A Lazy Easter (or ‘like’ if you are saved)

The Pharisees Question Jesus (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I love Easter… and I love social media. However this Easter has been the first time I have been disappointed in what I saw Christians doing to both Easter and the use of social media!

This Easter was the first time I saw link after link filled with soft ‘Easter’ related pictures and sayings with phrases saying things similar to “Like if you are saved” or “Write I love Jesus in the comments” … and while this is all good stuff it seems to me that Christians are starting to get lazy in the way we are approaching Easter.

Are we starting to get to the point that we think “Hmmmm it’s Easter, I better say something” and then proceed to find a Easter picture or nice scripture to post and then sit smugly thinking “Well that’s done for another year”?
My point isn’t if we should do this stuff because sometimes there is a time and a place for it… I just wonder if it actually engages people to the true understand and meaning of what Easter actually means.
Are we missing the opportunity to tell people why Easter is so important in every aspect of our lives as Christians?

Revelation 12:11 says “And they have defeated him by the blood of the Lamb and by their testimony.”

It seems to me that our testimonies are one of the most important part of our faith… so why are we reducing it to half thought through status updates and cute pictures?
A great example of a testimony working in a powerful way is when the Pharisees were trying to find stuff to put on Jesus so that they could capture him, they asked someone who Jesus had healed.
The Pharisees said to the man “God isn’t getting the Glory for the healing did on you because we know that Jesus is a sinner”

But here is what the man said in reply

“I don’t know whether he is a sinner,” the man replied. “But I know this: I was blind, and now I can see!” – John 9:25

You see they could try and trap the man with words and loopholes… but they couldn’t trap him with what he had experienced.
His testimony was a powerful statement of the power, grace and majesty of Jesus… NO ONE could take that away from him… it was his… his story to tell… his proof.

So lets stop hiding from our faith… because it’s our faith that will prove to the ones we love that Jesus is actually real in our lives.

“I tell you the truth, those who listen to my message and believe in God who sent me have eternal life. They will never be condemned for their sins, but they have already passed from death into life.” – John 5:24

Faith @ Home

new growth

In research done by the Barna group in the USA showed that only 27% of church going school kids had some sort of prayer or devotion at home… this number is REALLY low.

However what’s the most alarming is that if you take out grace at dinner time… the number drops to between 10-12%

So that means that almost 90% of church going school kids never get any kind of devotion…
Now parents in Christian homes tell me that they want their kids to discover a relationship in Christ… so the question has to be asked…

How are they expecting that to happen osmosis? 

John Piper writes: “If there is one memory that our children should have of our families and of our church it is this; they should remember God. god was first. God was central”

The Bible tells us to get the Bible message inside our children…

Write these commandments that I’ve given you today on your hearts. Get them inside of you and then get them inside your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning to when you fall into bed at night. Tie them on your hands and foreheads as a reminder; inscribe them on the doorposts of your homes and on your city gates.
Deuteronomy 6:6

Kids need and long to hear from us…

Our Testimonies… Our Experiences… Our personal encounters with God.

You see they want to know that what you believe isn’t just real but life changing.

Here’s the thing if parents don’t start to impress these on our children… you can bet that the enemy of souls will… in a subtle… but very real way.

Our kids are FAR TO VALUABLE to just to hand over to the enemy without a fight!

If you have children under the age of 12… and really would like resources for the home to help give your children EVERY opportunity to discover the amazing adventure God has in store for them. I would recommend Faith box.
For more information click on the link here!

and even better… I would strongly recommend you purchase it!

 

The Downside of Cohabiting Before Marriage

House flies Doin’ it!

I just read a carefully worded article by a clinical psychologist Meg Jay who did research on people who lived with each other before they got married… and it had some really interesting results… results that the church has been trying to tell people for years.

Now I have to point out that Meg isn’t a Christian… so don’t think it’s a Christians psychologist pushing Christian values…

Anyway Meg points out that many people who ‘try’ living together before they get married have a lower chance of staying together than those who don’t… I’ll quote from the article

“One thing men and women do agree on, however, is that their standards for a live-in partner are lower than they are for a spouse.”

