Party

This weekend we had a surprise birthday party for my aunt Marjon. The theme was USA. As a result almost everyone put on a cowboy hat. So that apparently is the way the Dutch typically view Americans :) Just kidding. It's probably the easiest outfit to come up with.

Walk in their shoes

Check out the banner on top of my blog and the short video in the side bar. It's about persecution of christians for their religion. I think it's horrible that these things happen and I cannot imagine what it would be like. That's why I like the video. It helps you see that we are so blessed to have freedom of speech and that we are free to believe what we want to believe.

Someone thought the video was too much focused on these injustices committed by muslims. This was actually not my intention. There are muslims who hunt down christians but they are not the only ones, there are a lot of other groups with different religious beliefs that persecute christians. Also this is no standard for all muslims of course! Not to mention the christian crusades where there were horrible things done to other people in the name of religion! Will mankind ever learn to respect eachother no matter what ethnic group or religion?

The land I will show you

Lately I've been feeling kind of restless. I'm at a point in my life where there's nothing new going on. Before there were always changes like a new school, new friends, boyfriend, getting married, etc. There was always some next step ahead, whether it was in everyday schedules or in the faith area. Now it seems the only thing I can do is change jobs but that's not something you usually do every year. We could have kids, that's a huge new change of course. But this requires a settling down of some sort. Don't get me wrong, we would love to become parents. I just find it hard to settle down as I think back on all the things I wanted to do some day and just never did. Of course I know that settling down doesn't necessarily mean that I can't do cool exciting stuff anymore but it does give me a sense of restriction.

Also in the faith area I feel stuck at the moment. I would love to hopp on a plane and just go work for God somewhere where it's really needed. Or do something radical in my own surroundings that really makes a difference for a lot of people. I feel like I'm just following my scheduled routine and not contributing to Gods plan. In fact, I really don't know what Gods plan is. I feel like I followed all the steps you're supposed to do and what I know God asked of me in the past but now I'm just waiting, not knowing what I'm supposed to do next.

This week I listened to one of my brother's teachings. He talks about Abraham who relied on God so much that he followed His instructions and moved his family to a land unknown.

Now the LORD had said to Abram:

“Get out of your country,
From your family
And from your father’s house,
To a land that I will show you.

I will make you a great nation;
I will bless you
And make your name great;
And you shall be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you,
And I will curse him who curses you;
And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Abraham left his safe and predictable life without knowing where he was going. He didn't know what was going to be next. He just expected God to show him the next step when it was time.

If God tells you the whole plan in advance you will be tempted to do it your own way. But if He only tells you step A you have to trust Him for step B. Also it gives a greater level of intimacy because you will be searching for step B and asking Him about it all the time. There's more dependency and daily interaction with God. So it's actually not so bad that I'm at a point where I don't know what to do, it's just the way God works.

Also God loves to surprise us. So He calls us to go somewhere or do something. What if we didn't go until we knew what was going to happen? God just loves to surprise us and He will take care of us in doing so. It can be very scary to just trust the Lord in that place just before you get the surprise. In the bible it says a father wouldn't give his child a stone when it asks for bread. Neither will God. He will surprise you with something nice, something unexpected. And He can do amazing things in the middle of ordinary routine life.

When I was younger I used to feel that with the help of God I could change the world, that I could do anything for the Lord. But now I find myself keeping my seat warm in church. I started to get the feeling that my time to do great spontaneous things has slowly slipped away, even though I'm not that old but my teenage and youth years are definitely over. But as my brother emphasizes in his sermon; you are never too young or too old. Jesus was 12 when he started doing amazing things. Mary was a teenager when she gave birth to Jesus. But also Noah was very old when he started to do significant things. Mozes was 80 years old before he led the Hebrews out of Egypt. And Abraham was 75 years of age when he moved his entire family to the land God would show him.

And then there's the trust issue. Will I jump when God asks me to? What if I fall? God will catch me, I know. But still there's this discomfort, this strange feeling, what if... My responsibility is in obedience. And God will make sure that I succeed or not. So it's great that I want to do all kinds of great stuff for Him but I need to learn to obey as well. The uncomfortable feeling is actually good. It keeps you 'awake' in your faith. We are meant to be comfortable as children of God but at the same time uncomfortable because we need to do things we don't know what the result will be. We need to be comfortably uncomfortable.
Sometimes the Lord calls us to do something that seems crazy or very little or insignificant. But you never know what the Lord is going to do with it. And although it's scary you don't go without a promise. God will not abandon you as you go along. We don't control how things are going to be received but our responsibility is to jump. And Jesus will always be with us.

I love the remark my brother makes in his sermon about the greatest danger to us not being drugs, alcohol, porn or the devil trying to tempt us all the time. The greatest danger to us is allowing the intimacy with God and expectation to disappear. If we stop expecting the Lord to do something in our life and totally surprise us with where we're at. If we get caught in the mundane cycle of life and stop expecting. As the lame man in Acts 3 was begging for money at the gates of the temple. Peter says: "I don't have any money but what I do have I give you freely, get up and walk". The man stands up and starts walking and dancing. This man had been begging for money for so long that he forgot that God could give him his walking back. His expectations were gone.

So I pray that I keep expecting miraculous things. That I will be comfortably uncomfortable and take up my responsibility to jump and that I will be surprised by the result.

(with thanks to my brother for his teaching, I really needed to hear it)

Shauni's Swing

I was going through my pictures and films and came across this funny video. This was shot during Boerengolf which we did with our teenager group. I might even send it to "Funniest home video's". No teens or animals were seriously injured. Please don't try this at home :)

Babies here, babies there, I see babies everywhere

A lot of our family and friends are having babies at the moment. Some already have kids but are going for a second child. Others are either expecting their first child or just had their first child been born. Is it just me or are there really babies everywhere I go?! It almost seems there's a little baby boom going on :)