I'm writing this sitting in Charlotte's car on the M6, somewhere south of Manchester. It's too foggy to see exactly where and the north is cold and wet. We're on our way back from Easter People to my parents for the evening and we're pleasantly tired from our spiritual and physical adventures...
It took seven and half hours to drive up from the south coast yesterday and we were up until 3am last night preparing a response and outwitting naive Americans (Charlotte was subjected to the funniest Christian chat up line EVER from a 25-year-old Californian... "I feel about ready to settle down and have children now." Charlotte laughed in his face - there were tears before bedtime. God bless them!). The day may sound tiresome but it was actually stimulating thanks to honest chats, lots of prayer and awesome bible studies (check out Colossians 2:9-14).
Of course I was reading and Charlotte was driving, rest assured no one was harmed in the writing of my talks. I love travelling with Charlotte; God is always in our conversations and I feel like we spiritually support each other. God's been cultivating this for a while so I think I'm stuck with her (only joking). She is my 24-7 other half.
This morning was my talk at the Emerging Church venue in Southport. The topic was freedom from sin and I think it went well. I got some good feedback and nearly the whole room qeued to respond. I tried to focus less on our failings and more on our motivation to fall more in love with Jesus. Charlotte prepared a rather fetching hot pink leopard skin banner for people to cut up and take away, it was very scissor sisters and was probably as much of a motivator as my talk.
After the morning meeting I had a seminar on Healing and Evangelism that I felt very under-equipped to give. I told a few stories, read some awesome stuff Jesus did and then prayed for faith. During both talks I really felt God challenge me to be honest and vulnerable and it seemed to break something in the group.
I'm pretty knackered now as we kipped on the prayer room floor with the rest of the team last night and couldn't find the switch to turn off the emergency lights. THERE WERE THREE OF THEM... VERY EXCESSIVE! IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO SLEEP AT 3AM, 5AM, OH AND AT 6.30AM! We did have fun though.
Thank you to everyone who prayed for me. I always appreciate it. We've come away feeling like we've connected with God, more so in fact than during the prayer room last week. I think that in serving the people there we actually had a more intimate time than in any of the hours spent talking to God about our all consumming worries. Thanks God. You truly have helped us to grow and enjoy this crazy world.
PS - There does seem to be a theme emerging in 24-7 related road trips with Charlotte. We got another ticket today but for going 0mph rather than 101mph. Oh the symetry! A road trip would not be complete without some road related gaff :)