Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

T’was grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved.
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed.

Through many dangers, toils and snares,
We have already come.
T’was grace that brought us safe thus far,
And grace will lead us home.

The Lord has promised good to me,
His word my home secures,
He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.

When we’ve been here ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we first begun.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

It’s been a while since I’ve had a session of worship like that, and I certainly haven’t worshipped like that since I’ve been in Reading. The closest that it’s ever been is whenever I go back down to King’s in Portsmouth.

Which, (yay!), will be again this weekend.

I’m quite happy taking communion, always have been, but what I didn’t like about the one this week was how formal and strict the entire procedure was. When we entered the church, we were handed a booklet which detailed what the ‘president’ would say, what the congregation would say in response, how the service would go and exactly what was going to happen. I don’t like chanting along with the rest of the church at the best of times, but when the congregation is being told by a piece of paper (which, incidently, was copyright to the Church of England) exactly what they should pray and when they should pray it, it really doesn’t feel right.

Relationships with God are personal, yes? So whoever made up these prayers, who are they to decide what I should say and how I should say it? I’m quite happy to have my own personal relationship with God — yes, be a part of a church, whole heartedly agree with that — and I’m also quite happy to partake in communion — the Bible says we should, therefore we should. But I’m more than happy to be allowed to make up my own prayers. God knows what I want to say myself, so I don’t see the point in the church being told what to say.

Just found it all a bit strange, that’s all.

Weird.

I’ve been trying to do a daily cycle for a while now, and I’m going to try and keep it up for as long as I can. And today, I’d been out in Reading all day so hadn’t had the chance to cycle during the day, so I went out for half an hour after dinner, a leisurely 5 and a half mile cycle, in the rain. It was really refreshing and cool; though the bike isn’t the most comfortable thing I’ve ever ridden.

I’d been cycling for about 2 minutes when I realised that it would be a really good time to pray… so somehow I managed to spend the rest of the cycle praying about everything that was on and in my heart at the time.

Must do that again sometime, was good.

But the thing I most want to blog about today is what happened last night. As some of you may know, it was the Passion London conference, and a bunch of us from King’s headed up to London in a minibus yesterday afternoon, and we attended the conference at the Hammersmith Apollo that evening. It was an amazing night, God really moves in times like that. Three-thousand plus students in one theatre worshipping God with no restrictions, no inhibitions, nothing to hold them back. Worship lead by Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman, David Crowder… but it really wasn’t about who was there, or who was playing, or what the music was like, or what the visual effects were doing; it was about God. The whole evening was totally about God. So many people focused on God in one place. Louis Giglio lead the talk; he’s one amazing speaker, and so many people there seemed to be moved by what he said, bringing all of us back to the heart of what it means to be a Christian, bringing it all back to what it is to love God, and reminding everyone that there is something more important in our lives than anything else.

I also discovered something quite interesting about myself, but also quite scary. I decided I want to do what Adam Roseblade does, I want to use my life to work with students (or that age group) in a church, in a university, bringing people to God and helping them stay with God through the thick and the thin.

Who knows if that will actually be where I end up, but I realised last night that that is what I’d like.

Scary, huh?

Anyway, back to what I’ve been doing. Today, I’m free, I have no commitments (aside from Rock Solid later this evening), and I’ve just moved a whole load of my stuff back home. My room is feeling empty, and I was sat at my computer wanting to write. As I said to Jay online, my keyboard is calling out to be used. So I decided I’d write a blog, and I’m using a new piece of software I found for the Mac called Writeroom. It’s bascially a tool designed for people who have to write with no distractions. At the moment, my screen is entirely black apart from the simple white text in the middle of the screen that I’m typing now. Everything has disappeared, no MSN, no web browser, no e-mail or feed reader, just text! And basically no interface either. If I want, I can move the mouse to the right of the screen and reveal a scroll bar to read back what I’ve written, or I can move it to the bottom to view the word count, or to the top to reveal the usual menu bar. A very conducive environment to write in, I must say.

