Well, there have certainly been some happenings since I last posted. Although I still haven’t re-read Ally’s post I mentioned in the previous post, I still have some things to say.

[sarcasm] This week at College started positively [/sarcasm] with a geography fieldtrip… To Hanley. Of all places… Hanley. I mean, I don’t like Hanley at the best of times, but in the rain at on a Monday morning/afternoon, it definitely scores pretty low. I have distinct memories of the first time I drove through Hanley, when I thought, “What a terrible place, this is the worst place I’ve ever seen.” I don’t hate the Stoke quite so much nowadays, but if you offered me a house just about anywhere else in the world, I’d seriously consider your offer. I mean, google maps says it all really.

I’ve been tired all this week, and I’m still tired now, so this may be… less than coherant. Sorry. Speaking of tiredness though, I did have officially the weirdest dream ever dreamt by a person (I think this even beats Mark’s famous weird dreams). I dreamt I was camping in a magical land populated by multicoloured mushrooms which were in the shape of unicorns and could fly They had no knees, like Rayman. The land was terrorised by a giant shellfish that had escaped from its shell. It had little versions of itself that bit my toes. The shellfish ate the unicorn mushrooms. I promise you, I have never taken acid in my life.

I think I should just get to bed. I’m too tired to write anything coherant. I’ll get back to this tomorrow maybe…

And congratulations to Mark, who got a first on his final Occupational Therapy placement. Mark was awarded the world’s one and only Peter Roberts obnoxiously large virtual platinum star of commendation, which he later sold to Google for an awful lot of virtual money.

I’m determined to understand the recent post by Alastair on the subject of providence, because it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Ally knows some stuff, and this is a practical post, but it’s just so long.

I’ve read it once, but I think I’ll have to read it again. I’d strongly recommend that you do take the time to read what he has said, because all my observations are based on isolated verses and things, which, while I’m sure they are helpful, are not nearly as good as observations which have had conclusions made from them and are based on a deep knowledge and wisdom concerning the Bible as a whole, which is what Ally prays to have, and faithfully pursues.

I don’t agree with Ally on everything, but I think he has a lot more authority to challenge us on our views than I do.

Something that’s really been challenging me from the scriptures recently is how the Holy Spirit unites our will and our actions, and how the Spirit is not intended to bring us under a constant struggle to do God’s commands without God giving us any freedom to do these things willingly. I believe God enables us to delight in doing God’s will, so that we don’t want to do anything else, if we submit our wills to Christ; although this is a gradual process and we’re not perfect yet.

I don’t know what you think, and I know that a paragraph which mentions God’s enabling so often can often just be assumed to be correct, and we say ‘Hallelujah, that’s so true’, but if you do find anything wrong with what I’ve said, please tell me, because I struggle with this issue too, and these are just my first observations on an issue which is so immense I doubt we’ll be able to comprehend it in eternity.

I’m writing this post from the home of my brother and his wife’s good friends’ house. I am not sure what these people are called, but they seem pretty nice anyway. We had a pretty militant conversation over dinner about how fundamentalist Christians and Calvanists were wrong. Or, it was more of a lecture really. Or well, that’s how it seemed to me. Still very nice people though.

From the Start

St. Andrews

Well, my tolerance of a laptop keyboard has reached its end… I HATE the things. I HATE THEM.

Well, God Bless.

There are a number of things that have happened over the last week. Firstly:

Cake

Now we move onto our next point, which is nameably how I’m progressing with being offline.

The eye removed, or merely temporarily closed?

Well, unfortunately I’ll have to go with the latter. I’m still lazy. And me ending every day talking on MSN is gradually moving away from being other people’s fault to being my fault. Most of the time I’m simply to busy to go online, which is not really a very pious reason for not going online. This has been particularly a problem in the last week, which was a time where I could see definite roots of bitterness and backsliding in my life.

Emma did the second CU session this week, which followed a terrible (not to be too judgemental) session in which we debated whether or not it was possible for God to do something evil. It was a liberal leading. Bad idea.

