Gods doing something

Its has been an interesting time lately, I think God has been slowly chipping away at the hardness in my heart. Slowly working away at the walls I have put up to keep him from truly working in my life.

There has been a couple of things that have been floating around in my head.

At connect group we watched a DVD from Life 08 (a conference in Auckland that our pastors went to) it was a guy John Bevere speaking on Intimidation. He shared about how Paul wrote to Timothy about timidity AKA intimidation. This DVD really got me thinking, I knew in my spirit that this is one the things holding me back from doing what God has on my heart.

John talked about how a lot of the time we deal with the fruit of intimidation rather than looking deeper at the root. The problem with dealing with the fruit is that the fruit grows back. Deal with the root and the fruit is gone. I loved this but I came away wondering what the root was in my life. I could see the fruit but no root. I think the reason why we don't deal with the stuff in our lives is we don't know what the root is. This may be that we have blinded ourselves from it or we are truly unaware of it. Ultimately we need to let God reveal what the issue is and then submit to him working in us to bring healing. I believe this is two distinct steps. So I spent the week praying and thinking about it and on Friday night I was praying about it during the worship and a single sentence passed through my head, as soon as it was said I knew it was the root. The sentence was:

I'm not important

I realized that it was from this root that I react the way I do.

So what do the scriptures say about this? is there truth in this statement that I'm not important? here is some scriptures I found...

Jeremiah 1:5 - "I knew you before I formed you in your mother's womb. Before you were born I set you apart and appointed you as my spokesman to the world."

Isaiah 49:1 - ...The LORD called me before my birth; from within the womb he called me by name.

but then I remembered these scriptures...

Mark 9:35 - He [Jesus] sat down and called the twelve disciples over to him. Then he said, "Anyone who wants to be the first must take last place and be the servant of everyone else."

Matthew 23:11 - The greatest among you must be a servant.

Seems to be there is a balance, on one hand I am loved and known intimately by my father in heaven, he knew me in my mothers womb. Yet at the same time I am called to be a servant.

On a side note I believe that Servant Leadership is critical to following Christ. When I see a leader that is unwilling to be a servant they loose all credibility with me (this is in any context - Church, work or School) A servant is someone who puts others first and sees them as more important than themselves.

So can we realize our importance in Christ and still be a servant? I think we can. Being a servant is putting others first but not demeaning oneself.

Who has the power?

Love is a giving away of power. When we love, we give the other person the power in the relationship. They can do what they choose. They can do what they like with our love. They can reject it, they can accept it, they can step towards us in gratitude and appreciation.

Love is a giving away. When we love, we put ourselves out there, we expose ourselves, we allow ourselves to be vulnerable.

I'm reading Sex God by Rob Bell at the moment. It looks at issues relating to relationships, sexuality and God. I love the above quote. Its context is talking about the love God has shown us. this is what is so freaky about love, it is an absolute giving away of self. I think as Christians we forget that this is what God did through Jesus. I know when I am disobedient or neglectful of God I generally think that God will forgive me (which he will) and that everything is fine (which it is) but the thing I never think about is that it still breaks his heart. Like a lover who has their heart trampled on it is broken. I wonder how it would change my actions if I realized that I am breaking God heart. I mean think about that! that puts a different twist on a lot of things.

When I choose to play nintendo when I know I should be spending some time with God... it breaks his heart

When I choose to stay silent about my faith at school... it breaks his heart

When I choose to put anything above him in priority... it breaks his heart

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The Darkness sing that Love is only a feeling, I propose that Love is a choice not a feeling.

The Darkness - Love is only a feeling

Update: August 2007 to Now

Well a lot has happened since i last posted here...

Probably the biggest news is that on December 3rd I asked Cate Mears out and she said yes :) Cate and I have been together for almost three months now. I am loving getting to know Cate and the little oddities that make her who she is :)

In regards to my study I got through the year, passed all my papers with a B+ average, so i'm happy with that :) I'm on track to graduate in 2009 :) I'm now a third year student (and student rep this year!) So study is going to be exciting this year.

