I am not the Robot Tourist

I just finished reading John Eldredge's book 'Wild At Heart' and I loved it so much that this is more of a summary than a review. Men, read it now (women too, or you can read 'Captivated' by Stasi and John Eldredge) because it will challenge you and men are made for challenges. The sentences are short. The language is stirring. The message is rousing. Men need to be real men!

All those men reading this post who know Jesus, shout 'I am a man! I am alive in Christ!' You know what I'm talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3p1f0-qgZI&mode=related&search=

Good. Now do something about it. Join the battle of good and evil, live the adventure of a relationship with God, fight for a beauty.

Eldredge's message is not primarily to do crazy stuff, but to be the man God made you to be. Men should not be obnoxious, but there are lessons from nature. A bullock may not be as dangerous as a bull, but it cannot create new life, it is sterile because it has been castrated. Now think about the fact that God made man in his image. Read the Bible, is God predictable? Does He not command an awesome respect? Jesus grew up a carpenter. Carpenters didn't have fancy power tools 2000 years ago. No offence to the producers of the Jesus film, but twenty-odd years of chiselling, sawing, drilling and hauling lumber would have produced a rather different looking man from the actor portraying Him in that film.

The problem with men is not that they fight too much, but that they fight for themselves, if at all. Can you imagine Adam in the garden of Eden? He was there at Woman's side when she was tempted, but he didn't fight for her. He didn't even speak up. Maybe he was afraid of getting on the wrong side of Woman, but whatever happened, ever since then, when it has come to the battle that really mattered a man has either fought only for himself or given up. That has led to generations of men with imperfect or non-existent fathers. That's in the past now, no matter how you feel about your father, he can only bless you and train you so much. Your real strength, your real masculinity comes from God.

Regarding the beauty: a woman cannot make you a man. Again, only God can make you a man. Be careful what you wish for, because God might give you the woman before you are ready and worst of all that may turn out the worse for the woman than you. One quote Eldredge uses is from Bly, “What does it mean when a man falls in love with a radiant face across the room? It may mean that he has some soul work to do. His soul is the issue. Instead of pursuing the woman and trying to get her alone... he needs to go alone himself, perhaps to a mountain cabin, for three months, write poetry...”. Do you need the woman or God? Find your strength in God first, then you will have something to offer your woman she cannot get anywhere else. Earn her, win her even. A woman needs a purpose to be caught up in. The best marriages I know are where the man and woman are a team for the Gospel. The man has a true help-meet, not someone to tame him, not someone to cook and clean, but a woman, a partner, a fellow warrior even, someone he needs.

In summary: carry out the mission God has given you and don't give up! If you don't know your mission, find out! God wants you to find him, He has a mission only you can do and this mission is in a battle. Once you join this battle though, it will hot up because the enemy is dangerous and the cost may seem too high. But be strong and of a good courage. God made you for it. He knows you can win.

So that was a summary of the book. What about me? Well I prayed my most dangerous prayer yet. At 26, I asked God to initiate me into true manhood. I am also learning what seems to me now the hard way that I may have many hard lessons to learn before I am ready for a life with my Eve.

I know that's encroaching towards 750 words, but I felt led

I BOUGHT A LAPTOP! I finally decided to go mad and drop £1300 on a Black Apple MacBook 2GHz C2Duo/1GB RAM/120GB HDD with iWork '06, neoprene case and Apple Care (I figured if I can afford the insurance I might as well get it). I know Vista is coming and I could get it as a free (+shipping) upgrade with a Dell 640[0|m], but I thought I'd try something new. I am concerned about the glossy screen, but many arstechnica correspondents think Apple's glossy is either, better, as good, not so bad as other marques or not worse than other screens.

Now I can use my own laptop at church/youth fellowship/etc where I might need a projector or just an horrifically expensive photo album! I can also try out objective-C development as I just had an idea to write a program that you can use as a prayer diary. I shall call it 'Intercede', if I ever implement it. Plus I get Keynote, Pages, Garageband, iPhoto, etc and the opportunity to pay the Leopard tax. I may also try Bootcamp with a seemingly legal copy of XPPro I have lying around (SP1a unfortunately). I intend to keep my trusty Athlon XP 1800+ Win2k system, which still runs fine, especially since I switched from Avast to AVG, it just takes ages to boot and shut down.

Next up is a big shout out to Thinktoy for his/her excellent Thinknology Podcast. I have raved about Dao's ska podcast and Hospital Records' drum 'n' bass podcast, but I almost forgot that I had downloaded most of the Thinknology casts and was thoroughly enjoying the big beat/electronica goodness. A few more breakbeats would be nice to get the energy levels up, but as it is Thinktoy has produced an almost easy listening big beat/electronica sound, which is both no bad thing and an achievement. Thinktoy, please do some more podcasts! Your last was July 2006.

Finally, The Mandate 2006. The theme this year was grace, especially the fact that God's grace is sufficient for any man to overcome the things, like addiction (to anything: porn, drugs, etc) that can stop a man living in the way God intended, but like any addiction, you need to want to change and sometimes you need the support of those around you.

This year the Mandate had a mime artist (Steve Murray) instead of the three actors who usually perform the hilarious dramas the Mandate is known for. At first I was skeptical of the value of mime over the usual comedy routines, but when you see Steve Murray in action and acting along to music you realise the extraordinary gifts God has given him. His face is amazingly expressive (I'm glad he didn't wear the Marcel Marceau costume though) and the grace and control he has over his movements is something to behold. Make no mistake, what he does requires extreme concentration, planning and discipline.

I was also glad that the last time I was at the Mandate (2003 I think) I wrote on the comment card that glossy paper was not easy to take notes on. This year the pages in the handbook for note-taking were matte and much easier to write on.

It's hard to pick a favourite part of this year's Mandate, since the mime was a revelation, and the sermons, seminar and interview were excellent, but it was the praise time at the end that most moved me. Granted the band was technically brilliant (although a bit more definition in the bass guitar, a bit more hammond, a boron and an accordian would have been nice), but it wasn't their technical skill that did it. Somehow during Amazing Grace I was able to sing harmonies I didn't think I had in me. Most amazingly, though, during These are the Days of Elijah, I had a real sense of God actually coming to Belfast riding on the clouds and got a tiny glimpse of the Customs House Square end of Belfast's Oxford street (don't ask me why there, I don't know!) bathed in God's glory, the way it could be. Then I thought of John Piper's sermons at this year's New Horizon and realised the vast and painful disconnect between how the world should be and how it is due to our sin and God's curse - and I could not distinguish between the tears of joy for seeing God's glory and the tears of anguish over the world's sin and it's separation from God. But I thank God for even such a fleeting vision of His glory.

hopefully my next post will be written using my MacBook and that I'll get time to blog about and to post some photos of my trip to Morocco.