Facial Paralysis and Offering Teach

This Sunday I was due to give an offering teach at church.

You know - the bit just before the Church takes up the tithes and offerings. The "collection" - if you are from an Anglican persuasion.

Anyway in some churches this is perhaps the time when you hold on tight to your wallet as someone comes up to the front to "pump up the offering" - expound very persuasively as to why you should part with loadsa money!!!

I need to be careful here because I am digressing slightly and I genuinely do believe in teaching why Christians should give generously in Church and that God liberally blesses cheerful givers.

So back to my story.

I had a passage from the bible which I felt God had laid on my heart and I was getting ready to put on my finishing touches when I came down with facial paralysis on one side of my face. (Bells Palsy)

Bells Palsy is believed to be a viral induced condition causing a swelling of the nerve from the brain to the face leading to loss of control of the expression and movement of that part of the face. Sounds very serious but thankfully it is not and 90% of people make a full recovery after 3 - 6 months.

My kids are typically non "PC" (politically correct) about this. One said I look freaky! The other is amused because I can only smile from one side of my face and I guess to her it makes me look a bit like a pirate.

So what does this have to do with my offering teach? I didn't give the offering teach after all but the passage I was going to share is from Romans 15 in the Message Translation.

Those of us who are strong and able in the faith need to step in and lend a hand to those who falter and not just do what is most convenient for us. Strength is for service, not status. Each of us needs to look after the good of the people around us. asking ourselves, "How can I help?"

My offering teach message was going to hone in on ... Strength is for service not status. God has blessed us and given us strength in many areas of our lives.

Physical strength....Financial Strength.....Spiritual Strength....Academic Strength ...etc.

Whatever area of strength God has given us it is for the good of other people around us.

If he has blessed us with financial strength then it is for us to use to bless other people.

Even if it is strength to smile then that strength is not just to make you look good - it is for you to give a smile to someone else. To be an encouragement. To be a blessing.

Strength is for service - not status.

It's a love thing!

I know I said I would move on to leadership in love but I'm not ready yet.

You see it is a love thing......

The fact about love is that sometimes you just can't explain it - it just comes out of intimacy.

You've just got to respond to it to experience it.

Intimacy with God is called worship.

Worship is your personal response to a loving God - and you know what - we were created for worship.

The meaning of life finds itself in worshipping God.

You've just got to experience God to know him.

To help you see what I mean and what it means for some people - I thought I would feature a few clips I found on you tube.

Have you responded to God?

Enjoy

What's love got to do with it?

So what's love got to do with the meaning of life?

Question: What is the most important thing in life?

Love!

What causes a man to lose his sanity and give up his credit card? Love!

What causes a woman to put up with a crabby man that everyone says what did she see in him? Love!

What makes you know that it is a bad idea to mess with a mother's kids. Love! A mother's love for her child.

So almost as complex as the question - what is the meaning of life - is the question what is love?

Ok everyone knows you have different kinds of love and men see things very different from women.

What do blokes know about love anyway?

The Greeks those master philosphers and thinkers on love broke it down with different words for love - which kinda helps as blokes tend to confuse things in English when they say I love my food- I love my car, I love football and I love my wife.

(Perhaps in that order too! )

Pehaps the Greeks can throw some light on this;

A Greek guide to love

• Eros from which we get erotica - self explanatory.
• Philia - the love for a friend - brotherly love
• Storge - needy love - child to parent love
• Agape -love without conditions - God's personal love for me and you.
  

Agape -

• God's love -
• I love you the way you are.
• You don't need to change for me to love you anymore.
• I cherish you.
• You matter to me.
• You matter so much too me that I would give my life for you.
• In fact I already have.

So what has this got to do with the price of fish in the 21st century?

Everything! We were created to love God and to love people.

The meaning of life comes from discovering God's real and practical love for me and in turn discovering his love for other people and my part in sharing his love.

• I was created to love God
• I was created to love people

Next post: Becoming a leader in love

MOL = L3 = L L L

So what is this fancy formula and what makes me think I've cracked it!

Well I am sure I haven't cracked it - at least not in its entirety.

However during a time of private reflection at Spring Harvest this year it suddenly dawned on me.

Three L's!

Love Leadership and Legacy

Love -

• The compelling driver
• The reason for living
• The reason we live -
• The reason we are here on earth spiritually and physically.

Leadership

• Growing up and becoming a lover.
• Leading out of love
• Leading because of love
• Serving out of love.
• Loving the unloved
• Sharing the love of God
• Bringing the love and will of God to every area of my life and the people in my life.

Legacy

• Fulfiling my destiny.
• Impacting this generation and touching future generations
• Making an impact so when I am dead and gone - the world - my country - my city -my family - my children - my friends - my neighbours - my colleagues are better off for knowing me.

Next post: Taking a closer look at love.

The meaning of life

I am back blogging again.

This time I am keen and back with a commitment.

The meaning of life?

The meaning of life for me?

I think I might have found it?


M0L = L3 = (L L L)


Watch this space.

Lost in cyberspace

Its been ages since I blogged last.

This time I have a real excuse.

I was frustrated by the system!

I earnestly wanted to blog but got lost in cyberspace. My ISP provider cancelled my email without warning and even though I offered to pay for the user name - he was not agreeable.

So my 8 year cyberspace identity vanished overnight.

