Six months later I came back to England, indignant and frustrated with ‘Westerners’. How dare they march round shopping centres spending their hundreds and thousands of pounds on pointless objects, when there were people who could not afford to eat?

Nevertheless, within a few months I was right back there with them. Acquiring more and more ‘stuff’ that I ‘needed’. It was all too easy for me to forget what had broken my heart a few months before when removed from it and surrounded by luxury in a materialistic culture.

I’m massively challenged by this because if what I have witnessed on mission trips does not infiltrate my day to day lifestyle then such trips become yet another form of western consumerism.

“From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, more will be asked”. Luke 12:48b.

So how can my life reflect and acknowledge the responsibility that comes with ‘much’ when I am part of a culture that is essentially built on the exploitation of the poorest of the poor, the people closest to God’s heart? Surely a massive part this has to involve a lifestyle that stands out and refuses to support such exploitation. Yet how often do I just turn a blind eye and buy a t-shirt for £3 from high street retailers, ignoring the real cost involved, even though it completely contradicts what my faith stands for? As a Western Christian in an economically privileged country, what does it look like to live my faith intentionally in a way that reflects God’s heart for humankind, aware of the responsibility I’m going to be held accountable for?

‘The tongue has the power of life and death’.

Scary but exciting truth.  I wonder, if it were possible to count up all the conversations I’ve had and set them against each other in categories where I’ve spoken either ‘life’ or ‘death’ (about both myself and other people), which one would outweigh the other? Perhaps that’s not something to be pondered too much, but it challenges me.

It is important to talk about the stuff we are struggling with and acknowledge that it’s there, but this has to be accompanied by declaration of God’s truth. All too many times I’ve chatted with friends about how rubbish I feel about myself, which in turn has reminded them of their own insecurities. Before we know it I’ve succeeded in dragging them into my pity party. For some bizarre reason, wallowing in woes feels quite good. I’m not going to lie, it’s comfortable to indulge in a bit of self pity. It’s nice to feel justified in our struggles and squeeze sympathy out of people. But there comes a point where we have to make a choice about whether or not we’re going to stay there.

If our words contain the power of life and death, in conversations we’re essentially embracing one or the other. I find this really exciting because in speaking life we both counter the agenda of the enemy and agree with an awesome and powerful God all in one swift move.  When we notice the potential others have and tell them what we see in them, we agree with God who made them in his image. When we agree with him, earth is in agreement with heaven, and when heaven and earth come into alignment, the kingdom gets released. People are walking in their true identity – sons and daughters of God, rather than in a lie.

Spot the lie, and counteract it with the power of life in the tongue.

I’ve been single all my life minus a fleeting few months in my nineteenth year and besides this anomaly, my ‘love life’ has consisted of multiple rejections, so my friends words were gutting but familiar in equal measure. Whilst I readily accept my current status as single, and need to acknowledge it and move on it when someone appears uninterested (however difficult that may be) there is definitely a place for refusing to define my future based on my past, because if my past is the lens through which I view every new situation, 1) I’m not trusting that God and 2) I’m being hopeless not hopeful.

 Where therefore, is the line between maintaining this desire and hope for a relationship in the future whilst being content in current circumstances? Being a person of extremes I’ve found the balance hard to strike; either I’m obsessed and proclaiming it to the world or if no one’s on the scene I completely squash and deny my desire for a relationship, pretending I don’t even care. Neither of these mindsets are helpful.

I’ve been advised multiple times by a variety of different people that wearing my heart on my sleeve (or facebook status, I haven’t done this but some people do . . .) is not cool. When you think/talk about something (or someone) over and over it essentially acquires more authority in your mind, and that, (it was pointed out to me) is meditation. I realized I’d been meditating on a guy for over a year. Oh dear. On the flip side, denying a desire doesn’t make it go away, it simply pushes it down and gives it space in which to brew bitterness. . . There is a middle ground, somewhere.

Whilst I do not have the ultimate answers to the turmoil of the single life, I know for a fact is that we are robbed what of what has massive potential to be an extremely fruitful time in our lives if we continually repress or obsess, focus on an absence and don’t trust. It must be frustrating for God, who has put the resources of heaven at our finger tips, to see his kids agonizing over something he has in his hands already. ‘Chill out, it will be fine, just look at what’s in front of you!’

Easier said than done, but if we want life, and life to the full, it’s about taking hold of what we have now and running with it, rather than sitting around waiting for something better to come along. As soon as we have the ‘once this is sorted, then my life will begin’ mentality, it only takes us to find the next thing we don’t have for dissatisfaction to take hold yet again. 

The question I’ve started to ask myself is ‘what has God given me NOW (and there is a very long list, he’s pretty generous you see), and how am I using it?’ This is where FAITH grows, it squashes discouragement.