Have your say about 40 Days of Purpose on Sight forums... | more...|

ANN WOJCZUK keeps a diary of her "40 Days of Purpose" experience...

DAY 21: 8th May, 2004

One of the things I want to be most in my life is a peace-maker.

I've had many opportunities to practise! Sometimes the outcomes have been great for everyone, sometimes they haven't.

But, equally, I've had many times when, even though I've done my best - tried to listen and promote listening, looked for the wonderful 'win/win' and encouraged honesty and respect as part of the process - it's fallen apart. We all are answerable to Father God for the choices we make in response to others.

I know that the way I deal with conflict or difficulty is not, I say not, dependent on the other person's treatment of me. I tell my 11 year old daughter this all the time when she's copping rubbish from someone. This is the great freedom and grace of Jesus Christ. I am free to choose to live outside the entrapment of someone else's sin. I am not slave to their problem.

I'm not saying it's an easy thing to do. Trust me, I've had many times where I've over-reacted or come away bruised. I know it's not easy and, for some, the circumstances that hurt them may not change.

The Lord says 'judge not and you will not be judged', 'forgive and you will be forgiven', 'treat other people the way you would like to be treated', 'love one another as I have loved you'. There is great power in the fact that He has already given us what He asks us to give. The One who is totally able to see and judge all that we do has chosen to release us from the trap we have been in and lead us in a different way. We are not bound to a response based on another person's attitude, words, actions or the circumstance we find ourselves in. We are free to be free on the inside.

I want that freedom. I really want to live it as a truth. I have tasted the way of Jesus in this and I want to do this again and again until it is part of the flow of who I am. That means, in the difficulty I am having now, my path is clear: 1. love; 2. forgive; 3. respect; 4. be honest; and, 5. pray for God's help!

We'll see how I go.

DAY 19: 6th May, 2004

Why is it that Almighty God always tests us?

You know, dear reader, right now I am silently having a real personality   and communication tussle with someone in my Jesus family and frankly, I want to put down my bat and ball and walk off into the sunset saying 'thanks for the memories'.

But the other thing that's working in me is the desire to be honest and love this person. So I keep having these very intense conversations with God and, in my head, with them, trying to find my way through it.

I don't want to be a hurter or get hurt myself but at the same time I know for our sakes and the Lord's I gotta sort it out.

So what am I doing about it? I'm resisting the urge to retreat and disconnect, although some days that wins. I'm trying to be as honest with God and myself as I can, and I'm praying that He'll intervene and lead us through to where He wants us to be. I'm praying for enough humility and love to accept whatever comes and still bless God and them. It's hard when you stop looking at the theory and start living the reality! But...without the theory, I reckon I'd really stuff up the reality!

DAY 18: 5th May, 2004

I've come to the conclusion that I need to radically realign my use of time by maximising 'timeless priorities'.

I think that's why I get so frustrated with the whole love/time/church/family thing. You know the way it goes - 'Yep Lord I totally get the picture but how? How? How?

I'm not sure how it's all going to go down with the various groups of people involved with me but I'm just going to continue to pray and ask the Holy Spirit to sort it. God definitely gets first pick of my time.

I have huge amounts of love and respect for so many in my life, church family and otherwise. I want to have the best time I can with all of them. There are so many balls being juggled all the time and I don't think it's working as well as it could. We'll see.

I guess underneath the time pressure I just have such a blessing for God, that He's healed my heart to the point where generous love is possible and that He's surrounded me with people to share that with. I wouldn't want to go back to Godless living for anything. Life in the River of God is marvellous, even if it sometimes seems a struggle. Mostly the deep waters do run peacefully. And the rapids? They're just there, and me and Jesus, we'll handle them together.

DAY 17: 4th May, 2004

Go to church, go directly to church.

I love church. I love our church. I love lots of churches and I pray for us all too. We need prayer.

It's not easy developing authentic honest relationship under any circumstance but how much harder when we get together in the weird environment of Sunday church? Come in, have a chat with a few people, sit down in rows facing the front where a few individuals lead some musical worship, corporate prayer and teach on some Biblical subject, sit down, stand up a few times, disperse to have a cup of something and catchup with a few more people and go again next week...or something like that.

I love to worship the Lord and have communion and listen to a good Jesus talk but I find the 'form' of church fairly boring. I know there a many groups out there experimenting with form, as my own church is doing and, honestly, I think we really need to.

