Faith + Hope + Love

It's the title of the latest Hillsong CD and it's more than good. It is an expression of the heart of the church and the life that it has created in people.

Today, as I stood and sang songs that have been born out of this house, with so much passion and fullness of life, all I could do was say 'thank you'. While sitting in the service, I was just struck with an incredibly deep love for this church, and for the 'house of God' on a global level. It took me back to when I was saved, at a young 17, and the church that I then called home for the next 8 years. It was then, during those first, intoxicating months of knowing Christ and His church, that I remember a deep love and passion beginning to develop in my heart.

For some reason, through the good and the bad that has happened in my 9 years of knowing Him, God has just rooted such a firm love for His house in my heart. At times I thought that I have hated it, I hated the hypocrisy and falseness that dwelled in what seemed like every corner I turned to, I hated the way the leaders treated me and didn't speak life and truth, but lies that fed my insecurity. I despised the way that we as servants, were treated more like slaves for 'his namesake' and I envied the leaders that were getting all of their hopes and dreams fulfilled when all I could see was them having the behaviour and personal skills of a six year old.

But even throughout all of the hurt and pain and what I saw, I still, for some reason believed that the church was Gods answer to a hurting humanity, and that, maybe oneday, other people would see it that way and start standing up to the responsibility that we, as Christs body, have to this dying and lost world. I thought maybe oneday, that the church would look beyond its four walls, look beyond its 'incredible' leaders, look beyond prosperity and blessing to see something so simple...a world in need of faith + hope + love.

Without faith, it is impossible to please God, without hope we have no expectation of good for the future, and without love, we lack the fundamental need of all humanity. We not only need these things, we were created to live and breathe and function out of these things.

To me, Hillsong is a place that continually challenges me to rise up and live out of this 'faith+hope+love' life, a place that has no constraints or limits to who God is and what He can do. A place that is so expectant for good to happen in my life, in the life of my friends and family, in this city and in this world. There is such an incredible atmostphere of God being BIGGER than any circumstance or situation and I love it.

I more than love it.

God doesn't just love the church, He can't, or not in the sense that we know love. If He were to love church like I love chocolate and ice-cream, then we may as well pack up and forget about it, give up. I will abandon my love for chocolate and ice-cream when I get diabetes, or when I decide that I need to eat sugar free, or when I am just bored of it. But God will not abandon His plan for His house, for His people, for His name to be exalted far above all.

See, God more than love's His church, and I think that I'm beginning to see it in a new light, in His light, and I think that I'm beginning to love it in a way that can never be explained by our word 'love', or probably ever explained. It is deep rooted, and it is profoundly breathtaking in the way that it has captured me.

wow.

London is my Ice-cream

This process and journey back to London has been like one of those exciting but furiously tantalizing moments when you're standing at the ice-cream store as a little kid being promised something so delicious, but having to wait for what seems like an eternity for it.

You pull your face up close to the ice-cream counter, deliberate over all of your choices and eventually, after your dad pressures you to hurry up, you make a selection of only one, how do you narrow it down like that? Despite your curiosity of other flavours, and desperately wanting to try them, you can never go past your favourite and ask for that one. You can see the store person scooping up that delicious Hokey Pokey (had to have kiwiana) and plonking it in the cone, you hope and pray that they give you a really, really big scoop, but you're too embarrassed to ask, so you just look up with your big puppy dog eyes and hope that they see you, succumb to the look of desperation, and add another. The ice-cream is so close, you see it dripping off the cone in the hot summer day, but, it is still so far. You can see it just in front of you, and almost touch it and taste it, but it's not quite yours, until the glorious moment happens when they pass it over and you skip out of the shop without a care in the world.

I've felt like that so much lately in life, how do I choose out of all these options? How do I wait so patiently for my ice-cream to be rolled and put on the cone? At last, this ice-cream is mine. I have it in my hand and it is the sweetest, most delicious Hokey Pokey ice-cream I have ever tasted (probably Kapiti or something). I have been waiting for this for months, and now that it is here, and now that I am consuming it, I am skipping around without a care in the world...

Almost.

You know, for me, I have almost put this expectation on God that He is my ice-cream shop owner and I am just waiting, so desperately, for him to give me a really giant scoop of all things good. I am happy, over the moon, with being able to be back in London, but would just like that added scoop please? So I look up with my big puppy dog eyes, and hope and pray that He sees me, but never really just be frank and ask for my extra scoop...isn't that kinda rude? Or so that's what my Mum always told me.

But I seem to think that there are different rules for God the ice-cream shop owner. I mean sure, things aren't always served to us in nice yummy scoops with a waffle cone and chocolate topping, but surely we can just ask. Isn't that the point in God being God?

So here, today, I find myself not only looking up with eyes that will melt His heart, but with sweet words of pleading for my extra scoop on life.

Actually, there's more than just one scoop that I want right now - but for this moment my added scoop that I really need is a job and some money. It's not too much to ask for, but in a way, I feel like I already have my delicious scoop of London, I just need the more. The more is just to enjoy the first better.

I arrived back in London 4 days ago and I felt like I have arrived 'home', which seems to be anywhere for me, but for now, my heart is here and therefore, my home. Getting back on the Underground Tube with my two suitcases from Heathrow airport never felt so good, it didn't matter to me that I had to lug them up and down multitudes of stairs or that no one even offered to help, because, I was home. I waited in one of the longest customs lines that I have ever seen (and I've done my fair share of traveling), but, it did not phase me, because I was home.

There is just a feeling of deep satisfaction and a knowing that life is about to get really great, maybe to a degree of greatness that I have never experienced before. That is my hope, that is my dream.

What ever it is that is waiting ahead for me, I am ready, I am excited and I want to rip it out of the hands of the ice-cream store owner and delve into it with the enthusiasm of a 6 year old.