Over the Christmas break I worked as a Shepherd at the freezing works in Timaru. I spent the day "leading lambs to the slaughter" haha. It was hard work and long hours but it was worth it.


I am part of the community at Invercargill Christian Centre, I am loving it. It has been good to connect with people in a similar place to me and to be able to serve. Church has a young adults ministry called Resonate that is doing great things. I'm involved with running a monthly Xbox360 LAN that we have run a couple of times last year, now I think about it I need to start sorting out that for this year. For those who don't know what a LAN is ... a LAN is where we get a whole heap of Xbox's together and connect them all together, we can then play multiplayer games against each other. At the last LAN we had 16 player Halo 3. It was amazing! I'm thinking of branching to Computers aswell as Xbox's.

Well thats a brief update on me! Watch this space :D

Random Music

I was reading Cates sisters boyfriends blog (Dahvede) and he posted about setting your music player to shuffle and unashamably listing the first ten tracks that get played.

haha heres mine :)

Electro Saturday - Elemno P
Shout to The north - Martin Smith
Summer of 69 - Bryan Adams
Supermessive Black Hole - Muse
I need to be in love - The Carpenters
Mood Rings - Relient K
It is well with my soul - Audio Adrenaline with Jennifer Knapp
Love song for a saviour - Jars of Clay
Slice of Heaven - Dave Dobbyn
Fuel - Tom West

Im back!!!

Hey!

Ive been thinking about life and faith more and more lately and i think i need to ressurect this blog to express these thoughts :) So im back! haha

Watch this space :)

This is Curtis signing off...

As you can tell i have not been updating this blog for the last few months...

I have sold out and have switched to Bebo, Bebo doesn't have the freedom that Blogger does but Bebo is an easy way to keep in touch with friends.

I will be posting the odd blog post on Bebo but you will need to be added to my friends list to be able to view them.

the link is http://www.bebo.com/Curtoos if you want to view them...

Many blessings

Curtis

Love

I attended a friends wedding last weekend, I had the honour of being the best man. It was an amazing experience to see Jason and Trina commit to each other and declare their love publicly.

The wedding got me thinking about what love is and the kind of love I want. The love that Jason and Trina showed was complete, it was unashamed and it was right, there was no need to hide it.

This is the love that I want, I don't want to settle for a half-pie version of this, I've seen friends settle for sleeping with a person who they think they will be with forever then finding out that person isn't committed to them and was just looking for a good time. Jason and Trina had both waited for each other. I am willing to wait for the kind of love they have.

From left to Right - Ronnie (Groomsman), Jason (Groom), Me (Best Man)

Character

Character is not what a person will be in the future. Character is what a person is at this present time. Pressure reveals the way a person really is.

Character is not how a person acts. Character is also how a person thinks, their motives and attitudes. To change one's character one must go deeper than actions.

Character does not appear without pressure. A person's true character surfaces when the heat is on.

Character is not just what people can see. Character is what other people do not see. Works are not always the sign of a good character. Man looks at the outward appearance but God looks at the heart.

Character is not limited to having wisdom to comment on the behavior of others. Intellectually knowing how to act, think and feel consistently with Bible principles may be a far cry from actually living in harmony with those principles.

Character is not limited to relationships between Christians. How a person interacts with unbelievers also demonstrates their true character.

Character is not limited to a person's relationship with their spiritual family. It also shows in how he treats his natural family.

I read this on James Macphersons blog. I thought this is soo cool, character lasts, character shows through in the toughest of times, Character defines if you will be the hero in a story or a villain.

I've started reading Soul Cravings by Erwin McMannus, it is VERY good. It is a collection of short two-three page "entries" that can be read as daily readings. I'm enjoying it, what I have read soo far is exploring the concept of Love.

Soul Cravings

Windows of Hope result

Found out how much we raised with the Steve Broad thing!

*Drum roll please*

$5200!!!

Amazing huh?

I thought it was pretty awesome :)