Has the Church forgotten how to pray?

Something that has been on my heart for a good few months now is the heartbreaking truth that so many people don't know God... and I'm not just talking about those who aren't Christian. There are far too many people in our churches, house groups and christian friendship circles, who don't know God. 

They might know a lot about God, they might know the Bible well, they might be able to quote scripture and discuss theology. They might even be preaching, leading Sunday School and writing books, but there is a big difference between knowing about God, and knowing God.

This genuinely breaks my heart. Its not a judgement; its a cry from my heart that we need to do something about this, because intimacy with my creator is the most beautiful experience that I have the inexpressible joy of knowing daily, and I want that for everyone. 

To be able to chat with God about what you're watching on TV, to be able to laugh with him as you try to put the milk in the cupboard and the cereal in the fridge, to shout at him when you're angry and cry to him when you're heart is hurting, to share your yearnings and fears, your successes and failures, your random thoughts and your meaningless ramblings - this is genuine friendship and real intimacy. This is what God wants us to have with him.

It blows my mind that this kind of relationship is possible with the creator of our world, the most Holy God whose glory fills the earth. And yet it is exactly what he wants for us.

I wonder whether we need to re-learn how to pray? We model prayer from the front of church as something that you read off of a piece of paper in a voice that you never use in normal conversation, and too many people never get to see that prayer can be an informal and intimate conversation. They never learn to recognise the countless ways that God communicates to us because we so rarely talk about it... they're missing out big time and it's heartbreaking. 

Have you ever tried chatting with God in the same way that you would with a friend? Chat to him about what you see around you, tell him the best and worst bit of your day... tell him a joke! (hmm this is where omniscience kinda ruins the punch-line!)
Have you ever asked him a random question? ... "God, If I was a type of breakfast cereal, what would I be?" 
"God, what is your favourite thing about me?" 
"God, when was the last time you wept over me?"

Chase after God and lose yourself in the depths of intimacy with him that will never run out.

... and then go tell someone about it so they can know God too!

Unexpected Beach Trips

Recently, I had an experience that I had imagined countless times, but I wasn't sure whether it would ever become a reality. When I first moved to the Isle of Wight, I used to make a regular trip down to my favourite beach - I enjoyed the drive and would use the opportunity to take some time out to pray and think. 

I'll always miss my friends in Uganda, but back then I had just moved back to the UK and was really struggling... I used to daydream about one day bringing a friend from Uganda to the beach with me. I can remember so many times that I drove that journey imagining what it would be like to have one of my precious friends that I'd met 4000 miles away sitting next to me as we drove towards the ocean.

Well, this month I had a visit from my friend Lawrence. He's been in the UK for a few months because he got married here in December, but just before he went back to Uganda, he made a visit to the island... so I took him to the beach! We had such a brilliant day and I absolutely loved getting to show one of my favourite parts of God's creation to a friend who had never seen anything like it before. 

The fact that the sea is salty and that the rocks in the cliff have straight lines in them from where the layers have built up, the fact that you cant see anything on the other side of the water and that the beach is bigger or smaller at different times of day - all of these things were new to Lawrence and it was such a blessing to get to show him.

The thing is, when I first met Lawrence, I never would have imagined that one day I would see him in England. When I first moved to the island, although I used to daydream about taking friends from Uganda to the beach, I never really expected it to actually happen.

... but this did happen!

I believe in a God who is bigger than 4000miles and the cost of a plane ticket and the logistics of a visa. I believe in a God who is bigger than my expectations and who loves to surprise us and bless us.

I'm excited to see what else he'll surprise me with as I continue to enjoy the adventures he takes me on ...maybe I should think even bigger with my daydreams!

When we come running

A couple of weekends ago I had the privilege of giving one of the talks at a youth weekend away that we ran. I love talking, and I love sharing truth with people, so it was something I was excited about doing, but I wasn't expecting to be impacted quite as much as I was. In the time that I spent preparing for this talk, God taught me so much and I wanted to share it...

Ephesians 1:5 says "God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure." 

The very idea of that just blows my mind! The God of the universe, who made the stars and the oceans, the all powerful God of the Bible who could choose anything of his desire to make him happy... chose us to bring him 'great pleasure'.

I've spent the past couple of weeks just soaking in the fresh realization of how much God loves me and wants me. Its something we all get told so much and whilst I've known it for years, I've understood it in a new and powerful way recently, and I pray that you can too!

I told a story in my talk about a little girl - the daughter of one of my good friends. The story was from a moment when I arrived to pick her up and before I even had time to walk to the door, she came running out to me with her arms outstretched and she barreled into my arms. This was such a precious moment to me. I could tell stories about her doing wise and intelligent and funny things, but my favorite moments are those when she comes running... she's not even my child, so how much more does God love it when we come running to him?!

