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October 02 Grabbing five minutes to blog half-asleep...Stayed behind at work this evening to fix a mistake that was largely (read: "entirely") my own fault. But we have a nice library here. And I have a fantastic church which I unfortunately can't be part of until I move closer to London, which isn't happening until at least after Christmas. But I'm settling into the job and there havent been any major disasters. Spent last weekend near Bristol and have now committed myself to making it down there over the Christmas break at some point. Must also visit Oxford. My social life is sort of spread over the south of England. Loving being in London though - which was unexpected. Shattered, so will go now and find a friendly train to take me back to Kent. Bysie xx September 10 Week OneRecovering from the first week of my new job. I found the recruitment folder in my office and had a peek through it (probably a mistake), and ended up thinking, "God, how on earth did I get this job?" Candidates with more PA experience than I have were rejected on the basis of "insufficient experience," and I was up against people with shining CVs and cover letters (and some not-so-shiny ones!). Even so, after a couple of days of feeling completely overwhelmed by the breadth and volume of things I was responsible for, it feels like I've dropped into the job like proverbial pig discovering proverbial mud. Granted, there haven't been any major disasters yet, and I haven't got everything right - the combination of those two is comforting - but I feel much further ahead in getting everything happily ordered in my brain, in my files and on my computer than I imagined possible at the beginning of the week.
The guy I PA for is simultaneously incredibly Godly, very intelligent and rather crazy. I like the combination. I'm also working with a friend of mine from KFL, whom I knew beforehand. It was rather random, coming into work on the first day, into a place I'd previously got used to in all-night prayer meetings, and now I have the front door key.
The only problem is I'm surrounded by Christians! They're great, but they're saved! I want to continue to share Jesus' love with people who don't know him yet, and that's a priority for weekends. It keeps me sharp and connected and passionate about the power of Jesus to actively transform lives.
Ciao for now
Executive PA Chrissie August 30 Pelagianism, Death, and Driving TestsHad my second driving test today.
Went out and bought a load of chocolate afterwards, to celebrate
the fact that it's easy, cheap and legal to drown - or bury - your disappointments in chocolate.
I don't want to talk about that now. Remarkably, I was quite mature about it, as opposed to dissolving into tears on the way home like a stroppy toddler. I won't have the money to book another test now for a while.
Going shopping tomorrow to update my wardrobe in time for next week. Matalan burned down last friday, so I've got to shop around a bit more. Does anybody else think it's crazy that to even shop there you've got to have a store card?
Anyway, so I feel like I'm Back to Square One on quite a few things. How do I make sense of this in the light of what God is doing in me right now? Over the weekend I had two incredible intense dreams, the first dealing with Pelagianism and whether it's a valid expression of Christian belief, and the second dealing with the event of a man I loved immensely sacrificing his own life, dealing with a terrorist threat. The first was unusual because I never have explicitly theological dreams, and I didn't even know what Pelagianism was. But in this dream, I was in a Pelagian church, and the whole time I was thinking, is this the real thing? Or is it flaky? Is it genuine or counterfeit? A friend of mine was there with me, someone who in my mind has come to represent my own spiritual discernment. I felt very weird - challenged, uncertain. The preacher took a peach - which I've just realised could have been a pun on the word "preach," or represent something that I've been imbibing indescriminately, like peach squash when I was growing up, and the peach was divided in two. I'm still not sure of the significance of that part of the dream. I chatted with a friend who's both a wise Christian and a former Jungian psychoanalyst, and he pointed out, as Karl Barth did, that British Christianity is infused with Pelagianism. I said, "really?" not really knowing anything about Pelagianism apart from the fact that Augustine didn't like Pelagius very much.
