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.

Patiently Waiting

I know, I stole the title from No-Sacrifice Blog but it just fits! And besides what i have to say is a little different to what No-Sacrifice says!

i have been thinking about and praying for patience this week and god spoke to me on friday about what waiting patienty REALLY is. God said to me that waiting and patiently waiting are two different things!

"waiting," He said, "is not something that honours me; it is like a child whose mum has bought them a lolly pop but has told their kid that they can't have it yet, they have to wait till they get home. so the child thinks to itself, "MAYBE if i plead and annoy mum long enough, then she'll give me what she has for me!!" so the kid says, "Mum can i have it now?! mum can i have it NOW?! MUM can i have it NOW?! MUM can i HAVE it NOW?! MUM CAN I HAVE IT NOW?! MUM CAN I HAVE IT NOW?!" and eventually the mum get SO annoyed, that she said "THAT'S IT!! YOU CANT HAVE IT AT ALL NOW!" and the kid wonders why!!"

"No,"god says, "waiting isnt what honours me. PATIENT WAITING, however, taht is a different story! it is like a child whose mum has bought them a lolly pop but has told their kid that they can't have it yet, they have to wait till they get home. so the child thinks to itself, "Oh, ok then, well, I'd REALLY like it now, but if i can wait just a little bit longer, then when i get it it will seem nicer and i'll be happier for getting it! And mum wont be annoyed at ME for annoying HER!"

"God, I pray for PATIENCE."---YOUR Servant.

... and Jebediahphat begat Epiphany... (Hez.6:7)

I’ve had an epiphany. It’s not one of those things that happen to me everyday, but today I had one. I am quite excited about my epiphany, because it's actually really freeing. Freeing in that I don’t have to think the way I did before I had my epiphany. I have a new thing to think about and a new thing to pray to my wonderful GOD to give me. so here's my epiphany>>> but before I do, for those who are vocabularily challenged, an epiphany is a bolt of lightning thought, one of those thoughts that you get one day while you're roti-ing or mundanely doing some other mundane task. It’s one of those thoughts that changes the way you think and the more you think of it the more your thinking changes. Oh, and Epiphany is not a name, and Jebediahphat was not his father and there is no book in the Bible abbreviated to Hez.!!

Ok so I guess you want to hear about my epiphany then. Well my epiphany is that for us to have the ability to truly trust god, he needs to first build into our lives, humility! I can’t believe it took me as long as it has to work out this simple truth! Of course god needs to build humility into our lives before we can trust him. I mean if I don’t have an amount of humility in my life, then I’m going to start thinking about what I want to do with my life!! Actually let me rephrase that>>> I'M going to start THINKING about what I want to do with MY life!!

You wonder to yourself "What's wrong with having my life planned out? It’s a good thing to do!" but I say that it's not your life!! And who plans and organises something that's not theirs anyway?

So let's get the facts out. My life is not my own. Your life is not your own, your life is not my own, my life is not your own. BUT my life is God's life, your life is God's life, our lives are God's lives. He made us, He loves us, He bought us with Jesus blood, so who are we to plan and prepare something that isn’t ours?

this poses a bit of a problem for us as humans because for the most part, we are the ones who live our lives, and we are the ones who make the decisions about what we do with the lives God has lent us! and i dont know about you but i can say for sure that i dont always make the right decision, or always have the right answer. but i know that my maker knows what i'm good for. he knows the road i should take, and he knows everything about me and my design right down to who i should marry and where i should live to best fit his purpose for my existence.

let me just take a moment to to illustrate my point about design with something REALLY simple. say i'm going to wash the dishes, and i need to fill the sink. the drain hole is circular, but i have a chioce of different shaped plugs. (there was too much choice at Bunnings and i coildnt decide). What do i do? do i select a random plug and hope taht it fits? or do i choose the one that looks like the closest fit to the circular drain hole? it's as simple as that! god wants to put us where we're most efective. just like a square plug wont fit in a round hole, so we wont fit if we arent where god wants us!and one more thing, we arent doing what we were designed for if we are still sitting on the bench and not in the hole.

