Pilgrim's Progress

Chaps: Who are we meant to be?

(This is a radically reworded version of this post - I didn't really communicate what I meant to first time round)

Here's one attempt to answer this - try this test (not too seriously) ... from a book entitled "No More Christian Nice Guy" ...

There's a lot being said and written at the moment about what God intends men and women to be. One comment that has appeared more than once on blog posts about godly masculinity has been "(why) does this only apply to men?". This makes me think about what difference it makes to be male or female under God, and how gender might influence the way God deals with us, how we respond to him and so on.

What I see in the Christian community concerns me. Coming from a male perspective, I'm concerned about how many Christian men are struggling to know who they are really meant to be, and to understand what implications that has for being husbands, fathers, sons, leaders, prophets, agents for change and so forth. From many conversations in recent years, I can only conclude that many Christian men harbour some degree of doubt and lack of confidence about what they have to offer the world, the church, the lost, their wives, children and all the other people that matter to them.

There is so much being written and said about what manhood and masculinity are all about. The burden I increasingly feel is to get to the heart of what God intended for us as men, and to discover how God deals with a man in a way which affirms and draws out his masculinity specifically, and not just his humanity in a general way. I would want there to be similar and parallel understanding of how God deals with a woman in a way which affirms and draws out her femininity specifically, and not just her humanity in a general way.

What I'm searching for is the basis for a man to feel secure in his created identity in a way which frees him to live out of a place of quiet inner humble strength, and does away with the need to prove himself, to abuse power or abuse other people, to run away from his weaknesses, and that kind of thing.

Church Leadership, Chaos Theory & Hebrews 2:8-9

How can we find order in chaos? The "strange attractor" arises from Chaos Theory in mathematics, which is all about order and chaos.

Conversations with fellow church leaders in the last week, and family circumstances have offered a sobering reminder of how chaotic life is "out there" in the thick of it, but I've also been strongly reminded that The Lord God Omnipotent reigns supreme, and though we don''t see it yet (painfully so), the day is coming when he will establish his rule on earth forever.

"In making everything subject to him,
God left nothing that is not subject to him.
But we do not yet see everything subject to him,
but we see Jesus ..." (Heb 2:8-9)

It's also about a desire to find a pattern for living, worshipping, serving, maturing within the chaos and unpredictability of life and a broken world. We can't do a great deal about the chaos, but how can we create some order in it, to allow us not only to survive, but to grow and even flourish?

As a visual way of holding order and chaos together, here's my version of a Lorenz Attractor, a well-known mathematical chaotic system. (Flash 6, 955K). It's designed so that the original pattern will not repeat exactly within a period of hours, or ever days.

(For anyone interested, the "chaos theory" mathematics underlying the Lorenz attractor are the basis for the "butterfly effect" - that due to the inherently chaotic nature of waether patterns, a butterfly beating its wings in Hawaii can lead to a hurricane over Tokyo. Click here for more ... )

Not Consumed

Unveiled Face

The Boiler Room

A really exciting new Boiler Room project is getting going in Liverpool, under the joint leadership of the Salvation Army and 24-7 Prayer.

It's permanently housed in what used to be Strawberry Fields children's home (yes the Beatles song one), and now the Salvation Army have offered it as a place of house of prayer and mission for the city of Liverpool and the community.

At the launch party last weekend, it was very exciting to hear the leaders talking about mission, about creating a house of prayer where all may come, a place of creativity (there are 8 themed prayer rooms), a place where the face of God is sought.

For more information, please contact Gary & Dawn Lacey on 0151 428 1647, or email projecti56@aol.com

I Am Waiting For You

I Have Longed to Eat This Meal With You

 

In Relentless Pursuit of REAL

This is my new blog strapline. The previous one ("Following Jesus wherever it leads and whatever it costs") was fine, but I was looking for something more all-encompassing that would take in worship, identity, spirituality, purpose, as well as mission and discipleship.

In Pursuit of Real

O for eyes, unscaled, made pure
A naked heart, a soul unveiled ...

O to brave the searing flame
That burns our masks to dust

O to tiptoe to the worship place
With trembling and awe
And fearsome expectation ...

O to return to this world
With eyes reborn,
Eyes that no longer see grey streets
And haggard faces
But a spacious land
Aflame with shocking colour
And God-sparked souls seeking homecoming ...

"Worship is bringing all we know of ourselves to all we know of God". (William Temple)

"Most of us want to get close enough to the furnace that is the love of God to stay warm, but we don't want to plunge in, because we know we'll emerge burnt, incandescently transformed, and life will never be the same again" (Fr. Brennan Manning)

I Am Still Waiting For You

I Am Waiting For You

More than your service
More than your success
More than your study
I want you*.

I am waiting here for you here
In the secret place*.

* This is the Lord speaking, by the way :)