Big Wave Surfing

Helen and I watched "Billabong Odyssey" last night. It was immense!! I loved it. The story is of a team of top big wave surfers who go round the world like delta force looking for the biggest waves to ride. It ends with a huge session at Jaws and this one guy catching an enormous wave. It is so cool. http://www.billabongodyssey.com/

An Emerging View of Church

God is speaking to His church. He is calling us to see church differently and then to be church differently. In this post modern world attendance in the traditional, mainstream denominations of the western church is falling. Questions are being asked about whether the future even has a church. The old structures and methods seem to be failing the culture of the new millennium. Society in a post modern age does not see the need or value of the traditional church. But people like Jim Thwaites and Pete Ward are seeing new shapes of church emerging. The church that they are describing is radically different to anything you have ever dreamt of or imagined. It is a church that reaches out into every sphere of creation and brings God’s goodness and light. This church is the body of Christ, but seen from a different viewpoint.

Click on the Comments to read on...

Behind my house there is a hill

Behind my house there is a hill. And on the top of that hill there are some rocks. And when I clamber to stand astride that stone I gaze out on a wondrous scene. There, stretching away beneath me is the Atlantic Ocean. “A dark illimitable ocean without bound, without dimension, where length, breadth and highth and time and place are lost.”* Is it any wonder that I feel closer to God my Father here? For it is here that I glimpse the ocean of love that he has for me, that same love, so limitless it passes our earthly understanding (Eph 3:18-19), that is made so real and obvious by this tiny corner of creation.

My Father in heaven is a God who has created beautiful things and has done so on an epic scale. As I stare from the hill behind my house I can turn from one Cornish coast to the other and it truly stirs my soul to worship the one who made this. I feel so close to Him when I look out on to His creation, absorbing images of the things that He first imagined then sculpted. When I am up high on hills or mountains it feels as though I am finally seeing His world from His perspective.

Last summer I trekked through a region of the Himalaya. Never have I seen beauty and wonder on such a stage. The uncompromising enormity of those landscapes and the breathtaking glory of the mountains will never leave me. And when I lay upon the grass of the campsites and stared out into space to see uncountable numbers of stars, a view unhindered by man’s night lights, I found myself contemplating with amazement my Father God who is big enough to fill all of creation.

This is the God who meets me atop my small Cornish hill. This is He who I meet on the summit of Himalayan peaks, and when I walk in His creation. This is the God who calms turbulent oceans and softens violent winds. This is the God whose love for me is without end, who gave His own and only son to die in my place, undeserving as I am. This is the God that draws close to me and this is the God who, in my own very small way, I love back.

* from “Paradise Lost” by Milton

Marrakech

We recently had a great holiday in Marrakech. It was so nice to get away as a family and enjoy end explore new surroundings!

New Site

I have just put together a few pages about me and my family.( see The Rodgers) Included on it are copies of the now defunct other blogs that I ran. This means that I am now going to write everything on to this one blog!!

So, wait for a report on Easter People and an update on things that are on my mind!

Thanks
John

Lovesick

I watched Mike Bickle on the God Chanel last Sunday and he gave a great talk about intimacy and the bridegroom.
He ended with a call to have a vision for 5 things. They were...

1) A vision to be wholehearted
2) A vision to be great in heaven
3) A vision for fullness
4) A vision to fast and pray
5) A Vision to equip your heart for the other 4 things.

The last point is perhaps the most exiting and definitley the most important. Encounters with intimacy will keep me in the place of achieving the 4 visions. I must pursue intimacy with God at the heart level.


Love Sick Bride
I want this blog to have a series of studies in to the area of becoming more and more lovesick for Jesus Christ. He is the bridegroom and the church is the bride. I know that He is desperatley in love with us as his bride and that leads me to a place of response where I am a lovesick worshipper, a bride that is desperate for the bridegroom.
Jesus, I love you.