Adjusting

So I've been living in the my new apartment for a couple of days now, and I am quickly realizing that this is going to be an incredibly different experience from what I imagined and expected.

When I moved in, I did so expecting two things:

The first was that I would feel more independent and get a taste of how different life is when you have to start paying for things and doing your own cooking and cleaning and such.

The second was that, because I'd be living in intentional Christian community, I would spend heaps of time talking and praying with my roommates and doing lots of cool stuff with them.

So far, this has not really been the case.

Half of the other people who are supposed to be living here right now are away for a week at MarkEast, a weeklong intensive study of the gospel of Mark, out in New Brunswick or Nova Scotia or something (maritime provinces, am I right?) Because of this, things have been fairly quiet here the last couple of days. I am not sure if I like quiet particularly much. There's been fairly minimal activity going on since they left, with the few of us who are leftover mostly out of the house and doing work, so it's felt a little lonely. I know this will change when everyone gets back, and I actually just had a really lovely conversation with one of the guys I live with, but it was pretty discouraging this morning when I slept through morning prayer and woke up to an empty house.

I guess all this being said I would really appreciate prayer as I continue to get used to things here! Aaand I will try to post again very soon!

Father, give me strength to adjust to my new situation and help me feel at home even in the quietest moments. Help me to not take those moments for granted, but rather use them to spend time with You.

Living in Community

Hey everyone!

So, tonight I am sleeping in my own apartment for the first time ever!- sort of!

For the months of May and June I will be living in intentional Christian community with a bunch of really cool people from Emmaus Anglican Church! For the last two years, a group of about six young adults from our congregation have been living together in community in Pointe St-Charles, a poorer area of Montreal, with the goal of growing together in their faith and reaching out to the people in that neighborhood. I am super excited to be living with them for the next two months as a member of their community!

I don't have a whole lot to say right now, but I felt I should keep in tradition and write something on a Monday night, and figured this was as good a thing to write about as any! So, I will end this here for now but you can rest assured that as I adjust to the madness of morning prayers and community dinners and independence from my parents I will have lots of things to talk about and lots of prayers to request!

For those of you who feel so inclined, here is how you can pray for me this week:
- Pray that I can easily make the switch between living at home with my parents and living at home with my friends
- Pray that I can adjust to the new lifestyle that comes with living on my own
- Pray that I am able to build tighter relationships with the people I'm living with
- Pray especially that God uses this to stretch me and bring me closer to Him!

Blessings,

The Bible in a Year: Week 13

Whoo! Sorry this is a day late, I was fairly busy yesterday (and by that I mean I watched hours and hours of TV and completely forgot about my blog, gasp!)

So, my Bible readings have finally brought me into Deuteronomy, and I must say I am pretty stoked to get out of the Pentateuch sometime soon. Jokes aside, it has been a really interesting read, if a bit heavy.

One thing that kind of struck me this week while reading Deuteronomy was the whole idea of Moses not being allowed to enter the promised land. As a person involved in leading ministry, that hit me really hard. I thought about how much Moses must have connected with the people he was leading, the deep bonds and relationships he built along the way, and the love he must have felt for them. I thought about how intensely sorrowful it must have been for him and for all of them when he told them that he would not be with them forever. Then I thought about how painful it would be for me, if I was in a similar situation. I wept a little, reflecting on Moses' leadership and on the humility it must have taken to stop before reaching the place he had worked so hard to get people to, and to just let all the glory go to God as His people were brought into the land He had promised them.

I pray that I would keep that in perspective while doing His work, that I would be able to understand that sometimes we can't be there for the beautifully fulfilling moments, but that we have to trust His glory and mercy to see things through to the end when we can't.

Cheers,

Dangerous Prayers

I was having a really great conversation with a friend of mine last week about faith, love and discipleship, and there came a point in our long discussion when the idea of dangerous prayer came up.

Dangerous Prayers are the kind of prayers I think we all need to pray more often, but are too afraid to pray. They are prayers that, in reality, are not actually *dangerous* per se- we aren't going to get murdered or accidentally blow up a bridge because of them, usually- but they are risky, in that God's answer to them is going to challenge the heck out of us! The example I was using at the time was in reference to praying for one's future spouse. This is a discipline I took up about a year ago, that I will regularly pray that God is preparing for me a wife who is godly, passionate, fertile, healthy, and going to challenge me a lot in my faith. I would call this a dangerous prayer because I am literally asking God to put me into a difficult relationship, because I just don't think I want something easy. But that's a story for another day.

Since we're talking about Dangerous Prayers today, I thought I would list a few others, and challenge you guys to pray some of them from time to time! :)

Pray for God to convict you of your sin. I figure this is a good place to start. It sounds pretty straightforward, but for a lot of people, the idea of *asking* Him to point out sin in their life is a terrifying thing. It's akin to asking your boss or supervisor what you can improve on at work. You just know there's going to be some stuff in there that you hoped nobody would notice, or that you were putting off fixing because of how difficult it is. And that's why this is a dangerous prayer, because it is so challenging, but so so worth it!

Pray for humbling experiences. This is one that I need to do more often, because it scares the heck out of me. Asking God to humble us is like a branch manager asking the CEO to make him receptionist for awhile- humility comes out of situations where we are lower, where pride is hard to come by. It is a good feeling being exalted, acknowledged publicly for good works, given a position of high importance, it all makes you feel more worthwhile. But the experiences that grow our character most and bring us closer to God are often the ones that are humble, behind the scenes and go unnoticed. This prayer is dangerous, especially for leaders, because it challenges our pride and invites us to step out of the spotlight and into the bathrooms with a mop.

"Break my heart for what breaks Yours" I couldn't come up with a way to phrase this one, so I'm just giving it to you as is. Asking God to help us see things the way He sees them is a dangerous prayer, but an amazing one. Often we see people who are so compassionate that we are blown away, and we wonder how they do it. It's because God has given them the gift of compassion, and they are able to see people and situations in a different, more holy light. This prayer is dangerous because it first takes acknowledging that we have built up so many expectations and biases that we are, in that sense, very disconnected from God; and also because having such compassion can move people in incredibly unexpected ways. Ready to do a lot more crying? If you're not, pray for humility first, then pray this one ;)

These are just a few examples of the dangerous prayers we can pray, but I'd like to challenge you to think of a few more, and start praying them from time to time! :) I read a book awhile back and am blanking on the title and author, but they listed quite a few and I just loved it. So if I find that, I'll come back and edit this post, but until then, that is all I've got! :)

Blessings,