Job-like?

I must admit that im feeling a little Job like . . .

So, im at Bible college doing what God wants. Ive found the husband that God wants me to be with and im trying to deal with that. Ive just come back from Methodist Youth Conference where i did Gods work all weekend. What do i get in return? A cold.
Now come on, its quite clear that a cold is the last thing i can deal with! The exaustion i can sleep off, the lack of appitite i can deal with (Vitamins and tomato cuppa soup!), the huge amounts of work i can just about handle, but a cold? Now thats not fair!

Im one of those people that God just doesnt really talk to. I swear he actually sits some people down and has long conversations with them. But not me. Im one of those people that has a couple of options to choose, randomly picks one, hopes for the best and sometimes God turns around and says 'Well done, you chose correctly, have your free prize!'

I guess i am feeling a little angry at God for this, after all, he alone knows how busy and overworked i am, he alone knows i need my health. Without my health i cannot solve the millions of other problems!

Job loses everything he has until nothing is left, even though he did nothing wrong. When Job compains, God puts him back in his place. Job realises that God is so almighty that his suffering is irrelevant, only God matters.

Maybe God is trying to teach me to depend on him by removing my health from me. Thats all well and good, but im sure there are better ways he can teach me a lesson! Miraculous healing would be pretty good . . .

Its not like im blaming or cursing God. I know it could partly be my fault, but still the question remains - why has God allowed it to happen?

Sarah x

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Rob Frost

This morning we recieved the news of Robs death during prayers at college. Needless to say, it struck the hearts of many who had been touched by his work throught the years. Myself included.

My prayers are with his family at this time.

The following is taken from the SJI website - http://www.sharejesusinternational.com/

SJI is sad to announce the death of our founder, Rob Frost.

Life is difficult!

Last week Rob and I had a lovely time in Devon, kicking up autumn leaves, eating roast dinners and sitting on sea-side benches … but for the last few days he was gradually getting weaker and began to feel sick and in pain.

On Wednesday night we drove back to London, by which time he was so poorly, we took him by ambulance to St George’s Hospital. For the last few days he has had the very best of treatment – Rob was telling the nurses and doctors how wonderful they were!

Sadly at 11.40am last night Rob’s liver could no longer function and he passed into glory to be with Jesus. Andy and Jo, Chris and Jo and friends were all there as we prayed and loved him through into eternity. The registrar said how unusually peaceful his death was – a nurse comforted us with thoughts of paradise while another stood and cried – it was a holy time.

During our time in Devon Rob had repeatedly said that he did not want to live in pain but would prefer to go to heaven to be with His Father. We believe God granted him his wish.

On the last evening of Easter People this year Rob preached and as he left the platform he was sad that this would be the last Easter People … but he believed God said to him, ‘… you will not be here next year Rob’. We thank God for this preparation even though the knowledge has been difficult.

We will let you know about the funeral arrangements although our choice is to keep this quite small – we will be inviting everyone to a celebration of his life at a later date.

We thank you for your friendship and prayers – Rob has now received the ultimate healing. We know that our Heavenly Father loves us all and that He is holding us.

Jacqui

No sting

I know that God has taken my dad home, that He is sustaining and holding our family at this time, and though we feel much pain and loss he will never fail to give us everything we need.

It has been a privilege to be the son of Rob and to witness the depth of his faith through everything life had to throw at him; good and bad. Even as he faced death he knew it had no sting for him, he was more concerned about his family and ensuring that we knew we were his joy.

As hard as it was to be there in the last minute of his life it was such a precious moment to see him die with such peace and to experience God’s presence in our pain and tears; a nurse, probably breaking protocol, quoted verses of God’s unfailing love and assurance of heaven.

Thanks so much for all your love and prayers, they have been a real comfort.

Chris

My hero

Rob was a great Dad! But more than that he was also my mentor, my boss, my friend, my hero...

I thank God for the amazing memories that stem the 28 years. It will be strange not hearing his catch phrases and not having someone to dream and scheme with. I am so thankful that I had the chance to say goodbye. I will miss him immensely! He truly lived a life well lived - a man of God!

Rob was not afraid of death and right now he will be face to face with Jesus. The Grace that he lived out, the Grace he wrote and preached about, the Grace he shared… has now carried him to be with His Heavenly Father.

Rob and I have been working closely together on the Pentecost Festival and it will be a privilege to make this vision become reality one last time!

Thanks so much for your prayers and support. God is good!

