And I say thank you...

God provides.

For the last couple of weeks now, I have been preparing for a mission trip to a coastal town, where we minister to school leavers who are at the beach to party. Part of this preparation is raising the funds to go, by asking those around us to support our ministry. I don't know if anyone else has had to raise money before, but asking people for money is scary. Particularly if you're naturally fairly guarded with money, like me.

And as one does, when you're scared about something and you're busy with other things - like exam study and honours applications - you try and push these things back as long as possible. And then you realise that the longer you put them off, the worse it gets.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I finally worked (and prayed) up the courage to approach my church for money. I'm fairly new there, not known to many in the congregation, so I thought a few friends and acquaintances might give me something, but had no idea where the rest was going to come from. Kit of little faith! I turn up to church and am greeted by people who don't even know me, but have heard about the mission trip, and want to support me, and walk out of the church at the end of service, holding almost the full amount, with promises from a couple more who don't have cash on them to give me money later.

I got home and went to my room, and for the first 10 minutes, all I could do was fall on my knees and laugh and cry at the same time, with two words the only ones I could speak. Thank you.

An answer to prayer....

You know those days were to quote my emo friend Avril "Nothing's going right/And everything's a mess"... I've been having one of those for the past couple of days.

I'm applying to add Honours to my degree, and the form is due tomorrow. In the stress of everything that is going on, I kept pushing back the fact that I needed to meet with my potential academic supervisor beforehand, to make sure I am a suitable candidate. So, with only four days to go, I email her, asking for a meeting, knowing that she is busy running exams... For two days I hear nothing and I begin to despair.

Meanwhile, I am currently trying to raise support for the short term mission trip I am about to embark on in just over a week. I still have almost $1000 to raise, and am getting only silence on all fronts.

And finally, last night, I do what I should have done in the first place. I pray. I apologise to God for trying to do it all myself, and I remember that if these things are in His will, He will see them done.

And so I sleep. And this morning, I receive two emails. One from the academic supervisor, telling me I can meet her tomorrow morning, and one from my church, telling me several people are willing to support me. Maybe not the full amount, but they will support me nonetheless.

PRAY.

Joy to the World

Well, surprisingly, as I'm posting this, I'm not actually feeling very joyful - I had this all written up, and then managed to delete the whole thing! But I've heard that perseverance is pretty good too... so I'm giving that a try. But, for the second time tonight - my thoughts on joy.

I've been doing a short study on joy recently, in particular, the reasons we have joy as Christians. So I've come up with an acronym for it...

P - Purpose
H - Hope
i [Superfluous letter to make the acronym work]
L - Love

I am rather proud of this, because I can even make it relevant to the topic! PHiLippians is the 'book of joy' in the Bible - it's a major theme and Paul even uses the word for joy or rejoice 14 times, in a fairly short book. If you want to do some investigating of your own into anything to do with joy, it would be a great place to start.

So what does my little word play mean? It is the three reasons that Christ has given us joy... I'll explain more:

• In Christ, we have a purpose. You know those age old questions, "Why are we here? What is the meaning of life?" [By the way, I don't think 42 really covers it...] We have those answers in God. Our purpose is to bring glory to God. "For everything was created by him and for him." (Col 1:16b) So no matter who you are, your purpose is to be doing it for Jesus, in whatever you do, and that should determine what you do and how you behaviour. And that is a huge joy for me, because it means that whatever decisions I have to face in the future, I know what the underlying goal is. That all the glory goes to God and Christ Jesus.
• In Christ, we have hope for the future. As well as a God we can trust and rely upon during our time on Earth, we have a great future to look forward to if we believe in what Christ has done for us and put him as our Saviour King. We can have confidence in God's promise that we "will not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:16) And I don't know about you, but to me the idea of spending the rest of eternity with God, worshipping him, in a place free from sin and suffering sounds like a pretty good reason to be joyful.
• In Christ, we have seen the depths of God's love for us, through his actions in dying for us. I don't know about you, but every time I see the Jesus film or The Passion of the Christ, those images of how Christ died make me almost ill thinking about how much pain he must have endured on the cross, in addition to the agony being separated from God. The cross is one of the most painful methods of execution known to man - so painful, they invented the word 'excruciating' for it. [Seriously... look at the Latin roots. 'ex-' (from or out of) and 'crux' (cross)] And Jesus went though that FOR US. "This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins" (1 John 4:10) That's how much the Creator of the Universe loves YOU. That's got to be something to be joyful about.

There are many other aspects of joy I haven't covered, but I know, especially when I'm feeling down, that it's important to remind myself of the reasons I have to be joyful - my "PHiL" of joy [Sorry, bad pun]. And you know the best things about these reasons? In Christ, they are eternal, unchanging promises. An assignment can give me purpose for an afternoon, I may have hopes for the New Year and anyone can love me for a day or even a lifetime. But the purpose, hope and love God is offering lasts forever. Now that's a reason to be joyful!