I’m a bit of a Scrooge at this time of year, all the relatives ask me what I want for Christmas, and I have to think what I could buy the family for Christmas… friends are easy, I just don’t bother! So this year I decided I didn’t really need or want anything, so I just asked for books (on the basis that they last a lifetime) or gift vouchers (on the basis that I could get things I might need at a later date).

But at this time I am more concious than ever of my greatest need is a Saviour. Ever since Genesis 3 that’s been my greatest need, ever since I was conscious of my actions it’s been my greatest need. Sometimes I just have to cry out Paul’s words of struggle in Romans 7, ending of course with hope - “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

Throughout the Bible God’s people are longing, waiting for a saviour, and what a joy Christmas is to celebrate the coming of the Saviour… Luke 2:11 “Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.”

This is the point of the year where proper bloggers like Bish and Adrian write several posts about their blogging years with links back to lots of cool previous posts… although in this new Wordpress blog I’ve only really been blogging properly since the summer so there’s not much to refer back to… but here’s a few highlights, well actually when you go through it, my life is surprisingly uneventful:

January

New Year in the Shire. I turned 21. We had a mission week at Sussex (Reality07).

February

Stopping the Traffik. February is a blur…

March

Obviously a quiet month… or just another blur?

April

Word Alive - Mike Reeves on the Trinity, Charles Price on Philippians.

May

Richard Beeston acoustic set. Exams. Revision at the cricket ground.

June

Keller at EMA on what it means to be an Evangelical, Vaughan Roberts on Daniel.

July

Keswick, Alec Motyer on Exodus, John Stott on Christlikeness, Simon Manchester on Jonah. Driscol - Radical Reformission.

August

Colwyn Bay 3 - supremacy of Christ in Colossians. Cricket action, two 5-wicket hauls this season.

September

Resits - no Forum again, gutted. More Driscoll, Confessions of a Reformission Rev. Touring Europe with mates- Prague, Budapest, Bratislava and Vienna. Business of freshers week.

October

Welcome to 3rd year. UCCF sharing the love on the South-coast. Driscoll on Philippians.

November

Met a nice girl from Wales. CU Houseparty, more Philippians. More Colossians at church. Church weekend, Leviticus.

December

CB3 reunited. Crying. Adrian Plass at Sussex carol service. Back Home. Final year project. Christmas shopping and all that.

Was watching Family Guy last night and it was the episode where Peter has a feature on the news “What Grinds my Gears” where he has a rant about something, well here’s mine….

Do you know what really grinds my gears… why these four things never work together… short leg jeans are always that little too short for me and regular fit, just that little bit too long for my little legs. Consequently I have to plan my shoes and belts; boot-type shoes are ok, they make me a bit taller, the jeans fit better, smaller shoes don’t, so my jeans end up dragging along the floor and ripping. I never really liked belts, but when you buy jeans that don’t fit they’re needed.

I just get annoyed, perfectly good jeans getting wet and ripped cause my legs aren’t an inch longer… and why do jeans, well trousers in general always rip in the groin first??

I have loads of posts brewing, half-finished, but alas this blog seems abit neglected of late…

The last couple of weeks seem to have gone by uneventfully, feels like it just passed me by, but some things must have happened…

Bit of a new look for bhmc.org.uk, also the sermons are now being updated more regularly, here’s a beauty - Phil Moon speaking on the Holy Spirit, very clear and simple, and bashing a few heresies.

I chose my project for my course last week, a website system for storing church sermons… could come in handy methinks…

At Mars Hill Church, Driscoll is into the third week of a new series on Philippians, so far at the end of each sermon they finish looking at the conversion of a hymn writer and how one of their hymns relates to the theme… then the band make it a tad more contemporary… Robert Robinson - Come Thou Fount… also for January there is ‘Ask Anything‘… Driscoll is inviting the “critics, bloggers, weirdos, nutjobs” to ask questions, people vote for the ones they want answered, then he’ll preach on them… no.1 at the moment is about the “Regulative Principle”… could be interesting…

Led CU Bible study on how the cross reveals God’s character, there were 3 of us, and I wasn’t expecting to lead, so preparing was a last minute job, but I learned loads… we are “justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” - wow!

Talked at Global Cafe on why there’s suffering in the world… I think I avoided the hard parts of the question really, but simply: God made everything perfect, suffering was a direct consequence of the Fall (Sin), God can identify with our sufferings in Jesus, God dealt with the consequences of Sin at the cross, for the Christian there is hope of a perfect world.