I'm a sensate person. Colour, sight, sound, touch, taste and smell are really important to me and impact my experience of worship and community life very profoundly when they are part of the spiritual environment. I really dislike the little morsel or fragment of dried biscuit and the gulp of grape juice for communion - it's a really thin response to a mighty sacrament and, for me, it's actually working against the message of the extravagance of Christ's sacrifice for us. I'd like a good mouthful of a rich port and a chunk of crusty, fresh bread, some soft lighting and music and an aromatic oil burning with some candles.

I wish we could incorporate the diversity of our community more and be more creative in our approach to communicating spiritual truth and the stories of people's walk with God.

But it requires the kind of group involvement and input that doesn't come easy in a busy working world.
Hmmm. Faced with the dilemma of time sacrifice and priority again.

Sigh.

Jesus says He will build His church. I'm glad. I hope we'll all choose to be involved.

DAY 16: 3rd May, 2004

How can I start treating other believers like members of my own family? Love them to bits and treat them with tender thoughtful extravagant time...or love them to bits and treat them with complacent familiarity; speaking to them less tenderly than I do people on the edges of my life; giving them morsels of hurried time and finishing the day with a cuddle and prayer having comforted myself with the knowledge that a, we love each other, b, I look after their needs, and c, this pace will eventually slow down. That sucks!

Actually I exaggerate, but it gets like that sometimes, doesn't it?

I don't even have a paid job. How do people who work full time or run their own business cope?

What's God's answer for chronic overburden? More time with Him, more stillness. Some people must get stressed just thinking about how to do that! I sympathise. It ain't so easy.

I reckon a lot of us 'westerners' are going to be compelled to make some hard decisions about lifestyle, priorities and affluence (or should I say effluents) within the decade. The burden of sustaining our current standard of living, feeding our relationships enough to stay healthy and life-giving and contributing into the wider society is heavy now. I personally don't think we can fragment much more and still stay spiritually, emotionally and socially healthy. What do you think?

I love my time alone with the Lord, I love real quality time with my husband and kids and other people too. I know time has to be found. OK, so where and from what do I take it?

DAY 15: 2nd May, 2004

How do I give my Lord all that I am? I guess I have to say to Him 'this is what I want to do' . . . and He takes more of me than I'm ever likely to be aware of. So be it.

It's never going to be less than a faith transaction is it? One day I'll sit down with Him and say 'Show me the video Dad, I want to know how it all works from your perspective'.

Till then I just go with the flow as intentionally, authentically, intelligently and faithfully as I can! And rely on grace.

DAY 14: 1st May, 2004

Sorry about the silence. Technical difficulties have silenced my computer again and...I'm tired. So many little pieces of life are jostling for attention.

My 40 days reading schedule has slipped a couple of times and I've found myself doing the 'I have to catch up' thing. I read a chapter, then think about what I've read and realise I haven't really 'read it' at all. Come on brain, go with me on this one!

But I have been mulling over some of the themes. There are serious discipleship issues here. In my mind's eye, I can see religion falling like old tomb clothes off a resurrected Lazarus. Obedience, surrender, authenticity, friendship, lordship. Costly and cutting through anything shallow.

DAY 11: 28th April, 2004

I love Practising the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence. It's a beautiful, timeless, simple, inspiring little jewel. It's God-breathed through a lovely servant monk.

You know when you read or hear someone speaking about things and you think ' I really would love to meet them and sit for a while to talk' - he's one of those for me.

So is Jesus and . . . Madam Guyon (she wrote another jewel like Lawrence's), C.S Lewis, Dallas Willard, Richard Foster, Leonard Sweet, Ezekiel, John, Paul, Noah, Job, Deborah, Esther, Adam, St Francis, Augustine, Martin Luther, Tolstoy, Floyd McClung. (Eternity is looking real good right now, I think I'll need it!).

I love talking with God. The 'talk to' bit's easy for me. It's the 'listen to' bit that challenges - but like I said the other day, there's a real sense of sweetness, even in the waiting and when the flow of the Lord's voice is there - aaaah, what a wonder! How lovely.

Sometimes there is so much clutter in this mind of mine, it's a bit like opening 'the plastics cupboard'! You know the cupboard which is so stuffed full of containers, old ice cream cartons and lids to things that don't exist that as soon as you open it, there's a landslide (a plastic slide?). I have to wade through a sea of little details just to find a quiet spot for me and my father to talk. Other days we just walk together all day.

