Hello, hello.

I'm putting my head on the block here...I'm admitting that sometimes I wonder about God and his substance.

Today I am not making wise God choices. I am making my decisions regardless of his input, because I am weary of searching for his voice.

Today, making the decisions was hard enough; there just didn't feel like there was enough energy to seek and struggle to find God's voice on the matter.

Today I wondered...God are you really real? Why is it so hard to know what you are saying? What would you say to me now, if your voice was a real as the people who I just had dinner with? If it was like having a conversation over a table or over a phone?

What would you say?

What would you say?

A string of Pearls

I was wondering today, being 28 years old now, if by some magical force I was given 10 minutes to sit down with my 18 year old self, what little pearls of wisdom would I so have cherished to have around my neck back then….even if while I rolled them between my fingers I didn’t fully understand their value quite yet.
I have restricted myself to 10.
I’m sure I could string more together.

· I know you hate hearing it, but really really, for so many reasons, the most wonderful years of your life are while you are school.
· The thing you will miss the most when you are grown up is your December holiday.
· The person you are at 18 is not the person you are at 21, or the person you are at 25. You will start to get more comfortable with who you are by then though.
· You can never grow inside your comfort zone. You will hate it. You will wish it away…but be brave. The absence of fear means you’re too comfortable.
· Not all your dreams will come true. This is not a license to stop dreaming however.
· You can never talk to God enough.
· As you move from place to place and season to season, make a point to keep investing in a few treasured friendships. Make an effort to call them, make an effort to write to them. Nobody expects you to do this everyday, or every week even. Collect them like gems in a crown, acknowledge what a beautiful thing they were in your immediate world at one stage, and believe that whatever distance separates you cannot prevent their continued contribution to your life.
· You are NOT as fat as you think you are.
· You can't explain being angry, or any emotion really. Mostly it is irrational. Non-sensical. But you still feel it. You can't deny it.
· A relationship should never be more work than it is worth.

On Wisdom

Here's a thought...

If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.

James 1:5

Perhaps seeking Wisdom from God is less about becoming wiser and more about the process of seeking God...

Perhaps, when we actively seek Him, and engage him, the Wisdom we seek is second prize.

Perhaps it is simply that in the presence of God, wisdom is superfluous.

One Prayer

I'll forget this if I don't put it in black and white tonight.

At the urging of the Spirit I have been encouraged to make this words of a song my prayer for 2010.

It is no secret to the people close to me that I am launching into an adventure, a journey that is as yet unchartered or itinerised yet it's intimate meanderings are already known by God. He has been calling me gently for the last few months to leave what is comfortable, to leave what is safe, to leave the support of friends and mentors and to adventure. I do it with a heart that is both expectant and excited but equally terrified.

I have a prayer for the year that the Spirit stirred up in my heart tonight. It was echoed in the words of a song and I wanted to put it out there;

So that I may come back to it and remember at the end of difficult days,

So that you may pray it with me.

So that when 2011 starts and can look back and give glory to my Father as I tell the story of how He answered.

This is my prayer:

That God would heal my heart and make it clean

Open up my eyes to the things unseen

Show me how to love as you have loved me.

Break my heart for what breaks yours,

Everything I have for your Kingdom's cause

As I walk from earth into eternity.

Amen

Why God?

Let me share a bit of John Eldredge wisdom...taken from his book Walking with God:

When it comes to crises or events that really upset us, this I have learned: you can have God or you can have understanding. Sometimes you can have both. But if you INSIST on understaning, it often doesn't come. And that can create distance between you and God, because you're upset and demanding an explanation in order to move on, but the explanation isn't coming, and so you withdraw a bit from God and lose the grace that God is giving. He doesn't explain everythig. But he always offers us himself.

What powerful clarity and wisdom on a little stumbling stone that I know so many of us get tripped up on.

Captured.

I have been blessed with an abnormal amount of free time this week which has left a lot of space for connections.

On one of these occasions, sitting in the lounge with 2 special girls and chitting and chatting while spring started blossoming in Cape Town Tess said something that has stayed with me all week.

Do you ever stop to consider what a privelege it is to have your life grabbed hold of by Jesus at such a young age. Do you ever step back and appreciate that at a time in your life when your personality is still pliable, when you are making decisions that you will feel the weight of far into your future: decisions about career, friends, family, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, adventures, houses, what you waste your free time on, what you pour your energy into...the list goes on. How awesome to think that your life is consciously in the control of Christ and that you are making these decisions prayerfully, with the wisdom and security of the Creator of the Universe as your personal advisor.

If you can contrast this with how haphazardly the world pours their energy into these things, how fickle their choices sometimes are, how self sustained and ultimately exhausting some of their endeavours are; do you not feel weak at the magnitude of blessing that is poured out over you. And consider this is only the beginning...

It makes my heart swell with love for my Saviour, when I realise, if just on a tiny level, how much He loves me.

Do You Realise

To give credit where credit is due, this is an extract from Rob Bell's newest publication "SEX GOD". Just a powerful piece of writing that stopped me in my tracks for a day or 2, simply because it spoke straight into my heart.

"Do you Realise...

You don't need a man by your side to validate you as a woman. You already are loved and valued. You're good enough exactly as you are. Do you believe this? Because it's true. You have limitless worth and value. If you embrace this truth, it will affect every area of life, especially your relationship with men.

You are worth dying for.

Your worth does not come from your body, your mind, your work, what you produce, what you put out, how much money you make. Your worth does not come from whether or not you have a man. Your worth does not come from whether or not men notice you. You have inestimable worth that comes from your creator.

You will continue to be tempted in a thousand different ways not to believe this. The temptation will be to go searching for your worth and validity from places other than your creator."

The necessity of uncertainty

These are my musings on life. These are the thoughts that God puts in my heart and stirs and matures in my head. These are the things that he whispers when I allow myself to curl up in his presence and soak him in. They are such special whispers, such precious teachings that I cannot keep them to myself anymore. A little bit of Heavenly wisdom on Earth I was telling someone the other day.

Currently my little heart is anxious over a trivial thing.

I have been planning my first overseas holiday for a few months now. Saving and budgeting and not spending so much money at Woolworths; researching places to stay; dreaming of places to see. It turns out the one thing I planned badly was dealing with the beurecrats. I left the visa's a little bit late.

(Silly really. I'm claiming ignorance and vowing to never make the mistake again.)

So here I am, less than a week away from my scheduled departure and still waiting for a visa into Croatia and have only recently discovered that for some unfathomable reason I need a Shengan visa to spend less than 12 hours in Frankfurt and Munich while in transit. That leaves me with 4 days to get 2 visa's, do a 24 hour call, pick up Forex and pack!!! There aren't actually enough office hours in the day!

In my heart though I know this simple truth...Nothing is impossible for God and there is no limit to the level in your life that He can intervene. If I know this in my head, if I know this in my heart, if in my own life and a hundred others there are testimonies of how God has come through for them, why do I still feel so unsettled? Why do I doubt?

The answer came in a quiet breath tonight.

"Lin you doubt because you are human. Because as much a part of you acknowledges Me and My capacity, a part of you is still mortal and recognises the distance that must be covered for you to get from point A to point B. You have to be able to recognise this distance though, else how would recognise that you on your own were not capable. How would you recognise my hand in the situation. You see faith is not the absence of fear or uncertainty, it is the hope despite the presence of the former...else it wouldn't be faith...it would be truth and you wouldn't need Me."