I've since looked up Pelagianism. It's individualistic - no original sin. I've read positive and negative critiques of the Pelagian worldview (the positive ones obviously prefer Pelagius to St. Paul!) and one of the biggies is that Pelagius said that Adam would have died even if he had not sinned because he was created mortal. True, he was created mortal, but with an immortal destiny - he was meant to eat the fruit of the Tree of Life. The reason he didn't was that God kicked him out of the garden because Adam had chosen to be his own ruler. So Pelagius is mixing up spiritual death, which is the result of a moral separation from God, and physical death, which is simply being denied the right to eat the fruit of the Tree of Life. Jesus said, that unless we partake of Him, we do not have "life in ourselves," (John 6:53), not just meaning existence, but the "God-quality of life" which is eternal, powerful and is lived in partnership with God. Christians still die! But Jesus makes it clear in John 6 that if I partake of Him and thus have "life in myself" through Him, when it comes to Judgement Day I'll be found innocent, connected with God and can live in His quality of life, with Him, forever. But Pelagius was convinced that each individual is free to choose between good and evil - where Jesus said, that's not the point - do you have Life (Greek zoe, spiritual life, rather than bios physical life), or not? For most Brits, the primary test of religious observance is our daily behaviour towards our neighbours, pets, plants, and various charities - and not a lot to do with actual saving faith in the redemptive work of Jesus on the Cross. Pelagius insisted that faith must be practical as well as spiritual (which I of course agree with), and he and his followers were rigourously ascetic.
So, do I have a strong Pelagian undercurrent to my faith, as the dream suggests? I dislike the doctrine of original sin, and try not to think about it. Although I do believe that no one can be right with God apart from the saving work of Jesus on the cross, the fact that I don't want to believe it, is an inpediment to my sharing about Jesus with people that I'm well aware of. As for the grace vs works thing, I believe wholeheartedly that faith does by nature produce good works, but I have a tough time when I fail because I don't really trust God's grace for the big things - that ultimately my favour with God comes through Jesus, not through my own works.
Why is this important? I'm going into an area of ministry where a lot of people are coming from a consciously or unconsciously Pelagian viewpoint. We don't just need to "improve" the structures of our lives; they need to be transformed. This is true for work, for justice, for politics, for youth culture, and so on. I think the Holy Spirit is telling me that the line of discernment is a fine one and I need to be able to stay His side of it - not to get deceived by attitudes that sound convincing (much of Pelagianism is very attractive to me) but are actually counterfeit. There's also the possibility that I need to talk to the individual I was with in the dream about it.
The second dream, on Monday night, was far more troubling. In it, a man I loved intensely (I don't know consciously who this was) died whilst neutralising a bomb threat in a school. He texted his best friend before he died, saying, "it's not about us, it's about Him (meaning Jesus), and when I heard about this, I wept like I've never wept in a dream - I tend to be fairly emotionally neutral in my dreams. The last thing I saw before I woke up was my own reflection in a mirror, distorted with pain. I've never seen my own reflection in a dream before, and I don't know what it meant. I'm still working through the possible meaning of that - it was so real and clear, and I woke up and had the sense that it was meaningful.
I asked God a little while ago to start speaking to me through dreams. Although they are a bit scary, I'm not disturbed by them, I only feel an urgency to find out what they mean. Most of my dreams aren't like that - they're just dreams. I like to think I can tell the difference! It's like I'm on the edge of something, not necessarily in terms of crossing in to something new, but like my path has narrowed down to a very thin line and I'm trying to stay balanced and move forward. Perhaps this means I'm going to have to slow down and really dwell in the Word and in prayer, rather than trying to race on. Certainly everything - and I mean pretty much everything - except my new job - seem to have gone back to Square One.
Chrissie August 25 DelicateGood evening.
