Firstly I'd like to apologise for leaving such a long gap between posts! I'm hoping to make this a kind of habit, and not something I start and never finish ( because I tend to be better at the latter and not the former unfortunately).
Soul Survivor, where to begin? It was fantastic and perhaps unexpectedly emotional week; I went with a view to have a standard experience there, attending seminars and learning all I can to equip myself as much as I could for next year. And, in other words, draw as less attention to myself as possible. I certainly did that, but God sort of had other plans, as He usually does.
I found myself being very overcome with emotion quite frequently throughout the week, which is quite a big deal as I like to think I'm really not someone who expresses their emotions at all! I felt as if God was breaking me, as they say 'breaking my heart for what breaks His', not for any reason that I'm aware of yet, but it allowed me to break down and be comforted in His presence in a way I've never dealt with before. It was refreshing, and at the same time incredibly confusing and draining - even retrospectively, I really have no idea what happened! But as much as I'm yearning to discover all the right questions I have about faith (rather than the answers, referring to a quote from Tom Wright - wonderful theologian), and I'm hoping my course at University will help with that, at the moment I'm quite content to not have any clear knowledge about some things, because that's not how God works. I know He's got me, and He understands me better than I understand myself; that's all I need to know.
Besides this, I learnt a lot too regarding leadership and communication, about hearing God's voice, and surrounding a lot of other things that I'm sure I'll talk about later. There was a lot of information and encouragement for prospective University students too, which was invaluable! I met another girl who was hoping to study Media at Salford University, and we got on really well; one of my insecurities about University is my potential inability to make friends and talk to new people, but gaining a friend encouraged me quite a lot. Maybe I'm not so bad at making conversation and finding common ground with a person as I thought! I've also linked up to the Christian Union at Lancaster University and had my email address shared with the churches there through Fusion, a Christian organisation for students that provided me with a lot of support at Soul Survivor that I also wasn't expecting! Here's the link for anyone who's reading and might be interested.
At a point during the week I felt particularly called to give my life to God, completely. I had an inkling that I might be called to do something specific in the future that would require me to be utterly dependent on God, serving His purpose somehow and sharing His message of hope and unconditional love to those who feel lost and disconnected to this world. Now I feel totally inadequate to do this; I'm nothing special, I'm far from special, believe me! But I realised that I couldn't live for God as I am now, on my own, just like no-one else can. It is the piece of God inside of me, inside of everyone, in the form of the Holy Spirit, that will enable me to follow the path that God wants me to walk for Him. I was fairly relieved at this, and had another overwhelming moment thinking how amazing God is.
When I got back, I shared this with a wise and very treasured friend of mine, this time including my partly selfish fears that perhaps if God called me to live for him, then I'd never enjoy or experience the things that I was most looking forward to in the future, such as having a family. She told me something that gave me not only further relief but a stronger sense of purpose; she said that a lot of the time as Christians we tend to glorify the people that make the 'biggest' sacrifices to follow God's calling and carry out Jesus' mission, like the missionaries that go to foreign countries, or the people who leave behind their wealth and sometimes their families to do what they think is right. These people are rightly commended, for what they do is incredible (my aunt was a missionary in Congo some years ago, and she's an incredible woman!), but often we forget to commend the extraordinary within the ordinary. What she meant was, there are people who live very ordinary lives all over the world, who have a family, a career, a house, a mortgage, a dog/cat/etc, who still manage to live entirely for God, which is equally quite a hard thing to do. Living as a Christian in any circumstance is hard, because we have to essentially live and participate in a world that we can't conform to, amongst people that will laugh at us and call us stupid (and that's a nice word to use).
So as much as we glorify the extraordinary, we should also not underestimate the struggles of the ordinary. I might be called to live an extraordinary life for God, I haven't a clue what my future involves yet - similarly, I might be called to live an ordinary life with a family and career, yet in an extraordinary way still for the glory of God, which may be just as challenging. We shall have to see!
Soul Survivor, where to begin? It was fantastic and perhaps unexpectedly emotional week; I went with a view to have a standard experience there, attending seminars and learning all I can to equip myself as much as I could for next year. And, in other words, draw as less attention to myself as possible. I certainly did that, but God sort of had other plans, as He usually does.
I found myself being very overcome with emotion quite frequently throughout the week, which is quite a big deal as I like to think I'm really not someone who expresses their emotions at all! I felt as if God was breaking me, as they say 'breaking my heart for what breaks His', not for any reason that I'm aware of yet, but it allowed me to break down and be comforted in His presence in a way I've never dealt with before. It was refreshing, and at the same time incredibly confusing and draining - even retrospectively, I really have no idea what happened! But as much as I'm yearning to discover all the right questions I have about faith (rather than the answers, referring to a quote from Tom Wright - wonderful theologian), and I'm hoping my course at University will help with that, at the moment I'm quite content to not have any clear knowledge about some things, because that's not how God works. I know He's got me, and He understands me better than I understand myself; that's all I need to know.
Besides this, I learnt a lot too regarding leadership and communication, about hearing God's voice, and surrounding a lot of other things that I'm sure I'll talk about later. There was a lot of information and encouragement for prospective University students too, which was invaluable! I met another girl who was hoping to study Media at Salford University, and we got on really well; one of my insecurities about University is my potential inability to make friends and talk to new people, but gaining a friend encouraged me quite a lot. Maybe I'm not so bad at making conversation and finding common ground with a person as I thought! I've also linked up to the Christian Union at Lancaster University and had my email address shared with the churches there through Fusion, a Christian organisation for students that provided me with a lot of support at Soul Survivor that I also wasn't expecting! Here's the link for anyone who's reading and might be interested.
At a point during the week I felt particularly called to give my life to God, completely. I had an inkling that I might be called to do something specific in the future that would require me to be utterly dependent on God, serving His purpose somehow and sharing His message of hope and unconditional love to those who feel lost and disconnected to this world. Now I feel totally inadequate to do this; I'm nothing special, I'm far from special, believe me! But I realised that I couldn't live for God as I am now, on my own, just like no-one else can. It is the piece of God inside of me, inside of everyone, in the form of the Holy Spirit, that will enable me to follow the path that God wants me to walk for Him. I was fairly relieved at this, and had another overwhelming moment thinking how amazing God is.
When I got back, I shared this with a wise and very treasured friend of mine, this time including my partly selfish fears that perhaps if God called me to live for him, then I'd never enjoy or experience the things that I was most looking forward to in the future, such as having a family. She told me something that gave me not only further relief but a stronger sense of purpose; she said that a lot of the time as Christians we tend to glorify the people that make the 'biggest' sacrifices to follow God's calling and carry out Jesus' mission, like the missionaries that go to foreign countries, or the people who leave behind their wealth and sometimes their families to do what they think is right. These people are rightly commended, for what they do is incredible (my aunt was a missionary in Congo some years ago, and she's an incredible woman!), but often we forget to commend the extraordinary within the ordinary. What she meant was, there are people who live very ordinary lives all over the world, who have a family, a career, a house, a mortgage, a dog/cat/etc, who still manage to live entirely for God, which is equally quite a hard thing to do. Living as a Christian in any circumstance is hard, because we have to essentially live and participate in a world that we can't conform to, amongst people that will laugh at us and call us stupid (and that's a nice word to use).
So as much as we glorify the extraordinary, we should also not underestimate the struggles of the ordinary. I might be called to live an extraordinary life for God, I haven't a clue what my future involves yet - similarly, I might be called to live an ordinary life with a family and career, yet in an extraordinary way still for the glory of God, which may be just as challenging. We shall have to see!
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