Thank
you so much for your prayers; my first two and a half weeks have been so busy, and in the
best way!
A
quick summary is that I have quickly felt at home in the community house here
(with a lovely German roommate), and have enjoyed being trained at the hostel’s
café, where guests can order food/drinks and/or just relax. But the most
precious times have been sharing the Gospel at a deeper level – those moments
(or hours, in some cases!) have been such a blessing already! So I’ll share
with you a bit about each of those aspects of life here, leaving the most
exciting ‘til last…
So,
in our community house there are about 25 of us who work at the two hostels
(Shelter City and Shelter Jordan) – I work at the Shelter City, which is a
20-25 min walk or 10-15 min cycle away, depending on how many tourists are in
your way..! We share everything: a kitchen-dining room, which is packed
with breakfasty food, there’s a library for studying, and a living room area
where we have small groups/ communal prayer/worship times. There’s also a
classroom where we have ministry training classes, and a prayer room. Everyone
is lovely; we’re all from different backgrounds, different cultures, and
different levels spiritually, but we all have the same heart for the city and
for evangelism, and are open to learn and grow. I love hearing people’s
testimonies, what God’s doing in their lives, and the plans and desires that
God has given them for the future. It’s really special to be able to seek the
Lord together, and be fuelled by His presence; we’ve had times to intercede for
Amsterdam and the ministry, as well as opportunities to minister to and
encourage each other. I’ve found myself saying ‘we’/’us’ when I’m praying for
the city... we’ll see where God takes my time here, but I found that pretty
interesting(!)
We
begin each shift at the Shelter with a mini Bible study (we’re currently
working our way through Luke) and prayer – this is so important and keeps us
focused on Him, remembering that we’re here as His hands and His feet. We also
learn something new from His Word, and pray for each other’s particular needs
of the day. My favourite shift so far is the busy Morning Café, although I have
to get up at 5.30am and be at the hostel by 7.15am …the morning breath of 50
Spanish boys in a row certainly wakes you up! I’ve learnt how to clean a giant
frying plate and a deep fat fryer, neither of which are pleasant jobs! And my
hands have been destroyed by the freezing weather and a reaction to the
cleaning products, so I asked for gloves, and hopefully my hands will slowly
heal… Lunch and dinner are ideal times to get to know the cleaners, because all
the staff eats together. The cleaners usually aren’t Christians, but are
offered a month’s bed & board in return for 3½ hrs cleaning per day, as
well as joining a daily devotion, which our staff members prepare. (I’ll come
back to getting to know the cleaners in a moment..) The evening seems to be the
best time to talk to the guests about their relationship with God, especially
with candles and fairy lights :) On Thursday and Friday evenings we have film
discussions, open mic nights, and ‘hostel nights’. Hostel nights entail free
food, lovingly cooked by one of the staff, a 5-minute message, and a chance for
the guests to socialise with the team, to get to know us more. Last week was
so full that we ran out of food; our theme was Valentine’s/Love, so my friend
decorated the room with candles. We talked about how God’s love for us
surpasses all knowledge and is a completely different experience to the superficial
‘love’ we find in our culture. I read Ephesians 3:17-19 – apparently my British
accent makes all the difference ;)
One evening, I had a 2½ hr conversation with one of the cleaners, about
how God made it possible for us to enter into a relationship with Him and to
have Christ’s Spirit dwell in us. One of the managers suggested he reads 1
John, because he’d been struggling with the fact that many ‘Christians’ don’t
act like they have Christ’s Spirit in them. The cleaner’s opinion was that
surely only if you reach ‘perfection’ (which, in his eyes, is to allow Christ
to take over fully and thus be completely full of love) could you reach heaven.
Personally, I believe that we’re saved by God’s grace; that we’re sinners and
can only come to Father God through His Son Jesus. But I believe that there
should be evidence of God’s Spirit at work in you. We’ll still have temptations
and struggles and thus can never really be ‘perfect’ while we live in this
fallen world, but the Holy Spirit is constantly transforming us back into God’s
image (2 Corinthians 3:18). God led this conversation with the cleaner; we both
walked away challenged!
