Film Weekend

On Sunday I got back from a Film and English weekend that UKH had put on as an evangelistic event for students. It had been a while in planning, and Craig, Linda and I had been involved in putting it together. The idea was that students could come along to practise their English, and also to enjoy watching some films in English too. We prepared the lessons, and chose films we thought had themes with which we could present the Gospel through.

The films we chose were Match point, Pay it Forward and Seven Pounds; and between the three of us we each took a film and presented some thoughts on the themes within each film, and how they relate to the Gospel. For example, Matchpoint presents a very nihilistic worldview and leaves the viewer wanting justice by its end, so Craig was able to lead discussion on where our sense of justice comes from, and whether there can be any justice in a nihilistic world.

I got the honour of doing a talk based on 7 Pounds, which I have to say is an awesome movie and I highly recommend it to anyone. I don’t want to spoil it if you haven’t seen it, but it contains themes of guilt and redemption, which I got the chance to talk about after the film. I talked about how Jesus deals properly with the issue of our guilt before God, and how he secures a much better and fuller solution of redemption than the one presented in the film.

On the whole the weekend went really well. The venue was a school out in a rural part of Czech Republic, half an hour drive from Prague. The school is run by Christians, and used to serve firstly as a monastery, and then a prison (!) before becoming a school. All together there was around 10-15 of us, a mix of Christians and non-Christians, and the dynamic was very laid back and fun. Unbelievers heard the Gospel, so that’s something to praise God for.

I really enjoyed being a part of this, I have to say I have a great love for film so to be able to incorporate that into my job and then talk about the Gospel through it is a dream. Its also really encouraging to see how the message of Jesus is so relevant to contemporary culture, whether that is film, music, literature etc. People often say that Christianity is irrelevant in this modern age, and that we don’t ‘need’ it or any other religion anymore, yet if you look at the cultural expressions of today I think we see that people haven’t changed that much over human history. We still cry out for the same things people did 2000 years ago; love, peace, meaning, justice, redemption, forgiveness. These themes come up again and again in music and film, it shows humanity isn’t quite satisfied despite its progression in thought and technology. That’s why I think its really important that Christians engage with the culture around them with a view to presenting the Gospel.

Hopefully there’ll be plenty more opportunities to do events like this while I’m here in the Czech Republic.

Hebrew Messiah

Prague’s famous Karlův Most (Charles Bridge) is known for being lined on each side with statues of various figures, including this one of Christ. Now, I’m not really one for getting over-excited at statues of Christ on the cross, but this one in particular caught my interest; mainly because of the fact it is decorated with Hebrew letters.

In many ways it is very odd that a statue of Jesus would be decorated in this way; it certainly doesn’t seem typical to me when I think of other such statues depicting the Messiah. What’s even more interesting is the translation of the letters, ‘Holy holy holy, the Lord of Hosts’, a phrase from Isaiah which Jews even today recite in their prayers. When I was researching the origin of this strange sight, I found out according to another blogger, “these golden Hebrew letters were part of a humiliating punishment assigned to a Jew at the end of the 17th century who’d been accused of blasphemy. He was forced to pay for them, and it made it seem that when the Jews said this prayer, they were referring to Jesus.”

Perhaps, given the treatment of Jews in Prague (and everywhere else for that matter) in the past, I shouldn’t be surprised that the presence of these Hebrew letters was originally due to anti-Semitism and an attempt to humiliate and degrade the Jewish people. It has to be said that this statue is still controversial today amongst the Jewish community in the city.

However, despite realising the negative origins of this peculiar statue, it still symbolises for me as a Messianic Jew a much greater and ironic truth, which is proclaimed far louder than the original statement of humiliation it was meant to. For although in some ways the statue is odd, in a far more profound way (in my opinion) it is very fitting: for Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. He was (and arguably, still is) the archetypal Jew, promised through Hebrew Scriptures to be the Saviour of the Jewish people, and of course the Gentiles as well. It is only right that Jewish people should refer to Him as Lord, as it is only right that we should remember his Jewish identity.

When I think about this statue it brings to mind the Jewish community as a whole on this earth. The vast majority of them do not believe that Jesus is their Messiah, and so are still under God’s wrath for rejecting Him, like every other unbeliever, and are destined for eternal judgement. The Apostle Paul displayed genuine anguish at this fact (Romans 9:1-3, 10:1).

