My life, my dominion

It's 915 am and i really ought to be trudging to school but the summer lag has still got it's hold on me.
I wake up today at 8am to find out that my once free friday has now been shattered. WBS has now given me a 10-11am seminar slot. DARN! I desperately look for another slot but don't find one save for fridays 9-10. which honestly does not appeal to me. i could go for thursdays 10-11 but oh well i already have thursday mornings off so i don't want to do anything to jeapordise that. so what does that leave me with? Well it now means that i have to catch the 5 to 8am bus to campus so that i am on campus when the library has just opened. This will give me roughly 2 hours before seminar and 3 hours after to do two slots of studying and an hours slot in the gym. this means that i have to fit in a 1 hour slot of weight training in the gym on thursdays and tuesdays to make up for the lack of conditioning on friday and wednesday. The problem is tha ton tuesdays i have seminars at 9, 11, 2 and 4 thus giving me LOTS of little breaks inbetween which is VERY annoying. oh well just have to live with it. so essentially i will be spending mondays, tuesdays, wednesdays totally in uni. i have yet to decide if i want to come inearly on thursdays mornings. right great start to the wek,.

oh yes tithing. I like tithing. Not because i like people to know that i'm giving back to the Lord. But honestly, ever since i began tithing regularly a tenth of what i had since NS each time i put the money into the bag/basket/box each month i feel a great sense of relief. Whenever i have not done it i feel honestly buggered the whole week becuause i feel that i've been stealing from God. This week i've been holding back on my tithing of the earnings i made during summer and this month's allowance because i'm still waiting for a cheque from my very tardy landlord in london.
Why? coz i like money. i like having it in the bank so that i can spend it. and i keep thinking,' i'll tithe once the money comes' but at the same time i 'm spending money rather unscrupulously on holidays and other things. Contradictory right? sigh..... Yesterday morning in church i had writtent eh cheque and it was in my pocket. i was still comtemplating not giving it till i read the account of Ananias and Sapphiras in Acts 5. Then i was convinced that what i had been doing all these months was enjoying God's blessing and stealing from him at the same time. So what if the cheque does't come. i'm just starting from square one then. I would have learned a lesson in landlord tenant relationships, and plus the money is God's to begin with, who am i to say that it is mine and i will decide what will happen to it. Who am i to hold God in credit and wait for more money to come in. Its like saying that i will keep an account with God and when i have enough, then i'll tithe the total amount due. No that is wrong. And i felt much better as i slotted the money into the box. I don't feel pride for i am only doing what is due of me. It really was relief when i did that because i am returning to God what is rightfully his not giving out of my own. Even if i offer more offerings on top of that, it is still God's anyway. That said i still hope the cheque comes in. it was supposd to be for my parents. oh well.

right on to other things. I told PX the other day that God doesn't work in mysterious ways, instead He works in freaky ways that it just scares me. Why?Well as of this morning, it's been two sundays in a row where the quiet time i did on monday conincided withthe message on Sunday. It just scares me into awe at the centrality of the message and it's consistency and how God will speak to you clear and loud. I'm not a regular quiet timer. But i've been trying to do that this year. And i mus tsay that it's been shockingly clear the message he has for me.

Well i'll just give short brief of the two messages and the following quiet time material. As for the impact they have on me wel that's personal for the time being.

Last week our church began a new series on ACTS, the account of Luke of the acts of the apostles.
ANd last weeks message started form Acts 1. of which pastor Paul titled, Barnacle Scraping the Church.
Acts is the account of the apostles and the activities of the first churches. It is the shining light as to what all churches should be. And rightfully so, over and over i hear of people christian and non christian turned away from the Lord because of the way they see the church rather than because they have not seen God. I suppose it's all linked, if people can't see God in the church, then obviously they don't see God in it's people and the message preached.
Well then, th strength of Luke's account is that he is not narrating but chronicling. he is a doctor, keen on details and he writes Acts as a means of detailing the first phase of the church to set an authoritative and truthful statement of the work of Christ and the Spirit after the Ascension.
The church therefore should be a Spirit Empowered church.
In so doing, it will be
1. a church empowered by the Spirit to evangelise
2. a church empowered by weakness
3. a church empowered through the spirit to be what Jesus wants it to be

Sadly i've lost my bible, very bad, so i can't really quote that freely, i really ought to get a digital bible. but a the end of Luke in chpt 24 verses 45-48, we read of Christs promise of the holy spirit as well as the path set out for them. He talks about the fulfilment of the prophecies that the word is to be spread to the world. In that time, Rome was the centre of the western world and gateway to the rest of the world. So by the spirit, the word went to Rome and from there spread rapidly out. what can we take from this?Only that the spirit empowers us to do one thing and that is to establish a Kingdom that awaits Jesus's return. We are to expect and hope the spirit to empower us to evangelise, not to gain knowledge of the scriptures but to preach. Just as the likes of moses and elijah prayed not for knowledge but the ability to speak of God's word likewise we should pray that the spirit will guide our tongues and actions to speak of God.

Secondly, we can only be empowered through the Spirit in weakness. In Acts 4:12-13, the sanhedrin and pharisees saw that peter and john were 'untrained and uneducated' yet spoke with such authority. while they wil not admit it they saw the Spirit in these men. Thus is the character of the Spirit and of God that they will shine greatest through weakness. Those who claim and show to be strong are nothing but hiding the fact that they are removed from God. Famous examples are David, Gideon and Stephen the matyr. All of them through weakness showed the power of God to overcome the odds and to stare death in the face and yet rely on God's love.
Also, strength as we know it is a worldly standard. The word wil not spread by worldly means and by wordly standards but by the spirit and it will only show strongly if we admit our weakness and realy on the spirit to empower us to do our duties. only then can we evangelise with conviction. Also pride in institutions and worldly expectations weakens our faith in God. Emphasise of pride in traditions, individuals just causes us toe lose faith in God and to put our faith in worldly things that wil fade ultimately. But to put our faith in God and to rely on the empowerment of the Spirit si all that we need.
Finally we are empowered by the Spirit to be what Jesus wants us to be.
Rathe self explanatory. we can tell ourselves what we want to be, successful, smart etc. but these things are worldly wants and not what jesus has in mind. Doing his will requires of us to rely on teh spirit to guide us. Only where the spirit is is teh word effective.

The quiet time that i did the monday after that sermon was about leading a life isolated form jesus. Am I constantly aware that the Holy Spirit is in me and that i should rely on it to guide me? or am i using too much of my mind and my worldly knowledge to go about life?Am i humanly holy? like the pharisess, holy through knowledge and acts but lacking in faith? Is my life empowered by the spirit? And sometimes i'm really sure that it isn't.

yup have to go now i've got a 11 oclock lect and it's already 10!!!

more on yesterday's sermon later.

ciao!