Don't Look Back

On Sunday we heard a great word from a young guy, all of 23 years old, but he spoke with great authority and wisdom for his age. We felt God really used him to speak to us, this has been happening quite a bit lately, and we felt very blessed and motivated afterwards.

His main passage was Luke 9: 59-62 "He said to another man, "Follow me." But the man replied, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God." Still another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say good-by to my family." Jesus replied, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.""

We were really challenged by an illustration he used to explain the last verse. The illustration was of explorers burning their boats so they can't go back. Right now we feel that this sums up well where we're at. We've been keeping our heads down and getting on with stuff whilst also involving ourselves in the life of the church. On Friday we submitted our redeployment proposal to Crosslinks and feel that in doing this we have burnt our boats so there can be no going back.

We're now on a journey with our friends from Macassar and are really excited about where this is leading us, but wherever it takes us we absolutely will not be going back. The boats are well and truly burnt!

We're very happy with our redeployment proposal and appreciate the input and feedback we had from a few of you and were quite overwhelmed with your very positive and encouraging comments. For us this was another step in confirming the direction God is leading our lives and we feel that we're in the best place possible to move forward in His purposes.

Graham (our pastor) recently preached from the prayer of Jabez. Most preach or teach on this verse in a pseudo 'prosperity gospel' kind of mode but Graham approached it from the perspective of positioning ourselves as Christians to be involved in God's purposes and therefore be blessed by Him. Again we felt this was a word specifically for us and feel that our time back since January has been very much about positioning ourselves ready to serve the kingdom by serving the local church.

Joining Love & Grace in Mitchell's Plain has been great and we're enjoying getting a bit involved in the life of the church and building some great friendships, but we're even more excited about where God is leading in the midst of all this.

As Jesus said: "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God." We're most certainly not looking back!