So they’re not going in looking for a long term thing… they going in with the intention to try, and not at the intention of living together forever and ever… so they try and if it works out then they will go further and maybe get  married but if it doesn’t  work out  it’s back to the auditioning phase…

They’re not exactly ‘settling’ for something less than they deserve… however it’s pretty close to it… They would never admit they’re settling, so they use phrases like “We’ve been through a lot” or “they’re a really good friend”…

However those who go in and sift out all the rubbish first… fight through the guys who aren’t interested in treating them like royalty… and are picky with the people they date have more of a chance at staying together because they’re not auditioning for ever and ever… they’re constantly working towards forever and ever.

Another quote from the article was this from a woman in her mid-twenty’s  “I felt like I was on this multi-year, never-ending audition to be his wife,”

So why is this?

Surely trying before you buy is a good thing?

Well it’s not… and the reason it isn’t is because sex was meant to be a sign of what you are doing with your whole life… giving of yourself fully to someone… anything outside that is just consumerism, it’s “It feels good to me when I’m with him…” but sex is meant to be about a giving of yourself... it’s about vulnerability and it’s a sign that you’re giving yourself fully in ALL areas of your life.

Author and Theologian C.S. Lewis put’s it like this:

“The monstrosity of sexual intercourse outside marriage is that those who indulge in it are trying to isolate one kind of union the sexual from all the other kinds of union which were intended to go along with it and make up the total union.”

So what Mr Lewis is saying is it’s ALL or nothing.

It’s a really interesting article… CLICK HERE and have a read and see what you think!

 

It’s your story…

We all have stories

I was talking to a friend of mine, and I was reminded about the amazing provisions that God had continued to bring into the life of myself and my family.

There have been so many times in my life where our cupboard was bare… and just at the right time someone came with a box of food…
Or when our car had been in need of repair… and just at the right time the money came into our account – the EXACT amount.

I can give story upon story of how God has provided for us at just the right time in so many ways.

Revelation 12 says:

And they have defeated him by the blood of the Lamb and by their testimony.
And they did not love their lives so much that they were afraid to die – Revelation 12:11

Testimonies remind us that God is still in charge… how?

Because no one can take away the things God has done in our lives… we EXPERIENCED it.

It’s kind of like walking in and seeing your grandmother naked… you can’t UN-SEE things like that… and you can’t un-experience the things that God has done for you.
When we share the things that God has done for us we take away from the enemy his lies telling us that “God doesn’t work in our lives anymore” when we know he does because we have experienced that in our lives.

We have experienced his Grace, we have experienced his healing, we have seen and heard  his answers to prayers… and we can say with all honesty that “God has been with us Thus Far and we know he will continue to be with us.” (1 Sam 7:12)

Often we think that Testimonies are only to do with how we became a Christian… and what God did for us does come into the story of how we became a Christian… but Revelations 12:11 talk about how POWERFUL our testimonies actually are.

One of my favourite testimonies I have heard was in Mark Batterson’s book ‘The Circle Maker’… t goes something like this:

Bob Bagley was a missionary to Africa.  His tribal church was literally meeting under a tree and one day the local witchdoctor cursed the tree and all the leaves withered.  They lost their shade.  They also lost their status!  That curse overshadowed them.  So Dr. Bagley decided to call a public prayer meeting.  He laid hands on the tree and prayed that God would resurrect it.   I love his prayer: “It’s not my name that’s at stake.”  He knew that he couldn’t establish God’s reputation without risking his own!  The rest of the story?  Not only did God resurrect the tree, it became the only tree of its type that yielded fruit twice a year!

Isn’t that great… those sort of testimonies remind us who’s really in charge, and that God is able to do immeasurably more than all I can ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20)…

But here is the thing – If we don’t share the way God is at work in our lives, then we’re tempted to think God isn’t working at all.

So what are the stories that YOU have of Gods provisions in your life… God’s Grace etc…

Are you telling people about them… because they are YOUR stories to tell… and another way of overcoming the enemies in your life.

Testify!

Cheating myself out of you…

What (or Who) defines… YOU?

One of my best friends ‘Ren’ last week got me thinking about if I was ‘normal’ or not… in fact she actually asked the question “So what is ‘normal’?”
As it turns out I’m not ‘normal’ (which really wasn’t a surprise to anyone really!)… however being weird is the normal God designed us to be… so as Christians being ‘normal’ isn’t really an option.

But it got me thinking a bit more about what defines me?… and maybe more importantly how do we see ourselves?

In a way only God can plan, as I was thinking about this another good friend and mentor of mine Hamish spoke about “What defines us…” at our church today… sometimes God doesn’t let you off the hook that easily!

