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.

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

Famine update

It has been interesting this last week, I have had world vision on my heart for the last few months moving to invercargill has been a good thing for this :)

An event down here for the 40hr famine that I am involved with is the 'Window of Hope'

https://secure.famine.org.nz/events_info.aspx?id=29

This is Steve Broad (a guy who was on NZ Idol) being in a shop window for 40hrs, there will be people collecting for World Vision. It has been awesome to be involved seeing people get excited about this and the willingness of people to spend an hour to two being a collector, theres even local celebs getting behind it - Tim Shadbolt (local Mayor), Netball Players, Police chiefs etc.

I am personally up to $100 for the famine now so yay, I am pretty stoked about that :) I have been having a competition with a friend (Nicola) to see who can raise the most, I'm a little behind but I don't mind.

It is good to be back involved doing stuff, I want my faith to be something that makes a difference in this world. Things like world vision are such a great way to rally a community together and to express the heart of God for people. I love it!!!