Referring to Tom’s post about Mike Guglielmucci.

For those of you who haven’t been following the story, Mike Guglielmucci was a Youth Pastor for Planetshakers. He has recently admitted to faking having cancer. He had been pretending to have cancer since September 2006.

… I guess watching him on Today Tonight made me feel sad because he must be feeling terrible. I am sure he loves Jesus, otherwise he had no reason to admit his sin. And now he’s getting a battering in the press, thousands of people are upset with him, he’s let his wife, family, parents and church down. I can’t imagine that the relief for admitting this makes up for what he’s copping now as a result. It would have been easier for him to not tell anyone what was going on.

His Dad said in a statement to his church: “I can’t begin to tell you how much this is hurting us on the inside. A few weeks ago Mike had a dream of Jesus on the cross looking down on him saying, ‘the truth will set you free’ and so he decided to confess and bring everything out into the open.”

Read the rest of what Tom wrote. But what I began to write as a comment on his site was that I definitely agree with what he said.

First up, this is why I don’t watch Today Tonight or ACA. They just get it so very, very horribly wrong. And I get so very angry and passionate as a result. So it’s probably just best I don’t watch them at all :)

But back to the main point… in God’s eyes, yes, Mike Guglielmucci has sinned. But he is no less loved by God than you or me or anyone else on this earth. It’s only us who put labels on how serious a sin is. God hurts very deeply whether we swear, have a lustful thought in our mind, or whether we murder someone.

So who the heck are Today Tonight, or any other media source, to judge him? Are they perfect? It hink what makes me most angry is the way some people are acting very high and mighty; very arrogant really. Their actions give the impression that they think they’re better people that Mike, and that they would never possibly do anything as evil as that.

But every second they have their back’s turned on Christ, they are being just as evil.

Most importantly, Mike Guglielmucci has confessed that what he did was wrong. And so therfore he is forgiven by God. [edit: bad theology James - regardless of whether he confessed it to the world, if he has asked God for forgiveness, he has it.] Do we claim to know better than the one who created us? Are we choosing to say to God, “Hey God, I know better than you, and I reckon we should judge this guy a bit more before we let him off the hook.”

No. We need to forgive. Just as our Father has forgiven us.

Oh how my heart hurts for those who don’t understand the love, the freedom, the peace that Christ has shown and gives us.

So cool :)

Yesterday was quite the busy, but awesome day…

Got up nice and early and headed to Hornsby station to leave my car. I jumped on a train and found Sammy at Beecroft station and we headed into the city. The Aroma Festival was on in the rocks. It’s apparently for lovers of coffee, chocolate, tea and spice - but all we cared about was the coffee. We started with some turkish coffee, but that was a big mistake. We tried some awesome 100% fair-trade and organic Republica coffee, which was pretty brilliant. But the peak of the day came a few moments later when we had a perfect latte from my friends at Velluto Nero. It’s quite possibly the closest thing to coffee perfection that I’ve tasted, and perhaps will ever taste. I will definitely miss that place with not working in the city anymore. After having some Danes Gourmet Coffee to finish it off, we headed back to Wynyard and back on a train to Hornsby… Just slightly buzzing.

edit: Forgot to add here in the middle that I had lunch at Cathy Bell’s place. Hang time with Thornleigh people was quite fun :) It was a pity that I could only stay for a couple of hours… but it was still a great time. I got in trouble for not including that.

I headed back down to Toonie for band practice. I found out about half an hour before practice was due to start that there was no drummer. It was a bit frustrating to hear… but surprisingly, it didn’t actually get me down too much. I told all the musos straight up, and just suggested that we focus on working each song acoustically, and just really listen to each other. The first run-through was very rough, but once we worked out an order, and then decided how each song would be done, it sounded tops for the final run-through. It was a challenge and a half, and I was definitely feeling exhausted by the end of the service… but it was a great experience. And importantly, it was a great time to sing cool songs to God :)

And then it was dinner time at Hogs Breath! Debbie was visiting, so she came with all of us Toonie people. And it was a really fun night out hanging with those guys. We had some good times reminiscing about old House of Bach days, and all-night LAN parties and Bathurst challenges on the Xbox. Ahh good times :) But then it was time for James to go home and clean his room. It looks good now though!

