‘I Miss You’ – Original Music from Goose

Here is the 2nd new original song from the Live @ HPCC E.P.

The Song “I Miss You” is one of my favourites from the E.P. – It’s a song about when a loved one has gone away… and you realise just how much you miss them.

Original Music from Goose… “Messy Middle”

On the 1st of September 2012 I was privileged to be able to be given the opportunity to play at HPCC at the 2012 ‘You Are Here’ Art Exhibition. I played a short acoustic set of all originals.

I chose 4 songs to play… really basic… just a guitar… a microphone… and me!

Here is the first song of the set called ‘Messy Middle’.

Messy Middle is about when life throws you a curve ball… something that you didn’t see coming and you’re thinking to yourself “God what are you doing here?… can you just call me???”

In Our Community a year on…

Christchurch, New Zealand

Those who follow this blog regularly would know that I live in Christchurch New Zealand… and on Wednesday we commemorated a year on from  the earthquake on 22 February that changed the way we live in Christchurch forever.

My church HPCC took it as an opportunity to get into our community and to see what how everyone was feeling… and a year on we found that some people are still really upset and uneasy about living in Christchurch… the constant living with the unknown…

“When will another earthquake hit?”

“Will it be big?”

and the list goes on…

As a church we were concerned for our community that we are apart of… so we went knocking on doors to find out how people are. The whole door knocking thing was pretty awesome… when the door was answered we would introduce ourselves to the house owner as from the local church down the road… what happened after that was amazing…

Some people asked “what do you want? What are you trying to sell me?” or “what is your sales pitch?” – they saw us as coming to their door as “selling Jesus” to them – the awesome thing was being able to tell them that we were actually interested in how they are feeling… is there anything that we ‘as a church’ can do to help them as a person in the community that we really want to see develop.

Some people gave the short “yeah I’m good” answer… and even if you tried to dig you were given the impression that it just wasn’t going to happen…

And then there were the people with their quake stories… they wanted to be heard. Some were still hurting… it was wonderful to be able to get beside these people, some needed physical help, like one elderly couple who needed some gardening done or help with some practical stuff… or the person who had just had an operation, and was bed ridden who we were able to come into her home and make her a cup of tea.

It was great to chat with these people… and if the ‘God’ question came up we would talk about it… and if the person was struggling we were able to ask if the would mind if we prayed for them.

But every house we prayed that God would bless the home and bless the conversations…

The thing I loved about going door to door checking everyone was still doing ok… (on all levels) – is it was a continued part of who we are as a church in our community… it’s a relationship.

We were able to work with some local business… work with our local schools and come up with ways to really build on where we are in our community and the partnership is awesome.

Where we are at community means relationships… it means building on those relationships. Through this we have been able to see people coming to Christ because of it – and that is awesome… however through this relationship I have a sense that we will see many… many more.

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Why we don’t pray

Prayer

Our Church (Hornby Presbyterian Community Church or HPCC) has just finished 21 days of prayer, however I was talking to my friend Mel who made the comment “there isn’t that many younger people at the prayer meetings” – and she’s right, there is certainly more ‘older’ folk… so why is that?

Could it be the fact that we’re to comfortable? – are we just so comfortable just so blessed that we don’t feel the need to pray?

If you talk to some older people you will discover that prayer was the thing that got them through lots of hard times… but that’s just the thing isn’t it? They have something to pray for.

Is it because we don’t know HOW to pray? Maybe we’re just so out of practice that we have forgotten what words to say and so when we do pray our prayers are vague and shallow…

I wonder if part of the reason we are not very good at praying is because we’re not really good at reading the Bible. Pastor Mark Batterson once said “You don’t read the Bible… You pray the Bible”.

You see the really BIG miracles in the Bible were from people standing on the PROMISES of God. When Joshua asked God to make the sun stand still so he could finish his battle… it was because he believed that the promise of God. God had said he would always be with his chosen nation. I’m not sure Joshua knew exactly what he was asking for… however I believe he knew the immensity of the prayer.

I wonder if our prayers are so boring because we’re not willing to let God be God. We’re scared to pray a BIG prayer just in case God doesn’t do something.

But do you know what? I believe the main reason prayers go unanswered… is because they are not asked.

All through the Bible we are told… “Pray first…” but it seems that we have put prayer as our last resort… and for some it’s not even an after thought.

If you want miracles… you need to stand on the promises of God and trust that God will fulfill those promises.

 

 

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Pray First

Image via Wikipedia

There are a lot of things I like about our church and the church leadership… The church I go to is called Hornby Presbyterian Community Church (HPCC) in Christchurch New Zealand…

What makes me proud of our church is the fact they they have decided every year to have 3 weeks of prayer.

Why does this excite me?

Well first of all is that it is Biblical… all throughout the Bible we are told to pray first… It would be easy for a church like ours to try and get stuck into doing community work and start big ideas to have through the year… but here is the thing, unless we pray first all of the things that we are doing haven’t been given to God to deal with.

And Secondly… it’s not about us.

It’s easy to get stuck into the rut of praying for ourselves… our own needs… our own problems. However what my church leadership has done (and what other churches around the world continue to do) is given us an example of putting prayer first, but it’s more than that… it’s reflecting as job of the Holy Spirit – interceding for others.

What a great way to start the year… bringing the needs of others before the altar of God.

It shows that it’s not about us… it’s about a God who cares for all.

It shows that in all things pray first… or as it says in 1 Timothy

“I urge you, first of all, to pray for all people. Ask God to help them; intercede on their behalf, and give thanks for them.” 1 Timothy 2:1

 

 

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