Memory bank

1. “Take my life and let it be
2. Consecrated, Lord, to Thee.
   *Take my moments and my days,
   Let them flow in endless praise.
3. Take my hands and let them move
   At the impulse of Thy love.
   Take my feet and let them be
   Swift and beautiful for Thee.
4. Take my voice and let me sing,
   Always, only for my King.
   Take my lips and let them be
   Filled with messages from Thee.
5. Take my silver and my gold,
   Not a mite would I withhold.
   Take my intellect and use
   Every pow’r as Thou shalt choose.
6. Take my will and make it Thine,
   It shall be no longer mine.
   Take my heart, it is Thine own,
   It shall be Thy royal throne.
7. Take my love, my Lord, I pour
   At Thy feet its treasure store.
   Take myself and I will be
   Ever, only, all for Thee.
8. This song was written by Frances R Havergal, a woman who, being so filled with the spirit and the joy of the Lord, took her light and brought it into darkened, gloomy places; until those places and people too were filled with the joy of the Lord! It is my prayer that by the light and the hope that is given to me through Christ, I can be the kind of person who shines light in the darkened, gloomy places, so that others can know and see that God is good, He is alive, and He loves them. 
9. There is a light I’ve seen lit in the eyes of those who believe. It is a light that comes where there was no light before, and the darkness cannot overcome it. This is a light that I long to see lit again and again and again.

T.

I went out for coffee today with a girl who is pretty close to me.  She just turned 17 a couple weeks ago and I realized we had shared more than 3 years of life together! 

I met T when she was 14, and just barely old enough to come to the drop in center. She used to take a running start as soon as she came through the doors and jump up to give me a big bear hug. I’ve always felt that she is one of the girls God just gave me to love. T started dating boys shortly after I met her… a lot of them. When things got bad at home she started drinking too, and then it was the classics: boys, smoking, drama, weed, more boys and drinking, more drama.

Throughout all of this we would often meet up for coffee or just go for walks. Mostly I would listen. I didn’t know what to say half the time but I tried to love her best I could. Mostly when I tried to talk with her about God she’d make it pretty clear she’d rather have a topic change. I prayed for her a lot. I kept asking God; “How can I show this girl you love her? How am I supposed to share the love of Jesus to one who shows no interest in you and barely want’s to even hear advice?”

After a while the drinking stopped. She started going to school more often and worked on improving things at home. Today she told me that while last year she had been talking about moving out because she “couldn’t stand” how things were with her mom, that now she and her mom were started to build a really good relationship, they were going out for mothers day dinner and had even just started saying “I love you” to each other for the first in a very long time. Our conversations about God became less one-sided too, and she starting asking really awesome questions. Recently, she’s been coming to church with me quite often. We’ve shared together about the bible and we’ve prayed together too. She even came and spent Easter dinner at my house, something that was very special and very cool. She tells me that at church, she feels a peace, like something right she can not quite explain. I told her that’s what the presence of God felt like, and she nodded silently. 

Today when we hung out she told me worriedly about a close friend of hers we both knew, who had recently lost her first son and was starting to get into cocaine. This was the same girl that a few weeks ago, when we were all hanging out together, said to us: ”There is no way I could ever go to church with you guys, if I even walked in there the whole place would start to burn!” At that time I had fumbled for the proper words to respond, when T quite confidently said: “I used to think that too, but now I go and I didn’t burn at all.  Actually, I think that God is pretty cool”. 

Today I asked her if she wanted to pray together for her friend. She said yes. We thanked God for some things and then prayed that He would help her friend. When she was finished praying she looked up at me and said “you know, I think it would be good for her to come to church with us some day. I really think that God can help her”. 

I have been baffled and amazed watching T grow in her faith and understanding of who God is. More and more I see the way’s He’s been protecting her, and teaching her, and all of this so often has been in spite of me! I can count the ways I have been absent or late picking her up, or lost for words to say MUCH more often than the times I have actually felt that I have been able to offer anything meaningful to her! But In this girls life I’ve seen that though my ability to deliver love has often been so fragile, faulty and so limited, that God’s love is one that pursues and protects us.

He is the God who takes our our smallest, most menial offering and makes it beautiful, and holy.  

Jesus sent me so that you would know that He loves you.

Sometimes I think there must be something wrong with the way I live. I don’t live like ordinary people. When people ask me what I have been up to, I never have a clear answer, and if I do, than rarely do I have a clear reason for it.

Last night I was supposed to go over to a friends house to watch a movie. That seems like a nice, normal thing to do.. although the times in which I do that are few and far between. On the way, I got a little lost. I don’t know why I got lost.. I guess I had just had a long day and my mind was somewhere else as I was biking along at quarter past 10 at night. I turned around, and as I was correcting my course, ran into one of the sweet girls that God has given me to love, who I’d also hung out with earlier that day. She was stumbling home drunk and high from a friends house that (regretfully) I had dropped her off at. So I was able to walk her home! She was shocked, but I just said “see, this is just proof that the good Lord is looking out for you! Maybe he sent me just so you wouldn’t have to walk home alone” She actually seemed quite relieved.

