Moving

Somebody asked me the other day what was going on in my life lately. I said 'moving'. They said they meant in my personal life. I said 'moving'. There's not a lot of room for anything else!

The intensity of the last couple of months has been coming from two fronts- the first being moving out of base without a new base to move into, and the second being getting the new base finished! Thankfully, the first hurdle is behind us, and we can concentrate all we have on the second. We'd known for a while that we had to move out of our old premises by the 30th of November, but what we didn't was whether the new base building project would be completed by then. It wasn't, but we managed to get out nonetheless, and the build goes on!

Most of the handy people on base have already been working on the new building for some time, but I stayed back to help with the move. I was put in charge of sorting and emptying our tool shed, and man was that a big job! Eleven years of accumulated 'this could be useful!'. Plus I'm inclined to keep things rather than throw them away, so it took a fair bit of work. But we got there in the end, and crammed all of the day to day stuff into a much smaller shed at the back of one of our staff houses. Sometime in the future we'll work on a more permanent shed solution, but that's taking a back seat at the moment.

Then in the week and a half before the deadline, things were kicked up to the next level. Twelve hour days have been pretty normal lately. My favourite part of the whole process, though, was seeing God provide for us. Obviously we have a lot of stuff to move off base, but no new base to move into, so we had to find storage. We had no money for it, because every spare cent is going towards the build, so we were praying hard for a solution. We had a couple of places that we thought were the answer, but they fell through. It looked like the only solution was going to be taking it all to a farm two hours' drive south. Then one of the women organising the move felt she should ask about using an empty warehouse up the road from us. She didn't hear back from the real estate agent for a couple of days, but eventually he called and said the owners had said no. But would we be interested in a bigger one? A few hours later we had the keys to a warehouse literally five minutes down the road, big enough to fit everything we had to store! God came through with exactly what we needed, exactly when we needed it! He is so good!

So that's what's been engulfing my life lately. Now that we're out I'm working at the building site, as well as continuing to cover Vehicles, so I don't expect any respite soon, although we're aiming to be finished before Christmas. Please pray that we finish on schedule, and that moving in goes smoothly! Also that our vehicles stay healthy- it will be really difficult to work on them with so much else happening at the same time.

Thanks for your all your prayers and support!

Crunch Time

Or maybe crunching time would describe it better. I think I've written before that as we get closer to the move, everything around base is going to grow in intensity. Well, I was right.

Things have been heaping on lately. One of the biggest things for me in the last couple of months, and especially the last few weeks, has been the added responsibility in leadership, and I get the distinct impression that this is something God is wanting to... educate me in.

For most of this year, Property and Vehicles have had more than enough to do with not enough staff. Even though that's not ideal, I do quite well there. I can just knuckle down and get on with things, bury myself in a job and ignore the world around me. But in the last month, the situation has changed quite dramatically. The first thing that happened is my leader got married and left on his honeymoon, leaving me and another guy in charge of our ministry. That wouldn't have been such a big deal, except that around about the same time, five new people joined Vehicles. So I went from being responsible for just me, to being responsible for a team of six. Big change.

And honestly, my first response was wishing they hadn't joined. After praying all year for more workers, I didn't want them, because it made my life more difficult. And I had a choice: Invest more effort, and enable us to do way more than we could before; or be selfish and ungrateful and waste what God had provided. I knew which one I shouldn't chose, so I decided to invest.

God's grace is amazing. I'd been finding it difficult to keep up with what I was doing already, so I didn't think I could handle any more. But as I took on more than I could handle, His grace kicked in, and it just makes all the difference. It still takes the constant choice to dig deep and do what I need to, but when I make that choice He provides all the strength and grace that I need. I remember that I do know how to lead a team. I do know how to include people in the vision. I do know how to exhort people to serve with excellence. And I do know how to lead by example in getting on my knees and crying out to God to provide us with the wisdom and the strength that we don't have on our own.

I can see the way that He's been targeting different areas in my life. He's challenged my faith for the impossible, my humility and sheer dependance on Him, my prayerfulness, and my love for others before myself. He's really building up my muscles in the area of leadership. And that's exciting, because who knows what His reasons are?! I believe that He is preparing me for whatever it is he has for me in the future, and given the magnitude of the challenge now, I think He has big things up His sleeve.

Please pray for me in this! Just because I've clicked with what He's doing doesn't mean I'm immune to mistakes or making poor choices. Pray that I can lead well, in a way that serves the people that I lead as well as the base a whole, and in a way that honours and pleases God. Pray for our vehicles! At the moment seven of them are off the road (i.e. unable to be driven). Pray for miracles, and for wisdom in how to fix them.

