Blog Yellek

I was talking to someone in my life group this morning and she said to me that she was definitely going to remember to bring her eyeliner in future to the conference because after she cried at what God was doing in her life through the ministry of Jentezen Franklin and Chris Hill this morning her eyeliner ended up all smudged and lopsided. All I can say is that it is a good thing I don’t wear eyeliner

Tonight was opening night for the influencers conference and, after months and months of preparation, the conference is finally underway. From every vantage point the auditorium was packed all the way to the back of the balcony and the expectations that have built up over the weeks and months leading up to this conference have finally become to come to fruition, God’s plans for the week ar underway.

Tonight it was all about sacrifice. Pastor Ashley spoke on what was an interesting topic for the first night of a major conference. People who I talked to about it remarked that the first night of a conference is usually marked by the sort of message that revs people up and gets them excited but that this message was unusual and that God wanted to do something different.

Pastor Ashley started by talking about how that after God had called Moses to take the next step and take the nation of Israel to the promised land that God proceeded to give the Israelites a precise and exacting series of regulations to govern daily life. He pinpointed two things that they were called to do: bring sacrifices and burn incense. He made the comment that God was trying to build into the daily life of Israel the things that they needed to continue the blessing that He wanted to pour out and that we needed to build a place in our lives for God to dwell to get us to the place we needed to go.

Pastor Ashley talked about how sacrifice is a part of the deal if we want the presence of God and that it is something we are called to do daily as the Israelites were. He then talked about how the smell of the burnt offerings would have lingered and permeated everything nearby just as cigarette smoke does today and then made the point that so many of us have had the smell of the sacrifices we have made come and stain our lives to the point where there is a stink.

Incense was also commanded of the Israelites daily at the same time that the sacrifices were made which had the effect of removing and deoderising the smell of the burnt offerings. Incense is an analogy for the worship and prayers of God’s people.

The crux of the matter is that both sacrifice and worship are necessary to maintain spiritual health, both are commanded of believers and that worship is necessary for the sacrifices that we need to make not to smell bitter in our lives and in the lives of those around us.

We finished with a great time of ministry and an altar call for prayer for those who needed to bring the incense of worship into their lives.

Today I went to get my car cleaned up so that the people I am driving around Adelaide during the Influencers Conference have a nice clean vehicle inside and out and leave Adelaide with a positive experience rather than my car’s usual state of cleanliness. When my car gets a good clean I like to go to the Mobil Adelaide car wash where for more money than you would normally pay they will go to more trouble than you can usually be bothered with to leave your car looking fabulous and smelling better too.

After the wash I usually go and sit on a nice bench provided by Adelaide council on the footpath right next to the area where the people from the car wash go over your car with towels after the wash and clean the insides and listen to my iPod (luckily the podcast today was more intelligible than last time). On a sunny day like today it provides a nice pause where you can convince yourself that time spent sitting in the sun is not time better spent running around doing what you have to do.

After they had finished with my car one of the guys doing the work motions to me and I come over. He asks me if I want air freshner (yes I do) and I point out a couple of places on the windscreen that need to be fixed up (not his fault by the way). He gets to work fixing those up and I start chatting to him about why I’m getting the car cleaned. It turns out that he goes to the Paradise City church and really loves the ministry there. After he finds out why I need the car looking good he goes round the rest of the windows again just to make sure.
What got me was that here are two guys who just happened to meet in the middle of a normal day who on the surface have nothing in common. I’m having a day off trying to get things ready for the conference and he is working hard, probably trying to earn some money to support his studies. I’m older, he’s younger. I’m caucasian, he is asian and yet we share the samne church, the same faith and the same hope.

Hem, I hope you get blessed on Thursday night when you come. I hope you get a great seat and I hope that the extra effort that you put in to my car comes back in blessings from God in overflowing measure.

Pastor Ashley preached the warmup message with all the new seating and stage set up this morning before Influencers Conference gets going on Tuesday night. I must say that the staging crew has done a fabulous job constructing the stage yesterday and I have it on good authority that there is quite a bit more signage going up tomorrow to complete a fabulous setting for the move of God this week.