However, whilst not wanting to turn this post into a theological debate on eschatology or the relationship between Israel and the Church (on which I respect there are many diverse views), I do believe that there is hope for the Jewish people yet, but that can only be through Jesus. May God bless abundantly the work of Jewish evangelism. I pray that many Jews would have their eyes opened to the Gospel by the Holy Spirit, repent of their sins, and that they would genuinely declare Jesus as their Holy, Holy Holy Lord.

 

Philosophical Faculty Mission

The UKH group based at the Philosophical faculty in Prague are putting on a two day mission next week on Tuesday and Wednesday, which has been in the works for a while and is hopefully going to be awesome. The speaker will be Charlie Hadjiev, a member of the IFES Europe committee, who will be staying at our flat for a couple of nights. The topics for his two talks are ‘Full diary, Empty Life?’ and ‘Everything under control?’ so hopefully students at the faculty will be attracted by these issues and will come along to hear about the Gospel. I’ll be at the Suchdol group on the Tuesday so will miss the first talk, but I’ll be going along on the Wednesday to support the group and hopefully have some good conversations with any interested students that might be there.

Please pray that there would be a good turn out to both evenings, and that good conversations and follow-up would happen. It will be an enormous encouragement to the small group of Christian students meeting together if these evenings go well, and hopefully God will be glorified through students engaging with the message of Jesus.

Of course, I was more than happy to help out when they asked me to design the poster for the event.

Updates to come…

Chocolate Music: The Aftermath

Chocolate Music went really well last Tuesday and was a really relaxed and chilled-out evening. It attracted both Christian and non-Christian contacts and both Czechs and International students, which was really encouraging as the group at Suchdol was pretty much starting from scratch this year. The previous week I and the rest of the team had done some publicity on campus involving flyers and questionnaires, so it was great to see some of the students we met then turning up to the event.

As promised, there was both chocolate and music at the event, the latter of which was provided mainly by Craig and myself. We’ve uploaded a video and a few mp3 tracks from our 7-song set for your enjoyment, 2 of which are covers and 2 of which are our own tunes, so check ‘em out…

Ain’t No Sunshine

Down the River

I Just Called To Say I Love You

Other highlights from the evening included live latin jazz musical chairs, and a sensational performance by one girl singing classical music.

On the whole it was a great evening and as a result, from this Tuesday there is going to be a weekly Bible study at Suchdol. They’re going through the Christianity Explored course (I believe in both Czech and English) so it will be suitable for all, Christians and non-Christians. Hopefully there will be many more great stories to come out of Suchdol this year, I’ll keep you all posted

Chocolate Music

This is the poster I’ve designed for our upcoming Chocolate Music night at Suchdol university in Prague. There will be copious amounts of both chocolate and (hopefully) music, as well as a short evangelistic talk by UKH General secretary and all-round legend Tom Uher. The last two evenings we’ve been going round Suchdol doing questionnaires and publicity for the event, meeting both Christians and non-Christians, and we hope that both groups of people will be present next Tuesday. This way a) the Gospel can be proclaimed to non-Christians, and b) we can gain awareness of UKH to Christians and get a solid group up and running.

Craig and I are playing quite a bit of music (with the interesting combo of guitar and saxophone) so prayer would be appreciated. Also, we really hope that students will be up for playing as well so its not just us (since that kind of defeats the object of an open mic).

If I can I’ll get some video/audio to put on here after the event so you can see us playing our own stuff or murdering a classic tune or two.

Church

For the past few Sundays Craig and I have been visiting Czech churches (purposefully not international ones as we want to integrate into Czech culture as much as possible), in the hope of finding one where we feel comfortable to join and get involved with in some way. Bizarrely enough when we moved we realised that there was a CB (Czech Brethren church – like a conservative evangelical denomination) church literally across the road from our apartment, so we visited a couple of weeks ago. Obviously we understood very little of the service, but we did enjoy it. There were around 30 people there,  and the demographic was mostly elderly people with the odd younger person floating around. We sang from a hymn book, and a lady in the row in front would keep showing us her hymn book every time we sang so we knew the right number hymn. This represented what most stood out for us about the church, its hospitality. We were made to feel very welcome, despite the language barrier. People came to say hello, shake our hands etc. and the guy leading the service stood at the door at the end to say bye to everyone personally. He spoke a little English, enough to say a warm ‘God Bless’ to us which I found very touching.

Another elderly man spoke to us, and told us that particular Sunday was very un-typical of meetings, as most of the congregation were away at a Church plant that week. This included the Pastor, who we then realised wasn’t the man who had lead the meeting and given the sermon. We knew then that we would definitely have to come back another week to get a more accurate feel for what the church was like. We noted that we would like to be in a church with people our own age so we could make friends with people outside of work.