Thank you for your prayers regarding my staff debt- in the last two months it has come down by about $1500! God is still challenging me to keep being active and pushing to see the last $2500 cleared in the near future, so please keep praying with me!

Bless you, and thank you for being fighting with me!

Hope

It's been kind of a byword for me recently, I keep coming back to it.

I guess the story of the last month-and-a-bit has been the counterattack. After getting incredible breakthrough and revelation of God, the enemy will do, and has done, whatever he can to make it seem untrue. I've been going through a fair bit of that lately, it's been a lot of ups and downs. But God is so faithful.

There's been a lot of times where I've felt like I can't hear God. A lot of times that I've felt like He is distant. A lot of condemnation coming in. I don't like speaking Christianese, but it has been a desert season. You know when everything builds up until you can't see anything good? I've thought about writing a new blog a few times, but didn't because I couldn't think of anything happy to say. That doesn't mean that there's no good in my life, it just means I haven't seen it all the time.

But I just realised something. How can God test us and build us up through the hard times if we're not going through hard times? It can feel like getting kicked when we're down, but I reckon God jumps at opportunities to work in our lives when we are broken. And it's not because he cares about doing His thing more than He cares about our pain. He does it for our good. He does it for us. So that's what He's doing in me. Instead of building me right back up, He's taking this opportunity to go deeper, shore up the foundations, strengthen and purify, so that when He does build me back up I will be stronger.

And even in that He does not leave us alone. I just heard a sermon that said, "If you feel like you can't hear God's voice, read it!". The Bible is flipping amazing. I'm reading in Jeremiah right now, and God just spoke to me through Jeremiah 15:20- 'I will make you a wall to this people, a fortified wall of bronze; they will fight against you but will not overcome you, for I am with you to rescue and save you,” declares the LORD.' Jeremiah went through so much trouble and opposition, but God enabled Him to meet it. It's bits like these that give me confidence that if I hold onto Him, I can never be overcome.

My hope is in Him!

God bless, and thank you for your support!

Luke

P.S. Thanks for your prayers! Vehicles is starting to feel more comfortable now, I've learned a whole lot more about cars and how they work. I've been able to carry out quite a few smaller repairs, and get a couple of our vehicles roadworthy again, hallelujah! Please pray for continued guidance and grace- it seems that with every problem that gets fixed, another one rears its head. I suppose that's to be expected, I just need your prayers!

Also, my staff debt is going down, praise the Lord! He has been really faithful to provide for me, and slowly but surely the amount is lessening. I think it's around about $3500 now. Please keep praying it all the way in!

New things

Things have been changing a lot lately. This post's a bit overdue, and it might look a bit different, but here it is.

God is so good. So good. The last week has been marked with revelations of who He is that have left me broken, but so alive. His love just became so much more real to me.

In a nutshell, this year has been hard. The grinding, wearing down kind of hard. It came to the point where I was dragging my feet, trying to last out the season and waiting for it to end. Then a month ago Claire and I broke up, and that was too much. Too much. Lasting it out wasn't an option any more: it was find God and get out of this; or give up and find something easier to do with my life.


Guess what I felt like doing. Thankfully, that's not what I did.

I found something new. My relationship with God has taken a turn that will not be reversed. He's telling the truth when He says He'll draw near if we do! Intimacy is not something that marked my walk with God before. Love? Yes. Commitment? Yes. Passion? Yes. Intimacy? The ability to spend time in His presence, to receive His affection, to lay down my burdens and rest? No. But that has changed.

I threw myself on Him. I found rest in Him, refuge and strength and courage to fight. And he showed me that there is more to Him than I had ever imagined. More to what we can have together than had ever crossed my mind. I believed that the best my relationship with God could be is what it was, only tidied up. A bit less sin, a bit more prayer and worship. But He blew me out of the water with revelations of the intense closeness, the intimacy and love that we could have if I want it enough to take hold of.

Why do we look forward to heaven? It's not because of environment, gold streets or choirs of angels or even no sin. The glory of heaven is intimate relationship with our Father and Creator, and guess what? We don't have to wait! It is available to us here and now! This is the life abundant that Jesus spoke of, and He's shown it to me.

So that's where I'm at. I have Jesus and for the first time, that's enough. I want to emphasise that I'm not saying I just got saved. I've been a Christian, and a real committed Christian, for a while now. But I just took a step into uncharted territory, that I never knew even existed, and it is amazing. Don't think that you know all there is to know. I bet you there's more.

And that's the last couple of months summed up! Thanks for your support, God bless you!


P.S. I've got a couple of prayer requests that I'd love you to get behind me with.

