This past Friday we got back from our evening youth club - which was surprisingly quiet, the week before we had one girl show up drunk, one boy decided to keep pulling the other lads trousers down, and one lad yelling extremely nasty stuff to me! Fun! - to find that that there was a meeting with a well known evangelist in the area. We were putting away our things from the club as people started arriving at the church for this service. I'd heard about this guy before, actually, I'd seen him before. When I was here two years ago with Team Canada we did an evening event in Newbiggen-By-The-Sea where this evangelist attended. He proceeded to tell the kids that if they wanted a high better than anything they needed an experience with the Holy Spirit. A couple youths mocked what he was saying so he had them come up so he could pray for them. They fell over and then everyone wanted to have a go. It was an interesting night! We came outside and the tires on our van had been slashed! He's very much an "all for it" kind of man and I know that he's known for an incredible healing ministry.

Anyway Mike was telling Lisa and I about this meeting and was pretty pumped to go, but I wasn't...in fact I wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible and just get home and have my tea and sit down and that disturbed me...

I got home and sat down for a couple minutes in my room and I looked inward for a bit and honestly I knew that if I went to this meeting, where this man was, I would probably be met by God and challenged and I'd have had to deal with things in my heart that I didn't want to face. I felt the kind of poke you sometimes get when you know that God wants to do something in you and you know it's not going to be a happy time.

Four years ago I would've jumped at the opportunity to go hear someone powerful preach. I remember once I drove across Ottawa, when I was scared of driving in the city, to go hear John Raymer at a Bill Prankard meeting because I wanted to meet and have a powerful experience with God. I did. Now, when there's a similar meeting on my doorstep, I run away because I don't want to face up to the inadequacies in my life at the moment. I don't want to face the reality that perhaps I have become a bit to comfortable in my Christian life and perhaps I have lost some of the passion that I once blazed with.

Perhaps I'm being a bit of a "Jonah" at the moment. Hearing God and running in the opposite direction. Full of zeal when it's comfortable to be so, but fearing it when I have to bring it into every aspect of my life.

I'm thankful God is patient and doesn't give up on us.