Merry Christmas

guess one of the benefits of having a blog is you can moan about what you want to moan about! I don't normally like moaning but one thing gets my goat is when people say xmas instead of CHRISTmas. This season unfortunately is more about presents and father Christmas than Christ for many people. I have a dream, I have a vision, I may not get there with you but I wanna see Christ back in Christmas! Spare a thought for who it really is about this Christ..mas

Good deeds don't outweigh bad ones!

There is a misconception out there that by performing lots of good things we can somehow make up for all the bad things we have done. There is so much danger in this, not least because it gives rise to pride "i'm better than you because I have done more good", Christian churches are full of this mentality and I have been guilty of this myself. We want to look at ourselves and say how good we have been, surely all the good I have done makes up for those mistakes I made?
Try that in a court of law, you are before the Judge for murder and you say "I gave money to charity, helped Doris accross the road everyday, worked in a charity shop, feed hungry people..." The Judge would reply that is great what you have been doing but you are on trial for murder and these things have nothing to do with that, you are guilty of murder and he would meet out your punishment, it is called justice.
God is a just God and he must punish our breaking of the law, so if you have ever told a lie (who hasn't), taken something that doesn't belong to you, looked at someone lustfully, been jealous over someone elses things and so on..then you are guilty just like me! We have no leg to stand on. If we are honest would we be guilty, I am and everyone is. Therefore would God allow people like that into heaven, it wouldn't be heaven would it, he must punish and that is what hell is all about. He doesn't want us to go there, he loves us that much that he sent his son to die a cruel and painful death on the cross in order to take our punishment. It is like you are sitting in the electric chair and Jesus walks in and takes your place, your debt or fine is paid by Jesus's death on the cross. Justice is satisfied. There is no greater love than someone dying for you, someone who dies for you even though you don't love them! This love transforms your life, God says there are two things you must do to receive this forgiveness, 1 be willing to turn from the wrong things and 2 make Jesus number one in your life - wow.
Drop me a line at georgeosborn@hotmail.com with any question, statement, help, anything....

Getting out there...

Since being a Christian and spending more time in church it has surprised me at what it actually means to be a church. A church is people not a building, when God talks about building his church he is talking about building people. Where we meet together is where we get patched up, fed and sent back out into the world, as Jesus said "GO into the world..."
I have just been out on the streets and meet a few people, one lad is serving in the Navy and lost his father at a young age. He was really touched to hear the Christian message and let me pray with him, he speaks with his chaplain when times are tough. I spent about 15 minutes with another bloke who just hadn't thought much about it and had loads of questions, he has agreed to come on a course in the New Year, we exchanged numbers. He really wants to investigate it, you can't ask more than that.
One of the common things we do, I certainly did, was say I'll get around to it one day, do you know there are 150,000 people who die everyday, I bet the majority of them said the same thing...
We have a course coming up at my church on th 27th January to ask questions and examine the evidence, why not get around to it? If you are not local then I am sure there is a church near you doing the same?

Genius!

Some quotes from Einstein you might like, he is often quoted as being an atheist, I'll let you make up your own mind...

“In the view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views”
“We know nothing about [God, and the world] at all. All our knowledge is but the knowledge of schoolchildren. Possible we shall know a little more than we know now. But the real nature of things, that we shall never know, never.”
“I see a pattern, but my imagination cannot picture the maker of the pattern. I see a clock, but I cannot envision the clockmaker. The human mind is unable to conceive of the four dimensions so how can it conceive of a God before whom a thousand years and a thousand dimensions are as one.”
When asked about Christianity he said “As a child I received instruction in both the Bible and the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene.”
When asked about the historical existence of Jesus he said “Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.”
About the Creator’s existence he said “I’m not an atheist. I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvellously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws.”
“What separates me from most so-called atheists is a feeling of utter humility toward the unattainable secrets of the harmony of the cosmos.”
He wrote in a letter “The fanatical atheists, are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who – in their grudge against traditional religion as ‘the opium of the masses’ – cannot hear the music of the spheres.”
In other words, because of their hatred of traditional religion, they cannot see the genius of God’s handiwork in creation.

Salvation

Had a topsy turvy couple of days and the pair of slippers someone gave me on Friday are quite apt, Mr Bump!
Friday I was part of a youth event called Amplify (http://www.amplify-uk.com/) and gave the talk. It was around what salvation is, a word we don't often use. Salvation means saving from evil, a good picture is a crushed car that is taken from the compound and restored. That is exactly what Christ does, he takes our lives and restores us, bringing back together the most important relationship of all the one we were made for...knowing God. Don't you want to know God, I promise you that if you come to him humbly through his Son Jesus Christ then you can know him!! Wow. You know we spend weeks investigating what car to buy, months looking into what house to buy, years looking into what partner to be with, yet when it comes to our eternity, our relationship with God we spend next to know time! Make this Christmas the start of that investigation, you will not regret it!
There are among other things 5 clear ways that God is trying to shout out to us, 1. his death on the cross, 2. Christians, 3. Creation, 4. Your conscience, 5. rising from the dead...drop me a line with any questions

Empathy

I think it is so important to put yourself in other peoples shoes, even just for a moment. I therefore want to extend that to anyone who is not yet a Christian. I know what it was like from the other side, these weirdo's keep going on about a God, these weird smiles all over their faces, Holier than thou attitudes (or so it appears!) Can I implore you to put these aside and simply examine the information without throwing it to one side thinking you know what people are going to say...

One of the strong pieces of evidence for a God is your own conscience, the bible says that God has written right and wrong on your heart. Con means with and science means knowledge, therefore when we do wrong things we do them with knowledge. That's the feeling of guilt you get when you do something wrong.

Now at this point people often say to me that their parents taught them right from wrong and it has nothing to do with God. Let me answer that by asking a question (true politician style) if they taught you to lie or to steal would you say that was right or wrong, obviously we would say wrong. At this point people say well then society teaches us right from wrong. I use the same analorgy and take someone like Hitler for example who taught his society that killing jews was an acceptable thing to do, our hearts cry out that this is wrong and we demand justice. Therefore if it is not our parents, not our society that teaches us where does this internal demand for justice come from. I don't see many monkeys, gorillas, fish or any animals with courts of law, spanking for their children or forms of justice. This is because the bible is very clear that God has written it on our hearts, God says that man will be without excuse. He also says that man has been given a rescue plan, will you investigate it?