Monday has gone fairly quickly. I’m loving the fact that I woke up at 7:30 this morning, left the house at 8, and was still early to work. Love it.

wondering if a certain young twittering telstra working man might be interested in a lovely lady friend he is yet to meet
07:43 PM December 24, 2007

Wondering if James likes friendly, fun, musical, primary school teaching, 24 yr old females
10:36 PM December 24, 2007

In answer to the second question: yes. :)

On June 21st, I asked Debbie to marry me. And she said yes :)

The last 5 months and 21 days have been some of the most amazing in my life. Through my relationship with Debbie, I have grown so much closer to God, and started to really learn what it is to rely on God, His strength, and His timing.

And friends, having God at the centre of your relationship is so awesome. It’s one of those things that you realise is just so good that you never want to be so stupid as to do without it.

But about today; here’s the story:

Today was an adventure that was part of Debbie’s birthday present. She didn’t know where we were going, or what we were doing.

We headed up to the Blue Mountains. I took Debbie up to Mt York, just near Mt Victoria. There’s an amazing lookout there that we’d visited before. We had some morning tea there, including cheese and biscuits, and even prawns, and some Maison too. But after sitting outside in the 7 degree temperatures for a little while, we got back in the car to finish our Maison.

We headed down to Blackheath, and out to Perry’s Lookdown, which has some quite amazing views. And Micky did well on the very rough and pothole-filled dirt road out to the lookdown. Then it was lunchtime, and so back into the centre of Blackheath for lunch at an amazing Italian restaurant. We were lucky enough to be the only people in the place for most of the time, and had a table right in front of the open fire. Really awesome food. Definitely on the list of places to go back to.

Then it was afternoon tea time. So off to Leura! We went to Everglades historic gardens. I hadn’t been there before, but it’s quite an amazing place. There was a wedding happening just off to the side in one of the gardens (ironic?), but we headed into the house that is there and had a nice hot chocolate and coffee before going for a wander in the gardens.

After a short walk, we found this small natural pool with a waterfall coming down into it. It was quite amazing and very tranquil. And everything just fell into place, and before I knew it, I had proposed to Debbie, and she’d excitedly said yes :)

It was quite funny… cos we were pretty quick to get out of there, and all excited about calling parents and family, and then messaging all our friends. So our trip back down the mountains felt very quick, because we were on the phone almost the whole way down, and then reading lots of messages too. 

It’s all been quite a blur, but an exciting blur :)

Saturday night, Debbie and I were having a [rather late night] chat about prayer, stages of life, and God saying yes and no in different ways. Last night, b preached a pretty tops sermon indeed. And the cool bit was that what he was saying followed on almost directly from what I had been saying only 18 hours earlier. Very awesome indeed.

And it all followed on beautifully from what Deano had preached on a week ago - on how we should pray in a submissive way, rather than just expect things and ask for things. It’s just really caused me to rethink how I pray, and my view of God in how he listens to us and responds. It’s all been very encouraging.

Last night was a pretty ripper night for music too. I had an absolute ball playing keys with the boys. We played Mighty To Save only for the second time in the service… but by the time we got to it in practice, we were playing very much together, and so it was quite easy to just chat about structure and order, and then just nail it pretty much from the first time through. It was oh-so loud… but that translates to oh-so fun sometimes ;)

And the preacher enjoyed it, so that’s a plus too!

Pretty quiet at work today. Need to start finding more sales opportunities to work on so I don’t get bored. Looking forward to dinner with parentals and Debbie tonight.

You gently pick me up and wash me with your love.
And opening my ears, you speak the word.
You’re healing me, and releasing all the hurts and fears by the hope that you’ve placed within me.

In between each heartbeat, Lord, I surrender.

Everything I am and ever hope to be… I surrender all that to you.

