Dreams Really Do Come True

I am a bit of a dreamer or a ponderer, not sure which, maybe they are very similar to each other.  But I do love to day dream, I dream about revival, I dream about praying for people to be healed, I dream about seeing peoples legs grow out from stumps, I dream about receiving huge lumps of money and giving it away, but I also dream of other things like getting a bigger house, seeing the world, being able to eat and not get fat (come on girls, we all dream about that!), Tele Transportation Star Trek style and being able to go to Disney World Florida as many times as possible.  Now some of those dreams seem quite reasonable, some of them seem a bit far fetched but some of them also seem a bit frivolous. But I believe that all our dreams are important to our Father God and he doesn't distinguish between those that are, in our eyes, far fetched or frivolous.  He loves for us to dream, he loves to hear all about our dreams and he loves to full fill our dreams.

About a month ago I put on Facebook that I would love to go to the Star Wars Weekend in Disney World, mainly because I knew the kids would soooooooo enjoy it, but I also knew we would all have so much fun! I thought it was impossible and it was just another day dream, but somebody commented on the status and said 'Why don't you go in Half Term?'.  This set me thinking, and thinking and thinking - a bit like Pooh Bear 'Think, think, think'.  I started to think, why don't we go in Half Term, is that even possible?  So I say to Steve 'Wouldn't it be amazing if we could find a really cheap deal and go to the Star Wars Weekend during Half Term - but it would have to be really cheap which I don't expect is possible!'  There it was, I had thrown down the gauntlet to Father God, Steve and to myself, was this possible?! For the next few days there was an awful lot of internet searching and investigating, I didn't really hold up a lot of hope as it is half term and when I was saying cheap, I was meaning really cheap (in Disney terms anyhow).  We found out about a budget airline (Monarch for those interested) and we started to put in dates and see what came out.  Half Term was, as you would expect, very expensive but amazingly the week either side of it was half the price and possibly affordable.  More research was done, more figures calculated, more day dreaming! Before I knew it Steve had produced a spreadsheet with how much it would cost to the penny.  There was quite a large deficit between what was saved and what we needed, but I started to look through the budget spreadsheet and pull together money from all the little corners we have, and low and behold, we had the money!  We couldn't quite believe it, we checked our figures a few times, we checked the prices with the airline quite a few times to make sure there weren't any hidden costs we didn't know about and then we came to the conclusion, we could go!!!!

Sadly then we started to have a crisis of confidence - just because we can afford to go, should we spend all this money on one week! This is a slightly mad and frivolous idea - we could do so much else with that money.  I have to admit I felt embarrassed that we might go and spend lots of money on another holiday having only just been to Rome and what would people think! But then I started to remember my dream of being able to take the kids to the Star Wars Weekend, and of being able to go to Disney World many times and knew how excited the kids would be and I wanted to be able to give them this amazing gift of going for one mad week to do something that they will remember for ever! I began to get an inkling of what the Father must feel when he gives great gifts, we couldn't wait to see the kids faces when we told them, that not only were we going to Disney for the best weekend ever, but we were going in two weeks time!! As I thought about the joy that this was going to give us, I began to realise how much joy it must be giving the Father to be able to give this gift to us as a family.  I could feel his smile and love shining down on us so we hit the 'Book it' button!

I have to say we had the best fun ever!!!! It was such a blessed week and despite coming back completely shattered, it was definitely the right decision.  Making memories with your kids is so important, full filling their dreams is so amazing and letting God flood your life with blessings and full filling your own dreams, however frivolous they may seem, is fantastic.  So looking in from the outside it must have seemed like madness to go for one week, but from our perspective it was the hugest blessing from our Father, heaped on us with all his love and a fullfillment of dreams, because,as they say in Disney, dreams really do come true!

Church and Revival

I have been part of a local church for most of my life and have been very active in New Frontiers Churches since marrying my Husband in 1994.  We have run Housegroups, Alphas, Student Groups, led worship, been Trustees, been involved with Kids work - you name it we have done it! And for the most part have enjoyed it. But there came a point before we left our church there were more and more things that just didn't sit right with us, not because they were wrong but because we just didn't feel this was where our heart was anymore.  We weren't interested in having a church building, and being a big church in the city.  This whole ethos has never sat well with me particularly, but I thought that was the way to do it so went along with it, but really I don't think this option works for everybody.

I can see that there is a huge need for the local church and the work that they do, especially working into communities and the such like, but what about 'Joe Blogs' off the street, where does he fit into this.  However hard we try, churches seem to be middle class, academic, youth and student based organisations, not that this is wrong but there are a lot of people who don't fit into these criteria, how do they cope with a church where they don't have a 'place'.  There is coming a day when we are going to see a huge revival and I really don't think that the only people who are going to come to know Jesus in this revival will be middle class or students! How will 'Joe Blogs' or 'Josephine Blogs' cope with this alien set up of 45 minutes of worship, followed by some notices and then 45 minutes of an academically based exegesis of a bible passage?  I don't think that it is unfair to say that they probably won't cope!  So there has to be an alternative, but what is that?

This is difficult to answer at the moment, but I know that God is opening a way up for a new type of church or better still a whole new way of doing church. Have you ever given much thought to why we do church the way we do?  How much of it is tradition and dare I say religion?  What would it be like to do it completely different?  What could it look like?  These are the questions that we are pondering and asking Father God to help us with.

So we are looking at the bare bones of what church is, which is to gather with people who love God to spend time together and focus on him.  For the last couple of months we have been gathering people we know on a Friday or Saturday evening once a month, to have a meal together and have a time of worship or something along those lines.  It has been a really fantastic experience and really encouraging for us.  One of our prayers has always been that the Father blesses us with every heavenly blessing so that we can be a blessing to others and I would love our house to be a place of blessing.  One where people come in for a good meal, good company and some great worship and go off refreshed and blessed to go about their daily lives in their churches and homes. We don't want to start a church, but we want to live a life where we are the church. rather than going to a church.  I think opening up our homes is going to be an amazing way to cope with the numbers of people who will come to know God in a revival.  It wont be for everyone, as with 'Big Church', but it will definitely suit people who maybe don't fit into the other option.

How will this look as time goes on?  Well to be honest we don't really know, we are walking a path where we can't see round the corner, but we are trusting in God and know that he is leading us and that he is good all the time.  We said when we left our church that we were on an adventure to see what God was doing out there in the big wide world, we didn't know at the time that it would mean not being in a church! God moves in mysterious ways:-).