so i want to be where i'm being used the most effectively. i want to be in the drain that god has chosen for me but to do that i have to let him take control of my life and to trust him with my purpose. and that's an easier thing to say than to do! i know of plenty of instances in "my own" life where i have taken control from god and tried to drive even though i couldnt even see over the wheel! ithought i could run my life better that god could i thought that my way was better and that. does this sound silly to you? it does to me! because to me it sound like i'm a 3yr old who thinks they can beat up thier dad!!

to be able to trust god with my life, i need to realise that 1 it's not my own and 2 that god does it better!! and this takes a certain amount of humility. so i give up my life to god. i give up control to god. i sat to him , "God, you do it better than me, so you can do it and i'll just do what i'm told."
so there you have it. my epiphany.

i cannot trust god to fulfill my purpose while i still think that i'm the one who controls my life.
Miracle AudioAdrenaline

I am free
for the first time
left my fears behind
in front of me is open sky

I'm taller than trees
I can see further than before
everything's different now
now that You've ruined my life

(chorus)
You took my dreams
and stole my schemes
and turned my life upside-down
You took my heart
stole every part
and made it a miracle 

now I can sing, sing a new song
my burden's gone
you gave me all the words and melodies

and now I can be at Your feet
Your place for me
everything's beautiful
now that You've ruined my life

You took my dreams
and stole my schemes
and turned my life upside-down
You took my heart
stole every part
and made it a miracle 

and I'm wide awake
and tonight I'm saved
in Your arms I'm singin' of
how You made me a miracle

I'm taller than trees
I can see further than before
everything's different now

I Am A Beautiful Butterfly

Chrysalis is a stage of the metamorphic cycle of the caterpillar/butterfly. It's the stage of cocoon in which the caterpillar undergoes the amazing change from a caterpillar to a beautiful butterfly.
This weekend has been one of the most amazing | |'s of my life.
I was privileged to be asked to participate on a camp called Chrysalis that is aimed at hitting you where you're at. It's not a camp that you attend for adventure--that comes when you leave. It's not a camp that you attend to be constantly being entertained by "activities." Chrysalis is a camp you attend to see god move in your life. I went for this reason and was not disappointed!

Have you ever been invited to something that you know nothing or just the bare essentials about by a friend and agreed to go only because your friend believed that you should? I thank god for my Friend Aaron because without this man of God, I wouldn’t be able to type this short message bout the character of God.
Here is my TESTimony:
for those of you who know me, I’m a bit of a know-it-all--even if I know I don't. I like to have the answers to your questions. "Where does this come from?" "How does this work?" "What should I do in this aspect of my walk?" answering questions helps me to feel needed, helps me to fell like I have a purpose. And of course so as not to be a hypocrite, I had to know the answers to my own life too! I had to know where I am destined for the future, what was wrong with my life, how to fix it, why I felt this way, why someone felt that way about me. Everything that there was a question to I had to know the answer; despite whether I knew it when it was asked. Sometimes, this is a noble cause. What happens though when there's a question about my own life I don’t know the answer to? What do I do? The answer is simple really and quite obvious, I make it up!
here's some background for you:
recently on my trip to Thailand and in the weeks following I felt god lay upon my heart the desire to go and study a DTS wit a youth missions organisation called YWAM. Around the same time I was approached to possibly be the manager of a DOME cafe (A huge step towards my lifelong dream) and there is also the possibility of a position in youth ministry at my church. Knowing I couldn’t do all three especially since one is in Thailand, I accepted the manager's position, and told them that I was leaving in 5 months. Through all of this, I was praying and giving the decision over to god, but I think that I had handcuffed the outcome to me so that I got to decide in the end. I mean surely DTS is the right answer! It has to be, missions is God's heart for the world!! So I was going to Thailand. That was it. It was final. I had made my decision. I talked about it with my parents, and with my best friend, and I told my pastor. But in between my initial talk with my parent, and with my friends, I sort of forgot that God hadn’t stopped speaking. And when I heard him saying "SLOW DOWN RYAN, YOU'RE MOVING TOO FAST," my reaction was a mild version of get thee behind me Satan!!
God led me to a point where I could say confidently, "I'm not confident about this decision." Through Him speaking through friends and workmates I came to a spot where I didn’t feel His peace about this decision. So on Friday night I nailed it to the cross. I gave the decision back to God, saying I can't do this without your peace. And do you know what I felt??? Nothing. Nothing, at least until the next night. When we were asked to reflect on the night before.

