meeting point

Last Saturday Ian and I were invited to speak at Meeting Point, at Christ Church. This is the youth work they do for the 14 to 18 year olds. A couple in our House Group run it but had to be away this weekend. It was all very last minute but we were glad to help out. We were asked to speak on Ephesians chapter 3 for 10 - 15 minutes. There is so much stuff in that chapter that the time was a real challenge. We spent most of Saturday preparing it. I learnt many things from the whole process, but mainly these two things:

First, the message itself from the second half of the chapter - "how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ" - "the extravagant dimensions of God's love" as the Message puts it. We talked about how God can use us to fulfill his purposes when we have inner strength from His Spirit, we are "rooted and established" in love, having a better knowledge of how much God loves us - as opposed to how much we should love Him. From that standpoint we can have the strength and courage to withstand all things.

Secondly, I learnt a bit more about myself. Now I may be seen as a pretty modern career girl, who is quite happy speaking to crowds and not daunted by authority figures and all that sort of thing. However, I am pretty "traditional" about a lot of things including the fact that I would like to stay at home when we have the baby even if Ian has been working for 20 years and thinks he should be allowed to (we are in negotiations on that one - i think i have the advantage of our Creator's design!). When we were asked to teach at Meeting Point I assumed that Ian would do the teaching and I would operate the powerpoint. He is the man after all. Ian asked me how i thought we should do it and I immediately suggested he should speak. During the course of Saturday I was becoming increasingly frustrated as I was getting really into the passage and felt that God was giving me lots of good stuff to share but Ian was coming at it a bit differently. He was exhausted after a particularly hard week at work and eventually said that he was having a fuzzy day so I should do the speaking. He did an introductory bit about who we were and I did the main bit. It went really well and I believe God spoke through us. It taught me that I should be more open to hear from God and not assume that He will use Ian before He uses me as He has given us both the gift of teaching.

I guess I haven't fully recovered from growing up in a Church where women were not allowed to teach, pray in Church meetings or serve communion. They were allowed to give out cups of tea and wash the dishes. They were permitted to gather together solely for the purposes of making cakes and arranging flowers or praying otherwise in the presence of men.