A once vibrant Christian nation, Ireland has fallen into a deep Spiritual poverty. Our heart is to work alongside the remnant of faithful Irish Christ followers to bring the hope of the Gospel of Jesus to all.
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7 months in…What we’ve learned so far
Everything I thought I knew about missions in Ireland, but didn’t
· I thought I knew English so speaking to Irish people should be easy…wrong!
Words mean different things here, are used in a different cadence, there’s almost a song to some Irish speakers and not for others. Irish people never say ‘no’ but will give you loads of other reasons for why they shouldn’t do a ‘thing’.
· I thought I knew how the government worked…wrong!
Irish government is still relatively new and in a constant state of change. How someone else did something (got their license, registered a vehicle, etc) may be very different to how I must do it today. And again, terms used are unfamiliar so I often do things wrong. I have learned a Que is a line.
· I thought I knew how to ‘get things done’…wrong!
Irish people do not take kindly to be told what to do so most often its offered as a suggestion. Unless you are a Garda (policeman) or government official in which case everyone expects you to be nasty, so they tell you exactly what to do.
· I thought I know how to trust and wait on God…so wrong!
Still learning this one.
· I thought I know who I was and how I fit in church…wrong!
God is showing me a new side of myself and it’s a fun discovery! I don’t have to be in charge here and I love that! Irish people thrive on Team mentality and so do we, now we have to learn to live it like they do.
· I thought I knew how much I would miss our kids and granddaughters…so very wrong!
Well mostly wrong, we knew we would miss them but this is really hard.
· I thought I was okay with new and different…somewhat wrong.
I do love things to be different, but this isn’t a vacation, this is the new normal and its not normal yet.
· I thought I could just dive right in…nope
There needs to be time to adjust to everything! New smells (it smells like spring or fall everyday!), new seasonings (not at all what I am used to), new language (Gaelic is tossed casually into conversation like we do French but I don’t know Gaelic), driving on the other side of the car on the other side of the road, etc.
Even though we live far apart from friends and family in Canada and the States, I think we always just ‘knew’ we could drive over on a weekend if we had the time. We could drive all around the entire island of Ireland in the time it would take to drive from our home in Penticton to our kids in Northern Alberta! Time and tempo has changed. There is never a rush here (except on the motorways!).
Missions in Ireland is long-haul ministry. Many do not see new converts for many, many years. But each life is precious to our Lord and we will continue to press on!
So as much as we were trained for ministry both in life, experience and school, we must prepare ourselves and fellow missionaries to give ourselves TIME to learn this new life. One cannot simply move anywhere and just dive in like nothing has changed. Everything has changed…and that’s a good thing!
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Courage & Obedience in the Irish Sea
7 youth from our church in Swords to the step of obedience in baptism this past Sunday. I spoke with many of them and the same refrain kept being sung, “I am so scared but I am doing it!”
I remember my baptism. It was in a nice, warm, baptism tank in a nice warm church building surrounded by church family and friends. Mostly fellow believers.
These kids took the plunge in the most public place possible on a Sunny Sunday in Ireland...the sea! It was cold, had big waves, and strangers were milling about wondering what was going on. In a country with less than 1% believers, this was an odd site for sure! But most stuck around to watch the kids and their baptizers get swept up in the waves as they tried to be plunged under the water and back up again. It was one of the most glorious and fun baptisms I have ever witnessed and I am so glad it is just the start of what God has for us here!
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How good is our awesome God!
But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. Titus 3:4-7 ESV
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One of the most endearing things about Irish people is their incredible sense of community. Because of that, kindness is incredibly important.
Be generous, Be honest, Be kind, Be a good neighbor, Be content, Be peaceable.
These are a few ways the Bible teaches us about kindness.
Proverbs 3:27-31
Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to act. 28 Do not say to your neighbor, “Come back tomorrow and I’ll give it to you”— when you already have it with you. 29 Do not plot harm against your neighbor, who lives trustfully near you. 30 Do not accuse anyone for no reason— when they have done you no harm.
31 Do not envy the violent or choose any of their ways.
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“Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens, Your faithfulness to the clouds.
Your righteousness is like the mountains of God;
Your judgments are like the great deep;
Man and beast You save, O Lord!”
Psalm 36:5-6
God’s creation screams His mighty attributes and how wonderful He is!
