A huge thank you to all those who supported our fundraising BBQ the other week. Nearly £2,000 was raised for the Romania Youth Camp which will go a long way to ensuring that teh 700-800 young people that attend will have a great time.

This year the youth camp is being held on our very own campsite so you can imagine the team in Romania have been extremely busy erecting marquees and building showers and toilets. It is an exciting time for us as we see massive expansion in our future both at home and abroad.

Delirious have been one of the most important and influential Christian bands since I became a Christian back in the late 90’s. Sadly they have decided to fulfil their outstanding commitments into next year and then call it a day. Even if you are not a fan it is hard not to see the impact they have had on the worship culture and style of many churches including ours.

I first saw them in a church in Leigh and last saw them at Alton Towers in 2007 (their matching white suits made my eyes burn). They were always amazingly good live even if people did feel the need to do the ‘Jesus’ chant during the quiet bits. Stu G sometimes wore a kilt but it was better when he didn’t!

Here is a youtube tribute with some of their best songs:

Rain Down

Paint This Town Red

I’m Not Ashamed (which even now is giving me goosebumps)

I really wanted to include Hang on to You but the only youtube video I could find had bad audio and weird people. Check it out if you are feeling brave -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHq0LSrwRaw

Today Petra and I celebrate our 13 years ‘courting’ anniversary. Tomorrow will actually be our 9 year wedding anniversary with the gift of pottery being traditional. If you are interested in buying us a present I we would quite like a pottery flat screen TV or a pottery Wii. Whilst sitting here wondering where 9 years of my life went (I seem to have blinked and missed it) I was reminded that the Bible often describes the relationship between Christians and Jesus as being like a marraige. I find it interesting that the Bible uses the imagery of marriage to describe the close bond of intimacy that God wants to exist between us and Him.

If I want to avoid spending my life sleeping on the couch there are certain things within my marraige that I must work at. I must keep promises, help out around the house and spend time with my wife. But perhaps the biggest factor to the success of a marraige is faithfulness. In fact I expect my wife to remain faithful to me and she expects me to do the same. I’m sure that God wants me to remain 100% faithful to Him but even when I don’t He incredibly remains faithful to me.

When I mess about “behind God’s back” with petulant sins I am glad that He never turns away from me. He never gives up on me but continues to love me. The sacrifice of Jesus on the cross is not removed from me but impossibly when I am at my most unfaithful to Him His faithfullness to me is shown even more powerfully.

As the average 6ft 3 guy who can just about cope with 2 hours shopping around the Trafford Centre and an office full of gossipy women I very rarely lose my temper. Compared to your average guy I think i do quite well only losing my temper on average about 12 times a day. Haha ok not that much, in fact, nowhere near that much. I tend to often get into situations like everyone else where I should/could lose my temper for example shout back at my boss who has just told me off, be nasty to a smelly kid who has just offended me or flip when a friend has just let me down. There are the times where the repeat offender does this and I have had enough so I do flip, but I always regret it. So the majority of the time I overlook the situation and take a humble position and let the other person lose their temper with me and I just stay relaxed, it’s actually quite amusing because they tend to get more worked up when I do this. I’m not saying I’m a push over but I’m saying it is good to sometimes tackle the situation with a gentle approach. I must admit, sometimes I do tackle the situation with a gentle approach and then I go home and when I’m dwelling on the day I get worked up with myself for not getting annoyed at the time. But when I do this I always turn to this passage in Philippians…..

Philippians 4:5a

“Let your gentleness be known to all men.” In the NASB we read “gentle spirit.”

Gnetleness is often interpreted as a defect especially in men but this is not what this means. Don’t interpret this to mean let’s all be push overs and keep quiet and if someone is nasty to us we shrink up into a corner and get on our knees and apologise.  Paul is simply encouraging here the saints to be strong yet soft. Bit contradictory? hmmm….I say this means its good to be physically strong and big but be gentle in our attitude and behaviour.

So to be gentle spirited in a world like today’s sounds hard, it takes strength, only strength that Christ can give and thats exactly why we should be gentle. A christian can only experience  a gentle spirit and peace if they have recieved and experienced and peace from God and they can only exhibit gentleness if they have Christ and his peace in their lives (Kingdom of God, Shalom etc - another post for that haha).

So this gentlness is NOT to be hidden away and I stress again I don’t mean be an emotional, geeky push over, I mean be the calm one, the happy one, have a sense of genuiness about you and be assertive in a positive way. These qualities shine out as light and in our dark and cruel world the light of our Saviour and King and His gospel truth will shine through in us.

The benefits of this are amazing; not only are we giving our self a sense of peace, but we are drawing ourselves nearer to Christ and preparing ourselves for Heaven and we are glorifying our amazing God who deserves all the glory by shining out as Christians in the streets and even if someone walks into Church. It helps us as Christians to relate to children, and we need so many children’s workers, help us relate to the older generation who know so much and have so much wisdom and if for example and alcoholic walks into church looking for an escape from reality, from the chaos of this world and their messed up lives we will have the key qualities to relate to them , help them and show them Christ.