A Curious Girl: Overuse of the word 'amazing'!

I went to Church in the morning today (no chance of sleeping in, is there?).

I was rather annoyed about this, as I get fed up of the kiddie's songs (Great, great, brill, brill, urrrrgh) and not seeing many of the Youth Group and 'young people' there - even John (the one who makes fun of Mr. JE's little jokes) wasn't there and he usually is in the morning. Even more annoyed when I discovered that Hazel was preaching this evening, and I like Hazel. I talked about Jeri last entry - well, Hazel is someone I admire too, in different ways. She's always very firm about God, and when she came on GB camp one year (the year before Jeri came) she talked amazing sense. That's what I like about Hazel - apart from when she occasionally loses her temper (run away!), which is very rare, she's always level-headed, a good sense of fun and not at all mystical or funny voices, or anything that you'd think of when you think of 'religious nuts'. And Hazel is a nut, as she once pointed out :-) She's a retired PE teacher I think, she teaches Sunday School.

But I was in luck as far as kiddies' songs went - the children were all out for something or other, and so we sang good songs. Not that there aren't any good kids' songs (Jesus loves me, this I know) but just that they did pick ones I like, including one of my ultimate favourites Heart of Worship. It was a healing service, and so the perfect opportunity to go for prayer about my shyness (although social anxiety sounds much better when you talk of healing :-) But I'm shy, and that's that.). Hope no-one thinks I have a dreadful illness... I'm glad I got prayer. One of the women who were praying for me - Iona, I think her name was - said we all have difficulty, but it gets better when it comes to witnessing. The other woman asked if I felt God was saying anything to me - talk about putting me on the spot! I didn't say anything, but he did say a few things, I realised when I thought clearly. For instance, I realised that we shouldn't treat healing prayer as a placebo, a type of hypnosis to convince us, but a real movement of the power of God. As I sat down again, I flicked picked up the Bible, and opened it on a likely looking page, and read Luke 24:45-49, the last verse of which reads, 'I will send you what my Father has promised, but you must stay in Jerusalem until you have received that power from Heaven.' And it assured me that God was going to give me that power too. And another thing was, one prayed that I be given an over-flowing heart of love for God, because the mouth speaks from an overflowing heart. How true that is! I want to have an over-flowing heart.

And when I pondered on how quickly I had found that verse in the Bible, I remembered the Monday of the Noise when we'd met together for an update. Matt (organising, not the other Matt I mentioned last entry) asked if I'd like to say something about our litter picking on Saturday, and so I basically said where we'd been, and how much of a blessing it was being able to do stuff like that for God. It wasn't very well presented on my part, but when I sat down, Matt said, 'That says it all, really' as if I'd just said something deeply profound - but I'd just said how I'd felt, nothing amazing. And then I realised something about the work of the Holy Spirit - just like when I was picking that page, and felt that the page I was turning to was the right one, as opposed to expecting him to seize control of my hand and guide it in the right direction, I realised that we aren't meant to be robots for God (this also explains why Christians sin - God doesn't zap us into automatons, we have bad desires just like anyone else) but instead he gives us the strength to say what we know is true within us, as well as them being the words of the Holy Spirit. We aren't merely channelling for the Spirit, the Spirit helps us say what we too know we have to say. Or as I profoundly thought getting dressed one morning (which is why I miss breakfast so often - damned profound thoughts!) we're not just the messengers, we're also part of the message.

Also (yes there's more!) when we were singing I had the great idea of going on a 'worship walk' - ie. going around just to admire what God has done. And it reminded me of the feeling I got when I learned how DNA worked. It reminded me why I want to do Biochemistry - because I feel like worshipping when I learn that stuff, about how life works. And as a teacher I could pass on this amazing wonder. Suddenly I was overwhelmed with some of the amazing things I'd just like to teach people so they could admire their world more, and in turn hopefully admire God! (I say hopefully, as I am reminded of watching 'Son of God' and wondering why no-one was getting excited) And Diggers thought that being an English teacher was the most fun. Huh!

(By the way, I can't tell you if I've turned into an amazingly confident person yet! But I know he'll be taking away my fear when I need to say the right words. And I've now realised that I'll know the right words. So no need to be afraid.)

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