Something that really stood out for me was the main things define us and it was a simple list of 4 topics:

• Others
• Events
• Self
• God

Now I had known this for a while… however it was really hammered home when I realised that 3 of the 4 things in the list are changeable…

So What are the forces that shape us as people?
What should shape us?

When we let others shape us… we’re in danger of seeing things through not only our broken ‘life lens’ but theirs also.
You see often we don’t see things as they are… we see things as WE are.
Often others have their own agenda’s and own reasons for feeling a particular way…
How fickle are the opinion of others?
It really highlights how important it is that we have people who we really trust to speak into our lives…
Who have you got that you really trust to speak into your life?
Do you have anyone?

There are plenty of events in our lives we can look at that maybe have really been hard… separation/loss of job/scandal/natural disasters you could probably add your own ‘events’to this list…
Coming from Christchurch New Zealand I know how fast a major event can change things… but the question is are we going to let these events DEFINE who we are?
One of my earliest memories of seeing someone who refused to let an event define them was when I saw a friends Mum at a funeral… the funeral of her son and a friend of mine who had died in a major outdoor accident. Only a year before this tragic event this amazing lady was saying goodbye to her husband who died of cancer… she stood up and spoke of the pain she was feeling of such loss… it was heart wrenching… however she spoke of her faith in God… and I knew that this event although it was painful and would be hard to erase, wasn’t going to be the one thing in life that would define this woman… she knew who she was.

Then we come to ourselves… sometimes we’re our harshest critics aren’t we, we have low self esteem because we don’t value ourselves or we’re always comparing ourselves unfairly to others or we dwell on our past… but here is the thing… Moods change… people change… feelings change…
So why are we putting so much pressure on ourselves?

You see these three things… Others, Events and Self are all things that change… in a heart beat… they’re not consistent… so isn’t it funny that we have put so much time and effort into letting these things be the main things that mold us into who we are… the main things that we let define us???

But God… the creator of the world… is forever unchanging… he made you to be who you are!
And it never matters about our past… “God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.” Romans 5:8 (NLT)…
You see… while we were still sinners… it wasn’t about the fittest or the best or the most popular… it was because you… are YOU… and God LOVED you that much!

You see we know how much God loves us… so why are we striving to let others define us?

Sometimes it’s almost like we’re trying to cheat God and do things our own way…
When we’re not cheating God… we’re cheating ourselves out of what HE has for US…
We’re just cheating ourselves!

Who are we kidding?

Lastly… Hamish came to this wonderful conclusion… maybe… just maybe our list of who defines us should look more like this?

• God
• Self
• Others
• Events

You see when you’re putting your trust in God, you have to die to yourself… you have to deny yourself.
But here is the great thing about that… when you put God at your number one… it frees us from ALL the other stuff… there is no need to ‘perform’ we can relax and let God define us… and he calls us his ‘masterpiece’… he calls us ‘very good’… he calls us ‘sons and daughters’… he calls us ‘heirs’…

So what  (or who) defines you?

Remember you’re unique just like everyone else!

Weird Fish Art (Photo credit: pfly)

I said to a good friend of mine the other day… “you have to understand that I’m just not normal…” as a bit of a joke…
However she turned around and said to me “So what’s normal???”

Drat… I hate it when people ask a question that actually makes sense!!

However… That got me thinking… what IS normal?
It’s kind of like “Remember you’re unique just like everyone else!” isn’t it?

Are we really that unique… or are we all just different flavoured versions of each other?

after thinking about it for a while… I’ve come up with the answer to “what is normal?“… the answer is “Yes”

Goose I think you may have miss understood the question… but I say… I think I understand it perfectly… You see even King Solomon said “there is nothing new under the sun” meaning that the problems, the trails, the victories, the things that we experience in life are just variations of a theme… they’re mainly the same thing replayed by a slightly different cast.
So are we all the same in the things that we experience… I would say “Yes”

However when you look at people who are Christians and some of the teachings that are in The Bible are totally different to the way everyone else sees things…

Here’s a couple of classics:

“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you…” Luke 6:27 …

Doesn’t normal in our world want to do the opposite?
Doesn’t the world encourage backstabbing… if someone mistreats you, you are snarky to them back???
We could most likely say that that would be the ‘normal’ response… but you see as Christians we don’t play that way… we march to the beat of a different drum.

