battling "self"

Will there ever be a time when we will be completely at peace with ourselves, with our walk with God, with our motives, etc? I hope so, but I've not convinced myself of this yet.

A great woman of God and I were discussing this subject last december, and the question arose. "Is God enough? Is He enough to fill that void, that empty space that lies deep within ourselves?" (Like Paul, allow me to speak foolishly for a bit.) Don't get me wrong. Life is good, I have come a little ways since that evening in early october/01, but I'm not exactly where I want to be, on the inside. I know God should be enough. I've no doubts that He's not enough, but, I don't feel my spirit completely filled yet. If we are born again, new creations, etc, why do these feelings persist? Why did so much junk fall off me in Oct/01, but not all these feelings?

That woman of God then asked, "I wonder if the giants, like Bill Johnson, or Rolland Baker, or Benny Hinn are filled to where they've no recurring feelings of inner longing?" We weren't talking of spiritual hunger, or desperation, etc; but of something more pressing, something more "un"Godly.

We couldn't give each other a clear cut answer, but we both agreed that we love God, and that God loves us, and that alone should be enough.

JEHOVAH-JIREH

To have a piece of land to call your very own is fairly sweet. In the 28 yrs I've been on this Island I have accumulated very little. No car, no house, no wife or kids, not many friends, etc etc etc. I spent the first 24 yrs of my life pursuing that which only brought condemnation and misery. Live and learn, I guess. Maybe God kept me from acquiring all that to bring me to the very place I know stand. I like to think of it that way.

Last week, my brother and I drove out to Point Pleasant to check out 1.5 acres of land that has been given to me, no strings attached. This is an awesome gift. I had always said that I didn't want to spend my life on Prince Edward Island but would like a plot of land to own here. A place where I could always come back from my foreign endeavours to seek rest and peace. Now I have that. Nice :). I don't know what or when I'll do with it, but thats for the future, for now, the present is taking care of itself.

Poll of the Week

So here is the results for last weeks poll. The bachelors were clearly defeated.

Marriage or the single life. Which is better?
marriage 80%
the single life 20%

This weeks poll deal with whether or not you all think I should go to North Carolina for the summer. There is an opportunity to work at a children's camp for june/august but, it would severly cut into my correspondance time, leaving me not a lot of space to get my first year courses in. I need to have 15 courses done for september; I'm on my fifth right now. So let me know what you think. Your opinion will be well-noted.

V for Vendetta

Well, I went to see "V for Vendetta" tonight with a couple of guys from my church. I wouldn't recommend this movie and didn't even really want to see it in the first place, but Shawn Cuthill said he'd like me to comment on Natalie Portman's scene where she is imprisoned and tortured. Before I comment, I'd like to say that Natalie made this movie bearable. She is by far one of my most favoritest actresses.

So "V" imprisons Evey and tortures her to see if her ideals will hold the test. We don't know for how long (maybe I missed it) but it was likely at least a couple of weeks. When time had passed, "V" (she don't know its "V" though) comes in and tells her if she don't cough up some info on the double they are gonna take her out back and shoot her. Evey replies to that saying, "Kill me then" (or something to that effect). The disguised "V" walks out of the cell saying, "You don't fear anymore, now you are truly free" (or something similiar).

I think this is what all our pastors should do once in a while. Get some crazies to storm the church and take a random person hostage and rough them up a bit and persecute, etc. It's a good little test to see where we stand in our "faith". We say we're willing to die for Jesus, but, are we? Are we really? It might be good to have that put to the test. In the end Evey (Natalie Portman) passed the test and proved that she was indeed willing to die for what she believed in. It's a horrifying thought, but I think it would be good for all of us, who profess to be Christians, to be in her spot at some point. Many of those who will actually give up their whole entire lives for the sake of taking the gospel to the unreached, probably will.

Praise God.

All go, no whoa!! (2 Joshua 5:55)

I'm gettin antsy. Life on PEI is becoming overwhelmingly slow and mundane. I look forward to when I can put this Island behind me and move on to another season of my life. Patience is a luxury I can't afford right now. It's not that I wouldn't buy some if I had the resources, but I just don't have the goods to get it. A lack of friends, and like-minded people to talk with is wearing me out. It's not that I don't have any friends, it's just that my "close" friends are all very, very far away. That's hard on a person. But does it have to be?

