Jeff Lucas is funny. FACT

Tonight by random choice my friend, Lee-Anne, and I ended up going to CFC's service and when we got there discovered it was the end of some weekend conference and the place was bunged. I'll be honest and say that I was just like "oh lee-anne it'll go on forever let's just go get a coffee!" I am glad that she wasn't listening because when we got a seat and the guy started talking he said that Jeff Lucas was speaking. Now at first I was like, that's funny coz mum and dad have books that I have read by a guy with the same name, and his books are hilarious but it won't be him. Someone who writes BOOKS doesn't come to church in Belfast, why that would be ridiculous! So much to my surprise and delight, it was the actual Jeff Lucas!

One word. Hilarious.

.....or Gifted, that could be another one. Either way I was captivated by him speaking from the very start. I even took notes! I haven't  taken notes during a talk in a long time. Just thought I'd share what I got from it.

People are often led to believe that the will of God is going to be something you don't want to do......I guess people are thinking well there was Jonah, he didn't want to go to Nineveh where God wanted him to go and look what happened. This is not true at all! We need to unlearn the bad ideas of God. His will is not necessarily going to be all the stuff we don't want to do! In fact, when we ponder and pray over things we learn about what God does want and wills for us to do. We are allowed to like God's will for us! To be fair He can give us a choice, ie free will, and He will use us whatever choice we make and providing we pray about it, we hopefully go in the direction he wants us to go. For example, He will bring people into our lives perhaps unexpectedly, answer our prayers and reveal His will for our lives. Trust me, I know that one. Prayer puts a shield of divine protection around us, so providing we pray we are less likely to be tempted in the wrong direction.

Anyway so Jeff was talking about Abraham and about how if you look in the book of Hebrews chapter 11, there is no mention of Abraham being remembered for the one who made mistakes. We should not define ourselves by our mistakes then we just get caught up on looking back instead of looking ahead. You are never going to get anywhere in life if you keep thinking to yourself  "I have fallen down, and I can't get back up." Change your motto if that's what you think!
Jeff made 5 points about God's generosity from Abraham's story:
1) God gives Himself to us  Whereever your life takes you, God is with you on the journey and He will be there regardless of the outcome
2) God wants to bless us - We need to ask him and believe that He can still do the humanly impossible because we know He is mighty and if we have the faith, all things are possible.
3) God gives us the blessing of character
4) God makes us a blessing - we should therefore go and be "fixers" and not consumers just taking everything but  instead take the blessing and share it in our community and the world
5) God gives us grace for the journey - God doesn't taunt us with our failures but celebrates the good things that have happened.

Of course, the above points were all illustrated wonderfully with hilarious stories. If you have never read any of Jeff's books I would highly recommend you do and you'll see his humour.
Afterwards Lee-Anne and I were talking and I had been telling her about some stuff I'd been thinking about and had happened in the past and still concerned me. She read this quote from Helen Keller to me "When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us"
 "STOP LOOKING AT THE CLOSED DOOR! Focus on the open door that is giving you the happiness, this door has opened to you for a reason" said Lee-Anne. She is right and I am thankful for friends who can remind me of that and keep me accountable.

Anyway, that is all. I just wanted to write it all down from tonight because I really enjoyed it and if you are reading this, I hope you got something from it. I love talking about God stuff mainly because I love God. I should do it more often with those whom I don't talk about it often enough with.

Jeff Lucas is my friend on Facebook now. I feel quite cool to have such a funny friend. Enough from me,

Night all