We’re called to LOVE… regardless… that’s just not normal!

How about Matthew 7:13-14 (NIV)  “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. ¹⁴ But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

Do you see that… Many are on the road to destruction… that’s ‘the norm’…
‘The Few’ – the weird ones… the freaks… those that don’t act like everyone else… in this case those who follow Jesus rather than their own desires or what the world calls ‘normal’.

You see I believe God made you the way you are for a reason… you’ve been through some tough stuff in life… to gain the experiences in life that make you ‘weird’… to be different from everyone else.

So why are you trying so hard to fit in… because you don’t!

And if you’re trying to become more ‘normal’ (whatever that is) to make yourself more comfortable you’re just lying to yourself… especially if you claim to be a Christian… you are God’s masterpiece… you were created the way you are for a reason… so why hide the fact?
You see as Christians we’re different… our weirdness is what sets us apart… it’s the thing that means we shouldn’t  worry like others do, we should treat people differently to how others do, we should treat our possessions differently to how others do, we should look at relationships differently to what others do…

Lets face it…

WE’RE NOT NORMAL

Craig Groeschel from Lifechurch.tv said it best when he said “Weird because normal isn’t working”

Christians: Don’t read this if you’re not ready to deal with stuff…

sin city effect (Photo credit: Salva Boada)

This isn’t going to be one of those nice feel good type of blogs… so if you’re not prepared to think about making some hard decisions then turn off the computer now and walk away… we’re gonna get serious!

I’ve been trying to sort my life out, it’s been a long process… but growing fruit is like that isn’t it?
I’m just starting to see the fruits of it all come into a new season now… but it hasn’t been easy.

Can I be perfectly honest with you?
I’m not going to sugar coat it… I’m a hypocrite – if I was to be perfectly blunt.
I never meant to be… I just became one… it wasn’t a planned move… it wasn’t a clear pathway I chose to go on… it wasn’t even waking up one morning thinking “I think I’ll be a hypocrite today”... I just became one.

You see Christian’s are REALLY good at coming up with excuses why they do things… In fact we’re starting to become famous for it… as an example – we are called to “Love” yet Christians are more known for what we are against than what we are for…
We’re part of the crew that gets drunk with everyone else… yet we say we’re “in the world but NOT of it”… We make excuses for living with our partners before we’re married, when we know the Bible says not to do it… but because it’s not a ‘direct command’ we think we have discovered some great cosmic loophole… We say that our bodies are a temple of the Holy spirit but we go out for a quick smoke at lunch time, or don’t eat properly or exercise regularly.

Lets start to get real people…

I know we all make mistakes… heck I’ve got be to pretty high up on the ledger as far as mistakes go… however fruit needs to grow, and we need to make sure we are starting to put ourselves in an environment for it to do that.

Now I was happy to continue my  little life of having my feet in both camps… until I re-read this verse.

“Everyone who sins is breaking God’s law, for all sin is contrary to the law of God.  And you know that Jesus came to take away our sins, and there is no sin in him. Anyone who continues to live in him will not sin. But anyone who keeps on sinning does not know him or understand who he is.
….  Those who have been born into God’s family do not make a practice of sinning, because God’s life is in them. So they can’t keep on sinning, because they are children of God. ” – 1 John 4-10

Hold on… so if I know I’m doing wrong yet I still choose to do what is wrong… I don’t really know who Christ is???
But I’ve been a Christian all my life you may shout,  however according to this verse… and plenty others within the Bible… you may have the ‘label’ of Christian… but you’re not a Disciple of Jesus… you’re not a follower… you’ve just got the label and go to church… you’re a casual Christian…

And just when you thought… but the things I’m doing are fine… Jesus didn’t COMMAND it… actually he did!

We get blindsided by this one phrase…

“If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me.” - Matthew 16:26

Lets face it… we’re hypocrites… and we’re selfish…

It’s sucks aye?

We’re so into making sure we’re HAPPY that we forget to look to the only one who can free us… the ONLY one… and what for? Our own selfish desires??? Our own comfort????

“But surely God wants me to be happy??”… no he doesn’t!!

God wants you to be so much more than just happy… “Christ came to give life… and life in ALL it’s fullness…”(1) or in some other versions “ABUNDANTLY.” He GAVE his only son as a sacrifice to FREE us so that we can be MORE than just happy and we’re willing to look for loopholes so that we don’t feel guilty about it???

