"Repent and get an I POD". "Redeem your rest!" - Pastor Mark Driscoll

We were pretty skeptical about the value of these bizarre machines that we saw advertised on TV. The I POD. Everybody seemed to be getting one. So we resisted. What a waste of money. What a useless acquisition. It'll be on the rubbish pile in no time and the next great technological advance will take over yada yada yada.

But we were wrong!
We gave one to each other at Christmas time this year hoping it might be a good way to listen to sermons and be encouraged. We'd heard you could so this and at the time we weren't hearing sermons at church regularly because one of our sons was finding it hard to settle in the creche and Lauren wasn't going to get to bible study this term because of the same reason. So we bought an IPOD and we began downloading.

Our current favourite site for downloading sermons is Mars Hill Church, Seattle with Pastor Mark Driscoll preaching. We have been so encouraged and learned so much. You can download audio or video. We just download the audio.

We just wish we'd bought the IPOD earlier in our life with CFS. If you're a new sufferer - get one! Turn off the TV. Start listening to sermons. It completely changed our outlook on our "wasted time" resting (& for Lauren doing housework).

Listening to sermons is heaps easier than 'planning' to become a "prayer warrior" (that requires your own motivation and drive as well as the Holy Spirit & with CFS it's far easier to just be on a downer for the day and watch mindless TV). It has given us motivation and drive by refreshing us with God's word and increased our faith in Christ as we've heard it.

This last week, as we've been sick and fearing a return of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for Craig we have been listening (one ear plug each in the bed) to a series of 28 sermons on 1 & 2 Peter - called "TRIAL 8 Witnesses in 1 and 2 Peter." Now this is a serious blessing of serious illness. It is taking 7 months to preach this series. Sermons are 1 hour plus and preached once a week. But we've listened to 9 sermons in a week.

We would really recommend the whole series to you but in particular the sermon "Trial and Jesus" sounded like it was written for CFS sufferers (just ignore the first 5 minutes on Mars Hill budget outcomes for the year). We were really thankful for it at a really hard and horrible time. You can do a search for it on the site.

We've also listened to the

• Doctrine - What Christians Should believe series
• Spiritual Warfare series
• 1 & 2 Timothy series

all of which we would highly recommend and hope to be a blessing to you. Please let us know in the comments if you have any favourite sites for downloading sermons - we will have to branch out at some point!