Shining Light: a word for christmas

12 Dec 2016

Everyone is familiar with the Christmas gospel. you know "In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were mad,e without him nothing was made which has been made. In him was life and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it."


This is one of the most famous passages in the Bible and we read it every Christmas without fail, It talks about Jesus being God and being with God at the very beginning and it refers to him as "the light" Light is such an exciting phenomenon and as a science student I've studied light for at least 5  years of my life and I still get amazed by how something can travel 8000000 metres in a second when I can barely travel one!

Light is mentioned 272 times in the Bible which shows just how important it is the first words spoken by God in the Bible are "Let there be light" Which makes it even more exciting when he sent the light down to redeem the Earth because he was returning it to its original glory. We get light wherever we go it's almost impossible to escape light, Even in the darkest depths of the ocean where it is pitch black the angler fish, you may remember it from Finding Nemo, provides its own light. In that 'light' this is what we should be doing as Christians, we are called to be the salt and the light of the Earth to reflect the light that Jesus shows.

We so often have the picture of light as something that lights our path and brings hope to dark situations but I was recently challenged by the fact that light also comes to disturb. A small beam of light sneaking through your curtains could be enough to stir you from your sleep. In the same way Jesus comes into our hearts, yes to bring us peace, but also to disturb. If the spirit isn't disturbing our hearts, alerting us if we do something we know we shouldn't and in disturbing us pointing us in the right direction,

My prayer this Christmas is that the Holy Spirit keeps disturbing me and keeps me going in the right direction in Gid's great plan for my life which all began at the birth of his Son, Jesus of Nazareth.

prosperity.

19 Oct 2016

Picture this, you're in a new place, you don't speak the language and you're lost, really lost, what would you do in that situation? I think for many of us the answer would be, wander around and try and retrace our steps or else pull out google and ask it for directions because god forbid we ask for directions even though we have absolutely no idea where we are!


So often we let our need of needing to resource ourselves, do things ourselves, that we disregard our serious need for help in certain situations, How often do we do this with God? Our Prosperity, which has been provided for us by God, to allow us to do his work at our full potential, being fully equipped, being in the top percentage of the richest people in the world, is the very thing that is holding us back from doing everything that God has planned for us. "I don't need God, I have google". So often we can put our God into a box and limit what we feel he's capable of, despite it saying in Ephesians that "he can do far more abundantly than all that we ask or even imagine" Our God is limitless and we put limits on him based on our own perceptions. We allow our want of self salvation get in the way of true salvation, salvation from the king of kings.

Music That Never Dies

8 Oct 2016

The music that we hear everyday on the radio or in the charts is always changing, one week we could think we've heard the best song ever only to then have it replaced the very next week with something completely different. As young people this is exactly what we're expected to do, to float around, following after all the latest trends, the older generations always expect us to know what's new and cool at this very moment and the thing is, we usually do. People have the power to change the face of music in the drop of a hat but they also have the power to bring it back to its roots and that's exactly what Italian trio Il Volo have done with their latest album, NOTTE MAGICA- A TRIBUTE TO THE THREE TENORS.


The three young men, Piero Barone (23), Ignazio Boschetto (21 at time of recording) and Gianluca Ginoble (21) take us back to the times of The Three Tenors, Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo (who features) and Jose Carreras who first made opera music accessible to the masses. Performing some of the arias from famous operas that shaped them as performers, the three accompanied by Domingo, seek to continue what the Three Tenors started and bring opera music, the music that never dies, to the younger generation and as a young person myself I can vouch for the fact that they've definitely done that. The stand out tracks for me were Nessun Dorma, Sole Mio and Cielito Lindo along with the solo performances of E Lucevan Le Stelle by Barone, Una Furtiva Lagrima by Boschetto and En Aranjuez Con Tu Amor by Ginoble, It also included a beautiful rendition of Non Ti Scordar Di Me in which they were joined by Placido Domingo.


The Tracklist of The album is Listed Below.



Overall I wasn't actually expecting to love this album as much as I do so I feel that is testament to itself as to how good this album is and how hard the boys worked on it, and I'm excited for it's official UK release so that even more people will be able to listen, enjoy and understand the wonder that is Il Volo.

