My new book

My wife has bought me a new book to read today.

I have been looking to buy this and read it for some time now and so I am real happy about my new gift.

I will report back on it once I have read it.

Computers and Websites

The past two weeks was spent setting up both the new Wesley Methodist church website as well as refining the blog.

The Blog is running ok now, but I still have a lot of work to do on the website.

I believe that the web presence that these two sites provide will and can be a ministry in their own right. By setting up these sites I believe that we can give people inside and outside our church community the opportunity to share and learn about God.

I am still around

I have been very busy these last few days.

My PC crashed on friday. Completely. It took me till Sunday afternoon with very little sleep in between to get her going again. Luckily I was able to recover most of my data.

I am also very busy with things for the church. Amongst others I have set up and am now maintaining this blog for the church as well. I am also busy trying to figure out how to set up a subscription mailing list for the church , as well as how to do bulk SMS's so that we can forward info and prayer requests to our members.

We have a gentleman at our church in the evenings and he is doing talks on communion with God.

Most of it centers around prayer. I find it really applicable in my life at the moment as prayer is the one thing that i struggle with and that I would like to develop more in my spirituality.

I posted a whole section on Trevor's session last night on the Wesley blog. Go take a look.

Nothing and Everything

I am busy reading a book called 'The Ragamuffin Gospel' and this together with some other happenings and readings made me realize something over the past few days. Now bear with me please and read through the whole post, because if you quit halfway you are going to miss my point. OK ?

Here goes...

I realized that to God I am absolutely nothing. Nothing I say , nothing I do, Nothing I ever did , means anything to Him. This God whom I serve is all powerful, all mighty, and just freaking awesome. He is greater than any thought I or the greatest theologian ever had of Him. He created the world , the galaxy , the known universe (we don't know it all , I promise you) just by saying the words. He measures the universe in the palm of His hand.

And if I were to stand before this amazingly awesome God , I would be nothing more than a mere speck of dust. Nothing I say or do makes a difference to Him. I can do nothing for Him in order to bribe Him or make Him like me. Like the lowliest of slaves before the mightiest of Kings I have no clout or stature before Him.

But....

I also realized that I am everything to Him. He loves me. He thinks me important enough to love me. HE thinks me important enough to take an interest in my life. In fact , He thought me important enough , and He loves me enough to allow His Son , Jesus Christ , to die for my sins.

He created me and he knows me better than I know myself. He knows me with all my flaws and mistakes. He knows my human fraylty and imperfection. He knows it all. And still He loves me. How liberating to know that I can stop wearing masks in front of God.

How much better the world would be if we all treated each other with that same loving grace as He treats us.

The reaping

On Tuesday my wife and I went to see 'The reaping'. Now this is not the type of movie that I would normally see but, because we realize that other Christians and non-Christians would see this movie and then probably start asking questions, we go see it in order to be able to at least comment from a first hand experience.

So what did I think of the movie ?

My first reaction was : What a completely senseless waste of my time !
Let me explain. Normally when I see a movie I try to figure out what the writer/director wants to tell me. The closest I could get an answer for this question was that he wanted to show me the cool special effects he can do. And even that wasn't all that fantastic. I mean , it might have been a bit of a feat to color a whole river red. The maggots and flies happened on a fairly small scale. Apart from the one raging bull (did he have mad cow disease) all the other animals died from the plague very quietly. Oh yes the first dead frog to hit the water at least made you jump of fright. Also only because the soundtrack had a gunshot in it.

Now where were we ? The head lice weren't done to badly. O yes, the boils seemed to affect only the mayor and his assistants. The only effects that are really worth mentioning is the Locust Swarm and the Fire from the sky.

So what did the director try to tell me ? Did he try to disprove the 10 plagues in Moses' time ? Did he try to show my God as a wrathful and violent God ?

Actually I am not at all sure what he tried to do.

Hopefully next week I will get to see 'Amazing Grace'. At least that looks promising.

Grace

I love my wife. I absolutely love her.

She is the most amazing person I know. And she is so amazingly full of grace. She treats me with such love and grace. Even if I do not sometimes deserve it.

I love her.

and.......

She loves me !!!!!!!! She does !! I Know. Unreal heh ?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Heavenly Father,

I thank you for such a wonderful person as my wife in my life.
Bless her in what she does. Bless her life.

Father I thank you for our Marriage.
Bless it and make it stronger every day.

Make me a better Husband to my wife , every day.
Help me and guide me to be the kind of Husband you want me to be.

Amen.

Jesus meets a Gay man

I found and followed this link from Greg Andrews's blog,

I wanted to copy it here , but that will be plagiarism. Please go and take a look at this here.

Advice to young brides

Although the following was tagged by www.snopes.com as a hoax or urban legend I thought it very funny :

This is a reprint of an article in The Madison Institute Newsletter, Fall Issue, 1894:

Instruction and advice
for the young bride

On the Conduct and Procedure
Of the Intimate and Personal Relationships
Of the Marriage State
For the Greater Spiritual Sanctity
Of this Blessed Sacrament
And the Glory of God

by Ruth Smythers
Beloved wife of The Reverend L.D. Smythers,
Pastor of the Arcadian Methodist Church
of the Eastern Regional Conference
Published in the year of our Lord 1894
Spiritual Guidance Press, New York City

Instruction and advice for the young bride

o the sensitive young woman who has had the benefits of proper upbringing, the wedding day is, ironically, both the happiest and most terrifying day of her life. On the positive side, there is the wedding itself, in which the bride is the central attraction in a beautiful and inspiring ceremony, symbolizing her triumph in securing a male to provide for all her needs for the rest of her life. On the negative side, there is the wedding night, during which the bride must pay the piper, so to speak, by facing for the first time the terrible experience of sex.

