Guinea Pigs

This Christmas Chatterbox and Squidge got some guinea pigs.

When we got them both they were tiny little things.

To the left is Cookie - Squidge's guinea pig, to the right is Jelly Bean - Chatterbox's guinea pig (so named because Chatterbox thinks their poos look like jelly beans, lol)

Squige's guinea pig is now HUGE, well that sounds a little dramatic.  When we got them both we presumed they were brothers.  But one has grown so much bigger than the other.

Jelly Bean to the left, Cookie to the right

They LOVE cucumber and squeak and squeak at me if their daily food doesn't contain cucumber.  I'm wondering if they need to go into some kind of rodent rehab to get over their obvious controlling addiction. :D

Because it's so chilly we are keeping them indoors in a cage, when the weather warms up a bit they'll be outside in their two storey guinea pig mansion.

Because they are indoors they drive Boots a little crazy, she has launched herself at the cage a few times.  The guinea pigs just sit and look at her out of the corner of their eye whilst munching away on their din dins.

Boots in a total state of collapse. :)

"Which do you choose?...

Should I come with a rod to punish you, or should I come with love and a gentle spirit?"  (1 Cor 4:21) 

It is interesting...or disturbing...well both, that I come across many Christian writers who claim that corporal punishment is an aid to the spiritual upbringing of children.  That it will 'drive out sin'.

One of the scriptures quoted in line with this idea is:


Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell. ~ Proverbs 23:13-14

I always wonder about such Christians.  Why do they believe that corporal punishment will 'drive sin out' of a child? That it will save a child's soul from hell?  Why would a Christian believe this?  On the one hand we say that salvation only comes through faith in Jesus Christ, but for some reason if you're under the age of 18 then salvation comes by being beaten with a stick?  Mmm, no...

The only Rod that can saves souls is the Rod of Jesse - Jesus.  He took the punishment we deserve, therefore because of Him we are saved from punishment.  So why do we add extra punishment for children?

We are under the new covenant.  The writer of Proverbs is writing under the old covenant.  Why do some parents think that children are different than adults in this sense?  Children need the saving grace of God in Jesus Christ.  Corporal punishment will not save their soul from hell.

I also read often that corporal punishment apparently encourages first time obedience.  The idea is that ensuring first time obedience to parents is an essential step in training a child to obey the Lord.  But again, we are under the new covenant.  Our obedience to God comes not from physical chastisement but from our belief in Christ.  Our doing of good works comes not from fear of punishment but from our love of God because He first loved us and expressed that love by sending His only Son to die for us.

Thus we cannot 'train' a child to be obedient to God.  Physical chastisement may mean that a child acts obedient, but God is interested in their hearts.  How can their hearts be changed?  By Jesus. 

I pray that my children will obey me because they honour me, not because they are afraid of me; most of all I pray they will be obedient to God because they love Jesus.

Dear brothers and sisters, if another believer is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path. (Galatians 6:1)

Weekend

We had a bit of a silly Saturday.  When we were eventually ready to go out for the day we decided to go visit a picturesque village about an hour away from our house...but when we got there it was three cottages and that's all. Not much to see.

Noticing a sign advertising a local stately home which was a short drive away and had a restaurant we thought we'd try there, but it was shut!  I did get this lovely picture in the gardens though:

So by now we are starting to get very hungry for some lunch.  We drove to a farm that takes visitors, but it turned out it would be £28 for us and all it seemed to be was a muddy field with three very fed-up looking donkeys.  It certainly didn't look worth the money.

Faint with hunger...LOL...we drove to a nearby town to visit a museum, but we couldn't find any parking.  When we did eventually park up we realised that we weren't allowed to park there and the museum was now just a restaurant which we couldn't stay to eat in because we couldn't find anywhere to park legally!

Decidedly fed-up we got back into our car drove around and found an ASDA, bought some snacks and then drove to a shopping centre where we had lunch/tea.

Talk about a waste of a day! :)  Better luck next Saturday I hope.

Prayer of Jesus

Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do. All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” ~Luke 10:21-22

Good morning.

It's ten past eleven and I'm still in my jammies. It's lovely.  The girls are playing Mario Kart on the Wii. In a bit we're going to go out for the day, to where I'm not sure.

It's been half-term here.  We've had a nice week.  As you know I've been struggling with things and it's been an effort to motivate myself.  But once I'm out and about I feel much better.  It's just when I'm home all I want to do is go to bed.  My doctor said that leaving my church is like a grieving process, leaving the friends and community I once knew - particularly as we are essentially shunned now (there are very few who have stayed in contact - funny how 'love' can go so quickly).  If it is a grieving process I think I'm going through 'depression' stage, the next stage is 'acceptance' and I'm not sure I what that would mean in my situation.

It's more than a grieving process though.  I was so enmeshed in the philosophy of the church, I had put the Pastor up there on a pedestal, I thought it was the ONLY church in the world worth going to.  When we left all these props had gone, after a while I had a terror that it was all fake.  Everything is a lie.  I remember curling up in a ball in the bathroom and weeping because I had put the Pastor in the position of God.  I had made him my mediator and not Jesus.

But Jesus has never left me, I know that my repentance is real, I can move on now.

I started to go through a Bible study written by someone with a very strict set of beliefs about what the Bible teaches. I wanted to follow God's rules, not someone else's. I figured if it was totally scripturally based then the opinions of the man wouldn't sully the teaching. I suppose it was a reaction against all the times I heard, "God has told me XYZ and you must follow it" and the church was controlled by it, controlled by another man's relationship with God, controlled by another man's vision, it was almost like second hand faith...Brennan Manning describes it well in his book The Ragamuffin Gospel:

"We must never allow the authority of books, institutions, or leaders to replace the authority of knowing Jesus Christ personally and directly.  When the religious views of others interpose between us and the primary experience of Jesus as the Christ, we become unconvicted and unpersuasive travel agents handing out brochures to places we have never visited".