Two weeks later (last Sunday), after visiting a Baptist church in between, we went back to the CB church. And my, was it different! This time there were around 100 people, the church was nearly full. It was much more diverse too, people of all ages were present, including quite a large youth group (‘youth’ in this culture is very broad, it extends to ‘young adults’ like myself). The service itself was similar to last time, although there were a few additions (namely a short talk for the children, and an excellent choir performance). Craig and I correctly worked out the sermon was from 1 Corinthians 1, and it was great to see that they were preaching from the Bible in what appeared to be an expository talk.

Although things looked very different compared to last time, something that encouragingly hadn’t changed was the hospitality. Once again, people came up to us to say hello, and introduced us to people in the congregation who spoke decent English. The pastor himself came up to us and introduced himself, and we were invited to tea and coffee downstairs, which we wouldn’t have known about had we not been invited. One man apologized profusely that he had not given us an interpreter for the service. It was just really refreshing; it would have been easy for us to have been overlooked, especially as this time there were a lot more people – but we were very warmly welcomed. Many churches in England could learn from this example.

The icing on the cake was when a student called Jonathan came to us and introduced himself. He was part of the youth group and spoke excellent English as he had spent long periods of time in the States (he is Czech though). We got talking, and he told us about the youth group; when it meets, what they do etc. He also mentioned that they were playing football that afternoon, and when I said I loved football he invited Craig and I along! So, that afternoon, we went and played football with some of the youth from the church (and its sister church) and had a lot of fun (despite me getting some rather nasty insect bites on my legs).

I’m pretty confident that we have found the church God wants us to be a part of in Prague. I see it as a definite act of his sovereignty that we would live so close to what appears to be such a great church; I don’t think we would have known about it and therefore visited it otherwise. The added bonus is that because we live so close, we may have the opportunity to invite people back for lunch after the service once we’ve established some relationships with the people there.

Prague

Well, this is it. I am now in what is going to be called home for at least a year, quite probably two. First impressions and feelings have been quite mixed, but at this moment I’m really enjoying the city and am looking forward to starting my work here good and proper.

I’ve only been here a couple of days, but already it seems like I’ve been here for ages, and I’ve managed to do lots of stuff since I arrived. Saturday was a crazy day jammed full of stuff. I flew into Prague airport in the morning and got a lift from my team leader Gareth to the apartment where Craig (fellow team member) and I now live. This was a feat in itself; Craig, Linda and I all had 2 massive suitcases each plus hand luggage and yet all of us and our luggage was able to be squeezed into Gareth’s Hyundai. It was a miracle, that car is like a Mary Poppins bag on wheels.

We then managed to unpack some of our things before heading to the local shops. Firstly we bought ourselves new mobile phones to use over here, which involved us waiting a long time to be served in the Vodafone shop and looking rather socially awkward, but luckily we did eventually get our phones, and the shop employee spoke enough english to help us. Its quite funny: Linda, Craig and I now all have the exact same phone on the exact same tariff with Vodafone – we’re not sure if this makes us cool or incredibly sad, but hey I guess there’s no cost to team bonding.

We went to get our first food shop which was quite productive; funnily enough Tesco is the main supermarket near our house and it stocks literally everything so we got all that we needed. Food here is cheaper than the UK, particularly fruit and veg which is dirt cheap (we managed to get a bag of about 15 apples for the equivalent of £1!), so its great that we don’t have to worry too much about our weekly shop being too expensive. After the food shop Craig and I then set about perhaps our biggest challenge yet – buying a bed to sleep in, since our apartment didn’t have any. This required a trip to the Ikea in Prague, where thank God we were able to get a cheap bed each for £30! Yet again, a much-needed bargain!

In the evening we went for a meal and then for a walk to a place called Vyšehrad. Here there is a grand church and nearby is a high view over the whole of Prague. It was at this point that I started to realise how beautiful Prague is, I found the views of all the lights across the city plus their reflections on the Vltava river breathtaking. Its already become a favourite spot I think, theres a nice park and coffee shop there – itll be a good place to go to escape from it all as there arent many tourists there, just Czechs walking their dogs! I’m looking forward to exploring this city more, I’d love to find more tourist-free areas that are chilled out and quiet yet have beautiful surroundings.

