Lost in Transit...

The following extract is from Pete Greigs book Red moon rising. I can't tell you how much I get inspired and stirred up when I read more and more from it. If you haven't read this book yet, read it!

The vision is JESUS – obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus.

The vision is an army of young people.

You see bones? I see an army. And they are FREE from materialism.

They laugh at 9-5 little prisons.
They could eat caviar on Monday and crusts on Tuesday.
They wouldn't even notice.
They know the meaning of the Matrix, the way the west was won.
They are mobile like the wind, they belong to the nations. They need no passport.. People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence.
They are free yet they are slaves of the hurting and dirty and dying.
What is the vision ?
The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes. It makes children laugh and adults angry. It gave up the game of minimum integrity long ago to reach for the stars. It scorns the good and strains for the best. It is dangerously pure.

Light flickers from every secret motive, every private conversation.
It loves people away from their suicide leaps, their Satan games.
This is an army that will lay down its life for the cause.
A million times a day its soldiers

choose to loose
that they might one day win
the great 'Well done' of faithful sons and daughters.

Such heroes are as radical on Monday morning as Sunday night. They don't need fame from names. Instead they grin quietly upwards and hear the crowds chanting again and again: "COME ON!"

And this is the sound of the underground
The whisper of history in the making
Foundations shaking
Revolutionaries dreaming once again
Mystery is scheming in whispers
Conspiracy is breathing…
This is the sound of the underground

And the army is discipl(in)ed.

Young people who beat their bodies into submission.

Every soldier would take a bullet for his comrade at arms.
The tattoo on their back boasts "for me to live is Christ and to die is gain".

Sacrifice fuels the fire of victory in their upward eyes. Winners. Martyrs. Who can stop them ?
Can hormones hold them back?
Can failure succeed? Can fear scare them or death kill them ?

And the generation prays

like a dying man
with groans beyond talking,
with warrior cries, sulphuric tears and
with great barrow loads of laughter!
Waiting. Watching: 24 – 7 – 365.

Whatever it takes they will give: Breaking the rules. Shaking mediocrity from its cosy little hide. Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs, laughing at labels, fasting essentials. The advertisers cannot mould them. Hollywood cannot hold them. Peer-pressure is powerless to shake their resolve at late night parties before the cockerel cries.

They are incredibly cool, dangerously attractive

inside.

On the outside? They hardly care. They wear clothes like costumes to communicate and celebrate but never to hide.
Would they surrender their image or their popularity?
They would lay down their very lives - swap seats with the man on death row - guilty as hell. A throne for an electric chair.

With blood and sweat and many tears, with sleepless nights and fruitless days,

they pray as if it all depends on God and live as if it all depends on them.

Their DNA chooses JESUS. (He breathes out, they breathe in.)
Their subconscious sings. They had a blood transfusion with Jesus.
Their words make demons scream in shopping centres.
Don't you hear them coming?
Herald the weirdo's! Summon the losers and the freaks. Here come the frightened and forgotten with fire in their eyes. They walk tall and trees applaud, skyscrapers bow, mountains are dwarfed by these children of another dimension. Their prayers summon the hounds of heaven and invoke the ancient dream of Eden.

And this vision will be. It will come to pass; it will come easily; it will come soon.
How do I know? Because this is the longing of creation itself, the groaning of the Spirit, the very dream of God. My tomorrow is his today. My distant hope is his 3D. And my feeble, whispered, faithless prayer invokes a thunderous, resounding, bone-shaking great 'Amen!' from countless angels, from hero's of the faith, from Christ himself. And he is the original dreamer, the ultimate winner.

well this is a wierd post. I'm writing from a pub in dublin airport. I've been on a business trip this week getting a big customer get their customer service computer system running. When I was younger I always used to see business people at the airport in suits with their laptops sitting, eating and drinking on their own andsaying to myself that i'd never become one of them, and yet here I am. I still feel very out of place walking around in a suit and tie and my laptop and staying in business hotels and eating in respectable restaurants and being 'professional'...very wierd. One thing cracked me up no end today was I saw in big letters 'TPS' in a diagram of the wall of someone's desk which undoubtedly indicated that the customer actually has TPS reports, it took me right back to the film 'office space', with PC loadletter and 'What's happening...." and those wonderful TPS reports. (note if you haven't seen that film..go watch it now, and you'll understand this post a lot better!), it's kinda a running joke between some of my friends and I. Perhaps i'm easily entertained, but i couldn't take what the guy was saying serious after that, definately made the last few hours of work much better.

