Grown apart?

Today I met up with my best friend from Secondary school. We went through year 7 to 13 together and were very close. Yet when we both left school we didn't see each other much due to distance and business. She lives in Lenham and I live in Ashford and now I have a car, we decided to meet up, so I could meet her fiancee. Which was cool, I haven't seen her in two years and thought that it would be a great way to catch up.

...However I was so wrong. I met her fiancee who is very nice and sweet. I am really glad that she has found a great love (even if its not Jesus, please pray for her). Yet we didn't really talk and it felt so strange. The silence could have been sliced by a knife and the awkwardness hung in the air. I didn't know what to say, she didn't know what to say and her fiancee tried his best to keep the conversation alive. I felt so different and distant from this person who was once my best friend and a person I could talk to about anything and maybe with time another better friendship will come. Still I sat next to someone I still love very much coming to the realisation that we had grown apart and both changed.

Change is a good thing and brings new and fresh things, so maybe a better fresher friendship will come, but right now I feel saddened by are distance.

Things can sometimes become like that with Jesus. We have grown apart from Jesus, moved away and changed. Yet Jesus never changes or moves away or grows apart from you. Instead He stays by your side throughout everything, waiting for you to realise that He had never moved away from you. Jesus will never change His mind about me, you or anyone, whoever we are He will always love us with That amazing Grace and beautiful mercy and He will always want to be with you.

Where you go, Whatever you do and Whoever you are He will never change His

mind about you.

I find that a very comforting thought and I hope that I will know it truly within my heart. This relationship with Jesus is different from any other relationship with any other person here on an imperfect earth.

I will try my hardest to work at making my relationship with my friend better than it was tonight. So as I try with my dying relationships on earth, so must I try with my relationship with Jesus.

God says 'I will never fail you,

or abandon you' Hebrews 13:5

but He also says to you 'I will always love you'

That is all that Jesus is about love. Loving in our failure, so must we love others in theirs too!

Baptized

On Maundy Thursday I and many others from my church will be baptised. It amazing how God works because I have wanted to for ages but didn't want to do just because I wanted to. I wanted to know that God wanted me to and He has told me in so many ways. Now finally I will be obedient to Him and do it. It will be a fresh new start and I know that I need that so much. Some of my family will be getting baptised at the same time and hopefully my Dad will be too, which would be amazing(please pray for my Dad).

God has been working so much within my Church lately and I have not been able to stop myself being continually amazed and awestruck by Him. This will be an amazing time for me and my church.

I would like to invite you all and however can get there to my Baptism on Thursday 5th April @ 7.30pm, At South Ashford Baptised Church, Brookfield Road, Ashford, Kent.

Exhausted in the world... rest in Jesus

I hear so many people complaining that they are 'Exhausted'! and that includes me too. So many people are working so hard saving up for things, to be able to pay the bills, put food on the table and all just to get by. Nowadays both parents are working all the hours God sends and having to pay for childcare too, when they know that they are missing out on so much... seeing their children grow, someone else see your child's first steps or hears their first word. Trying their hardest to get by, pay the bills or even maybe be able to give their children I better standard of living.

But and this is a very big but, is this even living at all?

Yes in the Bible it says that we should work and everything we do should be working for God, but how many people out there are working for God. How many people are working so hard that they are forgetting how to live. We have become so obsessed about working and money that we don't remember or have time for what life really is about. The life we have been given back, the life we owe back. This free gift doesn't always end up honouring the one who gave it to us. It becomes about ourselves and our life's. We as a race, individually, nationally and international have become EXHAUSTED by ourselves.

We are so busy doing that we are never being- We weren't called Human doings by God and the first time we were created we had to rest and not do, just be. We look after ourselves, well almost... we look after our bodies and try to be healthy, we try to look after our minds... but what ever happened to looking after our souls?

We were all made body, mind and soul, but it seems that because we cannot see the soul its the part of us that is probably the least healthy. We are so busy nourishing the parts we can see or know of and have some understanding of that we forget to nourish the soul. We laugh at Spirituality, but its our spirits which our lacking. Its our undernourished souls which need to be refreshed and renewed and then maybe we won't be so EXHAUSTED all the time.

Jesus came for this purpose, to nourish and save our souls and once well fed, sent out to feed the rest of the starving souls out there, just crying out for rest, refreshment and renewal. Because we are all so EXHAUSTED!

So there is a special rest still waiting for the people of God.

For all who have entered into God's rest have rested from their labors, just as God did after creating the world.

Hebrews 4:9-10

Self-leadership?!

