...They that wait on the Lord...

I decided the other day that today (Sunday) would be a day for re-establishing my focus...

The last few weeks have been flipping hectic, and as you can see from my last post, finding time for God has been a struggle. But now the pressure's off a little - I have some time in the evenings as of today, now that most of the students have gone back home for the hols, and I really really want to spend some quality time with God... an hour in the morning, sorting out my focus for the day, praying for friends and a little bit of worship just doesn't cut it when what i'm looking for is intimacy...

It seems as though God agrees too... I felt Him speak to me in church this morning... I noted it down:

"Chris, it's not about Sunday mornings.

Wait for me. Wait for revalation of me. Wait for my Glory.

Wait for my voice.

If you want to hear me, then wait on me."


So like I say, a semi-rushed, fairly-structured, no-time-to-listen prayer time each morning just ain't gonna cut it any more.

I remembered recently just how good it is to spend a whole day with someone I love - and I really want to be able to find that place with God. So... enough blogging, time to start waiting and listening... :-)

It's a good job I don't have any other commitments today... phew!

God bless,

C

...Now it springs up, do you not perceive it?

It's interesting... When times are hard, it often becomes (after the initial struggle) so easy to find God, because you often have no choice but to rely on Him, to find comfort in His arms, to cast all your worries and cares upon Him...

But when times get better again?

Therein lies the difficulty.

The last ten days have been SUCH a good time: work went well, I went to my first opera, the sun finally came out, I played my first game for the firsts lacrosse team and I really enjoyed some great friendships - spending time with one friend particularly...

I'm overcome by just how easy it is to forget to thank Him when he does everything you ask for, and more.

But I'm determined to keep my focus on Him. To stay in this place that He's led me into. To find out what these passions are that He's beginning to stir up in my soul. Most of all, to keep Him at number one in my heart.


I was reading the verse 'Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart' (Ps 37) earlier. It's such a famous verse, and I used to love making all it about me. But I was taught a few years ago what it meant... It's much easier to understand in the context of the following verse: 'Commit your way to the Lord; Trust in Him and He will do this.'

The light begins to dawn on what the original verse means - A follows B, not the other way round. When I delight myself in the Lord - love Him, worship Him, commit my life to Him, keep my focus on Him, then He will simeltaneously (sp??) be doing a deep work in my heart.

The 'desires of my heart' will be pretty similar to the desires of His heart. Which will be tied in with His perfect plan for my life.

Which will be pretty darn good.

Right, enough blogging for now.

God bless all.

C

..."I am doing a new thing"

Seven weeks.

There's not really any way I can write down what's gone on in my life since my last blog. To be honest, if I could... well, suffice to say a lot of it is just for me and God.

What I will say is this: It was the light at the end of the tunnel. Eventually, God brought me out of the desert, but he did it through the fire - now I'm in a place where I can hear his voice again, he's waking up passions I had long-since forgotten, exciting new passions I hadn't ever imagined I would have, teaching me to pray 'like a dying man' and, most of all, making me so, so hungry.

There are about half a dozen people who I really need to express something to - over the last 2 months, spiritually the hardest of my life so far, you have stood by me in prayer all the way. You know who you are. I quite literally could not have made it to this place without your support. You've taught me the meaning of love, dedication and friendship, and I hope that someday I can be there for you when you need it, offering even half of what you've done for me.

So I feel more or less back on track - it feels like it's time to start blogging my life again!

God's asked me to keep my future fully open to Him... so, when I finish this job in just under 4 months, I have more or less no plans. No job, nowhere to live, not even a home town (folks are moving away from Cambridge). And, once the fear had subsided, I realised how comfortable I am in this situation - Me, the perpetual plan-maker... happy that the plan is 'no plan'. I think it's due to the excitement of what God may do...

Last of all... I've felt Him ask me a question recently. It's been asked to quite a few people, most significantly to one of my heroes of the faith. He doesn't want an immediate reply it would seem, I think He wants me to think about it:

Hoe feci pro te; quid facis pro me?

I'll let you know the answer when I find out what it is.

lux?

So, as things start to feel even worse (Man, this whingey blog-style must be boring you - it's boring me!) I'm getting nearer and nearer to this point of desperation that was spoken over me. For those of you who i haven't spoken to about that, Joy (a prophet in our church) told me this a while ago:

"God wants you to be desperate for Him. It may well be that the reason that you're finding it hard to hear from Him is that He wants you to want Him more - to be in a place of desperate longing for His presence."

Those words felt more comforting than any words of comfort that have been offered to me about this situation. I don't know why, because, if you read between the lines it says this:

"If it's not over, it's probably going to get worse"

But nonetheless, it felt comforting. And I have a feeling that's because it's what God was saying.

