The future

I do not know what the future holds for me.

But my God is a good God and I know that He has something awesome planned.

It may sound strange, but people (Christians) often tell me that they feel that God has something amazing planned for me. The truth is that this can be said to each one of us. When we become Christians we are giving our lives over to God and trusting Him to use them to His glory, through His works. Personally I find this so exciting; is there possibly a future greater than one living for and serving my God? I think not. 

I am seventeen and have just applied to university to study Economics. During these past few months I have found it really difficult to know what God wants for me. Although I feel that I may be heading down the wrong path having applied to study Economics, I can already see points in my future where I know God can show me the way if Economics is not His plan. Therefore, I am confident that, as long as I stay close to Him, I will be taken through His plan for me; an awesome and exciting one where I shall grow ever closer to my God. Following God’s plan will not be easy, nor plain-sailing; but it will be millions of times better than following my own plan (having already found this out first-hand).

 I know for definite that God is calling me to help those who suffer from social injustice and even knowing this is a great comfort when sometimes I despair at my lack-of-a-plan. I know that the remainder of this year will be a strain on my relationship with God as I battle with exams, making time for Him, and trusting that He has it all in control. I have already found that talking to my Christian friends about God’s plan has really opened doors and helped me know what I want and consider how God is working in those plans. Getting my friends to pray for me, and praying for them too has strengthened our relationships and of course, our own relationships with God. One of the opportunities which has arisen from praying with friends and family is that I have just been accepted on a mission trip to Latin America (either Guatemala or Nicaragua) with Latin Link this summer. I am so excited because I know that four weeks of straight-out serving God in Latin America will test both my faith and hopefully challenge the people we meet in the communities we visit. I have discovered through this process that even when I don’t know what the future holds, when I seem to be failing God, He will pick me up, set me straight and put me back on His path. He knows what’s best for me and I want what He wants.

Ephesians 2:10
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. 

Proverbs 19:21
Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand. 

Thank you so much for reading, any comments are most welcome.

God Bless and be encouraged that God has an awesome plan for you too!

Love

Esther

P.S. This is a post which may be updated as I grow in knowledge, gain experience and learn more of God's will for me. :) 
P.P.S. This is a taster of what I feel called to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nnqOI4mVKc (love this) 

Having originally written this months ago, I now know that I was right-Economics was the wrong path. After many hours of prayer from me, my parents and my friends, I realised that what both god and then I wanted to really pursue was International Development (with Economics). I seem to have found the perfect course at the Unversity of Bath. I wrote to them after I had received an offer for Economics from them asking them if I could change course to IDwEcon. Surprisingly they were really keen and offered me a place, with lower grades too! Only later did I discover that they only have 20 places per year and they had been kind enough to offer one to me! God has sent me so many blessings. 

Today I have also been reassured that this is God's plan as I have been accepted for a four-and-a-half month mission trip with Crosslinks during my gap year. This is closely linked to what I will hoppefully be studying in my university course and is just so encouraging. 

Another detail I was right about was that this year will be hard. A-levels are tough, but keeping by God's side in the midst of them is tougher. So many distractions have come my way and I have been finding it so easy to use the constant excuses of 'I'm too busy' and 'I'm too tired'! However, my God is a faithful god and He has loved me and kept with me throughout this year, even when I have not loved him or kept by His side. So many times when I have felt far from Him, or just having a realy bad day someone has asked me about my faith, God or church, which will always brighten my day. I have started to appreciate the beauty in my surroundings more and God has taught to appreciate everyone, everything and every day.

More to come...

It's Our Time

This weekend I've been at a youth weekend away where youth groups from the Southeast of the UK gather together. I was eagerly awaiting the meeting on the Friday night, but was disappointed at what met me: an unenthusiastic band and a semi-passionate speaker. His message was great but the passion was lacking and as a result I felt that many people were switched off. He didn't seem to be living for God, yet he had given his life to Him. So when I got home this afternoon, tired and bored I took to searching the internet, as I often do, for some sort of interesting Christian media. YouTube was on my hit list and when the homepage appeared I felt led to the user 'IgniterMedia' who I subscribed to ages ago and promptly forgot about. I have stolen today's title from a video I found on their YouTube channel. This is the video I watched:

This video to me portrays the urgency needed to awaken our generation to the service of our King. God is calling us to be His servants and we keenly should answer this call. I often find, myself included, that my generation are good at criticising what happens in churches and moaning about issues such as the old people, the organ or the draughty church. However, this is not what we should be doing. If we think something is wrong there is a three step approach to solving it:
1. Pray about it: prayer is the initial step in everything in life. See what God thinks about it, after all it could be that the majority of the church likes the organ so removing it would have adverse effects.

