Showing posts with label Good. Show all posts

Steve and I moved to colchester a year and a half ago and took up residence in a little one bed flat. As a newly married couple we had one aim, to try and love Jesus and move with him into our neighbourhood and uncover the hope of him here.

I haven't been the most positive of people. I started looking around at my home and my neighbourhood and I am a bit ashamed to say, I let the physical definition of success be what I strove for. Don't get me wrong I loved Jesus and all, but there were a lot of 'good little projects' to get involved in and I started letting the success or failure of them define who I was and the purpose for why I was here.

I started letting other peoples stories and experience be the definition and standard for my life.

By the end of this last year, I was becoming such a moan addict (just talk to my closest friends!! whenever they asked me how things were going, after I got the 'oh fine fine' out of the way I would launch in to self pity monologues about how I was doing so much but was getting so little back).

Steve and I had a beautiful opportunity to go to a 24-7 Prayer leadership training conference. It was both an intense challenge to step up; as well as a moment of space to reflect and relax on what God has been doing in our lives.

After those 4 days I came away saying to Steve... "this year i need to remember how much good we get to be a part of ... how much hope we get to experience each and every day!" and I need to let that... let God define who I am and how well I am living.

So many great things have happened sense I have come to live in colchester.

#1 I have met and live with the greatest man I have ever met and we get to share our ever day normal lives together. It was not that long ago that I remember crying out to God about how desperate I was to just share the same house with Steve... now I do every day and I don't stop and thank God (and Steve) enough for this great life we share

#2 I have an epic job!! God so provided in his perfect timing a job that is beyond all I could have hoped or imagined. I get to spend the majority of my time with some amazing young people and am supported by a great, intelligent and caring team. I know God was up to something good when he planted me in this team and even now I am tinging with excitement for what I get to do.

#3 I have met some of the most amazing and extraordinary women sense of I have moved here to live. From a great friend who cooks epic meals for me and will endure my endless conversations about God and Church even though it isn't really her thing, to an amazing and tender friend that totally accepted me into her and her daughters life and even asked me to be her daughters God-mother, to my great bubbly and active friend who inspires me regularly to physically take care of my body by going to zumba with her and includes me in her life in a way that makes me feel more like a sister than a silly neighbour, to two of the most hilarious women I have ever lived next to who can have my sides splitting in laughter at the epic way they commit to games and dinners together, to the complete friendliness of my good neighbour who cuts my hair on short notice, to the incredibly generous neighbour that invites me over to her house for dinner on that very day that I had NOTHING in the house to eat and couldn't be bothered... need I go on ...

#4 Steve and I have been able to find a new home to move into!!! As many of you know, just as Steve and I were deciding that this neighbourhood was definitely the place we wanted to live, we got a notice in the mail that said we were going to be evicted from our apartment due to the land lord not paying her rent. I just remember when this happened a few months ago, going into our prayer room on the estate and saying to God with a smile on my face "What are you up to?!?!"... and let me just say... God was up to the best idea. A few weeks ago one of the most generous women you will ever meet invited Steve and I to come and live in her house with her... and she lives JUST RIGHT ACROSS THE SQUARE. It couldn't be a better place and we are so thankful for this fun, new and exciting opportunity...


I could keep going on... but really what it all boils down to... is that while I was moaning that we didn't have enough- enough people, creative inspiration, new idea, etc... the reality is that we have loads going on in this little part of the world. And let me tell you, what we are getting to be a part of is one of the most epic adventures of hope and purpose.

I feel so proud of what God is working out here in our lives... and if he can do all this in just a few years that we have been here... I am really looking forward to what will happen in the next couple.

So from here on out... I want to remember how closely we have been written into this story of hope and how involved we can be in it and just simply enjoy it!

If God is so good then why the hell (if there even is a hell) does evil exist in this world? This is a question that often comes up when people find out that I love God and think that being a Christian is one of the most important decisions I have ever made in my life.

Most the time when I hear this question I know people are more wondering why bad things have happened in their personal life... so often there is no reason to really try and defend anything because mostly people are just using this question to open up a space to talk about why they have experienced hurt in their own life and all they really need is a listening ear.

However, when I have these conversations with people I always find myself (after that moment) flipping through my bible asking God the same question... "Geez God, if you are so good and so powerful, why do we have so much crap going on in our world?"

Steve and I are responsible for telling the bible story for Messy Church this coming up Sunday. So, the other night we thought it might be good to read it again. After I complained about having to read 4 chapters of the bible in a row... (flip how spiritual do you think I am? 4 chapters is a big ol'chunker *wink/wink*) Steve and I settled down into reading the story of Noah.

The Story of Noah starts off as God looks down on the world and sees that everyone around him is doing evil, evil, evil. It says that God was sorry that he had ever even made humans because all they seemed bent on doing was bad things and it was breaking his heart.

So, God decided that he would just get rid of all the evil in the world. But in order to do this that meant he had to get rid of all the human and animals that were caught up in this evil. God probably considered just forcing the humans to do good, but he didn't want slaves or robots- God desired a family, relationships, he wanted people to want to choose to love Him. But not only were humans choosing not to love God they also decided doing evil was more to their liking and it was destroying everything good in our world- and God couldn't let that happen!

None the less, God being all good and powerful decided (as I hear many people ask today) to get rid of all the evil in the world... but getting rid of all the evil in the world comes with some pretty heavy consequences and let me just say, we as a human race don't fare well...