So that was my first day, but what are my first impressions and feelings now? Well, Prague is certainly a lovely city, one I’m growing to like more and more. My team is great too, and my apartment is starting to look more and more homely. The language barrier overshadows any honeymoon experiences of the culture I have though. Its very unnerving and frustrating not being able to express myself to others, and I feel ignorant and stupid not being able to understand what a lady at a checkout says to me, or when I try to speak Czech to a waiter and he just replies ‘Are you German or English?’ I feel like an obvious outsider, and this hit me hard as soon as I walked into my local shopping centre. The notion that everyone in Prague speaks English is just wrong, and even if they did it wouldn’t make much difference; if you don’t speak Czech youre an outsider, just another ignorant tourist. I don’t want to be like that, I want to engage with the culture I’m living in – but it takes time; and its humbling to think that its gonna be a while before I get even close to that stage (if I do). Still, this makes me see where my identity is (ie. in Jesus) and helps me to rely on Him more so that’s a good thing. After all, Romans 8:28 is true whether I’m in the UK or in Prague.

Its not all bad though by any means, I’ve been here a few nights and its really cool. I’m already starting to settle, just soaking up the surroundings and hanging out with my team has been great. I’m looking forward to starting work soon, and on Wednesday I go away for a few days with the team for a short conference, introducing us to the work here in the Czech Republic. It’s a real privilege for me to be here, supporting this movement – a lot of students in CUs in Britain have no idea how well resourced they are compared to countries like Czech, and that’s why I feel honoured to help out here. I hope God blesses the work immensely.

More updates to come.

Formación

I always find it interesting how some of the coolest times or experiences in life often come unexpectedly. From seemingly out of nowhere you can find yourself in a position that you never anticipated, and be pleasantly surprised by how much you’re enjoying something. I’ve often found myself in this position, sometimes because of spontaneous or random decisions to do something or go somewhere, or sometimes because I knew an event was going to happen but was unaware of its potential significance.

The latter is how it was with Formación. I knew it was approaching a long time before I got there, but the conference itself was at the back of my mind for a long time. My immediate attention had been fixed mainly on my impending move to the Czech Republic; just a week or so before I left for Formación I was booking my flight to Prague and sorting out other bits and bobs. Formación itself seemed like not much more than a fleeting pre-cursor to the long-term move to Prague and therefore didn’t take up too much of my thoughts. When it did, I was mainly just worrying about the finances (see previous posts) rather than considering the conference itself. My expectations of Formación were that it would be like all the other Christian conferences I’ve been to recently (of which there have been many): great, but just another conference. Therefore, nothing to get too excited about.

And I have to say, a few days into my stay in Poland I certainly wasn’t that excited. It was fine at first,  I’d flown into Warsaw a day early with some other Brits going to Formación, and had spent the day wandering round the city which was really fun. The next day I got on the coach with the other CGLs (Community group leaders) to arrive at the conference centre a few days early for orientation and training. The training was good and it was great to meet the other CGLs, including Zaiga from Latvia, who would be leading with me in my group. The thing was though I didn’t feel that comfortable there; I was anxious about 150 students descending on the site, I didn’t know what my group were going to be like, I was also a little nervous about leading them. Above all I felt a little lost amongst all these other CGLs from lots of different countries. If it was bad now, how would I feel when all the students arrived?!

Well, the students did arrive, and the conference got under way good and proper. The schedule at Formación was quite full; in the mornings we had expositions from Mark’s Gospel by Andrew Page, a fantastic speaker. We would then discuss the talks in our discussion groups. In the afternoons we would have activities/free time and the evenings would be taken up with seminars, and various other things such as Culture Night, film night etc. After hours people could hang out at a late night café to sit and chat. On the first night I was introduced to my group (pictured above, who came to be known as ‘Team Air Guitar’ as Formación went on) and they seemed like a good bunch of people. There were 10 of us in our group representing countries as diverse as Egypt, Holland, Bosnia and Greece, and by the end of the conference I felt we’d become quite a close-knit gang. Im really grateful for all of them and feel lucky to have been able to build good relationships with them over the 10 days.

Activities are a big part of Formación; they are used to teach students about team work and identity. After each activity we would discuss it as a group, see what we learnt and then try to apply those lessons to our personal circumstances as student leaders in our different countries. I think in many ways it was the team activities that really brought our group closer together; we had a lot of fun playing basketball, volleyball and kayaking. Once we were more comfortable with each other everyone starting being more open and forthcoming in group discussions throughout the conference, which was great.

