Guest Blogger – Hazel ~ Finding my momentum
What´s love? Is it that warm fuzzy feeling that comes so easily to you when you meet someone you like, someone who likes all of the same things that you do? I used to think so. I realised that love is pain, graft, toil, heartbreak and joy! Without the pain, love becomes just sentiment. That´s something I learnt at Soul Survivor this year.
The ultimate love: ~Man has no greater love than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. ~ Toil, hardship, hard work – LOVE.
Today´s post is a message from the heart, something that God spoke to Hazel, a good friend of mine.
I´ll sit quietly and let her tell you how God used Christian events Soul Survivor and Momentum to speak to her heart.
Well I suppose it’s about time I filled you all in. 
Firstly I would like to say a thank you to those at soul survivor for the amazing worship, the message you brought and the time you all put in to help encourage the church and help it to grow, keep going
I went to Soul Survivor and momentum as an escape, I had a year feeling very alone at church, my friends had all gone and I was left very much alone.
I didn’t fit in and was starting to feel very resentful towards my church. This doesn’t mean I hated the people in it, although I had my moments, my petty please don’t talk to me I’m really not interested.
I felt invisible, and almost grateful that I was, I was never the sort of person who goes up to other people, they had to come to me, being quite shy normally means I get almost a little star-stuck (for lack of a better word) when people I don’t know talk to me, or if I dare to talk to them.
Then it’s full of awkward silences, anyway I’m digressing a bit.
Going to soul survivor was my chance to love god with my friends, people my own age who I could connect to, they used examples I could relate too, to explain bits about the bible or God, or any of the other things we learnt about.
But as the week progressed I knew God wanted me to change, a couple of weeks before soul survivor I was asked to help with the prayer of intersession at church and I turned it down, I didn’t want to be up in front of people, everyone watching me, what if I got it wrong, what if my words came out all messed up.
I couldn’t handle the fear.
God showed me that it didn’t matter that I was afraid, I had to see past the fear, to see that he was there holding me up, I can’t do it in my own strength, me fears were crippling my life, everything from a fear of butterflies to escalators to microphones to being in front of people. With the help of the prayer of those around me I came back with a new confidence in Christ.
Momentum was just as amazing but in a much more subtle way, they were still going on about the wow, woe and go, but I’m somebody who’s never had a wow! But it didn’t bother me, I hadn’t needed one.
We had a talk one evening from Ellie Mumford, who is an older lady, with a proper Queen’s English style of speaking, so I was sat thinking oh no, I’m not gonna understand this, she’ll use some example I won’t understand. But she didn’t, she connected really well and I remember mentally slapping my wrist for judging her, just because she was old.
Then I thought if I could judge her like that is that what I’ve being doing at church. Then I realised I needed to stop, I needed to change, to become an encouragement to my church even when it was tough, even when I didn’t want to be, even when I don’t feel like I fit in, because only when I love God’s church as it is, with it’s many imperfections would I then be able to see its wonder, it’s goodness and feel like I’m truly apart of it.
So since I’ve got back what’s changed? Well I am trying to do the bible in a year, and so far I think I’ve read more in 11 days than I have in any year previously despite going to church almost every Sunday of my life. I have also volunteered too try teaching in Sunday school, a big step from being a teaching assistant for 4 years.
I’m also trying to attend the evening service at church more often, as an encouragement to my church, as well as being more open to helping in church whether that’s by reading the bible, saying a prayer or evening just welcoming people as they come in. I’ve picked my guitar up for the first time in about 8 years, and I’m singing more.
But most of all I’m living despite my fear, one of the songs at Dave’s induction service summed it up nicely for me, the change God was asking me to make:
Will you love the ‘you’ you hide If I but call your name?
Will you quell the fear inside And never be the same?
Will you use the faith you’ve found To reshape the world around,
Through my sight and touch and sound In you and you in me?
From now on this is how I’m going to try and live, it doesn’t say I won’t have fear but that I’ll act anyway, that I’ll love the me inside (that for me is a big ask, I’m somebody who’s never felt good enough), that I’ll use what I’ve found this year for him in everything I do, so please keep me in your prayers.
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