Ghosts Upon The Earth

Music, music, music…

Sometimes you come across albums so good it would be a crime not to share them. Ghosts Upon The Earth by Gungor falls into that category.

I was first introduced to the creativity and musical genius of Michael & Lisa Gungor when their previous album Beautiful Things was released. My wife Sarah was so inspired she even had some of their lyrics tattooed on her forearm “You make beautiful things out of the dust.”

In the world of Christian music it’s very difficult to stand out from the crowd, there are so many talented musicians and song writers, but there are also so many who churn out songs of little substance, and this is why Gungor are such a revelation, they’re not prepared to settle for the norm, they want to push the boundaries, they want to write music that hasn’t been written before. And you know what? They succeeded.

I had the privilege of seeing them live in Bradford recently, my friend wrote a review of the evening here. It was an evening that will live long in the memory.

Check out this live version of The Earth is Yours (a song we’ve just started doing in church the last couple of Sundays) performed in a forest…

Or some of their other videos here

As I said, their first album Beautiful Things was incredible, but if anything their follow up Ghosts Upon The Earth is even better. I’m not even going to attempt to describe the journey these songs take you on, I would never be able to do them justice, all I’m going to say is go have a listen and see for yourself. I promise you, you won’t regret it.

iTunes link

Sunday Setlist

At Alpha last night I was asked if I could provide a list of songs we sing each week so people can look them up and buy them.

I thought this was a great idea, and something I’ve half heatedly tried to do in the past. It’s good to come together and worship God through song, and that works a whole lot better if we all know the songs we’re singing.

So, with that in mind, I’m going to start posting weekly setlists, with links to iTunes (other iTunes type stores are available, of course) so you can easily see what new (or old) songs we’re singing and, if you feel so inclined, you can purchase these songs for your own listening and worshipping pleasure.

Maybe you’ll even discover a few new favourite albums, I wholeheartedly recommend every album I’m linking to…

Sunday 16th October 2011

Holding Nothing Back – Tim Hughes

The Earth is Yours – Gungor

One Thing Remains – Brian Johnson & Jeremy Riddle

Never Once – Matt Redman

Search My Heart – Hillsong United

Sound of Praise – RPM (ALMuk)

The last one is actually a YouTube link, the song isn’t available on iTunes.

And because this is the first of these posts I’ll go back a couple more weeks too:

Sunday 9th October 2011

The Earth is Yours - Gungor

Our God – Chris Tomlin

Furious – Jeremy Riddle & Brian Johnson

First Love – Jock James

Forever Reign – Hillsong United

How Great Thou Art – hymn

Sunday 2nd October 2011

O Praise Him – David Crowder Band

Furious - Jeremy Riddle & Brian Johnson

Never Once - Matt Redman

How He Loves – John Mark McMillan (David Crowder version)

Give Me Faith – Elevation Worship

Jesus Saves – Tim Hughes

Enjoy

#SexyBack11 Week 5 Update

Short and sweet this week…

183lb, 3lb off!!! Woohoo!!!

My scales even flashed into the 12 stone at one point this morning.

I have revised my goal for #sexyback11, It’s still 175lb, but also I want to weigh less than my skinny brother, he’s about 174lb so it’s an incentive to push that little bit further!

#SexyBack11 Week 4 Update

Straight to the point this week… I only lost 1lb

But, that’s still 1lb less than I weighed last week!!

I’m now 186lb, 9lb down from where I started and only 11lb from my target.

I still consider this a win, despite it being my worst week so far. Weight loss is still weight loss!

And more importantly than the weight loss is I’m still sticking to my new routine, I’m still eating well and I’m still exercising.

But this is a good time to refocus, I haven’t been quite as dedicated as I had in the first 3 weeks, for a number of reasons, but I’m determined to lose at least 2lb in the next week. We’ll see if I manage it!

#SexyBack11 Week 3 Update

It’s checkin day again!

On 17th June I weighed 195lb

Today, 3 weeks later I weigh 187lb!

That’s 8lb off in total and another 3lb this week!

#sexyback11 is a 12 week challenge and my goal is to lose 20lb in that time, so I’m well ahead of the game so far.

My running is going well, I’m still using the C25K app on my iPhone and I’m already into week 4 of that, it suggests 3 runs a week and I’ve been doing a bit more than that so I’m on target there too.

One question for you this week, please help me out, because I’m clueless! What are some good healthy snacks that aren’t fruit or veg? Seriously, apples and bananas used to be my friend, but we’re in danger of falling out, so I need to find some good alternatives to mix up my snacks and keep me out of the biscuit tin!

All help greatly appreciated!!

#SexyBack11 Week 2 Update

Slowly but surely, I’m getting my sexy back!!

In my first week I lost a nice and steady 2lb, which may not be anything huge but I think I’m going about it in a good way, at least for me!

