My fourth week at college

First the apologies:

Sorry for the late posting.  I'm aiming to always post on Sunday nights ready for that Monday morning look-at-posts-rather-than-do-your-work moment - but what with attending my brothers wedding on Saturday and err...oh all right I admit it I had a night off on Sunday!

Also sorry that I still haven't got the toga version of the Greek alphabet song for you.  Don't know if you can view it yourselves on the facebook KBCTC 08/09 group...

Now on with the blog...
 
Well after one induction week, one overview of the bible week, one week of exegesis, we have moved onto two weeks on the Old Testament (ie the bit of the bible before Jesus was born).  I have to say that my head was spinning at the speed at which they were trying to give an overview of some 4,000 odd years of history...and didn't help having our first exegesis deadline on Friday I was a tired bunny (well a tired man actually).  Though it was interesting what a deadline does for the popularity of the library! 

Tom Sine
On Thursday had a break from the Old Testament and had Tom Sine give a presentation based around his latest book "The New Conspirators".  Basically it was an exciting overview of how many Christians are radically living out their faith and being counter-cultural.  It's something that has been stirring in me for a while - why do we resemble our society so much - how much are we truly influenced by God and how much by our culture and advertising, etc.  We already have our home as a drop-in centre and share our lives (and holidays) with people and dream of building an extension so we can have people live full time in it - and this passion was re-ignited anew by Tom (who lives in a community).  Community is something that is desperately needed by the world and too often we have swallowed the home is my fortress (or whatever - it is late!) line...

NEWS FLASH Thought you all might like to know that we found out on Friday that Jennie is pregnant with our sixth child. 
The children are VERY excited and the consensus is that they would like a boy.  Lizzie thinks this is important as we have had 3 girls and 2 boys so far - so it'll be balanced!  Josiah would like a boy to play with and looks at the pregnancy test each day to see if mummy is still pregnant.  Hannah just keeps saying "baby in mummy's tummy" and "can I touch the baby?"
Public "thank you" to all those who have said "congratulations" to us - your affirmation of our baby's life means so much to us.  We don't know how long we will have to love this one - so these moments have been so precious.
If you want to pray for us then please pray that we would love this one without holding back (it would be so easy to do so after losing the last two to protect ourselves from pain) and that Jennie would not be afraid of living (avoiding doing anything that might cause a miscarriage - but there's no life living that way).
Am very happy.

Monday's devotions
Finally for those who have asked how me leading the Monday morning devotions went (we have half an hour first thing every day except Thursday where we have "chapel" later in the morning)...I did it on Lamentations (a cheery thought indeed for Monday morning!) First I started with a quote from Matt and Beth Redman's book "Worshipping God on the road marked with suffering" (great book by the way - written by people who have been through the mill):

 Worship is always a choice.  At times it's an easy, straightforward one.  When life is peaceful and painless, the choice to respond to God in thanksgiving and praise may not be such a hard one to make.  But at other times in our lives, worship becomes a much gutsier decision.  Caught up amidst a whirlwind of pain and confusion, the decision to cry out, "Yet I will praise You," is a costly act of devotion.  In the life of every worshipper there will come times when worship meets with suffering.  And these moments shape what kind of worshippers we will become.  Yes, praise be to God for times of abundance and plenty in our lives - those carefree days full of peace and laughter.  Yet we praise Him also in the wilderness times - those dark and stormy seasons of the soul when we're left crying out with the psalmist, "How long, O LORD, how long?" (Psalm 6:3) When trials come, trust must arise.  When there's nothing to rock the boat, our trust in God is rarely tested.  The question then is this: Can we still find our way to the place of praise?  We may have faith to believe in God as Lord of the calm - but do we also have faith to believe in Him as Lord of the storm?

Then we watched the video clip:



I wanted a video to engage people's hearts.  It's very easy with something like this to only give mental ascent to the ideas whereas I wanted people to open up to hear what God had to say.  I was also wary of using a video as I didn't want to just create an emotional fix - but have people meet with God and be changed.

I then talked about how my wife and I sought to worship God when we lost our baby (Rachel) last Boxing Day - one of the first things I did was talk to a lady in our church whose husband walked out on her and her two kids for another woman and asked how - how did you worship God? She said "worship is a choice" - she was so right and has it made the difference in her life - she sought after God and has been transformed - she has no bitterness only joy and all the more so now her prayers for a godly man have been answered (she gets married in 2 weeks!).  So we did choose - we chose to trust that God is who He says He is and worship Him and we don't regret it - we are different people as I said in one of my previous posts.

I had a number of passages that I felt were right to use and then prayed about which people to give to read them.  God was so good as they seemed really speak to those individuals.  If you're interested, they were:

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=habakkuk%203:17-18;&version=31;

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalm%2013:1-2,5-6;&version=31;

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=lam%203:20-24;&version=65;

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalm%2042:1-6;&version=31;

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=job%201:18-21;&version=31;

We then sung "Blessed be Your name" and "Even though I walk (You never let go)" by Matt Redman.  Great songs to worship God in all circumstances - the first was written after 9/11 and then second after their third miscarriage in a row.

Finally I pointed out how many of the passages tell us how they remembered.  When in these circumstances we should remind ourselves what God has done for us, who He is and the hope that we have in Him.  So had someone read Psalm 103:

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ps%20103;&version=31;

We finished off with singing "Our God is an awesome God" by Rich Mullins.

"Mint!" as JK would say.