Sweet Recollections

I distinctly remember my first day at the Crossing. I was incredibly nervous. I picked out my best clothes, tried to look as good as possible, be as nice as possible, basically, I wanted to give a really good first impression. And then I lived with these people for nine months so now they know all my quirks. They’ve seen me on my good days and on my bad days. They’ve seen me living in the spirit and living utterly in the flesh. It would be impossible to even begin to capture all the memories, the laughs, and the learning into ten minutes. So instead, I’ll share with you a bit of my testimony: why I went to the Crossing, what God has been doing in my life over the past year, and what God has been teaching me since I’ve been home.

I could possibly say that I decided to go to Bible College for many of the wrong reasons, but I believe God will use anything to bring us closer to Himself. I think my main reason for going to Bible College was because I was thirsty. I knew I needed a deeper relationship with Jesus, but it just wasn’t working for me. I had always seen myself as a ‘good little Christian girl.’ I’m slightly obsessive about following rules. I’ve never really been ashamed of telling people I’m a Christian. I’ve never been one to take part in wild parties or any of the other extremes. So I was thinking to myself: “If I’m so good, why do I feel so bad? I have an amazing family, I have awesome friends, I live in a town that has three Tim Horton’s within walking distance of each other, so why are there days when I still ache inside?” There is no one reason why I chose New Zealand (although the fact that they made Narnia there was sweet as!) but one of those reasons was that I wanted to get away. And I wanted to find out why my relationship with Jesus had gone stale.

It’s a Heart Thing
The first week just about blew my mind! It’s kind of ironic to think though that everything I heard in that week was all stuff my parents, Sunday school teachers, pastors, and youth leaders had endeavoured to teach me time and time again and yet I had to travel half way across the world before I got it! But I have learned that God reveals His truth in His perfect timing. We learned about the Sermon on the Mount that week and I think it could be summed up as “It’s a heart thing.” I learned that law can only make me aware of how sinful I really am. And I learned that all my actions, whether I’m acting out in anger in response to someone else, worrying, holding a grudge, or being impatient, are not so much reactions as they are a revelation of what is in my heart. And it is only the saving life of Jesus Christ in me that can change my heart. But as a Christian, I also learned that I have a choice. I can either live for myself, fulfilling the desires of my flesh, or I can love for God, allowing Him to get the glory


God Demands all the Glory
And that leads me to my second point: God deserves all the glory, point final. I’d like to share a poem with you that I wrote after my first week at The Crossing:
Lost For Words
I am spectacularly, wonderfully
Lost for words
You amaze me, astound me
Take my breath away
I am lost in Your presence
And now I understand
My life is nothing more than Your story
I live for nothing less than Your glory
I am lost to myself
You indwell me, live through me
You do all things for Your glory alone
I have died to myself
So that You can live through me
It’s not about me
It’s for You
For Your glory!

Seeing God as He is
One of the most important things I learned at the Crossing was about who God is. I tend to see God first and foremost as a God of perfect live – which He is – while forgetting that He is also a God of perfect wrath. No one in the Bible hugs God on their first encounter. Upon further investigation, we found that everyone falls to their face, fears for their life, or is rendered speechless. I never realized that God is more like a lion than a lamb: able to tear me to pieces. But I know that, because of the righteousness of Christ that clothes me, I can approach the throne of God with both dignity, but also complete humility. “The dignity comes from the fact that I’m now worthy to come at all times; the humility comes from the fact that I had absolutely nothing to do with this worthiness.” I realized that I have been worshiping a god that I have made small and nice and gentle. But now I realize that I want to know God for who He is, not as I would prefer Him to be.

