US Seagull
Well-known member
Yorkie said:
Over the internet? What's the URL?
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Religion
- Thread starter CHAPPERS
- Start date
Over the internet? What's the URL?
bhaexpress
New member
Many's the time I've called on the almighty in times of crisis. Typically something like October '02 against Palarse when we went 2-0 down.
'Oh God no !' I said but did he hear ? Clearly he was watching a premier game.
'Oh God no !' I said but did he hear ? Clearly he was watching a premier game.
Dandyman
In London village.
On the Left Wing said:
Does that you mean you believe in the "end times" and if so do you believe we are living in them now?
Part of by reason for asking is that the idea of the impending apocalypse seems to be the prime motivating factor for the support of the U.S. religious right for Israel, which they manage to combine with a quiet although virulent anti-semitism.
Dandyman
In London village.
Yorkie said:
But why do place your faith in the supernatural rather than recognising your own strength ?
Wilko said:
Yes I accept that people have good things happen to them which just happen.
For instant recently we have been trying to move. We did pray about moving back to Brighton because we wanted to do the right thing (no right or wrong where you live I hear you say) but the church we belong to in Huddersfield is thriving with over 400 members and growing weekly.
But I had a real deep desire in my heart to return to Sussex. So we prayed and said to God if it was right to open doors for us.
We asked a friend to send us the Argus so Ned could look for a job.
The first Argus that arrived through the post on Sat morning had his job desciption advertised. He applied and they grabbed him with open arms.
So we knew we were doing the right thing.
All well and good and a nice coincidence...
Maybe
We put the house on the market and it sold ok to a first time buyer. We looked for a house down south and found one. Again all well and good but then things started going wrong. The people were messing us about when it got near exchanging contracts.
It turned out they were having problems with the house they were buying and hadn't let on to us. We gave them another month to sort themselves out but they still didn't.
Our buyer was getting impatient and the 500 mile round trip for Ned wasn't easy.
So we prayed as to whether we should stick with that house or look again.
We both felt strongly that we should look again. We rang the estate agents and asked if there was something that was vacant possession as we were coming down for the Brentford game, That was on the Thursday.
That very day someone who had been renting out their house decided they had had enough of renting out and put it on the market. We viewed it on the Saturday (no-one else had even viewed it) and made an offer which was accepted straightaway. It was far better than the original house and everything we wanted in a house.
We are nearly ready to exchange now.
Coincidence or answer to prayer?
bhaexpress said:
he he
Unfortunately I know some Crystal Palace Christians
Seriously I don't pray for the Albion to win but I do pray every player will do their best and the officials make good decisions.
Perhaps if more of you did it...
Meade's Ball
Well-known member
God: Earth's hairiest paperboy.
chez
Johnny Byrne-The Greatest
ChapmansThe Saviour said:
Yeah course it would. What I mean is that I cant understand the extremists points of view in the first place.
US Seagull
Well-known member
Yorkie said:
Not maybe, yes.
Yorkie said:
Coincidence. Problems with moving houses? Hardly an uncommon experience. All got sorted in the end, good for you, but most people sort it out in the end, otherwise nobody would ever manage to move anywhere. And if god had "opened the door" for you to move to Brighton, why was it such a hassle with the first house. Surely god would have sorted that out for you before you got there. He sounds a little lazy to me.
I moved from Pittsburgh, PA to Indiana (about 400 miles) with my car on a trailer behind a rented moving truck that I was driving (biggest thing I've ever driven by a long shot). Passed through a serve thunderstorm around Columbus, OH (couldn't even see the back of the truck in my wing mirrors at one point). But we made it in one piece with no praying required.
Sorry Yorkie, but your miracles are leaving a lot to be desired in my book (that's the Haynes manual for the Ford Escort).
chez
Johnny Byrne-The Greatest
Yorkie said:That's fine US Seagull. I am quite happy to thank God for what he is doing in my life.
I am not asking you to believe it just telling you what I believe.
And my point is, why should anyone have a problem with that? Why should the fact that you thank god for what he's doing in your life make someone want to kill you.
Yorkie said:
I see what you are saying but I just do not understand how you can put these events down to God. I mean, things like this happen to people all over the world every single day of their lives whether they are Christian, Muslim, Hindu or a complete athiest. I do not see how you can make that distinction that God helped you when similarities happen to all others all over the world.
Once again I am not looking to argue I am just intrigued and interested in others ideas and opinions.
On the Left Wing
KIT NAPIER
Personal Jesus
Okay guys here it is .... before you read it, let me reiterate that I don't believe in religion (see earlier posts) and I am not an evangelist (I don't expect anyone to believe as I do) but I do believe in Good, God and the saving grace of Jesus.