2. Think about the logistics of it. If you believe that god has said yes, or at least He hasn't said no, consider whether your plan will actually work. It is no use bringing up an idea at the church AGM if there is zero chance of success.

3. Present the idea to the congregation, the vicar, pastor or leader of the church is probably a good start. He/she may have had other people suggest similar ideas or may be able to see some flaws in it. They are mostly very wise people and know what is best to do for the congregation so are the best to help you.
If something is wrong in your church, it needs to be sorted or you need to understand why it may not necessarilly be wrong. Don't forget though that in everything we do we should be serving God. The changes you would like to make must be helping to build His kingdom on Earth and anything which stops this from happening is not a good idea.

My favourite band is Rend Collective and probably my favourite song of theirs is Build Your Kingdom Here which I think is a marvellous song for this topic. In all we do, we need to be building God's kingdom here on Earth so I really want to challenge you to think about your actions throughout today and consider whether they are building God's kingdom or preventing it from being built.

Thank you so much for reading, any comments are most welcome

God Bless and keep kingdom building

Love

Esther 

P.S. I would advise you to take a listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbdJXKqVgtg

Practical Fellowship

Practical ways to live out fellowship:
I know of many Christians who have friends who they call their 'accountability partners'; these people help them keep on God's path and often pull them through the trials of life. A mutual accountability often works well as everyone has something to give to other people and that way both partners have equal authority. This is a great way for individual fellowship but it is not enough for you to simply rely on one person to support you on your journey with Christ.

Church is the obvious answer to this topic: most of the time you can find people of your own age or people just a bit older if you are still younger. Having people of your own age is really important as they understand what you are going through in life and can often provide first-hand experience advice. People a bit older are often wiser, yet still have a lot of relatability. As a 16 year-old, I find having people who are aged between about 22 and 30 who I can chat to, pray with and call my friends is extremely helpful. (This is why I respect and admire many of the leaders at my camp; they are so genuine and simply want to do all they can for you.) Looking for a Bible study group/ home group/house group/ small group/ cell group or whatever you want to call this sort of thing is also really important as I find once again that these people are people who can answer your questions and be personable to you. Bible study groups often form a very supportive centre to a group of Christians as you journey through exploring the Bible together.

Another sort of fellowship I would encourage would be fellowship with out-of-town Christians (people who are not from your church or your town). I find that the advantage of this is that when you chat to this type of person about an issue, they are looking on the issue with outsiders' eyes and therefore can offer a different perspective, generally an unbiased one. This has helped in many occasions in my life when I have been worrying about something and a friend has pointed out that actually not everyone sees things as I do. I have found letters a brilliant place to express my worries, feelings and thoughts to someone who can read it at home and reply when they are ready. There is also a relief of just telling someone about something which I find is a lot greater when it is someone who you know will actually spend some time with you going over the issue.

A few of these methods are repeated from my previous post but I thought it may be clearer for me to do an individual post for anyone who is struggling with fellowship or keeping their faith going.

Thanks for reading

God bless,

Esther

Fellowship

I always thought that the word fellowship was a bit outdated and referred more to my parents' generation rather than mine. It seemed to be the type of word that people would whip out when trying to sound holy, especially when praying. However, the truth is that I had got the completely wrong end of the stick. The word is great, I just didn't know its true meaning..

The Oxford dictionary defines the word fellowship to mean 'friendly association, especially with people who share one’s interests'. In our case, as Christians, our common interest is or course Christ (it's in the name). So when we talk about fellowship in church, we are really just talking about being friendly with other people who go to church. I often find that actually doing what the Bible tells us to do is really difficult and that the instructions it sets before us seem hard to relate to my own life. However, I think that when it is put in a form such as 'meeting with your Christian mates and having a chat about life and your faiths', it can seem rather a lot easier.

This weekend I have been at a reunion for a Christian camp I went on in the summer. The camp is the best place I have ever been and both years I have been, I have definitely grown in my faith. I think that the biggest part of camp are the leaders who are amazing and make the whole week so great. The other youth members are so supportive and caring too so together it feels like a huge family. I often find myself missing camp and the times we had together, but most of all I miss the Brambletye (name of the camp) family. This weekend has made me realise more than ever how fantastic and important it is to have a whole load of Christian friends who support you, pray for you and love you like siblings: fulfilling the ever-so-cringey phrase of 'sisters in Christ!' We all have troughs and peaks in our journey with Christ and during the hard times we often need someone to chat to; someone who we know won't judge us, and someone who will continue praying for us even when we ourselves stop praying for us. These people of course must be Christians, so while I encourage having a wide network of non-Christian friends, it is more important ,in my opinion, to have supportive and caring Christian friends surrounding you. One of my best friends is a girl from camp who I have actually only met for two weeks and two weekends in my whole life, yet through the wonder which is Skype,letters and prayer, we have formed the most unbreakable bond and she is more than a sister to me. She is the one I go to when I am desperate as I often feel that my parents may judge me if it is them who I tell. This sort of relationship with a Christian friend is what fellowship is all about (no I am not trying to say that my friend and I are showing a perfect relationship of fellowship). We need friends and often family around us to support us on our journey with Christ; to love us and help us grow in faith. This is why it is so vital that we practise fellowship with other Christians. Just note that you need to give as much into the relationship as they do in order for you all to gain the maximum amount possible out of it. God will of course help you as a group and you need to keep him in sight at all times.

