"Home" in a faraway place

Last time I wrote about a home I returned to that was very familiar but at the same time strangely foreign to me now. As soon as I touched down into London Heathrow on my return route to Hungary, returning to the continent I have grown accustomed to as 'home', I felt the exact opposite; this is very foreign, but its comfortingly familiar.

It is quite obvious to me in my short life thus far that God knows what He is doing. He isn’t called all-knowing, all-wise and all-loving for nothing. How I ended up in Hungary for a second year is quite beyond me, but God’s ways really are not my ways; in fact they are far better than ‘my ways’.

It is easy to say ‘I know God has a good plan for me; I’ll just keep making the choices that best suit me. I know He wants me happy, and life will be great!’ But this comes far, far shorter than what God wants to do in your life. It starts with making Him Lord, and casting off the sin nature to be born into a life of walking in the Spirit. His Spirit of life, instead of the nature of sin which is slavery and death. Jesus offers this, He died on the cross to set us free from living a life in bondage to our selfish lusts and desires. It is only possible to walk in God’s plan if that sin nature is dead and you are alive to God’s purposes for you. Have you really surrendered to Him, and asked ‘If you were going to write the story of my life, how would it look God?’. I can guarantee it may be different to how you envision, but that it will be better in the long run that you could have ever imagined.

I’m sure I have written about learning this before, but the lesson that keeps coming up is that we can trust God with every big or little decision He makes for us. And this is the essence of faith.

I have been reading about the Israelites being led through the desert on route to the promised land. How they failed in trusting God! He delivered them from slavery and promised to provide a new land flowing with goodness. So why did they doubt and complain? Because they didn’t really know the One they were being led by!

It is interesting to me that God instructs Moses to send people in to scout out this new land. Why not just lead them in there and prove to them ‘see, ha, I told you all along I was going to do this, and now you see it with your eyes!’. Instead He has people go in and come back with a report. Most of the scouts came with negative and hopeless reports; “its true that the land is great, but it’s filled with impossible barriers. The enemies there are giants, we’ll be slaughtered within the first five steps!’”(my paraphrase). But one man named Caleb, who ‘was of a different spirit’ had the spirit of faith; “no, we can do it. The Lord is with us!”. Who do you think the Israelite community believed? They grumbled and wallowed ‘if only we had died, we may as well go back to slavery in Egypt!’

What is my point here? Well, God always gives us the choice to believe in His goodness. We believe a report; the Word has told us what God is like and what is in store for us. Shall we believe it, even if there is promise attached of possible suffering and hardship, or it possibly being different than what you imagined? If so, what is the basis and hope of our belief? Is it not God’s character, which is faithful and good and wise?

Surrendering to His plans means surrendering to His purposes for us, which is NOT to give us a ‘happy’ life. Don’t get me wrong, I believe life with Jesus is the most abundantly satisfying thing there is. But it might not be all sunshine and roses. The purpose for the plan He has in mind is this: For us to be conformed into the image of Jesus. Check out Romans 8:28-29. Everything He does in our lives is aimed at making us more like Jesus.

I love the internship, I love this school, the students, the staff and the ministry here. But it all comes with various challenges which I feel totally inadequate to face. Do I fear my inadequacies? I used to, a lot. I still do some. Everything in me wants to be prepared BEFORE I step into something, to know I am strong enough so I can rely on myself. But that’s not how God wants it to work. The Isrealite’s hope in going forth into the promised land was not that they were a mighty army able to conquer – it’s obvious by their fear they knew they were NOT. The hope was that God was with them.

I do not fear the challenges because I know the God I serve- He is gracious, and He is able to equip me with whatever I need that I don’t possess in myself. That pretty much means that I rely on God for every little thing, because (as I am learning) my flesh is feeble and weak and ugly, but God’s Spirit is strong and life-giving and anything beautiful in me is of Him.

A deep desire in me is that I would be a vessel containing- nay, not just containing, but overflowing- with life. The kind of life that flowed out of Jesus, that made Him able to say ‘I am the bread of life, He who comes to me will never grow hungry, and he who believes in me will never thirst’ (John 6:35). The kind of life that was written of Jesus ‘In Him was life, and that life was the light of men’ (John 1:4). The cool thing is Jesus promised that about me; ‘Whoever believes in me, streams of living water will flow from within Him. And this He spoke about the Holy Spirit...’ I want to receive that life from Jesus, and then be a vessel of it. It comes with being filled by the Holy Spirit. More of Him, less of Me!

All that to say that the first two months here have been great, very full with all the various things I do- from the study and grading assignments and writing schedules- to the fun things like baking and organising games nights and chatting with people over a nice cup of tea. If you want more of a regular update on the practical stuff going on, and prayer requests, leave me your email address and I’ll add you to the newsletter list. But thank you for letting me share my heart and I hope this has encouraged you today! Jesus loves you more than you know!

"Home"

It’s hard to describe the feeling of being back home, surrounded by fellow countrymen, the scenery almost exactly as I remember- almost as if I had never left. Everything is at once familiar and foreign. So it’s comforting and the slightest bit uncomfortable at the same time, not knowing anymore if I fit into this world they call Australia!

Certainly I don’t sound like one of them anymore. ‘You sound weird’ I’m informed by my little brother and friendly jesting friends. ‘Oh really’ I say putting on my best American accent, but I don’t have to try very hard. I don’t know if I’ll ever shake off the ‘yah’s’ ever again.