Well I have got to a point today where I really feel God is trying to say something to me... I have just read a daily devotional and the next chapter in the book I've been reading 'Courageous leadership' by Bill Hybels... all about, well you guessed it Self-leadership. The thing that I have just worked out is God has been trying to tell em this for ages and all throughout today He has placed people to tell me this without them knowing it or me until now.

At work today God used a maintenance man to talk to me on my break and although it was not overtly about God and was about sport. It made me think. This man told me that I needed to lead a healthy life, to exercise and eat well- 'the right food'. He told me that I should find a sport that I could do which required self-discipline. This man I only met today and yet he was right on the ball. He could have been talking about sport or my spiritual life.

My body is God's temple and I should look after it and keep it healthy both physically and spiritually. It was that the man was so right that I need to discipline myself and both these books talk about how leaders require discipline to lead themselves first and then lead others.
We cannot be effective leaders for others, unless we lead ourselves first. Unless we spend time refreshing, renewing and sacrificially giving ourselves to God first, how can we inspire others to do the same. A leader is only as good as his/her self-leadership.

We first must lead ourselves towards God, towards our goal and then give to others the leadership that they require of us.

I have finally listen and got God's message for me, after He graciously shouted it at me all day, don't make God have to do that to you.

But nobody, NOBODY, can do this but you! Only you can lead yourself and discipline yourself.
Read and consider 1 Samuel 30.

'David strengthened himself in the Lord God.'

1 Samuel 30:6

Wedding ring, anyone?

Today was such an amazing God filled day. Some close church family friends got married today. This was much awaited, but worth waiting for. It was so good. I felt very privileged because they asked our youth group to do some prayer stuff in the middle of the wedding. It was really good, we gave out cards for everyone and talked about the reason, prayed lots and gave Gary and Jan a book of blessing and encouragement full of personal messages to them.
I had fun and danced my socks (or should I say tights) off and felt at home with my church family, which I haven't felt for a long time.

The wedding ring that two people give to each other represents that binding love between the couple never ending love, just like a ring continues and never ends. That same love is the binding love that Jesus has given to us. He gave us each a ring the day He died for us and for those who accept His proposal are binded to God through His love.
How many times have you rejected God's proposal to you? How many times have you not taken the ring of love Jesus offers you?
Well whether you have or not, Jesus will never stop loving you and He will never stop offering you a ring and a new life of marriage with Him!
We are the bride of the lamb... will you be ready for the wedding day?

1I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The first heaven and the first earth had disappeared, and so had the sea. 2Then I saw New Jerusalem, that holy city, coming down from God in heaven. It was like a bride dressed in her wedding gown and ready to meet her husband.
3I heard a loud voice shout from the throne:
God's home is now with his people. He will live with them, and they will be his own. Yes, God will make his home among his people.

The stone in my shoe

I was walking home from work when half way home, I felt something in my shoe. At first I wasn't bothered it didn't hurt and I didn't have far to go. But soon it moved and started to rub on my heal. 'Ok' I thought 'its not too bad and the ground is wet, so I'll ignore it. I'll be home in five minutes!' and yet again it moved. It moved into a more uncomfortable and painful place. The ground was wet so do I stop and take the stone out and risk getting my foot wet or do I just try and ignore it. Well it wasn't long to walk only about two more minutes, so I decided I could cope with the stone until I got home.
Every step I took hurt and every time I put pressure on that foot the stone dug into the soul of my foot. Every time it hurt I thought only I little bit more to go and tried again to just ignore it and get on with my journey home.
Finally I was home and when I took of my shoe I tipped out the tiny stone that hurt me all the way home from work. I thought to myself how can something so small hurt so much? but it had and it could have been so easy for me just to stop on the way and take out the stone, even if I had got a wet foot it wouldn't have been as painful and annoying as the stone.
Why did I do that? and why do we all do that in life?
We all carry around pain and baggage when we don't need to. When we could just stop on the journey and throw it away, we hold onto it. We can cope, its not that long to take it. We can't risk getting our feet wet along the way to get rid of the pain.
I know that I have done that a lot and in many ways continue to do this. I can't risk getting my foot wet to release my pain, my burdens and baggage. Yet God says that our feet won't get wet and the pain, baggage and burdens will be gone if you trust me and give it to me.
I know that I have to do this, because I've got a lot of stones in my shoes, and if I trust Jesus, my feet won't get wet and He'll take those stones upon Himself for me and He has already done that on the cross, but everyday will continue to do this for each and everyone of us.

Will you take the stone from your shoe and risk getting wet feet?

'Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me.

Get away with me and you'll recover your life.

I'll show you how to take real rest.

Walk with me and work with me- watch how I do it.

Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you.

Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly.'

Matthew 11:28-30 (The Message)