People don't understand when I tell them I "have" to go. It's not an option. It consumes my thoughts, it pushes all else away. I've wasted so much of life pursuing that which was misery and lies.

It's not that I think the rest of the world is some glorious opportunity which is only realized outside PEI. On the contrary, there is nothing new under the sun. People are basically the same everywhere. There are slight differences, but overall, things are similiar inside people's heads. What gets me is a seemingly contentment to stay where they are at. I see people every day whose lives are dismantled, broken, wasted, etc etc. But they are unwilling to take any kind of responsibility for why it is that way. They are content to live at this "less than" abundant life. It's not just like that on PEI. The world over, there are people who are resistant to change. Should the ones who are trying to provoke them to change give up though....................nah, we need to trudge on. It's why we're here.

Sunday Rave/Poll of the Week

Today I was kind of "blah". Nothin special a'tall. Church was good, I did some drummin. Thats always fun. Time with my psychiatrist. Wasn't too impressed with the worship again today. I set some high standards to try to attain. Live and learn, I guess........I hope.

So, here's the results from my Poll on where you all think I should take my next foreign mission trip:
Mozambique 50%
Brazil 27%
India 18%
Sudan 5%
You are probably not far off. Mozambique is never far from my thoughts.

New Poll of the Week:
Tell me if you think "marriage" or the "single" life is the way to go. It's funny, cause scripturally I can back up or tear down both of these stances. Personally (and all "issues" aside), because of Matthew 19:10-12 and 1 Corinthians 7:32-35 I believe the single life is a smarter choice. But, like I said, I can argue this topic from both sides of the street. Anyways, what do you think?

Holy Given graduation

So I was on Iris Ministries' website and I was searching through some of Rolland's pictures, and I came across our Holy Given Missions School graduation picture, taken on Aug 13/05. Can you see me? I'll help you....click-->here. I'm right in the middle of the back row with my right arm raised. Wow, that's quite a grad class. Three months in the dirt of Pemba, Mozambique. Talk about a filthy bunch of foreigners!!!

stories from the field #4: Maputo Elephant Reserve

O.K. Here is one of those "on the lighter side" type stories. Enjoy, cause the result of this story could've been disasterous!!!

Much can be said about the couple days I spent with Celia, Julie, and Matt on the Maputo Elephant Reserve in southern Mozambique. A long-term missionary got sick so Julie rushed into the short-term compound looking for someone to help take 40 kids camping for the weekend. It was between me and Marcus (from New Brunswick), and Marcus wanted to go less than I did. Long story short, I got talked into it. I threw some stuff into a bag and jumped on the back of the flatbed, and we were off on a 5 hr drive over roads that you couldn't really call "roads".

The time was good. On the second night we made popcorn over an open fire for the kids. They enjoyed very much so. Julie wanted to make juice for the kids to have with the popcorn, but Celia said, "We should save the juice for the morning, cause we only have enough to make one more serving for them." And that's what we did, we saved the juice. All was good, we all crashed.

In the morning, I slept in an hour and when I woke breakfast was well under way. I sleepily took a seat by some boys and poured myself some juice into my water bottle. I sat, ate, drank, and was merry. The juice wasn't that good, it tasted like it was extremly watered down and flavorless. But it was a pale yellow, so I figured that they musn't have had a lot of the crystals to make it really good. Julie comes over and sits beside me and we start raving. I take another drink from my water bottle [which was half empty by now (or half full, depending how you look at it)] and she says, "Josh.......what are u drinking?!"

"I'm drinking the juice you guys made this morning", I replied.

"Celia, did you guys make that juice this morning?"

"No, why?", Celia shouted back.

A look of horror came across Julie's face as she said, "Oh my God, you're drinking the water!" (They had gotten the water for doing the dishes).

Not cool. Anyways, that explained why the "juice" tasted like crap. But, I never got sick (thank God) and all was well. Whew....close one. African tap-water out of the back of a random building is not a good idea.

it's Monday

So I just got off three night shifts, t'was a long weekend. Went yesterday to the Home Show here in Charlottetown and seen fellow "HoGi"/"House #12'er" Jordan Ethridge. Was the first time since Holy Given. It was good to catch up.

