Long Blog Posts

So I’ve been thinking for the past few days why when I blog they are always essays? I don’t know why I can’t just throw down ideas and if I don’t like them later just delete them.

So this is what I will do now. If in my travels I decide to blog about it then I will. No more carefully constructed paragraphs of logic (not saying this will stop happening, just less often) but instead I will just blog about whatever is going on that I feel like blogging about. Don’t know what I was afraid of. Plus I usually just want to jot stuff down instead of doing long posts. I for one don’t usually have the attention span to read other people’s long blogs so why should I expect people to read my lengthy write-ups.

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Hi everyone,
Sorry I haven’t blogged in a while. Have had lots going on which I will probably talk about in later posts with interesting observations on life to make it actually interesting for people to read.

Life in General – Forgiveness

Hi All,

Well it has been a long time since I have blogged. A lot of stuff has been happening in my life so unfortunately I have been unable to do much work on my history of the Bible project. Will do heaps of work on it in the coming weeks hopefully.

A lot has been going on. I started a new job which is going really well. I get to drive around and fix people’s computers. It’s great because I really love driving and I really love fixing computers and seeing the joy on people’s faces when they are able to use their computers properly again is something I don’t think I am ever going to get tired of.

There has been a lot of emotional turmoil lately as well. I won’t share what it has been about but I have come to a new understanding of the human body; how our emotions and physicality interrelate and how difficult it is to seperate the two. Whoever said that when you go through some crazy emotional trauma that you will still have the ability to function normally is either really sick or isn’t really emotionally traumatised. I guess it really depends what the circumstance are but I am actually really thankful for the things that have been happening. I am a totally different man. Like I still believe the same things and still hold the same views but I think the way that I now understand people and what they do and say has totally shifted. My understanding of a lot of doctrinal stuff has changed too. Like forgiveness, mercy, grace, trial, pain, perserverance, hope and love.

I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday about forgiveness in particular. How hard it is for us fallen human beings to forgive when we are wronged normally. We have this attitude and understanding from both culture and our fallen nature which I guess is one in hte same cause, that we will forgive only when we can get something out of it. Look at this picture for a moment. We are sinners. All of us. Noone is exempt and noone can say they have never sinned. The Bible says that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). ALL. We are given this amazing gift of forgiveness from God. This free gift of forgiveness. God gives it to us for us to receive. The problem is is that people don’t want it. People either think that they can handle their own sin or that they are “good people”. But the Bible says no, that is not the way it works.

As my friend and I were discussing this massive gift of God’s forgiveness, I came to an understanding that I had known but not understood. God’s forgiveness is given regardless of what we do. There is nothing that we have to give God. God already has everything he needs. This is mind-blowing. God does not need us, He is not some poor old man who needs friends. He is not some sad little person who sites in a corner and cries over not having anyone to have as company. He is GOD. If He wanted He could have wiped us all out when Adam and Eve sinned. He could have started again with new creation where there was no sin. Where there were still humans but no sin. Perfect relationship with God forever from the beginning. But no, God wanted all this to happen. God wanted us to see how great He is. He wanted us to fall down on our faces in complete adoration and love and to be totally blown away by His forgiveness for a pathetic humanity.

We need to be like this. We need to forgive. We need to understand that God’s forgiveness isn’t bent on a if and then agreement. (If and then is like when we are praying and we say to God, “Dear God, if you do this for me then I will do this”) We are not meant to forgive like this. People suck, people hurt, people cause pain. Jesus was in pain. Jesus was in extreme pain. Emotional, physical, unbelievable pain. What did He say? Forgive them Father for they know not what they do. Unconditional, sacrificial forgiveness.

I pray with all that I am that we all will smash this pre-conceived notion that our culture has on forgiveness that we have to get something out of it. That we will totally shatter people with our ability to forgive and that we will point people to Jesus and his ultimate sacrifice for our forgiveness of unrelenting non-stopping sin. That we will be able to forgive our enemies just as Jesus did and they will wonder why and we will be able to say because Jesus is awesome and you should meet Him.

Work

So my work is alright. My job title is Desktop Support Specialist. Thankfully I am lucky in the fact that my job title explains very little of what I actually do. Essentially a Desktop Support Specialist sits at a desk taking second and third level help desk calls; proceeds to get up from the desk when moves and jobs which require a presence are sent through and then continues the rest of the day sitting at said desk.

Thankfully, even though much of my work is at my desk, it is great. I am given the opportunity at the place I currently work at to sit at my desk and develop programs, web sites; look into new technology, chat with my co-workers and pretty much do anything. I am blessed.