I do love just listening to Australians talk. A girl in Rome figured that out when she was trying to sell us a ticket/tour deal into the Vatican, and I was so entranced with her Australian accent I must have worn a particular expression that made her stop midway, turn to me and say ‘are you laughing at my accent?’. I hadn’t spoken a word to give away my identity, but she somehow knew it was her accent I was smiling at. I think the Australian accent goes along with our national character. Australian’s are open, down-to-earth, so laid back it’s as if the world had zero worries. It’s not just the accent but the way we relate to each other. Everyone is your ‘mate’ if they give you a ‘fair go’ (treat you well). I learnt all this in social studies in high school, but to have been in Europe I now appreciate the stark contrast. The best way I can think to describe it is that Australians are very simple people, and Europeans are very complex creatures. The way Europeans act and relate can be tied up in numerous things, often religious background or historically there are wars and regimes like communism that still bear a lot of weight on their thoughts and actions. Not so with the simple Australian who has grown up in freedom, equal rights, and no dominating religious or political force. I don’t know what to do yet with these new insights into my culture but I’m sure they’ll help me in the future somehow. They help me understand myself a little better, and the areas I have to be sensitive in as I do ministry in Europe.

While the last two weeks have been quite wonderful, relaxing, spending time with my family and catching up with my dear friends, I am conscious that this is not a resettling. It still has a temporal feel, my roots must not go down too deep, for I know that in just three weeks I will be again saying my goodbyes and boarding a plane to cross miles of vast ocean and land to ‘settle’ (in whatever sense of the word a missionary can think of settling) back in Vajta. It is nice to be able to call Australia home, what a blessed country this is. But as I’ve been reflecting on 2010 and looking back through journals I believe I have pinpointed the very day last year that I stopped being homesick- which is that longing inside to go back to the place I can call home, Australia- for good. I was in Germany, having my devotion time out of Psalm 84. It is an awesome Psalm, turn to it if you have a bible nearby. It begins with a declaration and crying out to the Lord ‘how lovely is your tabernacle, O LORD of hosts! My soul longs, yes even faint for the courts of the LORD; My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God’ and then follows on later ‘Blessed are those who dwell in your house, whose heart is set on pilgrimage.’ You see we have a longing inside for permanence, to be rooted somewhere we can call ‘home’- but that longing is only going to be satisfied when we reach heaven, the place of eternal life. So while on earth what I really long for is my heavenly home, and I must be prepared to be a pilgrim, a foreigner on this planet. To know that nowhere on earth is my home. But my comfort and peace comes from looking always to Jesus. He is my home, because He is with me wherever I go or stay, He is the one constant thing in my life. He never changes, and He keeps all His promises. Such promises are found in verse 11 of Psalm 84; ‘For the LORD God is a sun and a shield, the Lord will give grace and glory; No good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly.’ As I thought about this when I was in Germany, and chose to believe those words with every ounce in me, I was filled with a certain confidence. I was still unsure at that point whether I would even be doing a second semester of bible college, whether I was prepared to stay longer in Hungary. But as God promised to withhold no good thing from me, giving me the grace and peace I needed, I was excited to see what plans lay in store. I prayed that day that in the moments I felt my heart unsettled that I would not look to the hope of returning home to Australia but the hope of coming home to Jesus. And something in me that day surrendered to the idea that what I really desired was not a comfortable normal life in my home-country. I haven’t wanted that for quite some time now, which was why I was so surprised I battled with so much homesickness when I first got to Hungary.

Anyway, so the story goes on that I did stay for the rest of the year, and though there was thoughts and plans formulated with the idea of being in Australia in 2011, eventually the Lord’s will broke through in both my desires and the open doors set in front of me. I was invited to return as an intern at the bible college. By the time the question was formally posed to me I had already spent many weeks in prayerful consideration of that particular ‘what if’. I had come so incredibly far from my first months of homesickness in Vajta. Though even at the beginning, through missing home I knew I loved the college, I loved my classes. Now I loved everything about life there. I love the ministry- seeing my roommates and classmates and friends transformed by the Word. Going on trips to share about Jesus and assist the churches. I love living in Europe and have realised more and more how big of a mission field it is. I love the family there, all the staff.

Furthermore a large part of what God was teaching me my second semester was about being great by becoming a humble servant. To follow Jesus example is to cast off all care of reputation, of being exalted. It is to lay down our lives for others, to simply love and do whatever we can to serve people. One of my favourite titles in the bible is ‘bondservant’- one who chooses of his own will to remain a servant, because of the goodness of his Master. I was praying and realising that I would be both willing and excited to serve at the bible college, should they see those qualities in me.

Basically the interns are there to serve the staff and students- we are given responsibility and authority over the students to manage certain things like the dorms and servant-hood areas (housekeeping, dining room, coffeeshop, laundry ect.), to lead the outreaches, to grade some of the assignments and of course be an example and mentor to the other students. I’ll also still be doing some study aswell. Its actually a little daunting, but I think its good that I’d be a little nervous because then I will have to beg God for His strength and not rely on any of my own- something I’ve definitely been learning to do more and more. A lot of pray will be required the whole year I’m sure! I am going to try stay more up to date with these blogs as I’ve realised how important they are to me for debriefing. When I was negligent last semester I struggled way more to comprehend and untangle all the thoughts running around my brain. So blog readers, (Lydia, I am sure you will be a faithful one) keep me accountable!

That’s all for now, God bless you for your love, support and prayers!