Week One

This time last week I was in the room that had been my bedroom for virtually 26 years uninterrupted and in the closing stages of packing my suitcases. Now I'm sitting in my temporary bedroom of one week and will be starting a new job tomorrow in a totally new field in a totally new country where I don't know more than a handful of people and where I have no pre-existing church to plough into.

But the change hasn't felt that monumental. I've been here for more than a week before now, gotten very used to being in Mandy's parents' home, and have my beautiful fiancee to be with. I think this next week is when things will begin to feel that bit more alien. At the moment I can still believe that 'life' is on pause, waiting to be resumed, rather than that a new 'life' is on play and I need to get in on the action.

When you've left what you're satisfied with it's easy to wait for something new to come along. But that's not going to happen here. This isn't going to all change again in a few weeks. No, I've got to make the best of what is here and find that in fact God has laid out treasure for me in this place. I guess this ties in to something that I've noticed more and more recently concerning large parts of my life - that I react rather than enact; respond rather than initiate. Perhaps the easiest thing to do is to try to learn to cope with what I lack here so far, which would be a reaction to circumstances. That would mean to miss out on what God has for me here though, and definitely a statement of unbelief. Instead I must seek to change circumstances - to build friendships, to develop habits and hobbies, to engage with what's around me and become a part of it. While I know that must happen from a church planting point of view, I believe that that is just a reflection of a more fundamental level. Christ came to engage with this world, and His image is being formed in me. Indeed this week alone there have been countless reminders for myself and Mandy of how everything needs to be truly rooted in Christ or it becomes something far less. And I mean something far more than just doing a copycat of what I see in Jesus. No, it is indeed the life of the vine in the branches (Jn 15:1ff). As it is in Jesus, so it must be in me - in mission, in work, in marriage, in life.

The more I see the kind of life that God intends us to live, the more I become convinced that walking with Christ, in the ongoing fellowship and power of the Spirit, must be the norm of Christian experience that is intended. It can sound a bit mystical and for the superspiritual wackos of this world, but actually it seems this sort of settled condition of yieldedness, fellowship, supply, indwelling, and love is actually at the core of Christianity - a life-changing relationship with God lived out every day by genuinely knowing Him. Our life and His - it would seem the one should not be thought of apart from the other.

So at the end of the rambling, I guess you could pray for me that I have a closer walk with Jesus, and that that would introduce me to Belfast, and Belfast to Him.

What? Another blog?

Everyone who knows me knows I love to talk. Well, that's not strictly true - often I will be the quietest of the bunch and be all contemplative instead of talkative. But everyone who knows me knows I love it when I have something I want to talk about.

I guess the times I have something I want to talk about and the times I actually have something to talk about don't always marry up though. In fact I think often when I don't love to talk is perhaps when I might have the most to say.

Here I think you will find a mix of both. Sometimes there will be things I love to talk about and perhaps I'd say them even if no one was listening. But sometimes I hope you will also find some things I perhaps wouldn't want to jabber on about - things for which I might hope no one was listening. I guess I want to start making less distinction between what I talk about and what I keep to myself and just talk. In any case it means more talk, and that means another blog.

The Durban Adventure started for me a habit of blogging (one that I must resume, to be sure) that I want to continue in a way that's not tied to my time in Durban (as, alas, it is finished). I have another blog - http://onebehindsecond.blogspot.com - where I want to practice my 'role' as a teacher of the Bible and just develop ideas and thoughts about God, the Bible, the world, etc. But this one is more personal, more from the heart. Instead about being about something it is about someone, namely me. While it will be a journal of day to day things and what's happening as I go off to Belfast soon and wherever life takes me (for those who just want to stay in touch with what's happening in my life), it will also be perhaps my side of a conversation, with whoever wants to listen, about me. Who I am, who I am becoming, what all these new experiences are teaching me and forming in me, and ultimately what God is doing in me - all this will be here too. And that is important to know, because this can't just be about me. Oh no! 'Me' is changing. 'Me' is in a state of flux. 'Me' is a work in progress - a wonderful work of God on a much less than wonderful person. That's why I mention being 'Full Of Earth'. I'm on the road to recovery. Much like an addict who sits in the ruins of their broken life, so sin addiction (by me, against me, and around me) has left me dead at the kerb. But Jesus Christ has died to give me life to the full (Jn 10:10), a life that I must press on to make my own (Php 3:12), a life worthy of a son of God (Eph 4:1). What I shall be is not here yet, but I will be like Him, and by the same grace that started this all off I am becoming what God intended, purifying myself just as He is pure (1 Jn 3:2f).

They say the first step in recovery is admitting you have a problem. Half the time I might not actually really believe it. The other half the time though something great might just happen. Watch this space!