What is Grace?

Grace is to see what’s in my heart, my motives, my desires, to look beyond what I say and do, and still forgive me. It is not that the more you understand me, the easier it would be to forgive me, it is precisely the opposite. God gives wisdom freely, He gives His Holy Spirit freely. I have His scriptures freely, and in them is contained all that is necessary for life and Godliness. I have everything I need, yet still I sin.

The sheer amount God has fed me, the sheer amount He has given me. I have everything I need, and much more, and yet so often I despise that.

One of my friends was once struggling with the amount he had hurt his girlfriend, the things he had said to her, the way he broke up with her, and he knew it could never be the same. Yet, in all this, the only one we can be sure is not ashamed of us is the very one who sees more of our sin than anyone else.

But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering. Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers.

I’m currently celebrating Mark’s acquisition of a 2-1, and my dad’s birthday.
It’s great having Mark back, he really is a legend, and it’s also fun messing w/ his blackberry. I think Mark’s done very well for himself really: straight out of uni and he has a job with accomodation, travel, and a company car all built in, even if the first car was a ‘94 ford sierra, and managed to break down so spectacularly it broke down an AA van.
God Bless

The living water flows into the valleys. In the mountaintops you will find an energetic spring which flows away quickly, but only in the valley will you find a great flood.

Mary’s most treasured possession spilled out over the feet of Christ. Those who had never loved Him scorned her, not seeing a broken and contrite heart, the most fragrant burnt offering of all. As the fragrance of fine perfume filled the room, so did the fragrance of Christ. All things would be crushed under his feet, but there and then she placed herself willingly under His feet, and in Her brokenness, beautified the Temple of God.

The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.

“Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher; “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.

Disconnected quotes? Not to my mind. Everything is empty without Christ. If I try to ‘find myself’ in anything other than a relationship with Christ I will find myself more lost than ever. My death was nothing less than a complete separation from the world. If I seek his face, I will lose myself, only to find my true self on the other side. If my love for the world is still alive, it is as it were, a zombie, because it was put to death on the cross 2000 years ago.

Becoming a Christian is nothing less than the ultimate act of trust. It is a death sentence on your very soul. If Christ died and did not rise, then your soul was put to death for nothing, and you are still dead. If I do not allow Christ into some aspect of my life, I will not find that part of my life unsatisfactory, but completely dead. The only way for us to live is in the Spirit. We are either in the Spirit or we are dead.

What we once found to satisfy us, we will not find satisfying again, whereas we could once work by ourselves, we can no longer. It is Christ himself who lives in us, or we are dead, and can do nothing. We can’t turn back, because there’s nothing to turn back to. It’s gone. Dead and buried. The branch which does not abide in the vine is dead, not sick.

God Bless.

If the protracted silence proceeding from this blog hasn’t made you give up hope forever, mayhap this post will come to you like rain in the midst of the desert, but perhaps more likely like rain after the sky has been ominous all day, and you hoped beyond hope it wouldn’t crack.

Doug: Wait! I’ve got a great story you should hear.
Max: AAAAAACCCCCHHHHHHH!
Sam: Keep it short, kid. My partner’s got a low tolerance for long stories.

So, what’s been happening to me?

First of all, as a follow on from my previous course. I know what and where I want to study. It must be a miracle. I said it would have to be in my last post, and I’m not going to swallow those words now.

I visited Oxford, and I was so thankful, because it was the most beautiful city I’d ever been to, and both me and Emma wanted to go there, it felt perfect. I was particularly interested in Magdalen College. This is the same college as CS Lewis went to. It has the most beautiful garden I’ve ever seen, and a deer lawn, and that really does it for me.

Perhaps that’s where I’ll go, but I really don’t expect it will be. Ignoring for now my results, let me tell you about Cambridge.

Cambridge’s Engineering presentation really inspired me. So much so that I’d say that even if I never go there, the inspiration was absolutely invaluable. I fell in love with Oxford city, but as for the engineering course, I’ll have to say Cambridge’s course was much more inspiring.

The impression I got at Oxford was that engineering was something they did extremely well, but it wasn’t a major department. The course seemed shrouded in mystery, and as much as I asked, the lecturer didn’t seem to understand I was looking for some inspiration to take up his course. I wasn’t told about any specific final year student projects, normal daily timetables or anything.

In Cambridge everything was laid out on the table, from the application process to the course contents. Cambridge do a general engineering course, and you don’t specialize until the second year, but the specialisation that inspired me most of all was ‘Geotechnical Engineering’. This is the point at which geography and engineering meet. Earth dams, tsunami-proof houses and landslide-proof pipes were all projects chosen by students. In my estimation, this is the best academic preparation for the mission field I can get. It gives me incredible joy to think how useful to God I could be with such skills, and that studying geography wasn’t wasted.

In addition to all this, Cambridge has a languages center as part of the engineering department itself, so I could carry on my German, and myabe take up another language too. Who knows? It’s in God’s hands anyway.

Now I get to my results. The sad thing is that they are not good enough for me to get into Cambridge yet.

1. German: A
2. Maths: A
3. Physics: B
4. Geography: C

I’ve dropped geography in response to these results in order to focus on the subjects I am good at, and thus raise my chances of getting to Cambridge. I prayed about this decision. I asked for peace before, during, and after making it, but now I must admit I am not certain of it. It doesn’t cause me to lose sleep at night, but I don’t know what God’s will is at all. I’m sure it’s not too late to change back, but God will bless me either way I’m sure. My mother told me, “Don’t worry about what God wants you to do all the time. God gives you desires, what do you want to do?” I want to be useful to God, but I felt so ill-equipped to make that decision, I feel so far from God. I wasn’t trusting him like I should have, and I knew it. Maybe God gave me those results to make me drop it, or maybe it was a challenge. Who knows?

That’s all for now, I might write some other post another day. God Bless