Lost in Transit...

My Blog has now moved!

the new address is www.xanga.com/ghoward81

g.

Things that have inspired me lately:

1 All the stuff that went on the other weekend at the conferences run by my church and thameside church
2 24-7 prayer
3 the book 'red moon rising by Pete Greig
4 music by Sigur Rós

5 Christians who put everything on the line and live by faith to pursue their dreams... I've heard a number of stories recently about people who literally put everything they had on the line to pursue what they felt God was calling them to do, and seeing God miraculously provide and look after them. When I hear stuff like that I'm very challenged, as these people are putting their money (or lack of it) where their faith is and trusting God for absolutely everything, and see him come through. It really makes me think is it God that i'm putting my trust in, or is it my job, my bank balance or the way of life that I have here in southern England? The frightening question that comes into my mind is how do i begin to trust god more in my life? When I've been on missions in the past I got caught situations where i was so out of depth it was ridiculous and I had to pray my way through....a time where I got lost in pre tourist destination era Bulgaria with little money no phone no language skills and no address, springs to mind. The crazy thing was I look back on that trip and remember feeling the most alive that I ever had been before then, and came back a changed man. Living sold out for Jesus is hard and costly and scary, but adventures are never safe are they??

if any of this doesn't make sense, or if you have any questions about the whole jesus, god christianity then please send me a mail on ghoward81@hotmail.com

It's wierd this post ended completely differently to what i was intending!

quick update from the past couple of weeks

Played piano at a big conference in Reading (about 1 hour west of London). Had a lot of fun playing with full band, electric guitars, big PA system etc. we had a few mishaps on the way, including my keyboard spectacularly dying during the soundcheck. On the friday night I watched in astonishment from the stage as someone in the meeting that was being prayed for stood up out of her wheelchair, no joke, no dodgy televangelist stirring up hype or staging a healing, this was the real thing. if you have any questions about this sort of thing or God or anything like that email me at ghoward81@hotmail.com

Today I'm off to Bournemouth for Steve Hancock's (a friend from university, also was on the mission trip with him) party. I am taking a spare load of clothes as the last party he had ended up with water fights (yes in november) people throwing cornflakes and cream everywhere....i don't think it'll be that bad this time but i'm not taking any chances. I'm also in a sad way quite excited about going to the sheeshka/hookah bar as well....

I haven't posted anything deep and meaningful for a while just updates on how my life is going, perhaps living like a student for a weekend might stir some creativity and i'll start writing some deep and meaningful stuff about church again....

hope everyone who's reading this is well

g.

Highlights from this week:

1) Taking Megan and Lauren (my two neices, 3 and 1 years old respectively) to an indoor play park/maze in Bracknell this morning, what was fun was that me and my sister had to supervise the kids in the maze, which basically meant we crawled, slid and dived around the maze with the kids as well, took me right back to my childhood. It did make me realise i'm getting old though, as I looked around and realised a lot of the parents were my age...it's wierd everyone is settling down, buying houses, getting married having kids etc, and there's me more than ever up for travelling and living a random life.

2) Having a mamouth 6 hour practice session for the healing conference in Reading next week. (By the way if anyone is in that area, it's next thurs-sat at the loddon valley leisure centre 730pm) The best thing about the practice was that the musicians were up for messing about as well, so in bosh style we broke into funk, jazz, psychadelic riffs in between doing worship songs. Church music can be very musically restrictive sometimes so it's good to have a bit of fun along the way.

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!"