"Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord."

I heard a talk on this verse (Romans 12:11) on Saturday night at the threeplusone event in Ormskirk.

I've been thinking.. maybe as the fact that I've hardly posted on here in a while may suggest... that maybe I've been lacking in zeal lately. Obviously, not that writing blogs about christian stuff is an indicator of how zealous you are for God, but in general... I've not felt like I've had that much to write about.

That's one of the things about Christian life... it's up and down... or it is for me anyway. Sometimes I'm on a mega high and feel like God is with me all the time, I WANT to read the Bible and pray and talk about Him all the time. And other times... pretty much the opposite. I read somewhere about how when you're feeling far away from God, you should ask yourself, when was the last time you shared Jesus with someone?

...

hmm.

I KNOW that God is there, and that He's with me all the time, He'll never leave me or forsake me. He IS an AMAZING God. Why is it so easy to forget that? I know it in my head, but rarely seem to really feel it in my heart.

Someone's status on facebook earlier on was something like this: self-pity is the reaction of pride to suffering. I think I need to read CJ Mahaney's book on humility again. Every day you just see more and more how rubbish you are..sorry how rubbish I am as a Christian. But I guess the more that you realise that, then the more you realise how amazing God is that he is still faithful and doesn't leave us or forsake us. And how much more amazing it is that even when he knew before the foundation of the world, who we were and what we'd do in our whole lives, how we'd fail Him so often. Yet STILL he created us and loved us and sent Jesus to die for us.

That's pretty amazing.

Maybe I'm not putting it across right though. I'm aware on this blogging malarkey.. it's so often ME centred, and even when I'm writing about God and how amazing HE is... the focus is still on me somehow. On how amazing HE is that he's send Jesus to die for ME. Which is true... he did die for me...why....because God loves me. But not BECAUSE of me. Not because of aything I;ve done to merit his attention at all. There is nothing lovely or good or beautiful about me or any other human being... Christian or not. He loves us because of who HE is. because of how good HE is. And to bring glory to HIM.

these are lofty thoughts... I need to do some uni work. Just thought I'd share that. Sermons at All Saints for the next few weeks are going to be brilliant too... 2 Thessalonians in the mornings, Ecclesiastes in the evenings. I'm loving Ecclesiastes. I love it when you read a passage, have no clue what it's going on about really... then go through it in a sermon, and come away just thinking..."of course!"

love it.