5 Years Today!!!

Happy re-birthday to me!!!

Well today marks 5 years since I died and was reborn of the spirit of God. 5 years of being changed and making a difference. 5 years of happening to life instead of life happening to me. 5 years of allowing God to constantly challenge my perceptions and paradigms. 5 years since I was suicidal. 5 years since I stopped living for myself. 5 years since I met the person of love, faithfulness, justice, kindness and righteousness. 5 years of learning to rely on God instead of myself. 5 years of joy and happiness. 5 years of meeting the kinds of people that truly are inspirational, not because of what they say but because of actions that correspond. 5 years of going against the grain of society. 5 years of growing in contentment. 5 years of learning who I really am. 5 years of celebrating the unconditional love of my God. 5 years of learning not to objectify woman. 5 years of reclaiming my purity. 5 years of taking back 18 years of death. 5 years of building up instead of breaking down my country. 5 years since I decided to pick up a guitar. 5 years of seeing lives changed, people healed, demons flee and darkness quake before me. 5 years of coming to terms with the grace of God that I don't deserve. 5 years of seeing God reach into the darkest of hearts and change them into icons of beauty, compassion and inspiration.

Agh... and it has just began... I still have eternity set before me... and it just keeps getting better. The love and grace of my savior is infinte just as is the beauty of His majesty.

Anyway... hope you all have a splendid day today. I'm going to go watch a spoof of Macbeth tonight that is being put on at my old high school. It should be really funny since the teachers are doing it.

Gareth

ok... finally some feedback of my life

Wow… the last couple of weeks have really been busy. So I’ll have to divide this into different parts. In fact I don’t want to bore you guys with 2 many details so I will try do it in point form. Yeah right... ok… I’ll try keep it brief at least.

I am now leading our youth leadership team here in Springs. (That kind of makes me youth pastor except that I’m not in it full time). My strategy for this really is going to be spending 80% of my time with 20% of the people. I.e. the existing leadership team. Started out by revisiting our vision statement and looking at its implication and where we are falling short of fulfilling the vision.

Decided that we need to establish some foundational things (as I couldn’t recall us having preached the gospel to any of the youth the whole year).

So I preached a hard core message on how you become a Christian and made sure I dispelled the “I’m Christian by osmosis” idea. I used props and my own testimony to get it across with the help of an advanced form of the bridge diagram from contagious Christianity. So the youth are now officially clear on how Christianity works. I did not water down anything.

Then we finished preparing for the boiler room that was launched for the transformations event. I was hoping for 20 kids… was horrified when 80 arrived… we didn’t have enough space so ended up using not just the block of offices that was assigned to us but the actual stadium. 80 kids spending the night in creative intercession (and a bit of soccer in between) was an awesome experience. I was really blessed when twice during the evening I led a bit of unplugged worship which ended up in prophetic song. Very hectic. The first time my body almost couldn’t bear God’s presence almost forcing me to stop playing guitar. The second time lasted at least 45 minutes (could have been 2 hours… I really don’t know) and consisted a lot of me declaring God’s heart to various people and bringing freedom. Most people present had never experienced prophetic song… so God’s grace was on me big time for this as I almost never do this in large groups. In fact only seldom in small groups do I burst out into prophetic song (fear of man).

So this was really awesome for me because I have had such a burden in my spirit that worship should be a platform for God to bring freedom and deliverance as we see happening in the old testament battles.

After the night of prayer was the day for the actual event. We had organised a youth event to take place after the main event in the evening. It was an incredible time of worship led by Tony (one of my new friends) and intercession for Springs. The last thing for the evening was for me to preach a message on sexual purity. Not an easy thing to talk about. In fact I blindly volunteered for it and regretted having said yes. But as in all things I knew that God’s grace would be there. Little did I know that God would be helping get closure on some issues from my past.

I knew the message had to grab their attention from the start. So it would need an introduction that I was not capable of conceiving.. And an introduction which I least expected (or wanted as a matter of fact) was exactly what God gave me during the night of prayer.

I will post the sermon up as soon as I finish expanding the bullets. The intro involves something that I have never spoken about nor ever been able to go to God with. God in is loving mercy (once again) has allowed me to come to terms with this and receive forgiveness and let go of bitterness that I was unaware of. **suprise**

Here are a couple of photos:

Some of the art from the boiler room

One of the guys came up with quite a clever little idea. Below is a poster that says "Jordan River". This person realised that for the main event everyone would have to walk across this poster to get into the venue... so everybody had to cross the Jordan river.

Here's me after the all night of prayer.... I know.. I know... I just keep getting better looking.

We had string haging from the ceiling of the boiler room. The idea is that you write down your prayer request on a piece of paper and peg it to the string. Then if you had nothing to pray about, you could go around reading peoples prayer requests and praying for them.

