Take Your Pick

You were made for more. Not for less or for just enough, but for more. You have a dream (don’t tell me you don’t) and you have a desire to live for something. But that isn’t real. It’s only real when you start to live it out. It’s not about whether it’s successful or not. It’s about whether you start to pursue it. The same exists for porn. You have a desire and a lust and it lives in your head. The only difference between lust and your God given dreams is that when you start to pursue lust, it goes nowhere. In fact it goes back. When you start to pursue your God given dreams they start to come alive. They start to breathe. Which mean you start to come alive and you start to breathe. Today you have a choice. Today you can pursue something that leads to nothing but heartache and inner...

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Why Frankie Boyle should be allowed to say what he likes.

So Frankie Boyle has done it again. He's gone and upset someone. This time it happens to be Jordan. On his new show Tramadol nights he made a joke that Jordan deemed too far, a joke about her and her family. I watched the show on Wednesday night and even though I am a big Frankie Boyle fan, a lot of it was pretty close to the bone. I laughed at some jokes and I didn't laugh at others (even though I wanted to). But it raises the question. How far is too far? How far is a comedian allowed to go in the name of comedy? Should there be some sort of comedy regulation, the comedy cops if you will? And this raises a wider question about free speech...

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What Wayne's World Can Teach Us About Faith

One of my favourite movies, not just comedy but of any type of movie is Wayne's World. It's a Classic. But if I have to be honest it's probably the sequal, Wayne's World 2 that has maybe the most influential scene for me in a movie ever.  Ok that could be pushing it considering all the incredible movies that have changed the way we think and have shaped cinema as we know it. I'm thinking more the Halloweens and the L'assassination Du Duc De Guise's of our time here (yeah look it up) than the Troll 2's (rule 1 of titling a movie- make sure there is at least an element of the title in the movie) and the Glitter's. But still, there is one scene or more precisely, one line in Wayne's World 2 that has changed the way I think about my life and how I live it. Let me paint the picture. Our hero...

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The Lost Art of Affirmation

You remember how as a kid you would do something. Maybe a blob of paint on a page that you passed off as art on par with anything Monet ever produced. Or you wrote your name on a page, even though it looked more like those puzzles where you follow the fishing lines to find the treasure rather than the old boot. But it didn’t matter. Because in your eyes it was the greatest thing since…well at that age, ever. You were so proud of yourself and all you wanted to do was show someone. Anyone. Just to show them that you could do something. That you had learned a skill you didn’t have yesterday. That’s an important step in our development I think. To show another human something we created and have them tell us how good it is. But somehow we lose that. Instead when we grow up a little we like...

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Quitters Anonymous

I'm a quitter. There I said it. I don't like seeing things through. When something gets tough I take the easy route and bail. It's easier. It means no emotional involvement and it means not having to face yourself. Which may be a good thing short term but not so much in the long term. Take writng for example. Already I have started to write something three times and deleted it all because I thought it was rubbish. Which it may have been. But the truth is I just wanted to stop. Close my computer and go and do something else. Not have to deal with the part of me that tells me I need to write. Does that happen to you? If you are a human reading this then I am pretty sure the answer is yes. Maybe not writing but maybe following a dream, or an opportunity. How often do we give up on the first...

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Poverty

More and more recently I have been considering poverty. A thought occured to me that there must be enough resources in the world for everyone; it just isn't being distributed well enough. I mean if one footballer can earn himself £250'000 a week and is playing terrible, there is something gravely wrong. But it can be easy to blame the world's poverty on the insanely rich. I work in a shop and we throw food out all the time. Whenever bread has reached one day before its sell by date we throw it out. And that's its sell by date, not it's use by date. Think about the last time you had a meal with a lot of people. Did you finish everything on your plate? Then think about the last time you had a big feed. Did you get to the end and then feel full or could you have stopped a lot earlier? There...

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5 reasons why being married to Brit is great (or 5 reasons to marry an American)

Just over 3 months ago I got married to a wonderful woman. This is her A woman who makes me laugh and apparantly thinks I am funny. She cares about me and she puts my needs above hers. She puts up with my constant attempts to get her to watch the Simpsons which she has never seen. ( Finding someone who has never seen the Simpsons is the equivolent of discovering there are some dodos left i.e. not likely). She also lets me express that part of me that loves Take That. That is true love right there. Every now and again she will drop a bit of information about my beloved Spurs and it makes me smile so much. I think I am pretty lucky anyway. She...

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Sticks and Stones and the c word

Today I got called a rude word in work. It's so rude I'm not even going to print it here. Let's just say if I was to say it I would probably be picking the negative comments off my blog for months. It's that bad. Definately not PG. Now I don't really mind being called names. Sticks and stones and all that. Though now you mention it (or should that be now I mention it) what kind of sticks are so strong they are breaking people's bones. Anyway. What made this particular name all the more bizaare is the reason I was called it. So I'm innocently enough serving a customer when in walks a man, who without introducing himself (very rude) asks or rather yells at me, why we let people sit outside the shop and sell the Big Issue? I tell him that they are allowed to sell the Big Issue if they like. But...

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Church Sex Scandals

First Ted Haggard was accused of having sex with a male prostitue, then the whole Roman Catholic Church abuse issue. Now, not to be undone, Bishop Eddie Long of New Missionary Baptist Church in Georgia, USA has found himself in the middle of allegations of abuse from young males of having sex with them while they were under his leadership and care in his church. It seems that every few months the Church is due another huge sex scandal and right on cue it has happened again. And I think that there are so many issues that will arise from the Eddie Long situation. From Everything that has happened to Ted Haggard and what is going on in the Catholic...