I'm feeling very delicate this evening. I've been working quite intensively for most of the day - working some ideas and practical applications through with a colleague who is so spiritually dynamic that working with him is both inspiring and tiring! And I've only got just over a week before my new job starts, and so I'm swotting up on that. It turns out that being an executive PA - essentially the role I am going into - is the pinnacle of a particular career path, and I'm going straight into it at 22. No wonder the Holy Spirit has been exposing me to some pretty difficult stuff over the last few years - I need to pick things up, quickly, that people take years to sort out. I'm going to be moving back in with my parents for a while, since I don't have the finances to move closer to London yet and I want to save up as much as possible whilst still paying off my student loan. Which means that in the next week I'll be moving out of my house. So everything's transitional, on the move again.
I am still exhilerated about getting this new job. It's so much in the centre of things, I couldn't wish to be more in the centre of things, right in the middle of London, in the middle of an organisation that I've only come across because I've been following what the Holy Spirit has been saying with regards to my own vocation. It's all happened so quickly, I feel completely off the map. And, of course, it means that I can commit properly to the Kingdom Faith church I've been visiting occasionally for all-night prayer meetings, and feel so at home and welcomed there. So it's change - sudden, brilliant, change. I think it was in March or April when God said very clearly, "next year there will be a sudden, positive, huge change in your life," - and I immediately thought, "great, I'm getting married!" :-) But that couldn't be further from what He was hinting at. I've had a few complications relationship-wise, which has made me wonder if I'm even cut out for a long-term relationship. I think there's some healing, or something, that needs doing. I know that there's a call starting to really take effect in my life - it's kind of like a timebomb, which started ticking when I committed my life to Jesus, and is now starting a slow explosion of purpose and mission. And God is doing whatever it takes to prepare me as a person for His purpose. So I'm feeling delicate.
Good night.
Chrissie August 24 Brief update! At last!Hooray! MSN hasn't let me blog recently for some unfathomable reason best left known to Bill Gates, which is a pain because I haven't been able to update you on Faith Camp or anything subsequently.
Faith Camp was amazing, God spoke lots, set me up for this next year. My new job in London starts in 10 days' time, I'm moving back home and I'm retaking my driving test on the 30th. I'm also having some friends around for dinner tonight and desperately need to clean the sitting room, so I'll blog again later.
Love and hugs,
Chrissie xx July 27 TestFailed on left reverse. I only picked up six flipping minors! I'm so peed off with myself!
Grrr
Donations for Chrissie's Retake Fund gratefully accepted. July 26 Minus three daysWoohoo! Faith Camp in three days. Feels rather surreal, as I've been preoccupied by my upcoming new job... July 21 I GOT THE JOB!!!!Starting work at the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity just off Oxford Street, in September. It was apparently a unanimous decision.
YAY! After interviewThis is the worst bit. I've been praying about it loads, mostly for grace in case I don't get the job. I hate the waiting. They've said they'll phone me today to let me know the results of the interview.
I think the interview went well. Went up to London for 10.15 yesterday morning, and had three one-on-one interviews back to back, and the whole thing took about two hours - they overran with me. Which might be a good sign. It was really fun to meet the people there* - we're on the same wavelength and I think that really came across. If they're looking for somebody who's intelligent and spiritual and passionate about their vision, they'll employ me. If they're looking for an experienced PA, they won't. That's what I'm telling myself. And as much as I'm praying and committing this to God, I can't get rid of the butterflies in my tummy or the fact that I'll go crazy if they don't phone soon...
Chrissie
*London Institute for Contemporary Christianity July 18 Yessss!.... aargh!I got the interview. Thursday morning. The day after my six-month review for my part-time work. And my driving test next week.
Aargh July 13 The definition of true successI've come across a job that looks pretty much perfect. It's in London, but it's pretty much what I'm doing now writ large, and represents not only a fantastic potential career move but, more importantly, it's exactly in line with where God has been leading me over the past couple of years. I don't want to say any more until after the interview (if I get one) next week. Tuesday morning, when the application pack dropped through my letterbox, I was so excited I couldn't even rewrite my CV. Last night I had a nightmare that the waiting room for the interview was full of middle-aged, experienced people who were much more qualified for the job than me. I do have some unusual experience which lends itself extremely well to the job description, but I'm still only 22 and relatively new at this.
