Onwards!

Good afternoon and I suppose a Happy New Year to you, even if we are now coming to the end of January. Hope you all had a lovely Christmas but now it's back to routine and normality. I am now back up at Eston and ready to carry on the work I began last year and ready to pick up my weekly blogging, did you miss me?

So, my first week back and the week once more provided me with opportunity to meet people I would have had no chance of meeting before and on top of that to talk to them about faith and about Christ was just a blessing. I look back at the last 5 months and I have had so many opportunities to talk to people about Jesus, it's quite incredible. Whether that be with fellow Christians or through School assemblies or by simply talking to the person who has come to the Salvation Army for help. There is a lovely song called "God be in my Head" and a lyric in that song says "God be in my mouth, and be in my talking". A way for us to communicate God is by talking about Him, not hiding him away and pretending to get on with our lives. In November during a week of training with ALOVE (Youth department for the Salvation Army), we were on Oxford Street handing out leaflets inviting people to visit the Christmas Fair in Regent Hall Salvation Army. As I was doing this, a man walked past me very quickly and said "Jesus loves you!" and I heard him tell that to everybody he walked past on that street. I saw some people have quizzical look on their faces and some even laughing but has he not got the right idea? Okay, his methods are probably not the best but this man was telling everybody about Christ. What does it say in Matthew Chapter 28? "...go and make disciples of all nations...", "All nations", that means everyone should know about Jesus and the love He has for them. I echo the prayer of that song may God continue to be in my talking, may I have the courage to speak of Him to all people of all nations.

I've called the blog "Onwards", and my thinking of this comes from the idea of onwards we go into the new year. Now, I may upset a certain generation of people who read my blogs but I am not a big fan of the song, "Onward Christian Soldiers", I like the words but the tune really annoys me. But sticking to this idea going onward really hits me. 2014, apart from the 20 days that have already been, this year is unknown, no one knows what it is going to bring and for some people, including me to an extent, this scares them. The idea of them not being in control and not knowing what lies in store really bothers them. But my message for this blog is very simple, although we don't know what lies ahead and things may change and this year may bring all sorts of concerns and surprises, God's love remains the same. Gary picked an excellent song yesterday written by the late General John Gowans which says those words, "His Love remains the same". So why do we fear the unknown of 2014 if we know that God's love won't change. The year may have changed but God's love hasn't. I pray for myself that I may go onward into the unknown of this year with the confidence that God loves me and I pray that you reading this will too know the unchanging, unfailing, unconditional, incomprehensible Love of God.

I'm looking forward to this year, so many exciting things are going to happen and I am so thankful for the situation I am in; I have the most wonderful people who love me in the form of my family and Sophie, I have the privilege to be here to learn from the wise and lovely people Gary and Lorraine and I have a God who has been faithful and has got me this far, I think I'll trust him for the future.

God Bless.


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@peggo36
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