This post here is somewhat pertinent to me right now. I will start my new series after the funeral of my mother. I am too exhausted with every preparation, every detail. So when I do a series there is much prayer and study that goes into it. It can take days, hours to get it together. So as my strength and cognition are below par I must hold off.
A photo of me from my 11 years, has set me off. I am seeing that many years have gone by from that sweet pure face, with big blue eyes. A sadness came over me, it is still there, one of regret. In this process I have verified that I had shut down parts of my life, and the people associated with them. Rejection and depression are terrible things. It started when after school, a mixed experience, it seemed that I would follow my father into carpentry. Yet when I stepped into that arena, the bosses, however hard I tried did not take a liking to me. I was on what was known as the Youth Training Scheme, and I had 3 separate experiences where I was asked to never return. I felt a failure. I felt directionless. It was there after reading “Run Baby Run” by Nicky Cruz that I found myself. I shed many tears over that book.
Yet I do a disservice to this recollection. When I was 8 I received the Hamlyn Children’s Bible, days and hours I spent reading and seeing the pictures. The impact of that experience somehow laid a foundation to what was to come after. I wondered what this God was like, and what Jesus was like, one picture shows Jesus on the Mount looking up to heaven. Will reproduce here. Yet will need to scan from that Bible very soon.
So I read Nicky Cruz’s book and knew that without a radical change of direction my life would not count for anything for myself. We sometimes ascertain the Vocation as something for others, our impact on others. It is not. In the first years, Church, travelling, Brixham, Forest of Dean, I immersed myself in these activities, shutting down some simplicities that now I am being reminded and submerged in them again. The Word above about the locusts is so relevant because several locusts have eaten away at my life.
What I am learning and have come to, beyond all what I write here, is that what the world calls religion, it is misunderstood because what is most important to me is sitting down with God in Costa Coffee and opening the Word and receiving precious words from Him. However, I must go back to this promise. God cannot bring the years that have been eaten, but His restoration are beyond expectation. They are profound processes. The spirit of youth He desires to impart afresh. The ministry rat race finished, because its not about what we do for God, but rather who we are in Him. When the years are restored, there we are assured on the day of His appearing He will say “come into my abode, for I knew you intimately.”
May God bring us into that restoration. May God detach us from the bad news, politics of today. May He detach us from the idea that what we do for Him is what counts. It is who we are. I am meeting again the people I was connected with, and we all have gone on. The Lord has said, “it is time to come home”, and that home is not a house or a road, it is with the God you belong, and the people you belong to.
Our years that have gone may have seen death, destruction, deception, but God has a way to build life, and life in abundance. It is not from us, it is all Him. May we come into that place from brokeness and regret, from loss and sadness, to a place of His Consolation so that He can build and fill our eyes with true perspectives and true horizons!
These musings are processes I am walking out, and with them I wish to help others to ascertain them. I nearly died 4 years ago, and now I am seeing God recompense me for those trials. When He was silent within, and walked Intensive Care, yet I puzzled over His silence.
His ways are past finding out. We must simply put our hand and our heart in Him. May He walk us into the years He is adding to us, so that regret fades and joy comes in the Morning!
wonderful message beautifully described thank you!