Moving With God

Baby steps of faith, hope and love

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Details: Written by: Alyssa; Category: Life; Published: 27 October 2010

Matt and I made our own sushi last night. With REAL RAW FISH. Neither of us was sick, although we both felt like our brains were getting punched from inside our heads when we added wasabi. I don't know what happens to the wasabi that you get from sushi places in the food court - maybe it dries out or is not as strong because Canadians are wimps - but I literally screamed with surprise and pain when our legit, Chinese-grocery-store-wasabi-from-a-tube kicked in behind my nose and under my brain. The good thing is that just shortly after the wasabi spice has incinerated your will to live, the pain simply ends, unlike hot sauce or peppers, which leave you to suffer for hours until you overdose on milk, choke on bread, or simply drown in your own tears and mucous. Long story short: sushi was a huge success and we're gonna do it again!

This pose is all I remember from our Japanese students in Grade 7. This and something like "oh-ha," very cute.

THIS was a completely unexpected moment of culture, waiting for our friend Joyce outside her building. This is not Joyce. This is an Asian woman in pink leggings and a cape, about a week too early for Halloween. It is difficult to capture how funny she was with this paparazzi-style shot from my cell phone inside the car, but we all laughed. Respectfully ;)

Details: Written by: Alyssa; Category: Thoughts; Published: 20 October 2010

Please pray for Matt and I - life is so busy, and it is good in so many ways, but it can also be hard to keep up and I feel myself wearing thin. I am sick - I missed work but managed to write my midterm tonight - which in a crazy way is good because it forces me to take better care of myself... but it is not good for anything else because I can't think clearly and have no physical stamina. This is all beside the point.

I was reading my Bible while I waited for the bus to school, and decided to pick up where I left off weeks ago in the book of Mark. I started in chapter 8 and continued into chapter 9, struck by Jesus, not really making sense of what he does or says - I mean, it makes sense in a Sunday School kind of way (it's in the Bible, so it's right), but if I imagine these scenes in real life 2000 years ago... no wonder the disciples were confused. In between doing miracles, Jesus tells the Pharisees that they won't get a sign from him, and he's always trying to be covert, healing a blind man outside of the city and telling his disciples not to reveal that he was the Christ.

Read more: Changed Forever

Details: Written by: Alyssa; Category: Thoughts; Published: 10 October 2010

There are two sisters who live on our floor who are believers. Many times when Matt and I have chatted with them, they always manage to insert "Jesus is coming soon" into the conversation.

This I believe, but I don't say it much, especially like "Yes, I'm coming home from work right now. Jesus is coming!" but this morning, I decided to go for it. Matt and I took the elevator down with them on our way to church and we were talking about how great the weather is this weekend. One sister said, "but the time is coming. Winter." And I said, "I hope Jesus comes back first - I will tell him in my prayers - Lord, please come back, maybe Tuesday."

This woman looked me in the face and said, "You are selfish. More people need to know Jesus - he is being patient."

Oh. Right.

So I got busted. If I have any charismatic tendencies, I struggle to take them seriously.

Matt and I talked about it as we walked to church, and we agreed that we liked me being chastised (it's Biblical!). It is better for us to remember that God is being patient than to just be depressed that Jesus isn't back yet and we have bills and snow coming.

Details: Written by: Alyssa; Category: Thoughts; Published: 08 October 2010

In Bible study (at Chazown!!) this week we talked about Moses and how desperately he tried to get out of God's call on his life. One of his excuses was that he didn't know enough about God to tell the Israelites about him. I was struck by God's response - he tells Moses his name (I AM) but also explains who he is - a God of action: God who is sending Moses to his people, God who was with their ancestors, and God who will be remembered through all generations.

God assures Moses that he is not confounded by the Israelites' slavery - he was with Jacob when he brought his family to Egypt generations before - and he will be the God remembered by the children of Israel, not the gods of Egypt.

Jesus' life was not the only time that Yahweh stepped into human history - as he taught Moses in the wilderness near Horeb: he IS. He exists beyond creation, but he desires to be known through creation - through his people and by his people.

Details: Written by: Alyssa; Category: Life; Published: 04 October 2010

I have been busy busy the last few weeks and have wanted to blog but didn't. I have thoughts in the works, but they will have to wait because there is laundry waiting to be moved into a dryer and greasy hair to wash! Life does not feel glamorous, but it is definitely fun, and I am happy to say that despite blogging getting pushed to the side, I am mostly happy with the things that are keeping me busy - playing keyboard in church, seeing friends, walking my ridiculous dog and spending time with this guy I married who made amazing soup today :)

Sunday afternoon was a great break from being busy with things I should do though (laundry, homework, limitless things to clean): Annie and I made cookies!Matt and I had a Brazilian lunch of feijoada at the Keidann's, then Annie and I had the house to ourselves to make a batch of the best decorated cookies I have ever been privileged to help make (note "disco bear" above - and the glittery sprinkles he has on his paws). It made me want to bake more!

Details: Written by: Alyssa; Category: Thoughts; Published: 23 September 2010

One of the youth led Bible study at Chazown this week, and it was great! We read about Peter denying Jesus in Matthew 26, and something new stood out to me - in verse 73 a bystander comes up to Peter and says, "Certainly you are one of [the men with Jesus], for your accent betrays you."

Peter was a Galilean, and the way he spoke made it obvious, even when he was trying to blend in with the crowd outside the courtyard. I don't think Christians should try to keep their faith a secret, but there are many times it may not be possible or appropriate to preach and evangelize. For those times, I hope I will live with an ever-strengthening accent: a humble attitude, gracious spirit, and integrity of character - all testifying to the work God has done in me, so that no matter what my words happen to be, bystanders will recognize that I belong to Jesus.