Not wishing to bore all and sundry about it but this sparked chaos for me as since I had forgotten my password and my email address had been cancelled I couldn't ask the system to send me a new password - because it would only email it to my email account which had been cancelled.

Quite circular but the question is - what happens when you get lost in cyberspace. Do we cease to exist? If the computers say you don't exist or you can't answer the question like how the computers want you to - what happens then?

We live in a digital world where our interactions are goverened by a series of 1s and 0s -great certainty and very predictable in the digital world but what happens when life isn't a 1 or a 0?

In fact life is rarely a 1 or 0?

It is often a myriad of things rather than 1 or 0? Yes or No?

So how do you make sense of life in a non digital world?

Wow! A year is a long time in life!

I cannot believe it has been over a year since I last blogged and my has the world has moved on.

The 2006 world cup has come and gone, Israel has fallen out with Lebanon (Hezbollah) and oil has peaked at $78/bbl for brent crude.

Amazing how for some people their focus and drive for the last 4 years has come and gone. For some shatterred dreams of world cup glory for Italy elation tempered by the scandal of corruption.

The English FA £20M poorer for poor results - Brazil and Argentina the pre tournament favourites back to the drawing board.

Spin the globe and the challenge is the threat of life itself - Israel and Hezbollah. Hezbollah's rockets slamming into civillian population. Israel retaliating and seeking to "clear out" the threat from Hezbollah by heavy "disproportionate" artilllery bombing.

A similar story of life threatening proportions is played daily in Iraq.

The challenge is making sense of life itself. Whilst for some it is years of life dedeicated to winning or playing in the world cup. For others it is protecting their homes from bombing raids. For others it is flying bombers. For others it is directing bombers.

On the personal front I've had a baby boy -( well my wife has) and I've made some important life decisions including changing church.

The questions is how do I make sense of life?

Perhaps for me the question is not how can I make sense of life but how can I make sense of my contribution to life whilst everything else is happening around me!

Would my contribution to life be different if I lived in Iraq. Would it be different if I could play football? What should my contribution to life be since I neither play football nor live in Iraq.

A couple of weeks ago I preached in a church in London on Matthew 5 "You are the Salt of the Earth and the Light of the World".

How can I be salt to the earth?
How can I be light to the world?

Life is complex and making sense of life is perhaps beyond me.

However I feel have no excuse for not making sense of my contribution to life.

Have you worked out what is your contribution to life?

Do share!

Tragedy in London

Senseless devastation. Terror on the Streets of London!

Faceless people striking at innocent civillians. Can anyone make sense of this?

My heart goes out to the bereaved and wounded and I pray for them and their families.

Only God himself can bring comfort faced with such tragedy.

What a difference 24 hours makes. From jubilation in Trafalgar square to celebrate the award of the Olympics to London - to tears, screams and silence on the undergrounds and buses.

What drives people to blow themselves up in fighting their cause? What is their cause anyway?

Some say they are fighting injustice on their own land and bringing it to the attention of the people they percieve as their oppresors. Some say they are fighting in the name of their religion! Yet others deny that such people are fighting on their behalf!

So what do we do? If we fight fire with fire can we ever stop the burning?

If we say we don't talk to terrorists will we ever get to understand them and persuade them of a peaceful resolution. The flip side is do the terrorists want to talk? Will they listen - will they see compromise? Can they be reasoned with?

Or do they only understand one language!

None of this is comfort to the victims, their families - or the people in fear of going to work or going home.

So today I pray for the love and comfort of God.

Come Lord Jesus! Heal and comfort as only you know how. Touch lives and restore.

Come Lord Jesus!

Olympic Opportunity

We've landed the Olympics!!! I am so thrilled!

What is it about the Olympics that suddenly captivated the nation. That made me shout at the radio Yes! Yes! Yes!

That made people pour out of offices in London into Trafalgar square in tumultuous celebration. That suddenly created an overwhelming national feel good factor!

Is it the sense that suddenly England was going to play host to the greatest sporting festival in the world. That suddenly London was going to be put on the map. That the world no longer held the War in Iraq against us. That we had managed to whop the French! That suddenly there was a sense of new community spirt, new prospects for regeneration, new business opportunities etc.

Suddenly the whole media has gone sporting crazy? Why? What does this mean? What is the point of it all?

Perhaps the Olympics is a celebration of life itself! A celebration of health! A celebration of the human strength of character, strength of resolve, strength of physical prowress, ambition and drive.

Is this the Athenian Spirit?

If so what does this mean for me?

I love My Kids

Apart from my wife my kids are the most wonderful thing to have happend to me in my life.

Kids - they wake you up early in the morning, they whinge, they cry, they throw tantrums and scream - but can anything compare with the overwhelming love you feel when you look into their eyes.

Can anything compare with this?

Who am I?

Deciding to Blog was the easy part.

The really difficult thing was deciding what to call myself in my blooging handle? It's one thing to be born with a name - far more challenging to give yourself a name. What's in a name? Names speak volumes - they tell the world who you are but perhaps more insightful how you see yourself! Are you a run of the mill Jack or Jim, a trendy street wise person, someone who takes themselves far too serious or someone who doesn't really care.

Which one am I you decide!

I chose Igbo Man because even though I was born in the UK of mixed Nigerian and Jamaican parentage and have lived in the UK for over 25 years - I trace my outlook on life to my upbringing in a Western European , West indian, West African fusion steered by my father's orgins from an eastern tribe in Nigeria called the Igbos.