With all the craziness and business in my schedule lately, an opportunity is coming up to go to North Carolina for the summer (june-july) and work at a camp for troubled kids and stuff. In the natural, this is not the best time, or what even seems like the best idea to do, but it really speaks to me and I am seriously considering doing it. It is South Mountain Christian Camp. Looks pretty sweet. Any prayer you could offer up on my behalf regarding this would be appreciated. It sure would kill the summer months off though, and I could get off PEI again :)

As to the poll of the week. I seem to be getting much amusement out of the current one, so I am leaving it up for one more week. Mozambique is in the lead, followed by India, then Brazil. Foreign missions is cool.

What's up with this?!

Since last friday (Mar 3) people in Tignish have noticed a face-like impression on a cloth with a crown of thorns. There have been a whole lot of foolishness associated with this type of phenomena world-wide, but in this case (not saying ALL others are not legit) you can actually see a face that has appeared where it definitely was not there before. I'm not saying this is a divine touch of God coming down from heaven into Tignish, but.....why not? God loves Tignish as much as another place on this earth.

An interesting note is that FaithWorks went up to North Cape a couple weeks ago and prayed and welcomed God to come into the lives of Islanders in a mighty move. Pastor Bill and another board member were also in that very church praying for the Spirit of God to move the very day the sighting first occured. Now I'm not saying that they ushered in this event, but if God answers prayer, then it's likely, the accumulation of those prayers would indeed have an effect. Anyways, judge for yourselves. There is definitely a face. Whether it's Jesus or Mary or Josh Duffy..........(I'm pretty sure it's not me, by the way!!) I don't know. I know that God often moves in ways, not that we can't understand, but that we don't expect. Time will tell. My advice is to be careful what you do with the things of God.

Go check it out. Here are some links to stories in the news regarding it:
Yahoo
CTV
CBC

Stories from the Field #3. South Africa, Swaziland, Mozambique

So, here is a picture of my first ever outreach. The date was March 27/04, and it was Day #2 on the Foreign Mission Field. Pastor Supresa drove us all an hour and a half outside of White River to the border of South Africa, Swaziland, and Mozambique. I had no idea what to expect. We got out and used a generator to set up a couple of speakers and a keyboard, then blasted worship music into the village to draw a crowd. It worked well enough. About 80-90 people showed up to check out what was going on. The music was an attraction, but so were these "whities" that were there too.

Anyways, we worshipped for about an hour, then the mic was handed over to Jack (our team leader) who preached a message on "The Prodigal Son". It was kind of funny; there were some youths standing some distance away from us back on the road shouting obsenities at us. We, of course, couldn't understand them, but Jack changed his message a wee bit to include them in his presentation of the gospel. None of them responded but they sure heard the Word anyway!

In the end about 20 people responded to the alter call. When we got back to Supresa's house later, I asked him if he thought that it had been a sucessful outreach (seeing as I had never been on one before). Keep in mind that this man speaks a dozen languages (give or take a couple), has planted scores of churches, seen the dead raised, ministers to witchdoctors, etc etc etc. He said, "If one person accepts Christ out of ten thousand, then, yes, it is a good
night. So, yes, tonight was a sucessful outreach."

I wasn't much the same after that night in late March/04.

The Divinely Inspired Word

Quite a few people these days question the validity of the Bible, and the idea that imperfect humans could accurately record the words of a supreme being. The Bible is in fact written of God. The problem lies in our sometimes innacurate translations of the original Hebrew and Greek manuscripts. This is a fairly vast subject but let me try to explain, as shortly as possible, how God uses imperfect man to record His Divinely Inspired Word. I will focus on two key words: REVELATION and INSPIRATION. This is some of what I have been learning through correspondance.

REVELATION
The Bible is God revealing Himself to man. Check this out: God's omnipotent nature makes the revelation possible. The need for communication between the Creator and the creature makes it probable. God's character of love and mercy makes the revelation credible. The sin nature of man makes it necessary.
Matthew 11:25-27
Matthew 16:16-18
Ephesians 3:2-6

INSPIRATION
While revelation has to do with God's truth coming to man, inspiration has to do with how that truth was recorded. The Bible in it's original language is infallible because of inspiration. The inspiration of God is what gave imperfect humans the ability to write and copy the divine revelations without error.
A good example of this is Moses, who recieved the 10 Commandments by revelation and then was able to record them under inspiration.
2 Samuel 23:2
Jeremiah 30:2
2 Timothy 3:15-17
2 Peter 1:19-21
Revelation 1:11

Another amazing fact about the Bible is that a lot of times men, moved by God's Spirit, wrote what He told them, not even comprehending what they were writing! For instance, Zechariah had no idea what he was seeing in his prophecy of the end-time war cause in that day, warfare was not carried out in this way. He had to trust in his level of intimacy with God and believe by faith that what he was seeing was acurate. That's faith!! Today we have no problem imagining the type of warfare he described.
Also, Peter's pentecost sermon was under revelation cause it was about 2 years before his vision of the "sheet with the unclean animals." Only after that vision did he go to Cornelius.
The hundreds of fulfilled prophecies in the Bible are further proof that God can use men to record His words.