So God's giving me an opportunity to trust Him again. I believe theoretically that He knows the end from the beginning and that all of this is under His control. He knows exactly what He is doing. At the same time, it's really hard not to fret about it. Part of me feels like God owes me a break - which is a dangerous mentality. I've not felt like this since I put in my UCAS form to get into Oxford! There are alternatives, of course, and even if I don't get this job, I'm much clearer now about the kind of ministry that God is drawing me into - and it isn't church leadership, even though it's leadership in the church. It's being a missionary, or someone who goes into the mission field and resources and trains up other missionaries. Except it's in Europe, in the UK right now.We have got to find and keep a missionary mentality and not get complacent.
I've been told to allow the Holy Spirit to synchronise things and not to try forcing them. One of the most significant things I'm learning from my line manager David is that when he's relying on the Spirit, things fall into place - especially things he wouldn't necessarily have associated together. I've had that experience too, I suppose it's part of the whole Romans 8:28 deal - God working all things together for good for those who love Him. But I realised last night a deeper meaning to that verse.
The core meaning behind the circumstances of my life is intimacy with the heart of God. From that place - abiding in Jesus - we're "fruitful," and we're rewarded for that fruitfulness. But note the order of events - life circumstances providing opportunities to get closer to God's heart and abide in Him, leading to fruitfulness and success (by God's definition), leading to reward. Not, trying to be a spiritual success to win intimacy with God. That means that even when my life circumstances seem to be going down the pan, if I use it correctly - to get more intimate with God - it will lead to good.
It also means that this new job opportunity is foremostly as an opportunity to draw really close to God, which I know I really need to do anyway. If I get the job, that's a secondary issue - the job then becomes another challenge to draw close to Him, perhaps in a slightly different way. At the end of the day, it's only the things we achieve out of intimacy with Him that carry the reward and pleasure of God. That's the definition of true success. Anything else misses the point, like misinterpreting a question on an exam paper.
In other news, I watched the new Pirates of the Caribbean film last night. It wasn't as good as the first one, although there was plenty of action and tension (a lot of it rather slapstick). They did a sort of Empire-Strikes-Back thing at the end, which annoyed me, because I like films to end properly. And I didn't like what they did with Norrington's character - I rather liked him in the first one, but in this one he's just dishonourable and treacherous. Didn't work. End of rant.
July 08 Dude!! :-DMade the best decision of the month and went up to Kingdom Faith London for one of their all-night prayer meetings with my friend Mark from Oxford. I arrived feeling peeved, because it reminded me how much I missed having a happy clappy fairly naive faith at university where everything was gonna be wonderful and victorious and there'd be no struggle once I was settled in the purposes of God.
So I started off the prayer meeting feeling like that. It's kind of hard to describe the atmosphere of the presence of God to someone who's never experienced it. It's like, real clarity. Suddenly, the reality and fear of God hit me. We were singing that William Booth hymn, "O God of burning cleansing flame" and I found myself unable to sing "send the fire" for long because I didn't really want God to send any kind of fire at the moment, thank You Lord, and I knew that He would. I ended up having to surrender all over again - either that, or I'd have to have walked out entirely, so intense was the worship. It was deafening at times, which was remarkable considering there were only about thirty of us. The big breakthrough for me was the prayer, "Father, I need the strength only to re-focus on Jesus." When He's at the centre of my attention, I have strength and provision for everything else.
So we prayed from about eleven o'clock on Friday evening to five o'clock on Saturday morning, and by the end of it - well, I came away full of intense joy and actually wanted to praise God and talk to Him and serve Him and pray for people, rather than doing it grudgingly. It's a bizarre experience when members of the church randomly come up to me and start enthusing about Jesus or (even worse!) praying for me! Mark got pretty much jumped on by a fantastic lady who was determined to really pray with him whether he wanted it or not!