t this point, dear reader, let me concede one shocking truth.Some young women actually anticipate the wedding night ordeal with curiosity and pleasure! Beware such an attitude! A selfish and sensual husband can easily take advantage of such a bride. One cardinal rule of marriage should never be forgotten: GIVE LITTLE, GIVE SELDOM, AND ABOVE ALL, GIVE GRUDGINGLY. Otherwise what could have been a proper marriage could become an orgy of sexual lust.

n the other hand, the bride's terror need not be extreme. While sex is at best revolting and at worse rather painful, it has to be endured, and has been by women since the beginning of time, and is compensated for by the monogamous home and by the children produced through it. It is useless, in most cases, for the bride to prevail upon the groom to forego the sexual initiation. While the ideal husband would be one who would approach his bride only at her request and only for the purpose of begetting offspring, such nobility and unselfishness cannot be expected from the average man.

ost men, if not denied, would demand sex almost every day. The wise bride will permit a maximum of two brief sexual experiences weekly during the first months of marriage. As time goes by she should make every effort to reduce this frequency.

eigned illness, sleepiness, and headaches are among the wife's best friends in this matter. Arguments, nagging, scolding, and bickering also prove very effective, if used in the late evening about an hour before the husband would normally commence his seduction.

lever wives are ever on the alert for new and better methods of denying and discouraging the amorous overtures of the husband. A good wife should expect to have reduced sexual contacts to once a week by the end of the first year of marriage and to once a month by the end of the fifth year of marriage.

y their tenth anniversary many wives have managed to complete their child bearing and have achieved the ultimate goal of terminating all sexual contacts with the husband. By this time she can depend upon his love for the children and social pressures to hold the husband in the home. Just as she should be ever alert to keep the quantity of sex as low as possible, the wise bride will pay equal attention to limiting the kind and degree of sexual contacts. Most men are by nature rather perverted, and if given half a chance, would engage in quite a variety of the most revolting practices. These practices include among others performing the normal act in abnormal positions; mouthing the female body; and offering their own vile bodies to be mouthed in turn.

udity, talking about sex, reading stories about sex, viewing photographs and drawings depicting or suggesting sex are the obnoxious habits the male is likely to acquire if permitted.

wise bride will make it the goal never to allow her husband to see her unclothed body, and never allow him to display his unclothed body to her. Sex, when it cannot be prevented, should be practiced only in total darkness. Many women have found it useful to have thick cotton nightgowns for themselves and pajamas for their husbands. These should be donned in separate rooms. They need not be removed during the sex act. Thus, a minimum of flesh is exposed.

nce the bride has donned her gown and turned off all the lights, she should lie quietly upon the bed and await her groom. When he comes groping into the room she should make no sound to guide him in her direction, lest he take this as a sign of encouragement. She should let him grope in the dark. There is always the hope that he will stumble and incur some slight injury which she can use as an excuse to deny him sexual access.

hen he finds her, the wife should lie as still as possible. Bodily motion on her part could be interpreted as sexual excitement by the optimistic husband.

f he attempts to kiss her on the lips she should turn her head slightly so that the kiss falls harmlessly on her cheek instead. If he attempts to kiss her hand, she should make a fist. If he lifts her gown and attempts to kiss her anyplace else she should quickly pull the gown back in place, spring from the bed, and announce that nature calls her to the toilet. This will generally dampen his desire to kiss in the forbidden territory.

f the husband attempts to seduce her with lascivious talk, the wise wife will suddenly remember some trivial non-sexual question to ask him. Once he answers she should keep the conversation going, no matter how frivolous it may seem at the time.

ventually, the husband will learn that if he insists on having sexual contact, he must get on with it without amorous embellishment. The wise wife will allow him to pull the gown up no farther than the waist, and only permit him to open the front of his pajamas to thus make connection.

he should be absolutely silent or babble about her housework while he is huffing and puffing away. Above all, she should lie perfectly still and never under any circumstances grunt or groan while the act is in progress. As soon as the husband has completed the act, the wise wife will start nagging him about various minor tasks she wishes him to perform on the morrow. Many men obtain a major portion of their sexual satisfaction from the peaceful exhaustion immediately after the act is over. Thus the wife must insure that there is no peace in this period for him to enjoy. Otherwise, he might be encouraged to soon try for more.

ne heartening factor for which the wife can be grateful is the fact that the husband's home, school, church, and social environment have been working together all through his life to instill in him a deep sense of guilt in regards to his sexual feelings, so that he comes to the marriage couch apologetically and filled with shame, already half cowed and subdued. The wise wife seizes upon this advantage and relentlessly pursues her goal first to limit, later to annihilate completely her husband's desire for sexual expression.

Copyright 1894 The Madison Institute.

I so screwed up

I so screwed up yesterday. I wrote a 5 page word document about sex and the way I think men see and value and experience it. I thought I was very wise and insightful. I thought that what I wrote could be used a lecture at a bible study.

I planned to publish it here. Then I gave it to my wife to read last night. And I really really hurt her.

I feel like a complete ass. This is not what I wanted. But maybe if I thought it through properly I would have realized this.

I really love my wife. And you know what. She loves me. Even though I am a complete Ass.

Oh , and I will not publish my 5 page screwup anymore. You will have to be satisfied with this lame post.

I did find this blog on the net however. BUT do yourself a favor , start at the beginning here.
scroll down right to the bottom at the first post and start reading upward from there. It is a very long read, but I think certainly worth it.

You will find me there , reading some more.