What is the vision? I know Pete Greig begins his challenge of discipleship with that statement, but in all honesty...it's a good question right?

The vision is a journey.
The visions is a body making the decision that they want to join in on the journey.
Where are we headed?
The top of a mountain and through the clouds to a place where oxygen is thin and eagles daren't fly.
Up there fires bure and waters flow.
Life lives.

We all pour out our hearts and physical energies on the climb up the sheer mountain side grazing our knees and scarping our elbows.
But what does that matter to us?
For we know whom we seek.
And we shall seek his glorious face for all our days.
I am a reflection of that glorious face and so are you - so delicately crafted to stand as a giant among dwarves.

I'm sure I've written this many times.
Or atleast that i am beginning to.

But we love because God first loved. We love because God so loved the world that he gave his only son.

That NONE would perish.

My struggle is the response that we give.
It is simply that. It is a response. It's not a show, it's not songs or people.
It is what our voices and hearts were made to do.

Does that make sense?

I never want to be part of a show.

And I regularly pray that if pride creeps into my bones, that God will break me down and humble me. God doesn't need me to lift up his name in a show. He made me to lift up his name and worship.

Christ is the vision.

Christ is the reason.

This is it.

I just got back in from a walk around my favourite little espace 10 minutes walk down the road along the river.
I decided to nick my housemates ipod seeming as mine has declared itself legally dead so that I could spend some time in an open space just singing.
Have you ever tried to press into God and just felt a brick wall stopping you from getting anywhere? You'll open your mouth and boldly form the words

'Father God...'

and...that's all you can get out. You search your mind for words and it's as though you are searching a vast brick wall that has no graffiti on it. None of the memories, thoughts or laments of your heart are there. Then an acute desperation hits...but you soon forget about it because God is always there right?


But this evening I went out with a view to exalt (ooh I like that word) God because that's what God made me to do and singing is how I love to do it.
It's the times when you feel God is the furthest away that actually he is closest (as cliche and overused that analogy is).

We see God in intense visions, worship experiences where we cry and prophecy and speak feverishly in tongues, then God steps back and says

'Now you draw close to me'.

That's the challenge. Some of us run into church and expect each Sunday to be God smacking us around the face and squeezing our hearts the whole 2 hours. But the rest of the week what are we doing?

Read this and think about it for a second:

The vision?
The vision is JESUS.
Obsessively.
Dangerously.
Undeniably.
JESUS.
(The Vision & The Vow-Pete Greig)

As I walked along the river this evening I saw what seemed to be a picture straight out of scripture.
I saw what I could only describe as fog hovering over the waters.

'Now the earth was formless...
and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters' (Genesis ch1v2 NIV)

It was almost as though God was saying something...what I think is for me to figure out and for you to figure if this has made any impact on you whatsoever.

So as I pray and I sing, I want to push into God and into the heart of Jesus.

I want to understand and touch the love that put nails through the hands and feet of the son of God. Surely this man saw something worthwhile in the world and those that would fill it. Jesus is the cause.

I seek.

I pray.

I sing and I cry out for that heart.