Saving Grace
"By this time I thought I would be sleeping In a pine box for all Eternity, My Faith keeps me alive and I know I'm only living By the saving grace that's over me."
(Bob Dylan 1980)
"Tell me how it feels?"
It was my mother's voice; there was no mistaking that. I struggled to say something but a dryness in my throat allowed only a smile.
She clenched my left hand.
Beyond her the ward clock reported 9.30. I drifted back to sleep.
Sometime later I again opened my eyes.
Mother's own eyes brightened and, as if from her mouth, I heard my father ask: "How is it son?"
I was surprised. I managed to reply: "Fine, but I can't move." The ward clock betrayed 10.10.
"Is that all it is?" I asked looking up at the wall, knowing that I had been led to the operating table at 8.30am.
"It's 10pm," my father replied.
I gagged for some reason... why had I been out for more than 13 hours?
Over the next three days my parents, surgeons and nursing staff gradually outlined to me the most telling day of my life: 17 May 1988, a day when surgeons worked tirelessly to remove two thirds of my right lung and repair a damaged aortic artery.
It was an operation plagued with difficulty and twice they thought they had lost me. But working straight through, they never gave up and used finely honed skills to take away the cancer and repair my body.
It was the final stage of a rebirth of life and spirit.
Some eight months earlier, I had been diagnosed with a malignant histio-cytoma of the right shoulder.
The diagnosis followed a year of failing health, tiredness and a strange and growing lump on my shoulder blade that would not go away.
Eventually, after claims of a sebaceous cyst and a muscular haematoma, I was told the truth.
"I dinna ken what it is," said the plastic surgeon, betraying his Glaswegian roots. "But it looks malignant and we had better have a closer look."
It was like being knocked down by a bus or blown up by a terrorist bomb: cancer only happened to other people. It was a disease, which was difficult to talk about and even more difficult to contemplate.
Now I struggled to take in what I had been told.
A simple biopsy of the lump, as we all learned to call it, confirmed the surgeon's suspicions. I was quickly booked into a local hospital for immediate and radical surgery.
Whether in shock, or just out of single-mindedness, the diagnosis passed me by.
I responded by reading every piece of medical literature I could find.
My former sister-in-law was a cancer research specialist at Leeds University Hospital and furnished me with reams of reports about this rare and seemingly deadly cancer.
As I prepared for the surgery, I asked questions of doctors, cracked jokes with my parents and worried for my ability to cope. Eventually I cracked and phoned the Samaritans.
It was probably the most important call I have ever made. I hurriedly explained to the female voice at the other end of the phone that I was not suicidal, but terrified of dying. There was a rustling sound as she rummaged through her files and gave me the number of the organiser of a local cancer support group.
I tucked the number away.
A few evenings later, when the depression hit me again I picked up the phone. Diana was her name. At 38, she was a few years older than me and had recently been given remission from breast cancer. Diana was ebullient, encouraging and above all told me that whether I lived or died was up to me.
"You must visualise this thing that has invaded your body and fight it," she said.
"Only you can beat it... with perhaps a little help from the surgeons and God."
That was the key.
But where was God?
Diana and I were to begin an enduring friendship. I was able to reciprocate her help, I hope, when her cancer came back to taunt her three years later. I began to learn the value of friendship.
But what about God?
I had always believed in the saving grace of the Almighty, but my church-going days had lapsed many years earlier.
Somehow I had to re-find God and find my own strength and faith to deal with this cancer.
The next morning, calmed by a warm early autumn sunshine I walked to my nearest church.
Gothic, cold and empty, it provided space to think and pray. The operation to remove the cancer and replace my shoulder and back with re-constructive surgery was awkward, at times bloody painful and most of all seemingly endless.
Many days and nights of lying cramped on my left side as the skin grafts and flaps healed. Days and nights to think and determine whether I would recover.
God became close as I lay there warmed by New Testament promises and the gospel lyrics of my musical hero, Bob Dylan. Three months of radiotherapy followed at Cardiff's Velindre Hospital. Three months of finding more about myself and more about my fellow human beings.
And through them, finding God.
Housed in a small hostel within the hospital grounds, patients of all ages and with all forms of cancer worked within and without to tackle their own disease.
There was Coral-Ann, who denied here own malignancy. "It's just a small tumour and is what you say: benign," she lied. There was Maureen, colostomy bag in hand, who sipped morphine as she told tales of her childhood in Rhymney.
There was my room-mate David, whose pituitary cancer had given him grossly large head, hands and feet and made him appear like a freak at his job in the local tax inspectors' office.
"Well boyo, this thing won't beat me," he cracked. And it didn't.
And then there was Andrea.
At 21, she was the sweetest and most beautiful girl I had ever met.
