big beginnings..

saturday was a day that i had been both dreading and looking forward to for over a year and a half, and its finally been and gone. the last few days have been such an adventure and so exciting, but definately 3 or 4 of the hardest, scariest and most exhausting days of my life. it's literally like trying to meet and remember the names of hundreds of people a day, as well as getting enrolment and uni sorted, and making friends, and trying not to miss home to much, and being independent, and having fun, and not sleeping through meals - something i have not mastered quite yet. it's a beautiful thing knowing that my saviour and best friend is with me every step of the way every day, because if it wasn't for him i'd be back in an instant. this is going to be one crazy year, and definately one of the hardest yet in so many ways - but his love never fails, he is a faithful God and we are the salt and light in this world, so that's exactly what i'll be. in other news, i'm legit counting down the days until sunday, can't wait to be back in his house!

freedom

we have a beautiful saviour who came to give us freedom

he gave his own life, so that every morning when we wake up, the mistakes we made yesterday can be forgotten, but when we choose to hold onto the past and not walk in the freedom that he gave up everything for, we take the power and the significance away from what he did.

he didn't die so we could hide away what's wrong, or die so that we could hide all our mistakes and put on an act. he gave it all, and so all we need to do is give us and all our imperfections back to him.

it's crazy watching how much God can transform a life that is willing to be changed, a person that admits their faults and acknowledges that they're not perfect, but are made perfect in HIS love. 

John 3:17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 

set a fire down in my soul that i can't contain, that i can't control.

no matter how long we've been walking with him, for all of us there's still things in our life that we like to control. things that maybe at times we place above God, things that we're scared of surrendering to him & things that make us feel safe or comfortable.

how on fire for God somebody is can't be based on how high they lift their hands in worship, nor by how many times they've read the bible or how many verses they know off by heart. being truely on fire for God means surrendering everything, giving him control even when it's hard and scary.

camp

new years resolution of getting back into blogs is currently failing.

this coming week is going to be the one of the greatest weeks of my life.

i'm believing for futures to be revealed
i'm believing that strongholds will be broken... that depression, that eating disorders, that peoples past hurts, guilt will be broken off their lives
i'm believing that every person will encounter God, and fall more in more in love with him
i'm believing that girls will begin to understand their worth and realise that what he thinks of you is so much more than what the world can offer
i'm believing that every single person will legit have the funnest week ever
i'm believing that people will have dreams birthed, have life defining visions that will change everything
i'm believing that even the leaders and interns and everyone who actually makes camp happen, won't just watch lives change but will experience something themselves
i'm believing that more than ever chch, wellington and ham will become more like a family
i'm believing that young people will have moments with God that they will remember for the rest of their life
i'm believing for so much more, for a generation to take a stand and run after God with EVERYTHING.

i am so so so excited for camp, but i can't help but think that though for everyone else this is the start of something huge, for me camp is the end of what's been the most beautiful, greatest, funnest, most challenging season of my life. i'm still coming so so so expectant, and i'm still coming ridiculously pumped to see lifechange, but for everyone else this will define where elevate goes this year, for me this is just the most beautiful way i could ever imagine to say goodbye to something i have learned to love.

i was talking to Rhi tonight about me when i first started coming 3 and a half years ago, it was great. it's funny, because i was already a christian when i came. but i was just this quiet, angry kid that wasn't pumped about living in a new city and hanging out with new people.it's beyond amazing to think how much has changed in that space of time... i've gone from crying on my way into town cause i didn't want to go (funny story that...) , to legit having like a meltdown over the fact that i have to leave.

life is an adventure, and i definately am pumped about the next step. but right now i just can't stop thinking about what this week might hold. eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

love.

i've had a beautiful past couple of weeks learning, discovering, realising how powerful love is.

to love someone is so simple, it doesn't require knowledge, experience or qualifications. to love you don't need to be skilled at something, or know exactly what you need to do. love simply requires somebody who is willing to kneel before an almighty God and say, let me see the world how you see it.

God is love. 

to show people who he is, we don't always need an awesome message up our sleeve or a long story about how we met him. we don't need to be a great communicator, or an anointed preacher, all we have to do is love them. that's all it takes to turn their life around.

it's easy to complicate the gospel, to get into the politics of church and to get so caught up in the details of what we think God wants us to do. when we just need to grasp the fact that we're here to love his children.

we can so often look at the world, at a school, at a person and see how much is wrong, and simply give up cause it seems too hard to try and help. but really, it's so simple... love like he loves and you can change the world.

time is running out...

its a weird feeling, every day this term when the bell goes at the end of the day, knowing that another fifteenth of my schooling career has just ended.

when the end is really close, and things aren't looking so great.
you tend to do one of two things...

give up.

or give everything you've got to changing something before its too late.

i don't even want to think how i'll feel if i finish this year without giving everything i have.
13 days to make a difference.

the beautiful thing though, is it only takes one second to change a life, one moment. and though there's only 13 days, there's thousands of seconds, and my life is in good hands.

there's something beautiful about spare time, silence, doing nothing
yesterday i left my lights on (again) during my piano lesson, the battery died. and i had to wait a good hour and a half for AA to come, but it wasn't really annoying. it was pretty nice actually!