I made the decision not to try and do anything too radical too quickly, because I knew I wouldn’t stick with it.

So my regime has consisted of:

1. Zero junk food 6 days a week. This includes sweets, biscuits, takeaway, stuff I ate on a daily basis before.

2. Running at least 3 times a week, but basically any day I have time to do it!

3. Sunday is my day of rest, I still exercise because I help set up and take down church, which is a workout in itself. And of course there’s the worship leading too! Sunday afternoon’s are usually spent with family or church family and I allow myself to enjoy lunch, it’s what Jesus would want

So there we are, pretty simple I think. I’m not starving myself, because that’s not healthy, but I am creating change in my diet and exercise that I should be able to carry on long after #sexyback11 ends, and that’s my goal.

Ok then, onto the important bit, the weigh in…

I started 2 weeks ago at 195lb

Last week I weighed in at 193lb

I now weigh…. 190lb

Which is another 3lb off!! I’m really happy with that.

I’m sure it’s just in my mind but I can already feel my jeans getting loose! And one thing that isn’t just in my mind is I feel much healthier.

Thank you #sexyback11, @loswhit & @anidolheart for starting this and giving me the impetus and the desire to be a part of it!

If you haven’t joined in so far, it’s not too late! Head on over here and get your sexy back too!!!

#sexyback11

I’m doing it! I’ve never, ever purposely tried to lose any weight, ever, in  my life.

But, for the next 12 weeks (and hopefully beyond), I’m in! I’m signed up and ready to try.

You’re probably wondering what #sexyback11 is, right?

If you head on over to Ragamuffinsoul.com and you can check out all the details, but here’s a video explaining it.

It can be whatever target you want to set, it could be weight loss, it could be measured by how much junk food you eat, it could be measured by levels of happiness or depression. Whatever it is, it’s all about improving yourself and feeling better about yourself, which sounds like a pretty great reason to get involved if you ask me!

So, are you in? Are you ready to bring your sexy back with me??

This works by being accountable, so I’m going to post my starting point here and then try to believe it might actually go down over the next 12 weeks, so here goes… I weighed myself this morning and I was 13st 13lb (yeah, way to keep it under 14 stone Lee!!), for my North American friends that translates to 195 lb. My goal is to reach 175 lb, although I’ll be honest and admit any kind of reduction will make me happy!

I haven’t exactly made up my mind what I’m going to do to achieve this, I think that makes it a bit too real right now!

What do you suggest? What works for you? Help get me started!

So long Osama and thanks for all the fish

I’ve taken a day or two to fully formulate my thoughts on Osama Bin Laden’s death, but since I’ve started this blog I should probably take a few minutes to offer my own 2p’s worth on the subject.

My initial reaction was one of relief that he had finally been caught. I learned what had happened via Twitter (yet another indicator that social media is now the best way of keeping up with the latest news, but that’s another blog post entirely).

However, as I read twitter I began to feel uncomfortable with what I was reading. There was a lot of celebration, and I can understand that, really I can, there is nothing wrong with celebrating good triumphing over evil, but it raised the question, should any death be celebrated? Even that of Osama Bin Laden?

And this got me thinking, what does his death actually accomplish? In truth, probably very little. Osama has spent years in hiding now, how effective a leader can he have been whilst cut off in his fortress in Pakistan with no phone lines and no internet? It seems much more plausible to me that Osama was little more than a figurehead at this point, and the real Al Qaeda leaders are elsewhere, with internet connections, running operations.

So, back to the issue of his death, the only reason I could consider it to be a good thing is if it meant other lives would be saved, as President Obama claims will be the case. But I don’t see this saving lives, if anything retaliation at the murder and subsequent celebrations in the street (oh how the tables have turned) will mean more innocent lives are lost.

And so we will carry on, just as we have been, not allowed to pack shampoo in our hand luggage, with the war on terrorism as alive today as it was prior to that raid in Abbottabad. The problem is we are not fighting a single enemy with a single leader in a single country. One head gets cut off and ten more grow in it’s place, one cell gets eliminated and a hundred more rise up. We will not win the war against terrorism by fighting. I understand why we do what we do, and I applaud and am grateful for those who give their lives to defend our freedom. But we’re fighting a never ending battle.

As Mahatma Ghandi said “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”

So how does this end?

The only way I can see it ending is by following Jesus’ example, we need to meet these people with love. The only chance we have of peace is to love, regardless of our differences, regardless of the crimes being committed we need to look past the religion and meet hatred with love. I believe that love alone has the power to end this war and we had an opportunity to show this in our response to the death of Osama Bin Laden, yet all we did is prove we are no different than those Muslim extremists we condemn for celebrating murder as victory.

What do you think?

If my title confused you, this might help

Miracles For Sale

Last night I watched a show called Miracles For Sale with Derren Brown. Now, I haven’t seen Derren much before so maybe this one show has given me a false impression of him, but he comes across as a master manipulator of the highest order.