Ireland reflects God’s glory everywhere we turn. But as vast as the heavens and sky are, they are nothing compared to God’s love. As high as the mountains and cliffs are, they are nothing compared to His righteousness. As deep and fathomless as the oceans are, so great are His judgments! He is good beyond measure and I love how He declares it simply through His creation!
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Confessions of a cookie snob!
I love cookies! I have never met a cookie I didn’t like and never found a recipe I couldn’t make or personalize...until now. We live in a new country, I cannot find all my tried-and-true ingredients, and I have a new cooker (stove). Our friends and neighbors seem quite willing to be my guinea pigs while I try but I know they are not turning out as good as they could be.
I have a new and massive respect for all my immigrant friends who have learned how to adjust old family favorites with new or slightly different ingredients and tools. I have lived in many different elevations in Canada and different humidity’s but thankfully the grocery stores all carry the same things across the country. I am now in a new country where everything is different. Everything! I cannot even get the temperature on my cooker right! Ahhhgg! (Quite a humbling experience :)
These are my challenges as I keep trying to make my well-loved Chocolate Chip cookie recipe:
The new cooker does stay true to temperature once it finally gets there BUT it has a fan and not elements. This is different from the previous electrical and gas stoves I have used. The oven is very tiny so I can only bake 8 cookies at a time.
The flour is heavier so upon advisement, I am now sifting it before use. This works great!
I am used to using margarine or even butter but the Irish ‘baking fat’ and butter are both quite different. The ‘baking fat’ (Margarine) tastes more like shortening. I think I will move to just butter but have to adjust to Irish butter which has far less salt and is creamery butter. This makes a big different in consistency and taste. I have upped my salt in the recipe which is helping but am not sure how to handle the butter melting issues.
The oats I am using are old fashioned which just makes the cookies chewier which is good.
A dear friend sent me some sweetened shredded coconut (my secret ingredient for chewier cookies) and that has helped a great deal! Thank you Jessika!
I used Caster sugar today which I have found is a very fine sugar somewhere in between granulated sugar and Icing sugar. The taste is ok but consistency is off.
We have chocolate chips here but they are incredibly expensive for the amount you get so I am using baking chocolate which I bash the heck out of with a hammer in the ground. This works but adds a chocolate dust to the mix. Actually a very yummy addition!
So there you have it! If you have any tips or ideas, please let me know. I am very open to ideas. I love to bake because in school I really wasn’t very good at most subjects. But I was trained by my mom and grandma’s how to be a good homemaker. One of the things they taught me was how to bake. As someone who is slightly dyslexic and numbers confound me, I loved that I was in charge in the kitchen. I rarely follow a recipe to the letter and love my freedom there, so this is challenging my very core.
Maybe I will just have to learn a new recipe to be my classic one. Maybe things will have to change? I am seeing some sort of a lemon drop cookie in my mind. Perhaps iced or glazed...hmmmmmm new ponderings for this cookie snob.
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Just to add to your appreciation of all things Irish, here are some of the quirky and fun things the Irish say.
“Yer man” = that guy, ‘Buddy’, the fellow who did ‘that’, That fella over there.
eg: Sure then yer man cut the grass and left a mess behind!
“Sure...” = Simply the beginning of a statement.
eg: Sure and I am full happy with that!
“Aw yer very kind/good” = You are very kind or good to do that. Usually said in place of Thank you.
eg: Sure yer very good to do that!
“Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye” = Goodbye (on the phone)
eg: saying goodbye on the phone
“Ah no, its really nothing.” = Thank you for the compliment but I cannot make it look like I was looking for a compliment.
eg: self explanatory (Generally Irish people don’t take a compliment very well in response but that doesn’t mean they don’t appreciate them. They might respond with ‘yer very kind’)
“Ah go’ on wit ya!” = “Your joking!”
eg: self explanatory
I hope that gives you a small look at what we are picking up as far as common language sayings. Someday I will post all the things we have been told NEVER to say in Ireland that we say all the time in Canada. But I have to figure out how to do that without offending either Irish or Canadians!
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From Coast to Coast and into the mountains, Ireland as truly stunning!
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A whole new world!
During our journey to Ireland we often heard “Ireland is not much different than Canada” and “they speak the same language” and “It’s a first world country so things will be pretty much the same”.
*Dramatic Pause
Um, No. Ireland is quite different from Canada, English is basically the same but there is so much variation on meanings that its almost a different language. Yes, it’s a first world country but NO things are not done the same. What seems logical to us may only be logical because we have adapted to the system we live in. The logic here is different and so challenging as we try to connect the dots and do the things we need to do. The best way to approach this is with the understanding that “its not right, its not wrong, its just different.”
