connecting God, life and us

NOAHABRAHAM

MOSESDANIELDAVID

JESUS

JOHN McCARTHYthe risk/adventure/challenge issue

...pluck o the Irish

Production Manager Rob Hare

Assistant EditorHenry Cavender

Graphic DesignKris LannenDavid Renyardwww.davidjdesigns.me.uk

PhotographyDavid RenyardMark Wankel

Websiteswww.lyfe.org.ukwww.biblesociety.org.ukwww.christiansurfers.co.ukwww.tubestation.orgwww.switch-valdisere.org

SURF

introduc-tion

Surf lyfe (Life Your Faith Encounters) is about connecting you, the surfer, with your own life-shaper, God. Its about meeting with your buddies on the beach, on the slopes, in the pub, caf, aprs-ski, wherever, to discover what our shaper has to say about our everyday world.

As surfers and boardriders of all kinds, the lifestyle we all enjoy can be one of danger, adventure, challenge, and of taking big risks. Over the following pages youll find six key people who encounter God in different ways, each one willing to take a risk and step into their own unique adventure.

Each Bible encounter has a section called local knowledge which will give you some helpfulbackground, and off the lip offers relevant fact,

wit, wisdom or worldview from or about some of the big names and influences in surf culture.

As your lyfe crew meets, it is helpful to follow this simple pattern :

Read read the passage to yourself, slow it down, soak it up. Reflect talk about it, share your feelings and what you got from reading. Respond talk about how to respond and agree on practical action.

We hope you enjoy meeting together in this way, and we pray that you will hear God drawing you into a deeper encounter with him. And rememberthe ultimate ride does exist, you just have to know where to look.

The LORD saw how bad the people on earth were and that everything they thought and planned was evil.

He was very sorry that he had made them, and he said, Ill destroy every living creature on earth! Ill wipe out people, animals, birds, and reptiles. Im sorry I ever made them. But the LORD was pleased with Noah, and this is the story about him. Noah was the only peson who lived right and obeyed God.

He had three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

God knew that everyone was terribly cruel and violent. So he told Noah:

Cruelty and violence have spread everywhere. Now Im going to destroy the whole earth and all its people. Get some good timber and build a boat. Put rooms in it and cover it with tar inside and out. Make it one hundred and thirty-three metres long, twenty-two metres wide, and thirteen metres high. Build a roof on the boat and leave a space of about forty-four centimetres between the roof and the sides. Make the boat three storeys high and put a door on one side.

Im going to send a flood that will destroy everything that breathes! Nothing will be left alive. But I solemnly promise that you, your wife, your sons, and your daugters-in-law will be kept safe in the boat.

Bring into the boat with you a male and a female of every kind of animal and bird, as well as a male and a female of every reptile. I dont want them to be destroyed. Store up enough food both for yourself and for them. Noah did everything the LORD told him to do.

GENESIS 6. 5-22

Noahs life is shaped by two great floods the flood of evil and the flood of water. Noah was the only person left of his generation who still followed God completely.

God calls Noah to build a huge boat in the middle of the desert, hundreds of miles from any water! This is no dinghy, the boat is calculated to be the size of one and a half football pitches and four storeys high. During the building of the boat, Noah is humiliated by the taunts of others, yet he trusts God completely despite the discomfort.

Like us, Noah wasnt perfect (he once had a few too many beers and ended up lying naked outside his tent (see Genesis 9. 20). However, for a lifetime he walked step by step in faith and loved God wholeheartedly.

God makes a promise (covenant) with Noah to keep his family safe. A covenant like this was a binding commitment and was grounded in the relationship rather than law (check out another covenant in Genesis 8. 21-29 which incorporates all creation).

Japanese Surfer, Motomitsu Watanabe, died surfing big Pipeline in January 2009. East Coast pro, Noah Snyder, whod paddled for and missed the last wave, saw the whole thing: As I raced to get under the wave, he was grabbing for his rail, trying to get over the ledge. Then the wave got real ugly and he got lip launched out into the flats while still holding his rail, and as I went through the wave there was a loud noise like he might have hit his board. When I ducked the next wave I got sucked over back onto the reef; where he would have been, but his board was broken and I didnt see him anywhere. Jesse Hines, fellow East coast pro, added, Noah, Will, Matt Beacham and I came a couple of days later and prayed with his parents for him and them, we know it could have been any of us.

