Silence: More Than Words

by Scott Lyons 11/22/2006 I am sitting across from my spiritual mentor. Today we are meeting to talk about silence, to discuss the importance given to the discipline within the church throughout its history. "There is irony here," I say, "Mystics and monks who go on and on about silence. It reminds me of Polonius, whom Shakespeare could only quiet by having Hamlet run him through with his rapier, speaking the words, 'Brevity is the soul of wit.' " "There is no irony," [my mentor] quietly assures me, smiling. And so we begin. "Her sister, Mary, sat at the Lord's feet, listening to what he taught. . . . 'There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her'" (Luke 10:39, 42). I don't remember ever hearing a sermon about practicing quietness, about seeking out silence and shunning conversation. Our culture doesn't value it. And though I want to criticize my world for all its noise, its busyness, and its foolishness--I am Martha. And silence, my sister, is a stranger to me. There is value in saying nothing, in stepping away from disagreements, in excusing ourselves from conversations. And to do so not because we wish to avoid conflict or because we pessimistically believe it will change nothing, but because we recognize in ourselves the wickedness of needing to be right, of wanting to be thought right, to be heard. So we become silent because we know that we lose something when we speak. But I am a lover of words. If I stop speaking, I will be naked on this stage-bearing witness against myself before God. So I keep speaking, wildly hoping that what I want to be heard will be heard. How do we walk away from words? I know it's not easy. But to be silent is to be known. And in the quietness there is forgiveness (because there is confession), peace, and strength. I am not asking anyone to become a Trappist monk. What I am asking is for us to try silence-just for a short period of time. Turn off your radio and head to the park near where you work. Sit quietly and eat your lunch. Turn off the TV one evening each week. Pray. Read. Pray some more. Learn to be familiar with the silence. Then, in time, if you are snapped at as you walk through the door, or if a barrage of little ones immediately crowd about you and pull at you, you will discover greater rest in your heart. The discipline of silence does not give us a place of mental detachment, but a soft blanket that we gently, caringly spread under our families. I am tired of hiding behind the noise and the words, expecting to find rest where I have never found it before, tired of trying to avoid hearing a quiet voice say, "Where are you?" Noise is just another fig leaf. So I shut my mouth and let my pretense drop, shattering around me. I need to be here, at this moment, in silence. I need to be able to hear again. I am desperate for rest; I am desperate to be known. "I confess to almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned through my own fault." So come and sit with me. Sit with our sister, Mary. And let us listen to this Jesus.

Blessed

I just finished reading an article in relevant magazine that really spoke to me and I know will speak to you too! It was about looking to the blessings in the now instead of ignoring them and looking for the blessings in the future.

Right now is an amazing time of blessing in my life. God has been speaking to me and directing me and leading me, but the blessing has come through following his directions. Imagine looking at a map book for directions, and not going where it says!! It makes no sense! Following his lead, though, hasn’t been easy. He has asked of me things that I have not wanted to do and I have asked things of him that he has declined to give. So there are times when I get discouraged. I get down, because I think to myself that I will never see the end of this, that I will always be in the dark waiting for the light, or more fittingly, that the light at the end of the tunnel seems to be moving at the same rate I am!
The article in relevant talked about a guy and his sons who every week played XBOX together from 2 till 4 on Saturdays and Sundays. They really enjoyed the time together, but he found that his sons were SO HANGING OUT for Saturday that the rest of the week was just an obstacle to get past so they could get to the weekend.

This is how I feel sometimes. There are things, amazing, and wonderful blessings, in my life that God has told me to wait for. So do I look at the time I have now, the waiting period, and use it to it's full? No I pine for the blessing. I WANT IT NOW; I don’t want to have to wait. The waiting period is hard! It's an obstacle that's hindering me from the blessing.

I DONT WANT TO PINE FOR THE BLESSING!! I want to be able to enjoy what I have now! I want to be able to look at what I DO have and not think to myself "One day this will be better" but I want to think to myself "how blessed I am be have what God has given! Surely it can’t get any better than this for this point in my life!"

I choose to look at what God has given me now, and grow it. I choose not to look at what I want and complain that I don’t have it but rather to look at what I have and thank God for it! Develop it and to nurture it.

Because God has given it and I am blessed.

Term 4 Calendar

term 4 calendar, originally uploaded by Stunyard.