I’ll talk in a
moment about the positive impact it had on the cleaner, but it also led me to
seek God on the issue of lukewarm Christians. In Matthew 7 Jesus says very
clearly that on the final day He won’t welcome those who disrespect His
commands, and calls them foolish, even if they called Him “Lord, Lord”. In
Revelation 3 Jesus criticises those Christians who have the wrong priorities,
and says that He’ll reject those who are ‘lukewarm’. I didn’t discuss these
things with the cleaner, but he told me that if being a Christian didn’t
involve your life and attitude being transformed, he didn’t want a part of it.
The Lord reminded me in prayer that one of His solutions to half-hearted
Christianity is us. Jesus tells us to go out and make disciples
of all nations, and not just to get people to sign a piece of paper, or fill a
seat on a Sunday. Ephesians 4 explains that spiritual gifts aren’t just for us
to experience God more, but rather that Jesus has given us as gifts to the
Church, His body, to build her up, and disciple each other in maturity. Paul
writes that it is this that leads to reaching the fullness of Christ:
12. His intention was the perfecting and the
full equipping of the saints (His consecrated people), [that they should do]
the work of ministering toward building up Christ's body (the church),
13.[That it
might develop] until we all attain oneness in the faith and in the
comprehension of the [full and accurate] knowledge of the Son of God, that [we
might arrive] at really mature manhood (the completeness of personality which
is nothing less than the standard height of Christ's own perfection), the
measure of the stature of the fullness of the Christ and the completeness found
in Him. (AMP)
Verses 15 and 16
expand on this, and focus on working together out of and into love.
The next day, this
cleaner came up to me and asked whether I had time to continue our
conversation. He asked what I meant when I said that ‘nothing compares’ with a
relationship with God and living in His Presence. We read and discussed 1
Corinthians 13, a passage that impressed him, and he wanted to know more about
this love that comes from God. He shared that when he had experimented with
drugs it was an ‘extraordinary’ experience, and he said that he had seen all
the things that ‘love is not…’. Contrary to this, I suggested that under the influence of the Holy Spirit he could see all the ‘love
is…’ attributes, which would be all the more ‘extraordinary’. He then told me,
“I want that”. To be honest, I was so surprised when he asked me to pray with
him to give his life to Jesus, that I first made sure he ‘wanted in’ for the
right reasons. But, Hallelujah! and thanks to the Lord, for working on his
heart, and for the many prayers and conversations he’d had with staff over the
past months. When I asked if he wanted me to pray for anything else, he said
that so far he still thought and acted like a sinner, and that he wanted to
wait for God to teach him the right desires, and that, rather than living as a
hypocrite, he wanted to start a new life motivated by love. Please pray for
this new Christian, that God will station His angels and His saints around him,
and continue drawing him closer, to a fuller revelation of His grace. He
started an alpha course with a male staff member yesterday.
So, there you have a snippet of my life here so far.. Thank you all for your prayers!! God's amazing. It’s been such a blessing to see fruit already, and it’s so special to be part of a ministry
which seeks, in both spiritual and practical ways, to carry out what Jesus has commanded us to do.
I thank our Saviour for:
- being the Great I AM, and demonstrating His everlasting faithfulness
- opportunities to experience His presence in unusual ways and places
Please
pray for:
-
settling into a church soon. I’ve found a church that I’m comfortable in for
now, but I’d like to join one of the churches for street people later on
-
more people to come to Christ at the Shelter, in particular the cleaners
-
God’s clear guidance as to His will for my time in Amsterdam after the Shine
seminar
- time management ;) - and knowing when rest is more important than doing
P.S. We've had fun, too. Here are some photos from the first few days of snow (and ice) here:
 ...moments before my Kenyan friend fell through the ice! |