In silence we reflected. In silence I was distracted. But once again I praise god for Aaron who came and rescued me. He listened to the spirit's leading, and asked me the most layered question in the world, "How you doing?" I assumed he wasn’t referring to my visible layer so I told him all that was going on--- I dint know the answer and I was scared and humbled and in a place that I didn’t want to be. I didn’t know if God wanted me to go to Thailand! What a scary thought!! This is something that is going to impact on my life so much between now and then and then forever after, and I don’t know the answer!!! [Remember how I said that I like to know the answers? well this was THE big one in my journey to date] God had hit me where it hurts. He’d humbled me in the area of my life that I take pride in, my knowledge. I was talking to Aaron and it hit me that I was no longer in control of my life, that my life was indeed God’s and that he had control. When I nailed the word Thailand to the cross, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. All I knew was that I didn’t quite fell right about it and that’s it!

I still don’t know if god wants me in Thailand. But I am no longer ill at ease. Why? Because if there is one difference between pre Chrysalis Ryan and post Chrysalis Ryan, it's that my life is back in God's Hands and he's never let anything slip!

Chrysalis is an amazing experience I hope I never forget! To all those in the Emmaus community THANK YOU! You have meant so much to us here at Perth Chrysalis.

I LOVE YOU ALL

FLY WITH CHRIST.

God Almighty!!

It's amazing how and where God works!!

I watched bruce almighty again tonight(for the 2nd or 3rd time)and was again amazed at the themes of Love and Grace (Grayce) and the searching heart that were built into it!! in fact I was so amazed I went searching for the source of these themes; the person involved who influenced the movie in such a profound way.

I came across this interview with TOM SHADYAC, the director, and thought you would like to read it.

Interview with TOM SHADYAC

Who am I?

This week I was thinking about who I am and who I am not when it comes to my faith.
Who am I now that Christ is in me, and who was I or would I have been if Christ wasn’t in me.
I got to thinking about all the people I could have been, and all the things I could have been doing without Christ in my life and I came out the other side thanking god for who I am!!!
Imagine yourself without Christ: lies, profanity, abuse, hopeless, lost, searching, afraid, immorality, pride, slander ….I could go on.
Now think of how Christ has changed you life through his death, through taking your that old life to the ends of the earth and ditching it. LOVE FAITH HOPE.

Christ’s death didn’t just take away our sin, and he doesn’t stop forgiving the first time. Christ’s death, his resurrection and his ascendance changed life as we know it. We no longer have to worry about the future, we don’t have to pretend to be someone we’re not or do good works and hope that’s enough.
We are saved!! Christ has redeemed us from the curse of sin!! he has bought us back with his blood. and now we can look forward to all the blessings he has promised to his children.

As I was writing this I thought of a song that we used to sing in Sunday school and it says:

BORN AGAIN, BORN TO WIN,
I’M A CHILD OF THE MOST HIGH GOD
BORN AGAIN, BORN TO WIN,
I’M A CHILD OF THE KING

I’M A NEW CREATION,
IVE BEEN WASHED IN HIS BLOOD
HAD A TRANSFORMATION
NOW I’M LIVING IN THE POWER OF GOD!!

so there we were... but now we're here.

so we wer in chiang rai the last time i talked and i guess i should keep on filling you in on what i've been up to.

