Blog Yellek

For me this session was more about the annointing and the ministry to people than the content necessarily. I know others got much more out of it than me as is often the case with preaching. I was certainly blessed by the sense of the presence of God in the meeting.

Pastor Jane preached on the 5 things that can happen to make us lose God. She preached with great compassion and emotion throughout, especially when talking about how Mary’s grief at the tomb on the morning of the resurrection blinded her to the fact that Jesus stood before her until she was able to turn from her grief and realize what had happened. The 5 things that can cause us to lose God were:

1. Distraction:Getting too busy to listen to God and follow Him
2. Disobedience:Deliberately walking away from God
3. Despair:Letting grief so overwhelm us that we can’t see what God is doing
4. Discouragement:Letting discouragement cause us to go back to where we were when God called us, always a disaster
5. Disappointment:When we let disappointment cause us to seek comfort in the things of the world rather than in God

Following up on the awesome session earlier in the day on seeking God’s face Joyce Meyer preached another amazing message on walking in love to those around us. She shared how this was the second most influential thing that she had learnt (the previous session being about the first) These are a few of the main points:

• Love is a decision and we need to decide to put on love as our “spiritual clothing” every day. She gave practical suggestions on how to do this like watching over the fist thoughts we have when we wake up. Love isn’t something we need to be led to do, we should be able to love people as a matter of course throughout our day. Joyce uses the principle of being loving to people unless God leads her not to but also acknowledges that she can’t do everything that people want her to do so she needs to focus on God’s calling. Love is more about the attitude with which we prioritize.
• Spiritual gifts with no fruit can be more harmful than good see the example of Jesus cursing the fig tree. As Christians we need to display more than just leaves.
• Big point:You cannot be both happy and selfish

Great session.

[Listening to: Two Tribes - Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Now: 1984 (3:55)]

Wow! Pastor Sunday was good but Joyce Meyer just lifted the roof for me. I look down my notes and just about every point is a memorable quote that I could chew on for hours. Easily the best session of the conference so far for me. Joyce was sharing on the 4 things (or 5 things, see my later post) that have most influenced her in her life and this was about seeking God’s face and not just seeking His blessing. I’m going to just transcribe a few of my notes:

• Faith is to get us through something, not just get us out of something
• Faith is keeping your commitment and remaining stable when going through something
• God establishes relationship with us by doing things for us but there then comes a point when there has to be a change, a transition
• God wants us to go beyond asking for what we want and ask him what He wants and what we can do for Him
• God wants to change us until none of the things of life can move us any more
• When God speaks to you He gives you the faith to believe what other people can’t see
• Conferences are just a bunch of principles until God starts dealing with you and building it into your life
• Life is about the journey so we might as well enjoy the trip
• God is always moving us along
• If we just feed on what God is doing for us we will be unsatisfied, like eating only junk food, we need to feast on the presence of God Himself
• What we should be desiring is God and not the things He has called us to do
• God did not call us to be busy, He called us to be fruitful
• Paul prayed for joy in the midst of his and others’ circumstances, not for deliverance
• One of the first signs of pride is missing our appointments with God
• Talking all the time about our busy schedule is a sign of pride in all of the things that we are doing
• God himself is our answer, not the things that He can do for us
• Are we going to serve God for who he is or what He can do for us?
• Give God time and you will be as close to God as you want to be
• If we succeed at something it is because we think it is important enough to spend time on
• Work your schedule around God and not God around your schedule

And that’s just the highlights without all the funny stories and examples (and the actions, voices and faces). If you can get a hold of an audio recording or DVD of this it would be well worthwhile.

Awesome session! Pastor Sunday’s preaching appeals to me. He is both strategic and theological as well as being funny and unconventional. He was preaching on PS 110:1-2, remarking on the fact that Jesus is seated and the instrument of God’s dominion is the local church (=Zion).

The meeting started with pastor Sunday prophetically praying for various people in the meeting for various sicknesses, asking them to lay hands on themselves. He then did something I haven’t seen him do before by asking specifically for people who needed prayer for deliverance from drug addiction to come to the front so he could pray for them. Usually he prays from the front for people where they are seated. 2 people came forward for prayer, very brave on their part in a gathering of mostly committed Christians. I knew one of them and talking to them afterwards God is doing some amazing stuff in their life.

Pastor Sunday then preached an amazing message on the local church as God’s instrument of power by drawing biblical parallels with the concept of Mount Zion. As mountains are elevated places, meant to be seen so is the church meant to be seen by the world as the place where God lives. If our perception as Christians is that it is simply a meeting place then our perception limits what God can do through the church, his chosen instrument. The church is God’s total answer for the world, we just need to realize that.