I just took over responsibility of all our vehicles on base. That means maintenance, servicing, repairs etc, on everything from little hatchbacks to utes to vans to buses. I don't know the first thing about cars. Pray for me that I wouldn't get overwhelmed, that I'd be able to do what I'm capable of and for God's wisdom and miracles when I don't know what to do. We do a lot of outreaches and work in the city of Perth, and without working vehicles that would all go kaput pretty quickly, so I'm feeling the pressure a bit, as well as it all being new and unfamiliar.

I'm also really trying to get rid of my staff debt. Since I first came here I've been falling behind on paying my staff fees (i.e. food and accomodation). I joined staff without enough regular support to keep up, and it's been a real battle of faith to see God provide. He has done, and He's cleared my debt on a couple of occasions, but it's built up again recently. I'm really trusting Him to demolish it once and for all this time. Please be praying for me! I owe about $4000.

Cheers! God bless you!

I've found my Doppelganger!

His name is John Lewis, and he just arrived on staff. It all seems normal, until you find out that he's Welsh, and was born only a few hours' drive away from me. In the same year. On the same day. We now share a room, and to top it all off now we've started saying the same things at the same time! It's a bit freaky.

Actually we've had a few changes to our house lately. Two new staff have joined, one came back from outreach and two left on outreaches. It's fun having new guys, we have a really great house dynamic at the moment. For a long time I was quite detached from my house, sleeping here but not much more than that, and not interacting much with my housemates. I think it was the same way for a lot of other guys as well. But we've really changed that this year, and have deliberately cultivated unity. We meet and pray together regularly, and even organise house events, which are awesome! It makes all the difference, and I feel a lot more at home in my house than I ever have.

I think that all ties back in to how God was challenging me in my hospitality. Creating that kind of unity where we live really opens up opportunities to invite other people in and make them feel welcome. It's a good knock on effect.

One of the high points of last months has to be the high school weekend camp I staffed. There's a Christian high school on the outskirts of Perth that often calls in YWAMers to help out with their camps, and this year I was asked to help out along with a couple of other guys. It was an all-boys camp, and we went to join in with the activities and lead some devotional times for the boys, one time each. To be honest, the three of us didn't really know what we were doing or what was expected of us, so we just went with the flow and asked God to show us what to do for the devotions. On the first day, my new housemate Jason shared his testimony, which was really powerful. I think the kids might have seen us as 'special case Christians' at first, as though there was something about us that allowed us to know and follow God in a way that they never could, but that really got broken down as Jason shared his far-from-perfect history of finding God.

We had intended to spend that night's session going into the gospel, because the teachers told us that a lot of the boys had fairly nominal faiths, but that didn't work out. We got back from our activity really late, so we decided just to have a short time of worship and then go to bed. We were really tired. But as we got into worship, the Holy Spirit started speaking to me about how He wanted the boys to experience His manifest presence and power. Long story short, what was meant to be a 15 minute session turned into an hour and a half of these boys meeting the Holy Spirit, receiving the Father's love, praying and being prayed for, and experiencing God in a whole new way. Even after we officially finished, we were talking to and praying for the kids for hours. One of them said to me that for his whole life he'd thought that he knew God's love, but that night he experienced it in a way he had never known he could.

The next day I shared with them about what God had created them for, and went into detail about the meaning of the gospel, and how it shows God's deep desire to be close to us. The night before showed them just how true that was, and eight or so boys recommitted their lives to God before going home. Isn't God good?! The head teacher told us that in seven years of doing those camps, he'd never seen kids go that deep in experiencing God. And my favourite part of all this is that the glory can only go to God! We were clueless and ready for bed, but God used us to introduce these boys to Him in a way they will not soon forget. Hallelujah!

One last exciting thing before I finish- Claire is back in Perth! She spent the last three months working with Megacities in Mexico city, and then home in the US for holidays. I have to say, I prefer her being on this side of the world, so it's really good having her back!

Thanks for your prayers, God bless!

This doesn't feel like Autumn...

Perth has just broken it's record for the most consecutive days of 30+ degree heat, and I am led to believe it is now challenging the Australian record. Twenty-six days and counting. Even though Summer is officially over... it's still quite warm.

I had quite a good February, God has been speaking to me a lot. Like I said in my last post, it is quite a big adjustment, finishing a DTS and moving into Property, and that's something God's been leading me through in the last weeks. Part of it is the drop off in intensity, because staffing a school keeps you so busy, that when you finish you have more time and space than you know what to do with. At least it's that way for me. Something that God started teaching me about this time last year was that you can never go backwards- either you keep moving forward or you stagnate. He's definitely been continuing that lesson recently.

