faith

so carl has had the craziest holiday EVER, but im not going to sit telling you about it cos i don't really enjoy doing that. i merely am trying to make the fact that i have not posted something in a while seem forgivable.

From the 7th to the 12th of July I took a team of young guys into Botswana to run a short term mission in a local church there. I was kinda scared leading up to the whole deal because spiritually speaking i was kinda between a rock and a hard place. For weeks I had been at my usual place.... you know that place we all tend to hang about at.... there and there about but nowhere at all.... you know it? maybe it is just me :-) Anyways, i was feeling quite scared because now i was being asked to lead a mission and i felt like having a moses moment: 'Not me, Lord'.

Yet something inside of me just wanted to push into God. To be somewhere spiritually. To push myself out of a rut. So i pushed. And God was faithful. Should I have expected less? HE came to my aid. HE started whispering in my ear again. HE pulled as i pushed and i felt my team mate walking beside me again. Fearless, it was like i became a new man in a few days. And what's weird about it is that i rose to the occasion because i had an occasion to rise to. It couldn't have been much different. The next few days I was going to be in charge of the spiritual dynamic of a team and I needed my A-game. I was not prepared to go minister without it.

And so God was faithful. The build up to the mission was incredible. I remember praying things and knowing that God was going to answer. Knowing that i was asking for what i couldn't achieve, I felt God pleased that my life was requiring faith at last. I was depending. I was needy. And i think God was loving that (I'll clarify that in a while). God blessed our team with incredible divine unity and with a spirit of prayer and boldness. There we were... relative strangers but feeling like we have known one another for months.

I would love to tell you about the whole mission and what happened every day because it was a trip of constant highlights. But I will tell you about my favourite afternoon. We arrived on the Saturday and on the Sunday we had planned to do a few open-airs. This is where we take our sound system to a car park or field and try to get a crowd around us by doing dances and dramas and then share the Word with them and hope that God bring people to know him. Already that is sounding like a rather scary experience hey?! Well anyways, to make matters difficult our sound system broke on the sunday morning. I asked the pastor to try work something out and get us another one but he was unable. hmm, big obstacle this was. But somehow i still felt that we should go for it anyway and the team were all feeling the same. I suggested to the pastor that we try to use the sound system of the shops at the centre. i will never forget his response: 'No, they are all asian people. Very difficult people. They will never let you.'

Well, i had to try something... so i started asking at shop 1 of 5. A flat refusal. Maybe the pastor was right. Shop 2: NO, and a few heated words. Shop 3: A polite lady! who still said NO. Shop 4: Same as 2. Shop 5: I meet this guy called Lee. He's about 50 years old and about 2 feet tall and after rattling off my needs he says 'sure, no problem'. He then walks inside his little shop and plays a CD player which is attached to a 15 inch sub woofer outside his store. Whoa! God pulled through! It felt amazing to be trusting in a God that does pull through. Constantly. Anyway, i'm rambling on a bit so i'm just going to summarise the rest. We did the open air there and souls came to the Lord. We got back into our combi and decided that we weren't done. We wanted more. We felt a little bit cheeky asking God for another sound system. Hadn't already pulled through once? So off we went praying that God would lead and provide. We turned up at a shopping centre place that was having a HUGE social with about 200 people drinking and braaing. The centrepoint of activity was a shebeen called the 'african pot'... By heart skipped a beat when i heard soundwaves coming from the shebeen. But it was a shebeen and we were missionaries. Surely not?! Turns out they had hired a DJ to come and spin some tunes and from what i could gather it seemed that this DJ owned the biggest rig in Botswana. Flip, but this thing was loud. So there I went... the hesitant requester.... to ask if we could do i dance using their system. I got more than i bargained for. He gave me the mic and allowed me to say some stuff about why we do what we do and that we do it for Jesus because we believe he is alive and that it matters. I got to share the gospel! Anyways, we did our dance and stayed there for about an hour and a half speaking with people and having the most amazing conversations. I remember one man saying that this was the first time he had ever seen people bring Jesus to the bar and that he was so grateful because he really needed to hear what we had to say.

So that was God blowing our brains out with his provision and faithfulness. Could only be.

But I had a scary realisation through all this. For the first time in months maybe years of 'christian' living, my life and my day was requiring faith. I was needy. If God didn't lead I would not know where to go. If God did not speak I would not know what to say. And it was abnormal. It felt totally foreign but it felt so good. And then I thought about how I live normally. I do not need faith to get through a single day. I get by fine without it.

And that got me thinking.... the Bible says that without faith it is impossible to please God. Have I just been thinking that God is pleased with my little stupid attempts to be 'christian' when in fact he is not really pleased at all because my life is requiring no faith?

hectic question that we all need to answer. What about today do you need God for? What are you depending on him for? What need can you not meet with your own resources?

We shouldn't have to rise to the occasion when it's a mission trip. Our life should be an occasion that we should have to rise to.