Soap for Jesus

When I rededicated my life to the Lord in my late teens, I began what seemed to be a lesson a year. First it was love - God began to teach me how to love with His love, to see with His eyes, as I prayed for it. The next year was faith, and the following faith and trust. It wasn't like I picked these to work on - love was what brought me back to Him - a breakthrough from my friend Taylor W. - and faith and trust have always been struggles, partly because I like to understand things, and partly because I've never learnt to trust deeply, easily. Faith, as you know if you live by it, is a walk in trust. The two, though different, are deeply and intimately connected. To walk by faith is to walk in trust, and to trust fully means utter and complete faith. One of the joys of following Jesus has been to see His love through different aspects of my life - as I like to say, "God's love is of the same beauty and diversity as a many faceted diamond." First, I learned His...

Recently, it was the birthday of The Dude. It was kinda a hard day, despite this place of constant peace and resting the Lord has provided. It took a bit of pondering, over the past few weeks, whether or not to send a birthday greeting. After all, he totally blanked (probably forgot, you know what men are like :P ) my birthday this year, in spite of our past friendship of seven years. The one part was going, "Well, I want to ignore him. He ignored me. Maybe I should just leave it to public holiday greetings from now." The catty, angry, self-righteous part wanted to send him a greeting, just to say to myself that at least I did the right thing. And both of them were holding back because, well, I don't want to give in to the self-righteous part. I want to love him right and purely. In the end, I sent it. Because holding back isn't an option. When you love, you give all, whether or not it's returned. It's a rejoicing day because someone is alive, someo...

Note: The way I live out my faith is...somewhat radical, because I believe in an intimate relationship with Jesus. So be prepared. :P I felt sticky, and ugghy, and grotty and bleh as I stepped outside of the office building where I work. It was another dragging high pressure day, and as much as I love my job, the atmosphere (and the worry) sometimes gets to me. Pulling my phone out of my jacket pocket as I began the twenty(ish) minute walk to the train station, I tried to catch up on a few people's posts, shielding the phone from the glare of the sun. A dear friend and sister posted about how some cruel people had laughed and called her fat before running off, and how broken she was feeling. Couldn't do much, but posted a quick note and walked off praying for her. It's been a beautiful day, in the between. And the between is what counts, isn't it? For right now, I'm in the brightness, the sun shining bright and the world glowing with colour and hope and beau...

This past weekend, I attended a Youth Conference (along with one of my UK besties, Stephanie, and my twin, Joseph) at Bethel Free Baptist Church in Birmingham. What I was expecting ran something along the lines of: 1) Listen to preaching and be fed 2) Sit awkwardly on the sidelines and fail miserably at interacting 3) Spend the weekend watching and listening What actually happened was totally different. God moved this weekend. I watched young people recommit their lives to the Lord. I recommitted my life to the Lord. I gave Him the burden of my broken heart and prayed for release. It's still broken, but He's got the burden of it now and the joy is...unspeakable. I watched my Stephie change from a girl who is shy and self-controlled, though happy, start singing in public - something she would never do even if I begged, though she'd do anything else. I watched as she stepped out on the streets to witness - which she was scared sick of. I watched her cry, and go to ...

There's a hole in my heart that cannot heal. Most of the time, I'm running. I'm learning to run with a smile, now. God is, slowly but surely, teaching me to find joy in every circumstance; to see His blessing Hand throughout the sadness. There's one problem I'm still having, though. It's learning to praise Him for the pain. I can thank Him for using the pain - and have, even to using the loss of the one I loved most, for I watched Him do it even as I lost him. I run from pain. Hate it. And now I'm running from him. From every single memory that he was ever in. I reconstruct my life and future without him, focusing on keeping busy, being productive, serving God. But the hole is there. And I run. It's harder than it should be to store everything away. When Taylor told me that to break free of the darkness and despair, I had to love, I randomly picked someone and tried to love them with God's love because I felt I had to. I didn't realise...

Standing in the cold, hands in my pockets with cars splashing past, I gaze up at the inky blue sky. No stars are out, for it's heavy with clouds. Kinda hard to believe that the shortest day has come and gone. Soon, though, the difference will start to show. Six long months of waiting, and light will come again. Light will always come again...until the Light of the World comes to outshine it forever. It's a night like any other. The X51 is late. It's always late recently, and my skin is a grey-purply-white shade when it arrives at the bus stop, 20 minutes after me. I'm in jeans and a jumper, like I would be any other dress down day before Christmas. "Days of Elijah" is on repeat and I'm having a hard time not singing aloud. Thoughts are busy romping in my head though. Cause this is the last night I shall ever travel home on the X51 from work. I glance up the street as I board the bus. Emotions are mixed as I prepare not only to change my travel, but...