Racked in pain, with Ewings Sarcoma, a bone cancer, she knew her chances of survival were slim.
"But I'm going to fight it," she urged, willing me to do the same. "I haven't yet got my degree, I haven't learned to drive... and I'm still a virgin.
"I want to live a bit before I die." She did.
But that did not dull the agony when four years later David and I stood together and shared tears at her funeral.
There is no reasoning in this.
My memories of Andrea remain. Her smile and her laughter as she beat me 3-1 in a physiotherapy game of football, where she was only allowed to use her right leg and I only my arm.
And then there was the rainy December day when she returned from a Christmas shopping trip in Cardiff City centre laden down with presents and a £300 hole in her Visa card.
Her pleasure was manifest.
The radiotherapy became of secondary importance. I had found God in my fellow human beings and in the karma of knowing that far from myself being the key in this battle, the door was unlocked from without.
When the cancer returned to my right lung some months later I knew I had the strength to face it down.
My life was saved by the dedication and skill of the surgeons. But my Spirit had already been saved.
At the time I was told I had less than a one in 10 chance of surviving beyond a year. But 16 ears later, the cancer is gone for good and I know that God has always been with me.
Okay guys here it is .... before you read it, let me reiterate that I don't believe in religion (see earlier posts) and I am not an evangelist (I don't expect anyone to believe as I do) but I do believe in Good, God and the saving grace of Jesus.
Saving Grace
"By this time I thought I would be sleeping In a pine box for all Eternity, My Faith keeps me alive and I know I'm only living By the saving grace that's over me."
(Bob Dylan 1980)
"Tell me how it feels?"
It was my mother's voice; there was no mistaking that. I struggled to say something but a dryness in my throat allowed only a smile.
She clenched my left hand.
Beyond her the ward clock reported 9.30. I drifted back to sleep.
Sometime later I again opened my eyes.
Mother's own eyes brightened and, as if from her mouth, I heard my father ask: "How is it son?"
I was surprised. I managed to reply: "Fine, but I can't move." The ward clock betrayed 10.10.
"Is that all it is?" I asked looking up at the wall, knowing that I had been led to the operating table at 8.30am.
"It's 10pm," my father replied.
I gagged for some reason... why had I been out for more than 13 hours?
Over the next three days my parents, surgeons and nursing staff gradually outlined to me the most telling day of my life: 17 May 1988, a day when surgeons worked tirelessly to remove two thirds of my right lung and repair a damaged aortic artery.
It was an operation plagued with difficulty and twice they thought they had lost me. But working straight through, they never gave up and used finely honed skills to take away the cancer and repair my body.
It was the final stage of a rebirth of life and spirit.
Some eight months earlier, I had been diagnosed with a malignant histio-cytoma of the right shoulder.
The diagnosis followed a year of failing health, tiredness and a strange and growing lump on my shoulder blade that would not go away.
Eventually, after claims of a sebaceous cyst and a muscular haematoma, I was told the truth.
"I dinna ken what it is," said the plastic surgeon, betraying his Glaswegian roots. "But it looks malignant and we had better have a closer look."
It was like being knocked down by a bus or blown up by a terrorist bomb: cancer only happened to other people. It was a disease, which was difficult to talk about and even more difficult to contemplate.
Now I struggled to take in what I had been told.
A simple biopsy of the lump, as we all learned to call it, confirmed the surgeon's suspicions. I was quickly booked into a local hospital for immediate and radical surgery.
Whether in shock, or just out of single-mindedness, the diagnosis passed me by.
I responded by reading every piece of medical literature I could find.
My former sister-in-law was a cancer research specialist at Leeds University Hospital and furnished me with reams of reports about this rare and seemingly deadly cancer.
As I prepared for the surgery, I asked questions of doctors, cracked jokes with my parents and worried for my ability to cope. Eventually I cracked and phoned the Samaritans.
It was probably the most important call I have ever made. I hurriedly explained to the female voice at the other end of the phone that I was not suicidal, but terrified of dying. There was a rustling sound as she rummaged through her files and gave me the number of the organiser of a local cancer support group.
I tucked the number away.
A few evenings later, when the depression hit me again I picked up the phone. Diana was her name. At 38, she was a few years older than me and had recently been given remission from breast cancer. Diana was ebullient, encouraging and above all told me that whether I lived or died was up to me.
"You must visualise this thing that has invaded your body and fight it," she said.
"Only you can beat it... with perhaps a little help from the surgeons and God."
That was the key.
But where was God?
Diana and I were to begin an enduring friendship. I was able to reciprocate her help, I hope, when her cancer came back to taunt her three years later. I began to learn the value of friendship.
But what about God?
