reflection

Hello all

I have no idea who reads this blog if anybody, but if you do I thought I would give you an update on whats happening at the moment.

I realise that there's only a month until my final year at cliff which sounds really scary to me. The whole thing is going fast but at the same time I really feel that God is working in me fast, and this holiday has been a time for me to reflect on the changes God has been making in me and the person I have become and becoming.

just after my 20th birthday I cried for the first time in about five years properly with a friend who waited with me and let God do some stuff in me that needed to be done. since then I feel that I'm more open, more confident, and more in tune with God and his heart than ever. Even though I still have a long way to go (isn't that always the case) I feel i can explore a bit more of who God is and wants in this world. I thank God for this but can also feel quite fearful of what getting closer to God means

One thing that i have noticed over the past months is that the closer I get to God the harder my life becomes. I begin to see expectations of myself change and see that God has plans for me to, yes, prosper me and not to harm me, but also not to conform to the pattern of this world. This means not having everything that I expect or want, but having everything that God wants for me. Many may interpret this as the same thing but it isn't. This may mean not having the great job, not expecting things everyone else expects, not being, in essence...comfortable.

One thing that we have seen in the past week is that people are stealing things that they want, think they should have, feel entitled to in some convoluted way. The vast majority of us can see this is wrong, and the chapter in Bunyan's A Pilgrim's Progress about vanity fair also challenges me. so many of us can get caught up in the hysteria of that fair, everything you want on offer, whether it be youth, drink, sex, money, 'rock and roll', and then forget that the rest of the journey is still ahead of us. All this stuff often is merely a distraction to us pursuing our goal.

I'm so privileged to have people around me who keep me in that reality and I thank them for that. my aim is no longer to desire these things, but instead to desire justice to come to where there is no justice, righteousness to shine where there is no righteousness, for (in the old cheesy song) this little light of mine to shine.

so many people have found the call to holiness impossible, like no one can live up to it. I often agree. Yet Jesus doesn't call the perfect, instead he calls the sinner who genuinely wants to have a heart like his, one that loves like his, one with a passion like his.

I realised that I may have preached a little here without intending to. Yet I think this is something that needs to preached to me regularly.

Hope all are well

Andrew

Hi all

Hope everyone is doing well. I thought I would update everyone on how Cliff was going.

It has been totally different from the year before, but still enabled me to grow far beyond my expectations, I can see everyday how God is working in my life. a couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to go to Newham, London. Newham is the most culturally diverse place in Britain, Europe and some argue the world and is thought of by many of the locals as the world on one street. That was definitely the impression I got so it was great to have our urban mission lectures there. So many of my preconceptions were challenged there and I learned so much more about people, religion and culture than I thought possible to do in a week. I set foot in places where many would not deem appropriate as a Christian but met people there who have brought new perspectives to me.

One experience in particular that challenged me was going in to the bookies, which in itself is alien ground to me. we went in to understand more about places which so often we as Christians are ignorant about and expect others to agree with our perceptions of things. while in there I met a man and we asked him about betting, how to place a bet, what would be best to place a bet on, we obviously didn't have a clue and he could see that. He said something that will stay with me for a long time. "Don't place a bet, you've already won" he said. It struck me how much this 'hobby' can take people, how it can own people. I realise how throughout that experience, even though I had a pound in my hand I could not place that bet. It wasn't about the money, after all it was a pound, I lose pounds out of my pocket and think little of it. But to place that bet was inaccessible to me and I had no idea why.

I looked at my experience of gambling and remember my Grandad putting a couple of quid on the horses on a saturday and me sitting with him watching them on his TV. I saw that it was for him a passtime and very little harm ever came out of it (at least at this time). Yet I also remember my parents stance on gambling, never even taking part in raffles, they just gave the money to whichever cause it was in aid of.

For me gambling has often been a grey area, like alcohol too much of it can be bad yet if it is only done once in a while, then what is the harm in it. But what about that man who was in the bookies who thought we have already won by not starting. As more and more adverts for bingo and online poker etc are coming up on our screens, where should we stand on it, especially in view of 1 Corinthians 8, a dominant piece of scripture for us that week.

Its something that all people need to think about and especially how the Church should respond to this.

Hi all,

Hope you are all ok, just had deadline a couple of weeks ago and it was one of the most stressful times i've had, so i've taken a couple of weeks of doing a lot to recover a bit from it. Going to work a bit more from now on and get all my essays in quite a bit earlier than usual. I just had a facebook message from Sarah Malik. Sarah and Bobby have been working on a charity called living hope and a couple of us at cliff last year helped out with Tesco bag packing and coffee mornings. If anyone wants to know a bit more the website is below.

www.livinghopeproject.org

I think the Cliff blues have been settling in for a lot of people. The time we have here is so intense and the most adventerous times often turn out to be a trip to McDonalds or Tesco.

I want to see God move in Cliff, as do many of the other students. A lot of us came here to get much deeper in to our faith and to bring others to a faith also. It's very easy to get disheartened sometimes and feel as if not everything is going right, so I would like to ask those who read this blog to pray for the students at cliff, and also the staff as they have to put up with us :p.

I believe more and more that if we want to see things change then prayer is the way to do it. I believe that if it wasn't for faithful prayer then I would never have become a Christian. Next week Cliff College will be engaging in 24/7 prayer and I'm really excited for it. I'm sure God wants to do awesome things throughout next week and I know we want to see them happen.

I'll hopefully blog sometime soon, though I know I'm not the most punctual blogger.

Andrew Sterling