But I soon realised that this Bible study [I'd started hoping to counteract (to unlearn if you will) what I'd learned under a man] was a man's interpretation of the Bible.  And boy was he into rules, he made up rules that weren't even in the Bible. He took Biblical teaching and extrapolated it to include things that aren't actually mentioned, or even suggested, in the text. It was a study full of fear not freedom in Christ. It was a bit like the gezeirah of Judaism:

"A gezeirah is a law instituted by the rabbis to prevent people from accidentally violating a Torah mitzvah. We commonly speak of a gezeirah as a "fence" around the Torah. For example, the Torah commands us not to work on Shabbat, but a gezeirah commands us not to even handle an implement that you would use to perform prohibited work (such as a pencil, money, a hammer), because someone holding the implement might forget that it was Shabbat and perform prohibited work. The word is derived from the root Gimel-Zayin-Reish, meaning to cut off or to separate." From Judaism 101.

I don't want to put up fences.  I want to boldly approach the throne of God, knowing that I am safe under the covering of Jesus, not rules.

Anyway, I've totally gone off at a tangent with this post!  LOL.

So, it's snowing now, which may mean our day out needs to be nearer home that we planned.

Hope you have a great day.

Here's a few pics from a recent walk:

Looks a bit ethereal with the sunlight coming through the trees

Aww, Chatterbox

Beef lasagne...haha (if you're British you'll get that)

Come on Squidge! Leave horsey alone we need to go!  "Awwww"

 Have a super day! xx

p.s. BLOOMIN' spam!  I don't want to put comment moderation on at the minute and as for word verification it's a nightmare! Perhaps if I stop anonymous comments? I dunno.

Oh dear

Messing with some posts and republished and they've redated themselves to today. Doh!  I'm going to move them, lol.

*Shakes fist at Blogger*

Now I must stop messing with my blog and do something productive.

Hope you're having a good day! :)

It's been an OK day

I've been for a walk.
Been to the doctors - bared my heart to my GP, she was very nice.  Husband made me go, he could see I was slightly falling apart.
I'm going to get over all this church stuff, but it's going to be slow.  I can't rush anything.

Unlearning is so much harder than learning.

Couldn't go to church last Sunday.  The panic attacks were ridiculous.  Hoping I can make it next Sunday.

I'll perhaps share more about the cult we have left, at some point...I don't even want to call it a church...

Hugs

Michael Finnegan

Begin again!

[are you familiar with the rhyme? Google it! LOL :)]

This is where I am with my Christian walk.  I feel I'm back at the beginning.  But unlike Michael Finnegan I'm hoping this is my only begin again!  Having left a cultish church I am determined to get back to basics.  Right back to Jesus. No more mediator other than Christ.

Something that has excited me recently is the story Mephibosheth.

David asked, “Is there anyone still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness for Jonathan’s sake?”

Now there was a servant of Saul’s household named Ziba. They summoned him to appear before David, and the king said to him, “Are you Ziba?”

“At your service,” he replied.

The king asked, “Is there no one still alive from the house of Saul to whom I can show God’s kindness?”

Ziba answered the king, “There is still a son of Jonathan; he is lame in both feet.”

“Where is he?” the king asked.

Ziba answered, “He is at the house of Makir son of Ammiel in Lo Debar.”

So King David had him brought from Lo Debar, from the house of Makir son of Ammiel. When Mephibosheth son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, came to David, he bowed down to pay him honour.

David said, “Mephibosheth!”

“At your service,” he replied.

“Don’t be afraid,” David said to him, “for I will surely show you kindness for the sake of your father Jonathan. I will restore to you all the land that belonged to your grandfather Saul, and you will always eat at my table.”

Mephibosheth bowed down and said, “What is your servant, that you should notice a dead dog like me?”

~2 Samuel 9: 1-8

Why did David offer such favour to Mephibosheth?  Because of a covenant he made with Jonathan, Mephibosheth's father:

And Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself ~ 1 Samuel 18:3.

How does that relate to me? God shows kindness to me for the sake of the new covenant made in Christ's blood.  I say, "Who am I that God would notice a dead dog like me?"  God says, "You will always receive My favour and you will always eat at My table".  What did I do to merit this? Nothing, it was all done on the cross of Jesus Christ, and because of that I will always eat at the table of the Lord. So simple. Rest for the soul.

The simplicity of the gospel can be lost in many churches, may I never forget it.

Happy day.

It was lovely to see people still reading here!  It made me happy to see the comments, lol. :)

As I said, I haven't blogged here for a while for personal reasons. It's been good to take time out, to get my head straight about a few things, to take a little private time at a 'secret' blog.  But I don't want to delete this one.  I've taken time out from blogging in the past, for various reasons, and deleted old blogs and have always, after some time, regretted it.

So I've made a decision [long pause in the style of Pop Idol final] and I'm going to keep this blog up.  How often I'll blog I don't know, things are busy, busy.

I've been working through a lot of things.

I've learned a lot of things.

Life has been such a transition since leaving our church last June.

It is hard to describe...but the legacy of being part of a cultish environment has taken it's toll spiritually, emotionally and even physically.

But it's been beautiful to rediscover Jesus all over again.

Freedom is a wonderful thing.

p.s. I loved this preach by Adrian Rogers:

Freedom from the Performance Trap

I'm baaaack!  Well, not quite.  I took some time away from this blog for personal reasons.  I might post here again, I might not.  I've been writing privately elsewhere, but I do have affection for this blog.

I wonder if anyone still reads here? :)