The Irish people are very kind and friendly but not ‘syrupy’ so. They will tease us and poke fun but genuinely care. We went to a Nando’s restaurant yesterday for the first time. My stomach was feeling a bit queasy and everything on the menu is somewhat spicy. You order at the counter and they bring you your food, so when ordering I was asked how spicy I wanted my meal and I told the girl not at all if possible because my tummy was a bit off. She immediately turned into my best friend! Her facial expression changed to concern and suggested Sprite (as they don’t have ginger ale) and told me “Mine always feels off if its been too long since I last ate. Try a little food and see how you feel. I will check on you and if your still not feeling well, I will bring you a chamomile tea on me.” And then she did!
We thought that the closer we got to inner Dublin, the less hospitable people would be. That has not been the case at all. There have been a few people who have shied off from us but that may just be who they are, shy and private and that’s okay. The people in our neighborhood, church, and shops, have all been very helpful and friendly.
We even had a check-out clerk stop rushing us through when he discovered we were newly moved here and that we live in his mum’s neighborhood. He paused to think over where the best pubs in our area were! We now have a written-out list of good, safe pubs to go to and ones to stay away from as “they are a bit dodgy”.
As western Canadians we pride ourselves on being very casual and friendly. But we are learning a great deal from a culture that places more value on community and help that just being polite.
Yes, we miss home and the easily familiar ways to do things. We greatly miss our family and friends. But God is doing what God always does and He is giving us new friends and ‘family’ who want to see picture of our kids and grandkids, who want to hear about home and want to help us embrace and enjoy our new home and people. It’s a whole new world!
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What is a special commissioning service and why? Today was that special day for Bruce and I as we celebrated our last Sunday at Penticton Alliance Church. Our wonderful pastor and elders put together a beautiful service including a new hymn done by the choir, a fabulous testimony of God's amazing power to do the impossible, and a great sermon about how God sometimes takes us to desert places to train and strengthen us. And when he pours out His blessing in the desert place it's stunningly beautiful! God is doing amazing things in our hearts and lives and at the same time doing amazing things in Ireland. Now He is bringing us and Ireland together. This special commissioning was by no means the first time we have been prayed over or appointed by our elders. But this was their 'sending out' blessing. It was humbling and precious to have these dear people of God lay hands on us one final time for God to use us as He takes us to Ireland. This church has been a place of refuge and joy for us. A safe place where God has carried us through some very challenging times and heartache as well as rejoicing in victory with us! Church is not a place to just listen to good music you like or hear a good sermon. It should be a place where fellow believers walk, cry, laugh and be real with you. It's a community. It's a family. And it's essential to getting through life better. If you have been hurt by a church in the past, please don't give up. Try another one. Keep looking until you find a group of believers where you feel like family. Family gets into one another's lives and makes no apologies for loving you. We will be heading to Ireland on the 30th and are very excited to see what the Lord has next for us there. We love our church here and hope to see many visit us in the future.
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What is a special commissioning service and why? Today was that special day for Bruce and I as we celebrated our last Sunday at Penticton Alliance Church. Our wonderful pastor and elders put together a beautiful service including a new hymn done by the choir, a fabulous testimony of God's amazing power to do the impossible, and a great sermon about how God sometimes takes us to desert places to train and strengthen us. And when he pours out His blessing in the desert place it's stunningly beautiful! God is doing amazing things in our hearts and lives and at the same time doing amazing things in Ireland. Now He is bringing us and Ireland together. This special commissioning was by no means the first time we have been prayed over or appointed by our elders. But this was their 'sending out' blessing. It was humbling and precious to have these dear people of God lay hands on us one final time for God to use us as He takes us to Ireland. This church has been a place of refuge and joy for us. A safe place where God has carried us through some very challenging times and heartache as well as rejoicing in victory with us! Church is not a place to just listen to good music you like or hear a good sermon. It should be a place where fellow believers walk, cry, laugh and be real with you. It's a community. It's a family. And it's essential to getting through life better. If you have been hurt by a church in the past, please don't give up. Try another one. Keep looking until you find a group of believers where you feel like family. Family gets into one another's lives and makes no apologies for loving you. We will be heading to Ireland on the 30th and are very excited to see what the Lord has next for us there. We love our church here and hope to see many visit us in the future.
