Saturday 28 February 2009

Alpha week 3

I am late in posting week 3 due to other commitments, however, there has been no week 4, this will be next week.

HOW CAN WE HAVE FAITH?

Those who become Christians become a new person. A new life has begun and they are not the same anymore.

The first part of Alpha invites us to ask questions and discover the answers we are looking for about God,Science and History.

Firstly the talk was about 'The magnificent 3' The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, we know the son is Jesus and the Father is God, but what about this Holy Spirit? Well the Holy Spirit comes from within, it is a sense and a feeling within in you, born out of love, and then the 3 becomes 1.

Basically explained by taking the meaning of water, which can become ice and also steam, but esentially water is one and the same, so the Magnificent 3 are 1 and the same presented to you in all 3 ways.

People who become new Christians can do so because they have experienced a revelation and know immediately that they have found God, but it can come to us gradually and we can be led down a path that we do not understand, but eventually leading us to our conclusion.

Going back to the paragraph about asking the unanswered questions, we all have a need to know the truth, but what is the truth? How do we know Jesus actually came, how did he know what was right and what was to be expected of him? How do we actually know the theory of relativity was measured correctly? Did Einstein have a huge ruler that he poked right out into space and then calculated the measurements? How did the math come about to take these measurments in the first place?

Also I find that each religion has a different view of looking at things, which all religions would say are wrong, but I feel that in our search for the truth we can then decide our own religion in which we need to believe,because everyone needs to believe in something, a man,therefore, thousands of years ago may have decided that he believes in order to get closer to God we need to sacrifice animals or cross our legs and hum etc, the main point being that we all need to believe.

The discussion was lead to the fact that we can have the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in our lives,but we still need the basics? What are the basic foundations?

MY PERSONAL FEELING

I felt that I should be asking the questions, I always felt that something in my life was missing, I commited myself to work, and relationships and pushing myself into fitness etc etc, but something was always missing. I have now discovered that was God telling me what I needed to know and I was just looking in the wrong place. I still need ambition and exercise and love and family, but God too, and now that I have accepted that, I have lost this longing for something and strangely lost this longing to know the answers, because the answers are there within you.... The Holy Spirit

There was no Alpha course this week due to some people being away etc, but we had house group and prayer, and I realised how much I had missed it, with that in mind I had arranged to go to a 'girlie' prayer group on Friday morning, here we had breakfast and chatted about what had been going on in our lives for the past week, followed by prayer, during the prayer I had my hands clasped in my lap and my eyes closed. I was told there was no pressure for me to pray out loud as I am still a little nervous in doing so and have,on occasion prayed out loud,but in very small gestures. Anyway I digress, during prayer, I had an amazing amount of pressure on my arms and I felt like I was fighting to hold them down and clasped in my lap, to the extent that my muscles ached in my upper arms,I felt that I had prayer to give, but did it silently, still the fight continued with my arms and eventually I thought "what am I fighting for, just let go" and my arms relaxed and I raised them up with open hands and it felt so much better that I sat there for some time.

When I opened my eyes 'C' said that she had a picture in her mind during prayer, of me and I was rowing a boat against the current and putting up a mighty fight and did I know what it meant?

I was so overwhelmed by what had just happened that I was totally hyper for about two hours! It made me shakey and quite teary......what do you think?!

Friday 13 February 2009

Alpha week 2

Last nights discussion was titled 'Why did Jesus die'

The talk was hosted by the 'lovely Claire' and she gave such a good account that so far, before I have read up any of the pieces from the bible that were discussed, I have no questions.

Basically we are all sinners, the bible said that if we sinned the payment was death and we would be partitioned from God, but God loved us all so much and unconditionally that he gave his only son for us.

An old ritual where by people sacrificed animals to God, helped explain that they put their hand on the animal and confessed their sins so that it passed into the animal and then it was sacrificed and so clearing the sin. In a way this is what God did for us, he allowed us to put our hand upon Jesus and confess our sins and he took them all and died for us removing the partition and giving us eternal life with God.

When I read passages from the bible I find it very difficult to understand the text, but the alpha course gives you the opportunity to see and hear things from other perspectives and add what you think yourself to give conclusion.

I am still currently reading the gospels from last week, I could quite easily just scan over them, but now feel the need to look more in depth to the meaning....for example

The Cost of following Jesus
Now when Jesus saw the great multitudes around him, he gave the order to depart to the other side. A scribe came to him and said "Teacher I will follow you wherever you go" Jesus said to him " the foxes have wholes and the birds of the sky have nest, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head"
Another of his disciples said to him "Lord allow me to first go and bury my Father" But Jesus said to him " follow me and leave the dead to bury their own dead" Matthew 8:18

This I found quite harsh and hard to understand. I felt it sounded bad, but upon discussion last night - even though it was right off topic, Clare said that she felt the meaning was that the deciples father hadn't yet died and was living a healthy life, but the man was making excuses for not following Jesus just yet because he had other commitments. Which when looked up in the study bible said exactly that.

I am thus far intrigued and am hungry to understand more.

We are going to Church on Sunday and this week, Kristie will be joining us, I am really looking forward to it, infact I can't wait!

Monday 9 February 2009

The first week of Alpha was as gripping as I expected it to be, the discussion was titled 'Who was Jesus' basically discussing his background and where he came from and then we were invited to ask questions on anything about the discussion or otherwise.

One visitor to the course questioned the names of the Gospels and how could they have such 'English names' if they originated in Judeah

So here goes

MATTHEW

English form or Matthaios which was Greek form of the Hebrew name Mattityahu meaning 'gift of Yahweh' (Jewish) meaning Jehovah- and was also known as Levi. The name Matthew has been used since the middle ages.

MARK

English and Russian form of Marcus originating from 1st century BC Roman (Marcus Antonius) - Marks account was probably written for Romans

LUKE

From the Greek origin Loukas meaing Lucania - from Italy. Luke was a Greek travelled Dr and the only non-jewish testament writer.

JOHN

Latin form of Greek - Joannes derived from Hebrew name Yochanen meaning 'Yahweh' or Jehovah. Yahweh is gracious

12 Apostles were re-named by Roman translators when edited and re-copied.

So that is my extensive research- it doesn't look much, but I put a lot of time into the research and I half expected to come up with those kind of answers because generally when you hear those names, they are more often than not referred to as biblical names.......what do you think?