The passageway between all the rooms we were using for the boiler room

This is the crowd I preached to

Me preaching (while trying to take the mic out of the stand)

We ended with some more praise in which the crowd really participated well... so well in fact that while a procession was running around, the computer and video projector got knocked down and are now broken.

Still around

Don't worry... I havn't droped off the radar... I have been putting together my next 2 posts... unfortunately they will be largish in size.... unavoidable. Personally I hate long long long large posts... but for those of you that have your own computers there is light at the end of the tunnel.

I just installed Mozilla Thunderbird. It is an email program. A really awesome, easy to use email program that has a built-in RSS reader.

What is RSS??? it stands for Really Simple Syndication.

"Oh ja... of course".... ok so what does that mean.

Quick explanation... let's say that you are a really big fan of mine... so big in fact that you check my blog everyday for updates but get frustrated because I only post once or twice a month on average. Well... if you have an RSS reader you can setup my blog as a "feed" on the program. Whenever you load it up... it then checks for you to see whether I've added anything. If I have, it then downloads it as if it was an email... including any photos etc.

So... now I have syndicated some of my friends blogs... so that I don't have to waste time (and internet bandwidth) checking whether or not they have update their blogs.

By the way... most news sites of a number of feeds... not just blogs... so you can for instance link in all your favourite article providers so that you never need to check for a new article... it will always be delivered... and because you haven't subscribed with the individuals involved you never have to fear that they might give away your email address resulting in endless amounts of spam.

Ok... so download Thunderbird!!!
http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/

Do it now!!! Be a winner!!! Be a hero!!! Make really simple syndication a standard!!! (that's a really bad pun by the way...)

oh ja... to add my blog as a feed, the url needed would be:
http://welovegareth.blogspot.com/atom.xml

you just add the "/atom.xml" to the end of the url and then thunderbird will syndicate it.

So how did it work

A couple of posts ago a spoke about "sanctified identity". In there I mentioned that I wasn't really sure how it worked and went on to explain my experience of God changing how I see myself etc.

Well... here's a little insight into why it works.

We know that Jesus sacrifice was perfect and blameless. Therefore his sacrifice doesn't just atone our sins but actually does a whole lot more. Why is this? Because Jesus's sacrifice is infinate in its worth. One could say that there is still a whole lot of Jesus's gift left over after our sin has been covered and we are reunited with God. An infinate amount in fact. In Isaiah 53 (the messianic prophecy of Jesus death that was written a couple of 100 years before it actually happened) we see statements about what Jesus's death has done that don't refer to sin. They refer to healing and peace.

I.e. Jesus didn't just absolve me of my sin and guilt but also purchased me health and peace.

In John 10:10 Jesus mentions how he came to give us abundant life.
3 John briefly mentions us having prosperous souls.

So then... if you are a Christian, you should not only be free of guilt and condemnation (Rom 8:1) but should be living healed, whole and filled with peace.

It is God's grace at work in us once again that allows us to receive this. None of us deserve this abundant life... but God lavishes it out. This is why I don't care much for trying to buy myself material happiness (which never seems to satisfy anyone), because I have already achieved mans greatest goal. The goal to be happy, and this I've done without any hedonistic practices.

Nothing will make you more content than knowing your God and knowing what he has to say about you. And even better is that externals like where you live, what you do, what you drive, what you own, wear or eat can't take this away. It means that like many matyrs, past and present, you can simply smile, extend your arms to God, sing and laugh while people stone you to death or burn you alive because once again the story gets even better. Or as Paul said, "To live is Christ, to die is gain."

Not so old, old friends

Hey guys... got to spend some good time with KC last night. For our international / non grahamstown readers KC is one of the lovely powerful ladies of the 4 Durban Street Digs of 2004.

She also went on the Chrysalis thingy that I went on a couple of weeks ago and there was a Chrysalis reunion type event last night in Benoni (where KC lives). So we hooked up so that I could get directions and headed off to the venue. Lots of food etc. It was great. After much socialising we headed back to KC's place for some Vanilla flavoured hot chocolate. After we had preached up a storm with each other till the early hours of the morning I decided to leave back for Springs.

This morning started early... I headed off to another churches youth group to do a presentation on boiler rooms. We (me & my brothers) then prepared a lovely lunch for my mom for mothers day.

I then prepared for youth. It was great. I preached the gospel. The whole gospel and nothing but the gospel. It was very well articulated.

Wow... the guys are really responding... not in the 100's (yet) but every week over the last couple of weeks there has always been at least one person whose life has been changed. Awesome. This was the first time I actually preached the gospel to a crowd.