Well it's been a long week, haven't really done much, although i managed to escape to temple bar in dublin last night which was pretty cool.

anyway i better stop here before i miss my flight back to london and inadvertently spend a weekend in ireland, which wouldn't be a bad thing but...nevermind..

g.

update:

highlights from last week:

1 Bosh did our first gig since august, it went surprisingly well considering we hadn't played togther in a while, it was good though to have some fun and rock out and to be worshipping at the same time.

2 A few of us made a road trip to Hillsongs london last night. We drove in convoy and I didn't know the way there completely which wasn't the best start, on the way home I took several wrong turns and somehow ended up in hyde park instead of the m4. I also had a minor heart attack coming within inches of running down a huge deer ( a couple of years ago i actually did hit a deer at 70mph which wasn't too pleasant), having said that it was good fun to simply hang out with friends in a meeting and in the restaurant afterwards. So often people think 'church' is the meetings, but i'm beginning to get the picture that it's a lot more about relationships, people united in their identity in christ living their lives out together. I would actually argue that sitting in a thai restaurant talking about God is church as well....contreversial maybe....

3 Being blown away by 1 John 3 verse 1 "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!"

Well I've been back from the US for exactly a week now, although strangely it feels longer. Had the usual weekly activities, working, getting tired, doing cell group, going to the gym, drinking caffeine, then this weekend I went to Bournemouth to hang out with my band and friends from university, and had some random moments. One in particular was Dave Griff (the lead singer from my band bosh) invited us to see him play bongos for a pub gig. So a few of us pitched up to the pub, only that it wasn't a gig it was actually someone's private birthday party, so about 10 of us inadvertently gate crashed the party and got not so nice looks from the people who's party it was whilst we sat in the corner and ate their food. Was quite a good gig though.

more to come....

Well I'm writing from my parents house in Wokingham, I arrived about 6-7 hours ago and haven't really slept for about 26 hours. Since the last post I did a night out on the town college station style with a load of Jay's friends which went on way into the morning, then friday afternoon I woke up and drove to Austin with jay and one of his friends in Jeff's truck (the one that i had driven psuedo legally), met up with jeff who had flown in from el paso, and did a night out on the town Austin TX style. Austin is definately a lot different to the rest of Texas that i've seen, it's a cool place. So the saturday Jeff got pulled over by the cops for 'apparently' not inidicating whilst changing lanes, he also got a ticking off for having out of date licence plates, what was wierd was the cop seemed a lot more interested to find out whether Jeff was a student on the way to see Texas play in the college football finals, after getting a warning we saw about 7-8 cops in as many minutes pulling people over....So after experiencing the joys of US traffic cops we went back to dallas, and i reluctantly got on flight AA50 armed with a ton of CD's and the experiences of a random week including shooting guns, flaming yeager bombs, taco bell, and thursday night in college station!

until next time, which is going to be a trip to Prague for new years....

Very random stuff happened last night. I went to a bible study run by the IHOP here in College station, and got prayed for by some of the guys. What was crazy is that people who had never met me before started telling me stuff about me and my gifts, callings etc that was 100% spot on and confirmed a lot of stuff that God's been doing in me lately, i went away very encouraged. I've just stumbled out of bed, just been handed a coffee, i'm also eating cereal out of a huge cooking dish and a teaspoon as there wasn't any clean stuff left, such a student thing but feels strangely normal. talking of strange things on the wall of the kitchen is a bit of toilet paper with some writing and a verse, one of the guys here prophesied whilst asleep over on the guys he was sharing the room, another guy who was awake heard it and wrote it down on toilet paper as that was the nearest thing to hand...very random.

more to come later....

