One more week!

I'm sure the idea of a countdown is far less compelling to you than it is to me, but it is one more week until at 1630 on Monday 16th June 2008 I fly out of Durban, leaving somewhere I consider truly home, and where, at least for a while, my heart will continue to reside. It's slowly dawning on me that this is happening, and that some time next week I'll realise that my departure has suddenly gone from 'coming' to 'gone'. At that point I'll look back and be surprised, I'm sure, that it happened so quickly and that all those intentions and possibilities that had been in my mind to do before I left are now expired.

What do you do with a week? If you had one week to live, what would you do? While I'm not dying (at least, not yet!), my life here is going to undergo a death of sorts. Yes, dear friends will remain dear friends, and yes, the task I've given myself to will continue, and yes, I can come back and visit, but my life here will die. Friends will be distant, I'll not be directly invovled with Hope Church, and while I can visit, I will come back as a visitor and not a resident. I hope to be able to make this last week count, and to just make sure I have no regrets about how I leave, even if, for now, I will regret leaving.

Was it like this when I left London? Yes, a bit. But somehow I felt ready to leave London. So far I don't feel ready to leave here; if anything I feel like I'm just about settled in. More than what we naturally happen to feel though, the Bible tells us to arm ourselves with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace (Eph 6:15). I love this part of the 'armour of God' - a readiness on our feet to move and be involved in the spread of the Gospel and the extension of the Kingdom. But it is not spreading the Gospel of peace we're to be armed with, but the readiness that it brings to us.

The Gospel puts us at peace with God. We don't seek peace, but God Himself brings an end to hostilities and announces to us the commencement of his truce. As Gary Welsh would often say, "I had peace with God when I woke up this morning, before I'd done a single thing. And it doesn't matter what I did yesterday or what I might do right now - I have peace!" This peace is in Christ, not in us. We change, He doesn't, and so neither does the state of full and final peace between those who are in Christ and God.

So how does this make us ready? If you think about going on a journey, as I'm about to do, you'll be thinking of making many preparations. But a point comes when all the preparations are done and all that is left is to go. God has made all the preparations - 'our bags are packed', as it were! We stand ready to be used by God, fully equipped by Him to be ministers of His gospel because we stand in Christ.

This Gospel also comes to us with the world in view. It came to us because it came to the world. This message came to us because someone else had it in mind to take it to the world. The message that came to me was not just, "God has made provision for peace with you", but, "God has sent His Son to die for the sins of the world!" Implicit in the Gospel is the call to go to the world with it, for if we really believe it to be God's means for dealing with the sins of the world, we believe by extension that it must go to the whole world; and so we become ready. We accept salvation for ourselves as we come to accept that Christ has achieved a salvation for the world. We've received a world changing message, and now we must go to change the world with it! This is another way I think the Gospel makes us ready - it calls us to be ready for service by its very nature as a world reaching message.

The Gospel is a message that's packed and ready to go - God has settled things in Christ! It's done! What more 'ready' message could there be? This readiness is not a call to go and finish something, but to announce that "it is finished" (Jn 19:30)! A ready Gospel makes for a ready person to go and spread it.

While it is the case that outer circumstances do quite force my hand in coming home, I can see beyond that to a God who is guiding my steps to bring his mercy to many people. Just writing this has helped my heart to be all that more ready. London is not enough to make me want to come home, nor even (yet) are other ties (with the exception of Mandy!). But the Gospel is enough to make me ready to go. What a message it is:

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:17-21)

Ready or not, here I come!

A note of thanksgiving

Ach! Got carried away!

What many of you might not know is that for the past week I've been enjoying the favour of God through a woman in Hope Church who has lent me her daughter's car. Her daughter has been away for a long time and will continue to be so, so this car has been loaned to me until I leave! After getting so used to planning my life around when I could borrow other peoples' cars or get lifts I didn't realise quite how useful this would be. But oh my, it's been so good!

The car itself is an old 1980s Toyota Corolla (at least it should be 1980s because it's all 1980s technology) that has four gears, runs on LRP, has a tiny 1.3 12v engine with a manual choke (!), and would probably die if it went above 80mph. But it drives! It's actually very much like the old Sierra I used to drive when I first passed my test, so it's a nice bit of reminiscense.

In any case it's a well timed blessing that just makes these last 3 weeks so much better.

Thanks to all of you who have helped me by your prayers!


Cook

End in sight

What a difference a day makes. Just being in the office today and closing out the day I realised a bit more how little time I have left as I watched the day fly by. The end is in sight.

