The sin barrier

So, I often get myself in a bit of a state when I worry about the things that I'm doing wrong, the ways in which I treat others, the sin that so easily seems to take hold. And yet those things are so stupid, such a rebellion against a wonderful God. I worry that I haven't truely captured God's grace and I question why I can't change the habits of sin I get caught up in. I just want to stop them. Chatting to a worker from church yesterday she pointed me to 1 John. Here the readers are being told that if they claim to be without sin they are deceiving themselves. If they claim they have never sinned they are calling God a liar and do not have his truth within them. They are encouraged to take heart that when they do sin (as they will and we all will ) there is access to the Father through Jesus Christ, there is a path to God by his wondourous grace! What an encouragement. As those who recognise our sinfulness we are recognising that we need Christ in order to help us, we cannot do it alone. Only through Jesus, not on our own, can we be good enough for God. Again it points out the wonder of grace. So often I worry that the things that do not show God in my life is the sin that hinders me and yet I can take heart that if I did not recognise this sin it would be that which would question my relationship with God!
It was great to chat through so many of my struggles yesterday and I am thankful for all the challenges that I went away with. There is a lot to think about, future wise, in my relationships with others, in my general day-to-day life and attitudes and yet I know that although things seem hard now and sometimes painful, I can look back on this time in my life in the future and know that God was working and was working for good!! Praise the Lord for his faithfulness.

Jesus is Lord!!!!

So after a week in Ledbury with all the other Relay workers I have come back to Birmingham with lots to think about and things to act on. I thought I'd learnt a lot over the past 5 months of Relay but apparently you can learn just as much in a week. I feel like I've gone away and come back as a different person with a whole new set of challenges! The key challenge to the week I guess was "out of all the opportunities I can see, with the person God has made me, how can I best show the world the truth about God so they can respond?" I need to be showing most of all in whatever comes next that Jesus is Lord of my life. I want to be doing something that will aim to reflect his glory and lead people to recognise Jesus is Lord of their lives too. A week ago I was happy enough to believe that that was about doing my PGCE and learning to be a Drama teacher but apparently God has different plans. After the challenges of the week I came home to discover that because my reference was not completed and the applications had closed, that was no longer even an option. I know that I have been challenged this week to really think about how I can use the privilege this year has been to serve God and his gospel. God has challenged me on what my true hearts desires are and how I often put other things above him. Some of my idols are just so ingrained to my life that I allow them to effect all the decisions that I make about my life rather than seeking God and his glory. How stupid is that? My value and worth is so reliant upon those things that I let them take hold and dont even give God a second thought. My rebellion and rejection of God was made so real to me this week and its something I want to see changed in my life. Thinking about my future in the way that I do needs to change. I realised this week how much marriage is an idol in my life. I want it so much that it affects how I look ahead in my life and suddenley any thoughts of how I should be serving God go out of the window. I expect that its in a relationship that I will find my true value and worth and that is totally wrong. Christ is where my true value lies and I long to be truely sold out for him rather than some man who is only going to let me down anyway as marriage is not going to solve all my problems. Life won't suddenley be fulfilled! Ok so the big question is, if my plans aren't working out then what is God leading me to? I need to truely trust in his Sovereignty and the fact that he will reveal his will at the right time, not my time.
This week has also made me so aware of how weak I am. That petrified me at first, I was scared that looking vulnerable was such a bad thing and I worried more about what people thought of me. But that again is looking to please man and not God. So what if I appear weak to others? Is that such a bad thing? By appearing tough and looking better am I helping or hindering my brothers and sisters in Christ? I need to seek to glorify God in my own life and in the lives of others. I am painfully aware of the effect my actions have in the way God is glorified in all my relationships, some more than others, and I hope now I will seek to make him glorified rather than myself as I so often do. I am no longer as afraid of my weaknesses because I know actually, that God will get glory through them.

'He said to me "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong!' 2 CORINTHIANS 12:9-10

Relay 2...

Ok so the day has finally arrived to go off to my 2nd Relay training conference and if I'm really honest there is part of me that is kind of dreading this week. It will be great to see people and to encourage each other but I know as well that its going to be another pretty intense week. It's going to be one of those times to see grace in action as we all work to encourage each other and build one another up with the truth of the gospel. I know I often feel inadequate as a Relay Worker, struggling with being the "newbie" in Brum, but hey, it s God's grace that got everyone to Relay in the first place! I guess thats got to be what I remember when I feel everyone else is doing wonderfully and I'm seemingly struggling. Yesterday at church John Stevens reminded us that we often make the gospel much smaller than it really is, we attempt to pack it down to the smallest we can in order to make it appealable to people and completely about personal salvation. We limit it to a tract and hope that we are skilled enough to pass it on. The gospel is so much more than that though! The gospel reminds us that we look ahead to a glorious future, filled with God's glory and wonder. It is about God's Kingdom being recreated and restored and Jesus being God's King over it all. How can you possibly limit that?? Its beyond our imagination how amazing it will be. So how can any news beat that?? So I guess my aim for this week is to encourage others what a glorious hope we have in Jesus, what a wonderful kingdom we have to look forward to and its that hope which can sustain us when things are tough. I know I'm struggling but no doubt others are too so I hope I can show them grace and truth and not just seek to make myself look good this week.