My Prayer

Dear Father,
I honour you as Sovereign Lord. I acknowledge that you are always present with me. You are the only all powerful, and all wise God. You are kind and loving in ALL your ways. I LOVE you and I thank you that I am united with Christ and spiritually alive in him. I choose not to love the world, and I crucify my flesh and all its passions. I thank you for the life I now have in Christ, and I ask you to fill me with your holy spirit that I may live my life free from sin. I declare my dependance on you, and I take my STAND against Satan and all his lying ways knowing you standing beside me. I CHOOSE to believe the truth, and I REFUSE to be discouraged. You are the God of all hope, and I am confident that you will meet my needs as I seek to live according to your word. I express with confidence that I can live a responsible life through Christ who strengthens me. I now take my stand against Satan command him and all his evil spirits to depart from me. I put on the WHOLE armour of God. I submit my body as a living sacrifice and renew my mind by the living Word of God in order that I may prove that the will of God is good and acceptable and PERFECT. I ask these things in the precious name of my Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. SO BE IT.

Home of the Open Heart - YWAM Thailand

2 min 59 sec - Aug 17, 2006
Thailand's Department of Public Health reports that per capita, Thailand has the most HIV/AIDs cases in the world. This translates into more than 14,000 AIDs orphans per year. Many of these will be HIV positive. Chiang Rai, one of the provinces worst hit by the Aids crisis, had no home for HIV positive babies. Project L.I.F.E. stepped in to meet that need with Baan Num Jai (Home of the Open Heart). Opened in December 2000, its heart purpose is to give HIV positive babies a loving home until their HIV status is determined. They also provide small group homes for babies who cannot be cared for by relatives. Home of the Open Heart is also committed to caring for HIV+ babies until they die. If a baby converts to HIV negative and is able to be adopted, Home of the Open Heart will release the child to have a family of their own! Our mission is to assist families affected by HIV/AIDs, through education, orphan care within the home and within the community, community visits leading to income-generation projects, and mother/child respite care.

If you want to know more about Baan Num Jai, please visit their website

Psalm 145

A psalm of praise of David.

1 I will exalt you, my God and King,
and praise your name forever and ever.
2 I will praise you every day;
yes, I will praise you forever.
3 Great is the LORD! He is most worthy of praise!
No one can measure his greatness.

4 Let each generation tell its children of your mighty acts;
let them proclaim your power.
5 I will meditate* on your majestic, glorious splendor
and your wonderful miracles.
6 Your awe-inspiring deeds will be on every tongue;
I will proclaim your greatness.
7 Everyone will share the story of your wonderful goodness;
they will sing with joy about your righteousness.

8 The LORD is merciful and compassionate,
slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.
9 The LORD is good to everyone.
He showers compassion on all his creation.
10 All of your works will thank you, LORD,
and your faithful followers will praise you.
11 They will speak of the glory of your kingdom;
they will give examples of your power.
12 They will tell about your mighty deeds
and about the majesty and glory of your reign.
13 For your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom.
You rule throughout all generations.

The LORD always keeps his promises;
he is gracious in all he does.*
14 The LORD helps the fallen
and lifts those bent beneath their loads.
15 The eyes of all look to you in hope;
you give them their food as they need it.
16 When you open your hand,
you satisfy the hunger and thirst of every living thing.
17 The LORD is righteous in everything he does;
he is filled with kindness.
18 The LORD is close to all who call on him,
yes, to all who call on him in truth.
19 He grants the desires of those who fear him;
he hears their cries for help and rescues them.
20 The LORD protects all those who love him,
but he destroys the wicked.

21 I will praise the LORD,
and may everyone on earth bless his holy name
forever and ever.

HARD.

Has God ever asked you to do something that you don’t want to do? Or required something of you that you weren’t sure how to give? This happened and has been happening to me recently.

There have been exciting things happening in my life recently, that have been an answer to years of prayer. I have been amazed at God's faithfulness through this time and have learned so much about him that I either didn’t know, or had forgotten, or had misunderstood. But I am coming to see that as the Matt Redman song says he gives and takes away! Now, I guess I’m blessed in that he isn’t actually taking away what he gave me but rather asking me to give it over to him and there is a difference!

I think about a kite. You know one of those ones with two strings so that you can make it do cool tricks and stuff. I got one of these for Christmas a number of years ago and it was one of the best presents I think I have ever got! But I didn’t automatically know straight away how to make it do all the things it could! I was no child KITING prodigy that's for sure! In fact I remember times when I struggled simply to keep the thing in the air let alone make it do tricks! What I needed was someone to show me how to work it. Someone like my dad. I remember that he would take me down to the park in Murray Bridge where we were holidaying with my Nanna and Grand-dad, and we would fly the kite and he would show me how to do stuff with it and then he would give it to me and I’d crash it! And so he'd show me again this time more slowly and with a little more clarity. Then he'd give it to me and I’d make it do what I wanted then crash it! So the next time, he'd take my hands in his and we'd do it together, his hands around mine, helping me to make the small movements needed to flip the kite over successfully and then flip it back! and eventually he'd let go, after I got the idea and he'd just stand and watch and advise me on the finer points of making kites do flips but he wouldn’t leave.