But not only was this training actually valuable - I did the Think On Your Feet training course - but it’s quite clearly a quiet week in the world today. I sent my regular customers an email early on Tuesday morning letting them know what to do instead of emailing me - usually this is almost pointless, cos for some reason they ignore it. But most of them actually listened this time round! So in the end, two days of pretty cool training (and it was even finished by 2:30pm this arvo), half an hour back at my desk doing a little bit of work, and I’ve got no work to catch up on!

The only disappointing thing is that cos I was on training I missed out on hearing John Dickson come and speak in my office!! I was so excited to get an email saying that he was coming to speak on Tuesday (and today he spoke at the Pitt St office). And I was even more excited to walk past the auditorium as I got a lunch break (only as he was finishing up) and see that there was a good 200 people in that auditorium :D

He was there speaking about the facts of Easter, pre-empting his The Christ Files documentary that is on Channel 7 on Friday arvo. I’m really looking forward to that - have a great admiration for him. He’s a very, very educated man and I really enjoy hearing him speak. Should be tops.

Massive shoutout to the long weekend that’s on its way - 4 days working, 4 days off, 4 days working… that’s an awesome combo. 4-day weekend deserves brilliance and wonder showered on it for that. Let alone for the reason that it’s a 4-day weekend - that just makes it the single best time of the year :)

B had mentioned it to me about 18 months ago, at which time, I wasn’t overly keen on the idea, and conveniently brushed it aside and chose to forget about it. And I thought he’d forgotten about it too. Hehe, I was wrong - he and God are crafty. And last year, God used a few different things to get me thinking about it more and more and even got me to the point where I was keen for it.

I spent a lot of last week thinking about what I would say, and how I would tie songs together, and what “God” things I should say… But then I realised that all that is pretty unimportant - I don’t need to have a speech or mini-sermon rehearsed. In fact I don’t need to say much at all aside from one or two welcome lines. And so I spent a lot of time thinking and praying about band practice and realising that my attention needed to be focused on leading that well. Kinda glad I came to that realisation, cos it was the right one.

And band practice went awesomely smoothly (thanks, God!). We powered through the songs, even worked on a fun transition (that ended up getting dumped at the last minute, but it was still cool teamwork), and still had time in the middle to practice a new song that we’re going to do with the church in a few weeks.

So for my first week leading a service, I ended up feeling very happy with how it went, and looking forward to how God’s going to use me more and more at church with music and services :)

And then it was off to level 4 at Westpoint to get some noodles (or Nandos if you so desired) and just hang out at the seat things in the middle of the piazza area like a cool gang. Yeah, we were cool.

After such a tops Sunday, it was a pity that this morning started off crap. Stupid Epping stupid road was stupid narrowed down to stupid 1 lane. Morris Iemma is a goose. I used to be a bit indifferent towards him… but I am rapidly joining the bandwagon of “get us a new premier, pronto”. Anyway, I reckon because of Epping Rd being narrowed, everyone went down other roads… namely my precious Victoria Rd. So my normal 1 hour drive into the city took 2 hours this morning. Not fun.

And then to hear on the radio that there is an early idea floating around to charge motorists for using main aterial roads during the peak times? Above and beyond the existing tolls?! What a joke! That is honestly the most insane idea that I have heard come from the NSW Government. The main reason that I think it is so insane is that our public transport system is nothing short of pathetic. It’s fine and dandy if you live within 10kms of the CBD. Lucky you. However, anyone outside that radius is subject to private bus companies who don’t operate very reliable or conveient routes, and trains that are constantly over-crowded. (Speaking of which, if I have to use a main arterial road to drive 15 minutes to the nearest train station to catch a train to the city, are you going to charge me a “congestion toll” too?)

Morris is a goose. Rant over.

correction: The “congestion toll” seems to be at the federal govt level rather than state. Which is good news I reckon. K-Rudd will sort it out. He’s a good boy.

It’s lunch time now - I’m sitting here eating some chicken pasta with sun-dried tomatoes in a white wine sauce - and the emails have subsided and I’m feeling dramatically more cheery than I did this morning. Looking forward to heading home shortly though to enjoy an evening of nothingness - just hanging out with Debbie and watching GNW. :)