Why Blog?!

I cannot claim to be a gifted writer, and I can certainly not claim that I have anything interesting to say! What I can claim is that this blog marks a fresh start for me.

A few months ago I was asked the following question, "Do you know God intimately?" At first I was a little offended by this question, but this question has penetrated deep into my heart. Although I can say with no doubts that I love God and of course I could know and Love God more and more (I'm sure that will be true until the day I go to be with Him forever)...  but this question was what I needed to hear. Over the past few months I have certainly had a renewed desire to deepen my relationship with God. The question that penetrated deep into my heart has made be carefully think through a few home truths.

This summer has already been action packed; a week camping with school, a week helping on a camp in Romania and a week on holiday in Madeira. In these few weeks I have had time to think, read the Bible, pray and come to a few decisions.

Something I haven't spent as much time doing recently as I would like to is talking about what really matters in life. It seems so easy to talk about random and mundane things rather than things that matter to us. I also miss reading Christian books and discussing them with friends. Something else I have neglected is actually thinking. And so on the plane on the way back from Madeira this afternoon... with nothing much else to do (as I flew alone), was to... think. Going through my mind was, 'What am I going to change to ensure that I commit to deepening my relationship with God?' 'What changes do I need to make to ensure Jesus is ruling my life and not me?' I wanted to think through what it means not just to know about God, but to truly know God. Of course there were the obvious answers, work on my 'quiet times' etc, but I wanted to also think about where I waste time and things I miss about being with the Christian friends in Durham (If your a friend not from Durham... not be offended!) who challenged me and encouraged me to grow in my relationship with God (Partly this will be because we've known each other for 7ish years).

One thing I decided to do, is to create a blog, posting some of my thoughts. In some ways to help me think things through and to get friends thoughts on the issues I'm baffled by. I also hope that maybe something that I write, that has encouraged me, might encourage others. I aim for this to be very different to facebook. One of my biggest procrastination tools has been facebook, and so as soon as I got home this afternoon I deactivated my account. Hopefully now, instead of writing random and pointless comments, blogging will help me to say something a little bit more useful. I also hope that now, instead of returning from work and spending time scanning facebook I will use my time more effectively, developing relationships face to face rather than virtually and more importantly to spend some of what was wasted time, now reading the Bible more, praying more, reading Christian books etc.

But its not just facebook, I'm going to ditch watching certain TV programmes (including Eastenders!)... not because TV (or facebook for this matter) are bad but because for me and my relationship with God, they are not the best...

So here begins a new chapter...