I've learnt recently that we don't always have to talk when we spend time with God... and he doesn't necessarily have to talk either if he chooses not to, but we can just enjoy sitting at his feet - enjoying just resting in his presence, knowing that he is here and he loves us and we love him. I can't explain the love of God in words... but I'm sure he'll have no trouble revealing it to you if you'll give him the chance.

Beauty and Brokenness

I've written and re-written this post so many times now... what I'm trying to express is close to being inexpressible... and yet my heart is crying so loud about it that I can't give up on trying to put it into words.

There is such a tension in my heart... 

Part of me wants to send everyone to Africa. I want everyone to spend time living with local people and learning about the culture and letting Africa capture your heart in the same way that it has done to mine. I want you to go and live and experience and understand... because no words that I can write or speak will ever express what Africa has taught me.

Africa is so beautiful and we have so much to learn from her and her people. In Africa, I learnt the real meaning of generosity. I learnt the real meaning of selflessness. I learnt how valuable and precious each individual person is. I learnt how to celebrate. I learnt what joy is. I learnt what it means to have strength and courage. And I want everyone to learn all of this too.

And yet, another part of me wants to stop anyone from ever having anything to do with Africa... I want to protect this beautiful continent and her incredible, strong, loving and gracious people from the broken world that the west is. I can see the effect of globalization and my heart breaks when I see well meaning people from the west inadvertently robbing Africa of what makes her Africa. In our arrogant state we assume that we can be the hero and fix the problems of Africa, but we fail to recognize the brokenness of our own culture and we don't realize that we're dripping our own brokenness into this precious continent... whilst we might be helping in some ways, we're only breaking her in other ways in the process.

But among all of this is the evil reality of extreme poverty. How can any of us stand back and continue in our selfish, luxurious lives, knowing that families are starving and hurting and dying and being stripped of their dignity? My African friends teach me daily that poverty is not faceless. Poverty is something which effects real people who are individuals with likes and dislikes and hopes and dreams. They have gifts and talents and hurts and challenges... they all have a story. These are real people and I wish we could understand that and stop talking about "poverty" and start talking about people... and then start doing something about it.

...but my prayer is that we can do something about it by working together and recognizing how much we have to learn, and how much everyone has to offer. My prayer is that in fighting the injustice we call "poverty", none of us will lose who we are, but instead, we'll learn from each other, hope together, love one another and celebrate together. 

Everyone should have a close friend who is living with poverty... then maybe we might all understand that people are real, and that poverty is unfair, and that we all hold the solution.

But actually, no one should have a close friend who is living with poverty... because poverty shouldn't exist. Perhaps if we gave each other a chance, we could learn how to overcome it together.

Paper Beads

This week and last I've been teaching some of the girls that I work with how to make beads - the same way that I was taught in a little wooden church in a slum community called Nabulagala in Kampala. Its been great fun and the girls are enjoying it and are excited about the jewelry that we're going to make together. Its made me so happy to see them embracing this and to know that this is something that I learnt from Uganda that I've been able to pass on as a skill in the UK - I believe that we all can learn from each other, and to see a small part of this actually happening in what I'm doing is exciting!

There is a tension in my heart between my heart for Uganda and my heart for the young people that God has called me to work with at the moment. I'm honestly so blessed by the young people that I work with. They're all beautiful and creative and unique. They never fail to make me laugh, some of them make me cry (for them, not because of them!), they inspire me, they teach me (without even realizing they're doing it) and I'm incredibly grateful to get to work with them. 

Some of our paper beads next to a necklace from Uganda

One of my young people asked me to help her to pray recently. When I asked what she wanted to pray about, she said 'that God will help the people in Uganda.' I smiled and prayed with her. I've always said to the girls that I'll be honest with them - they know that they can ask me anything and I'll be open. That means that they know all kinds of random facts about me, but it also means that they know how I feel about Uganda and this sweet little girl echoed my heart in her prayer. My prayer, is that all of these girls will also know that they are equally as precious to me... I hope that they know that they are the reason I am still here.

There's not a lot I can do about the things, people and places I hold in my heart. Some are relatively easy, like keeping up with friends and family in the UK, some are not so simple and somehow, I have to make them work together... my prayer is that rather than my girls feeling like my heart is elsewhere, this will actually have the opposite effect, and that in knowing what I'm sacrificing to stay here, these girls will understand how precious they are to me and that this might just reveal to them a small shadow of how precious they are to God.

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If you'd like to buy some jewelry from Uganda, I still have a few bits for sale and all the money will go towards a youth ministry that a friend of mine runs in Kampala.