If you didn’t see the show it’s worth checking out online, basically Derren set out to prove that ‘faith healers’ were nothing more than fraudsters out to make a quick buck. He took a scuba instructor and taught him how to perform these healing miracles to prove that it’s all a show and anyone can do it.

Now, let me just say upfront, I believe in miracles, I believe that Jesus is alive today and just as capable of healing someone as he was two thousand years ago. I have seen many instances where this has happened. But at the same time I do remain sceptical of lots of what I see on tv and especially of the tv faith healer type.

Derren said up front that this exercise wasn’t intended to condemn or criticise Christianity or the Church, but was merely to highlight the greed of these healers. I was interested to see whether he would be able to keep these separate.

Derren performed ‘miracles’ on a deaf woman and a blind man as part of his act, and this is where I felt he got it wrong. He implied, in how he healed these people, that those being healed were part of the act, and this is just not the case in the vast majority of healings. I have no doubt that, if you look hard enough, you will find people ‘fake healing’ in the name of Jesus, the Bible evens warns us about these charlatans. However, that does not mean that is always the case.

It was sad to see the healer who’s wife was feeding him ‘words of knowledge’ through an earpiece. It was sad to see a healer identify one of Derren’s crew member by name when that name was a false name given on an information card before the meeting. Clearly, in these instances, Derren is proved correct, faith healers are fraudsters.

It was also really interesting to see Derren and his team go out on the streets performing healing miracles on anyone who would let them, because these people were genuinely believing they were being healed. And I think this is what makes me sad when it comes to miraculous healings, people want it so bad that they try to force it themselves instead of allowing Jesus to work in his own way in his own time. This is what I’ve witnessed a lot of myself and this is why, even though I’ve seen the genuine articles too, I remain sceptical any time I hear about miracles.

Isn’t it the way of life that we get in the way of what God wants to do? It’s happened since Adam and Eve and it continues to happen every single day. It’s the main reason the church is so segmented today, the problem isn’t God, the problem is man.

I have no doubt that Jesus heals today. But we try to squeeze these miracles from God to fit our own needs and desires. And because of this we lose sight of the genuine miracles, they get lost in a sea of discredability. I think I just made that word up, but my point is, for miracles to really happen we need to allow the Holy Spirit time and space to operate, when we put on a show we take the onus away from God and put it on ourselves, and that’s never a good thing.

I’ll leave you with one thought. I’m not much of a Benny Hinn fan (if you don’t know who Benny Hinn is he’s a typical faith healer of the type Derren was focusing on), but I was 26 when Jesus came in to my life. It happened so suddenly and powerfully (that’s another blog post right there!) that it could only be God. I don’t know if this had anything to do with it or not, but it happened just after Benny Hinn held a crusade in Manchester in the Arena, which just so happened to be directly across the road from my apartment. Now, I don’t know if there is any link, but I do believe, regardless of how Benny Hinn operates or conducts himself, that there is an anointing from God that can surpass our understanding. Something spiritual happened that I can’t explain, I wasn’t a part of it, but it affected me. Now, it could just be coincidence, but is there such a thing where God is involved?

ECG

This Thursday marks the beginning of the ECG Conference in Llandudno. 2 years ago I had no idea the conference was even on, last year it passed by with very little local involvement, but this year we’ve managed to jump in the middle of it!

My good friend, and fellow i61 Pastor, Kristian Ponsford is leading worship in the alternate venue and Sarah and I are helping out.

I’ve served at many conferences in Toronto, but this is my first time involved up front. I’m excited!

It’s at times like these I check myself, am I excited for me or am I excited for God? Honest answer is a bit of both, but I think that’s ok. We’re God’s children, he wants us to have fun, but most of all he wants us to give him the glory and that is what I want too! I don’t have a desire to be a ‘famous’ worship leader, I have a desire to see my church grow and to step in to what God has for me, and I see this as part of that desire, so I’m ok with that.

It’s now 5 years to the week since we started i61, we’ve had good times, great times, slightly less great times and now new, exciting and fresh times!! i61 as a church has it’s critics, but if we didn’t then I’d feel like we’re doing something wrong, but you can’t deny we’re doing something, God is doing something through us! From a church of 6 people 5 years ago, we now have musicians involved in a conference that is attracting people from all over the country. Maybe next year we’ll be helping out in the Theatre rather than the Arena. On Sunday night we’re the alternative to Graham Kendrick, maybe next year he’ll be the alternative to us!!

I dream of i61 having the resources to put on a conference in Venue Cymru, or better still in our own building, but in the meantime we’ll let others come to our town and help out.

So why not come along, if you’re local you can get 50% off admission (ask for info), encourage us, worship with us and be a part of what God wants to do in Llandudno this week. I have a feeling it’s going to be epic!!

Full details on ECG can be found here.