Sometimes I sense the Holy Spirit drawing me aside for a longer time, to hear more, and it's like He teases me with a thought or a word and I go look it up in a dictionary, concordance or www.blueletterbible.org and we have a wonderful journey together finding out some stuff.

Sometimes I go for a drive to a nearby bluff and watch the waves swelling and crashing one after the other, watching the colours and listening to the sounds. My spirit gets massaged and relaxed by the bigness of God and His energy in the forces that drive the waves to the shore over and over. And I feel steadied and comforted and inspired and safe in His constancy and sovereignty. My spirit sighs and I just sit with Him.

Sometimes when I wake up in the morning I blow Him a kiss and say thank you for saving me and my family and I talk to Him for a while using the Lord's Prayer as my prayer shape, moving out in widening circles from me, to my family, to my church, to the churches, to the community, to the region, to the nation, to the nations, to the times.

Sometimes I lay my head on the pillow at night and realise we've hardly spoken.

He loves us you know.

DAY 10: 27th April, 2004

Have you ever played the trust game where someone stands behind you at the 'right' distance and you fall backwards, hopefully into their waiting arms? Have you ever stood on the end of a bed and tried to fall forward without putting your arms out to break your fall? Simple childish games. But the urge to 'rescue' yourself is often overpowering. If you can overwrite that compulsion (instinct?) with a deliberate decision to let go, and you survive the fall, it's surprisingly exhilarating. But...if you trust and the 'catcher' lets go or miscalculates, if you fall and the landing is hard or awkward...experience may counsel you next time not to take the risk.

How many little life experiences, little life risks leave us with cuts and bruises where we may have hoped for a soft landing. I don't know about you but I've had a few. Trust is neither easily won nor given. It's earned.

I don't easily trust. Never have. It's taken years and years for me to begin to truthfully trust God and we're still working on it. I've been married for nearly 20 years and only in the last 5 have I really begun to trust Peter. I wasn't abused as a child, I was loved. I haven't been abused as an adult either. Yet I was obviously very sensitive and this was the path of mistrust that I took, as far as I understand it anyway...Recipe for a control freak (being reformed!) - HURT to DISAPPOINTMENT to ANGER to JUDGEMENT to MISTRUST to INSECURITY to FEAR to INDEPENDENCE to CONTROL. From one step to the next progressively over time and instantaneously from incident to incident. Am I one sick puppy? Maybe, but I reckon God has just shown me a pattern that He wants to rewire and I reckon there're probably heaps of people out there just like me, who are afraid to trust because they're really hurt and they don't know where to start. So, if most of life and the relationships in it can be stitched up into 'controllable' sequences, outcomes and responses we'll be safe. And a lot of it is really about safety. Is it safe to trust this God I can't see?

Hmmm. Safety isn't something that we do all that well, especially when we can't even predict the response of our own souls!

'I' statements Ann, you must use 'I' statements.

You know what - I do get hurt and I am a bit defensive sometimes and I have got some scar tissue but I've come to the place where I really do believe that Jesus can catch me, wants to catch me, will catch me, does catch me. Is that surrender? When I read in the gospels about his compassion, his love, his loyalty, his anger with game playing users and bullies, his generosity and his power to heal - I reckon he's worth the risk and his arms are strong. I really want to surrender and I'm choosing each day, in a million different ways, to let go. God grant me grace to continue.

DAY 8: 25th April, 2004

Worship...it may sound really basic but for nearly 18 years on my 'Jesus road' I felt insecure about that word. I love music, particularly soul and blues, heaps of rock, some jazz, not into metal or thrash or anything that's really black, some classical I love and some instrumental stuff. I always equated music and singing with worship...and I'm not much in the singing department.

I loved talking to God and telling Him what I loved about what He made, particularly in nature and asking Him questions about stuff like ' how time works', 'what we'll get to do with Him in heaven' and so on, but I never realised that a lot of that lovely thankful conversation was actually worship. I wish I'd read some of this stuff years ago 'cos I probably would have been free to worship Him much sooner instead of being disappointed that I wasn't able to bless Him like other people could. What a duffer!

You know what's really unlocked me to give Him praise and really spend time listening for Him (and He doesn't always speak, by the way, but it's GROUSE when He does!)? The thing that has opened me out to Him is really getting the sense and knowledge of how much He loves me, like Rick (Warren) says somewhere in the last two chapters (of the book A Purpose Driven Life). I KNOW He loves me because the Bible tells me that over and over (Jesus loves me this I know...) and I FEEL His love when He bails me out of situations, speaks something wise to me, teaches me about His words or Himself or opens my senses when I'm concentrating on blessing Him. That often happens when I'm singing or praying in tongues, sounding out my feelings and depths to Him or just waiting.