I have said it once... I'll say it again... there is no greater joy than speaking about the resurrection power of Christ. The gospel's power is like nothing else. Oh well... before I start babbling on... I think I will end here and go to bed.

Busy week ahead... please pray... got a lot of work on my project that I need to get done... I am running slightly behind schedule.

Of Mice Of Men Of Vitamins

Well... I started getting really bad headaches a while ago because of my prolonged hours in front of computer monitors. I did a little research and discovered that some astonishing things about eyesight.

If you have frequent headaches or wear glasses you might want to check out:

http://www.program-for-better-vision.com/

One of the things I have done since is take a vitamin supplement and no longer have headaches. What has this got to do with Mice???

Well.. even after a long days work my eyes are still very attentive. Last night a couple of us were watching a movie at Andrews house. After the movie (some time after 22:30) we were sitting and chatting when I noticed some movement on the other side of the room at a much higher height than I was looking. I then quickly focused in and realised there was a little mouse scurrying over here:



So the hunt began......

We walked... we climbed.... we discovered....



But Alas we were unable to get into the lair. So we made camp and enjoyed a refreshing brew of coffee... ok... so it was just instant coffee and we just continued sitting on the couches.... but work with me here.

It was only a matter of time that my super hawk-eye powers noticed the perpetrator now in the kitchen. Two mighty men (Andrew and Shaun) then followed in hot pursuit while the rest of us remained behind and guarded camp.

After much tracking down in the outskirts of the land (and removal of heavy laundry appliances)... the critter was backed into a corner. It was time to take action...



But the critter was quick... it knew the end was near. It made a run back towards the camp while the mighty warriors were loading ammo. But alas its efforts were in vain as those of us back at camp were quick to see it leap into the undergrowth (a large green couch).

Death came quick as the critter was blinded by our spotlights (a tiny mag light) and the rifles shot (a pellet gun) entered its body.



Aaaah... the adrenaline of an african hunt. Pity it was so small... not enough to feed anyone.

Only joking... Africans don't eat mice... mmm I wonder... afterall I did eat those chicken feet last year and they were actually tasty.

HP in Spings perhaps?

A while ago I mentioned that I had been thinking of the possiblity of a church plant here in Springs.

Well... good ol' pastor Themba approached me on sunday... he wants me to give him a tour of the East Rand. The jhb church is seriously considering planting in the east rand. Wow. Steve and I have chatted about this a couple of times. We are both very well equiped. We could easily start by planting a bible school. I would be quite happy to lecture some of the material. We could definately find some other guys to get involved as well.

I am really excited by this idea. As much as I love serving in the methodist church it is not my home or spiritual family and travelling through to JHB every sunday morning so that I can get some decent spiritual food is a mission.

It doesn't matter how involved the methodist church is with Willow Creek. The fact will always remain that they are not operating under an Apostolic or Prophetic mantle. Furthermore the sermons that are preached are "skimmed-milk" compared to the "fattened-calf" messages I have been hearing for the last 4 and half years.

So for the remainder of the year, unless God speaks to me very clearly, my time of serving in the methodist church is purely to equip leaders so that they are able to effectively reach the youth with the Gospel. It is interesting to see how the youth are begining to impact the rest of the congregation.

Who knows what next year has in store?

Q:My Hope of Glory? A:Christ in me.

Hey guys...

I am so overwhelmed and humbled by this experience that I am actually shutting myself off emotionally to it. What experience you are asking yourself?

The other night we had a praise and worship evening here in Springs for the youth.

Half way through the awesome worship (but nowhere nearly as awesome as the Grahamstown guys) one of the guys from the youth group that Steve and I have been involved in runs up to me. Grabs me by the shoulders and blurts out uncontrollable excitement, joy and apprehension, "thank you so much. You guys have been such great role models. Your faith and strength is just awesome".

The thing that humbled me the most is that I wasn't even sure of the guys name. I just knew his face (there are about 80 in the youth and I havn't gotten to know them all yet). The other beautiful thing about this moment is I could see on this young mans face that something in his spirit had just broken. I could see that it had taken him all of his strength to be able to get over pride/fear of man to run up to me and tell me this. I could see on his face a real soberness of God challenging him on what it means to call God "lord".

I am just so blessed that God has allowed me this priveliege. It is so overwhelming. In my life I am always aware of my battle against the flesh... I am so aware of my inadequacies and short comings but yet there is always that desperate cry in my heart... "Lord... please let them see You in me".

Once again I am humbled by God's grace in my life. Thank you Lord for yet another soul that has count the cost and laid down his life for You. I can only imagine what will happen now with this young warrior as he is currently the head boy of the local boys high school.

Pray for us... Steve and I have 6 months with him before he finishes matric and then leaves for university.