(Surfing Magazine)

LOCAL KNOWLEDGE

the lip

off

ROCKThe location is Polzeath, England; a coastal village The Times described as

The

Thumping heart of cool Cornwall, steeped in surf culture and holding a consistent

beach break which, if the conditions are right, can hold everything but the very

biggest swells with relative ease. Traditionally a longboard Mecca, the wave

variety at Polzeath and surrounding breaks gives opportunity for every kind of

surfer, making it a consistently popular destination for travellers and giving the

hardcore local crew every reason to stay.

This story begins in 2002 in the beachside chapel Tubestation now calls home. With declining use it faced closure and commercial sale to a tycoon or investor with the bucks to turn it into yet more soulless holiday homes. But then a vision was born, one which continues to unfold today. The vision startedwith a rescue mission and the compulsion to give the site back to the community it once served back to the surfers. Tubestation opened late summer 07. It has been set up as an insane hang out, with all the gear. Water temps can reach a numbing 8 degrees in winter here, so although you might have got changed on the beach you wont want to hang around for long afterwards in freezing easterlies. Slope over to the Tube though and, with the hot outdoor shower and come in and drip on the floor bro policy, first impressions are of instant warmth. The hot chocolates are frothy, the coffees look as good as they taste and the sweet crepes hit your sweet spot.Grab a laptop from the bar and check the forecast, warm up some more with a round of golf on the Wii or a skate on the infamously sick indoor mini-ramp, than fall asleep on a bean bag to the gentle sounds of September Sessions playing on the big screens or some laid back tunes from one of the day-time DJs and sessionists. The vibe is one of freedom and creativity. Further development, all by the in-house crew of surfers and creatives, means that Summer 2009 will see two new big outdoor sun-decks ready to rock, providing a solid-ground alternative to the hammocks that rock gently between the palms, and soul surf company Nineplus are opening a shop here with skate brand Rise Worldwide to help pump some funds into the venue.

Theres a deeper element too. Being a totally faith-based with a healthy love your neighbour attitude coursing through its veins, it adds an extra dimension to the every-day material stuff. It warms the soul. The old church still meets here, but its been brought to life by a healthy indigenous surf community which somehow makes sense of the yawning divide between surf culture and faith culture. This makes for a seamless and fluid transition between the two. After all, who hasnt sat out back and been blown away by the wonder of it all?

WWW.TUBESTATION.ORG

TUBESTATIONREADY

TO

The LORD said to Abram: Leave your country, your family, and your relatives and go to the land that I will show you. I will bless you and make your descendants into a great nation. You will become famous and be a blessing to others. I will bless anyone who blesses you, but I will put a curse on anyone who puts a curse on you.

Abram was seventy-five years old when the LORD told him to leave the city of Haran. He obeyed and left with his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, and all the possessions and slaves they had got while in Haran.

When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram went as far as the sacred tree of Moreh in a place called Shechem. The Canaanites were still living in the land at that time, but the LORD appeared to Abram and promised, I will give this land to your family for ever. Abram then built an altar there for the LORD.

Abram travelled to the hill country east of Bethel and camped between Bethel and Ai, where he built another altar and worshipped the LORD. Later, Abram started out towards the Southern Desert

genesis 12. 1-9

Whats in a name? Hawaiian surfing legend and father of modern day surfing Duke Kahanamoku inherited the name Duke from his father. Duke Senior was named after Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh who was visiting Hawaii at the time of his birth in 1869. Duke was sometimes referred to as the Big Kahuna, but he rejected this name because it had connotations linked with ancient Hawaiian sorcery and magic.

off the lip

LOCAL KNOWLEDGEAbrams name is changed to Abraham (Genesis 17. 3). Abraham means father of many.

Abraham was a wealthy livestock owner. God calls him to a new adventure at the age of 75 years, to leave the security of the city and travel to a new and unknown land. His obedience will affect the history