Francis Chan Hell

I saw this really powerful video shared by my friend on Facebook so I though I'd share it with you. I've been big fan of Francis since I heard him at the Passion conference. I hope you enjoy it.

A few interesting things I've read this week

Tall Skinny Kiwi talking about Christian resources, their lack thereof in China and yet the rates of Growth of the Chinese church compared to the west.

An interesting article about the rewriting of the word friend and what it means. I wonder what the implications are for the Quakers?

An electronic cork board resource I'm thinking of trying to use during lessons.

Don Miller talking about forgiveness....and talking about Love [Awwwwww!]

A brief escape from the bunker

I am currently fully immersed in the deluge of work that has suddenly fallen upon me [a metaphor that considering the couple of thunder storms this week is very apt!] and as I mentioned earlier this week I am not going to be blogging much until at least Sunday. However this is a little exception for you.

Last night I came home feeling very stressed, very tired and a bit miffed at another last minute change to my plans based around work. I had been aware that I had changed from when I was younger and never got stressed or worried about anything and now have found myself on occasions finding it hard to get to sleep if there is a lesson the next morning that I don't feel prepared for or if I have a large amount of work to do.

I realised that one of the main reasons for this was that although I hid behind an excuse of trusting God about all these matters, really I just didn't care about these things. I was lazy and slothful and didn't need to be good at something. Mediocracy was fine.

Unfortunately for me God over time challenged this attitude [not least during my time at the well] and now I've found that actually I've gone beyond a healthy position and flipped to the other side!

So last night I came home, I read a message from a friend reminding me not to trust in my own strength, and praying for peace and I realised that I needed to turn to God and just trust in his strength, in his ability and let him get me through it all.

I brought out my guitar, I strummed along and repeated a few simple statements of truth and resting in his presence.

Suddenly everything didn't seam so bad.

Blogging hiatus

This coming weekend I and all the teachers at the school are heading over to Kharkiv to the bi-annual Ukrainian TEFL development conference [hosted by various IH schools]. This will be my second conference but the first one where I present something! [EEEEEK] it's going to be a 45 minute seminar on motivating teenagers [and other magic tricks] and I have to have a draft version ready for Friday's professional development session. Needless to say I am a little worried about the whole thing, with typical issues of self doubt and the pressing immanent date of the conference.

I intend to record it and upload it on here afterwards for your viewing pleasure with a summary of the points made.

Due to preparing this and a few other tasks I won't be blogging this coming week but I shall be back next week. If you have any suggestions of things you would like to see on the blog next week when I'm back then please leave a comment bellow.

Video: your reward; my picnic video.

I basically received the 5 comments I wanted [some weren't online] so I decided to upload the video anyway!

Here is a summary of what different people said.
When I'm telling stories
When I'm with my family (having a meal or playing a game)/ leading a kids song in Romania/ acting in a skit
When I'm drawing [this was from a student and is not as such online]
When I'm caught up in something, design work, Fun with friends, watching a movie, prayer basically anything that stops me feeling self concious
When I'm most free I'm least aware of it, it's only afterwards that I look back and realise I must have lost myself. It's when I'm doing what I believe I was created to do.

And now for my answer, I realised that it's when I forget about myself about thinking about what "Chris" should do. It's when I do activities that I don't care what other people think about me, it's when I forget about being a "good person" or being a "cleaver person". It's when I play guitar, when I sing full throated for no one other than myself and God, It's when I go for a walk on my own or with others and realise that I'm not alone but I am at peace, It's when I help other people and realise that I forgot about what I care about, what I enjoy but just think about that other person.
Those moments are when I feel most like myself, when I don't think about what "myself" is.

I hope you like it, please leave suggestions for more challenges [maybe even challenge me to do something!] or other video's you'd like to see. I have half of another one I'll try and get finished for next week [though it is going to be very busy so we shall have to wait and see]