1 John 1:7 (NIV) "If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin."

So to sum up: God is good and acts through others in fellowship to help us build our relationship with Him and our Christian friends. If we want to be like Jesus, we should practise fellowship-Jesus had fellowship with many people, mainly His disciples and as the verse above tells us, we can be purified of our sins and have fellowship with one another if we walk in the light. Christian friends are the best and God will work through your troubles, often using these people so by sustaining strong relationships with friends, you are giving God another option through which He can reach you.

I hope this post has been interesting and helpful. I would love any comments and/or feedback you have.

God Bless

Esther

Thought for the day: Lost Hope?

'After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward.”'  Genesis 15:1

We should look to Abraham as an example of hope. Abraham didn’t lose faith in God even though he was extremely old and could die any day. His faith and trust in god paid off.

Three things we should remember:

1.        Don’t be too narrowly idealistic-Don’t just give God a list and expect it all to be done.

2.      Keep dreaming-God works with us to achieve what is right for us and if possible, to help us achieve what we want too.

3.      Thank God for every little success as well as the big ones.

LISTEN!

Just a small disclaimer that whatever I write on these posts are simply my own views and I am not saying that they are all right, there may indeed be holes in them... There are two aspects of listening which I am going to explore: listening to God and listening to each other. I think that both of these are really important in our Christian lives.

Listening to God 
Christians are well known for prayer and as we all know, prayer is the sort of topic which comes up at any christian conference, course or week away we go on. I often find myself asking God for things when I pray and then wondering a week or two later why He hasn't answered my prayer. This may be a childish thing to think, but I believe that we have all probably thought it at least once before. God makes it clear in the Bible that we must listen to Him in so that we can follow in the path He lays down before us. 
Some people may say that the first part of the well-known verse Matthew 7:7 ('Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.') tells us that we simply need to ask and God will give us what we ask for. We need to listen for the opportunity God gives us to give us these things. 
I use the analogy of a mother and child to illustrate this practise: as a child, you may well ask your mother when tea time is, but you have to stay and listen to her response in order to know what time it is. If you don't stay, you will probably eventually get tea, but you won't know when it will come. You must wait for the answer of the question you yourself have asked. 
Luke 8: 21 (NIV) says: 'He (Jesus) replied "My mother and brothers are those who hear God's word and put it into practise."' Jesus is talking about His christian family not His genealogical family and personally I would love to be included in Jesus' family. Therefore, I take this verse to mean that it is imperative to us to listen to God. By listening to Him, we can know what He wants us to do and if we know this we can do His work, thus completing the second part of the verse. THIS is how we can start to do God's work on earth; we need to open our ears to Him first.  

Listening to Others 
This can be a way in which God speaks to us, lets us know His plans.However it can also be a vital part of our relationships with other Christians and non-Christians. When we are there to listen to people, they often feel safer around you and friendship can bloom through these relationships. If this relationship is between yourself and a non-christian, it can be a great time to offer to pray for them if they tell you of some terrible or terrific event that has happened in their life. Listening to others is also a way to love our neighbour as Mark 12:31 tells us to. Listening is a way of respecting others. 
For example, I was at our church's youth Bible study on Monday when the majority of attendees were discussing various issues by themselves; the poor girl who had prepared the Bible study is quite shy and hardly the type to interrupt others. I found out later that the fact that the others hadn't listened to her had really upset her. Some people just simply like being listened to, perhaps they have no one at home to talk to. They may be lonely, or maybe they just find you a bit interesting. You never know what people will tell you until you let them try and as cringy as it is, I will say it... you may also need them one day to listen to you, so treat others as you wish to be treated. 


So to round up...LISTEN! Some methods I have acquired from friends of the best ways to effectively listen to God are as follows (these must be quite good as they work for me and I get very easily distracted):

• sit in a darkened room or a dimly lit one with your eyes closed and just think about God
• sit with some christian music on in the background, try thinking about the lyrics and what they mean
• draw some pictures even if you think you're rubbish at art, God may bring something into your mind to draw

So, I hope this has helped, or at least you've found it interesting. I commend you for getting this far if you are reading this.
God is good!