If you are familiar with the story of Noah, you will know that after God decides to purge the world of evil he can't bear to put everyone through it because he sees that Noah is a good man, who loves God and enjoys doing what pleases God. God decides to save Noah and his family and warns them what is coming and gives them instructions to build a massive ark that not only Noah and his wife and three sons and their three wives can escape in, but also two of every kind of wild animal, farm animals, bug, birds... the whole lot!

True to his world after the ark is built and Noah, his family and animals are safely inside the rain comes... and as the story goes for 40 days and 40 nights the entire world is flooded. God did what I'm sure the good people of that time were constantly asking, he got rid of all the evil... but that meant he also got rid of all the humans (save the few that were on the ark).

Now if all of this hasn't been an epic of enough story for you then hang on to the end. There Noah and his family are floating around on this new 'Water World' wondering if God had forgotten about them. But then the water starts to recede. And exactly one year after God gave his warning to Noah and his family  they were able to come out of the Ark on to dry land. They were so grateful to be alive that they worshiped God and thanked him for saving them.

And in that moment God looked down on the world and I can only imagine the amount of joy and heart-ache he was in. Though he was glad to be rid of evil he hated that humans got swept away in that process. So God did something that would change the face of history for all time. He made a promise to all the humans left on earth... He promised them that never again- no matter how bad things get (and God knew humans had a bent toward evil), but never again would he kill every living thing as he had done during the time of Noah. Then he put a rainbow in the sky and said he would use this as a reminder to humans and himself that he would never punish his creation like that again.

****Pause****

Do we realize what a precious time we are living in? God is staying true to his promises. In spite of gangster using violence to control their neighborhood, dictators using their power to murder millions of their countrymen because of skin color, mothers abandoning their children for the next quick fix of sex or drug, despite thousands of westerners abusing millions of southerners so they can shop in air-conditioned malls and buy a shirt for less than a fiver and congratulate themselves for getting such a bargain as they rob helpless families of decent wages, regardless of men and women using each other for sex and claiming to be searching for love and not being prudes, of oil companies bent on making money at the expense of the environment and healthy community development, of 11 year old girls and boys being trafficked from eastern parts of Europe to the UK to become sex objects and toys for visiting guest to the London 2012 Olympics, despite toddlers starving to death in slums because they were left orphans when their parents died of HIV.... need I go on? famine, war, disease, .... or as the story of Noah would say "evil, evil, evil".... yet where is our great flood?

Why is God not hatching another natural disaster plan to rid this world of evil? Are we not tired of hearing and seeing evil?? God being all good and powerful can't you do something!?!?!? Do we really want him to? They say history has a way of repeating itself- what if God really did cleanse this earth from evil- would we survive? Would we be on the inside of Noah's ark or banging on the outside as the cleansing flood waters rise?

****Pause****

God is just as heart-broken now as he was in the time of Noah- But he made a promise... never again to  make a plan to get rid of evil by killing off humans. God loves us to much to let that be the plan-

So a few thousands years ago God made up a new plan and then he told a guy named Abraham the plan and made him a new promise that involved Abraham and his family to being chosen as a special group of people that God could use to keep the promise that he made to Noah. See God's new plan was simple- instead of holding humans accountable for the wrong things they did he would send his son to take the heat for them... for all of them.

For the next couple of thousand years this family of Abraham lived waiting for this promise of God- as the world got more and more evil (because humans just keep choosing bad over just loving God)... then  a couple thousand years old the beginning of God keeping this promises began. A preteen girl (yep she is related to that Abraham guy) in a no-where fancy place was visited by an angel and told she would carry the son of God in her belly. This girl believed what she heard and gave birth to Jesus.

Then Jesus did something no one else on this planet had the ability to do-  being100% man and 100% God (wrap your mind around that one-  you got it- Jesus was a super human) He chooses to cast off his power and ability to wipe out the earth's evil by any choice of natural disaster and instead chooses to take the blame for all the evil ever done (though he had never done one wrong thing his whole life) and then wipe himself out and all the evil with it!

That is what Jesus hanging on the cross symbolizes- all the evil being killed once and for all! But The story doesn't end there. See God still wants people to choose him. So he wanted all the people on earth to hear about how much he loved- how he loved them so much he sent his son to make a way for them not to be punished to death for the wrong things they had done, but to realize how much God wants them to be in his family- to be in relationship with him...

So in an extreme act of mercy God chooses to wait and let all the people in this world hear this great story that start thousands of years ago- A story about a very good God wanting humans to choose to love him, of him making them promises that keeps them alive and of him taking radical and extreme measures to make sure Humans survive the world being rid of evil.

So the next time you start asking yourself the question "Why is such a good God not stopping all the evil in the world?" consider the story of Noah... because just like during that time when God saw evil happening on this earth, said "Enough", hatched a plan to get rid of it, gave people time to prepare and choose weather they were inside the ark or outside and then followed through on the flood.... we are living in the sequel of that story.... God has seen evil again on this earth, he has said "Enough", he hatched a new plan that to get rid of evil and set it into motion when Jesus came and died for all the evil in this world- but the story doesn't end there... we are in the part of the story where God is giving people time to prepare and choose weather they want to love him or not. There is a time when God will rid this world of evil- once he knows everyone has heard what Jesus has done and they have been given the choice to love him- Jesus will come... and the rain he brings with him will bring more change to this world then was ever experience before- even more then Noah's story!