Catching my own fish
I realized very early on that the reason I was so hungry was because I wasn’t eating! Don’t you hate those mornings when you sleep through your alarm? You spend the next 20 minutes dashing madly around the house, throwing your books into your bag, splashing some water on your face, picking out something half decent to wear (that’s right, you forgot to put the clothes in the dryer last night!). Finally, you’re ready to go and in your eagerness to leave the house, you almost lock your keys inside. And it’s not until half way through your first class or your important meeting that your stomach begins to growl. “Hmmm,” you think to yourself, “maybe I put on the wrong shirt this morning. That must be why my stomach is growling.” So, during the next break, you head discretely to the bathroom to change (lucky you threw that extra shirt in your bag this morning!). When that doesn’t work, you decide to try giving your hair a good comb. But your stomach is still growling, so you attempt to make friends with the class mate at the desk next to you or the co-worker in the cubicle across the aisle. Ok, so this story is a little dumb, but, unfortunately, it’s true! Yep, that’s me! For way too long, my spiritual stomach was growling and I tried everything other than spiritual food!
God taught me that He doesn’t want me to simply identify with Him, He wants me to Assimilate Him. When Jesus shared the Passover meal with His disciples, He told them to eat Him and drink Him. In the same way, as I eat my bowl of cheerio’s and drink my OJ for the nourishment of my body, ‘eating and drinking Jesus’ needs to be of utmost importance to me since it is my spiritual nourishment.
I heard about a guy who, for a scientific experiment, ingested a small amount of radioactive substance. Using some high tech scientific gizmo placed by the guy’s toes, they were able to determine that it took 6 seconds for the radioactive stuff to enter his blood stream and make its way all the way to his toes. Thus proving that you really are what you eat! Jesus calls us to “be perfect, therefore, as you heavenly father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). I can’t do that, but God can. And so, it is by getting to know Him intimately – by spending time daily in His word and in prayer – that He can begin to transform me.

My daily quiet time has become very valuable to me and God is faithful and keeps revealing nuggets of gold buried in His word.

The End of Myself
I think that the hardest lesson for me (and the one that I am still learning, will it ever cease?) is that I need to come to the end of myself before God can truly work through me. Because I love illustrations, I’d like to share one with you that really helped me to understand just how much I need to rely on God.
Imagine a glove on a table. Now imagine asking the glove to pick up a book. No matter how many times you ask or whether you say please, the glove can’t do anything on its own. It’s only once you put your hand in the glove that it is capable of anything. In the same way, I can do nothing without God. This has been a difficult lesson for me because I can do stuff! I can tie my shoes and count by twos, but it is only when I allow Christ to work through me that anything of eternal value can be accomplished.

Coming Home
I’ve barely begun to skim everything that God has taught me over the past year. And He has been incredibly faithful to continue to teach me and to show me that He is in control. On my way home, I was meant to fly from Christchurch to Sydney then from Sydney to Vancouver and then on to Montreal. Unfortunately, the plane was two hours late leaving Christchurch because they had shipped a defective part to the wrong airport and so had not finished fixing the plane. This meant that I was two hours late arriving in Sydney and had arrived exactly 15 minutes after the only flight to Vancouver had taken off. So I booked a ticket out for the following day, found a hotel, and spent the night in Sydney. The neat thing was that I could have been nervous, I could have freaked out, but I had a sense of peace the whole time because I knew that God was in control and that He was working all things out for His glory. I had no idea why I had to spend the night in Sydney, but I also knew that I didn’t’ need to know, just so long as God got the glory. It was only two hours into the 15 hour flight to Vancouver that I found out. I got to talking to the guys next to me and eventually He asked what it meant to be a Christian. I then spent the next five hours explaining the entire progress of redemption to Him! All the way from Creation, the fall, Abraham, and the sojourn in Egypt to Jesus’ death and resurrection! God is faithful and God is in control!!!!!!!!!

Fond Memories
I have heaps of fond memories of The Crossing. Like having porridge with peanut butter every morning. Or walking into town along the river bed. It should have taken us about 40 minutes and, according to the director, the river was low enough that we could walk the whole way without getting wet, but it ended up taking almost two hours and we all waded through knee deep, freezing cold water. Then there was the time where I ate a live fish... Or receiving mail! Whenever anyone got a package, we would all gather around as the goodies were unpacked. My Mum sent me a package that included a shirt and some backed goods, but the shirt smelled like cinnamon cookies for a week! I’ll miss staying up late, sitting by the open fire and talking about anything and everything with the fifteen students I grew to know and love. I’ll miss the people, I’ll miss the places, but it’s so good to be home, and God has been incredibly faithful to continue to teach me and guide me.