Listening to Michael Ots from Lansdowne Baptist was helpful in preparing - ‘What kind of God doesn’t stop suffering?‘

Have been sad recently… looks like we’re out of the European Championships, lost the rugby world cup final (although the pub round the corner now has Staropramen on tap, which made it more bearable!), and Lewis Hamilton had a mare.

On a more happier note; great to see and meet lots of new people at church and CU, great to see God at work, building his church, although you do wonder why he chooses all the weirdos (like me)…

Man (I’ve started saying that a lot… too much Driscoll podcasting methinks) I’m tired. I need to sleep, get up early and do some work…

So I just came back from 10 days travelling around the Danube Capitals - Prague, Budapest, Bratislava and Vienna. Along with my good chums Reg and Loz… see photos on Facebook.

Prague

Arrived in Prague to find the main square filled with a sea of Irish football fans, they lost. There are 3 main Czech beers; Pilsner Urquell, Budweiser and Staropramen (we went to the brewery in Prague). Pilsner Urquell is the best and wonderfully is exported to the UK.

Prague castle and the Cathedral within it’s walls is the best sight, it’s amazing. It looks even better at night from across the bridge. Unfortunately our old pubs tour guide never turned up, which was sad. We went to the Communism museum to learn about the history of Communism in Czechoslovakia.

Budapest

Beautiful. Loads of grand buildings, palaces, churches, basilica, squares… we stayed right in the heart of the diplomatic quarter, between the British embassy and the parliament. Was more expensive than I expected, but really nice. Drank alot of Krusovice (which is a Czech beer as well). There’s a really cool park with loads of ex-communist statues just outside the city, didn’t make it there sadly.

Bratislava

Everything worth seeing here is contained within about 1mile square. Churches and towers and loads of little pubs/cafes. We drank 60p pints here of Zlaty Bazant, and also had some really pricy Pina Coladas. Smoked some Cubans… Got a boat to Vienna…

Vienna

It was nice, but just full of museums, and theatres and galleries and generally places of ‘culture’, beer and food was most expensive yet, but we did find the best pub ever… if you go to Vienna you must visit ‘7 Stern Brau‘ they have loads of beautiful home-made brews served in 1l jugs.

and in summary…

always take a pack of cards travelling to play Wist with… photos on Facebook!

Having slept, and generally done nothing for a couple of days I feel somewhat recovered from the 10 straight days of getting up at 7am and being busy with 70 14-18 year olds. This year’s theme was Australia, so I grew a beard, and put on Phil Moon’s (co-author of the definitive book on Christian youth work) Akubra - trying my best to pass myself off as an Aussie. I failed misserably at the station, ordering an apple danish in my posh southern accent, however I was approached by a Burma veteran who said I looked like “one of those Nips” he used to fight!

Adventures

Colwyn Bay isn’t the most exciting place in the world, but as ever we make the best of a pretty average location - not hard this year as the weather was perfect. Usual fun to be had on the beach, on the lake, up Snowdon, on the Great Orme. We made the customary CB3 Seagull Productions movie, an adaptation of Crocodile Dundee! I was safety officer on camp (what a joke, last time I was at CB3 I impaled myself on a spiked iron fence on the first day (ruining a perfectly good pair of trousers, and boxers!)), and thankfully only spent one night in A&E, with my dorm member who dropped a pool table on his foot! My favourite adventure was our trip to Conwy, having spent all week driving a minibus around I was king of the road, until 4 chavs in a Toyota Yaris had other ideas, thankfully there’s always a heroic Irishman around to save the day and diffuse road rage incidents!

Colossians

We went through the book of Colossians in both the morning studies and the evening talks. The book is a letter from Paul to new Christians in Colossae, defending true faith in Christ against the many and varied voices of the false teachers. It was great to learn…

• Jesus is King over Creation and the New Creation
• All that we need is found in Christ
• Don’t be seduced, judged or disqualified by false teaching
• Set our minds and hearts on Christ, Live with Jesus as Lord in all areas of life
• Keep going like Epaphras, don’t fall away like Demas

Colossians is a crushing rebuke to the false teachers of Paul’s day, and a warm and firm assurance to the Christians there. It’s just as strong a word today…

…to those who place too high a value on ‘experience’, who promote a ’second blessing’, or who impose a legalistic view of ‘the Sabbath’ - these are three false teachings that I’ve come across in recent years, from Bible teaching churches…. “The Reality however is found in Christ!”

