How much do you have to hate someone to not tell them about Jesus?

So this week as been one hectic but probably the best week of Pais so far! started off with having two days off for half term,  so was very much relaxation plus catching up on work which i haven't done, then by Wednesday last week me and my Burnley team traveled down to Blackpool to help out with there M4 Weekender! this was AMAZING we lead the worship as a team, and it went really really really well! i was so pleased with it and God really showed up and made himself clear to everyone! at one point we were supposed to be doing 30mins of worship, but it turned into an hour just cause God took over and lead the meeting! had some great talks with lots of the young people down there and was just great to see how they are getting on and seeing them fired up for God! then i came home on Saturday! and on Sunday it was my Baptism! with a girl called Lydia! and it was amazing! the church was so packed extra chairs had to be brought in... was great to see all my family and friends from all my old churchs and was just an amazing service!

      Last week i didnt have much time to do one of mmy parables so this week im starting up again by doing 'New Cloth on and Old Garment' and this is found in  

matthew9:16

mark2:21

Luke 5:36

 So if your free and would like to get involved with reading this with me then please feel free to :D  this week is going to be amazing just lots of cool work to do! and on Sunday i get to go down and meet Neil Wilson who is a worship leader for something called fuel! and i get to spend the day with him and the band and just interact with them and learn from him in how he leads the band spiritually and musical is going to be a great week! also on Friday at my church i have something called 'Picking up the Pais' which is a family event run by me and CC in which were doing a quiz about Pais and things :D

so the title of this! well i dont really want to speak about it but i just want to add a link to you and encourage you to watch it and have a look at what you think about it! its very sad what he says and i hope like me it fires you up!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhG-tkQ_Q2w

Thankyouuuu 

The Parable of The Foolish Builder!

OK wow this week has gone so fast, honestly feels like yesterday i wrote the last one of these! its been such a busy yet cool week! every night this week i have been out going to some people's from church's houses for dinner and then helping at Kids Club then finally at Echo! so going through the week, i had my first KFC in a long long time which was Wonder full!! then i had a great catch up with my line manager at Mount Zion! were we discussed all about what i was getting up to right now, what else i need to get on with, to check everything i was doing was OK and just to see what else we can do to help the church! is Wonder full meeting up with Her and is great just to talk! then i helped at Life Kids which is the Kids club at Life church! this week was Jungle theme like im  celebrity so we had lots of games were you had to gather stars and luckily this week i had all the nice kids so was great and FUN!!!!! then Finally we ended this great week with a chance to get youth groups from all over East Lancashire to get together at Life church and i managed to lead the Worship at that! which was a great opportunity and went well!! Then Finally Today (Sunday) i was playing in the Band again which again was a great thing to do! On Saturday i had my first experience of a motorbike, my host drives one so i was on the back and we were driving around for an hour was great when he was hitting top speeds and was a whole bunch of Fun :)



The Parable of the Foolish builder....  i found when i was reading this passage this week that this story is so well known, its probably one of the most popular parables there is, and im sure there isnt one Christian who do-sent know this off by heart!  but yet, ive heard this story 100000000 of times yet i havent heard this story! its one of these things that happens, if you hear something enough times you remember it but you brush over the meaning because 'you know it' sort of thing! so although i know this parable.... i haven't really thought about it before. So i was reading it from Matthew because i loved the way that Book portrayed the passage!  OK so firstly Jesus says 'anyone who listens to my teaching and obeys it is wise' so reading that you know that what you about to hear inst just about listening to Jesus and agree with what he is saying its about living what Jesus is saying! (this may sound like the simplest of analogies youve heard but sometimes its good to go back to basics) so jesus is talking about living a life Like him not just agreeing with him. So he continues by saying ' like a person who builds a house on solid rock' the great thing about Jesus is, he gives us pictures to associate things with! Jesus could simply say 'Anyone who listens to me is wise' and end there but know it shows how important this message is that he is giving it to us in an easy way hes drawing it out for us!  its like he's made the food, is dished it up, hes cut it all, hes put it on the spoon, hes moved it to our mouths... he's done all the hard work, now all we have to do is listen and do what he's saying. just have to open our mouths and eat the food! so if you listen to me and obey me then your like a wise man.. BUT  ( a big But) if you listen to my word and dont obey me your like a man who builds his house on sand! OK im sure we have all seen pictures of this were you build a house on some rock and its ok then build it on sand and its not OK so i wont bother spelling the picture out to you! but i think we can go deeper... its like church, i think this passage maybe meant for Church, listening about Gods word every week yet not living it, your  fool.. but listen and apply it your wise!! i just encourage you to read james 1 v 19-26 this amplifies Jesus message about listening and doing! i just want to end this by adding something in which i read this week...  me and My Burnley team are doing a study on ACTS and this week was Acts 4! and in that it says at bs 11 'the stone that you builders rejected ha now become your corner stone' so if you look into depth about a cornerstone is the main piece of a building without it there is no building! and in this passage its called jesus the corner stone!   and i just want to link that into this parable! so Now i want to challenge you with two things.... One  Be a wise man build your house on the rock.. listen To Jesus and OBEY him and build you house on rock... but also when you build your house make sure Jesus is the cornerstone.. make sure everything you do is based around him.. so that you have a strong foundations everywhere... make Jesus the center of Everything...


