As part of my morning walk with God I listen to the bible and some worship to help me start the day and focus things. At the end of my walk I head over to Spotify and listen to some Rend Collective Songs. One in particular recently has been on repeat, big time! It’s called; Undignified.

Here are some of the lyrics to give you an idea:

I am dancing as David danced
In the thrill of a wild romance
I’m in love, and I’m not ashamed
Love’s a fire that won’t be tamed
Oh, my soul, was not born to be caged

OK, let’s step back a moment and get some context. You can read about this moment in 2 Samuel 6:14-23. ‘And David danced before the Lord with all his might; and David was girded with a linen ephod.’

It’s been quite a week just gone. It started with a visit to an ageing relative suffering with Dementia; I’ll call him Winston, because that’s close enough. Winston is 86, was widowed last year, has all his own teeth and physically is in pretty good shape. As is typical of someone with his condition, Winston is great when talking about anything that happened a long time ago, but not so good with recent stuff. Each time I visit we run through the same ‘introductory’ Q&A, but the one thing Winston always wants to talk about is “this God you believe in”. He’s not a Christian, although a man of great integrity. Winston can be quite cynical, but most of all I get the sense he really wants to believe.

Are you caught up in the hunt for a bunch of roses and a 2kg bar of chocolate for your significant other half? Or are you standing your ground in defiance, voicing a silent protest against the marketing and commercialisation of a day of romance? 

Or maybe, you are in a different place all together, single and wishing you were not. Dreading the day and the relentless build-up of hearts, teddy’s, loved up promotional shop windows and the reminder of the desire that is yet to be realised in your life.

2019, a new year ahead, a year of hope, a year of new beginnings, a year with so much potential. People often look ahead to another year and say, ‘a new year will be a new me’.

Many of us will have or will be doing tax returns before the end of January, this was my first one for being self-employed and I did the return online, under the self-assessment.

Self-assessment is what we all seem to do at the start of another year, we assess what we eat, what we do for a career, relationships, family life etc.

Recently a mate of mine sent me a text as we were ending a conversation about God and some stuff and he mentioned this; 

‘it’s like Jesus you get for free, but Christ costs you everything.’

Let me start with some points of clarity. 

I am not suggesting here anything outside of grace, forgiveness from Jesus being completely his movement towards us, humanity. Our role in that is to respond and accept him as our rescuer and friend, simple. 

But, I did find this text from my mate really interesting. You see for me, it challenges something profound that is often not really spoken of when we show people who Jesus is. 

Over the past few days there has been a lot of activity on social media regarding the new Gillette advert. If you have not seen it, I would recommend watching it on YouTube as it has some really direct messaging to men.

A few years ago I heard the Mosaic LA church leader, Erwin McManus, say “…we teach what we know, we reproduce what we are!”. Throughout my life I have seen, over and over again, just how true this statement is. When any of us live life full-on for God and let His Word shape our lives, we get a lot more attention and many more opportunities to introduce our mates to Jesus. So much of this is about credibility and authenticity.

So the next value that I live my life by and want to share with you is: “I will be a man of nobility, integrity and honour. In doing this, I will make Jesus known to everyone I meet!”Right, I have a slight confession to make—it hasn’t always been this way. For a number of years I lived a bit of a double life. Publically, I was a man of God, believing all the right things, even condemning all the wrong things. Privately, it didn’t really match up, and you know what I could tell my mates about Jesus but it had zero effect—because I wasn’t letting His Word shape my life in the first place. The conversations that I had with my not-yet believing mates were few and far between and, when they did happen, I was just telling them what I knew in my head and not reproducing what was in my heart.

Happy New Year and welcome to 2019 from all of the team.
2019 is a special time for us here at CVM and during the year you will be hearing lots from us, why? Well, it’s an important birthday!

CVM has existed for 30 years and we are pleased to say that all year we are going to be singing happy birthday to ourselves and building on a theme of ‘The Big 30.’

We are going to be running some celebration events across the UK where Beechy and I will be calling men together to come and hear the good news of Jesus Christ and get ourselves on the front foot of introducing 1 million men to Jesus.

Christmas is here! I have to confess, I have been enjoying the build up to this day for over a month, and I was often found with Wham playing from my car. ‘Last Christmas, I gave you my heart…’
Anyway, firstly let me say Happy Christmas to you. Secondly, lets read this together;

The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighbourhood.
We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory like Father, like Son,
Generous inside and out, true from start to finish.

John 1:14 (MSG)

To quote Noddy Holder ‘It’s Chriiiiiiiiiisssssstmaaaaassss’ (nearly).
One of the words used at Christmas is ‘incarnate’. That basically means in human form, made flesh. The Son of God ‘incarnates’ himself as a man. He came down to earth in human form to get alongside us, share our life and experiences, so he could help / save us. Now, don’t worry I haven’t lost the plot, there is a ‘dit’ coming ..

Back in the 80s during the Cold War, my ship was taking part in a massive NATO exercise, involving ships from all over the world. We were one of the ‘enemy’ units, our mission was to attack the US based carrier group. I hate to admit it but we were taken out fairly early, and had no operational weapon systems, either offensive or defensive. We could still ‘float’ and ‘move’ but had no ‘fight’ capability. So we were no longer a threat to the ‘enemy’.