Mind blowing! That's the only way to describe God and the last 18 hours!

First I met up with a friend to 'get honest' before God, talking life through, sharing together and praying for one another. Its great how God brings people around you, people who can support and encourage you, and help you to grow in your relationship with him. It was great to speak to God honestly, talk to him and know that although they may take time to work through the things discussed can be left at the foot of the cross and are his and not ours any longer.

I then got a phone call from the local Uni CU, their speaker had pulled out on them with half an hours notice - could I step in and help them out? Not begin at all prepared I wandered over there with a collection of old Bible studies under my arm, praying that one would be suitable. As the praise time was going on I sat at the side contemplating and praying through which I should use, or if I should do something totally new, flicking through my Bible I came to Luke 11 - the Lord's Prayer...

Prayer is something that I've been thinking about a lot lately, not least because its something that easily gets pushed out of my life, crammed into 5 min, or when I do commit the time; it becomes a routinely said few sentences; no imagination, passion or creativity. But I know that it is vital, I know how important it is, it should be the root of all I do, and through it, it should give me the inspiration to go on and do more. It helps to pull us in line with God, allows us to hear his vision and understand the things he is doing that we either don't see or choose not to.

So we looked together at the passage - God inspiring me to lead, discovering the points of the verses a few min before he enabled us all to discover them together. How awesome is the Lord's prayer! These are just a few of the things we discovered last night:
Father = God wants to be addressed as our dad, he wants an intimate relationship with each of us, as a father has with his children, a true and loving relationship.
Our Father = He is not just my dad, but communally he is our father, the relationship we have with him is not an individual thing.
Your kingdom come = God rules, he is the King of all creation and one day everyone will recognise this, so lets pray that people recognise it now, not at judgment.
Give us each day our daily bread = God provides
Forgive us our sins = God is our saviour, and by his grace will forgive us
For we also forgive everyone who sins against us = in the context of Matt 6 (where the passage is also found) forgiveness isn't cheap, it cost Jesus his life and it costs us too; as we learn to go through the pain of forgiveness. Scary point was that we have to learn to forgive or we have no right to be forgiven ourselves!
And lead us not into temptation = this was 2 fold, firstly, that God wont lead us into temptation, but secondly that Jesus guarantees our salvation! - We will only be forgiven if we forgive others, but here Jesus tells us to pray not to be lead into the temptation of unforgivness and therefore promises to help us to forgive so that we can be forgiven - HOW COOL!
We then realised where this passage lies in the context of Luke, following immediately on from the story of Mary and Martha - a story teaching us how we should make time for God, and then Jesus reveals to us what we should do in that time we have dedicated to him - pray like this!

And no this morning...I've just returned from a meeting with Alan, from one of the other local churches. Again God has been revealing more and more of the plans he has. I came away from the meeting with tears of joy and excitement in my eyes - I was literally crying! To think that God has brought me here to Wycombe, where he is clearly doing some amazing things, and has some awesome plans. That he has planned I will be a part of it, is truly humbling. The meeting was just great, yet again ideas were spilling over about how we can move the youth (and childrens!) ministry forward in the town. God is just so so great, there is so much going on in Wycombe I can't wait for it all to get started.

But the thing I feel I am really being taught at the moment is to take time out and pray. If we don't pray these things through, then there is no point. We need God to be running these things not men, we need God to be sat in the driving seat. It's all greatly exciting, but first and foremost we need to commit every idea to Christ. I need to learn to pray, and to be patient with it!

Isn't God Great? It's just amazing how he works without us realising anything and then wham! he hits you right between the eyes. I was sat in a meeting earlier on today with Paul from WYFC talking about the future of youthministy in Wycombe, we were dreaming dreams discussing how we'd like to see churches working together, working in schools and being committed to joint projects when wham!

Paul mentions a little dream he's got, one he's been thinking formulating and mulling over in his mind. One which is very similar to a dream that I been thinking through the practicalities of, in recent weeks. This conversation some might say is a coincidence; "great so two people are thinking along the same lines," but when you consider that I met with both Sarah and Stella last week, and amazingly they too had been thinking big, dreaming dreams - and thir dreams tied in with the things that we were discussing as well, you have to celebrate, you can only exclaim that God is great!

So what now....do we suddernly think that this is right go ahead get the keys to a double decker bus and start ploughing forward without a second thought? As ouir excitment levels wamnt us too. No, the sensible thing to do is to realise that God is the one in charge of this, and it's his plans that are being revealed to us rather, than our own that we are simply coming up with. There is no harm in getting excited about what God has in store for the young people of Wycombe, but it would only be foolish to run ahead and try implementing things. What we need to do is return to the source, to spend time seeking God, spend time praying and humbly coming before him expectantly, waiting for him to act and empower others.

All too often in youthministry we get excited by God, so we run off trying to do ourselves what we think he wants us to do (or at least I do) and then ask him to bless it all 10 min before the event actually starts. But lets start to become people of prayer, lets start to allow God to include us in his plan, rather than asking him to bless our own, lets become the servants that he calls us to be, seeking him in everything we do.

Let's learn to pray!

Comments were made the other evening (at the Vision Night) that it was possibly a good idea, to start a blog, keep people up to date with my thinking and all that. Supposedly help with communication as well. Now whether this is the case or not i don't know - be interested to hear your thoughts!

Now it may be that this becomes one of those pages that never gets updated and just takes up space on the super info highway, driving in the middle lane at about 20 mph winding up every other driver on the road, but then on the other hand it may well be that it becomes an amazing tool, both for keeping in touch with people and for youthministry - who knows? And to be honest if i don't try then i never will!

So here i am, writing the ramblings of my brain onto a computer screen - is it a crazy thing to be doing? Allowing other people to see that little bit more inside your brain? Well hang on, cause if i do fall in love with writing random things on here, its gonna be a ride and a half - i don't know where we'll go, but it wont be were your expecting!!

So happy reading, feel free to comment

And hopefully we can glorify God together in shearing in this way.