Andy

The last meeting of the 06-07 Executive!

I think I will begin by explaining the roles of the Methodist Youth executive (MYE)

“The Methodist Youth Executive {MYE} exists to actively represent the young people of the Methodist Church. As an inclusive body, which is rooted in God's love, it seeks to keep the Church relevant to the youth of the 21st century. It aims to challenge and motivate the Church to listen and respect the voice of Youth Conference, whilst also showing a mutual respect for the traditions of the Church.” - Methodist Youth Executive mission statement.

The Methodist Youth Conference {MYC}, which meets annually around November time, elects the Youth Executive as representatives of the young people within the Methodist Church. There are 13 members of the Executive, plus the Youth President Elect. Members serve on the Executive for two years. The membership is staggered so that half the Executive is elected one year and the other half the following year. This is done to add some consistency to the work of the Youth Executive.

So this fantastic body of people met up for the last time, before old members leave and new ones join, this weekend.

The oldies at the front are two of the MAYC staff members, and the red tops are our special MYE tops with our names on the back that identify us and set us apart.

We did all the usual business, ate far too many sweets, had some fantastic meals cooked by our fantastic Chef Stewart and had a fun time! Every meeting, we try to have an excursion of some kind, and this time we went to a lovely all you can eat Chinese buffet. Not only did we celebrate Mike Seaton's 40th birthday, (It wasnt his birthday really, but the funny shade of purple his face went when the waitress brought out the cake was definatly worth it!) but it was also the first time Rachel had eaten Chinese food! (and i wore my new dress! :D ) It was really, really good fun.

Dont forget to check out our pictures on facebook. Feel free to add Brian or I.

Love in Christ, Sarah x

Free Burma!

www.free-burma.org

E.VENT

Ok! So its Friday 28th September and i'm off to an event called "E.VENT" (which just confused me straight away) at Trintity Church. Friday nights usually involve alot of music and possibly meeting up with a few friends. This was no exception, but i didn't know who was going, how many were going to be there, or what type of music was going to be played. So off I journey to a place of which i had never even heard of; Codsall, its near Birmingham which i have heard off and been to. E.VENT was being organised by Sarah and a few other people (who did an AMAZING job). It was a Christian gig, so it was gonna rock!. Starting the line up we had George (great guy), George and George ... well only 1 George, but he kicked us off with a great performance all by himself with his acoustic guitar. He was followed by 'The Royal Welcome' who got a few people up and dancing (Especially a few members of S.O.S). After their set had finished they mentioned that their CD was at the back, on sale for £4. The band then went to the table at the front of the Church and were quickly surrounded by screaming hoards of little girls who were after CD's and autographs. (A few even had the opportunity to steal a hug!) We ended the night on a high with the 'sounds of salvation' who really got the party starting with their style of dancing and amazing songs (which had everyone declaring "i'm not a guinea pig" which was reasuring). After E.VENT we had to put the Church back to normal which involved moving all the chairs back, but half way through putting all the chairs back we had an urgent matter of a specific chair had gone missing!!! Our only clue was that it had the name Claire on it. Which turned out to be the surname otherwise we'd of had a very distrought member of the congregation on sunday morning.
Eventually my evening in Codsall came to an end as we all went off in our different directions. As a final point i would like to say a massive THANK YOU!!! to all who organised it and performed; you helped to make the evening one to remember, WELL DONE.

The Gospel According to Anne?

Here i am sat at my laptop, searching for Podcasts by Tom Wright, as i was advised by my New Testement lecturer to do. Then i come across a site that is offering a download of N.T Wright and Anne Rice discussing 'Writing our way to God'.

This confused me greatly. Surely not the great Anne Rice, who created the infamous Vampire chronicals? Who's books i was addicted to in my last years of high school. Who created a style of vampire that appreciated beauty and innocence yet indulged in destruction. I devoured these books as i could get hold of them until i reached 'Memnock the Devil'; which turns around the Tempation of Jesus ->

