This week is the begining of the Transit year (www.24-7prayer.com/training). I figured it's about time that I got a decent understanding of the Bible and opened myself up to some discipleship and training. I've been here 24 hours and I can most certainly say that this is one of the top three decisions I've made this year...
It's great to be on something that I'm not organising in 24-7! We're really do have some rediculously gifted people in our community, and some pretty amazing Transiteers signed up for the course (I think I've found our new Aussie base leader, but ssshhhhh, she's only just started Transit so don't tell anybody ;)
I think I now understand the bizarre mature students I went to university with who got all their homework done ahead of time, took far too many notes and seemed dreadfully over eager. I feel like my brain has been crying out for a bit of stretching and now I am that over eager student who's probably making a fool of herself and won't end up in the cool gang.
Actually I don't think there will be a 'cool' gang. There's a really great dynamic here. There's an odd sense that this is the beginning of something quite massive. It's like each of us is opening up our lives and saying, "Go on then", to God, "lay your foundations, re-arrange the furniture, chuck the junk out and make yourself at home". This really is an opportunity to lay some building blocks down and I have a suspicion that at the end of this year God will be hyjacking a few lives. What fun!
My first piece of homework was to read Andrew Murray's "Humility". It wasn't as boring as Jude insinuated, I liked his perspective on the humility of Jesus, submission without sin. I also loved his take on Paul and his self-depreciating writings. I struggled with a few of the statements he made, like - there's nothing good in man!!!!! (We're made in the image of God! Surely, even if we don't know Him, we reflect Him, we have the capacity to chose good as well as evil. I know he'd probably agree but he wrote the statement so baldly I stared at the line for a good 15 minutes loudly dissagreeing in my head.) I also liked what he said about dieing to yourself - death is the ultimate in humility and in death humility is perfected - but he didn't have any sense of journey or how one would go about trying to acheive it. Maybe it's just the practical in me. It is good though. Worth a read (unless your Stephen Harding as his definition of humility was a paraphrase of the whole book - very sickening:)
Anyway, in general I'm looking forward to being made to read things I'd normally bypass for fiction, so all in all this is shaping up to be a good year! xc