Running out of space and running back home!

Brain ache...... I have definitely reached the point of overflow when it comes to new information to process and the capacity to do it.  Every morning we have extended worship time and then a teaching session (total 2.5 hours), the afternoon has three sessions (total 3 hours) and then the evening has another two sessions - all together 7.5 hours of 'stuff' for my brain to wade through.  Five days a week.  For two weeks.  Enough now please!

I am pretty much ready to come home now.  This has been - and continues to be - a great experience, for so many reasons.  I have met such fabulous people, learnt incredible truths that I am still trying to digest, and been challenged to deal with some of the gnarly parts of my life that I really wish didn't exist.  But now my heart is beginning to yearn for home.  I want to be in Glasgow, in my gorgeous flat, with my amazing housemate and my stooopid cat, and at Hope Church on a Sunday morning - Bethel church is great, but I know where I feel most settled and it's with my church family.

Of course I'm going to feel differently when my host family are driving me to the airport on Monday and I have to say goodbye.  That's not going to be fun at all.  They are so, so precious to me, and have made me feel that I am precious to them.  They have cemented in my mind the sort of home I want to have - laughter, noise, acceptance, spontaneity, more laughter, people, crazy chats over the dinner table.  They have cultivated this in their home, and their kids' friends know that this is a safe place to be - it's evident from how they behave here, how they interact with everyone.

One full day of classes left and then Friday morning as usual - we finish early afternoon after a prayer tunnel with the leadership team at Bethel.... good times!  Then a last weekend with the family before my journey home begins on Monday.

Truth and experience

A few posts ago I wrote about truth, and our absolute need for it.  Today I was in a class led by Judy Franklin (if you don't know who this woman is, and you're interested in heavenly encounters, find her books on amazon and read them!), and she started with the following quote, which has been attributed to the philosopher Deitrich Bonhoffer:

"Truth divorced from experience must always dwell in the realm of doubt".

That is such a challenge for me.  But it's come at a good time.  Having come from a christian family, I have been learning biblical truth for so many years.  And one of my skills is being able to regurgitate information that I've learnt.  It can make me appear like I am full of wisdom, and it is such a help in my day job as a skills trainer, but in reality sometimes all I am is just an entertaining parrot repeating the words of others.  I've watched a number of people who appear over recent months to have had this jet-propulsion into the things of God and, whilst I know that they have been taking time to study the Word and learn more about God, the key has been the time building what Bethel refers to as their 'personal history'.  Whilst they are keen for students to gain as much as they can from the experienced people on staff at the school, they are emphatic in their belief that nothing can replace this - no impartation, no experience in a meeting or a worship session (although, let me tell you, today's worship was POWERFUL!).  What really counts is what you build with God when you are away from others.

In Judy's class we did an exercise about picturing ourselves spending time with Jesus.  Me and Jesus were hanging out in our garden, as often happens to me in situations like this.  We were on the swing seat for a while, and then I ran off, to walk on stepping stones across the river.  I thought Jesus would join me in the fun, but what He said stopped me, and I chose to come back to the seat - 'you are always so busy and active to sit and spend time with me'.  When I went back to the seat, we didn't talk - it wasn't about that.  We just hung out, in each others presence.  It was peaceful - I liked it.  I got the impression that this seat would always be there, as our relationship grew; like a couple that fell in love, and then grew old together, we would be like them, always coming back to our favourite place, to swing on the seat, surrounded by grass and wild flowers, staring at the river nearby.

I am hoping (a prayerful hope!) that the time I have here I can use to start new habits in building that personal history, and particularly in making so many of the exciting things I am seeing, hearing and learning about from others into reality - truth - in my own life.

All change.... or all stay the same?

I'm about to head into what may be eight of the craziest weeks of my life to date.  And with nearly 36 years of madness already behind me, that's saying a lot.

My first challenge is completing some studies which have been ongoing for the past five or more years.  Once finished, I get to put some extra letters after my name... whoop-dee-doo.  Oh, and my CV looks better.  Wow.  Yeah, you guessed it, I'm definitely not motivated to get this done - in fact, the only thing really motivating me right now is what it will cost me financially if I run over the current deadline.  Which is in three weeks.  4,000 words to go.  Three weeks.  Research still to be finished.  Oh hec, it's going to be busy.  Not much I can do than suck it up, because there's little point in the coulda-woulda-shoulda done it long ago talk...

Saying that, it will represent an end of an era.  It's been hanging around like a bad smell for so long now, and is an inheritance from a job I technically no longer do.  It begs the question, 'what next?'  And that's where the following few weeks after that come into play.  I'm off to music school - worship school, to be exact.  Three weeks in sunny California, staying with an awesome host family, and getting to worship and learn with people who are all in for God.  Most of the time I am utterly giddy with excitement about the whole thing.  And then there are times like now.  You see, I've put so much stock in this being a key time for me.  And I've had people speak over me that this is going to be a significant time for me, that it is going to propel me forwards in God and into my destiny.  Right now, that feels like a tall order.  And I'm scared.  Scared that I'll be disappointed.  Scared that when I get back, I'll have to pretend that I've been through this amazing mountain-top experience that we all dreamed I would have, and that life will never be the same again. But what if that's not the case?  One of my dearest friends said last night that it would be impossible for me to spend that much time with God and not come back changed.  I hope so.  But I think that hope is as much earthly hope as it is heavenly hope - probably more so right now.  Those who know me well will know I have had a history of depression and anxiety - and so I'm fearful that the intense emotions and pressure of finishing my studies and going to Bethel are going to trigger a bad time, not good.  And for once, I don't want to feel like I have a battle on my hands.  To have a continuous period of being well, and not feeling like it has to be a struggle.  

That's why, over the next few blogs, those who want to can join me on a journey of truth.  Today I read a quote from Jonathan Edwards (the theologian, not the athlete... I think...) that 'truth is the agreement of our ideas with the ideas of God'.  This is going to be my preparation for the time ahead.  Learning and declaring truth.  And for me, talking about it, typing it, sharing it - whether anyone else reads it or not - helps me to process and then to learn.  I do believe that one of the things that God is 'making good' out of my circumstances is my ability to care for others in a similar predicament - it's an answer to prayer from years ago, during one of my worst periods of illness, when I begged God to 'not let this be in vain, let it be used for good one day'.  

Today is day one on the walk of truth.  It's going to be my own version of Pilgrim's (very slow) Progress.  This declaration, funnily enough, comes from Bethel church, where I'm headed in just a few weeks time:

"I am powerful, and what I believe changes the world! So today I declare:
God is in a good mood.
He loves me all the time.
Nothing can separate me from His love.
Jesus' blood paid for everything.
I will tell nations of what He has done.
I am important.
How He made me is amazing.
I was designed for worship.
My mouth establishes praise to silence the enemy.
Everywhere I go becomes a perfect health zone.
And...with God
Nothing is impossible!"

Read it out loud.  Go on.  I dare you.  And do it again tomorrow morning.  And tomorrow night, along with the next nugget of truth we share together.  Which means you'll then have more to say out loud.  Tell me how you get on.  Tell me what challenges you.  Let us encourage one another to keep going.  Because THAT is what the church is for.  Don't let anyone fool you into believing the statement that you don't have to go to church to be a Christian - it's true, church attendance has nothing to do with salvation, but the statement hides from a significant truth, that we NEED one another.  We need encouragement, challenging, those who rub the corners off our edges, those who hug us and tell us to hold on a little longer, because a new day is coming.  

Rant over.  Truth is here.  Truth is here to stay.