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