Matthew 4: 1-3 Next Jesus was taken into the wild by the Spirit for the Test. The Devil was ready to give it. Jesus prepared for the Test by fasting forty days and forty nights. That left him, of course, in a state of extreme hunger, which the Devil took advantage of in the first test: "Since you are God's Son, speak the word that will turn these stones into loaves of bread."4Jesus answered by quoting Deuteronomy: "It takes more than bread to stay alive. It takes a steady stream of words from God's mouth."5-6For the second test the Devil took him to the Holy City. He sat him on top of the Temple and said, "Since you are God's Son, jump." The Devil goaded him by quoting Psalm 91: "He has placed you in the care of angels. They will catch you so that you won't so much as stub your toe on a stone." 7Jesus countered with another citation from Deuteronomy: "Don't you dare test the Lord your God."8-9For the third test, the Devil took him to the peak of a huge mountain. He gestured expansively, pointing out all the earth's kingdoms, how glorious they all were. Then he said, "They're yours—lock, stock, and barrel. Just go down on your knees and worship me, and they're yours." 10Jesus' refusal was curt: "Beat it, Satan!" He backed his rebuke with a third quotation from Deuteronomy: "Worship the Lord your God, and only him. Serve him with absolute single-heartedness." 11The Test was over. The Devil left. And in his place, angels! Angels came and took care of Jesus' needs.

However she portrayed Satan as trying to reach out and save God from self destruction. (True, i did not reach the end of the book as i was quite appalled by it and still being young and suggestable, didnt think it was a good idea.)

Searching on, down the page i found a list of her books ;
Anne Rice,
author of Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, The Lives of the Mayfair Witches, and The Vampire Chronicles

Christ the Lord: out of Egypt??? Seems a little different to her normal style, unless shes doing what she did with Memnock the Devil . . . Doing a google search (God bless Google!) I discovered that she was a Catholic until the age of 18 when she left the church, recent serious ilnesses and perhaps the concequences of those have brought her back to God. I cannot find an account of her conversion anywhere so i am guessing! Then i found this;

"In two weeks, Anne Rice, the chronicler of vampires, witches and—under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure—of soft-core S&M encounters, will publish "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt," a novel about the 7-year-old Jesus, narrated by Christ himself. "I promised," she says, "that from now on I would write only for the Lord."

I am astonished. Truly i am, God has power over all things! She has and will always have a cult following due to her vampire books, especially through the films of 'Interview with a vampire' and 'Queen of the damned' .Through this divine intervention i pray reverently that her worshippers will follow suit.

Our God is truly an awesome God!

God Bless, Sarah x

http://www.gracecathedral.org/forum/for_20060514.shtml

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9785289/site/newsweek/

Calver Methodist sunday service

At Cliff college we have a choice of churches to go to on sunday morning. If you drive, you can go as far as you like! But if not, there are two main choices - Calver Methodist, or Calver Anglican. The Anglican is quite formal, so ive decided to go to the Methodist for now.

The church is a large open space with comfy seats and big colourful banners. Its very welcoming and informal. Today began with singing interspersed with prayer and bible readings.

I was asked to read Psalm 32;

1 Count yourself lucky, how happy you must be— you get a fresh start,
your slate's wiped clean.

2 Count yourself lucky—
God holds nothing against you
and you're holding nothing back from him.

3 When I kept it all inside,
my bones turned to powder,
my words became daylong groans.

4 The pressure never let up;
all the juices of my life dried up.

5 Then I let it all out;
I said, "I'll make a clean breast of my failures to God."

Suddenly the pressure was gone—
my guilt dissolved,
my sin disappeared.

6 These things add up. Every one of us needs to pray;
when all hell breaks loose and the dam bursts
we'll be on high ground, untouched.

7 God's my island hideaway,
keeps danger far from the shore,
throws garlands of hosannas around my neck.

8 Let me give you some good advice;
I'm looking you in the eye
and giving it to you straight:

9 "Don't be ornery like a horse or mule
that needs bit and bridle
to stay on track."

10 God-defiers are always in trouble;
God-affirmers find themselves loved
every time they turn around.

11 Celebrate God.
Sing together—everyone!
All you honest hearts, raise the roof!

and we sang a song called 'Broken hearted here i stand' which was a beautiful song from the Iona Community.

These two combined really touched my heart on what it means to worship with your life. In that you need to give everything you are to God, what ever is happening. Only then can you recieve healing. How can you be lifted up to God without being broken? In a prayer meeting we focused on refining. How a refiner takes metal and melts it to create something new. Thats how we come to God, to first be melted and broken, then to re-shaped into a vessel for honour or contempt. So the during the really horrible times in our lives, when you feel that God has abandoned you, remember that He hasnt, he is reshaping your life to complete His purpose.

The preacher (An american woman) preached on love. About how truly abiding in God means that we should embrace -ἀγάπη agápē - love for friends and family, a love that is self sacrificing and unconditional. Like a marriage should be, what ever happens, the love is still there because thats what binds them together, forever.

