Some days I wish I could be as care free as Kira. But you can't get what you want all the time, also she is a character I made up so it would be strange to have her kind of life but it would be fun...
The past few months I've been trying to figure out why I've been feeling so blah towards a few things. The annoyance and frustration I feel tends to be towards ministry.
Right now I am planning and studying a few things that will help build my skill set for a ministry I can hopefully start up by mid next year or possibly sooner. Right now though, I am in a ministry that has been frustrating me. It's become apparent that it's not the organisation of the ministry even though it needs to improve. What has been grinding me is that I'm not called to this ministry and my spirit feels uneasy and my heart longs for my calling. And when things go wrong I easily get annoyed.
It was startling to me that last Saturday I started feeling burned out and on the verge of walking out. I haven't felt like that since I burned out last year. Honest to goodness it made me mad and scared because I didn't want to be feeling like this.
That is when the alarm bells rang and I've been in constant thinking mode about ministry. I'm not called for it and it's become apparent that if I stay I will get even more frustrated and will burn out.
Lord please help me to talk about this and allow me be honest. Lord I pray that this will no longer worry me as it's all in your hands...
I'm at the point of snapping. I love serving God, I love serving on the worship team but I utterly detest disorganisation and the lack of excellence being presented.
At this point I'm at a crossroads. Do I pipe up and potentially say thing that will offend people or do I leave and take the easier route?
God's been telling me constantly if it stresses you out that much, why are you still there? Ministry isn't about feeling confined nor should it be so stressful for you to want to pick your things up and leave. Is there a reason why you're still there or are you too hesitant to move on?
This hesitation has been frustrating the hell out of me so much. I have no idea why I am hesitating. I want to say something but when I open my mouth my vocal cords feel constricted. Is this the way the enemy is attacking me in ministry?
I do pray that this hesitation will cease. It has gone for far too long and I've missed so many opportunities to say what I feel and suggest for changes.
All I have to offer is only for one person and that is Christ.
This blog is for my sister, Sandi. She wants to know my testimony of how I became a Christian. This will be just in dot points but basically my whole life is my testimony as people that were brought up in the same predicament as myself statically would be single mothers or live a life that is contrary to the bible...
When I was almost 2 years old my mum and father separated, having my little sister and I grow up in a single parent family for most of our lives.
As I was growing up I experienced a lot of abuse from my mum. A lot of the time it was because I favored my father more than her.
When I was 10 my father died leaving me only with my mother. I lost someone that I was so very close to. 6 months prior to my father dying, I watched him deteriorate, going in and out of hospital. Being so young I didn't quite understand it and it hurt me so much when people kept what was happening from me...
From that turn of events I was thrown the responsibility of looking after my sister. Explaining a lot of things to her in regards to what was happening to dad in my own understanding and to why our dad died in the end.
The abuse from my mum became worse after my father died making me rebel a lot.
When I was 13 my mum decided to move to Sydney, leaving all my relatives and friends behind. This made me rebel even more.
When I was 15 my mum found a boyfriend and he moved in after 3 weeks of them meeting one another. The abuse from my mum continued and got to the point of my mum beating my up with my guitar.
A week before my 16th birthday my mum and her boyfriend moved to Queensland with my sister. I rebelled and fought to stay in Sydney. My mum packed her things and left me with a family friend.
This was when I started self-harming, binge drinking and became so depressed.
A few months later I decided to move out into a refuge because I couldn't handle being by myself... I met people I wish I didn't and did things that I regret.
My depression so worsening.
When I was 17 my friend from school invited me to church. I was hesitant but I decided to go. I remember waiting for the train and saying to God, if you don't show me a way out of this, I might as well jump in front of a train and end my life.
It was from that point I was really testing God because I had always knew a God existed but never really thought he would help me in anyway. But from the point I stepped into the service I felt something that I had never felt before. By the end of the service God revealed himself to me. He showed me what I had been looking for, which was to know there was someone that loved me... If it wasn't for my friend inviting me to church I might have never found that God could fill the void I had. From that point I have never looked back.
So yeah Sandi you now know what I've been through... My calling is to reach the people that are hurting out in the community and show them that there is a God that loves them no matter what.
"Jesus said to go make disciples of all nations; he did not say go save them..."Quote from The Radical Reformation by Mark Dricoll.
That got me thinking. You see a lot of evangelists try and shove the gospel down non-believers throats. But really we should be living by example.
Only Jesus can shift someone's heart into loving him and nothing we say can convince them to follow him. But in saying that God does use us to reach out to certain people though our own testimonies.
So we need to live as an example because we all have people we influence in some way and we need to love them as Christ loves them.
I love how God just throws challenging thoughts and how he speaks through things you don't expect him to :3
I'm off to bed. It's already 2:14am and I need to be awake by 9am... WHEEE!!!
Dabs...
Ps. I'll leave you with this. This landed in front of me while I was at the lake and had all these challenging thoughts :3
I haven't been updating this sucker regularly and I need to get on to it. I've recently decided that this blog will hopefully be full of all the articles and thoughts I will be writing for a DeviantArt group called 'Great-Comission'
The purpose of the group is for Christians on DeviantArt to put in prayer requests, let us inform people of mission trips, to talk about evangelising, talk about the Great Commission that God called us to do and to post deviations (or works of art or literature if you will) that can consist of anything Christ focused.
I've been assigned as a contributor to the group which is exciting as this is where my heart and calling is, reaching out to the lost especially my local community in and around Blacktown. So if many of the things I post here seems offensive to you then I advise not to take it out on me as I'll be writing what God wants me to write.
Some of what I write will be about outreaches that I help out at and stuff God really does press into my heart. Some of things will be about how to engage people on the streets, what things to expect in outreaching ministries, what heart issues need to be resolved in order to be effective in ministering to the lost etc. I pray I will get something out of all this as well because I still have loads more to learn on how to be effective in ministry.
I'll be posting regular links to current blog posts through DeviantArt and Twitter. I just need my butt kicked if I don't update >__<
I'm contemplating on posting what I have written so far on an 'article' (thrown loosely), I have written. Right now it's really hard for me to write this one and I have no idea why. Maybe it's an attack. I say this just because as I was trying to start writing what God had put into my heart I was struck down with many different things out of no where. I got the biggest migraine, the muscles in my back felt like they were having a spasm, I felt nauseous and I couldn't sleep until 7am the next morning. I'm still trying to recover from it.
I might post it tonight but I have to reread what I wrote. I have no recollection of what I actually wrote when I starting >_____< "Father's Song".
Ooh and I just want to upload a drawing because I suck :p