But the end is in sight for something else too. This whole ordeal with my car insurance claim (somehow 90% of my life's trials seem to centre around this car!) has taken a big step closer to resolution. An assessor indeed went to see my car yesterday, so now I'm able to get rid of it. So today I managed to get the scrap sold for R2,000, which I've offset against the towing and storage costs, leaving me R5,400 to pay. Now I should be able to get R1,850 for the towing back from the insurance company, but they will of course only pay me whatever market value they put my car at less whatever they deem the salvage to be worth (which they may well rate at more than R2,000). In any case I'm just glad that the incurring of expenses related to this car seems to be finished and I can now just await my settlement. It might just be settled before I leave, which I pray it is, but it'll definitely not be until next week. The good news is at least I can afford to wait a bit now as each day isn't costing me more money in storage fees.

What a mission this has been! I am certain beyond question that God has designed this whole thing. Who knows, it might not be over! :o) But in any case, for things to have gone this bad is just not normal. One could conclude God has it in for me, but I see that again and again He's come through and none of these torpedoes seem to ever sink this ship! The Bible says in Ps 34:19 that our trials will be many, but that the Lord will deliver us from them all (rather than prevent them all!).

Thinking on Monday about having this certainty of God's design, favour, and strategy in all this, I was so aware that this also has only come by the mercy of God. Looking at the circumstances doesn't lead me to this conclusion. My own insightful thinking hasn't found the hidden pattern in all this random activity. Nor has even my own faith or knowledge of the Bible that has been able to grow such confidence. No, such things need God's gracious revealing to our hearts. I'm not just suspecting that God might have had something going on in this, I am sure! I know what the Word of God says about this, but I have the grace to believe it! In a funny, circular-argument, sort of way, that just convinces me all the more that God is at work to refine my faith which is more precious than gold (and so certainly more precious than Rand!).

I hope you're well as you read this, but if you also face ongoing trial then I would encourage you to either:

a) Seek similar grace from God by humbly coming (for He gives grace to the humble) and asking Him to help you put Him at the centre of all this (as I've done so failingly at many times).
b) Realise, if you don't know the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, that your trials are designed to lead you to Him, who promises rest for the soul of the weary and heavily burdened (Mt 11:28ff).

One trial is (seemingly) ended; more shall come. But there shall be a day when those in Christ will have no more trials, where every tear shall be wiped from their eyes, and where an eternal weight of glory that feels far over and above even the hardest of their trials shall be their portion forever.

But now I'm getting into what I'll be preaching Sunday week! :o)

See you all soon!

Two weeks!

Sho! So it's two weeks tomorrow until I come home! It is going to be very weird because even now I can't imagine being anywhere but Durban. It will be so odd to not come to be with the rest of Hope Church on a Sunday, so weird not to be living alone, so different not to be able to just drive straight for the beach, or the hills, or the Botanical Gardens. In nine short months I have pretty much become a South African - maybe not 100%, but more than I think even I expected to.

In the next two weeks there's a few things going on and a few things to get sorted, such as:

• Today someone will finally come and assess my car that was damaged over a month ago! When that's done I can get rid of the scrap, which I've found out is costing me no small amount to be stored where it is (for the first two weeks I couldn't get enough of a straight answer out of the insurance company to be able to work out that they weren't really doing anything about my car, just going to pay out as and when I send them the bills - though not for storage, of course! Speaking to the guy this morning there's a significant amount of money that I'm being charged, but not much I could do but grin and bear it from the time I found out what the state of play was). Anyway, so hopefully that can all be turned around and I can get the money paid out to me before I leave. Might need to open up a SA bank account after all, if they don't like sending the money to someone else's account.
• Today I will also get a quote for shipping some of Mandy's remaining things back home. I'll bundle a few bits and bobs in there too, but it's just another thing that's got to be tied up before I leave.
• This weekend we're going to be having our KZN regional camp called Faithful. Our three churches are coming together for what looks like it's going to be a great weekend. Please do pray for God to be on us in remarkable and miraculous ways. Also pray for me that I would have a much needed encounter with God before coming home where He speaks clearly and gives strength and vision for what lies ahead.
• I'll be having to start saying goodbyes real soon as students go back home, and just others that I won't see for one reason or another. It's going to be hard, but I hope to make them as significant as the people I'm speaking to have been for me.
  
• On my last Sunday I shall be preaching, and I need to finish writing that quick time. I'm going to be speaking to Hope Church about the subject of "hope" - what hope is, what our hope is, what lack of hope the world has, and what hope should produce in us. I "hope" (there's one sense of the word that's probably the furthest from the Biblical sense of hoping in God, but that'll be part of the sermon!).

It'll be hard to do until I'm back home, but I'm hoping to get my mind in gear for that a little more in these next two weeks. There's a whole lot of uncertainty with most things though, especially with teacher training not really being a proper option until next year some time. I'm just praying God will help me to be ready to handle the move and to have ears open to hear where He's guiding next. One thing's for sure, I think it'll be a hectic road!