For those who are not sure whether or not God can do evil, please read 1 John 1:5. I also made my doubts about Limited Atonement probably a little too clear, which I don’t think was helpful. I should’ve shut up. I was debating whether to even go to the first session, because I knew I’d say something I’d regret.

But I digress. The main point was that Emma reminded us of “Trust in the Lord and lean not on your own understanding”, which was something she had found helpful. I thought about this and realised I always have a plan B when praying. I’ll invent a new analogy, which may or may not be helpful:

It’s difficult to get off stilts, but it’s much safer on the ground. Our “Plan Bs” being the stilts of course.

That verse is one of the verses I have secretly and subconciously looked down on as something for people who don’t read the Bible properly, and look for inspiration passages. I’ve been guilty for a long time of a sense of oneupmanship on the Chrisitans who create inspirational calendars that never give any sort of context and gave us Father’s love letter. It’s like how people who have only read small parts of the Bible keep quoting Psalm 23. It’s not that I don’t believe that psalm or think it’s not an amazing passage, but I often feel like I’ve gone further in my spiritual walk than that psalm is catering for. I hate the pride in me, but at the same time I often feed it.

My pride showed up glaring red today when I started complaining to my mum about how my Geography teacher had given me such a low predicted grade (E). Rather than wanting to work hard to prove him wrong, my first reaction is to want to argue that he’s marked my work incorrectly and the marking system is stupid, which I have argued on several occasions.

Anyway, good bye for now. I know the last part of this post was a bit dismal, but I’m often at my most critical at 10, because it’s too late in the day to fix anything I’ve done. Good Night

Zen Cart is amazing, and all this time I was using Wordpress e-commerce lite.
Please note that this post was posted after a brief look through the features of Zen Cart. After slaving hard to create features that did similar things at an inferior level, you can imagine I was slightly annoyed that I hadn’t noticed it before.

If you don’t know anything about the reformation, Alastair could probably lend you a book on it (and I have Martin Luther’s biography, if anyone wants that). I say this, because I am in easy contact with practically everyone who reads this blog.

If anyone could give me a link to an overview of the reformation, I’d appreciate that. There is the wikipedia page on the reformation, but that’s written from a secular point of view and is too long for a human being to read on screen.

Update: There are several good articles linked in the comments of this post

Obviously, we all know about:

But above all, my brethren, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath. But let your “Yes” be “Yes,” and your “No,” “No,” lest you fall into judgment.

This is something that so often concerns me about contempory Christian music, we see ourselves as too faithful, and promise to follow God forever and ever with our whole hearts. What I am wondering is when stating our intentions in the knowledge of God’s sustaining power becomes rashly swearing.

But Peter insisted emphatically, “Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you.” And all the others said the same.

I would appreciate everyone’s input on this, so long as it is based in the scriptures.

Read this post

A rumour has recently been propagated by some of my comrades (I’m learning Russian ^__^) that I am popular. Let’s just clarify something:

One thing is true: I have made new friends. This had nothing to do with me though, mark my words. OK, so it may have had something to do with my unicycle, but there is more than that. Apart from Steve, who’s never around outside of lessons, none of the people I used to hang around with in St. Peter’s have gone to SFC. My old friendship group is not there, so I am thankful to God that I have been able to make a few friends, else I’d be a complete loner.

Most of my friends are in some way associated with the CU. I was really blessed, because on about the third day thewre, I was sitting on my own eating dinner like I have done every day for years, and someone in the second year, Steve, asked if I wanted to play cards. Shortly after, I discovered he was in the CU. He was the only male person in the CU out of 1600 people in the college, so it really was a fantastic blessing that he made friends with me.

Most of my friends are either in the CU, or friends of people in the CU, although I have made a few other friends as well, but that’s because somehow I’ve changed since high school and now, miraculously, have the guts to start conversations with people… Although this is usually after a 15 minute debate with myself, which I always lose. I have prayed about this, so it’s not a surprise, but I really am thankful to God that he’s getting rid of some of my initial shyness. I hope it doesn’t all go though, because of what the bible says about fools shutting up and being considered wise.

Thank you for your time. Good bye

And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire.

Matthew 18:9 (ESV)

Sloth