So I have been working with PDF’s a lot recently. In particular a site that pretty much has a few drop-down menus that have folder names. The site picks up the folder names each time a value is changed in the previous drop-down list. It works really well except all the data is on an external drive (don’t worry too much, it’s running on a gigabyte link) in the office. The site walks flawlessly except for the fact that if there are heaps of users on it it runs a little slow.

Now the other day there were some complaints about the speed. This got me thinking down a few avenues of thought as I tend to do. First thought was “How dare they. I have been slaving over making this page for months and it is great. It has better features, better functionality and is just plain better… how dare they.” Now this probably sounds valid. But is it really? I mean if the product/service doesn’t work well then why would someone use it. Just as in this situation, how am I going to know there is a problem unless people tell me.

Unfortunately my boss sent an email out before letting me know that there was a problem. (All fine though. All got sorted) This however got me even more angry. The remainder of the afternoon I sat at my desk filling with more and more rage and anger towards everyone.

Now first problem is that there was a problem. Second problem was the way I handled the problem.

I have been reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “Cost of Discipleship” over the past few weeks. This book is amazing. It talks a lot about obedience to Jesus and the love of Jesus. It’s a really great book and I have been enjoying it’s many many challenges. One thing that was getting to me in this current situation was that I was feeling rage and in turn revenge. Bonhoeffer writes a lot about the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-8) talking about revenge and it got me thinking about Jesus and what He suffered on the cross. That He was put through all that shame and pain but He didn’t open His mouth against His persecutors. What amazing patience and love. I had people who were saying things that weren’t even directly against me but He had people spit on His face and yell abuse at Him. How things are put into the correct perspective when Jesus is in the centre.

Obedience is important. Love is important. Even in my job where, when I think about it, I spend the most time in my week, I have to be so careful. We are called to be above reproach. To be obedient to Jesus and to follow His example. To ask for help and strength from the Father. This is not small key stuff.

I also thought, imagine I went to work burning with rage and did something crazy like punch someone in the face. Not only would I get fired and be charged with assault, but the people I work with know that I am a Christian. I tell them because it is important for them to know. If they see me do that, how does that make Jesus look. How is that showing the amazing change Jesus has made in my life. How is that making Jesus look. WE ARE TO BE ABOVE REPROACH!! That is the old man. The man that has been changed. Human emotion’s are tough because they are us. They are our nature and our being. But God has given us the Holy Spirit who is able to give us self control. How great is our God to give us Himself to help us in our walks.

So God is good. Work is good. The past few days have given me great insight to how and why I care so much about what other people think. I mean don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to fold like a piece of paper everytime someone says something bad or nasty; that is just sad. But, I will pray hard for the strength to know what is wise and obedient in the context of the world.

Motive, Morality, The Bible and Harry Potter

Okay, so it has been a while since I blogged. My apologies to you all. It has been a very busy couple of months.

So I was surfing the Internet during my lunch break today and came across this

Now this is kind of, very loosely good. It’s great to see that Harry Potter has shown people some kind of moral light into what is wrong with the world.

There is however a problem. Well several problems in fact… (or opinion). Harry Potter is a great collection of books. I have read the first two and I have seen all the films. I think they are great. So there is nothing wrong directly with the books or films. The problem is is that we have had the Bible for centuries and it has been giving us instruction on how to live properly and rightly in accordance with what God (our Creator) wants. So the problem I am having with this particular group mentioned in this article is that they are getting their reason and direction for making good choices from a fiction novel.

Seriously, what is going on? Am I the only one that is completely outraged that this group is making their motive a fictitious wizard. He is not some kind of endless source of wisdom. This group is trying to find satisfaction and reason to making good choices in a lie. You cannot bring fiction into the real world. Fiction belongs in imagination and you definitely cannot raise a fictitious character up to the massively untouchable place of our Heavenly Father. No one has the right or the power to do that.

Another thing; how can people find more reason for morality in a fictitious book when they have truth staring them in the face. When they have a perfect factual account of history to tell them “Hey wait a second, that’s not right. You should do this.”

Politicians are Dumbledore. They try to make moral choices and make the world a better place. They try to help. But they fail. All men fail. We are cursed by sin and have only one way out. To follow Jesus. To be obedient to Jesus. To know that Jesus died and because of His death and coming back to life, death has been defeated and our sins forgiven and we have the chance, the massive epic chance to be with God. To be back where we were meant to be from the beginning. With GOD!!!