So there you go. God can use imperfect human beings to accurately record His words. He rocks!!

Sunday Ravings/Poll of the Week

Twas a good day. Church this morning was good. FaithWorks bought a new digital drumset this week so I got to break it in.:) The worship was good. It's so nice to be able to beat the crap out of a set of drums again without anyone saying, "It's too loud!!" Pretty sweet. The evening service worship was rather gross sounding. The team just wasn't in sinc, and it totally showed. Oh well. Some issues that need to be worked out. Nothin major.

In between the services; me, Carinne (our bass player), Kristina (who shares the same birthday as me), and Megan (Our worship leader's daughter) went out to eat and then went and seen "Eight Below". A good movie. It bothered me that buddy left the dogs in the first place. I don't think I could've, but it bothered me even more when the bloody humans wouldn't go back to get them. GRRRRRR!!!! Like I said, bloody humans.

Now that that's out of my system, let's focus on the Poll of the Week. Last week no one new that I was wearing a WHITE shirt on sunday. Most thought green. I am wearing green today, but, too little too late. This week's poll focuses on where you all think I should take my next missions trip? So, where? Pick one of the ten places, and who knows, I might give an update someday saying I've got my ticket to wherever you've suggested. Your suggestion could mean the difference between life and death for untold numbers. No pressure though........

The Diety of Christ

One of the most hotly debated subjects is if Jesus was actually God. Every religion in the world will hold Jesus up as a great man, an inspired teacher, even a powerful prophet; but not God. In actuality, Jesus was indeed God. Check this out:

Here are some scriptures that testify of Jesus' divinity.

John 1:1-3, 14
a. Jesus existed in the beginning as God
b. Jesus was with the Father
c. Jesus is God made flesh

Philippians 2:5-11
a. Jesus existed before His incarnation
b. Jesus is equal with the Father
c. The whole world will confess that Jesus is Lord

He is called God
a. The eternal God (Romans 9:5)
b. The mighty God (Isaiah 9:6)
c. God with us (Matthew 1:23)
d. The true God (1 John 5:20)
e. The great God (Titus 2:13)
f. The saving God (2 Peter 1:1)
g The wise God (Jude 25)

All this points to one unshakable truth; Jesus is Lord. Any person or group that does not give Jesus His proper recognition (as stated in the Bible) cannot truly know God, as God is revealed through Christ. And there you go

Ever wonder what Jesus preached about?

We all agree that Jesus was the most anointed preacher ever!! The disciples sure must have been a blessed bunch. But ever wonder what most of His sermons were about? I think a clue lies in Luke 4:17-21 (And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. And He opened the book and found the place where it was written, "THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS UPON ME, BECAUSE HE ANOINTED ME TO PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR. HE HAS SENT ME TO PROCLAIM RELEASE TO THE CAPTIVES, AND RECOVERY OF SIGHT TO THE BLIND, TO SET FREE THOSE WHO ARE OPPRESSED, TO PROCLAIM THE FAVORABLE YEAR OF THE LORD." And He closed the book, gave it back to the attendant and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.") There is another awsome reference in Luke 24:27 (Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.)and Luke 24:45:47 (Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures,
and He said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day,
and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.)

Wow!! Jesus was a Jesus preacher. From the last couple Scriptures we can see that Jesus opened up peoples eyes to see "JESUS in the OT". The reason the OT is so important to us today is that there are so many shadows of Christ hidden within it's pages (Exodus 12.; Exodus 15:22-26; Leviticus 14:1-32; Numbers 21:4-9; Isaiah 53; Leviticus 16:1-22 etc etc etc). We are in a better covenant. (See Hebrews 10:1 and Colossians 2:16-17). True freedom from sin!! All this is just a nibble on what the OT says about Christ, but I hope you get the point.

Awesome stuff.