So the big challenge that He's issued me is this: Are you just going to sit there and be unfulfilled, or are you going to start taking initiative and responsibility when it's not set up for you? Sometimes rude awakenings are very good for me, and He knows when to dish them out! So this is a bit about what I've been doing with that.

My leader, Sam, has been away for the last couple of weeks, helping out with the flood cleanup in Queensland, so I've been leading Property along with another guy. Obviously, that is more of a structured responsibility, and temporary, but it has been (and continues to be) a good challenge. I find it's often a lot harder to lead peers, but somehow I think He did that deliberately, and I'm definitely being pushed and sharpened. Which is what it's all about! I know that I'm being challenged and I'm growing, and I'd much rather be there than having an easy time doing nothing.

I've started a drama group as well. I've been into performing arts since high school, and although I thought I'd be leaving that behind by getting into missions, God's bringing it back into focus. I've often done street dramas on outreaches to get people's attention and to convey a message, so the year before last I created a gospel drama for our outreach team to use. Since then the idea of doing that more formally, with a group, has been floating around at the back of my mind, although I didn't know if I would ever do anything about it. But it's come back up with the challenge of initiating, and I felt like God was saying it was time to start acting on it. So I've pulled together a group of people with a similar interest, and we're working on creating new dramas as resources for overseas outreach teams as well as outreaches into Perth. It's small right now, but it's a start!

The other associated bomb God has dropped on me is... hospitality. I was reading a book that talks about the interconnectedness of lives in the Body of Christ, and He nailed me. He said that I am called to live in community; a) because I belong to His church; and b) because He's called me to community here in YWAM, so I need to see what He wants that to look like. And that's openness. Not just with those I'm close to, but everyone. And that manifests itself in hospitality- showing value to people through action. I guess it might not seem like a hugely important revelation, but it is really challenging me in the way I relate to people around me. And hospitality is inextricably linked to initiating, because it requires making the effort to reach out to people first. So what He's been challenging me on goes right the way through my life, from the most obvious to the most private areas.

Achievement of the month: built a new washing line! The old one had needed attention for quite some time... like since I first came to Perth.  But now it's fixed up, and (wonder of wonders) now two people can hang their washing up at the same time! Hallelujah!

If anyone wanted to pray for me, they could pray that I would get over this sickness. I've been out for about a week, flu or something, and I'd rather it would hurry up and leave. So that would be very much appreciated!

God bless you!

Back in Perth

Man it's hot here. I thought coming from cold America to hot New Zealand to super-hot Perth would be a nice gradual transition. It wasn't. It was forty degrees the first day I arrived, and that was in the evening! And after a few more days of forty-plus degree heat, we had a cyclone, which unfortunately didn't cool things down. But nor did it do much damage, so not such a bad result. The weather takes a bit of adjusting to, but don't worry, we're not having any of the problems that the east coast is going through. I'm safe!

It's great being back in Perth after being away for such a long time. I was away for over four months, what with outreach in Mexico and holidays after that, so I was ready to get back into things. Which is good, because I'm right back into it! I'm working with Property again, which I have missed, and it feels good to be fixing things again. It's always a big switch between staffing DTS and doing property, they're kind of opposite ends of the spectrum, but I love them both and it's good to be starting a new season. There's something so satisfying about holding a big drill.

I had a good trip to New Zealand, too. My Australian visa expired while I was on outreach in Mexico, so my time in NZ was a holiday/visa run/fundraising trip. It's actually been really cool how God has provided for me to visit home twice in two years, because I came to Perth on a one-way ticket and never had a plan on how to get back, but He has been really generous in that respect. So I got to spend three weeks with the family, which we all enjoyed. The other major benefit of being in Auckland was that I got to build relationship with and join a church. I have never actually been part of a church in Auckland since we moved there five years ago, so for the whole time I've been with YWAM in Perth I haven't had a spiritually supportive community back in New Zealand. I really felt like that needed to be dealt with, so I got plugged in to Eastview Baptist, and I'm really pleased to be a part of them. Obviously three weeks is only a short period, but I got to know a number of people and also introduce myself and my ministry to the whole church, so we've got a base of relationship and can build on that!

Back here the next challenge is to really get plugged back in to base life. When I asked God why He called me back here, He reminded me of a word my leader got for me more than a year ago- God has called me to serve. In that service, He's going to teach me more and more about leadership (because leadership is service), but I am to concentrate and spend my efforts on serving. So that's my focus for this season, serving wherever and however. And Property exists to serve and support every vision that comes out of YWAM Perth, so that's why I'm doing what I'm doing!

Happy February!