Currently, I'm feeling slightly triumphant, because my earphones are working in the plane socket and I have Katherine Jenkins' beautiful voice singing Time to Say Goodbye down my ears and getting goosebumps as usual. (The Sound of Katherine Jenkins is a CD I have to get.) I must be getting old! I slept some last night, but I was sitting in the airport with yawns splitting my face, and as soon as I got in the plane and settled down, I fell asleep, only arousing at take-off and then for lunch at around 10:30 GMT - oh, and once for pretzels. I totally missed the headphones which is why I'm feeling all clever about using my own. :P So delighted to get a window seat on this flight. The cloud formations, the varying shades of blue and the icicles forming on the window which I can both watch and hear - these are a delight to my camera and me! :P Unfortunately, this is the only time out of the three flights that I will actually be getting either a meal or a window seat. :P Bu...

Oh my gosh. I'm actually going. That was pretty much my reaction Wednesday night when Mom, oh so casually, directed George to also casually place an envelope containing the exact amount of money I needed to pay for my flight to America. Of course, it shouldn't have been any more than a little nice surprise, but it was. Because all the jigsaw pieces had to fall into the right place at exactly the right time. I think it started back at the beginning of this year/end of last year. Mom promised me that because of my helping out with some of the bills, she would gift me a trip to America when the money came through. I had two choices - the OYAN Winter Workshop, or Laura and Daniel's wedding. I chose the wedding. Which meant that when the date was set, the money would have to be through. I plotted out the trip, and asked Mom if I could take an extra trip - yes, all okay. Then the money didn't come through. Because the solicitors had to sort it out. Etc, etc. Poor Mom, ...

IT'S PAINFUL! Oh, God, it's so painful. Why should I suffer like this? What have I ever done to deserve it? I've tried to follow You. Tried to do what You say. I've gone through my memories and I can't think of any sin I haven't repented of. So why am I going through this? Those cries sound so familiar, echoed in the cries of those not born again..."If God was good, why do good people suffer?" And through the story of Job. Maybe you've cried them. I know I have, guiltily. And you know all the usual defending comments; that we are all sinners, that God grieves with us but that this is part of the curse. Yes, He could stop it. Do you know why He doesn't? Because when you're living the easy life, how often do you turn to Him? How often do you seek His face, to grow closer to Him and learn of Him? How much is the value of earthly things to you, when you are in pain? Because, to quote one tweet I read earlier: "The t...

I got off the bus, both ear pieces in, and began to quickly stride across town towards my second bus to work. A dark-skinned lady who got off the bus with me, paused next to me. "Don't you come from T-?" I stopped, puzzled. "Sorry?" "Don't you come on the bus from T-?" Me: "Oh! Yes...?" Strange Lady: "My husband and I used to live in T- area and we used to see you reading your Bible on the bus in the mornings and it really encouraged us. I just wanted to tell you, don't stop!" I blinked back tears and gave her a hug. It's the little things in your day to day living, that testify. My Bible reading had dropped again recently, schedule packed, sleeping on the bus because I was tired, etc. Her comment both encouraged and shamed me. It's funny...how much you fail to realise...even the tiny things can bless someone...just an effort to read a few verses, where and when you can, and chew them over and th...

People have posted and I meant to the night after OYAN ended, but stuff happened. Y'know, like stuff does. And now I'm curled up for half an hour, trying to think exactly how to say the stuff in my heart. Friday night, June 21st, ended OYAN Summer Workshop 2013. I'd gone back to my dorm to put some stuff down before coming back, and missed the prayer over Mr S. As I wandered back around the outskirts of the group praying and singing, eyes closed and tears streaming, Jonny came over to me, pulled me close and wrapped his arms around me. I crumbled against him and started crying. When I finally looked up as the crush of bodies increased, the OYAN people were three deep around me. I was nose to nose with Marybeth, also weeping, with Kristin's expressive chocolate eyes fixed on me with a sad, trembly smile on her lips. This place isn't just any place. This place is our home because we are all there. No, not even that. We could all be there and have no bond...

The impending cataclysm still is in my heart and mind. The call of God in that short space of time and the unclear vision of the future to some of us. The separation of many of us and the intense struggles that so many of God's young people are facing today - pasts created by their own mistakes and influenced by outside forces not of their doing, undergoing the after-effects of so many of these. The young Christians of today are facing more problems than I've ever heard of any young Christian generation undergoing. We are not a united body - many of our worst battles are fought and faced alone with long-distance prayer. I don't believe in end-time revival but I DO believe that God is doing a work amongst the young people of this generation and that is why there are more vicious Spiritual battles than we've seen in a long while. Satan is trying to divide and pull us away, and we are pleading to become more like Christ. Tell me THAT won't induce a battle! So...

You know those points in life where things just hit you? It came to me as I was washing up in the kitchen, snuggled in my fluffy grey dressing gown, the electric light off and the warm glow of the sunset fading in through the window, Michael Card's Celtic music playing in the background. I'm 21. And finally life seems to be coming, in a way. So many plans and hopes and dreams buzzing through my head, so much that is likely to and so easily can be smashed. "I'm fine on my own," I said aloud, laughed, looked up and sighed. These moments where I'm the only one in the house and can talk out loud on everything with God - cause He already knows it - and know the intimate closeness of Him in my spirit. "No, I'm not. But I'm okay with that. You're here, and You'll be with me until the time is right." Marriages are sprouting up all around me as my friends begin to pair off, and the middle-aged-21 crisis struck me. Not so much because...