When are people going to realise that there is nothing satisfying except for Jesus. The absolute clarity that the Bible gives us to the problems of the world and the ultimate solution. It is so clear and true. It is so helpful and comforting and all-satisfying. Why do people keep trying to reach for the stars or find some truth in the latest craze or conjure up imagination to try to validate existence when the truth is known and believed by millions of people around the world?

I have just come to the decision that in the next few blog entries I will be doing a History of the Bible. I will look at multiple sources to find out how exactly we got the Bible so that people can see how it all fits together and is truth.

Summit Camp

On the weekend just gone I was fortunate enough to be able to go to a Youth camp with about 50 kids (I think) and 12 leaders (I also think) at Rathane which is a YouthWorks camp site somewhere near Engadine. (In case people don’t know, one of my many weaknesses is Geography.) It, in one word was GREAT. We went down on Friday night. The bus trip down was so much fun. I ended up just chatting and hanging out with some really great young people and I realised something that I probably already knew but had never really thought about before. Young people are so smart. Like really. I mean, I thought I had my head screwed on when I was the same age as them but really. Some of the amazing gifts and talent that God has given these kids is just another sheer reason why He should be adored and praised. They talk about some of the most crazy things and it’s so much fun. Anyways… the camp was so good. One of my good friends Craig preached some amazing words about how everything we do, say, are… just everything was created for His glory. Everything in the universe was and is created for His glory. It is so great. And it isn’t some selfish full-of-self kind of attitude. God loves us and with all His amazing power and ability He sent His son to die for us even though He could have very well wiped Noah and his family out in the flood and started the human race all over again. Jesus could not have come and died leaving us as a helpless race destined for Hell. Praise be to God.
So the talks were great. Us leaders were just able to hang out with the youth and chat and eat meals with and just spend the entire weekend hanging out. It is a shame it only happens once a year because it is so great.
LOL, just reading back over this post I realised I haven’t really told you all that much about the weekend. My apologies. As more memories come back to me I’ll update this post.

Windows 7

Hi All,

So I downloaded the new Windows 7 RC1 yesterday. Put it on a work computer this morning and must say that I am slightly impressed. Booted it up, setup took ages but I have come to expect this from Microsoft with all the stuff they load into their operating systems. Firstly, it is fast. Like really fast. I once built a 3K PC that was top of the line (except for SLI video) about two years ago and I ran Vista. It was fine. It worked pretty well and ran pretty fast. From what I have heard and seen, Vista’s problem is that people will buy it with a new system that is not fast and is definitely not up to the task of running such a resource hogging pig as Vista. Windows 7 seems to have fixed these problems. It runs well even on slow PC’s. But I will share this. I was talking to one of my friends the other day and he reminded me that Vista’s Beta and RC versions were okay. They worked well with everything. The final release was where the problems started. So let’s hope that Windows 7 doesn’t do the same.

The interface is simply beautiful. The PC that I am running it on is not great. It’s an old Dell that has onboard Intel video so I wasn’t expecting Aero to even run but it does. It doesn’t run everything but it runs enough to make it still look good. Thumbs up to Microsoft for this. I think they have finally realised that it isn’t just about having the best OS for all the nerds but that it is important to be able to have all the bells and whistles for the guy who doesn’t have enough money to upgrade. Good work Microsoft.

One negative for Windows 7 (RC1) is that it cannot take more than one application opening at once. I am as I type loading up Windows 7 (RC1) 64-bit on a much much faster PC to see if it makes any difference because Windows XP used to not be able to open lots of applications at once. I am hoping that Windows 7 will improve this important part of an OS.

An impressive thing that I know Vista had and Windows 7 still has is Windows Media Center. I like it. It has a cool interface, keeps all media on your PC is one accessible place and it works. I am glad that Microsoft has included this in Windows 7.

These are just some thoughts on the new Windows. I haven’t made a judgement yet but will keep you updated with all the cool new features that I find as I find them.

Ubuntu 9.04

Okay, so last week I was at work and somehow we got onto the topic of open source software. More importantly, open source operating systems (OS). The prime example of a great open source OS is Linux. I only know bits and pieces about it but from what I know, Linux is a user built backbone that has been used over the past decade or so on servers mostly that allows for complete customisation of everything by developers. BIG DEAL. This means that not only is it free to everyone but that anyone can make changes to it. There are many different distributions as you can imagine as people have liked what some people have done but wanted to make changes and then decided to release a whole new distribution.

I have been experimenting with the Ubuntu distribution . In one word this is amazing. I installed the newest version the other night and after some initial hickups with my wireless PCI card, I have been able to configure it without any dramas. There are a few key features that I would like to bring to your attention about this amazing FREE product.