Details: Written by: Alyssa; Category: Thoughts; Published: 19 September 2010

Matt and I were chatting with an atheist friend of ours who grew up in the church and is now done with God. It was a really good conversation even though he didn't decide to convert at the end. One of the things he said got me thinking though - that IF there were a God (which he denies), he is either not all-knowing or a jerk. Our friend didn't say jerk, but it was a four-letter word that ends in k.

God's a jerk, he says, because he gave humans free will knowing we'd mess it up, and then he punished us for messing up.

Read more: Punishment

Details: Written by: Alyssa; Category: Thoughts; Published: 16 September 2010

I gave my testimony at our church picnic this year, which was great! I was happy to share the great things God has done for me and in me, and it helped me to connect with some new people so I am making more friends at church :) I said more than I wrote down, but here's what I had written:

Hello, I want to say first of all how happy I am to be sharing my testimony with all of you. I hope that you will be encouraged in your faith to hear how faithful God has been to me in my life.

My father is a pastor, and I grew up going to church and learning about God. I believed in Jesus when I was very young, and I was baptized when I was 7 years old. It was always important to me to be a good Christian. I tried to be kind to everyone at school, even if they were unpopular, I memorized Bible verses in Sunday school, and I volunteered at my church’s programs.

When I was 14 I found a lump in my neck. There was a cyst growing on my thyroid that grew bigger and bigger, so by the time I had surgery it was bigger than my fist. There was cancer in the lump, so I had radiation treatment, and after the radiation treatment I had another even bigger surgery to make sure that there was no cancer left in my neck.

This was a very difficult time for my family because my parents were very worried about me. My church was praying for me, and even strangers from other churches who knew my story prayed for me and my family. It was frightening for me too because I felt very young to be so sick, but whenever I was scared or sad I would pray and ask God to help me be brave and to make me better. God helped me and everyone in my family to trust him, and finally my cancer was cured.

Gradually as time passed I started to drift away from God. I knew that he had helped me a lot when I was sick, but I was tired of all the rules to being a good Christian getting in the way of things I wanted to do. I started going to parties with friends and drinking alcohol on the weekend, but I always went to church on Sunday too. This went on for about a year – I still tried to be a good person, and I worked hard in school, but I rarely thought about God and it didn’t seem to matter very much.

Finally one day I was sitting in church hung over and realized that I had become a huge hypocrite. There wasn’t anything in particular happening during the service that convicted me, but there was a stillness in my mind and a very clear understanding that it was time to choose whether I was going to obey God or choose my own path, and I knew that the decisions I was making were not leading to the kind of life I wanted to have.

I prayed and asked God to help me begin a new relationship with him, not just keeping rules so people would see what a good Christian I was, and not just going to church so that I wouldn’t feel guilty, but getting to know God and becoming more like his child. I started going to a mid-week Bible study to get a more solid grounding in my faith, and I started living with more integrity and honesty. It wasn’t easy, and I made a lot of mistakes. I had bad habits, and most of my friends didn’t understand why I would want anything different. I was afraid that I would give up and walk away from God again, but one day when I was reading my Bible I realized that God has made an amazing promise:

Jude v 24 says that God is able to keep you from stumbling and to bring you into his glorious presence faultless and full of joy. When I read that, I memorized the promise so I could remember it in any circumstance, that no matter how much I fail, no matter how weak or vulnerable I am to sin, I can remember that God is able to hold on to me.

What I have learned in my relationship with God is that he loves me more than I can understand, and he cares about my life. He matches all of the effort that we put into our relationship with him, and he helps us to understand and do what is right and to become people who are pleasing to him, who want the same things as he wants for the world.

This past week I was reading in 1 Peter and was struck by chapter 2 verse 10 – “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”

It’s not that God wasn’t merciful before I gave my life to him – he totally was! Merciful by the family he gave me, merciful that things didn’t get more out of hand than they did when I was drinking, merciful to be ready to forgive me before I asked and merciful to convict me, to speak gently to me when I was hungover in church. Jesus died for us while we were still his enemies – Romans 5:8, so what does Peter mean about receiving mercy? I think that before we are saved, it is there for the taking but we don’t accept it. Now that we have accepted it, how fully it is ours! We cannot allow ourselves to question God’s mercy toward us – no amount of backsliding or frailty or lostness can keep us from God’s mercy or disqualify us from forgiveness. It is God’s will to keep us from stumbling and we can claim that promise! God is faithful not only to forgive us but to gently, mercifully shape us and change us – not that we ever get past the point of needing forgiveness, but he makes us able to rejoice in our salvation free of guilt or shame or fear!

Details: Written by: Alyssa; Category: BLAT; Published: 13 September 2010

Matt and I were talking last night about how it is making less and less sense for us not to have a car. Financially it makes all the sense in the world, but spiritually there are so many ways Matt's ministry is stifled by his lack of mobility. Sometimes we are both overwhelmed by our financial situation, but in the spirit of faith that God knows our every need and is able to do more than we ask or imagine, we have decided to pray for a vehicle and trust that God won't give it to us until he also has a way for us to run it.

I look forward to part 2 of this post, when I can share however God has done it :)

Details: Written by: Alyssa; Category: Life; Published: 11 September 2010

God is so funny. For weeks I have been meaning to knock on my neighbour's door and just say hello and that Matt and I would love to get together for a visit some time, maybe invite her over for tea or a smoke on our balcony since she is 83 and her balcony is under construction, so she is forced to smoke in her apartment. This last week specifically, I have been meaning to every day, but each day I had some errand or chore take up time so I excused myself from going by. We have chatted in the elevator and said hi in passing in the hallway, so there was really no reason for my hesitancy and procrastination, but there it was.

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