I had my final exam of my second year yesterday, shortly before going to London for the Passion conference. My exams this semester seem to have gone fairly well, and it’s certainly encouraging to get three or four texts before each exam from close friends saying good luck, praying for you, hope it goes ok. I haven’t been nervous going into any of these exams, and I haven’t felt bad when I’ve left them either. I have the results of one exam, and the piece of coursework for that unit, and the overall mark I achieved was 82%, so I’m incredibly happy with that! I really want the marks back for the other exams and coursework too, but they’ll all come in good time.

Recently, I seem to have been helping out more at the church than before. Firstly we had Party in the Square, where although I wasn’t down to help with anything in particular, I did spend 12 hours in the square from half 6 in the morning helping with whatever needed it. That was good fun, and in the following week I gave a hand with Rock Solid Live, and I’ve recently been doing the occasional Phat Cafe too. I meet up with Alex regularly, and he seems to rope me into things! Not that I mind at all. On sunday afternoon, after the morning service, I helped serve Chilli to fifty plus people, followed by various flavours of cheesecake. It was good.

I’m listening to Chris Tomlin’s God Of This City – “Greater things are yet to come, greater things are still to be done in this city” – Let’s hope we can be the people to start these greater things. God’s put a calling on our lives to change the lives of those around us for the better. I want to be crazy for God, I want to be a “fruitcake” for God (those of you on the Passion tour will know what I’m talking about), I want to be “out of my mind” for God and “in my right mind” for God [2 Corinthians 5:13], I want people to ask me “why did you do that?”, I want people to say “what made you say that?”, I want people to say “how come you’re like you are?”, and I want to answer one thing: God. I want to point them to Isaiah 26:8 – “Yes, Lord. Walking in the way of your truth, we wait for you. Your name and renown are the desire of our soul”. Yes, Lord. There is no one like our God – let’s let other people see that. Let’s take this wonderful salvation we have to the streets, let’s let everybody we encounter see something in our lives that makes us different, and makes us stand out. At Passion last night I suddenly thought of a line of matches standing on their ends, one of which was alight. Let’s be that match that’s alight among those who aren’t, and let’s set those other matches alight with our fire. God can do amazing things, God has done amazing things in my life and in the lives of those around me – so let’s show people who don’t yet know how awesome God is; let’s show them His love, His power; let’s just show them God.

There is no one like our God.

Greater things are yet to come. Greater things are still to be done in this city.

Let’s set those greater things in motion.

By my bed I have a few names of people stuck on the wall round the corner, there to remind me to pray for those people. I had a really cool half hour to an hour just lying on my bed, listening to worship music, looking at these names and just lifting the people up to God. Considering how, not stressed exactly, but rushed I had felt earlier, when I went and sat back down at my computer I felt so much calmer, so much more relaxed, and so much less worried about all the work I had to do.

Following that, Dan, Ruth and I spent a fair chunk of the evening just sat on my bed talking. It’s been a while since we just sat and chatted, and it was really good. We ended it with a 15 minute or so prayer session, just sat in each other’s and God’s company. It’s times like that when I realise what an amazing bunch of friends I have, and how close we all are to be able to feel we can just sit in silence, or come into God’s presence while spending time with each other.

I always feel so calm after a decent spot of talking to the big guy upstairs.

I also discovered that the mouse has chewed a hole through my microwavable giraffe and eaten poor Lanky from the inside out :(

Jesus died on the cross for our sins. And still, 2000 years on, it’s relevant today. Without Jesus, none of us can know God. Without knowing God, who are we? What are we? What is the purpose of our existance here on earth if there is no way that we can know God? Luckily for us, there is – and that way was the death of Jesus, bearing all our sins upon his shoulders.

In those days, he changed the thoughts of only a handful of people. In the days to follow, millions more were to come to believe, and thousands, millions, billions of lives were changed for the better.

He died for all of us. The least the world could do is show a little respect for a man who helped shape history.

