So I am Talking Tomorrow Part 2

I just realised that I went off on one in the post below and didn't actually talk about what I was going too, hense the title not matching up.

Basically, I am talking tomorrow to what we call our house group. Basically, house group is a small group from church that meets at my house. The reason being that it is hard to build up friendships with people in the larger format of church so in the smaller groups, we can come together, learn about our faith and support one another to the best of our abilities.

Tomorrow, I have been asked to talk on 'The Character of God'. It an interesting subject and there are many different aspects I could pick on, in fact just 30 mins of research into the bible tells me that God is:

1. Compassion , Mercy, Grace
2. Love
3. Impartiality
4. Patience
5. Goodness
6. Justice
7. Holiness and Truth
8. Perfection
9. Wisdom
10. Faithfulness
11. Sovereignty
12. Glory
13. Jealousy
14. Immutability

I could tell you more about each one and give you verses that back it up (and if you want me to do that please comment) but the thing I have been thinking about is this:

Tere is only so much you can get from a talk about what God is like but if you don't experience it, what does it mean? The answer I have come up with is simple, it means nothing. I cooked a spinach and ricotta lasagne tonight (with added meat, vegetarian? whats that?) but it was the first time I had used the recipe. I could read it and be told about it as much as I liked, I might start to believe it was good and even tell a few people about it based on reccomendations and the picture that Deia gave me but unless had tasted it tonight, I probably would have forgotten about it quite soon. We need to have the experience of God that people that wrote about Him in the bible had.

You may think thats a wierd thing to say but I have experienced God, I would not have such a strong idea about what I believe if not. So how do I make sure that I am not just talking about things but actually helping people to experience what I have, especially if they are in difficult situations which when you say God is Faithful makes them real in anger because that is not what they are experiencing at that time.

Well, I'm going to come back to that, hopefully on Wednesday.

So, I am talking tomorrow......

Some of you that don't know me really well, might not know that I believe in God. In fact, when I moved to Norwich, I joined my cousin in planting a new church into the city center. You may wonder why I say that I believe in God rather than saying I am a Christian, well, the word Christian sometimes conjurs up some interesting pictures in peoples heads and that is something I don't want to do.

I have never started a conversation telling someone that I am a Christian, indeed its not until someone really gets to know me that they find out exactly what I believe. Why is that you may ask, is it because you are ashamed? Is it because you are worried?

There is one reason and one reason only why I don't come out with it straight away, I like people to get to know me, to become friends with me for who I am. Lets face it, when someone says they a Christian it often brings up negative images straight away, even to me and I am one.

I love talking to someone and getting into conversations that are deep, the kind that you only get into once you are real friends and then speaking about my faith, after all, at that point I am being invited to talk about what I believe.

If you want to know why I am a Christian, feel free to ask a question in a comment on this post, in the meantime, let me tell you how it changes the way that I run te record label.

As you probably know, the record label is called Broeknrule, why? Because we want to break the rules of the record industry, we want to act fairly, we want to treat the artists and the fans with the up most respect and not just be after their money. People have said to me that you can't do business in a moral and fair way, I hope to prove that wrong.

I would love to converse with people that have a belief, please leave a comment below if you do. It doesn't need to be in the Christian God, it could be Budda, yourself or even Captain Kirk, let me know!

The whole of my life in one little bit of leather

No, I am not about to talk bondage! I am talking about losing my wallet the other night, my whole life was in that things and the best thing? Would you believe it takes 7-10 working days to get my cards replaced, how do I do anything without cards? My life is ruled by being able to pay by card or to withdraw money with my card!

So, I have been trying to work out how to live for the next week without using any money. First problem: I ran out of hair wax this morning and with nothing to put in my hair, I am just a tall person with a weird frizz on top. So I break out my emergency cash, managed £5 so went to get hair stuff and milk cause I had run out of that too. Well, I am walking around the store and I see the wine section, anyone that knows me, knows this is the place you will usually find me in any store and they had some great bargains. The trouble is I was looking at them FORGETTING I had no money, arrgghhhh, the pain of seeing a good bottle of wine on offer and having to leave it on the shelf!

So this brings me onto my question for the day. As a Christian, I believe that Jesus did a huge amount of miracles; I have seen miracles happen, people being healed by prayer and so forth. So if I have seen miracles and witnessed things happening such as a blind man being able to see after being prayed for, can I recreate Jesus' first miracle and turn good old Anglian water into wine??

Well, I guess not, it’s not really as important as making someone better or turning an impossible situation around but it would make me happy...........

Back to it

I write this completely knackered and ready to collapse on the sofa and wait for Spooks. I love that programme and was once really looking into joining the secret services myself. With the amount of charaters that seem to get killed off in Spooks, I am rather gald I didn't

On the other hand, at that time, my wife had just left me and I really felt as though I had nothing and it wouldn't matter if I died or not. In Proverbs in the bible, its written that 'without vision the people perish'. That was exactly where I was, depressed, without vision, feeling like there was nothing left for my life. I am so glad that vision returned to me and the vision that I got was so much bigger than I had ever seen before. To set up a record lable that would be there to help bands, to be fair and to help Christian bands get to the same place as any others that are out there, in the charts.

The other thing, is that this project, this vision seems to be just as exciting as it would have been in MI5. Thanksfully, I don't look down the barrel of a gun each day but I do face constant challenges. I am happy to say that my faith really does help with these problems and the fact that I actually feel that God is more like a friend than anything else, really helps me when I pray. I have learned that I am allowed to get annoyed with Him (and I have got angry at times), He can take you swearing at him and asking Him what the hell is going on.

The main thing is, I really do feel like He helps me when I need it. I would never thrust this belief into someones face, in fact I very rarely mention it unless asked and am very happy for anyone to disagree with what I say on this blog. So go on, chuck a comment on here, let me know what you think, is there a higher force that can help us, Can this force guide us, give us vision and help us with work?

Check out our website at www.broeknrule.com