What do you do with a scripture life 2 Timothy 3:16

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness…”

It doesn’t say “pick and choose scriptures that make YOU feel comfortable” does it???

We don’t want to give up what we have because giving up hurts… we have to die to who we once were... and dying isn’t fun (ask anyone!) … it’s often painful, and you have to give up so much… but the plans and the promises of God are so much more worth it…

Are you a person who ‘just goes to church’ and maybe sometimes reads the Bible or are you someone who is making a commitment to want to follow Jesus’ command and actually become a follower…

But here’s the thin… that means a death... death to what you’re clinging too… making excuses for…

I’m not here to judge… not my job… and it’s not my intention… I’m most likely more of a sinner than most of your who read this blog… however… I want to give my life over FULLY to what God wants for my life…

however if you are feeling uneasy… if you are feeling angry at me for writing this blog… if God is just quietly poking at your heart… then it may pay to give over your dirty laundry to God… he’s the only one who can deal with it.

It’s going to be hard… it’s going to hurt…
But Gods plans are so much better than anything I could ever come up with…

Have you got the courage to look through your life and start to make those changes… because that’s what repentance is… a TOTAL turn around… the other direction… not looking back.

It’s time to stop making excuses for your sin.

Changing Course…

KFC (Photo credit: Marufish)

I’ve been in a creative space lately… I’ve been doing a lot of thinking… and often when I think… I blog… it’s a great way for me to put the things that I couldn’t put into a song down on paper (even if it is electronic) and just be able to go back to read later on…

I have been thinking about a phrase that I heard Andy Stanley say:

Direction – Not intention – Determines our Destination

Wow… I remember hearing that about 4 or 5 years ago and it didn’t really have an impact… however I recently just heard it again and it almost leaves me breathless…
What have I squandered due to ‘good intentions’?
Does this explain the ‘How did I end up here’ scenarios I find myself in?

If you think about it it doesn’t take long before you can think of some good intentions that were laid on the roadside… while you went down another destructive path that lead you to another ‘How did I get here moment’

Girls does this sound familiar?:
“I want to meet and marry a wonderful Christian guy, who will love me for who I am and wants to spend the rest of his life with me…”
Yet you go out with ANYONE who asks you out as long as they’re cute… and you’ve had enough drinks.

Or how about the guys:
“I want great sex once I’m married…”
But then he spends his time watching porn, or he ‘practices’ with anyone who will sleep with him…

Parents:
“I want to be there to see my grandchildren grow up…”
But you don’t exercise, you don’t eat properly and you neglect your health…

Christians:
I really want to know Gods will for my life… I want to have a real intimacy with him”
But every evening you watch TV, and ever morning you sleep in or read the newspaper… or more TV…

Obviously this is a very short list and I’m sure you could add your own set of intentions… however ALL of the illustrations above show how ‘intentions’ don’t make any difference if you are on the wrong track…

It’s the DIRECTION that makes or breaks were we end up…

If you want to loose weight don’t spend lunch time at KFC…
If you want to stop getting drunk ever Friday night… stop going to bars…
These things are paths and they ALL lead somewhere…

Here’s a Bible verse to end with… take it and stick it up on your wall and think about it OFTEN:

“A prudent person foresees danger and takes precautions. The simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences.”Proverbs 27:12 (NLT)

(Prudent often means a wise person who understands life)

Get out of your camps

what does the word say?

For the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires. – Hebrews 4:12 NLT

I’ve been thinking a lot about the different camps that divide the church… and while there is a need to stand up for the truths that are in the scriptures… and there is a need for us to highlight messages that aren’t true… we all would agree with most of that… HOWEVER I believe that the camps we have found ourselves in are just making us lazy.

There used to be a time that people used to turn to the Bible when challenged… they used to check translations… they used to put it into context of the whole story of the Gospel message that had been threaded through the dozens of books of the old and new testament.

These days… we listen to the pod casts of those that we like… we talk about the Gospel with only those who share our views… we read books by people we know will challenge us a little bit without making us have to think too hard about the logical conclusion…

And we have become lazy…

We have become slack on the gospel story…

We are missing out huge chunks of the message of God.