Well I made it to College station in one peice. For part of the journey this morning I drove a truck with out of date licence plates, the owner somewhere in new mexico, no insurance documentation in the dashboard and little clue whether driving a private vehicle with a british driving licence was illegal and covered by insurance as the insurance support person we spoke to had probably never had a request for a englishman to drive a truck in texas and was somewhat flummoxed. So after praying my way through the journey, surviving a minor heart attack when a traffic cop told me off for parking illegally at starbucks (ie I was expecting to produce drivers licence, insurance stuff etc) we finally ended up here. It's pretty hot, probably somewhere near 100 degrees (38 celcius), lots of students around and i'm sitting in student hang out come coffee shop drinking some very good coffee at the moment. Now i'm deep into middle america i feel farther away from home which strangely to me is a good thing, i made the stupid mistake yesterday of opening a work related email which unfortunately was a stroppy email by the HR manager about me missing a work course, which at the time suddenly propelled me back into the pressures of my job and stressed me out a bit, so if there's one thing i've learnt, don't touch any work email account whilst on holiday! Still the experience of driving to college station this morning took my mind off it. I think one thing that i've got out from my trip so far is to for the most part i haven't beeen a traditional to tourist, to be in random situations rather than wandering round some dusty museum or going on an open bus tour of the city's historic features and going back to a spotless hotel for an a la carte dinner. I'm beginning to discover that there's something a lot more real and exciting by being (sometimes accidently) in situations where everyhting doesn't fit into place and there is a healthy measure of unpredictablity in the mix.

anyway for some reason this has taken ages to write so i'll stop here, i'll blog more tomorrow probably, hope everyones doing well,

g.

days 2+3 in Dallas...

Well I thought i better update the past couple of days: Well In the past couple of days i've done some shopping to take advantage of cheap US prices, brought several CD's, brought a load of clothes etc. We also went to an expensive steak house with one of Jeff's friends and had the most amazing steak i've ever had. I was going to bungee jump tonight but unfortunately it was closed...doh. Tomorrow me and Jay are going down to college station for a bit, for logistical reasons i'm having to drive Jeff's truck there as he's meeting us after flying into Austin on friday night after his 3 day busienss trip in el paso. I'm slightly worried as we're not completely sure i'm ok insurance and legally wise to drive the truck on an english licence, so we're praying i don't get pulled over by the police and get in trouble, the car insurance company were a bit vague about everything. Seriously I'm sure i'll be ok, it will be fun driving a 5.7 litre engine as I come from a country where a 2 litre engine is considered big. So the next couple of days i'm in college station which is a student city, then going to Austin on friday night, then flying home, this trip is going way too quick. Already i'm planning my next trip, possibly prague for new years with some of the guy from here in Dallas.

Anyway it's late and we're expecting to get a take out pizza to arrive soon.

g.

Day 1+2 In Dallas

Well I'm now more or less adjusted to US time, yesterday afternoon/evening was a slog to stay awake, I had to resort on a quadruple espresso from starbucks which kept me going til about 11, i did nearly 24 hours awake and on the go. So after having a lesuirely morning to recover from yesterday we went to a Texas Rangers baseball game, I drove jeff's 5.7 litre truck for a bit, then we went to the shooting range! So for the first time in my life I used a shotgun and to surprisingly good success, it was definately a very surreal experience, even more surreal driving around with a shotgun casually sitting on the front seat of the truck, and seeing random people walking around the parking areas lesuirely carrying rifles, shotguns and handguns. So this evening I had some traditional tex mex food, and soon i'm out on the town.

More random stuff to come this week, possibly some bungee jumping and who knows what else. Hope everyone is doing well back home, just to rub it in it's been 32 degrees both days here...

anyway i'm off out, until next time

g.

well I've arrived. Had a ridiculously early start this morning followed by a dull 10 hour flight next to a guy who refused to make any sort of conversation, my bags got searched both ends at customs whilst I observed slightly dazed and generally have been walking around like a zombie, but am happy to be back in the US. Jeff pitched up the Dallas aiport in his 5.7 litre truck playing the theme tune to team america full volume....heck yeah, if you've seen that movie you'll know what i mean. So far this afternoon i've sampled the delights of taco bell and american beer, i guess i'll be sampling some more tonight before i eventually get tired and fall asleep. So far I know this trip i'm going to a baseball game, going to college station for a couple of days, going to austin which apparently is a crazy city. It's wierd as soon as i got off the plane i became immediately aware that i stand out being an englishman, people give me strange looks when i say 'cheers mate', but i'm sure i'll get used to it.

Anyway there's more to come and hopefully some photos, i'm going to go back to watching college football on jeff's 62 inch tv, yes 62 inches...

g.