A day. It's an incredible short space of time. I paused for three seconds just and listened to the clock tick them. Three seconds of my life. Gone. Isn't it so short a span of time? Faith. Hope. Trust. Three things that God is trying to teach me and I am struggling with so greatly. Stop and read those words individually for a moment and think about what each of them means. We tend to bind the three of them together so easily. Think about the end of 1 Corinthians 13 - faith, hope, love, abide these three - but the greatest of these is love. Do you stop to separate the meanings of them out? I fail to, very often. But faith; hope; trust. Bound together by love. Love is the greatest of all. Notice, when one of them fails, the others weaken. Interesting. The last two weeks have been a haze of pain for me. I go through a couple of days (on a usual cycle) where I rotate through riding on faith, hope and prayer and preaching it, to allowing things to smash through th...

There's four projects currently running in the call centre. Two of those are the People First project, which most of the guys are working on - an intensely pressured job on which the target is 5 a day and you must get at least 4 a day or run the risk of being laid off; and Women in Leeds, another highly stressful task because of how boring it is. Most of the responses are no replies or answer phones (now we have cleared out the horrible unobtainables and withheld numbers which shrill piercingly down your ear and one after another are torturous) as most women are out at work during the day. When people actually do answer, there is an incredible amount of refusals, men answering to say their wife/partner isn't there and won't be until gone six pm, or people hanging up in the first sentence (which is quite emotionally knocking, for me anyway). I'm sitting here writing this as I'm dialling in an attempt to keep my poor brain occupied. I'm an outdoor person, stim...

I guess it's a pretty well known fact that I don't trust guys. Even though I love my brothers, (I really do. You guys are awesome!), I still can't trust most of the guys I know. (That not being entirely your faults; often it's mine, in that I feel I can't trust you because you don't know how bad I am. :P) There are a few that made it into my closed, barred, walled and icy heart. Because when it comes to trusting, that's exactly what I am. Remember I said that was what God was working on next? :D Those few (four/five in total) have faced every kind of backfire you could possibly imagine from me. And they still care about me. They're pretty amazing guys. God's...God works so clearly in them and through them to the people around them. To me, they're the epitome of Unconditional Love. God's Love. It was 5am GMT, and 11pm CST, when one of these guys was up chatting me one night. I won't name him to spare him embarrassment, but he'...

Dear guys, blokes, men and gentlemen, This is particularly addressed at you, although it's also a general announcement, because I want you to know where I stand, why I'm off limits and why my Facebook status reads, "It's complicated." Simply because a lot of guys seem to read, "It's complicated" on any girl's status not as a chance to help them out (not me in this case) but as a chance to get a foot in the door. I also want to explain what love means to me - something far beyond mere emotion or fluff, or something that can wither and die. If you've read my blog long enough, you'll know what love is to me. Eternal, unconditional, priceless. True love is God - the heart of God to man. And true love is a gift from God, planted in someone's heart, to never be given up on and thrown away. If God has given you love, then it's nothing to sacrifice lightly. I didn't start this way. When I first fell in love, it was a deliberat...

Dearest Lord, *coughs and looks up, blinking hard* I guess this has been coming for a while. I'm listening to a song that says all You want is me. And it's true... I've been feeling so down and depressed recently...I know You forgave me...but every time You do, even though I'm fully aware of Your forgiveness, and start smiling and singing again, I make no move to get close to You. And that's where the problem lies...if we don't move to get closer to You, we start moving backwards, because life with You can never BE at a standstill. It's like a love relationship. It IS a love relationship. If you don't work at it, it starts to collapse. It's not I haven't wanted You...it's I wanted other things more than You. I was angry...and hating...and lonely...and numb...and...I'm sorry... I need to forgive myself for what I've done...which I can't...but to forgive myself, I need to completely accept Your forgiveness and realise that...

We cheered on the Olympians, and still more the Paralympians, with pride in our countries and awe at their amazing achievements. Those guys (and gals) sacrificed years and time and money and strength and purpose to one goal - to compete here. As Christians, we have our own Olympics to run. Our goal - which is Heaven, our struggle - which is life. And we are commanded to run in such a way as to win the prize - the prize of the upward calling of God in Christ Jesus. I went to the opening of the Baptist Bible College in Telford area today. The guy who preached was Pastor David More. He talked on running the race. But not so much the beginning, as the ending. We need to end well. Many people, he said, start off enthusiastically and with zeal. But not so many end up finishing well, because they didn't run with dedication and purpose. We need to set our sights on Christ and following Him. That must be our goal. We may change immediate goals and our lives turn around in the me...