Comfort is so easy to achieve, and always looks so desirable. But the saying rings true, the grass is always greener on the other side. Comfort quickly becomes boring, stale, over rated.

But why is it so hard to leave the comfort zone? Why is it so hard to think outside the box? I love writing, I especially love writing songs. Yet when I sit down with a pen it is sometimes so hard to write. The same, boring ideas float round my head. The same cliché sentences that already send people straight to sleep, the same boring rhymes. Why is it so hard to find a way outside the box?

When we spend too much time being comfortable, it gets harder to break away. Waking up in the morning it can be so hard to get up, and it seems the longer we lie in bed, the more difficult it becomes to get up, well this is how it works for me anyway! Yet when we get into a pattern of getting up, it becomes easier, yes we will have off days. But when you get yourself used to it, it becomes natural.

I envy people who have the perseverance to master their skill so much that it becomes 2^nd nature. I long to have the same determination, but I spend too much time getting half way and being satisfied to quickly.

I long to stretch myself so much that I find it hard to sit comfortably, I strongly believe God longs for us to become uncomfortable, He did not send us to earth just to rest, and have an easy time. That’s what heaven is about! But we are here to grow, try, and try again. Sometimes at great cost. When this is not happening, something is wrong.

I find there is nothing worse than looking back on a day off and thinking, well I slept till 12, I watched TV, played on the Xbox, had a shower and got dressed at 4pm, and watched TV all night because it was too late to do anything. What a waste. So my challenge is simple… What can we do today, that will make tomorrow, a yesterday that we will want to live again?

I remember as a child every bonfire night we would go to watch the fireworks at Stand Road, being the busiest firework display in chesterfield parking was always an issue. So we used to park on a housing estate and walk 10 or 15 minutes. Each year there would be one or 2 houses, who would have their Christmas lights up. And every year we would watch them as we walk past, and comment it’s a bit early for that isn’t it, its only just november! Yet this was over 10 years ago now. And it still shocks us, no doubt this problem has been occurring way before i experienced it!

So when will we get over this shock? Maybe we won’t ever. Maybe in the year 2056 when the Coca Cola advert comes on tv at the end of april we will look back saying will be ‘Do you remember back in the day when we used to wait until October to put the Christmas lights out? That was the day.’

Having said all this we do have a strict tradition in my household that Christmas decorations definitely do not come out before December, and rarely before Christmas Eve. And it will continue to stay like that! Consequently i should point out we don’t put them away until September!

Thanks to Chris Witham for the design, hope you like it! I really wanted to give it a completely new look. Let me know what you think.

I do hope the mood of it brings you to a nice relaxing read!

I’ll get posting now it works! P.S as you will notice the address is now www.gazsimmonds.com How exciting…

Thought i would tell you about the latest addition to the Simmonds’ household, who actually has been here for about a month or so now! Meet Eva…

Isn’t she beautiful?! We got her when she was just 9 weeks, Its pretty scary how much she has grown in just over a month!

More blogs on the way i promise.

So i found a website the other day which produces things called ‘Wordle’s’ maybe you have seen them before, i haven’t so i figured i had to share it with you! Basically you type in or copy and paste in some text of anything, the longer the better. And then it creates a ‘Wordle’ of that text, where the words that appear most in the text are drawn as the biggest words, and the less the words are mentioned then the smaller they are on the ‘Wordle’ Its amazing. It cuts out all the words like ‘and’, and ‘the’ etc so its pretty cool.

I did this one below of the whole of the book of Revelation, and here’s what it looks like…

And i also did another one of this Blog. Which was cool. Maybe i will upload a new one each month to see what i talk more and more about…

This made me think though, especially looking at the one of this blog. I am happy that ‘worship’ and ‘God’ and ‘peace’ are fairly big, though i would prefer ‘God’ to be the biggest. A little disappointed that ‘really’ and ‘just’ are the biggest, those words don’t really describe what this blog is about! “It’s really just a blog!”

So this made me ponder, if someone made a ‘Wordle’ of our life, of all the words we ever say, and have ever said. What would our Wordle look like? I know what i would definitely want mine to look like, but i am not sure if it would. Even this blog, Jesus isn’t the biggest word, when i think he should be. And i am pretty sure Jesus wouldn’t be the biggest word in my life Wordle, but He needs to be.