Dare to be a Daniel

17 Sept 2016

Everything around me lately has been screaming Daniel, and not only because that;s our current sermon series, but more because I am at the same stage of life as Daniel and things are beginning to change around me. I head off to university in a matter of days and it's important to remember that although I will be entering into a different culture and everywhere I look things are yelling "change", that I don't need to change who I am in order to fit in. In Daniel, when he is faced with things around him needing to be done in a certain way, he stands up for what he believes in and ultimately ends up in the best place, and when he is put in difficult situations, you know just casually being thrown into a den of hungry lions and all that, no harm comes to him. If you trust in God and allow him to use you to shape those around you, you will notice a bigger and better change in yourself than if you allow those around you to shape you.


"Dare to be a Daniel,Dare to stand alone!
Dare to have a purpose firm!
Dare to make it known."

being all there

3 Sept 2016

  September is often viewed as a time of change and transition for many people, it's the end of summer, the leaved start to change from green to brown and everyone starts back to the busyness of work and school. For me that statement has never been truer than it is at the moment.As I am starting university this year there are so many changes that are lined up ahead of me and it's a huge shift in the everyday norm that I'm used to. I had my university life all planned out, I was going to go to Queens to study Microbiology, I was going to live at home and get the bus in everyday it's only ten minutes up the road, everything will be fine...

  Everything would be fine except I really hadn't taken into account what I was faced with when I got my results a few weeks ago. I didn't meet the requirements to get into my course of choice so suddenly I found myself no longer attending university in my hometown but instead at one over an hour away by train. I'd worked out all of the logistics and had decided that I was still going to live at home and just get the train to uni everyday because it was so much cheaper than living in accommodation that I didn't like and I was 100% positive that that was what I was going to do and then I could easily move out in second year.


  This week I attended a preterm with the christian union at my new university and as I was hit with the fact that it wasn't the financial aspect of moving that was holding me back but it was the fact that I'm still absolutely terrified of everything that the future holds and I thought that staying at home would be a safer bet but having met the incredible people who I will be doing life with for the next 3-4 years I realised that living at home wasn't the safest bet anymore and that God had placed me at Coleraine for a reason and that reason wasn't just to study. I had been so sure of what I was going to do that I had completely shoved aside God's plan for my life and tried to do everything on my own terms but I finally realised that if God has placed me in Coleraine then I should be entirely at Coleraine and not half in Coleraine, half in Belfast and making compromises, This is the future that God has had planned for me my entire life so now I just have to learn to trust him and embrace everything that my new, totally out of my control future is going to hold for me.

"For I know the plans I have for you declares the LORD, plans to prosper and not to harm you, plans to give you  hope and a future"




are we human?

18 Aug 2016

In church our sermon series at the minute is on our values as a church and this week we were focusing on world mission. As part of the talk a girl shared about her experience in South Africa working at an after schools club. I have spent the last few years volunteering at an after schools club in my church in Belfast and I was really impacted by how many similarities there were between the two clubs. It really puts it into perspective that although it may seem like there could be no similarities between a child living in the centre of a first world city and one living in a village full of extreme poverty but this isn't the case. A child, is a child, is a child, is a child, they have the same personality, the both want to  learn, the both want to play, they both want to go on to do great things the only difference is, one of them can't.


"If you think we're human, take a look once again, If you think we're human where's the heart when we just look away?"


The same can be said for us and those younger and older than us, we can all learn from each other and each one of us is human. There is no such thing as a superior human we are all created in God's image and although we all have different gifts and talents when we put them together we create something beautiful. "we are all one body of many parts".

So think about the world around you, take in the differences in people and embrace them and when the situations arise in which you find yourself questioning the world, and why there is so much pain and suffering just remember that we are all human and we have the power to make a change. Look into charities that allow you to sponsor a child and it will allow you to make an impact on a child's life along with helping their whole family. I sponsor a child from Rwanda and being able to support her and converse with her is a really worthwhile experience which I highly recommend , I hope one day I will be able to visit her.
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