So I love it. I love the warmth of the people there, I love the wisdom and generous nature that their pastor has, I love the serious, joyful faith they have, the sense of mission and the perseverence to plug on and pray right through the night, every two weeks - I love the cultural diversity there and I just love the atmosphere. I almost booked with them for Faith Camp, but I'll be spending quite a bit of time with them. They're a real gift of God into my life. Coolbeans, as my housemate would say.
Chrissie July 06 Bedroom eyesChristina:
The state of your bedroom mirrors the state of your life at the moment. You're not doing a huge amount but the clutter of what you are doing is building up and up and you're shoving things under the bed but things remain half-unpacked (vision) and un-put-away (sin issues), your motivation is slack and you feel a great deal of shame. In your downstairs, visible life you've started visibly, rigorously cleaning, but upstairs you're messy.
Let others worry about downstairs for a while. I've deliberately put that out of your hands, so don't be offended. Make cleaning out the secret place a priority - clean up the temple. It is here that the Holy Spirit works, and it's the wellspring of all secret power and anointing. I will bring healing and refreshing into it.
I could have got this completely wrong, but you're not allowed to shoot me for being a heretic yet. I've got this huge issue with there not being any appropriate jobs at all around here for me, and all God's worried about is the state of my heart! Gah! How typical of Him, to have a completely different priority to me. And how typical of Him to cut right through to the core issue. I want my life sorted and He wants to sort my life, but we have rather different definitions of what "sorted" looks like! I've learned a very important lesson that you can't change God's mind by sulking at Him.
So here we go, on our way, again. It's not the first time He's said something like this, so for all my Oxford education I still must not be really getting the hint that I know in theory anyway.
Chrissie
The title of this post is a play on the idea of "bedroom eyes" that God's eyes see into the secret place of our lives and has intimate knowledge of us. Just in case you were worried.
July 05 Unfinished businessTwo groups of people, who Jesus has said must be effectively reached with the good news of real life in His Name before He returns (Matthew 24:14).
The inhabitants of the Nghari region are also known as the Chang Tang (Northern Plain) Tibetans. Although they are ethnically Tibetan, they speak a language far removed from other Tibetan varieties. Their lifestyles have changed little over the last thousand years and are still devoid of any technology or machinery.
The first recorded Tibetan church was built by Jesuit missionaries in Lhasa in 1726. Twenty seven baptized converts and 60 inquirers attended the church. "At the end of April, 1742, a new convert named Pu Tsering publicly refused to bow before the Dalai Lama. This threw the town into an uproar. Twelve of the Christians were flogged with 20 lashes each. The missionaries fled to Nepal, but their church was attacked by a mob who destroyed everything except the church bell."
Today there are no known Christians among the Nghari Tibetans.
The Boyu Tibetans are a distinct ethnolinguistic people group. As one visitor remarked, "their language and costume is now very different from Tibetans elsewhere." During festivals, Boyu women wear special dress, unique among all Tibetan peoples. "A breastplate is made of around five to six thousand coral beads, and an enormous silver medallion at waist level - known as meilong.? The body of the medallion is scattered with motifs executed in colored enamels, including Tibetan Buddhist symbols and talismans to ward off evil spirits." The Boyu are ethnolinguistically distinct from other Tibetans in the area.
There are no known Christians among the Boyu Tibetans today.