So this week i have monday tuesday off which should be nice.. then wednesday me and my team travel to Blackpool for 4 days to lead the worship down at there M4 conference, which is a chance to inspire and send young people out into the communities and school to make them missionaries... so that should be GREAT!!!!! and then im ending the week with just a little visit home i dunno i think i might get baptized not sure yet ;) so yeah great week ahead :D


Prayer points.....

that the two days off rest ARE days of rest.. that i dont get to bogged down with things i need to do and actually enjoy the days off...
That the conference will go great.. that every young person who comes will be inspired to promote the love of JEsus in there areas
that my baptism with go swimmingly :D

The Lamp of the Body

Another week gone by! its so sad when i look at my yearly calender and see that im like 1 1/Th through my Pais year! this month has gone so quickly!!! so this week i have been doing a few things! Saturday night i went down and watch a IONA concert down in Bolton! and if you have never heard them or seen then i recommend it! there some of the most talented musicians ive ever seen! this week i also started helping at Life Kids! which is the young peoples group At Life Church! (like Fusion in Oswestry) was very hectic but fun so looking forward to that this week again :D  I also lead the young peoples Sunday school this week again which was awesome! decided just to have a chat with the young people and was just cool getting to know them all more personally! schools went well.. in our hard school we decided to go for a drama and see how that would work and they responded so so so so well! which was a blessing! and the rough school listened with no interruptions at our talk and was just a very good week! we have now finish our series on Identity with one school and have two weeks left in another, so after this week there will be alot of prep deciding what to do as out next topic!

         So for those of you who read my blog last week i have just started a study on Parables! where im taking on one parable a week looking in depth at it and how it works for me! when i was spending time reading i found that my favorite expression of the parable was in Luke 11v2 in the NIV which calls it 'The Lamp of the Body' now what i didn't know about Luke was that Luke was a Doctor and traveled around with Paul, and he wrote both Luke and Acts, he also gathered all his information from the other gospels and from people who were at the place at the time! he wasn't a Jew but a Gentile and was interested in healings and facts! so that's why his book is more detailed. whats interesting is half off Luke is actually in mark! so he has copied alot! so you now kind of know the background in which this was written, Luke and Paul travelling around Europe together and gathering stories and talking to people to find out more about Jesus and Spread his news! so when he speaks about the Lamp of the Body it is saying 'Your' eyes are the Lamp, so your eyes are the thing which lights your body up so if you let what you see be good then you whole body is good. (this goes back to my blog on Rubbish in Rubbish Out) so let your eyes light your body up by allowing yourself to see good things and not and not bad things! when you search through the other books and what they say about it, it sort of moves on from this message! so Luke is saying make your eyes a lamp and make sure you inside are bright! so then you read that, then you also use what it says is to let your light out, spread your light! so you need to 1) make yourself bright, rubbish in rubbish out, good in good out, Jesus in Jesus out... then you need to 2) let it out... spread what you have inside like it says if you have a lamp why would you hide it, that's not what its there for!  so for me this has been an important message for me... let good into my life.. then proclaim the good to other people... ! what i get out of that as well is in church.... you can go to church every week and receive and receive but then never share what your receiving so there just taking! then you have some people who just give.. its a fact that 20% of a congregation does 80% of the work so you have people who just give give give but never receive! that's not good either you need to have a balance of both! heard a very good preacher at my Church this week and he was saying what harm is there in church in asking if you can help?? the worst that can happen is they say no thank you were OK! if you think you can help, ASK!!!!  maybe the challenge God is giving you is the challenge of asking?   

      If you have any of your own thoughts on this passage please email me on luke.al.thomas@gmail.com or comment underneath! so this week i am studying the next parable on my list which is ' A wise man builds his house on a rock'  which is found in  MATHEW 7V24-27 AND LUKE 6V 47-49 so get reading :D

this week is a hectic week.... alot of work to do, am out every night of the week so no spare time! have the possibility of leading worship on Friday at our once a month youth vent getting around 80 young people... then preparation for when me and my team go down to Blackpool to lead the worship at there 3 day conference with young people! so shall be an exiting but tiring week!

so if you can just pray for that sort of paragraph above.. all my prayer points are in there :D get reading the parable and i hope to hear from you with your thoughts :D 

Parables

So its been over a week since i last did a blog, life has been very hectic so am just trying to catch up on a lot of things! so we have been going into schools all the last two weeks, in our first school we managed to get about 12 young people in the lunch club! the second we got about 25-30young people and the fourth around 50! so the numbers are going great so far with every school! just all we are struggling with at the moment is the people who are actually attending, specifically the school of 50 as many of the young people want to be there but many are just there so we are finding it a bit challenging at this current moment, but we believe God will keep the people he wants to touch and we are just praying that God will give us the right words to say so that we can bless all the people that want to be there! so in terms of Church we have finally got some things up and running we have organised some sort of event to happen once a week on a Friday with the church, so now we are just praying that we can get the young people along to it, so its all about advertising it properly and in the right way. i have been going in and out of all the Sunday school groups at Church as well so has been awesome just getting to know all the young people in the church.
      So parables.... well today im starting on a topic in which im going to be doing my devotionals. the topic as you have guessed is Parables, so having done a lot of research and this may cause issues with some people but ive calculated there is 40parables so every week i will be doing a Study on each one, and will hopefully give you my opinion on them, and if your reading this and want to get involved in it with me then please do this week i will be studying the parable of 'the lamp under the basket' and it is found in Matt 5:14-16; Mk 4:21,22; Lk 8:16,17; Lk 11:33-36 
so please feel free to read it with me and study it in depth with me and see what opinions and thoughts you get out of it! i truly believe that each parable inst written with a  stone cold right answer, i think they are there to be adapted to each of us so that each of us can use it in our life, although the core message may be the same, thoughts around it will be different for each of us!


OK so prayer points

- prayer for the young people who are just turning up at our lunch clubs and want to be there just to mess around and distract others
-prayer for the young people at mount zion that the right young people will come on the Friday events which me and alot of people at church are putting hard work into