what lies in wait

So my first post for this year of 2008, and I am feeling at the moment that it will be one of the last here on my blue trike life blog. It was six years ago I flew the coup and moved to Ballarat from my beautiful little Sale to begin my new and exciting young adult life away from my family and the constraints of life at home.
In those years I have studied 4 different courses at University, TAFE, and online Bible College, without completing any full accreditation. Been unemployed, worked nights and weekends in a supermarket, and sold mobile phones. In those years of work it has mostly been casual and part time work, always weekends, often fluctuating hours, with never any real long term stability. Along with this has been in those six years living at nine different residences, from University residence, to a friends floor, to a share house, to boarding with two different older couples, to another share house, to back with my parents in a new city, to sharing a unit with a friend, to renting a room in another share house, and I might just move again soon, but if I do it would be for a couple years at least i feel.
My family and especially my parents have always supported me in many ways, they figured out if I was calling there was probably something I wanted.
I have to say in these testing and trying years though God has been my rock, and my two church communities Wendouree Baps and Enfiled Baps have been a real source of Love and support. God has been the one stable thing in my life that has helped me through each day, week, month and year, and when my family and friends couldn't be there for me He was and is.
It has been great to go through struggles in my faith in God and what I believed and sorting through what was real and needed to be held tightly with both hands and what was not important and needed throwing out the window or at least loosely holding or simply letting go of. As well as what was missing and allowing God to change me, and allowing God to Love me. All continuing processes too. God has used so many different people in all of this, from my unit 3&4 pals at Uni, to Harvey, and Tab, Christop and Trav, Blake, to a 16 yr old work mate, to Stefan and Scotty in more recent times, and many others too. Then there has been the books that I have read by Michael Frost, John Dickson, Rob Bell, Erwin McManus, Jim Palmer and others who have helped shape my thinking and ideas also. There is also this Author named Paul who wrote a whole bunch of letters to Churches in the couple thousand years ago vicinity who God has used to help me.
During these often stressful and crazy years there have been spells of being depressed and wanting an easy way out, and sometimes hating the way I am or can be. There have been great times as well of joy and love, and happiness, when life was wonderful and things were great. God is with me through all these times never letting go of me, His Love is like no other.
There have been many nights of fervent prayer, giving all i could that God's power would flow into the lives of others and seeking Him in my own times of despair. Prayer has shaped the way I am today, the times I have spent with the Lord crying out for others as well as for my self have been so powerful and growing and eye opening, some experiences I cannot even explain.

In the years to come I look for more stability, some settling down a bit, to be more responsible with my time and money, continuing growth, growing career, a stronger mind, a stronger self confidence, continued healing, some luck in love, and whatever else God has in plan.
There may be a new blog on the way too, with a better forward looking outlook on life. So thank you to all those past six years and here is to the next six years and what lies in wait.

Makes me feel better about being a Sony Ericsson lover

Here is an article from Greenpeace about how environmentally friendly our electronic equipment is.

We first released our 'Guide to Greener Electronics' in August 2006. The guide ranks the 18 top manufacturers of personal computers, mobile phones, TV's and games consoles according to their policies on toxic chemicals and recycling. The sixth issue of the Guide has been expanded to include televisions and game consoles. Market leaders Microsoft, Nintendo, Philips and Sharp enter at the bottom of the ranking of environmental performance with Nintendo being the first company scoring zero out of a possible 10 points. Philips and Microsoft performed little better, scoring only 2 and 2.7, respectively. Sony Ericsson has taken over the top spot from Nokia while Samsung and Sony have surged ahead to now occupy second and third positions. Read the rest...

Gary Ablett on Depression, Drugs, and Jesus

In an interview before his new book is released in early december Gary Ablett has spoken of the hardships in his life and how God has helped him. Read here...

The window or the door?

So here is today's dilemma, after I woke up this morning I soon found out that the door knob was not turning and I may have to climb out my window to get out of my room. I then discovered that the screen for my window is very well secured and not easily coming out. So which do I try and force open possibly breaking something along the way, the window or the door?

What are the important things in life?

So what is success?