I had always believed in the saving grace of the Almighty, but my church-going days had lapsed many years earlier.
Somehow I had to re-find God and find my own strength and faith to deal with this cancer.
The next morning, calmed by a warm early autumn sunshine I walked to my nearest church.
Gothic, cold and empty, it provided space to think and pray. The operation to remove the cancer and replace my shoulder and back with re-constructive surgery was awkward, at times bloody painful and most of all seemingly endless.
Many days and nights of lying cramped on my left side as the skin grafts and flaps healed. Days and nights to think and determine whether I would recover.
God became close as I lay there warmed by New Testament promises and the gospel lyrics of my musical hero, Bob Dylan. Three months of radiotherapy followed at Cardiff's Velindre Hospital. Three months of finding more about myself and more about my fellow human beings.
And through them, finding God.
Housed in a small hostel within the hospital grounds, patients of all ages and with all forms of cancer worked within and without to tackle their own disease.
There was Coral-Ann, who denied here own malignancy. "It's just a small tumour and is what you say: benign," she lied. There was Maureen, colostomy bag in hand, who sipped morphine as she told tales of her childhood in Rhymney.
There was my room-mate David, whose pituitary cancer had given him grossly large head, hands and feet and made him appear like a freak at his job in the local tax inspectors' office.
"Well boyo, this thing won't beat me," he cracked. And it didn't.
And then there was Andrea.
At 21, she was the sweetest and most beautiful girl I had ever met.
Racked in pain, with Ewings Sarcoma, a bone cancer, she knew her chances of survival were slim.
"But I'm going to fight it," she urged, willing me to do the same. "I haven't yet got my degree, I haven't learned to drive... and I'm still a virgin.
"I want to live a bit before I die." She did.
But that did not dull the agony when four years later David and I stood together and shared tears at her funeral.
There is no reasoning in this.
My memories of Andrea remain. Her smile and her laughter as she beat me 3-1 in a physiotherapy game of football, where she was only allowed to use her right leg and I only my arm.
And then there was the rainy December day when she returned from a Christmas shopping trip in Cardiff City centre laden down with presents and a £300 hole in her Visa card.
Her pleasure was manifest.
The radiotherapy became of secondary importance. I had found God in my fellow human beings and in the karma of knowing that far from myself being the key in this battle, the door was unlocked from without.
When the cancer returned to my right lung some months later I knew I had the strength to face it down.
My life was saved by the dedication and skill of the surgeons. But my Spirit had already been saved.
At the time I was told I had less than a one in 10 chance of surviving beyond a year. But 16 ears later, the cancer is gone for good and I know that God has always been with me.
Here's something to think about and I am saying it now before anything happens.
A few weeks ago I was praying that Falmer will be granted to us.
I opened the Bible to read it (no bookmarks or anything like that) and it opened at Ezra 6. Verse 22 says
For seven days they celebrated with joy because the Lord had filled them with joy by changing the attitude of the king of Assyria, so that he assisted them in the work on the house of God.
I believe that to be a positive answer to Falmer
Now I am setting myself up, aren't I ?
A few weeks ago I was praying that Falmer will be granted to us.
I opened the Bible to read it (no bookmarks or anything like that) and it opened at Ezra 6. Verse 22 says
For seven days they celebrated with joy because the Lord had filled them with joy by changing the attitude of the king of Assyria, so that he assisted them in the work on the house of God.
I believe that to be a positive answer to Falmer
Now I am setting myself up, aren't I ?
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On the Left Wing
KIT NAPIER
I also want to state that I think Chappers has started a brilliant thread here and although we are united by B&HA we are all after-all individual people with our own different opinions and (hopefully) respect for each other.
I hope that when this thread is exhausted it in placed on NSC Gold.
I hope that when this thread is exhausted it in placed on NSC Gold.
Raphael Meade
Well-known member
i have to say that what was started for a bit of fun to provoke a reaction has turned into a very interesting debate on the world and such like.
well done MAX.
well done MAX.
On the Left Wing said:
Well said, although I do not agree with all comments on here, or rather, do noy understand how religion works for some people this has been a thoroughly enjoyable debate/discussion. I also respect others opinions and beliefs even if I do not share them.
NSC GOLD !!!
Juan Albion
Chicken Sniffer 3rd Class
chez said:
Don't let the press give you the impression that there are swarms of extremists out there. I think you'll find that it is a very small minority of any religion. In terms of numbers they are insignificant. Sadly, a few can make a big noise, and the media spot it a mile off. Equally sadly, some people can't see beyond the extremists and have no idea of what 'everyday' religion is to believers, be they Jewish, Christian, Moslem or whatever.
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Lush
Mods' Pet
Juan Albion said:
Also: see "The future of the phone-in" thread.