so on tuesday we sorta had a quiet day. we swam in the pool with all the crew and got a LITTLE burnt then in the arvo Will left, and tom left for bangkok at 7

wednesday was pretty warm. we went with shane to pack up his stuff at the the ywam base, which we got done relatively quickly i think due to camille helping him get organised. i stayed downstairs and burnt 20 cds of photos for shane to distribute among his crew. when we finished, Pi Jesse and Pi Uab picked us up and we went to lunch at apparently the best Kaoh soi (a type of soup) place in town. then back to the hotel for general chilling and a quick swim (dont want to get too burnt). i think for dinner i juat had something light, like fried rice or something.

we were up early again on thursday. apparently they dont believe in letting people sleep in! but it was cool because we went to the border of thailand and Myanmar for some shopping. the border is about 30mins drive (Jesse style) form chiang rai and the town that straddles the border is called Mae Sai. so in Maesai twe pull out our passports, and 250 baht (<$10) to crossthe border into Myanmar which is cool because now i've been to Three different countries!!

Myanmar is Opressive. as soon as you cross the border there are beggars and Vendors that perssure you to buy their cigarettes which is just a front for selling porn. but you just say no and keep walking. the market in myanmar's maesai was crazy, they sold Everythingfrom "brand name" electronics, to knives and bb guns, to clothes, to dvd's and cds. and cheap too. like 6 new dvd's for 400 baht (<$15)
so we purchased a bit and then went and ate lunch at a restaurant right on the river.
on the way back the the hotel to pack, we said goodbye to Kate and Pi eunice whch was hard for them because it was actually all over. no-one left to say bye to.but we made great friends with them and they wont be forgotten. PUNISH IT GUYS. so we packed and went tothe bus station to board our 11 hour bustrip that brought us to bangkok at 6.00 this morning.

the bus was great. we got VIP bus Tickets which got us better that airline seats except for the foot rests and airlin service. unfortunately we didnt get airline sleep. so i'm stinkin tired and i have a headache.but other than that good.

so you're up to date. we staying in the english school till sunday and fly out at around midday.

peace out
ryan

So, Here We Are...

So here we are in thailand, just punishing the blog so all my fam know i'm still alive.
i'm having a great time chillin in the chiang Rai hood. we got here on friday morning after a couple of days with very little sleep. it was awesome to see shano again even though he looks so much like a ywamer! his grad on friday arvo was cool but oh so hot!
we are staying in a resort right near the airport but i haven't once heard any planes which is good. we were the only ones there on friday and sat which was cool too because we had the pool all to ourselves!! early morning and late night swims are the order of the day, so we've been punishing the pool hard.

sunday we went to PiJesse and PiUab's home church which was, for all the DTS Crew, their last sunday together. we started with some worship and prayer led by Will, and we sang oneof the most touching and i know for some the most heart felt song i have heard in a long time. i will try to link to it later if i can find it. so we sang and prayed and then Steve (Beckingham) spoke a challenging sermon on Forgiveness.
after church we went to lunch then all trekked into town to say goodbye to a few of the DTS crew who were heading off on a bus back to bangkok and tehn we went to Swensson's ice creamery for some chocolate......icecream and other flavours too. photos will be on Flicr later.

on monday we travelled about 45 mins north up the Kok (Gok) river to a village for an elephant ride. we ate there, and chilled out for a while with the two massive Constricors and a monkey in a cage before-hand and then took the 20 minute elephant ride option which cost about 80 baht (<$3.50) each. i got as many photos as i could but i'll have to apologise for the quality. i never realised that elephant rides were so bumpy!
that night we went to dnner at the airport because Kim was leaving @ 8.00.


well i'm gonna have to leave it there for now i gotta go but stay tuned.
peace out.
love you fam.

Thai Me up Before you Go Go.

yeah you read right! i'm off to thailand.
In exactly 11 hours my first international adventure starts when i board a plane to Brunei and from there board another plane to the land of the long white cloud. (or is that new zealand) either way i'm officially an accomplished jetsetter and i'm so excited.for those of you who dont know why i'm going to thailand, it's to go to my best mate shane's graduation. for those of you who Do know why i' going to thailand, it's to go to my best mate shane's graduation.

anyway i hope to blog while i'm over there so stay tuned and i'll keep you updated