It’s in this analogy of teaching that I find a picture of God. there are things in life that he gives us for you enjoyment and simply to bless us but if at some point we fail to use what he's given us properly, he will take it away and teach us. Then he gives it back and lets us try again. Once again we blow it, we pull the string too hard or for too long and we become a tangled mess that's plummeting straight for the ground. So what does he do? He gives us another go showing us in a little more detail how to do it well. And he repeats the process until we are proficient enough for him to let go! Now fortunately for us after he has let go he doesn’t just walk away, and leave us, but he stays beside us forever giving us pointers and hints on to use the blessings he's given us "successfully."

But it's our decision whether we want to actually give it over to for him to teach us or to keep it and try to learn by ourselves! We may learn the basics in doing it by ourselves, but we will probably crash so many times in the process that by the time we have mastered one trick, we are bent and broken beyond recognition! If we give it over to him, while we REALLY want to enjoy it, and it will be hard to give it over, we will gain so much more enjoyment out of it in the long term because we know how to effectively use it! And this brings joy not only to US but also to him!!
God wants us to enjoy what he's given us!! he wants us to be able to use it and then bless others through it and though it WILL BE HARD the best way for this to happen is for us to give it back to him so he can teach us!

No where in the Bible does it say that life will be easier as a Christian! In fact to many things we are called to walk a HARDER road (matt 5:17-48)! But the comforting thing to know is that God is right here beside us, never leaving, always guiding, and always helping us up when we stumble.

Now unto Him...

This is a post about worship. Worship that doesn’t hold back, that doesn’t talk about worshipping God, but actually worships him. I have been noticing recently, that many of the songs that are sung in church, especially the newer ones (the not-hymns), talk a lot ABOUT worshipping God, but don’t actually make the next step to saying how great he really is!! It’s about time that those people to whom God has given the talent of song writing, start to tell God what they think of him, HONESTLY with an once of vulnerability!! Now, I’m not gifted in song writing, but God has given me words. And so I am going to worship him with my words.
Firstly let me say that God is eternally faithful. He has never left me, he never will. I look back on my life and am amazed to see that God has been doing huge things in my life, preparing me for the future, in the times when I thought I was furthest from him!! In my darkest days of relationship with him when I wondered where he was and what he was doing that was more important than me, i have come to realize, he wasn't anywhere else, doing something more important, because there is nothing more important to him than me (and you)!! It wasn’t God that had gone anywhere, it was ME!! I’m reminded of the TRUTH found in the poem "Footprints."

One night a man had a dream.
He dreamed he was walking along the beach with the LORD.
Across the sky flashed scenes from his life.
For each scene he noticed two sets of
footprints in the sand: one belonging
to him, and the other to the LORD.

When the last scene of his life flashed before him,
he looked back at the footprints in the sand.
He noticed that many times along the path of
his life there was only one set of footprints.
He also noticed that it happened at the very
lowest and saddest times in his life.
This really bothered him and he
questioned the LORD about it:

"LORD, you said that once I decided to follow
you, you'd walk with me all the way.
But I have noticed that during the most
troublesome times in my life,
there is only one set of footprints.
I don't understand why when
I needed you most you would leave me."

The LORD replied:"My son, my precious child,
I love you and I would never leave you.
During your times of trial and suffering,
when you see only one set of footprints,
it was then that I carried you."

I love this poem because even thought it's old and some might say a little too "Christian" I can relate to it so easily! I look back on the times when I have been struggling, and don’t know what's going on, and I see only one set of prints! And I think to myself, "GOD IS GOOD!!!"

Another thing that amazes me is God's grace!
Actually this doesn’t amaze me as much as it BLOWS MY MIND!! I still struggle to come to grips with the fact that God, the creator of the universe sent his Son to die in my place and I am the one who did the killing!! In fact I think it goes even further than that! God didn’t just say to the SON, "Off you go, do your thing," God created a body for his son! Just like he created us, he CREATED Jesus!! I was thinking about this a while ago and found it hard to get my head around! This was God’s Son, with whom he'd been in relationship for eternity, being sent to earth, to live by the laws of this earth, to die unfairly by the people of this earth, in order that the very people doing the killing would be able to spend eternity with him!! What’s more, Psalm 139 applies to Jesus too!! God poured all of his creativity and imagination into Jesus, creating for him a body like yours or mine, God designed Jesus TOO! Then Isaiah 53 describes what happened to Jesus body! God poured all his love into this particular creation, he watched with intent as he grew in the womb, he laughed and cried as Jesus experienced childhood he shared in Jesus' struggles and in his temptations, he was there to strengthen Jesus. God spent 33 years with Jesus, all so that he could take our sin to the cross! One of the hardest things for me to understand I guess is the depth of his grace! I’m sure you know what I’m talking about, I just cant understand (I KNOW, but don’t understand, cow jai mai?-you get it?) how God is able to allow me to come back to him after I’ve stumbled. How is it that God LOVES me THAT much that, despite my murdering his son at the first chance I got, he still wants me back? By his amazing grace. It’s one of those things that I’ll never fully understand I think. I mean, who could? But I don’t think that lack of understanding is a bad thing when it comes to God and his unendingness. If I fully understood God, then where would be the need for faith? Christianity’s focus would focus from that of faith in a God that can’t be seen, to how can we use this knowledge to create a God we CAN see!