Information from www.joshuaproject.net July 01 God is infuriatingHaven't posted in a while. It's been a really, really long week. Had a *fantastic* time in Bournemouth with a squillion of my friends (more or less) in a caravan, a wedding and three birthdays. Came back on Monday and sort of crashed. Lodged in between leaving my Oxford chums behind (again) and losing my pastor to a seaside town, I've been living with my parents and commuting to work, since living in my own house would have involved lots of staring at walls and having pity parties. I really enjoy living with my brother and sister for a bit, as they're home from uni - Sarah actually has a similar sense of humour to me, and my brother is a regular Leslie Nielson - utterly random. You don't see these things when you grow up with them. Led a prayer meeting Thursday night, and really wasn't in the right place to do so. I'm not sure it's entirely healthy to lead a worship/prayer thing when you're mad at God. But the irritating thing is that, even though I didn't feel like doing it, I started leading worship, and it worked powerfully. Talk about cognitive dissonance! God was saying, "I'm going to minister through you, Chrissie, whether you're sulking at me or not." I ended up feeling quite put out, because God had been worshipped and had moved in spite of me. Not that I don't need to get myself sorted out. I was aware today that there has been a lot of disobedience and bitterness in me towards God recently, which probably hasn't helped things. I'm reading a really good book by TD Jakes atm called "Can You Stand To Be Blessed" which is about enduring through suffering. It's good, and it's building elements of my spirituality/theology which were underdeveloped. This will all make sense eventually. June 20 Heretical poetryJust go away. I don't want to speak to you today. Don't tell me that I'm good enough. I'm rubbish.
Don't tell me I don't have to be good enough. You didn't call me out. You set me adrift. I thought You could be trusted. Again. I don't understand everything And so I loved You anyway.
You gave me a backhanded slap. Bitterness wrapped in marshmallow Chocolate-coated crap. Why do I feel guilty writing that?
I'm not what You want me to be. Get lost. I would follow You at any price Except this... empty failure. I couldn't fail You if I didn't serve You.
You expect me to persevere Like I've done, over and over. Maybe I can't. I'm stuck.
How can I dig my paper crown out from under the sofa? And become my own tissue-paper queen? I'm stuck. How can I do anything but worship You?
Part of me still believes in the crown behind the cross. Where would I go? Simply because I don't hear them (I'm too busy shouting at myself for being a failure and a fraud) You may just still speak the words of eternal life.
May 27 Speaks from the whirlwindWell, this week has been a proper whirlwind. In Scripture God speaks quite a lot through whirlwinds: they are a sign of shaking-up and judgement. My friend Mark finds it amusing that I get wound up about things which then get sorted out. I started a "life-coaching" course with my ex-pastor this week, which immediately led to the Holy Spirit exposing some issues I had with being in Gillingham, how spiritually dry and lukewarm I was being, and how I felt completely paralysed concerning what I should be doing next year. Darren made a comment along the lines of "it's not an impossible situation, I can see what God might be saying to you through this," and then refused to tell me what he thought that was, on the basis that I had to hear from God and work it out myself.
So this week I've been agonising over what it might be, and particularly the first half of the week I felt spiritually constipated. However, the tactic of just committing to fifteen minutes' prayer a day is paying off because once I get started ("after all, it's only fifteen minutes"), stopping is more of a problem. Which is very encouraging, because it's not legalistic and has kick-started my prayer life again.
Which has also focussed me on my own spirituality. I generally dislike the word, because it puts me in mind of the popular, self-focussed, self-improvement "spiritualities" that our culture encourages. But this is SPIRITuality - my personal relationship with the Holy Spirit. And I realise that, despite an admirable focus on correct doctrine, that is something that even the most charismatic of evangelicals often miss out on. Certainly I notice the difference from being in Oxford, when belonging to a dynamic, charismatic church and being surrounded by full-on, Spirit-filled friends, it was all about spiritual praxis - the outworking of theology. In itself, that's so good - praying in real faith and confidence in God, which means praying for the sick and believing they'll get well, which means speaking in tongues and prophesying and talking to people about how awesome Jesus is...