But, the assurance is a great one. He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness, and brought us in to the kingdom of the Son he loves. In Him we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him. The great news that we don’t need to change anything, we don’t need to move on to a further experiences, some extra rituals or laws, but the truth, the fullness, perfection is found in Christ.

CB3 on Facebook

Also found some good books today. There’s a small Christian book shop in my town (very small) so the last thing I expected to find was some Driscoll - both his books there, so I picked up ‘Confessions of a Reformission Rev’ having enjoyed ‘The Radical Reformission’ so much. Also, in the bargain book shop, £6 bought me a copy of the complete scripts (with images) of series 1&2 of Extras!

Played cricket again today, slightly more sucessfully than last time. Went up to play Kingston University, which was quite nice as grounds go despite the abysmal standard of the teas, which is the standard by which any cricket club is to be judged. Anyway I opened the bowling (yes for those of you who played with me at Dean, I am now opening the bowling for Sussex 1sts - hmmm), 9 overs, 2 wickets for 20 - a couple more wickets would have been nice. So me and Jo Harman had them 40-4, then the pie chuckers came on, anyway the end result was them finishing on 187-9…. hmmm…

Batting usually doesn’t require my involvment, though I did get 0 not out. We got to 190 on the first ball of the last over. The previous over I got called a cheat, which I was suprised at how much that offended me - I didn’t hit it, so I didn’t walk. However, the previous game I did walk (the umpire wasn’t going to give it either), which is causing something of a crisis of conscience… what happens if me walking causes the team to loose? Why should I walk when others don’t, especially people I’m bowling at?! I’m sure there must be something biblical that can be applied to this situation (do not lie?) but I can’t be bothered to consider this too deeply right now… I feel bad when I lie/cheat, so I think when I know I’m out, I’m going to walk!

On the way back we stopped off in Horsham, lots of rich people live here. Anyway, we went for food and drink at the Weatherspoon… but being Horsham, it’s not your typical Spoons; it’s non-smoking, no loud music, no chavs or scallies, no middle-aged alcoholic men, I could see the carpet and it was clean, I didn’t feel out of place in a shirt and tie. Loving my purple shirt and tie…

Saturday… BBQ on the beach, 2nd place in the quiz

Sunday… Sweetie back to preach on Acts 6, Pub lunch, Persverance with Lucky

Monday… Sussex CU, Carl Chambers on Ephesians 2 - happy to be alive

Tuesday… 2 years of hughbourne.co.uk means I have to pay some more money

Wednesday… AGM at BH - disappointment at the lack of YoYos

Thursday… Mid-Sussex Bible Convention - William Taylor on Matthew 10

Friday… Bargain Books in Wesley Owen

Cricket season started proper today, after 5 months of nets previously. Played a 40-over friendly against Oxford Brookes. Sussex batted first, scoring 146 runs - I managed to contribute a nice round figure to this total! Opened the bowling, didn’t get any wickets, then the spinners came on and cleaned up - took a catch though. Brookes were 138 all-out with a couple of overs left.

Would be nice to see England win a game of cricket…

I’ve had a driving licence for just over two years which reminds me of two things; first having moved house 18 months ago I should probably change my address on the card, apparently you can be fined. Second, congratulations to Mr. Adam White on successfully passing his driving test… Hooorah!

Anyway, in these two years I’ve noticed that there are certain songs which result in a change of mood while driving, this mood is demonstrated in two ways; 1. Excessive tapping/holding down of the right foot, 2. dancing/grooving (always with both hands on the wheel mind you!)… So here are my top 10 tracks, not to listen to whilst driving as it may cause either or both of the above symptoms - commonly generalised as bad/dangerous driving!
1. Do Your Thing - Basement Jaxx (I groove to this)

2. Stop the Rock - Apollo 440 (Known to cause speeding, especially in minibuses)

3. Austin Powers Theme (Another groove one)

4. Walk this Way - Run DMC Feat. Aerosmith (Classic, in fact most Run DMC tracks could get on here)

5. Don’t Stop Me Now - Queen (I sing this very loudly)

6. Johnny Be Goode (Go Johnny Go)

7. Lust for Life - Iggy Pop (Very good cruising music)

8. Praise You - Fatboy Slim (Love the crazy dancing man on the video for this!)

9. Tribute - Tenacious D (Ultimate Sing-along)

10. One Week - Barenaked Ladies (Love to sing this, but hard to fit all the words in)
Sadly my MP3 player is dying, I can’t move back a track which means I’m screwed if I want to hear an intro again… which you definately do if you’re listening to Lust for Life…