i think we underestimate how busy life gets, how little time we have to just sit, or to just think, or just listen to music, or read a book. im the worst in the world at it.
i mean we all have free time, but i suck at using it well.

however tomorrow im going to Mt Maunganui. im legit so so pumped, i've never been on holiday just me and Jesus. like seriously i am so excited, its ridiculous.
about just reading his word. hanging out by myself. just relaxing. just thinking. just going for walk on the beach. mmmmmm.

in other news... think i'll deactivate my fb account for a while. hold me to that :)

life is so fun. Church was so great on sunday. im so excited. it will be sunny iJn. mmmhmm.

today i found out about this pastor in Iran - Yousef Nadarkhani - who, as we speak might be living the last few hours of his life because he refuses to deny that he's a christian.
this man has a wife, he has two children, and his family is being torn apart over this.
it seriously broke my heart.

sometimes i think we might be missing the point of christianity a little bit.
I mean we talk about not being Sunday christians, and so we go to church and then we try to live our lives as best as we can monday to saturday before returning to church on sunday content with our efforts.
but there's people like Pastor Yousef all over the world every day, being murdered or abused, or risking their life just so that they can believe in God, and bring glory to him, and most of the time we don't even know about them.

don't get me wrong, i think its awesome, and have so much respect for the people who stand up in their schools and make a difference, or the people we hear about who have the faith to step out and say their testimony at school, or pray for somebody in the common room. and its seriously amazing!! But every day in the world there are these people who stand in front of authorities, and risk tearing their family apart, or losing their life. All for Jesus. all behind the scenes. all where nobody knows about it. they are the ones that inspire me.

when i was in Vietnam in April, i went over to help them, but soon realised they had a lot more to teach me than i could help them with in a week.
i remember lying in bed listening, as the missionaries at YWAM where we were staying had to shut all the windows, and all the doors before singing praise and worship songs in case somebody heard them and they got reported.
i remember hearing about how they weren't allowed to teach people about Jesus directly, but they had devoted their entire lives to serving others in the hope that people would find Jesus not through their words, but their actions.
i remember listening as one of the missionaries talked about a tribe who found Jesus, but had this awesome, unique way of worshiping God because, though they were now christian, they'd been brought up doing certain things and that was their culture and their identity. but they managed to find Christ through that.
it's crazy to leave that poverty stricken environment, and walk back into church. it's awesome to be home, but its important to never forget.

he is everywhere. and its really easy to forget how big the world is, and that though our life is so important, so is everybody elses. our God is good, but its too easy sometimes to turn a blind eye to whats going on in the world.

and i am no way saying that we're not doing a good job living for Jesus.
i'm just saying.. its really easy to become so focused on our own lives, that maybe just sometimes... we do miss the point of it all.

second blog in a day. what i do for some people... :)

leadership is awesome, but with it comes a lot of responsibility. its crazy to think that when i look back on the year, the times lifegroup has been booming has generally been the same time i've been loving life, pumped about elevate and mega in love with God. and the times its been semi average are about the same times i've been tired, or flat or just not as pumped as i could be.

its a scary thought, an exciting thought, but a stressful thought that your life actually can and does influence others.

the craziest thing about looking back on the year, is that in those times i wasn't trying to lead well. i wasn't trying to impress anybody, i just knew who i was, was passionate about people and God and it all flowed from that.

i seriously love life. i love elevate. i love my friends. i love my leaders. i love school. the tricky thing about being in an amazing place in life, is that its really easy to stay stationary. to not step out, or not move forward, because the place you know is beautiful and comfortable.

but sometimes, and probably more often than not... the hardest things to do are the best things.

2012.

two thousand and twelve is approaching much faster than i'd like it to.
i am so so excited about next year. to move out of home, to live in a hostel, to make new friends, to learn alot, to grow, to have more freedom. there's like a billion amazing things to look forward to.
however there's just one thing that's stopping me from being mega pumped, one thing that makes me wonder why i'd even consider moving, the one thing that almost makes me throw it all out the window and enroll at vic instead.

but seriously i am ridiculously sad about leaving church, about leaving people, about leaving elevate.
me and annalise were talking about it the other day, and those people are seriously irreplaceable!!

like i tell myself that i'll move and there'll be just as awesome people down there. but then i think about it, and before Wellington there were awesome people but not as amazing as the ones i have now. i seriously dont think in the world i will ever come across people as amazing as the ones in my life at the moment.

I'm not very good with change, currently LOLing at the whole moving from Taupo to Wellington sitch, classic example... anyone who knew me post moving would back me up on that one. but this is different, i'm a very different person from the one i was 3 years ago. but WAH i dont wanna go.

but oh my i'm still pumped. though this is potentially going to be one of the hardest things i've done to date. but its going to be awesome, just one of those situations where i wish i didnt love people so much. like i was one of those people that just hang with whoever, that love people while they're around but just move on and make new friends with the snap of a finger.

i have no idea what exactly 2012 is going to hold. but despite everything i know its gonna be a beauty.

this has been a very contradictory blog. but i think with every big decision there are good and bad aspects. however with this one the good aspects just seem to be REALLY good so do the bad.

but, its gonna be awesome.

eeeeeeee.