss, had a guy ask them "what do you do if your not Hillsong?" what they do is great but really do you honestly think there are churches out there who are stressing because they are not hill song, they should be thankful.

Christian world scares me.

I enjoyed being a vicar, I love hill songs music, I have been blessed by God TV, I read books by christian authors, I speak the secret language....

I'm conflicted, I'm scared, I want to be positive about the body of Christ I enjoy all the trappings of Chrsitian world, but I am still scared.

I have a niggle in the back of my mind that it all may just be a little bit wrong.

Romans 12. The Message

Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

A dialogue

“What are you doing?”

“I’m worshipping”

“Worshipping what?”

“I’m not sure, I think it could be God”

“God! It doesn’t look like God”

“Yeah I know, but what does God look like?”

“Well he definitely doesn’t look like that..”

“How can you be so sure? How do you know he is a he wouldn’t the fact that you refer to him as he box ‘him’ in a little?”

“Now your just playing with semantics, I’m pretty sure that that is not God”

“So you know what God looks like, you know what I should be worshipping?”

“Well I wouldn’t go that far, you’re worshipping something, it’s just not my idea of God”

“Whose idea of God should we worship?”

“Don’t you remember what they told us about God, have you forgot the stuff they taught us in school or the words they made us read in the bible? Surely they never said this was God?”

“Who are ‘they’?”

“Stop being semantic”

“I’m not! ‘they’ have told me many things and I’m not sure I believe ‘they’ anymore.”

“Okay, but I’m not convinced this is God”

“I’m not trying to convince you, I’m just worshipping”