There is a real buzz around the church at the moment with all the prayer that has gone into making this conference a reality. You can feel the presence of the Holy Spirit in the building and there is a sense of anticipation that only comes from the knowlege lives are going to be changed this week.

This is a special week for the Pentacostal movement worldwide with the Azusa Street Centennial celebrations marking 100 years since the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles which launched the modern Pentacostal church. Many world Pentacostal leaders will be preaching at the celebrations. Bishop TD Jakes will be opening the preaching at the celebrations in Los Angeles then going directly to the airport, getting on a plane, flying to Adelaide, coming directly from the airport and preaching his opening message at Influencers. Jentezen Franklin will be going directly from his last meeting at Influencers to preach the closing message at the centennial celebrations.

As you can imagine there is a real sense of connection between the conference and the centennial celebrations and an feeling that we are part of a historic move of God upon our nation and the world.

It’s going to be a big week!

The Influencers Conference begins in just under 3 days time and today they installed the new tiered seating at Paradise Community Church in preparation. If you look in the photo you can see the new tiers they have built at the back of the church up towards the balcony which should improve the view of those sitting towards the back. The church is really looking great and now all we are waiting for is for 1600 or more guests to arrive for everything to be ready.

I like this article:

Dear First Date: - Christian Singles Today

Sitting, sitting in a vaguely comfortable chair, too small as usual, dazed, no energy, waiting. The feeling of nausea deep down, smouldering, waiting for a chance to flare into a conflagration but starved of fuel, no food, bringing weakness. Hot, do I have a fever? Don’t know, maybe it’s just hot in here.

The wall seat is free, the local car salesman and his young female friend , colleague? , don’t know, have gone in. Why are they here together? They don’t look like they are together. An odd couple to be sure. Move over near the wall, lean back, much better.

The steady bubbling drone of the girls behind the counter processing the patients through like Medicare numbers washes over me. I wonder if they call them clients? Probably. The steady rumble of air in my intestines going nowhere. How much longer? I’ve been here 45 minutes already. I wonder what would happen if I collapsed on the floor, made a commotion, would everyone rush over? I chastise myself for being overdramatic.

The young child in front of me marches around making a game of the patterns on the carpet. Two guys in work shorts & boots sit opposite me, have they come here after work ? Still the patients roll in. I look at the battered copy of National Geographic beside me. It is from 2002. I wonder how it got there, what stories it could tell of the people passing through, stuck in a limbo until doctor time catches up to the fantasies hopefully or deceitfully handed out on appointment cards. What if they never call? What if I’m doomed to sit here for eternity amidst the ebb and flow of Medicare numbers coming in and going out?

They call my name, mispronouncing it, and I wander over, leaving the waiting room behind in some sort of timeless limbo as I become one of the lucky ones until the next time I need medical attention.

I just found this list of over 300 freeware utilities which contains a number of the pieces of software I use daily. Worth a look. I know I’m going to go back to this list again and again. Audio tools, typing tutors, file utilities. It’s all here.

The Development Abstraction Layer - Joel on Software
I love this post, mostly for the following quote:

A programmer is most productive with a quiet private office, a great computer, unlimited beverages, an ambient temperature between 68 and 72 degrees (F), no glare on the screen, a chair that’s so comfortable you don’t feel it, an administrator that brings them their mail and orders manuals and books, a system administrator who makes the Internet as available as oxygen, a tester to find the bugs they just can’t see, a graphic designer to make their screens beautiful, a team of marketing people to make the masses want their products, a team of sales people to make sure the masses can get these products, some patient tech support saints who help customers get the product working and help the programmers understand what problems are generating the tech support calls, and about a dozen other support and administrative functions which, in a typical company, add up to about 80% of the payroll.

The latest SOA Expert Podcast proved too quiet for me to be able to hear on my way to work this morning. I know that podcasting sometimes has less than stellar audio quality (although Java Posse is generally excellent) but David Linthicum’s habit of just leaving his podcast recorder on the desk somewhere near where he is speaking has lead to some of the most excruciatingly difficult to listen to audio I have ever heard. I think that taking a few lessons from David Berlind might be in order.