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Short but sweet.

Before you ask, no the title of this post doesn't refer to Michael J Fox in the awesome Back to the Future Movies. It's more important than that. Simply these guys are doing great work and giving hope to those who need it. So... If you are struggling with addiction to sex then do yourself a favour and get sex addiction help. Or maybe you know someone who needs help with their internet addiction. If so then help them get internet addiction help.  Or maybe you struggle with other depression or suicidal thoughts. You don't have to beat it alone. There are others who know how you feel....

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Its always funny until someone gets hurt then its just hilarious A Comical rant

body { border: 0px; font-family:verdana; font-size :10pt; direction :ltr; background-color :#ffffff; line-height :1.2; margin:4% 10% 4% 10%}table { font-size: 10pt;}I love comedy. It's funny how much I love comedy actually. You see I just made a joke. I used a word (i.e. funny) that is synonymous with comedy to describe my feeling about humour and all its connotations.OK it wasn't the best joke ever, but it was still a joke. You can't deny that. Or maybe a joke to be defined as a joke must have at its very core one simple element...it needs to be funny. And since most people won't have found my joke funny would not then label it as a joke. So me referring to it as a joke in that previous sentence was a lie and so you can't trust anything I write and should therefore stop reading this right...

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What we hope for

body { border: 0px; font-family:verdana; font-size :10pt; direction :ltr; background-color :#ffffff; line-height :1.2; margin:4% 10% 4% 10%} table { font-size: 10pt;}  A few days ago a pretty monumental thing happened. The LRA Recovery and Northern Uganda Recovery Act was finally passed in the House of representatives. Two days ago it passed onto President Obama's desk where he signed it and made it law that the US government will have to take action to end Joseph Kony's reign of terror. If you have ever read my blog you will know that this is something I care deeply about. For decades, children have been abducted from their homes and...

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Accidents and Compliments

A few days ago when I woke up I got up and came downstairs and immediately turned my computer on. This is my routine most days if I‘m not working early. I get up, check facebook, check my emails, check any blogs that I read normally and then start to think about writing for the day. That day though I got up and went to the xxxchurch site straight away. I am going to be writing a blog for them and I had submitted my first blog a couple weeks prior. And I am really excited about it because xxxchurch saved my life and I love and appreciate what they are doing and to be even slightly involved with this ministry is really exciting for me. But…for the last week or so I had been logging on waiting to see my blog up on the site. And every day I had been disappointed slightly. Because it wasn’t up....

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Sean

There are times when your preconceptions are shattered and what you thought you know is completely blown wide open. These times are good. They can be painful and difficult to deal with. But ultimately they are good because you start to see truth where before you were seeing what you thought was truth. But it wasn’t. I have a lot of preconceptions (that’s probably a whole other thing to get into) but on Thursday night I had my preconceptions of Homeless people changed dramatically. When I saw a homeless person on the street I forgot that they are a person with a life and a history. They have a story.  And I forget that they weren’t always homeless. On Thursday night I went with two really close friends into Belfast because one of my friends wanted to give out food and blankets to...

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Why the World only needs one Rob Bell

When I write I have a tendancy to compare myself to other writers. I love Rob Bell and I love Don Miller and I wish I was them. Well maybe not them exactly, but I definately wish I thought like them and I had thier talent. But I don't. I try my best but ultimately I am just not Rob Bell or Don Miller or any other great writer for that matter. And when I understand that I can finally move on and start writing like someone else unique..... Myself. When I constantly compare myself to other people I am preventing myself from being who I was created to be. I wasn't born to be Rob Bell. I was born to be Paul Robinson. And when I constantly compare myself to other people it shows a lot about what I think about God. If you asked me if I thought God is perfect and never makes mistakes I would...

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Cigarettes and Alcohol and Rollerblading

It doesn't seem that long ago since Christmas. Seven weeks and five days to be exact. And now we are already gearing up for Easter. The Easter eggs have been in the shops for a few weeks already. It seems that preparation starts earlier and earlier. But for pretty much all my life I have not been prepared for Easter. Today is Ash Wednesday and it marks the beginning of Lent. The time period of 40 days or so where we traditionally give up something we love. Maybe for you its coffee, or chocolate or cigarettes, or maybe you are giving up watching LOST. Maybe you gave that up ages ago. Whatever it is. It's good to deny ourselves some stuff over this period. It's good to direct our minds on something other than ourselves. And I think that is the main point of Lent. It's not that we try and...

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Can't go on, must go on, can't go on, mu.....

I like to write but most of the time I don't feel like it. I like to blog but at times, like right now, I just can't be bothered. I have no motivation whatsoever. This guy I am not That sucks when something you enjoy doing is not appealling. I have that feeling and I need to figure out why. And I think I know. Discipline. I hate that word so much. Mostly because I severely lack in that department. Reading the Bible, praying, revising, practicing the piano, all these things we are told are good for us, are not interesting to me most of the time. And I don't have the discipline to write. But I want to. Right now I am writing...

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When pickets turn funny

Right. Enough is enough. I have been away from here for far too long and I am getting a few minor withdrawl symptoms? (Is that how you spell withdrawl?, is there an e in there? Wow it's been so long I've forgotten how to spill). So if you are one of the 8 people who follow this I apologise for my severe lack of blogging. My last post was before Christmas so expect more stuff to come in the next few days. And expect more varied stuff. I've realised that I want to maybe cut back on the serious blog posts a bit and write a few more laid back posts. Hopefully that will result in a bit more blogging on my part. So I am excited to be back and...

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