Having a professional job so you can make money to do whatever it is you do with your money.
Being really involved in your local "church" where people heap praise on you for your great spirituality, knowledge of the bible, and how committed you are and how much time you spend serving in the church. Giving your 10% tithe every week. Being a small group leader or involved in some other leadership role in the church.
Buying your own home and having that nice new car you always wanted.
Having the big screen TV home cinema set up with a wall full of your favourite DVDs.
Having your nice church friends over for dinner and maybe inviting some people from work to come so you can get them to meet your church friends and come to your super seeker friendly church services.
Getting married and having kids, making sure you can give them everything you didn't have when you were a kid, even though all they probably really want is you.

Does money, how comfortable your life is, how much cool new stuff you have, and how highly rated you are by your pastor or others from your church really matter? or in the end will it mean nothing except wasted hours of this thing called life.

So could success look like this.
You work a job where you get paid enough to get by and have necessary things like a house, food, clothes and one used car.
You get to church services on a Sunday maybe once a month, meet fortnightly with a small group of friends where you talk about life, God and the people you care about.
Having that family from across the street over for dinner because you know they were going to have takeaway pizza again for the fifth time this week.
Getting married and loving your wife like crazy because intimate relationships are what God is about, and you have kids if you can and adopt a couple as well because children should have a loving family. You teach your children to care about other kids and not be selfish. You teach them about this God who you are always discovering more about who came to earth as a baby boy, spent his first years as a refugee and became a carpenter because his earthly father was, but when he was thirty years old, having a mid life crisis found God wanted him to go wander the country like a nomad telling people about a God who thought religious men were idiots and that the poor, sick and whoever else who knew they needed God's help were much better representatives for Him. Who was killed by the idiot religious men, a Roman emperor and God, died on a cross and rose back to life beating death so we could have life now. Sorry I think that was just a bit of an off the side rant. Anyways...

So what is life and what are the important things in life?

Daft Punk

Daft Punk are coming to Australia finally!

I fell in love with their music when I first saw their debut single Da Funk on Rage at 13 I would have been, and bought their 1996 album Homework. So it has been more than 10 years I have been waiting to see these Frenchmen bring their show to Australia, so I will be Flying to Sydney for their December 22nd show, they are not coming to Adelaide, and I will probably need to be in Sydney around Christmas. Got my ticket today!

I am gonna go crazy that day!

in the deeper places of life

Ok so I am still terrorising Adelaide, recent happenings include my birthday a couple weeks ago where I became twice as old as a twelve year old. Last weekend my Church held the Innagrual "Lifewell Conference" with Dr. Allen Meyer of Careforce speaking. It kicked off on the Friday night with a session open to the public, with another four sessions on the Saturday one being a split male/female session where Alan spoke on mens stuff and I don't know much about the other one that was for the ladies. Lifewell is a part of our Church and runs out of the old manse next to our main building. It's there that people go to be apart of Careforce Lifekeys programs, support groups such as a breast cancer support group, to join in greif share a help for those who have lost immediate family, for a good hair cut at a low price, for remedial massage, professional counselling and the list keeps going and growing. Most services are at a subsidised cost, with money from the New Begginings second hand store that also runs on our land as a part of our Church.
I got to play a role in the managing of the Auditorium and some technical stage management stuff as well at the conference, which was stressfull at times, but I really enjoyed it. We were excited to see plenty of people come and alot of lives impacted by God and I am sure some who will be experiencing a time of healing and restoration in the months to come. It was also great to be able to put out the message of "Hey we are the Church, lets really help people!" and hear people going yeah we can really do something. It was great to see how everything paned out after much prayer and a little effort. I am so greatful to God that I can be apart of my Church, it ain't perfect but as my Pastor John has said "the church should look more like a hospital than a fitness club" or something to that effect. That we are humans with messed up lives, and if we wear that on the outside, we create an environment where we can get healing on the inside, "in the deeper places of life" as Ps John would say.

