God has been amazing recently, showing me so many different lessons and and areas to grow in and my heart and thoughts have been changed in deep and long-term ways.
One of the big things God has been stirring in me are big picture thoughts about the future, not detailed steps, but about how I want to live my life.
I have been reading Shane Claibourne's "Irresistible Revolution" which has been exciting and challenging and God has been changing me and my thinking throughout it. It's a great book - some of which I agree with, some of which I'm more dubious about.
The main thing God has challenged me on and from that, change has come, is my vision and what my dreams are for my future.
Had you asked me a few months ago what I envisioned for the next few years, I would have told you I want to finish a three-year degree, start a career, get married, have kids at some point, be a stay-at-home mum, take kids to school, then maybe go back to work at some point, have grand-kids and then die. Great. Is that literally all there is to life? I just got to a point where I wondered if there was more? Because if that's life, it's not the life I want to lead. I'm not saying that kind of life is boring or wrong or anything, I just don't know if its for me.
With that, I've massively been thinking about community and living in community, what that means, what that could look like, how does intentional community practically work?
Essentially, community bases on love and I want to be a lover of people and Jesus calls us to that. Community seems like a way that I can live that out, living and loving each other which is not only what Jesus calls us to for each other, but is also an incredible evangelistic tool and way of loving people who may seem unlovable, of drawing broken, seeking, lonely people into the love of Jesus and His church. Can we live out the Acts 2 community that the early church lives out?
God really stirred in me a dissatisfaction with the life I had imagined for myself, almost this "perfect life" I had envisaged. I don't want to live in the ordinary! I want to lead a God-inspired extra-ordinary life!
I want to travel. I would love to travel to the two extremes that this world lives in - go and visit churches and people in the West, for instance in America, Australia, New Zealand and see how they do life; the positives and the negatives and the differences. I then want to go and see the other extreme in India or Africa, and see the beauty in life in those hard, impoverished environments and learn from both. I want to learn to love from as many sources as I can so that I can fulfill what Jesus has called me to do in the middle ground of the two extremes.
In "Irresistible Revolution", Shane Claibourne lives in a community that leads a really simple life, living in ways that seem radical and extreme to our culture. I don't feel like God is calling me to the same life that Shane Claibourne lives, although (and this is so strange that I feel like I can say this) if God called me to that, I think I would be OK with that.
I do think there's a place to radically step out of the norm and into something drastically different, but I wonder though, if we can love radically and live in extraordinary community right were we are. There's nothing wrong with having a nice, comfortable, homely home, but we need to acknowledge and live in the truth that it is a gift from God and we can use it for Him. If God blesses me with a home like that, I want my front door to be known as an open door, where people can drop in for a cup of tea or coffee when they're having a bad day. I want people to know that if they find themselves stranded somewhere with no way of getting home, they can call my family and we'll come and get them straight away. I want a home where people know there's a place for them to sleep if they need it. I want a family home that people who have never known a "home" or a positive family can come into and know what family and a home can be. I want to have a home and a family that is built around loving people and drawing them into community and showing them Jesus.
I just want to love and live radically and invite people in and show them Jesus' love. If we love Jesus, we should be loving people: the successful ones, the arrogant ones, the least, the lost, the poor. Each and every one. It's a tough calling to love and I have no idea how to go about it but I know that I want to try and go for it.
I want Jesus to take my life on an adventure, a non-conventional and different life, living for Him, whatever that looks like.