"Therefore since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God!" Romans 5:1-2

The Gospel from first to last...

Ok so last night at BUECU (Birmingham University Evangelical Christian Union) was soooo encouraging. The have a focus week coming up and as I have never really been part of a big one of those I am massively excited. This excitement only increased with the talk from Acts 10 by a guy called Gary. What a truely awesome encouragement he brought. He reminded me how the gospel is key to our everyday lives as Christians. The gospel is what saves and changes our lives everyday. Its not like one day we hear the gospel, become Christians and then forget it again; its what sustains us as Christians each and every day! It was so great to be reminded that we need to remember what true grace is all about and how that should be working out in our lives every day and how we should be gaining a deeper knowledge and understanding of what the gospel is truely about.
As I look back on the last 5 months of Relay I realise it is that which has changed and moulded me. Ok so I have read and learnt so much about God but ultimately it is Jesus and his gospel of amazing grace that saves me and gives me the honour and privilege to serve him in the way that I do. It is the gospel that leads me to him each and every day. How can we forget the gospel when it is what begins and sustains us in our faith??
I guess I take away another challenge and that is to remember that power that resides in the gospel is the same all over this world and that each and every person, no matter what their people group or culture, needs to hear and accept that gospel! What a challenge for not only "Focus Week" but life! Each and every day of it! Am I willing to go to the ends of the earth so that people can experience the power of the gospel for themselves? Am I willing to be God's true disciple? Thats the real question right.

"For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed - a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: "The righteous will live by faith."" Romans 1:16-17

I do what I do not want to do!

So I have been struggling a bit recently. So much is going on in my head and heart that I know does not honour and glorify my God, and I hate that! I get caught up in these cycles where I just get frustrated at myself for doing stupid things that only seek to make myself look better or are totally out of my own selfishness and no doubt upset or hurt others. I get annoyed at myself and wish I could change so at that point I no longer attempt to deal with the situation, I just get caught up in feeling rubbish about myself.
So in my personal time with God at the moment I am reading Romans, a great book that continual reminds of you of the wonder of the gospel of Christ. I was reading Romans 7 this morning and it just seemed to make sense, Paul hit the nail on the head with this one!

"For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do-this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is the sin living in me that does it.
So I find this law at work: although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this bidy of death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!." (Romans 7:18-25)

The devil so often encourages us to get caught up in this cycle so that we forget what it truely means to be saved. It is Jesus who rescues us from the pit of destruction. God's grace was displayed by Jesus on the cross. It is that grace which saves me from the wretched person that I am and that Paul was. It is that grace which allows me to serve my awesome and almighty God. It is that grace in which I now stand free from the chains of sin that bound me and look ahead instead to the glorious hope I have through Jesus! AMEN!

Belongs to Him!

Ok so I know people that keep diaries and that seems to work for them. Me? I'm rubbish at it. I know a few people that blog and thought, hey, why not give it a go. So much goes on in day to day life at the moment I feel I need to get it all down just to make sense of all the things going round in my head so this seemed entirely appropriate.
I guess one of my biggest challenges at the moment, and something that my Relay year with UCCF is constantly reminding me, is how much of my life I truely offer up to God. I suppose in today's culture so much of life is all about me, me, me and how well can I control what is happening in MY life. In my head that just makes things so much more complicated, if I was in control who knows where I'd b today. I know God is control, and although times are often uncertain, thats a massive comfort. Everything I have, all that is going on in my life, is in God's hands. Ok, so I often still think I know better and I don't completely trust God when I should, but he is worthy of it all. Worthy of every second, minute and hour that I live. Worthy of it all.

Cathy Burton

I hear the tears of my Father falling.
Cos he’s been waiting for such a long time.
I hear the sound of his heartbeat calling
As I discover that everything thats mine

Belongs to him, belongs to him

Belongs to you
Jesus all I have, Jesus all I am, Jesus all I’ve seen, Jesus all I’ll be
Belongs to you.

I sense the chains of my resistance falling
As freedom beckons and Jesus takes me in.
I feel the strain of sin but I no longer crawl in
Repentence flows and I realise all that’s within

Belongs to him, belongs to him.

Belongs to you.
Jesus all I have, Jesus all I am, Jesus all I’ve seen, Jesus all I’ll be
Belongs to you.