We're on the move !
It's amazing how in the frantic, chaotic state that is your life when you're moving, that somehow you can find such order and satisfaction in your life strategically packed into plastic and cardboard boxes, all sorted and categorised. Pens and stationery that once sprawled out in every useless place of the house, now found and lying orderly in a plastic container. Old things thrown out, the ultimate Spring clean! Moving is always such a bitter-sweet experience for me. I am highly sentimental and I have such vivid memories attached to everything, that make leaving any home hard. On the other hand, I love the excitement and fresh start of new places. Growing up for no particular reason, we would move often. Every 2 years or so we would buy a new house. It seems to be the pattern with our family now too although I'm believing soon and very soon we will settle in a home that will last a little longer than 2 years...
About 3 weeks ago I put in our notice at the place we've been at for the last 3 years. It's been a fabulous place to rent but overpriced and to make it work we've had homesteads and people renting rooms downstairs. God has been good and in all the 3 years we've lived here we have always had awesome people, some from all over the world, as part of our family. It came around to rent review and knowing the price was going up, decided it was time to make the move, to downscale a bit. I have a love-hate relationship with finding a home. I secretly LOVE looking at homes which was just as well because I was seeing 2 -3 homes a day truing to find the right place for us. It is a fun little faith exercise, knowing we had to be out in a matter of weeks and needing just the right place to come our way. With 2 weeks to go we got the call to say we got the one we wanted!
I am still trying to wrap my brain around the reality of the date today. We are officially past halfway through 2018. This year has been nothing I ever imagined, the ultimate curve-ball, the type of year that leaves you going back to basic, right back to basics. When everything is stripped back to basics, that's where you get back to authenticity, to what is genuine and real. I know a few others who are walking through the storm of their lives right now and I am blown away by God's provision, peace and purpose in the storm. The storm doesn't have to destroy you or take you out. The storm is absolutely part of the plan, designed to strip back all the baggage you acquire in life (literally like throwing dead weight overboard), and designed to bring you to a place of dependancy on God, depth in relationship that comes from a place where surface-level just doesn't cut it. The type of season in life where if you don't go after God with all you have you know you won't make it out. The type of season that makes you, that tests everything you thought you knew about God and His plans for you.
I had a conversation with Abby recently which took me back to almost the exact same conversation that I had with a uni friend. Basically the question, from an 8 year old and a uni student was, why did God create us? Isn't it vain to create something just to worship Him? The question initially took me by surprise because I had really never seen it that way. I managed some answer about worship being more relationship with Him and actually went home thinking about it. It was funny when Abby came up with the same question just a few weeks ago. This year more than ever I am coming to realise that God tells us to worship Him and Him only for our good, not His. He is not some egotistical deity who 'needs' worship to feel validated in his supreme position of autonomy in the universe. Quite the contrary. God is love. Love is selfless and sacrificial in nature.
What if God tells us to worship Him and put Him first because He created us and knows anything else we give the place of validating us will only fall short? What if anything else we 'worship', devote time to and adore, whether it be riches, fame or relationships, will only leave our soul wanting? What if it's because He knows that there is only hurt, heartache and disappointment ahead if we give away the right to hold our heart? Imagine the world if everyone found love, identity and purpose in the ONLY One who can truly love us the way we long to be loved? Imagine a church with people who are so deeply hidden in God, so secure in His love, so steadfastly standing in His love that nothing that happens in this world, whether loss or disaster, could shake them? When we find ourselves in a place where Jesus is all to us, we realise that He really is all we need. We are truly untouchable when we hide ourselves in Him. Church is so full of hurt people who never really find the source of true healing. We look to revenge, to the false security of self-made success to prove to ourselves and others that we are worth something, we walk around letting the sweet spirit we once had get contaminated with bitterness and justify our position because of what was done to us. What if it's all just a big set-up? What if no matter what, we win? If we use every situation as an invitation to go deeper into a relationship of trust with the One who knows the end from the beginning.
We aren't told to keep our eyes on Jesus, to put Him first and to love Him above all else just for His satisfaction and joy (although we are His delight and I'm sure it brings Him immeasurable joy), it is because that is the way to peace, to victory, to living in the purpose of God that we were created for! What a liberating way to look at it!
I think it is for our benefit that God calls us to look up, to come up higher and to be found IN Him. No matter whether we're in a season of plenty, a season of answered prayers or a season where God is teaching, moulding and shaping us, we can know God isn't taking us backwards, He is for us, He is trustworthy and faithful.
