How to raise a ginger in an anti-red world

 

We live in a dull, banal, colourless world where blondes and brunettes have become the toast of society, the A-list of hair-colours and where red-heads have been banished to nothing more than unimaginative punch-lines for immature jokes. But do not despair, we will see a brighter day (tainted with a ginger hue), where the word “ginger” and “ranger” will be something to be proud of, something  to be boasted about and gloried in. And we need to be ready for this day of nearing revolution. So parents of new born babes laden with flames of glory on their tiny heads, stand up tall and take heed of my top 10 list on how to raise a ginger:

 

10. Along with nappies, Factor 50 sun-cream is the next most vital commodity to be stocked up on

9. South Park and its “Gingers have no soul” mantra must be banned from your series collection

8. Never confuse freckles with pimples

7. On the line of freckles, never tell the children’s classic “How the Leopard got it’s spots”...it will lead to many an awkward question

6. Get rid of all wall-colours that are of the bone, ivory, white, off-white, egg-shell variety...red-head children’s skin tones often get lost with this type of palate

5. Never get angry or frustrated at a red traffic light as this can breed insecurity in your child

4. In the same vein, red cards in rugby and soccer matches are never to be booed or jeered.

3. When they become teenagers, make sure they shave regularly as red stubble can appear as dirt from a distance, causing your child to appear unwashed. (ignore if your ginger is a girl)

2. Live in the confidence that for all the jokes that come their way, if they grow up in a church the amount of prophetic words that come their way will more than make up for it...red-heads are easy prey for visiting prophetic ministries.

1. Did I mention to buy lots of suncream?

 

IMMERSED part one

 

We've started an exciting four week journey as a church community with our new series, "IMMERSED". Over four consecutive Sundays, we are inviting our church to explore four fundamental and yet revolutionary doctrines surrounding the baptisms we find in scripture:
The baptism into the body of Christ, baptism in water, baptism in the Holy Spirit and the often ignored baptism of suffering.
Hebrews.6 speaks of these "baptisms" as elementary teachings and yet the vast majority of christendom as we know it are only ankle deep in their understanding and application of these truths.

We believe that God is taking us deeper as a people, as we get ready to go wider in our efforts of discipling our city and the nations. Our prayer for this series is that we would dive into the greater depths of community, discipleship and mission that scripture and the Spirit are calling us into.

 

If you'd like to join us on this life changing journey, add us on twitter, read our blogs, study the scriptures and join us on Sundays 9AM or 6PM. Alternatively, you can check out our website where all this content will be readily available.

www.lifechangers.org.za

Something's brewing in the atmosphere...

 

A month ago tonight I found myself preaching in a church in Nelspruit to an audience that rounded out at just over 600 in an atmosphere which had nearly close to everyone present believing that anything was possible and that we were truly born to change the world. That night, huge faith stirred between preacher and audience as the life of God rose up within us in a significant way. People turned their lives over to Christ without much human prompting, repentance ran true, tears of joy and acceptance flowed strongly, blind eyes, deaf ears and other various healings of physical ailments were heralded without laying on of hands, and an uncommon unity that bypassed racial, economic and social lines was caught as something that looked extremely like the revivals of old was happening before our very eyes.

 

After 31 days of pondering this earth shaking night and the JobiJol camp as a whole, my heart has settled on five ingredients that contributed to what God did and is continuing to do. This is not an attempt to conjure up a recipe, but more just recognizing the fingerprints of heaven that are quickly becoming stronger and stronger.

1.       Missional friendships

-represented at this 4 day camp were multiple churches and personalities that came largely from the greater Johannesburg area but also from Nelspruit, Durban and Cape Town. This wasn’t a forced attempt at unity but rather the result of different layers of friendships that have been built over the last 4 to 5 years (and some longer). The camp, which happens every year in the December/January slot has gathered a momentum not because of strategic meetings, an organizational mandate or clever marketing but rather because of men and women whose hearts beat for the same thing, devoting themselves to building intentional friendships with the King and His Kingdom at the centre.

2.       High value of the bible

-What we are learning more and more these days is that God is faithful above all else to His Word. And with that as a cornerstone in our belief system we are beginning to have the audacity to believe what He says! So high on our agenda is to follow Paul’s admonition to Timothy to “preach the word” and to do so with a faith, knowing that “his word does not return to Him void."

3.       Recognizing the anointing of the Holy Spirit

-We didn’t all fast for days on end leading up to the camp. In fact, I came straight from holiday. But we are quickly understanding that the heavens were opened not by our pleas and rain-dances but by Jesus’ blood, never to be shut again. When Jesus declared that “the Holy Spirit will come upon you”, he might as well have shouted the child-hood adage of “OPEN GATES!” That Sunday night, a friend (Craig Herbert) and I met at our parked car to change shoes for the meeting, but quickly recognized that the Holy Spirit was stirring something special in our hearts. The shoes were abandoned and we prayed. Bold prayers. Open heaven type prayers. The Holy Spirit was with us, and we expected “to receive power.”

4.       A response of worship

-In every session of the camp, including the last one, the preaches culminated in us landing in worship. Or should I say taking off again in worship. It wasn’t a pre-camp decision but God so shifted our hearts from looking to push people to an emotional response, or to a manipulated altar call moment, but rather to recognizing that God was present and he was at work in the hearts and lives of the people there. It was in the worship that healings happened. It was in the worship that hearts were saved, that rejection was broken off, that the Holy Spirit filled people, that sin and addictions were broken, that lives were forever changed and commissioned. When Christ is lifted up all men will be drawn to Him.

 

 

That weekend in early January has left me indelibly changed. Grateful but not satisfied.