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Its been a rather long and winding path to get to this point, but isn’t that what much of life is? More of a path and not a straight line. We are very excited to be getting ready, sorting belongings, packing bags and saying “so longs” to friends and family and heading to Ireland on March 30! We have had quite the journey to this point and I am glad we have stuck it out and not given into the temptation to find an “easier” more economically wise type job.
God has allowed us to travel all over this beautiful continent (except for Mexico and Central America) and meet the amazing and diverse people who live here. We humans are a strange lot! We all do things differently but we all have the same goals. We want to have purpose, and reason to get up in the morning. We love our families and friends. We want to see others succeed and do well at life. We want hope, peace, joy and love for everyone we care about. At least the majority of people we have encountered want these same things.
Going to Ireland is not just an adventure of travel and culture. It is an adventure into deeper obedience to God and sharing His good news with whomever will hear it. People think Christians want to shove their religion down others’ throats. Not true! We just want everyone to have the opportunity to hear how much God loves them and wants a relationship with them. We want to love people as Jesus did, sacrificially and with fervor! (what they do with this information is between them and God.)
We hope and pray that this next leg of our life adventure with God will bring Him great glory as many (we hope) get to learn about His love and chose to serve Him in love. We want to share hope and peace, grace and mercy with people who have not been told that there is hope for them, there is peace available to them, mercy has been extended to them by God’s immeasurable grace.
We are very excited but also scared. Scared like on your wedding day morning, its a big deal what we’re doing and it will change everything. Everything is not bad but God is on the move and things are about to change for us! Please pray with us as we step into this unknown!
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Tired of winter
This feels like it has been the longest, coldest, snowiest winter we have had in years. I know most people on the west coast (BC’s Lower mainland) have thought it was Armageddon this year! More snow than anyone can remember. They are not prepared for snow and cold. We (in the interior of BC) are not prepared for such a length of time with cold and snow. It has been not very pleasant at all. But I am beginning to think we act like EVERY winter feels like the longest!
I think I am kind of like that with other seasons in my life as well. During seasons of illness or sadness, difficulties always seem like they are never going to end somehow. But eventually they do end. It’s good to know that no matter what season I am in, I am not alone. God has promised me that He will never leave me nor forsake me. So even during times that feel endless, God has determined an end time for them.
Spring will come, it always does. It is interesting to me that we never complain about how long Spring or Summer are! Just winter or Fall. (Fall is okay though because there is no snow to shovel, you can still get outside and enjoy nature, and it only takes slightly more time to get your coat and shoes on.) Winter requires effort and preparation.
If we are not prepared for Winter before it hits us, we can get caught in a blizzard in the mountains with all season tires on rather than studded winters. If we are not prepared by owning a snow shovel, boots, mitts, coat, touque, and loads of teas and comfort foods, winter can seem to overtake before we are ready. But it always comes! Why are we always just a bit ready and not fully prepared?
Maybe I just want life to be one long Spring with Summer days once in a while. But any good farmer will tell you that all the seasons have their purpose and are important.
In my spiritual life I used to go for long periods of time without daily Bible reading and could do with or without church. Prayer became boring, dull and short. I have come to realize that every season is important. I need to train my mind and be prepared spiritually and emotionally for those bleak spiritual days of Winter and Fall. If I do not read my Bible, pray earnestly, or spend time living out my faith with fellow believers loving a lost world I then will not be ready when a sudden storm of life (illness, lay-off, fight, etc) comes along.
I must stay focused on the truth which reminds me that there is a season for everything and even the hard times must end someday. Keeping my eyes fixed on Jesus, I can run the race through every season, ready for whatever life throws at me. Enjoy the nice, pleasant seasons but be prepared so you are not side-swiped by life’s harder times. Spiritually keep prepared through the word and prayer for the race set before us and run well till the very end!
Further reading: Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, Hebrews 12:1-3
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Joy of a child
Sometimes your eye catches a child doing things only little children do and your heart smiles. The joy of exploring and discovering life is a wonder not only reserved for little children. We are made to walk in that joy, that newness of exploration of life every day. That joy is an essence (sometimes a feeling) of deep abiding calm and peace. Perhaps even a smile in your heart even when life is very difficult.