Let me say "I LOVE God!!!!" I don’t know if you can say that or not, but he says that about you everyday! If you think that you're beyond God's love, YOURE NOT!! If you think that you don’t need God's love YOU DO!! I can’t say it enough!! GOD'S LOVE IS MIND BLOWING!! GOD'S FAITHFULNESS IS ETERNAL!! AND GOD'S GRACE IS AMAZING!!!

This post didn’t really turn out to be what I thought it would, but I know that if you are reading it and feeling that any of it relates to you, then God has used it for his kingdom. I wanted to worship God through this post and I think I have! It may not look like worship but anything that proclaims just how good HE is worship!!

How will you worship him today?

Ephesians 3

Paul's (and Servant's) Prayer for Spiritual Growth
14 When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father,*15 the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth.*16 I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit.17 Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God's love and keep you strong.18 And may you have the power to understand, as all God's people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is.19 May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.
20 Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.21 Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen.

Here i go Stealing Posts Again!

Paradox Jesus…

Jesus came into the world… that we may enter into heaven.

Jesus was born in the flesh… that we may be born of the Spirit.

Jesus was born of woman… that we may be born of God.

Jesus became the Son of Man… that we may become sons of God.

Jesus accepted poverty… that we may be made rich.

Jesus became a man of sorrows… that we may rejoice and be glad.

Jesus was made sin for us… that we might be made righteous.

Jesus was put to death… that we may have life.

Jesus was cursed… that we might be blessed.

i got this from my friend MATT's blog. please check him out he has good stuff to say

The KING's PARK

So I got called in to work early this morning on my day off, and I went just for a couple of hours, but by the time I finished, it was too late to get to church, so I thought "I'll just go home and finish my paper work as early as I can, so that I can have a day off!" So I was driving home past Kings Park (those of you who are coming here for visits and visa's we'll have to punish it), not really in the mood to go up there and really more Interested In going home to start my day off!! Something in me said you should go up there and I'm like "nah, can’t be bothered" but as I thought that I thought to myself "I don’t feel like going, but something's telling me I should. So I think I should! I think its God!" So I went. I drove up the hill and found a car park over looking the Narrows and looking sort of towards home (I looked but couldn’t find mine :-D). I just sat in my car listening to the HILLSONG LONDON album (it's good you should punish It!!) and I was praying about stuff and thinking about how much God had spoken to me in the last few months and how he's blessed me SO much and I looked at the trees and how different each of them was from the next but how together they make up a beautiful picture and so I was blessed by God to think that he made each of these trees with such imagination and attention to detail and originality but how much more time he put into us who are created in his image!

So I prayed and looked and blessed and was blessed by God all from the comfort of my car for... I guess it may have been 20-30 minutes, until I felt God saying to me, "Get up and go for a walk." and I knew it was God straight away this time because I SO didn't feel like walking! But I did lock my car and went for a walk. Down the hill along the grassed bit I found an area I never new existed! It was this terraced area with walking paths along the terraces and it was filled with all sorts of native plants and bushes (which are looking STUNNING at the moment (Perth In spring! WOW)) So I walked down along the lowest terrace until I saw a bench seat sitting rather randomly under a big palm tree on the next level up with stairs going up to it! So I thought, well I didn’t really even have to think this time, by now I just knew God wanted me there, so I sat. And I began to pray much the same sort of stuff I'd been praying in the car and while walking, but at some point God said to me "How many times have you been in this park? 20? 50? 100? And you never knew this even existed! HOW MUCH MORE SO WITH ME!!! How many time's have we talked; have I talked? And there is still so much stuff that you don’t know!" this was such an awesome blessing to hear!

(post script)
There are two things that made this whole experience more exciting to be in that I'm sure it is for you to read:
1. I Heard God-- not that this is so amazing in itself but to hear him and recognise his voice I think is the amazing bit! I probably I hear his voice all the time and write it off as my own thoughts or just stupidity but God is always faithful and NEVER stupid!!
2. I Obeyed God-- again in itself, this isn’t so amazing. I have heard and obeyed before, but today I was able to obey with confidence and decisiveness and I know that this is why I was so blessed by my encounter with God walking in his creation, while walking in his creation.

I hate to think how I would have felt about my day if I did not sit with God in the garden.