As I got into the swing of the conference I really started to enjoy it. Leading the community group was great fun and I got on really well with all of them; on most nights I would chat with one or more of them at the café after-hours. I also got to know lots of other students and CGLs better and I felt much more in my element. I gained loads spiritually from the expositions in the morning, and got a lot out of the personal reflection times that were set in the schedule (one extended period of reflection lasted 3 hours, giving us plenty of time to reflect and pray on what we had been learning).

There were some great stand-alone things going on throughout the camp too. On one day the whole camp took part in a dramatization of all of Mark’s Gospel, and I got the role of Jesus for a section! It was a really cool experience actually, the drama was well acted by all despite us being amateur. We had a bonfire night, a culture night (where some good old fashioned British stereotypes went down well) and also a chance to serve the community by doing some painting, decorating etc. in the local town. All in all, an intensive but awesome experience.

I think one of the things I enjoyed most from Formación was the chance to get to know so many new people from so many varied backgrounds. I had such interesting conversations with people from countries I know literally nothing about; and it was a pleasure to see such diversity united together in the name of Jesus. It was like a foretaste of the new creation! There were Arabs and Israelis hanging out together just fine, as well as Bosnians, Croats and Serbs enjoying each others’ company – just a great testament to the reconciling power of the Gospel. To be able to mix with people so different than me and yet have so much in common with them was amazing. To see how God has worked in people’s lives from all over the world was so humbling and yet encouraging at the same time, Jesus really is King over the whole world, not just England! I really saw the attitudes of students really change over the 10 days too, which was great – I feel privileged to have been able to serve as a CGL. God was truly glorified throughout the whole event.

Formacion truly was incredible, and made such a bigger impact than I ever expected it to. I learnt lots, had some great fun and was able to spend time with some incredible people, some of whom I hope to see again. It really was one of the best conferences I’ve ever been to; there was such a great sense of community among everyone and there were some emotional goodbyes at the end! Its been really helpful for me though in preparation for Prague, I feel a lot more prepared than I did to work cross-culturally so that’s a great blessing from God. What a conference!

In closing, I’m going to list some of my less-spiritual and more random memories of Formación:

- People clapping at literally anything in a meeting.

- The music team starting the song ‘Celebrate, Jesus Celebrate’ with the synth intro from Van Halen’s ‘Jump’ (a truly epic moment)

- Samurai. One of the best group games ever.

- The Papaya dancing.

- Literally hordes of Europeans thinking my name was ‘Jazz’ and not ‘Jez’.

- My community group’s air guitar presentation.

- The staple diet of bread, cheese and ham presented at just about every meal.

- Me drinking tea. A real rarity.

- Europeans speaking English with American accents (hilarious!)

Back with the Family

I’m currently living at home with the parents for a few months, back in Whitefield, north Manchester. I’ve finished Relay now, so I’ve relocated home for a while before I fly out to Prague in September. In some ways its a shame to leave the house I was renting in Salford, particularly as I really enjoyed living near the centre of town and with my housemates, but its been good to be back in Whitefield despite a few annoyances.

An obvious advantage to being back home is the reduced costs – its great not to worry about doing the food shopping or paying the rent or other bills. And of course I get my meals cooked for me again, which is always a bonus. These things aren’t the only things that have been great though; moving back home has enabled me to really enjoy other things that I’d previously taken for granted when I used to live here.

Firstly, hanging out with the family and home friends has been really awesome. I’ve proudly got my Dad thoroughly addicted to 24 now, we’ve been watching copious amounts of it on an almost daily basis – neither of us can get enough of it! Its also been good to see and chat to my Mum and banter with my sister too – good stuff. I’ve also been able to catch up with home friends which has been really cool – although according to one of them my accent has changed and I apparently sound posher than I used to. Fail.

Whitefield itself is such a refreshing change from Salford. I have to admit, being able to walk around at night feeling vaguely safe is a plus-point! Not only that though, the surroundings are just a lot more pleasant than the council estates and rows of terraced houses that I’ve been used to seeing on a daily basis in Salford. One of the real highlights for me of living in Whitefield though is the fact I’m within 10 minutes walking distance of Heaton Park. Heaton Park is awesome, I like parks anyway but Heaton Park is massive and is just a really nice environment. I’ve spent loads of time there in the past; whether hanging out with friends, playing football, or just going for walks round its huge grounds – and to have it on my doorstep again has given me a real haven for escape to when I’ve wanted to get out of the house for a bit.