If you'd like to read a bit more about my youth work, I keep a youth work blog here.

Nothing I can do...

God has been challenging me recently about why I do what I do. Its always great when I hear that my young people love our groups and activities. Its amazing when I get to see how God is having an impact in their lives. Its lovely to sometimes hear people say that I'm doing well - encouragement is really important and something that I'm always so grateful for... but somehow I've managed to find myself beginning to believe that in all of this - in pleasing people; in 'doing a good job', I was somehow pleasing God.

The truth is that I could never hope to do anything that is good enough to please God.

That is what is so incredible about grace. I believe in a gospel of salvation by grace. I believe in a God who loved me while I was still broken. I believe in a God who made a way for me to be righteous whilst I was still a sinner. I believe in a God who has loved me from the beginning of time.

God knew how much I would mess up. He knew that I would be imperfect. He knew all the silly things that I would do, all the mistakes I would make, all the hurt I would cause, and he chose to breathe life into me regardless.

There is nothing that I can ever do to make God love me any more, and nothing I can ever do to make him love me any less. I could turn my back on the work that God has called me to and mess up my life more than anyone could ever imagine, but God would still be standing there with arms outstretched, waiting for me to come home. 

My faith, my relationship with God, my salvation and my hope does not rest on what I can ever do for God. It rests in the incredible, outrageous grace and love of my extraordinary God, who loves me simply because he loves me. My obedience to his will and his command is secondary to that - it is for my own good, because his plan for my life is the best plan for my life. In trying to obey him, I'm simply submitting to the fact that he knows what is best for me better that I do.

The love of God is outrageous and I hope that I will always remember that God loves me because he loves me - not because of anything that I can hope to achieve for him.

If you're interested in what I get up to in my role as a YTP youth worker with Isle of Wight YFC, have a read of this blog... http://gunvillemethodistyouthwork.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/winter.html

Why Giving is Not the Answer to Poverty

"Tired of the way they portray you in the media, So I'm trying to bring change in the way that they see ya. Mother who gave birth to the children of Africa."

These are lyrics from a song called "Letter to TINA" by Fuse ODG in response to 2014's Band Aid single. Its from his album "TINA" which stands for "This Is New Africa" and I just love the message of it... 

"It's like were fighting the media, They show us the wrong vibe I've been reading up.I'm trying to show a different side to what they're feeding us. Time to regurgitate the lies we've been eating up."

I can only write from what I know, and that is only a few people in a small part of a small country in Africa. But what I can write from my experience, in absolute confidence is that the people of Africa are beautiful and generous and determined and incredible. I believe that many of us have so much more to gain and learn from the people of Africa than we can ever hope to offer them in return and it breaks my heart that as a continent, Africa is so often portrayed in a way that strips people of their dignity and that shows only a small part of what makes Africa Africa.

Poverty is cruel and unjust and wrong... there is no question about that and my heart will forever be broken by suffering caused by the injustice in this world, but perhaps we need to reassess the way that we fight poverty.

I don't believe that the answer to poverty is to give out food and clothing and shelter. By giving out hand-outs, the symptoms of poverty might be quenched for a short while, but the monster itself is only fed and the solution is unsustainable. I believe that the answer to poverty is to empower people. This way, people can reach a point where they are able to provide their own food and clothing and shelter and whatever else they chose to get, but they will not only have the physical things that they need, but also dignity, purpose and hope that their dreams are actually achievable.

"I'm making music because I want to change the perception of Africa.When I was younger...The perception of Africa was kids with flies around their mouth's and hunger and poverty and stuff like that.But we're grown now, were successful men, were doing our thing."

So please, let's stand with our brothers and sisters as we seek to fight this awful evil that we call poverty, but let's recognize that each and every individual has a purpose and has something incredible to offer, and let's expect to be humbled by the ocean of wisdom, determination, passion and potential that I believe Africa has.

There are countless ways to support and stand with our brothers and sisters... but here are just a few that I think are brilliant:

- Microfinance
By providing zero or low interest loans and the right support and training to people who have an idea, they can be empowered to set up their own business to support and provide for themselves and their families long term.
http://www.lendwithcare.org/

- Child Sponsorship
"Education is Power" was the motto at a school I used to teach at. An education unlocks the door to so many opportunities, and sponsorship is a way to give children across the world an education when their own families might not be able to pay for school fees.
http://www.smileinternational.org/sponsor-a-child.aspx
http://www.compassionuk.org/?gclid=CO_s3Ye9icMCFSWJ2wod9iQAGg

- Prayer
Prayer is the most powerful thing we have. I believe in a God of love, power and wisdom, and we should all be standing in prayer with our brothers and sisters around the world.

Listen to the song: "Letter to TINA" here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYScLhEZC9I