Posts Tagged ‘Irresistible Revolution’
Things I Like [7]
Posted on: September 23, 2011
I love reading. I don’t do it as often as I should, but I love getting lost in a story, fiction or non-fiction…I love reading people’s stories. I prefer story books, whether you are telling me someone else’s story or your own. I don’t so much like self-help books or teaching books.
Anyway, my top 3 books: (click on pic to find out more about the book)
The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborn
The Shack by William Young
Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller
(first 44 pages of blue like jazz available to read online)
Some authors I really dig:
Stephen King (IT, Carrie, The Shining, etc - fiction, horror)
John Grisham (An Innocent Man, The Client, The Firm, The Pelican Brief, etc - fiction, law)
Jeff Lucas (Lucas out Loud, Lucas on Life, How not to pray, Grace choices) - humour, christianity
living with strangers
Posted on: November 30, 2010
- In: blog carnival | my life
- 4 Comments
they say to watch the company you keep because you tend to become them or something. i always try to surround myself with good people, and i think i’ve done very well so far. god has brought some super awesome people into my life.
sometime this year i was going through some hectic spiritual stuff – lots of doubt, which i’d never really experienced before – so it was really scary, but the people from church helped me through it.
str
a few years ago i read donald miller’s blue like jazz and shane claiborne’s irresistible revolution and fell in love with the idea of living in community. i decided then that i didn’t want to live alone anymore – at that point i was living in a batchelor flat all by my lonesome. anyway, the following year i moved in with my friend lindri and that was really good. i think i needed that transition of moving in with just one person first to get me out of my “bubble” space mentality…and it was a really huge bubble. anyway, by the end of the year i was so used to lindri coming to my door all the time to talk that i’d so miss it when she wasn’t around. i got to a point where i didn’t just put up with being around people but i actually wanted and craved to be around other people.
the next year i moved in with 2 strangers. even more growth. atleast with lindri we’d been friends before we moved in together so i kinda knew what to expect but with these new flatmates i knew nothing. i only met them once i’d already moved in. and although there were some disagreements here and there – mostly about housekeeping: washing the dishes, cleaning the bathroom, etc etc – it was a really cool group of people so it all worked out in the end.
i just moved into a new house last week that i will be sharing with 4 other people – eek. 4 stragers. i lucked out though because they all seem like genuinely great people and we get along quite well. i actually went away with one of them this past weekend – after only knowing her for a week – to a music festival…she’s also a fan of music and dancing – yayness!
i think my biggest problem this year is going to be being farther away from my church people, especially since my flatmates aren’t Christians. i think i took that for granted while i had it. lind would always come to my room when she got something new from the bible and share it with me and we’d have hectic chats on the Bible and God and pray for each other and stuff. and last year, while that didn’t happen, knowing that my flatmates where Christians and being close to my friends whom i could always call on for coffee and a chat when i was feeling down or whatever was really encouraging.
i think church attendance and cell group are going to play an even bigger role in my life next year. i’m gonna be more dependent on that christian fellowship. and i’m gonna try to remember not to take it for granted but to really appreciiate it.
================================
this post was written for the one word at a time blog carnival. this week’s theme is “fellowship”. Click here to read other posts from some awesome bloggers.
What do you believe?
Posted on: October 15, 2008
- In: being Christ-like | my life | thoughts
- 1 Comment
Have you ever sat back and asked yourself that question…what/who do I believe in? And does your life reflect the answer you give to that question?
I know in my life from as far back as I can remember the answer would have been Jesus…and then I read the book “The Irresistible Revolution” and I started to doubt that answer.
What does it really mean to believe in Jesus? What does it really mean to be a Christian? What would my life look like if I truly believed in what I say I believe in?
————————
I used to have a problem with people who called themselves “followers of Christ” instead of Christians because I thought it was all semantics and it really means the same thing and they are just trying to sound all holier-than-thou…and now I am one of those people. What caused the change? Well, in my journey to discover what true Christianity is about (which is a journey I think I will be on til kingdom come) I came to the realisation that the early Christians…those who started the “faith”…were not simply Christians because they believed, what set them apart was that they lived what they believed. They took action…they believed that faith without deeds is dead! They daily took up their cross and FOLLOWED CHRIST. So the word “Christian” was used, in those early days, not to describe a bunch of people who came together once a week to sing and pray and read and then go back to their normal lives, but a bunch of people who followed the Way, who lived the Way, who truly loved the Way. People who lived their everyday life in worship and prayer and the Word. They were following Christ, not just simply saying the believe. So because the word “Christian” is misused, I choose to call myself a follower of Christ instead.