1 Corinthians 13 v 4-7
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

It was communion today, which we did the American way, dipping the bread into the wine, with 'enough bread to choke on' instead of a tiny bit like we normally have! I love the idea, but i usually end up choking on my bread on the way back to my seat as im trying to eat and breathe at the same time ,and end up having a coughing fit on the way back. So not a good look!

All in all, it was a very good service with lots of songs that i knew!

God bless x

Sarah x

EEA 3

EEA 3 (3rd European Ecumenical Assembly)
Recently I've had the pleasure of being a national representative for the Methodist church at a 5 day assembly in Sibiu, Romania (its just on the edge of Transylvania). Ok so we left Heathrow on the 4th September to fly to Bucharest and then had a 6 and half hours coach journey to get to Sibiu. The conference its self wasn't well thought out, as they had many "important" people speaking for long periods of time (and i think 1 person wrote ALL of the speeches) and said pretty much the same things. The days were long and hard work to get through, we started at 9am each morning and finished at about 11pm after the hearings. The organisers supplied everyone with a map (which was wrong with locations and numbering) which made things difficult to find.

All the way through EEA there was a youth cafe running, which was really good and taught me a few things. I learnt about EYCE (Ecumenical Youth Conference in Europe) to which Britain don't send ANY reps, of which i met Michael (chair), Petra and Daniel (members of EYCE). I was also in DEEP conversation with Rob Redpath (Methodist Youth President) and Andy Littlejohns (FURY Moderator - URC version of Youth President) about BYC (British Youth Council) and we started talking about setting up our own British Ecumenical Youth Project (BEYP - this is the working name we're using), while talking about this we had a visit from a very random American guy who started off a conversation with " do you mind if i talk to you for a bit? "so we obviously spoke to him. Then at the end of the conversation he then asked 1 last question "do you mind if I give you something?", Ok so this confused us (everyone else just answered our questions) he then reached into the front section of a small bag and pulled out 3 brand new books all the same, we think he only had 3 books in the bag which confused us further. so we then sat down and carried on with the work that we we're doing at the time while talking about our American friend (who was the author of the book).

Over the next few days we finalised our outline, written a proposal, approached the correct influencial people to see if they liked the idea (which they did) and came away with a list of people who could also help us make this come together. On the 9th we came home. My journey started at just after 5am and went straight through till 8pm but we lost 2 hours in traveling so i was going for 17 hours so when i got home the first thing i did was........ eat a good home cooked dinner then slept a little.

Brian's First blog (ever)

Hi All,

well i s'pose like Sarah I should tell you a little about me (Since i've been told to do a blog an' all). I'm 22, I'm the Methodist Youth President Elect (Sounds important doesn't it! I'll tell you more later . . .) , i live in a small village not far from luton airport and have done for nearly 18 years. Why am i on this blog site? It's because Sarah and I feel that you should be informed about what we're doing and where we are. (Plus, when I'm youth president i'll have to let Sarah know where i am so she can make sure i behave).

When I'm not at Church events or doing church work, i'm a full time student. (but i cant show u pics of my student accommodation as i still live at home) I'm currently studying to do my HND in Hospitality Management (this means Im taught how to be nice!), so i can work in pubs, restaurants and such like as a manager.

. . . Well i did say i would tell you more about my role as YP later on, and now is later on! What i do at the moment is stalk/follow the current youth president around, (Well i'm meant to learn from him . . .) but i go around talking to congregations, youth groups and not-so-youthful groups about the youth work i do and about how people can get involved.

I'll sign off for now! (i will scar you with a picture of me soon!)

GOD Bless

Me

Sarah's first Post!

This is me. My name is Sarah Tomes, i am 18, and am currently the Designate Chair of the Methodist Youth Executive. (Ill go into what that means in another post!)

I was born in Scotland and have lived just outside Telford for most of my life. (Its a large town outside Birmingham) I am studying for a certificate in Theology at Cliff College in Derbyshire.

I became a Christian when i was 14 on a Share Jesus Mission in sheffield. Jesus has blessed my life ever since i made that commitment. My parents arent christians, but my Grandmother is. I have been brought up in the life of the church ever since i was a little girl and for that i am thankful. I have a family at home and my church family, who are wonderful and support me.

This is my room at Cliff College








Ive only been here a week, but im enjoying it so much its unreal.

Til my next blog!