i fought the lord
I was introduced to God at a very young age – I can’t actually remember a time that I never knew about him. My parents are Christians and introduced me to God by reading to me about his Son Jesus in the bible, taking me to church and Sunday school and girls group where people taught the truths that Jesus is the way to know God.
During my early years at high-school, I began to regret that I had been introduced to God and didn’t want to be Christian. I hated the feeling of having to be good all the time and I just wanted to make my own choices and live life the way that I wanted. I pushed God out and welcomed in things that I enjoyed and things that I thought brought meaning. The bible is true when it says you cannot serve two masters and so I gave up on God and chose to pursue my own fun. The end years of high school and uni saw me enjoy life and freedom of a young adult making the most of a disposable income, going to parties, drinking lots, taking drugs, and making a heap of friends who loved to party too.
I studied Creative Arts at university and had a part time job with my friends parents who toured with big bands. I got to help out as their assistant, getting a free car ever now and then, meeting celebrities some more famous than others, and just working in a job that was fun, energetic and exciting. I did my university internships in creative industries and really wanted to work in the arts, rub shoulders with the creative and unique people with lots of inspiration to offer. I kept telling people I was a Christian because I still maintained that Jesus was a real person in history even though my heart was far from him, my life didn’t reflect the reality that Jesus is Lord and Saviour, and I wanted God to get off my back.
The more I moved away from God the more I distanced myself from my family. Yet all of them continued to patiently pray for me, invite me to church – which only fueled my anger towards them. I took their concern as judgmental, do-good, conservative comments from self righteous Christians. Although I was happy to exploit my parents though for money, a car, university fees etc… I deeply resented them and wished they never introduced me to God – the ultimate party pooper! No wonder my family call this my “princess-bitch-face phase”!
My attitude towards God at this time is best summed up by what one of my boyfriends who said to me as we argued about where our relationship was heading… his words still ring in my head so clearly; “YOU MAKE A MOCKERY OF YOUR GOD!” and that is exactly what I did!
I didn’t need God anymore, I was okay on my own. He added no value to my life. I felt he just condemned me and I just wanted to get on with my life without the guilt. And so I’d pray that God would leave me alone and “unreveal” himself to me.
Yet God didn’t seem to ever give up on me or answer such prayer. The glitter and sparkle of my world gradually faded when I had to really grapple with the reality of death!
Since year 9, I have attended at least one funeral each year. The first funeral in this series of funerals was that of my cousin who died from HIV Aids related illnesses. It wasn’t until 6 years later when my friend’s dad who I worked with died suddenly that I felt God rip the rug from out under my feet and confront me with the fragility of our world and just how fickle I was to think I was okay on my own and that I had all the answers. I was grieving another loss of life and was experiencing the emptiness or purposeless of this world yet I loved passionately everything I thought it had to offer. I slowly began to notice that all the things I got my value from or esteemed didn’t really last.
Sheepishly I accepted my brothers invites to church and hated going. I eventually started to take myself along finding a safe seat in one of the back pews and snuck out early in the last song to escape having to talk to people. But it was there that I listened to good people preach about Jesus and reintroduce me to God and his amazing love. I slowly began to see how my experience of the world matched up with what the bible had to say about it. We do live in a broken world, a place sick with sin, a place of pain and mess that is in desperate need of a Saviour who can heal us from our sin and make sense of our lives and the world we live in. My sin and the sin of the world has been nailed to the cross of Jesus. Jesus, who knew no sin became sinso by his wounds we can be healed. Jesus tasted death for everyone only to rise again to bring us peace and and give us life in his name.
I remember questioning how I could let the fun things this in this world compete with the love and hope that the God of the universe has for me! I knew I had to surrender to Him, to live a life that acknowledges that He is God and I am not. Even though I treated God poorly, I knew he loved me with an everlasting love. And the gift of the Holy Spirit enables me to live a life in response to this love God has shown for me on the cross. He has changed my thoughts and hearts desires, and continues to remind me that each day I need to relate to God, not on my terms, but on His terms, on the basis of the love and kindness he showed to me in Christ Jesus. I fought the Lord but He won!
My first real taste of seeing the truth of Jesus, that had so radically changed my life, evident in the lives of others was while I lead on Summerfest with EVChurch on the Central Coast of New South Wales, Australia. It was serving here that God made it clear to me that all His creation has been made to make him famous and scream out to all people just how good He really is. My Father in heaven was working to reconcile all things to himself and kindly uses each of us to be agents of his work by loving on others – in word and deed.
After finishing Uni, I traveled to work & live in a remote Indigenous community where I witnessed a desperate need for the gospel. I returned to Sydney beginning work in a Magazine Publishing House, where I felt constrained in the many opportunities I saw I could and would like to serve in and thought about returning to remote Australia to help share the good news in places where the gospel was not being shared. I finished up at my job, declined a scholarship to do my Masters and took on a part time job working with children in before and after school care so I could actively seek out opportunities to be useful around my church and spend time reading God’s word and striving to understand it better. God immersed me in all sorts of opportunities where I could make Jesus known and grow in my knowledge of him.
From 2006-2007 I was on staff at St Matthias Church, Centennial Park as a trainee or apprentice pastor. In 2008 I completed one year of full time study at Moore Theological College in Newtown Sydney, where I currently continue to study part-time while spending the majority of my week serving as Community Pastor at Church by the Bridge, Kirribilli.
It is only by God’s grace and kindness that I am who I am today and that I get to do the things I am doing. He is the one who drew me from the perilous pursuits of this world and united me safely to himself – captive but eternally satisfied and completely free to serve Him with every good gift he has given to me!
Jesus is truly better than the riches of this world.
Jesus is better than the sound of my friends voices.
Jesus is better than the biggest dreams of my heart.
And honestly, that is just the start!