It’s good to like good writers… it’s good to talk about gospel things with people who share our same view and it’s good to read books that cement our way of thinking… However… we need to get outside out nice little insulated Christian bubbles and look beyond what other people within our circles are thinking… we need to really get back into the Bible.

There seems to be more and more people who assume what they believe is right but it’s not based on personal study… it’s based on simply what they were told… that’s why you are seeing large crowds of presumable smart sophisticated Christians following people who’s message just doesn’t stack up biblically.

I love the book of Acts and I have most likely read that book of the Bible more than any book of the Bible… but this scripture caught my attention… I love how scripture is like that… you can read the same story 4 or 5 time and then one day this amazing realization hits you.

And the people of Berea were more open-minded than those in Thessalonica, and they listened eagerly to Paul’s message. They searched the Scriptures day after day to see if Paul and Silas were teaching the truth. – Acts 17:11 NLT

These guys are just cool… they didn’t just take what Paul and Silas had to say… they were challenged and they went back and read the scriptures… not just read the scriptures in this version it says they SEARCHED the scriptures… and not just once or twice but “day after day”

So are you just believing what is being told?

Or are you being challenged and then going and checking it out in light of The Truth…

 

 

Music Review: POD ‘Murdered Love’

P.O.D. (Payable on Death) are one of those bands that are seen by Christians as too secular to be considered Christians and considered by the secular world as to Christian to be taken seriously… and to be perfectly honest… that tension is one of the reasons I like the band.

Murdered love the bands sixth mainstream studio album is full of imagery. The album starts of hard both musically and lyrically… the first two tracks talk about hard subjects like ‘End Times’ while the title track of the album ‘Murdered Love’ is a song that talks about the minutes straight after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and it aims to paint a graphic picture of the event.

“Exterminate the absolute
Stain the just in the blood bath
Waste the pure, butcher the divine
annihilate the sunrise”

It’s great to have a song that really shows the pain that Jesus Christ went through for us… once you dwell on the imagery it’s hard to back away from… you’ve seen too much.

The album isn’t all heaviness… and 3 tracks in we are introduced to the song ‘Higher’ for those who only picked up on POD at the Satellite album this song is most like ‘Alive’… in fact the next 3 songs after ‘Higher’ are a homage to where the band has come from… and it may disappoint some hard-core POD fans as they are tracks that maybe aren’t so heavy musically… however POD have always been on the heavy end of pop and on the lighter end of hardcore as they infuse their metal blend sound with everything from punk, reggae, hip-hop and of course a natural bent to a latin style. West Coast Rock Steady is the albums ‘party fun song’ that they seem to like to put on each album a great way I feel to remember where they come from and where they have been… this track would not look out of place on their first album ‘The Fundamental Elements of Southtown’…

Talking about where POD had been…remember they had Katy Perry on their album ‘Testify’ BEFORE she was really famous. I wonder what Katy Perry thinks of POD’s most pop infused song to date ‘beautiful’… the best way to discribe it is like 311 with big boy pants on. It’s a great song, and would be a great Northern hemisphere summer song.

The album picks up the harder sound with ‘Babylon the Murderer’ and ‘On Fire’ (a song the band released as a free download in July 2011) before taking a brief journey into some metal based funk (Parliament meets Prince meets Living Color) in the song Bad Boy a fun song where Sonny sings “I’m a bad boy looking for a good girl” – it’s pretty cool… and a real epic funk number.

POD finish hard on the album with ‘Panic and Run’ talking about the world falling down around us… the mixture of styles is perfect for a song of this nature as it pushes heavily the punk infused sounds with reggae, SKA and even heavy metal… set upon the back drop of ‘chicken little’ imagery “The sky is falling”.

And POD finish it all off ‘I AM’in which Sonny sings with the same sort of honesty U2 used on ‘Wake up dead man’… it’s an honest song that talks about knowing God and knowing who you are in that… but confused about this mess that we are among in the world… thousands of religions… false prophets and confusion… it’s good to hear people singing about how things sometimes just don’t make sense.

This is a good album from a band that is feeling comfortable in itself… it’s an album from a band that is discovering it’s faith is getting deeper… and it’s a band who realise that their sound is not only part of who they are… but where they come from… and the sound of the community they have found themselves in.

This is an album that is an album that has got a bit of something for everyone… I just hope that POD isn’t trying to be all things for all people while alienating some of their longest serving fans.

Most likely POD’s most accessible album in Testify… but with new life and a harder edge.