A God outside the Box

So after my nervous breakdown last week things have gotten a bit better. I don't know if it was your prayers or just the nature of this school, but either way there's no need to worry, no one's giving up here.

After such a spiritually loaded week it was weird to dive into this one, as it felt like we'd entered a whole other world. We had a guest speaker from New Zealand sharing us about his views on life as a christian, especially a christian artist. Patrick Dodson talked about relationships, how they affect our identity, how our identity affects our creativity and how our creativity can change the world. It was very down to earth and in a way very unspiritual, but even more challenging that way. He had so many good points about our generation and the disaster we're running towards if we don't change our 'shopping mentality' and start growing up.

One of the things he said that really stroke a chord in me was that we shouldn't get too caught up in asking God what we're supposed to do. Instead of waiting forever for a sign from heaven about whether I should go to university or staff a dts I should just go ahead and do whichever I want more. God will bless any way we go as long as it doesn't go directly against Him and His good will for us. But we get too caught up in following his perfect plan that we actually stop moving, cos He's not giving us a sign. I knew I had this problem when I was thinking about what's gonna happen after dts. Should I travel around Australia, should I go to Soul Survivor Holland, should I go straight back home, should I this, should I that, God tell me what is your divine plan! Like He cares what happens during those few weeks after I graduate. He gave me the ability to choose for myself, to want things and act according to it. So I' m free to choose, as long as I don't choose something absolutely stupid... I believe he's still gonna warn me if I'm going to do something really idiotic. So choosing for myself doesn't mean that I can do ANYthing. It just means that I don't have to ask for His permission in everything. Just like children need to grow up at somepoint and start taking responsibility for themselves, so does God want us to look after ourselves in a way. I don't know if this makes any sense to you :D

Patrick also had some really good points about being a christian artist. He was verbally slapping our faces with some of the stuff he said, but it was good, it woke us up. Like realising that it takes 10 years to be good at something unless you're like really really really talented. And even then it takes like 5 years. But our generation is so used to this so called shopping mentality, where we push a button and we get what we want. We've stopped creating, because the pressure to be as good as the best is too depressing. But there's no competition in being excellent. Nobody has to be as good at something as someone else is, but everybody can be excellent in what they do, cos everybody's different. When jealousy and selfishness enter the picture, that's when the pressure comes, which often leads to giving up or selling out. It takes 10 000 hours of diligent practice till you're actually good at something. But with the shopping mentality we usually quit after 500 hours, if we're not making decent progress. That was basically me when it comes to almost everything I do. If I'm not good or at least decent in the very beginning I can't be bothered do continue practicing. Like with the guitar, after learning like 10 cords, enuf to write songs, I stopped learning more cos I wasn't bothered to make the effort. And I didn't even take lessons to have someone make me practice. I was just too damn lazy.

So Patick's teaching was very, very inspiring. Pretty much all of us got some ideas on what to do with our lives. I only shared like a tiny portion of all the good stuff we learnt this week, but if you're intrested in hearing more, go to http://www.patrickdodson.net/ and listen to some of his stuff. It's pretty controversial but frikkin awesome.

And like I said, the teaching this week was like the opposite to the one we had last week. It truly went from full on spiritual hippie fest to down to earth, practical everyday life. Just goes to show that we really cannot put God in a box. It's gonna take a while to process these two weeks and learn how to take them both and turn it into a balanced christian life that's somewhere in between those two. And like Patrick said, a lot has happened and will happen during dts, but we're not gonna change before we actually apply these things in our own lives.

So what else... Life's pretty good, it's still frikkin hot here (30-35 degrees C) and I can't wait to go to Japan to stop swetting! Only two weeks left! Our team still needs altogether about 2000 dollars, so if you could pray that God provide us with the money in time, that'd be great. Cheers!