I went on a run with 2 friends last night at about 11pm. We went down by the river and the air was so crisp and everything was so fresh and beautiful! It felt really good to run again after so like a month of not running. It was such a fun, spontaneous thing to do. And it led me to think that just because I'm getting older, it doesn't mean I have to lose that fun and spontaneity but rather that I begin to learn the balance between reality, seriousness and responsibilty with fun and spontaneity. God wants me to have fun and enjoy life... He came that I might have a joyful abundant life in Him. Thank You Jesus!
So April update...
Actually back-track to the end of March. At the end of March we had Outreach Week. This semester I stayed in York. The Lord really blessed the week from the beginning. We had some really great times of prayer where the Lord just united us as a team and gave us all vision for the week. Everyone had lanes and we were running in them and everything just meshed together really well. On one of the days we deep cleaned the Fellowship Hall and even degreased the floors (that was probably my favourite part). It was great just working together and getting the job done. I won't make it all sound like a bed of roses because there were times when my patience was running low and I was short with people. And getting people organised and just trying to get them to see what needs to be done is hard. I find it really hard to do especially to do it with love. Walking in love and patience has been a theme for me this past month because I've been severely lacking in both.
We had an outreach to the homeless one night. We cooked some soup and some of the team went out and offered it to the homeless and talked to them about Jesus. Myself and 3 other people on the team stayed back to pray. It was such an awesome time of prayer and God really opened our eyes to many things and answered many prayers that night. It was pretty mind-blowing!
Then the evening after that we had a "married couples fellowship meal" which was aimed at getting the married couples to fellowship and get to know each other. We set everything up like a really posh restuarant and we all wore black and white to wait on them! It went very well and the couples said that they were really blessed by it so praise the Lord!
On Saturday we had an acoustic night. I wasn't able to be there because I was babysitting for a couple so they could go but from what I heard and the pictures & videos I saw, it went pretty well and people were really blessed by it! So all in all a pretty good outreach week and all the other teams were really blessed too! Thanks for praying!
Then April kicked off with Easter celebrations! We had the Sader Dinner on Good Friday and it was a great time of Fellowship and all were blessed! On Easter Sunday morning at sunrise, I took a group down to Millennium Bridge where some people from churches all around York meet for a "Sonrise" Service. It started off with a great resounding trumpet call and then we sang a few hymns and read some Scriptures of Jesus' resurrection. The sunrise was breathtakingly beautiful and everything was just beautiful! Then we had a lovely Easter Service followed by lunch out at Nandos and then I helped with the youth group in the evening. So it was a really blessed Easter weekend.
The following week was filled with a lot of the usual stuff - cleaning, prayer meetings, discipleship meetings, church etc. Then i went home the following weekend and it was so good to be home! Home sweet home! It's funny because home doesn't have to be the most amazing place on earth for your heart to feel most comfortable. I love the way my heart feels when I'm at home. This visit was bitter sweet though. There was a lot going on that just broke my heart but at the same time it was sweet to know that God is always in control and nothing is going to get out of control as long as we stay focused on Him! How reassuring!
The following week was again filled with the normal duties. But one thing I love is that with Jesus even the mundane, day-to-day duties lose their mundaness and begin to be enjoyable, because we're enjoying Him in them! How freeing that has been for me to just learn to enjoy Jesus in all I do. Oh that I would enjoy Him more because I still lose that enjoyment sometimes.
That Thursday was the monthly Prison visit. Jamie and I prepared a drama called "choices". It was so much fun practising it and doing it at the prison. The prisoners enjoyed it and I think it really spoke to some of them. After the Gospel had been shared, round about 8 guys raised their hands to accept the Lord. It was such a wonderful time and the Lord was in the conversations afterwards too! One of the guys I talked to afterwards had been a Christian for about 6 months but he just hadn't been experiencing the power of his Christian walk. But that last week he had asked the Lord to just become more real to him. So he stopped reading his Bible dutifully and just sought the Lord's presence and the Lord was faithful to show Himself to this guy. It blew his mind and he began to realise that he was filled with the Holy Spirit and that the Spirit gave him the power to live this life victoriously for Jesus. I almost cried hearing him re-count what God had faithfully revealed to him! Praise the Lord for His presence!
The following week was Speakers Week! And it was such a blessed week. Our intended speaker couldn't make it due to the masses of volcanic ash in the air so that seemed kinda sad at first but it ended up being an extremely blessed week of just seeking the Lord and relaxing! And I definitely needed a double portion of both!
Here are just a few things the Lord showed me:
- Hebrews 4:12 God's Word is living and powerful. His Word is alive and it gives life. And because it's alive, it has a VOICE. If God's Word speaks, am I listening? Am I listening to the voice of God's Word?
- My view in life is determined by the habits I cultivate. I shared on this during one session but I confused the stories of Joshua and the spies and when they actually entered the Promised Land but no one actually corrected me which I thought was funny but the crux of it was that Joshua cultivated good habits and that's what helped him to have great faith in times of crisis. His obedience in little things helped him to have faith when the big things hit. So cultivating good habits in obedience and in seeking the Lord diligently will directly affect the way I view crises in my life. So it challenged me to cultivate good habits now while I have the time because what I cultivate in the common place is what I will draw from in the crisis.
- I was laying down in a field one of the days there and the sun was so warm on my skin... it felt wonderful! Anyway, I was watching the clouds change (something I used to do alot as a child while laying in the pool) and it made me realise how much like the clouds I am. The clouds change shape so much; one minute they are this and the next minute they are that... sounds like the story of my life! But then in the background is the blue sky; always blue; constant and never changing... sounds like the story of my God! It was such a beautiful picture to me of how steadfast and unchanging my God is despite my fickleness.
- Then on another day I was watching a river and something else struck me. The water and clear and pretty shallow near the bank where I was so I could see the bottom of the river bed pretty clearly. And littered all over it were the smoothest stones you have ever seen. The only they had become that smooth was from erosion with the water rushing over them and from rubbing against each other. The smoother the stone was the more erosion you knew it had undergone. And this made me realise that we are the same too; the more we go through things that rub us up the wrong way, the smoother we become. The more other people rub us up the wrong way, the smoother we become. Erosion is our sanctification and as erosion makes the stones smoother so sanctification makes us more and more like Jesus. So instead of just praying difficult situations away in my life, may I allow the Lord to use them to make me smoother.
- While at the same river, I began to pick up some stones and skip them. Now if you know me at all you know that skipping stones is not my forte. And no matter how perfectly flat and well shaped the stone was I could not skip it! But my friend who I was with would get them skip perfectly everytime and even all the way to the other bank! And that made me realise too that it's not about the stone at all at the end of day, it's more about the skill of the person throwing the stones. And we are like skipping stones in God's hands. What we do and how far we go in life is not determined by our ability but rather by how God "throws" us. It's all about Him and we are only because of Him. A stone can't skip itself; likewise we can't live this life ourselves. "In Him we breathe, move and have our being."
I will continue the April update tomorrow :)
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