Then, because her house was around the corner from the youth centre I work at, I suddenly remembered that I had promised another girl that I would come by that night. She has come in earlier that day while I was working asking for a glass of water and some prayer, and I had promised I would try and come in that night. But then I think, WHO DOES THIS?! Who gets lost on the way to their friends house, and then thinks “While I am lost I might as well stop in and visit somebody else”— Thats just not normal, or logical at all!! But thats what I did, and it turned out to be a good thing, she wanted to sing songs about around the piano and asked if I could give her a ride to church that Sunday (she hadn’t been in nearly a year).

Then I say to myself: this is ridiculous. I need to GO. So I get back on my bike, but then stupidly decided to bike up a hill which was far too steep for me, so I have to get off my bike and walk. While I am walking, I pass ANOTHER girl I know, whos walking with a guy who’s decided to tatoo and anarchy sign on his hand with a homemade carbon ink and guitar string. I walk them up the hill, bless them, and go on my way. Finally arriving at my friends, 2 hours later than expected. We laughed and finished the movie, and then my friend actually really blessed me with some words and wise council, but then I don’t get home until almost 2 in the morning, fall into bed exhausted and realizing that I have to get up and work in a few hours, and I think: why why why why do I live like this???!!??! But also that I don’t regret it at all. 

In Roman’s 8, Paul says: “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. (Romans 8:18-19) This is an incredibly powerful verse. It means that as children of God, we are the revelation of His love on this earth! When we love people, when we show them and tell them the good news of Jesus, we are living proof to the world that God is alive, and He loves us. When we live lives poured out in love that give testimony to Jesus, we are telling every person that we meet: God is ALIVE, and He loves YOU! We are a living testimony of the living God. This is our lives.

And so when we suffer— when we live lives poured out, chaotic and messy and disjunct, that do not chase after our own pleasures but chase FAST after the living God, then we remember, that whatever we go through now, weather its way to lacking or way too much, it is not even worth comparing with the future glory that will be revealed to us in Christ; and that glory is already being revealed to the world, through US. People are just waiting to see the power of Gods love in us, His children, those who believe. 

Because, to all those who did receive him, to those who believe in His name (Jesus), he gave the right to become children of God— Children born not of natural descent nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. (John 1:18)

I know my life is messy, it is far from perfect and is definitely messed up. The way I live sometimes hurts people and often doesn’t point people to Christ. I’m far from responsible but take on far too much responsibility.  I’m late, I double book and forget my best friend’s birthdays and even my moms. But I press on and press IN to Jesus because I know that He is the one who works His power in me to accomplish more than I could ever ask for, or even imagine. And that for some reason, God considers it blessed to use these crazy messed up canvases of our bodies to be a display of His splendor and His glory to this earth. He says “blessed are the pour in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God!” (Matthew 5:3) And the world is just waiting, in EAGER expectation, for God’s love to be revealed in us. 

Reflections on Communion

In the old testament, and in the days of Moses, God calls us to remembrance of Him:

Deut. 8:2-3 Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. 

God caused his people to hunger, only so that He could feed them, and so that he could teach them that they do not live on bread alone, but on the word of God. John 1 tells us that Jesus, before the beginning of time, was known as “the Word”, He was there from the beginning of creation, and has been revealed to us as Jesus, the Christ. This man, Jesus, the Word of God dwelling amoung us, then gives us His body to eat, saying: “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” Luke 22:19

In John 6:48-51 He says: ”I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

He does this so we may know ‘man does not live on bread alone, but on every Word that goes from the mouth of the LORD.’ This world is fufilled to us through Christ.

Later in Deuteronomy 12, Moses explains that when an animal is eaten as an act of worship or thanksgiving to God (12:20), to “Be sure that  you do not eat the blood, because the blood is the life, and you must not eat the life with the meat” Deut. 12:23

Jesus though, when giving the first communion at the last supper, takes a cup and says to his disciples: “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” Matthew 26:28

He does this so that we may live in His life!!! Though the Israelites were not permitted to drink the blood of their animals, the son of God invites us to the cup of His blood that we may partake in His life!

The truth of communion is much deeper and much more profound then even this, but the glory of communion is that though we were once dead in our sin, we now live in Christ’s life! For if we died with Christ, then we believe also that we live in His life…. Romans 6:8 and this is a glorious thing!

I know this is post is very scripture heavy, but I wanted to share them because these are the versus God gave me for communion this Easter Friday and it struck me as so beautifully profound. 

We presented the Easter story to the kids at the Bridge later that day and they were suprisingly attentive. One of the questions they kept asking was “If Easter is about Jesus dying… then why do we celebrate it?!” And this is why! His death was for us, that we might live with Him, even as He now lives! Glorious. 

Divine Love

When I am weak
That’s when You are strong
When I let go
I fall into Your arms

I take up Your yoke
I know that it’s so easy
I take up Your burden that’s light

I’m holding on to Your divine Love
I’m holding on and I’m not letting go
it’s not my strength, it’s that Your love is strong
It’s not my zeal, it’s that You’re faithful

I look into Your eyes of mercy
And I know that Your heart is for me

(Jon Thurlow)

Mountain

This year, I started a new job working with Youth for Christ Canada working to help them support other YFC ministries and our missionaries all over the world. This involves me connecting with local YFC workers in other countries to find out about what they do there to love God and serve kids there- very cool.

Yesterday, I got off a call with the new Director in Guatemala, where I am going to visit in the spring. He told me that they just started a new hiking ministry, where they take kids on a fun day trip hike up a mountain, and then, when they get to the top, they do a gospel presentation. On the top of a mountain. Like Jesus!

I just thought this was the coolest thing.