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Here’s the thing for me; there have been many times I have wished or prayed that God would write His will on the wall for me. I don’t mean to be demanding – I would happily make it a question so all He needs to give me is a simple “yes” or “no”. That would suffice! But funnily enough, God has never done this for me.

Our relationship with God is built and sustained by trust in Him. We come to faith by trusting and accepting what has been done on our behalf. We continue in faith by the same trust in what has been gifted to us. We will surely have moments of challenges and difficulties – be it physical, social, financial, relationship, work/business etc where doubts and uncertainties surround. May we find strength in the knowledge that God does care, even when we do not fully understand.

I believe in miracles! Last Sunday night, several people gathered to pray for me and anoint me with oil for healing, including the Bishop of Tasmania Dr. Richard Condie, and Anglican archdeacon Bob McKay. Years ago, when Pastor Phil Hills was preaching, he said something that I wrote down in my Bible and have often repeated it to Kim, “Before God grants a miracle, do everything in the natural to make it possible!” As soon as I had heard this it seemed to have the Spirit’s anointing of truth all over it. As I read through the Scriptures I now see this principle often associated with God’s miracles. A poor widow had to do the possible to receive the impossible. Isaac’s servants had to dig a well in order to ‘miraculously’ find water. Peter had to get out of the boat and put his feet on the water before he could walk to the Lord. The bewildered disciples brought to Jesus the only solution they had to feed 5,000 people. And we must pray for miracles while we roll up our sleeves and do what we can in the meantime.

Over summer I had the blessing of looking after my granddaughter Olive for a few hours.  I personally think she’s the best bubba in the world, but I suspect every other parent and grandparent may disagree.  They’re wrong, of course, but I won’t argue the point.  After a while she fell asleep in my arms.  Isn’t it one of the most precious things to hold a sleeping baby or child? To feel their warmth and closeness, to hold them securely, to see the way they relax into you. I always loved slipping into our children’s bedrooms when they were sleeping. Sometimes I couldn’t help myself and I just had to take a photo.  Too often I forgot about the automatic flash on my camera, and our poor children were woken from their slumber by a bright flash of light in their faces.  Oops.  I suspect they may still hold it against me.

It is too easy to think of a Spirit-filled, on-fire church as large a congregation with great music, great facilities, great programs, and great preaching. And, to be fair, it could be. But those things would be incidental not causal or resultant. Conversely, it would too easy to think of a small church in a small town with no worship band, no building of their own, no paid pastor, and no programs as “dead”. And, to be fair, it could be. But those indicators may just be incidental to its death, not the cause of it. A Spirit-filled, on-fire church can be either large or small, found in a large city or a small country town. It could have great music or no music at all. It could have a gifted dynamic preacher as its pastor, or it may have no pastor at all. But without exception, all Spirit-filled and on-fire for God church have three essential qualities.

Like many people, I love visiting and seeing new places. I love learning from new cultures and languages. To have these experiences though, one needs to travel. While there are different modalities of travelling, the easiest, fastest (yet) and by far the safest means is by air. But there is a problem, I don’t always enjoy flying.

Last Saturday wasn’t quite what you might expect for a summer’s day. It was around 11 degrees at 10:00 in the morning. It was grey and cold. It was raining, but not in a pleasant, warm, summery sort of way. I found myself wishing I had a jacket and not just the raincoat I had packed. It was a day of the week though, so perfect for fishing. While I couldn’t see into the water to spot fish clearly, I watched my line unroll as I cast into a likely flow, the fly landed pleasantly on the surface, and I thought “that cast deserves a fish to eat it.” A fish didn’t eat it though.

A number of years ago (back in the day!), I was offered the opportunity to do the Myers Briggs Personality test at my place of work. I was keen to do it! I always like understanding more about myself so I can grow. It was an interesting process, and I loved reading the final summary. One thing it suggested is that I’m generally easy going, but under extreme stress I tend to catastrophise.

Now I turn my attention to an oft neglected aspect of our spiritual well-being: resting. As a disclaimer, I am one of the least qualified to discuss this topic—but, embarrassing, any lessons I have learned about the value of rest have come negatively from not resting as I should have and then enduring the inevitable consequences.

A healthy lifestyle involves regular vigorous exercise (aerobic exercise) – such as long brisk walk, a competitive game of tennis, or a 30-minute jog – and, eating a healthy diet. In Part 1, I drew the parallel to how we maintain our physical health with how we can contribute to our spiritual health. In particular I pointed out that just as doing aerobic exercise delivered more oxygen into our blood stream, so too does developing our times of prayer add spiritual oxygen into our soul. In this instalment, I am going to draw parallels with maintaining a healthy diet of eating fresh fruit and vegetables, cutting down on sugared and processed foods, and how our spiritual diet. Too many Christians have poor diets. I hope to encourage you not to be one of them.