I love moments like these.

I love doing high ministry moments with mates like these.

But more than that, I love the momentum that these four days up country have created in me, in my peer group and in a generation who are beginning to respond to the something that is brewing in the atmosphere. 

Can you feel it?

New year, new resolutions

At the beginning of every new year, resolutions, new promises and deals with God, family and self are made as we all declare afresh that "This year is going to be different!"

Well I count myself as one such sucker. This year will be different!
Along with my usual annual goals to become "as big as my brother", to "get married...or at least go on a date or two", or "to eat more healthily" and the infamous but simple "to get to bed on time on a regular basis", this year's main agendas on my check-list are not as trivial or superficial. On a spiritual front, each new January begins with promises to try harder, to be at more meetings, to pray more, read the bible more than just on Easter and Christmas, to get deeper involved in church, to give more, to quit a habit or an addiction, to be a better dad or mom.
Basically, to do more.

With none of these being bad accomplishments to look back on at the end of the year, this year I have a simple resolve:

To DO less and to BE more

Sounds a very new age type of outlook on life but when the penny truly drops that we are human beings and not human-doings, we will clamber off the hamster-wheel of performance and trade the running shoes for a pair of footwear a liitle more comfortable and to our taste.
The bible calls us to keep in step with the Spirit, not to try and outpace him. My pure delight is to see what He is doing and then to run with that.

The great Puritan preacher Richard Baxter put it this way,

"If we rejoice firstly in our Christian duties rather than our Christian destiny, what will become of our joy when our duties fail or falter?"

So my pen is out and I've written down my top 3 resolutions for 2013:

1. TO RELAX MORE
2. TO ENJOY GOD MORE
3. TO KNOW THAT IT IS FINISHED...MORE AND MORE

Doing less, being more and the resolutions start shaping into something more like a recipe for a revolution.

Christmas Wish-List

 

 

6 things I've decided to do differently this Christmas. (for reasons why, read the blog below)

1. Stop Hoarding

-Clothes and go through my cupboard and give away every piece of clothing that I haven't worn in the last 5 months

-Food and have piles of tinned and canned meals in my car and at my home ready to give to any who ask for "A christmas box"

2. Start Inviting

-The lonely to my home for a meal

-The lost to one of our christmas services at church (people generally say "yes" at this time of year)

-The lazy to hit the back garden for a game of cricket, a round of golf or even a swim in the ocean...yes, I do swim on occasion...when conditions are perfect)

3. Lose my pale skin

(I know, it would be a christmas miracle, but one can dream!)

4. Watch Less

-television and series on my own with the justifying statement of "it's MY holiday!"

-movies as a default when asking the question, "what should we do today?"

5. Keep Quiet

-when family frustrate me

-and ask more questions rather than always giving my opinion. (be interested and stop trying to be interesting)

6. Make Memories

-with my parents, brothers, sister in law and nephews

-for other people who haven't had many memorable christmas' before

-by taking the danger encircled path of sacrifice over the highway of self-entitlement and gluttony


Best Christmas ever?

An African Christmas

Nobody does Christmas better than the Phillips family.

Growing up in our home each calendar year was split into 2 parts. BC and AD. Before Christmas and After (christmas) Dinner. We are such suckers for the christmas spirit that we would be pumping Bony M "By the Rivers of Babylon" and other such festive jingles as soon as we waved goodbye to the exam month of November and welcomed in December first! And we played them so consistently and with such great gusto, that our neighbours couldn't help but join in with a rousing chorus of "Rocking around the christmas tree" by the time the big day actually arrived.
Advent calendars, tinsle, singing lights and songs about chestnuts, snow and reindeers were all part of the christmas fare...and it didn't even matter that temperatures were soring into the high 30's and that the closest we had come to a white christmas was in the December of 1998 when the suncream bottle top came loose as I shook it above my head.

Like I said, my family has christmas waxed!

It's with these seasonal musings that I turn the pages to the first chapters of Matthew and Luke's Gospel accounts and dig a little deeper into how that first "christmas" went down. Compared to our Zimbabwean rendition of the yuletide occassion, the bible paints a pretty bleek picture of what happened +-2000 years ago. I mean for goodness sake there's not even one mention of a turkey or snow!

In fact when we get down to the bare bones of things, that initial "christmas" gathering didn't have nearly as much sparkle and glamour that we attach to our present day celebrations. Sure there was some gold, frankincense and myrrh (by the way, "myrrh" isn't worth as many points as you would think when playing Scrabble) and they definitely had some high profile guests (Wisemen attendance and angelic visitation definitely trump our usual christmas visitors - deaf grandparents and the creepy neighbour from down the street who somehow always seems to wangle an invite) but overall Mary and Joseph's soiree doesn't come remotely close to our jovial and expensive traditions.


The long and the short of my ramblings is that this year things are going to be different for me. No, I'm not losing the tree, the carols or the mince pies but I've decided to add some new traditions to the Phillips family list (said list will be in the next blog). We live in Africa where despite our best attempts to hide behind high walls, to turn a blind eye at traffic lights and to take alternative routes home so we don't have to go through "the bad neighbourhood", poverty, disease, joblessness and an all round lack of hope is running rampant. To pretend anything else or to sugar-coat the problem by turning our christmas carol volume up and putting our fingrs in our ears to not hear the cries is just as evil as those who turned Mary and Joseph away that fateful night in Nazareth by saying, "We have no room."

This year, I'm asking myself the question, "Do I have room?"

Do I have room in my heart, in my home, in my budget for the lost, the last and the least...
...or do I just have room for a second helping of the christmas ham?

We Are The Church (Red Week #3)

Video summary of a week that changed many people's lives...