Having Heaton Park there has also motivated me to do more photography whilst I’ve been home. Whilst on Relay I was extremely busy and I didnt find Salford a very inspiring place to get my camera out (not to mention having a real fear of getting it nicked!), yet I’ve took it round the park a few times already getting some results I’ve liked (The photo at the top of this post is a panorama from Heaton Park.) I know for a fact that Prague is gonna be amazing for photo opportunities, so the ability to hone my skills at home has been welcomed. Hopefully I’ll be posting photos from Prague on here too.

So home has been great on the whole. There have been a few niggles, having to have a bit of a ‘commute’ to church and to see my Salford mates is a bit of a bummer, and my room in Whitefield is tiny without a desk, but I cant complain too much. Besides, it wont be too long before I’ll be moving away again anyway…

An Encounter With Grace

For my first (proper) post on this blog I thought I’d share something that happened to me recently which was a massive encouragement, and how it caused me to think about a number of things.

As you may know, I’ve been planning to go to a conference called Formacion in Poland this summer, before I head out to Prague. Formacion is a student conference which is held every two years for CU leaders from all over Europe. Its an awesome event, and I wanted to go in order to serve there as a community group leader, and also get a feel for the European student scene ahead of my time in the Czech Republic.

Up until just over a week ago though, it was starting to look questionable whether I’d be able to go or not, mainly because of the barrier of finances.  I have to raise a lot of money for Prague in itself, not to mention the extra expenses of Formacion,  and it was looking like a mammoth task. I felt I had not started fund-raising early enough, I didnt know if I was going to have enough supporters to cover my expenses, and revelations about having to find quite a big sum of money up front before I left for Prague left me feeling even more unnerved. The added costs of Formacion weren’t going to help, and I needed to book flights soon so I was feeling worried – and this was where doubts started to set in, not just about Formacion, but about the whole of my plans to be abroad for the next couple of years.

I started to wonder if God really wanted me to go to Prague after all; I realised I put a lot of my identity in Christian work – what if God wanted to humble me and pull the plug on Prague so I would have to get a secular job next year? The thought made me shudder, I’d worked in Debenhams part time for 3 years and by the end had hated it, I couldn’t stand the thought of going back to something like that. But then the doubts got deeper, at worst I started to reason that if God wouldn’t provide me with the funds I needed, it might be enough to question his very existence! After all, if God doesn’t provide me with a ‘miracle’ in the form of funds, which would prove to me He exists, what reason do I have to think that my faith is anything more than social conditioning? This was bad news; the Bible is quite explicit about the fact we are not to test God (Deut 6:16), yet here I was, allowing sinful doubts to run away with me.

Given all this you can imagine how profound an experience it was when, over the course of two days, almost out of nowhere, I received gifts that covered all the Formacion costs! This was incredible and unexpected, when I realised I had enough I just sat on my couch in unbelief. God had given the OK for Formacion, and since me being at Formacion is in part preparation for Prague, I now believe with surer faith that he will provide for the rest of my funding for next year (which is still considerable).

When I thought about it more though, it became apparent to me that this experience went way beyond mere money. I had received real grace, and had been given a fresh glimpse into the very character of God. My weaknesses, doubts and sinful attitudes got totally ruined in the wake of God’s glorious and gracious provision. In hindsight, to think I had allowed the possibility of me not getting what I wanted to question God’s existence, essentially calling the bluff of the Creator of the universe, is crazy. Whats crazier though is that he actually responded to my challenge, met it head on, and came out the victor! Incredible!

The thing is God didnt have to give me the funds. If he hadn’t it wouldn’t have really been a reason to doubt his goodness or existence – He’s secured eternal life for me through Jesus, its not as if that isn’t enough! Even if I were to have a horrible job for the rest of my life I should still glory in my Redeemer, and not doubt him. In some ways it would make sense for him to not have given me the funds, and leave me to work in a secular environment so as to teach me a lesson about being elitist towards Christian work. Yet instead He delivered the goods, and through that revealed his grace and fully exposed the many facets of my sinful heart, and did all this through blessing me at the same time…which humbled me more! Who’d have imagined this is how God would deal with this situation, with such an amazing outcome? To think the best way of countering my sin was by blessing me! He’s shown to be all-powerful, his grace is revealed, I am shown my sin and am totally humbled, and yet I am still blessed with the support. You couldnt make this stuff up.

The icing on the cake was just being amazed at God’s grace through this, and really feeling passionate about him again. Spiritual apathy has been a problem of late, yet through this situation God allowed me to grasp more of his character and therefore truly desire him again, which has been wonderful. Oh, and my flights are now booked for Formacion, and I’m leaving on the 24th July – God is good!