Though I hope it doesn’t happen. Because that would mean we weren’t praising…

I’ll stand,
With arms wide and heart abandoned,
In awe of the One who gave it all.
I’ll stand,
My soul, Lord, to you surrendered.
All I am is yours.

And:

Strengh will rise as we wait upon the Lord,
We will wait upon the Lord,
We will wait upon the Lord.

Our God, You reign forever,
Our Hope, our strong deliverer.

You are the everlasting God,
The everlasting God.
You do not faint, You won’t grow weary.
You’re the defender of the weak,
You comfort those in need.
You lift us up on wings like eagles.

Tied in very well with the theme of Isaiah 40. On purpose, presumably!

Well we got to sleep on Saturday morning at 3. I was sleeping on this HUUUUUUUUUUUUGE blow up bed, it was practically a bunk bed the size of it. It was really comfortable though! Adam and Adam were in Dan’s room along with him and his brother, and Clare Ruth was on a sofa. Clare Ruth and I were up at half 7, as Dan told us, but the guys in Dan’s room wouldn’t wake up, so we ended up being late for the Saturday morning stuff! We arrived just as Frog Orr-Ewing (strange name!!!) was starting his talk (Learning to Accept), so we didn’t miss that at least! After that talk, we had a coffee break and then another talk by Gabriel Smy called Learning to Explore/See, and then lunch time. We had packed lunches (rolls and crisps etc) that Dan’s mum had kindly made for us.

After lunch we had 3 seminar sessions, and we had to pick between 5 seminars each session. I went to a seminar on “Everyday lifestyle” by Susie Gallagher, all about ethical living, etc. After that we went to talk about “Understanding Islam” by Frog, but during that I didn’t really listen, for some reason I felt like writing this:

I don’t understand how people can live in a world full of such amazing beauty and believe that it all came to be by chance. I only have to step outside and look at the sky, tress, nature, and think how incredible it is that God thought of and created it. Especially the stars – on a clear night, I love being outside where I can look up at the pitch black sky and see it pierced with small pin pricks of light millions of miles away. The stars and the moon in the night sky is one of the most beautiful sights, yet for many people it means nothing more than the product of chance, when in fact it is much more than that – it is a personal creation by God, by His own hand – He made every single one with love and care, and He knows every single one by name. And I find that amazing, incredible, and it makes me feel very small and insignificant in such a huge and wonderful world.
One of my favourite hobbies is photography. I don’t claim to know what I’m doing and I certainly don’t claim to be any good, but I know that what I want to do is capture snapshots of God’s creation, moments that are there one minute and gone the enxt. Photographs can save these moments more vividly than a memory can.
Many people don’t see much of the beautiful world – those who live in large cities, in countries in war – but who knows, maybe someone will see a photograph of God’s creation one day, and maybe it will change their lives.

I don’t know why I wrote that, I just felt like it!!

The evening session was the best talk by far. Roger Forster was a really good speaker, talking about “Learning to Fly”, and it was really interesting. There was some good worship afterwards as well. But by far the best worship was Friday evening, it was a really awesome time of worship, just brilliant.

We got back to Dan’s at some point that night but I don’t think we went to bed at about 1. Clare Ruth and I woke up at half 7 the next morning (as we had been told to by Dan) but the guys didn’t wake up til 9, and the sessions started at 9!! So by the time got there the morning session “Learning to Pray” was already over! But the main morning one, the one with the normal church congregation there, was at half 10, and was “Learning to Play”, but unfortunately I was asleep throughout the whole sermon – really shouldn’t have been lying on the floor with a cushion under my head!

After that we went to Toni and Chris’s house, was good to finally put a face to the blog! Then we went down to Dan’s church for their service (16:00, weird time for a service!) and it was good to meet some of Dan’s friends… like Livi? Did I spell or even get that right?! After that we rushed to Dan’s, gathered our stuff, and rushed to the train station, and here I am now.

All around the room at King’s Centre there were the words of Isaiah 40 in huge letters around the wall, and I now have the last verse on my wall as a big frieze (or however you spell it): They will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.