So my challenge to you, what would be the biggest word on your Wordle? Is it what you would like it to be? Why not try and make it what you want it to be…

But what this means, which brings me to my initial point of this blog. Is that it is now quite an effort for me to write more than 140 characters! Because i can’t do it in 10 seconds, it requires more thought! And i just spend all my time on Twitter! I am not saying it has taken over my life, because i can still live with out it! But it is a wonderful addition, and i have found it a great way to regularly keep up with friends, without stumbling into the more often than not awkward ‘Hello, how are you’ conversations! So if you don’t have Twitter i suggest you get it! You will find me at twitter.com/gazsimmonds i think.

I half wrote a blog last week which was going to tell you all about an amazing conference i went to where Loius Giglio was the main speaker. But i found it difficult to concentrate so left it to go and update my Twitter status! What i am trying to say ladies and gentlemen, is Twitter is where its at. Some would say it is the ‘Bees knees’ or the ‘Cats Pyjamas’, i just think it’s pretty cool. Our Church is even on it, along with many other Churches!

But having said all this, i am definitely not going to abandon this blog, because i love it. And soon i will get inspiration to write something good on here. Maybe we could even give it a little make over, like changing rooms! I feel i look a bit weird on those photo’s now as they are getting older by the day.

Anyway. God Bless

By the way, i bought a new football today, it’s amazing. I got that excitement i haven’t experienced since my child hood, where you buy a new football. We went to play with it for the first time. Only on grass though (Obviously) and then after i gently held it and flicked off all the dirt and made sure there were no major scratches. It is sitting proudly in my room as we speak.

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Thursday i lead worship at ACT, was a really good evening there actually, good conversation and bible study and stuff with Pete and one of the guys from ACT, looking at Genesis 1, always a good one.

So Friday was bank holiday! Here in Oxford they celebrate this in quite some style! Its tradition for all the students to stay up all night, all the bars and stuff open all night, and then in the morning everyone gathers in the centre, and at 6am a choir sings from the top of one of the colleges, and a short blessing is given over the city etc! So i decided i am only in Oxford for a year, i may as well give it a go! So 4.45am my alarm goes off, unsure if this is still a good idea! But got into town just gone half 5 and thousands and thousands of people we’re there it was amazing! An old tradition is also that people used to jump off the big bridge just next to where the choir were! So obviously now a days the police put half of the british police force on the bridge from 4:30 till about 7 to stop this happening! Obviously the people who still wanted to do it, just did it after 7, so the police just caused a mere inconvienience to the timing of their day really.

We did however go for a full english breakfast after though, so it was definatly worth getting up for!

Last night we celebrated Lizzies birthday, had a chineese, then went out to the pub where quite a number of other guys from Church joined us. Was a really pleasant evening.

I am leading worship at Reality tonight, so best go finish planning! And Children’s Church tomorrow morning, should be good!

Its the May ball this thursday too, can’t wait for that! Its a caley (How do you spell that? Like a country dance/barn dance thing!)

So yeh, God bless

Teaching was good, a guy called Christian who is an Oxford theology graduate or something, who apparntly passed with the highest marks ever or something like that!! He was very clever, and a really good teacher. He spoke to us about the Ressurection of Jesus and stuff so it was really cool.

This term myself along with a few other interns are helping out with the Marriage course! Which should be fun, first one tonight!

I’m co-leading at Hungry tomorrow with Rich, looking forward to that.

So yeh, thats a rough overview of what i’m upto lately

See you soon

And the sun showed up today!! I even gave the shorts a bit of a run out in England (Other than last week getting of a plane to a 6am extemely cold England!)

It was all going good, a little bit of football on the drive with my bro, until i had a shot, put everything into it, and then realised that my left foot which was previously grounding me to the floor, had decided to take a coffee break, and had joined the rest of my body horizontally for a brief second, before i made a quite painful connection with the floor, resulting in lots of blood and not so much skin over my ancle! But as the old saying goes, no pain no game! I think i would have prefered no game after this experience had happened!!

Watched Madagascar 2 again tonight, what a film!