————————-
It’s not enough for me to say I am a Christian and then my life looks no different to the lives of those who don’t follow Christ. If I call myself a follower of Christ, my life should look like that of Christ – I should have the same attitude as that of Christ (as I am writing this, Philippians 2: 1 – 11 is running through my mind). If I really believe that he is God, then my life should reflect that. I can’t call him my Lord and then live my life as if he doesn’t exist.
So how do I go about “following Jesus”? Again, still a journey of learning everyday…but I think it boils down to two things – Love God perfectly, love people perfectly! If you can get those two right then you are well on your way. Following Jesus is about having the same heart and mind as Jesus…aligning your will/plans/wants with his…meaning being in constant beautiful relationship with The Father, and selflessly loving and giving of yourself to others.
I still have a looooooooong way to go…
————————-
So ask yourself today (and everyday) “What do I believe in? How can my life reflect that today?”
God of Justice
Posted on: April 22, 2008
What if Jesus really meant what he said to the rich young man when he told him to “go sell all his posessions, give the money to the poor, and come follow me”. That’s the question Shane Clairborn asks in his book “Irresistible Revolution”. It was probably one of the scariest books I’ve ever read. Made me think about my walk with Christ. Made me want to be a follower of Christ. Now I’m not saying I’m gonna sell all my posessions (not that I have a lot of them anyway) and be poor, but it means letting the things that break God’s heart break mine. Jesus wasn’t too concerned with the rich and religious people of his day – I mean he did want them to see the light of course, but his main purpose is seen in the people he chose to reside with, the broken, poor, and untouchables. The people society had rejected. As he said, its the sick that need a doctor not those that think they are healthy.
Jesus could have chose to come into this world into a royal family – and maybe more people would have been his followers then (no matter how shallow their following would be) but he chose to come into the world in a manger as the son of a carpenter and become homeless with “no place to rest his head”. Makes you think…
—————————————————
We live in plenty. There’s more than enough for what the world needs but not for our greed. –quote from Mother Theresa paraphrased by John Ellis in the song Revolution (Sunday, Tree63 – and by the way that is my favorite band if you ever feel like giving me a little prezzie).
What would the world look like if we all unselfishly shared what we had with our neighbor? This is what the early church was all about. This thought kinda follows on my train of thought on living in community – real ubuntu, or at least my understanding of it. It looks really beautiful in my head.
—————————————————-
Matther 25: 34 – 36 and 40 gives us a very practical way to live church and to live all out for Christ. Isaiah 58: 6 – 8 tells us how to let our lights shine before all men that they may see our good works and praise our Father in heaven.
I have fallen in love with 2 songs that talk about this topic – I’ll just give you a little taste.
search my heart and make it clean
open up my eyes to the things unseen
show me how to love like you have loved me
break my heart for what breaks yours
everthing i am for your kingdom’s cause
as i walk from earth into eternity
God of Justice (we must go) by Tim Hughes
freely we’ve recieved now freely we will give
we must go live to feed the hungry stand beside the broken
we must go stepping forward keep up from just singing
move us into action, we must go
————————————————–
I had a revelation the other day – thanks to a friend of mine (Josh Ratiani). For a while my mindset was, live all out for Christ cos if you do then you’ll be covered even if Christianity turns out to be a hoax. Think about it: you’ll be ok with Allah cos you’re a good person, you’ll get to come back as something really good cos you’ll have good karma build up if bhuddism turns out to be true, etc. Here’s the revelation: live so all out for Jesus that if you were to die and find out its all a lie you would want a do over. Paul says we should live our lives so much for Christ that if Christianity is a hoax we should be pitied above all others. In a sense we should live our lives so all out for Christ that even if we are good with Allah, we should look back and say “dude, in that time I was serving JC, I could have [fill in whatever here]“. So that’s my goal: to let my light shine, to do for the least of these, and to recklessly abandon my life to him.
I am gonna need lots of prayer.
The link, by the way, leads you to Josh’s blog. If you have questions on the topic of “God of Justice” I would refer you to him cos that is his passion so i’m sure he’ll have something to say on it. He has unknowingly been instrumental in my spiritual growth in the last year and 4 months that I’ve known him. So yea, even though he’s not gonna read this: thanx Josh.