In today’s Canadian middle class life, it’s pretty hard to understand what it’s like to wake up every day thankful to just be awake. I take it for granted so very much! I don’t ‘have’ to wake up; God gives me a new day to serve Him and enjoy Him every day by His grace. So often I just wake up and ‘go’. I simply hit the ground running and just do life. What I am trying to do more often though is to wake up early and just lie there thanking God for the day ahead that He is giving me.
Often we just take living for granted. God doesn’t have to give us the ability to breathe. But God is good and He does. God deserves all the glory and praise for giving us new opportunities every day to live for Him. When I wake up and praise God, taking a moment to talk to Him about the day, I enjoy the day so much more! To be honest, I do not do this as often as I should or would like to.
My desire is to experience life the way a small child does, full of wonder and awe of it all. Children find simple things so special; they see God’s hand in everything! Children want to live and enjoy every moment. When it rains, they don’t see the rain they see the puddles waiting to be jumped in. When it’s hot out they don’t feel the temperature as much as the beauty of the sunshine. The wind seems annoying to adults but a child sees kites flying high! Jesus says to come to Him as a little child. When a child trusts their father they have no fear and even if they are afraid they know their father is with them and can have peace.
Do you want to just live or do you want to experience living? I want to enjoy the time we have here, regardless of life’s circumstances. I want to have that childlike faith Jesus gives us. Time with Jesus at the beginning of my day is a great way to start. He promises to fill us with joy that goes far deeper than happiness. Joy that carries a child through the night when they are afraid because they know their father is holding them. When we have Jesus at the centre of our lives, His Spirit gives us peace and joy but also the ability to enjoy the life He has granted us. Sometimes getting out of bed, as an adult, is almost impossible BUT with God He can carry us through our darkest days into His glorious light and help us enjoy the life He has given us.
Read Matthew 18 for further reflection...
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Weight loss and missions prep have a lot in common!
I think I was a pretty cute baby but ever since I was a teenager I have struggled with my weight. It was wonderful when I was able to find a lifestyle that worked for me and I was able to lose a lot of weight. But then life caught up with me again (Christmas, birthdays, holidays, etc.) and I would gain 15 or so pounds. When I was 250 lbs it was actually not very hard to get started losing weight but when I came to the last 10 or 15 lbs to lose, it felt nearly impossible. The last was harder than the first!
That is how fund raising feels to me. We seemed to plateau for a while then gain new supporters for a while then plateau then drop a few then gain a few then God did an amazing thing and we rocketed with a large number of new supporters/partners and got really excited about the prospect of being in Ireland soon.
But then Christmas and the holidays happened (just like dieting) and we've plateaued again. Its really difficult for us to talk about money with people, much easier for me to talk about weight loss actually. But if we believe God wants us to be in Ireland soon, we have to do it.
When I am looking at losing weight, if I look at the big picture and final amounts only, I get frustrated, overwhelmed and discouraged. BUT when I see each pound as its own victory, I get excited and actually believe weight loss is attainable. The same applies to raising support. Except it involves far more people than just myself.
Those of you who have already chosen to support us, thank you! You are an integral part of an incredible mission, one we could not do without you.
My thought was, if everyone receiving our newsletters prays and commits $10 (or more) a month, we would be at 100% monthly support raised! Please consider how God may want to use you in reaching the people of Ireland and helping the church community there.
When it comes to weight loss, wouldn't it be wonderful if all we had to do was lose 5-10lbs each and together make all of us a healthy weight? If a lot of people contribute a little to the cause of the gospel, a lot can get accomplished. We will be praying for you as you weigh and measure what God is asking your role to be in Ireland.
2 Cor. 9:6-15 “You will be enriched in every way for all your generosity, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God.” (vs 11)
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Isn’t God amazing?! His creation screams to us “worship Him!” (This picture is one our son, Brody, took from the top of Mt Baldy in B.C.)
We had communion in church this past Sunday. We teach this to be a solemn time of reflection about who Jesus is and what he accomplished on the cross. Its supposed to be a time of self examination and repentance. To be honest, sometimes it's difficult to not just participate routinely and go through the motions. This Sunday was different. As I focused on the cross my mind reeled like a movie fast tracking over all we know about the cross. These thoughts poured into my brain like a rock-slide tumbling over one another:
Jesus knew exactly who he was and what his mission was his entire life.
Jesus humbled himself to be born into a human body so we would understands that he understands what it's like to be us.
Jesus obeyed his Father in all things, though he had the power, authority and right to defend himself and stop the things he was going through, he did not.
