Praise and Thank You

I’m sitting here in bed, the reflections of the past 8 ½ months pushing their way to the front of my mind, creating a mad rush of emotions unequal to anything I’ve gone through in the past. Despite it being 1:30 in the morning and holding back the kind of tire that hurts your head, I cannot sleep. This is due partly because I’m listening to an inspiring new Hillsong United album, but mainly because I’m trying to identify the emotions which have taken over. To just say I am sad would be quite a disrespect to the other feelings. Anxiety, worry, excitement, gratefulness, joy, and just a general feeling of being overwhelmed all deserve mention and thought. I try to handle these emotions, each one more extremely felt than the next. Yet as this incredible journey comes to an end and the next one begins, the one thing which provides me with any sort of stability is the knowledge that a truly all-might, all powerful, ever graceful, encouraging, protective, genuine Father is standing with me through all of it. The fact that it hurts so damn much to be leaving Cape Town behind is testimony to how greatly my Father has blessed me during this time. Through joy and sorrow, courage and desperation, familiarity and the unknown, social prosperity and loneliness, God my Father has stood by me and upheld me with His overwhelming love. When difficulty showed up, I had not but to cry out to my Father to be reminded that I would never be alone. In the hardest moments as well as in those of purest joy, by no doing of my own, my Father came alive and clearly spoke the words “I am with you” into my soul. His love crashed over me like ocean’s waves over its rocks, powerful and without care for consent.
A new stage begins in my life. New challenges will present themselves and the context of ministry will change. Yet the constant company of the one whose love knows not even the boundaries of paternal sacrifice will accompany me all the days of my life. The end of these 9 months bring with them a great sorrow for having to accept them as past, but through the pain, I will bow down and worship the Lord my God whose blessings have poured down on me like the sun’s rays overwhelm the desert sand. How great is His love that He has allowed me to meet the people I’ve met, seen the places I’ve seen, and experience the moments I’ve experienced, all through the love of people like you who support, encourage, and allow me to follow His urging call on my heart. My prayers are full of thankfulness and joy for unsuspecting angels like you that He has sent upon my life, for people that have made His love known to me by so many means. We serve a mighty God who suffers in our agony and delights in our joys that we may NEVER feel alone; a God who came down from the highest throne, that we may be able to witness his glory; the One who forgives time and time again, despite knowing that we our sins will hurt him again, and again, and again. This is the God we serve and the God in whom I delight. If I have but one prayer to lift up, it may be that you may know this amazing and empowering Love. Thank you for shaping my life into what it is and for believing in me. I love you more than you know.
“O How He Loves Us.”

Andy