In the midst of half packed boxes and a to-do list longer than my A4 piece of scrap paper, I am encouraged by this. I pray that whatever your situation looks like right now, that you're encouraged that He is closer than you know, in more of the detail than you realise and His plans are better than you think. At the end of the day, we CANNOT lose, cannot come off worse-off, no matter what life, the devil or people throw at us, if we press in and lean into God. His goodness and mercy follows and His plan WILL prevail.
So from my home to yours, HAPPY HALFWAY through 2018! Here's to the promises, prayers and breakthrough's we're yet to see!
About 3 weeks ago I put in our notice at the place we've been at for the last 3 years. It's been a fabulous place to rent but overpriced and to make it work we've had homesteads and people renting rooms downstairs. God has been good and in all the 3 years we've lived here we have always had awesome people, some from all over the world, as part of our family. It came around to rent review and knowing the price was going up, decided it was time to make the move, to downscale a bit. I have a love-hate relationship with finding a home. I secretly LOVE looking at homes which was just as well because I was seeing 2 -3 homes a day truing to find the right place for us. It is a fun little faith exercise, knowing we had to be out in a matter of weeks and needing just the right place to come our way. With 2 weeks to go we got the call to say we got the one we wanted!
I am still trying to wrap my brain around the reality of the date today. We are officially past halfway through 2018. This year has been nothing I ever imagined, the ultimate curve-ball, the type of year that leaves you going back to basic, right back to basics. When everything is stripped back to basics, that's where you get back to authenticity, to what is genuine and real. I know a few others who are walking through the storm of their lives right now and I am blown away by God's provision, peace and purpose in the storm. The storm doesn't have to destroy you or take you out. The storm is absolutely part of the plan, designed to strip back all the baggage you acquire in life (literally like throwing dead weight overboard), and designed to bring you to a place of dependancy on God, depth in relationship that comes from a place where surface-level just doesn't cut it. The type of season in life where if you don't go after God with all you have you know you won't make it out. The type of season that makes you, that tests everything you thought you knew about God and His plans for you.
I had a conversation with Abby recently which took me back to almost the exact same conversation that I had with a uni friend. Basically the question, from an 8 year old and a uni student was, why did God create us? Isn't it vain to create something just to worship Him? The question initially took me by surprise because I had really never seen it that way. I managed some answer about worship being more relationship with Him and actually went home thinking about it. It was funny when Abby came up with the same question just a few weeks ago. This year more than ever I am coming to realise that God tells us to worship Him and Him only for our good, not His. He is not some egotistical deity who 'needs' worship to feel validated in his supreme position of autonomy in the universe. Quite the contrary. God is love. Love is selfless and sacrificial in nature.
What if God tells us to worship Him and put Him first because He created us and knows anything else we give the place of validating us will only fall short? What if anything else we 'worship', devote time to and adore, whether it be riches, fame or relationships, will only leave our soul wanting? What if it's because He knows that there is only hurt, heartache and disappointment ahead if we give away the right to hold our heart? Imagine the world if everyone found love, identity and purpose in the ONLY One who can truly love us the way we long to be loved? Imagine a church with people who are so deeply hidden in God, so secure in His love, so steadfastly standing in His love that nothing that happens in this world, whether loss or disaster, could shake them? When we find ourselves in a place where Jesus is all to us, we realise that He really is all we need. We are truly untouchable when we hide ourselves in Him. Church is so full of hurt people who never really find the source of true healing. We look to revenge, to the false security of self-made success to prove to ourselves and others that we are worth something, we walk around letting the sweet spirit we once had get contaminated with bitterness and justify our position because of what was done to us. What if it's all just a big set-up? What if no matter what, we win? If we use every situation as an invitation to go deeper into a relationship of trust with the One who knows the end from the beginning.
We aren't told to keep our eyes on Jesus, to put Him first and to love Him above all else just for His satisfaction and joy (although we are His delight and I'm sure it brings Him immeasurable joy), it is because that is the way to peace, to victory, to living in the purpose of God that we were created for! What a liberating way to look at it!
I think it is for our benefit that God calls us to look up, to come up higher and to be found IN Him. No matter whether we're in a season of plenty, a season of answered prayers or a season where God is teaching, moulding and shaping us, we can know God isn't taking us backwards, He is for us, He is trustworthy and faithful.
In the midst of half packed boxes and a to-do list longer than my A4 piece of scrap paper, I am encouraged by this. I pray that whatever your situation looks like right now, that you're encouraged that He is closer than you know, in more of the detail than you realise and His plans are better than you think. At the end of the day, we CANNOT lose, cannot come off worse-off, no matter what life, the devil or people throw at us, if we press in and lean into God. His goodness and mercy follows and His plan WILL prevail.
So from my home to yours, HAPPY HALFWAY through 2018! Here's to the promises, prayers and breakthrough's we're yet to see!
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