So things have got worse since the last post. I've been quite badly hurt by someone who I trusted very deeply. And it's left me desperate, deep in my heart. for something. I'm sure that it is God that i am desperate for deep down, but I'm still struggling to put 2 and 2 together in my head.

But some very good friends have been praying for me, and offered me 2 things - i, a word from God about the situation, and also Psalm 42. I've spent quite a bit of time in there recently... but it was good to be offered it as an encouragement.... particularly:

Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.


Please let this be the light at the end.

Please.

Blessed Be Your Name

A much-overused song in recent years... I get the feeling that the worship leaders in our church were starting to feel that it had got a little tired due to this overuse, and we haven't used it very much at all over the last year...

But we did today. And it opened up to a whole new level for me. I've always understood what Matt Redman meant by the 'road marked with suffering' and 'pain in the offering' lines, but it's not really meant anything deep to me when i've sung it bofore - it was always something of a promise to God that, if I was in a hard place, I would still worship Him.

As you can see from my past posts, my life isn't exactly great at the moment. spiritually, physically, relationally, sometimes it feels as though all the good stuff is crumbling around me. A lot of that is probably in my head. Or maybe it isn't. Still, the point is, it's hard to find good stuff sometimes. And sometiems when I think I've found something good, it goes away as fast as it arrives.

So why am i just doing more feel-sorry-for-myself ramblings? When I saw the words to this song up on the wall today, i had to think. I had to very deliberately say (in my head) God, I'm going to worship You now.

And there was pain in the offering. lots. I had tears in my eyes as a was declaring that God was good even though my life feels so shit, But it's the truth. Or what I've decided to believe as truth, at least.

I continue to look for a light at the end of the tunnel.

Facebook has blog-napped me!

Sorry to all the avid fans of my blog... (there are probably none of you left by now!) but facebook stole me! Darn it, it's just so easy to use!

But anyway, I think I'll re-make my original New Year's resolution - do the blog thing!

The last 6 months have made my life really different... It's such a massive change going from student-hood to working life - and not just in the obvious areas, like regularly getting up early - but practically everything. Although I knew it'd be different, I honestly didn't expect that going from being a student to working in the Students' Union would be such a difference. A lot of it's been really hard... getting used to a routine in my spiritual life (as you can see from my recent posts), getting used to having some real responsibility, learning to balance the things I want to do, the things I'm expected to do, and the things I want to do and most of all having to work out how to say no to things that people ask me to do sometimes...

Having said that, I adore the job. People told me when I started: "Don't expect to see big results - If the work you do makes a change, chances are it won't happen for several years." But two of the main tasks I set myself at the beginning of the year seem to be happening. believe me, no one is more shocked than I!

Course Rep numbers are up from 180 (last year's number) beyond 360 (my uber-optimistic target in october) to over 450 (and still rising)!! So much of it is due to some of the inspiringly good staff members at the Union...

Also, the coursework feedback improvement system that Ben (the president) and I have been working on, and trying to persuade academic staff to adopt in their schools is being adopted in schools! Not all of them, of course, but we keep on being approached by staff - deputy heads, school managers and so on who want to know how they can improve feedback in their own schools! Which makes me very happy.

I tell you what though, I am SO glad of a week off! phew!

Stone Me, He's Blogging!

Right, all you whingers! I'm blogging! I hope you're happy...

hehe...

There's a couple of reasons why i haven't been blogging over the last month or so - the first one is I havent been this tired ever in my life, and I usually have about enough energy after work to stagger home, eat food and crawl into bed...

The other is that spiritually, I'm finding life pretty hard at the moment - and writing deep, introspective blogs hasn't been tempting, because often i'm not liking what i see when I introspect at the moment...

As far as that goes, i'm more or less in the same place with God as what I described in my last blog, 5 or so weeks ago - finding it near impossible to dredge up the motivation to talk to Him.

Whenever I have prayed, (rare) it's been something like "God please help, I can't do this" or "Please give me some kind of revelation of You so I will want to seek You"... and, not that i don't think that He is helping in some way, but it's been very hard to see or feel anything in terms of help - so I continue round in that viscious cycle of low motivation to talk to Him...

Almost everyone who i've spoken to about this has offered very similar advice - "you need to discipline yourself into spending that time with Him every day" but I just find it SO freakin hard - I have no idea why either - normally personal discipline isn't a massive issue for me, I can eat healthily, get into gym routines (sort of), quit smoking by willpower - so why is sitting down with God for 10 minutes a day so frustratingly difficult?

Now I've grown so distant from Him that when i do sit down to pray, it's like sitting down with someone you knew 5 years ago, and you no longer have anything to talk about. Motivation drops again.

What can I do? Help!




PS hmmm. I intended to write a fairly light hearted account of my last 5 weeks. Then that came out. Pants. Ahh well, now it's there you can flippin well read it! ;-)