But here, I've had to distinguish between spiritual praxis and SPIRITuality. One you can do (at least in the short term) whilst tolerating sin and compromise in other areas of your life. It can become quite detached from the real world - after all, Truth is truth, whether it looks and feels that way or not! I realise now that, while Oxford was fantastic for my discipleship and growing in faith, it also had a rather dangerous element to it. I was looking at all the people I admired in their faith - you know who you are - and trying to emulate them in their faith. And that's Biblical. Absolutely - Paul commands it all over the New Testament. But just imitating someone else, even if it's genuine, won't give you the power to develop your unique vocation and relationship with God. Last Easter, in a moment of angst I cried to God, "Lord, why aren't You real to me?!" and he replied immediately in my heart, "Because you're not real with me!" That was scary. I had to go right back, and confess where I really was with Him, in faith, not just where I wanted to be. There was one particular person I was trying to be like - with mixed motives! - and in doing so I'd created a Christina inside my head who was this great woman of God, a superchristian. It was someone I thought this particular person would admire, but it was stifling my real growth in God - the Holy Spirit will have nothing to do with a lie, even a well-meant one.
Praying now, I have no immediate group of full-on friends to compare myself to. I have no exciting charismatic church that I'm a part of. And I'm beginning to rediscover SPIRITuality - "the nakedness of the soul before God." It's uncomfortable, because without the safety-net of trying to be like someone else, my old fear of being fluffy and compromising the TRUTH of God rises to the surface. But on the other hand, I'm feeling positive and joyful, and I'm not trying to ride on the back of someone else's growth in God. And in my spirit I'm not afraid that I'll go all heretical, because I know the One I'm walking with - and it's a scary walk now - and He is able to keep me from stumbling and to present me blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy...
To the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.
Jude 1:24-25
Chrissie xx May 16 Vocation and despairOne of my biggest stresses working where I do is that my greatest strength is perceived as a great weakness. I've just poured 18 years of my life into my academic abilities - being able to write and speak publically, and plan, manage, analyse and lead. Here, not only is that largely redundant, it's even looked down on by people and colleagues who say that people will think I am out of touch if they learn I am an oxford graduate. Here, for eight months I have been, figuratively speaking, trying to write with my left hand. I've got better at what I do, but I'm not able to truly play to my strengths. Yes, it's a good thing to work at what you're not good at. But it's exceptionally tiring and disspiriting. It's far more productive to sow into what you do have, and excel. I wish I could play to my strengths. I feel like I'm working with my strongest hand tied behind my back. I wish I knew what God is doing!
I've also discovered something else. This persistent... depression that exists over the area I live in, economically, socially and spiritually.... it is a spirit. I don't go round demon-bashing or seeing spirits behind everything, but this is a real spiritual despair. A spirit of despair. I was walking down Richmond Road yesterday and suddenly for no apparent reason felt really hopeless and depressed. And I felt God say, "confront this." So I said out loud, "spirit of despair, I command you in the Name of Jesus to leave immediately." It lifted instantly, and it felt like this warm, liquid joy was spreading quickly through my body. I went on and ran our youth group and went home feeling much happier. Where there's a dominant spiritual atmosphere, unless you're on the offensive it'll start affecting you. You can't ignore it forever, it has to be confronted. One of the greatest reasons the Church around here is so weak and fragmented is that it's subject to the same spirit of despair that the rest of the area is under. We have to break loose, and we can.
Chrissie xx May 14 Scary preacher ladyPreached today on prayer and intercession. I had a nightmare the other night that everybody was saying that I could only preach for ten minutes
 As it happened I preached for a lot longer than that (forgot to take a clock in with me!) but I think I got away with it. And it's going online for all and sundry to listen to! Urg. But I've only had positive feedback, and besides which I preached what the Holy Spirit laid on my heart and stopped when I'd run out of that, so I think that qualifies! I really crave hearing people really preaching! Better go now and put my head in a bucket of water, or something. Cool down. Chrissie xx April 28 Half way to driving menaceDriving theory test passed. Half way there.
Still waiting for my beautiful yellow car to appear outside my house, with keys and insurance papers posted through the letter box.
Dream on, Chrissie. |
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