This week I’m down in Christchurch for a public speaking training module, as part of my new staff training for Student Life. I’ll be here for another two days, and while it will be good to get home, I’ve really enjoyed the week so far, and the things we’ve been learning and doing.

Some of the things include getting a chance to prepare a first draft, and deliver, the messages we’re giving at this year’s student conference in July, as well as devotions and debates to help us learn about how we present ourselves up front (we video our devotional talks, and then play them back so we can see ourselves - scary!) All in all, this training has been very valuable. Now to put it into practice…

Trusting God is one of those things that is much easier to talk about than actually do. For one thing it can be hard to trust God in tough circumstances or situations; times where worldly wisdom would tell us either to give-up, or that logically we’re being foolish.

It’s also hard to trust God for the unknown, or when we’re waiting for something where we don’t have any clue of the time frame we’ll be waiting for. This is perhaps where I struggle more. I say I trust God, and I am trying to, but that doesn’t mean I don’t worry about something when I know God has control of it.

In many cases it turns out that we know God has control of the situation, we know that we have no control ourselves, and we know we have to wait. There is nothing one can do except wait! Yet we (I) still think “what-if…” or try and do things in our (my) own strength to give the situation a little hurry-up or help-out.

Being perfectly honest, sometimes we questions where God has us. I’m in one of those places at the moment with how work is going (CCC staff will know what I mean when I say “MPD”). With this in mind, I decided to write down some of the things I enjoy about my work, and why I took the job.

•  People. My heart is to see others walking fully in what God has for them, in order that God be fully glorified. In this job I get to work with people directly to see this happen.
• Faith. Faith is required in order to see this goal reached. That means I am continually challenged. It also means that I cannot do it in my own strength.
• Personal Development. Being challenged means personal development has to happen if I want to grow in this job. I don’t ever want to be in a job where I’m not challenged to grow personally.
• Sharing Jesus. Sharing Jesus fits into all of the above categories. Sharing with others is not easy, but I feel good doing it.
• Seeing God work. Not only do I desire to see others’ lives changed, but I get to see it in this job.
• This is where God has put me. There is not doubt that this job is in some way part of God’s overall plan for my life, and his glory.

I was checking out the stats for subscriptions to my RSS feed today. It turns out that there are 5 of you who are getting updated when I post, through apps like Google Reader etc. While I can take some guesses as to who you are, I think it would be better if you’d pop over here and introduce yourselves. So, why not take a minute now and tell us who you are in the comments of this post?!

I’ve finally had a chance to finish sorting through and uploading all of my photos from Bangkok. I took approx. 1150 photos, and kept 252 of them…

I was reading a book recently which asked the question, “What are five things you can thank God for today?” (or at least that was the gist of it). Great question. That got me thinking, why not take some time to thank God for five things every day? Not to be all religious about it, but if I can’t think of five simple things to thank God for each day, then I’m probably not generally cultivating an attitude of thankfulness!

So here are five things that I can thank God for today:

1. Safe travel back home from out-of-town.
2. Encouragement from friends.
3. A loving family.
4. My ministry partners.
5. A new (to me) cheap bed.