Street Socceroos a big hit with the Copenhagen crowds

The Street Socceroos unfortunately couldn't reproduce the magic that took the Socceroos through the group stage in the World Cup in Germany last year, none the less I am sure they fought on with the never say die Aussie spirit. First up against Scotland who are to play Poland in the final soon, Australia went down 13-0 in their opening Preliminary Group Stage match. In their next match against Finland the Street Socceroos fought hard but lost 7-3. After the Finland game the Aussies faced Liberia, having to ask the Danish keeper to stand in for the Australian keeper as he was on crutches cheering his team on from the side lines after being injured in the previous match. The Aussies fought hard for the ball but were out classed by the Liberians who kept their cool when finishing putting the Australians away 5-1 in the final game of the Prelim's. Even though Australia finished without any points and at the bottom of the group this did not mean the end of the tournament for the Aussies. This being no ordinary tournament the Street Socceroos had more matches competing for other cups against other similarly placed nations. The next day they were up against Mexico and with the crowd supporting the Aussies who were said to be just as happy when they lost as they would be when they won, they remained happy although losing 9-2 in the one sided affair. Greece then continued the Aussies run by beating them 6-2. Then in a closely hard fought match against Chile, at half-time it was 3-2 in favour of Chile but Australia won through in the second half and came out on top 7-5, with their first win of the tournament! Having gained some momentum the Street Socceroos continued their winning ways showing some excellent skill and finishing touches to beat Switzerland 6-1 after going into half time with a 4-1 lead, what a great performance from the Aussies. They then faced India and found themselves a goal down in the first minute of the match, but the Aussies kept their heads high and fought back to keep their winning streak going with a 7-2 scoreline. Their next encounter came up against Sweden and it was tight at half-time with the Swedes leading by one, eventually taking the match away from the Australians, Sweden won 10-5. Australia then faced Hong Kong in the wet, as the rain came down on Copenhagen, it was their tightest match yet ending 3-3 in normal time with Australia coming out victors in the penalty shootout.

After five days of matches Australia had fought their way into the INSP Trophy Quarterfinals coming up against Chile who the Socceroos had overcome 7-5 earlier in the tournament. It was another tight match as in their previous encounter, thankfully with a similar result and the Street Socceroos putting in the hard yards in the second half to come away with a 5-4 win. So the Aussies will play Kyrgyzstan in the Semi's of the INSP Trophy. The match was closely contested with the scores locked at 3-3 in the second half but the Aussies couldn't keep their opposition at bay losing to two good late goals and going down 5-3. So it was the 3rd/4th playoff for the Aussies. In a rematch against Sweden who ended the Street Socceroos winning streak earlier, both teams were keen to put in a good performance, with Australia grabbing the upper hand at half-time leading 3-1 going into the break. The second-half didn't bring any fruit forth for either side Australia winning the match and finishing 3-1 with the Aussies taking 3rd spot in the INSP Trophy. While Kyrgyzstan went on to win the INSP Trophy defeating Slovenia 7-5 in the final.

In the other Trophies Austria defeated Zimbabwe 3-1 in the Ombold Trophy Final. Mexico are to take on Netherlands in the Hus Forbi Trophy Final, Serbia are taking on Lithuania in the Cape Town Trophy, it's Kazakhstan versus Ghana in the Copenhagen Trophy final and Poland will fight in the World Homeless Cup Final against Scotland to see who will take the cup home this year. With the cup to be presented by the Crown Prince of Denmark.

Eric Cantona the famous frenchman who stared for Manchester United during the peak of his career, was also in Copenhagen after his duties with the French Beach Soccer European Cup Team had finished to support the French Homeless World Cup Team.

I made the magazine

I picked up the current Australian FourFourTwo magazine, it is the August issue and for those of you who don't know how these monthly work that means it is the issue that came out in July, the first week of July for this magazine. I just thought I would comment on how ridiculous it is that they call it the August issue when at it's release all the articles would have been written in June, making all the information current as of June and then the issue released in July. So where does August come in there???
Anyway so back to what I was telling you, they published my letter I wrote to them, they titled it "There's More To Football" and it is actually the first of the published letters in the issue! They are at the very front of the magazine (page 11) and it was to my surprise as I went to read the letters I thought to myself this sounds a lot like something i would say, and then hold on I wrote them an email oh look that's my name at the end, cool!
So i am very excited by this. I always knew I would make a football magazine.
Also if you are puzzled by the name of the magazine 4-4-2 is a football formation, four defence, four midfielders, two forwards, this is often considered an English formation.