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.