1. It is Free. You do not have to pay for it.
2. It comes with Open Office so you don’t need to buy any extra Office products.
3. It loads up nearly all hardware drivers meaning you don’t have to go and download drivers manually; it detects them and installs them for you.
4. The install time for the entire OS is really short compared to Windows (any version).
5. The Add/Remove Programs-esque program not only has add/remove like Windows but it also connects to an online database of programs that have been developed for Ubuntu and allows you to search through them and download them then and there meaning you don’t have to go and download and install manually.
6. It has a super cool GUI (graphical user interface). Check it out

There are many other things that are great about Ubuntu. The one only thing that is bugging me at the moment is that ATI haven’t released video drivers for the new release yet so I am unable to play 3D games properly. Should be resolved in the next week or so. But anyways, check it out.

Fast and the Furious

Well last night my beautiful wife and I saw the new “Fast and the Furious” movie. I find it quiet funny, as I have been waiting for this film for quiet a while that it has a very similar title to the first film which was called “The Fast and the Furious”.  It seems to me that the only thing that changed was the first “the” in the title. Strange, anyway.

I quiet enjoyed the film. It was much better than the second film of the franchise called “2 Fast 2 Furious” which wasn’t very good. The second film had a very poor story line but the cars were great which is what I believe the director thought was what people wanted. He may have been right but one of the best qualities of the first film was that it not only had great cars but it also had character development, a pretty decent storyline and music that didn’t sound like most shopping centres in Western Sydney on a Thursday night. (In case you don’t know, crazy bass, lots of vibration but not very much music to be heard because of all the bass drowning out everything else.)

“Fast and the Furious” had a believable plot and although some of the dialogue was very lame, it still worked much better than it could have. The character’s were very good. Vin Diesel and Paul Walker were able to show the audience how the characters had changed since the original without looking like try-hards. As with most of these films there were a lot of car racing scenes but the great thing about this film was that they were just all over the place. One was a normal street race, another was through crazy tunnels in a mountain (much like the chase scene at the start of the Bond film Quantum of Solace). Another great thing about this film was that it felt to me to go for ages. I’m not sure if this was becasue I was expecting a short film for its advertised 106min running time but it just kept on going and definitely not in an annoying way. More like a “wow I can’t believe that this film is still going strong after an hour”.

I don’t know if my expectations were low but I really liked this film and would give it an 9/10. The music was much better and was not on at every point in the film like the franchises previous films. It was skillfully placed in the film only at points when it was good to have music, which I guess is the point.

Trailer:   Fast and the Furious

The Cross of Christ

So I have been reading “The Cross of Christ” by John Stott over the past few weeks since I got back from my honeymoon. This book is great. Stott is able to in one book go through so much stuff. He talks all about how Jesus was a God-man and that there was no way for God’s wrath to be dealt with any other way except for God to come into the world and become a man. It’s huge. God becoming the creation. And one of the reasons I am finding this book so helpful is that it talks a lot about God having to come into creation because there was absolutely no way for His wrath to be satisfied and Him to still be just. Think about it. The only possible way for humanity to be saved from their sins and from the judgement of those sins was for Jesus, who is God and man at the same time, who was perfect and without sin, to come to this earth and to die. To die a sinless man, a perfect man. That is mind-blowing. Like I am never going to be able to comprehend Jesus being God and man at the same time but the fact that He was perfect and seriously, we are only saved because of God. There is nothing we can do at all. Isn’t that great. I feel immensly guilty about it most of the time knowing that my Creator had to do all that just so I could be right with Him but what an amazing thing. The most amazing thing I believe. And I know most Christians hear this kind of thing all the time but take a few days, not minutes and just think on this. Think that God sent Himself to earth, was born into the world, had to withstand the temptations that we all have to deal with when it comes to doing the wrong or the right thing and then He did the most amazing thing of all… He was tried unfairly by men just like us betrayed by His closest friends, don’t sugar coat it, think about it. How much corruption and betrayal is there in our governments, in our workplaces, with our friends and family; who are we to say that we wouldn’t do the same if we were in Pilate’s shoes; Jesus then was beaten to within the hallway of death and then crucified; the most excrutiating way to die, so bad and violent that it was not talked about in society. But how awesome it is that this was all God’s plan. The whole Bible looks forward to it. The Salvation of humanity, the fulfilment of promises to Abraham, it’s just so great that God was good enough to us, so unworthy and so sinful, that He still loved us enough to send Jesus and to have had this in His massive and great plan from the beginning. May God bless everyone who reads this and I highly recommend “The Cross of Christ”. It’s pretty heavy but well worth the time.