Pastor Sunday then went on to point out from 1 Tim 3:15 about how the church is there to establish God’s truth in our society and our nation. He pointed out how society wants the church to be silent and non-controversial but how the church, as God’s answer to society, should be leading in every aspect of societal life. Preachers, he said, should be heroes in our society and not just in their own pulpit.

Amazing session, I’m going to have to watch the DVD a few times.

I have to say at the outset that I found the opening night of Influencers solid and good rather than outstanding or life changing. SW managed to save a few of us some of the best seats in the place which was outstanding. We did a bit of celebrity spotting as the front row found their seats. The light show was outstanding, there were even more lights than on Sunday and the tech team did a fabulous job selecting colors and patterns. The bass in the auditorium also deserves special mention, all the kick drums had a satisfying thump with some really goos compressors hard at work to enhance the experience. I think they installed some extra subwoofers. The worship was good with a big choir setting atmosphere. It was the launch of the church’s latest album so the praise and worship was longer than usual with some old church favorites and also some newer songs done just for the album.

When Joyce got up to speak she stated at the outset that she was recovering from a cold and I think we could see her summoning up the energy to get into the groove. She definitely got better as the message went on. Also the sound wasn’t the best, there were a lot of feedback issues so that didn’t help.

Joyce Meyer stated at the outset that she had 4 messages on the things that had most influenced her in her life and she opened up talking about how God taught her to be who she was rather than copying other people. Also that we have a responsibility as leaders to allow other people to be who they are rather than making them be just like us. It was a liberating message, liberating from all the expectations that we put on ourselves from us and others to do things a certain way or to be like others. It was a message similar to one that T.D. Jakes had preached at the 1st Influencers conference 2 years ago. To people who weren’t familiar with the idea I think it would have had a lot more impact.

I don’t know whether it was my perceptions or the overall night itself that made it good rather than great but I know that others had different perceptions and that all in all God was definitely glorified.

Last year I blogged about the Influencers conference and those posts have been some of the most popular on my blog. This year I’m going to try and do it again with the headline speakers being Joyce Meyer, Sunday Adelaja and Matt & Laurie Crouch. The above piccy shows the new stage layout. The curved supports are entirely new, replacing the white backdrop painted for the last BU conference, as is the white paint on the sides of the steps (the tops are still black). The front steps are as before with some new curved steps in the upper section that you can’t really see from this picture. As usual there are a lot more lights. I’m hoping that the plasma screens you can see in the background are a lot less obtrusive than they were last year with them descending from the roof after worship.

Joyce Meyer is kicking off tomorrow night and it should be a blast!

I just started working in a different department of my daytime source of income generation and of course made a point of checking out the state of local wiki’s. It turns out that there is a Media Wiki installed which is something I haven’t used before but SnipSnap was getting a little long in the tooth so what the heck.

Wanting to create a table I read the Media Wiki table help and was absolutely horrified. Really this is no better than typing HTML table tags. There seems to be a 1 to 1 correspondence between HTML markup and wiki markup. Contrast this to the expressive and elegant Twiki table markup which achieves much the same functionality with a lot less code.

Even with the javascript syntax assistants in the media Wiki edit box this whole syntax is really just a waste of time and Twiki has had the same syntax for at least 5 years that I can remember.

powered by performancing firefox

Yesterday MeLo and I went over to a friend’s place to finally get a game of Settlers of Catan in. I had heard so much about this game as one of the all time greats of Euro Gaming and so it was great to finally get it on the table after all this time. My overall impression was that it was a game that I definitely wanted to play again. We played for 2 hours but it didn’t feel that long and, if we hadn’t had something else planned, I think we would have played again. I had originally thought that being restricted to 4 players might reduce opportunities to play Catan without the expansions but all that means is that Catan is an ideal 2 couple game which was how it worked out.

Initial starting positions are critical in this game and, going last to select a start position, I don’t think I made the best of the limited opportunities that were available. I always seemed chronically short of both wood and bricks which hampered me a lot during the early game. I managed to take the longest road card off of the player who seemed to be the biggest threat at the time not realizing that some subtle politicking was going on to make him seem like the threat whilst his partner went on to win the game by surprise, very well done I thought in hindsight.

A thoroughly enjoyable afternoon and I’m looking forward to doing it again.

For those of you that were after photos of me check out the following:

The Revelations of Norm: Watching The 4th Ashes Test