Jesus knew death was coming as that was his purpose, or was it?
This is where my brain gets bedazzled with God’s audacious plan of redemption for mankind! I get really excited when I start thinking about this so bear with my jumbled thoughts please…
Before Jesus came to earth, God (Father, Son (Jesus) and Holy Spirit) knew He would die and pay the sin penalty for us.
He also knew He would conquer sin and by doing that, He conquered death!
Sin is what holds death over us as a curse.
Jesus destroyed that hold (curse) by being the perfect atoning sacrifice.
And THEN he came back to life! His death is to be remembered because he beat death!
He promised that if we believe that He is the Saviour sent from God to be the perfect sacrifice for sinners (all of us) and choose to live our lives surrendered to His command, He will present us blameless in heaven to His father.
The whole purpose of the cross was to fix how we messed up having a one-on-one relationship with Almighty God! And He did it!
So when we were being given the cup and the bread, I was overwhelmed by joy and gratitude. I am SO glad I am not God because I do not have that much mercy anywhere in me. Through sin, we ruined what was perfect, through His death and resurrection He repaired it fully! His grace and kindness in the cross is astounding! His perfect relationship with His father was broken because of His choice to step into the gap and create a way for us to have a relationship with God again. He chose to be rejected, He chose pain and sorrow, guilt and shame, He chose it all for us. Why? Because He loves us. What a mighty God we serve!
This is just a short blog post about a massively important and deep topic. If you have any questions or want to know more about who Jesus is, please contact us. If that is not comfortable for you, please at least pray to God that He would reveal Himself to you. He promises He will when we seek Him with an earnest heart truly desiring the truth. If your journey does not lead you to Jesus, you are not finished it yet.
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I think I am generally a positive, happy person. Of course there are times of worry and frustration but I would like to think those are less often than most. I would like to think that but that would be untrue. I love being positive and an encourager in other people’s lives but when it comes to my own and my families’, I tend to worry and fret. When I am worried, fretful or frustrated I begin to talk...a lot. I want every opinion weighed so the best answers will be made by me and mine. I think this is pretty common for many people so I should not really worry about it, right?
Wrong, I am so wrong. The Creator of the universe who raises the dead to life and changes men and women’s hearts in the blink of an eye. The audacious God of all things who determines the stars in the sky and the hairs on my head. I believe Jesus is this God, I really do! I have seen Him do such amazing miracles that can never be chalked up to coincidence no matter how you look at it. I know the One who saves to the uttermost those who don’t even think they want to be saved and hate Him with everything in them. Yet He saves them and their lives change forever. But still I worry, and still I talk...a lot.
The story that resonates in my heart and mind with this is from Mark 4:35-41. Jesus is in a boat crossing the Sea of Galilee with his disciples. He is tired so he is sleeping in the stern of the boat. A great storm whips up quickly and Jesus sleeps on. His disciples finally, frantically awaken Him crying, “Don’t you care that we are perishing?” Jesus doesn’t immediately answer them but instead rebukes the wind saying, “Peace! Be still!” (NASB says “Quiet! Be still!”) immediately the storm calmed. THEN he questioned his followers with, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great fear realizing no one but God can command Nature to obey Him.
At the end of a very tumultuous, challenging, exciting year, we naturally want to talk about the events that formed 2016. The problem is this, nothing can change what happened. No amount of rehashing it can alter it. (I am not suggesting at all that through counselling and learning how to function in a healthy manner you don’t talk about it. You do but that has a time and place and facilitator to help movement go forward in a healthy manner as well.) What I am referring to is constant negative rehashing of events just for the sake of it. This can lead us to think, “God has forgotten us, or He just doesn’t care.”
As we begin 2017, I really feel God saying (to me at least) “Peace, quiet (stop talking)! Be still! I am here, you have no need to worry and fret and TALK. When you call out to me, I hear you. I am with you in the storm and in the calm. Trust me and settle down. Breathe. See, I am giving you breath and you are ok. Tomorrow will come and I will still be with you.”
We have great plans for 2017 and it’s easy to focus on those and how we want to accomplish them. We do need to be responsible with that of course, BUT God wants us to talk more to Him about our lives than to others. He has great plans, and they are good. His plans are almost never easy but with Him we can grow into the men and women of faith He has destined us to be. May 2017 be a year of unparalleled faith and boldness in us, the people of God! Happy New Year!
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