Cycling and Mountain Time
I’m in my first 40-day prayer period. Ever. It’s pretty phenomenal really. And just when I was wondering, or rather sometimes wonder, if we shouldn’t lead more ‘normal’, less ‘spiritual’, lives as passionate Christians, I read the first commandment to us: to love God with all our heart, our mind, our soul, our STENGTH. Everything. So instead, this is how I want to be for God and people. I thought, should we therefore be drained of strength in loving God? Well the quick answer we know we should give is that God renews us each morning or after prayer with his grace. And actually, yes I can testify that is true. And God also loves us like that too. This was in a bit of a book I read today: The Language of Promise by Graham Cooke.
The other thing I did today – not wanting to dwell on the two exams I think I did really badly in – was climb a mountain to pray. This was something that Jesus seemed to do quite a lot – at least in my Bible memory of the gospels – and yet we don’t really encourage each other to do it, do we! Although when I looked in the gospel of John up the mountain to try and see how Jesus prayed when he was there, sod’s law I couldn’t find a single reference! But instead found something else: that the most blessed of all babes born to men was… not Mary as the Catholics would probably vote… but.. can you guess? ……. It was John. (Jesus’ cousin; of course Jesus himself wasn’t purely a son of man. He doubled up as the Son of God as his Father was God.) John. But then we are told by Jesus that we are more precious to God than John. That takes some taking in.
But back to prayer, I also read John 17.1-5. When Jesus prayed he seemed to primarily pray for God’s glory to come… Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. (v1); I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.’(v4). This is how I guess we can also pray – not for our own selfish selves, but for the glory of the God who gave us life, to live for him!
The mountain itself was also really nice to climb; a bit scary, a woman alone on the mountain, but God led me to where to go on the roads and where to put my bike and then how to climb up and where to stop. I’m grateful to him for this.
And the cold in Japan combined with flying/slogging along on my bike reminded me of ski holidays in Austria! I went into a cool furnishings shop afterwards and bought a present for a friend back home.
I had dinner with the Fukuis, arriving unannounced but with Christmas present (not from me, but via me from someone in Singapore via Thailand through our team leader who went to a conference there…!) to have as my gift to the three kings (Luke, John and Jamie , aged 8, 6 and about 2, who like me). It wasn’t an easy day today- with important things to pray about, mid-term exams to take, and flunk, and an evening potentially alone, but to God be the glory as everything was perfect in Him.
The other thing I did today – not wanting to dwell on the two exams I think I did really badly in – was climb a mountain to pray. This was something that Jesus seemed to do quite a lot – at least in my Bible memory of the gospels – and yet we don’t really encourage each other to do it, do we! Although when I looked in the gospel of John up the mountain to try and see how Jesus prayed when he was there, sod’s law I couldn’t find a single reference! But instead found something else: that the most blessed of all babes born to men was… not Mary as the Catholics would probably vote… but.. can you guess? ……. It was John. (Jesus’ cousin; of course Jesus himself wasn’t purely a son of man. He doubled up as the Son of God as his Father was God.) John. But then we are told by Jesus that we are more precious to God than John. That takes some taking in.
But back to prayer, I also read John 17.1-5. When Jesus prayed he seemed to primarily pray for God’s glory to come… Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. (v1); I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.’(v4). This is how I guess we can also pray – not for our own selfish selves, but for the glory of the God who gave us life, to live for him!
The mountain itself was also really nice to climb; a bit scary, a woman alone on the mountain, but God led me to where to go on the roads and where to put my bike and then how to climb up and where to stop. I’m grateful to him for this.
And the cold in Japan combined with flying/slogging along on my bike reminded me of ski holidays in Austria! I went into a cool furnishings shop afterwards and bought a present for a friend back home.
I had dinner with the Fukuis, arriving unannounced but with Christmas present (not from me, but via me from someone in Singapore via Thailand through our team leader who went to a conference there…!) to have as my gift to the three kings (Luke, John and Jamie , aged 8, 6 and about 2, who like me). It wasn’t an easy day today- with important things to pray about, mid-term exams to take, and flunk, and an evening potentially alone, but to God be the glory as everything was perfect in Him.
posted by Henrietta at
9:46 am
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