All Over Again

It's been three weeks now since my last post. It's amazing - for me time has just flown. Two weeks away on mission, then one week at home recovering from mission, and now here we are.

There are so many things I could like to share with you, that I learnt while I was away, but I'm going to save them for a while, to process them a bit better. One thing I will share is something that has come up since I have gotten back.

While I was in Lorne, I started reading through the book of Malachi. Chapter 1 focuses on the offering of sacrifices to God, and his anger at the Israelites for presenting him with imperfect sacrifices... and not just imperfect, but their off-casts - the animals they didn't want anymore!

In the same way, we need to ensure that we are offering God the best, not the leftovers. I know for me, this often means the sacrifice of my time. Time is very precious to me, as it is to many people in this world. If this doesn't make sense to you, come and try being a full-time student, having a part-time job, doing ministry on campus and being a daughter, sister and friend as well. And I know there are many out there who would say I have it easy! But what I am trying to say is that with all these things going on, I often leave God only the dregs of my time. Whatever is leftover at the end of the day, when I am too tired to study and too grumpy to socialise. Is that what I think God deserves? Me at my worst, when I'm half-asleep and irritable?! Surely I could offer him something better?

Strangely, this isn't the point of my post today.

This isn't the first time I've looked at Malachi 1 and written these things in my journal. I studied the same thing over a year ago and came to the same conclusions, which I read last night when I was flicking through last year's journal. There are going to be lessons that are going to come up again and again in your life, just as the way I use my time to honour God has come up again in mine. Maybe I'll take a bit more away from it this time, and it won't come up again for another few years. Or maybe I'll be looking at the same thing again in six months or a year. Some things are going to take a whole lifetime to conquer. But I'm okay with that, because I know Jesus will be walking with me every step of the way.

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!

Listening Within

The Holy Spirit and his role is never something discussed in school scripture or Sunday school, apart from a brief mention as the mysterious "third member of the trinity" - the gas, to God and Jesus' ice and water (if I may use the analogy used to explain the trinity to me at school). And what I heard from the media and discussion about Christianity confused me. What the heck was "being slain in the Spirit" (a question I still have today...) or what does it mean to be "led by the Spirit"?

So the Spirit remained this shadowy background presence that my little Anglican-brought up self wasn't sure she wanted anything to do with.

After I started going to bible study, I started hearing different things, about how the Spirit lives in all Christians. And there were these fruit of the Spirit, which everyone wants to have and we need to rely on the Spirit... "But what does it all mean? How does it work?" I wanted to ask.

It's been a long time coming, but I finally feel I am beginning to understand a bit about the Holy Spirit, and how He works. He is God dwelling in us, and because of that, He changes the way we perceive the world. I think in a sense the Holy Spirit is God-coloured glasses, that every Christian puts on - often without knowing it - when they sign up to follow Christ. And while we are still looking around for 'evidence' of the Spirit in our lives - healings, tongues, miracles - we miss the real evidence of the work of the Spirit. Those moments where the Spirit has allowed us to see glimpses of God and feel joy, to reach out in love where we would have held back, the recognition of sin and turning from it - these are the real evidence of the Spirit.

But what does that mean? To me, it means I need to listen more inside. I don't think the Spirit speaks in an audible voice, even inside, or in any words - or at least, He certainly hasn't for me. But I know that it is He who brings the changes are reshaping my mind and my heart, and when I am quiet and listening, He shows me these things, and what else needs to be done.

I know there is much more I have to learn about the Spirit and his role, and that there definitely are some flaws in my understanding at present, but I feel I've come a long way from the Holy Ghost lurking somewhere in the murky depths, that I knew of in the past. And before I go, I must acknowledge a book that has helped me to articulate a lot of what I have begun to experience - Reaching for the Invisible God, by Philip Yancey (in particular the chapters "The Go-Between" and "Out of Control").

An hour of my life...

26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in
barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable
than they? 27 Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

Jesus - Matthew 6:26-27

I will readily admit that I stress a lot. My natural instinct in a difficult situation is always to worry - to imagine what could go wrong and think the worst. I don't enjoy this experience, and neither do others around me. I hate it when I can't concentrate on what people are saying because I have all my worries running through my mind. I resent the fact that it makes me look unhappy and perpetually in a rush. But most of all, I dislike the fact that it just consumes so much of my time and my energy. It takes away from my whole life - sleeping, eating, studying, relaxing... everything is affected. It certainly doesn't add anything to my life - instead, it damages my normal existence.

In the lead up to an event that has been causing me a fair bit of stress and worry, I sat down with my mentor, and she tried to get me to talk through my worrying and what its like. I came up with this metaphor - not perfect, but gives you the basic idea of what I feel worrying is like.

For me, worry is like this enveloping cloud. Each little detail is another wisp of white, and as they gather all around you, they blind you to the bigger picture until you can't see what you're doing or where you're going. It's not until you step outside the cloud, that you see what which way the wind is blowing and whether your cloud is a storm cloud or a fluff ball. We need to step outside our worries and look at the bigger picture of what God is doing, and what his purpose is in this stressful time.

Facing Fears

Yesterday at church, our speaker really confronted us with looking at our lives to examine what areas we lack faith in. He suggested areas like money or studies - that working copious hours at work or spending every moment studying is a lack of faith in God's provision. But what came to my mind is that often I fail to have faith in God's ability to overcome my fears.

I am naturally a fearful person. Ironically, last night, I watched a movie - Nim's Island - where one of the main characters is afraid of everything - germs, spiders, other people, her front door... And while I was able to laugh at Alex's silliness, and at her misadventures as she is forced to face her fears in order to help Nim, I saw a little bit of myself in her. I am afraid of so much. Now, I know the right kind of fear - a healthy respect for God's power - is essential, but the wrong kind of fear - my kind of fear - is a failure to trust God and his goodness, and that is sin.

Funnily enough, today, I got thrown in the deep end. My mother proposed we take a trip out of the city, to a rainforest about 2 hours away. Sounds lovely, yes? But then comes the tricky part. I am learning to drive at the moment, and honestly, it scares me to death. My mother wanted me to drive there, which meant winding country roads and two motorways. Then came the clincher. Since I was a little girl, I have had a phobia of heights. Winding staircases and those steel grid gangways send me into a sobbing mess. And suddenly we get to the rainforest, where Mum wants to go on a new rainforest canopy walk - an elevated walkway 20 metres off the forest floor, culminating in a 45m high tower - with an open to the air winding staircase to the top.

And I did them both.

I think God must be into practical lessons.