I really like the way this book encourages communication with the Lord and celebrates the different ways we can do that. Learning to live with and share with the Holy Spirit is lots of experimenting for me, based on what I read out of scripture and see other people doing, but the language we have together is often very individual and private and I love it. In fact I reckon I'll go out on a limb and say that one of the very most precious things in my life is the voice of God and I will continue to seek His conversation desperately and delightedly for ever, I'm sure. Isn't He wonderful to speak and act personally with us. I ADORE YOU DAD, I ADORE YOU JESUS, I ADORE YOU HOLY SPIRIT xxxx

DAYS 6 AND 7: 23rd-24th April, 2004
I love the stuff about eternity; it majorly fires me up. Knowing that I'm part of His eternal agenda is sometimes the only thing that motivates me through the crud!

I cannot get over the miracle of Ann Wojczuk being given the gift of Jesus.

When I remember to wake up in the morning and thank God for being saved, it frames the day and gives me strength and a perspective through which to filter some of the mundane aspects and disappointments of life and helps me to dance on the inside when He leans close to me as I move through another 24 hours of the time I have here. Thank you Jesus for breathing in me.

DAY 5: 22nd April, 2004
Hmmm. how do I see my life? I'm a 'foodie', so I'd have to say for me it's a series of meals. A rich and varied diet where God and I and others all share in the gathering, the cooking and the eating. Sometimes it's an intimate dinner for two. Sometimes it's a rambunctious banquet where everyone brings something. Sometimes it's just meat and three veg!

The more I think about this, the more it makes sense because, for me, a meal is something that sustains and blesses and enriches. It's a way for me to give myself to others, as well as receive and I love to eat in solitude with my own thoughts or share good food, wine and conversation with others. I love the time after a meal where you just sit around and laugh or chat. It's very special.
That metaphor most certainly applies to my life in all kinds of ways and as my vision and values have centred more on Jesus and people, the centrality of loving and giving has hugely increased.

Strangely, the other metaphor is very different. I tend to be a fighter, not a runner, and one of the aspects of life is 'the battle'. I don't like to surrender and so really giving my life to Christ took a long time. I admit to being a bit of a toughie on the outside. Of course, inside I was quite sensitive (but you mustn't let anyone see that must you!) I do see life as a series of battles sometimes, particularly when world views, personal issues and spiritual dynamics are stirred up. Obviously the Bible documents the reality of the seen and unseen conflict we live in. I'm not scared of it, denying it or obsessed by it but the reality of battle is with me as much as the rich experience of life. I LOVE TO LIVE. WHAT A GIFT IT IS TO BE BORN AND GROW AND KNOW GOD!

DAY 4: 21st April, 2004

I'm offline and disconnected in more ways than one. But I now know what drives me: short-term, getting in our new house; longer-term, Jesus. So that's good.

As far as today goes, I'm taking an eternal perspective. I can't write much but chapter 4 (of Rick Warren's book, The Purpose Driven Life) was fantastic. I'd never thought about the connection between the earthly tent and the heavenly house as a metaphor for my form on earth and in heaven.

I love the C.S. Lewis quote (come to think of it, I love C.S. Lewis): "There are two kinds of people: those who say to God 'Your will be done' and those to whom God says 'Alright then, have it your way'." Great way to sum up the choice we have to make.

DAY 3: 20th April, 2004

I am not as driven as I used to be. I am still thinking about what drives me. I'll get back to you on that.

DAY 2: 19th April, 2004
Had our first group night. How good was it to see 20 people packed into one lounge room!

I really enjoyed the questions, they were thought-provoking and interesting and the great thing was, there were lots of different approaches and responses to the material. But the best thing was sitting in a room with all those people, talking about God stuff, not just blah, blah, blah. I love that. It's so energising!

I haven't quite got a handle on how the timing's going to work with reading the book and watching the video but I guess they know how it comes together.

Chapter 2 of the book (The Purpose Drive Life). Hmmmm. That's a gnarly one. 'You are not an accident', God planned your parents, your whereabouts, your circumstances, your specific physical body and so on. Well I REALLY DO believe He made me deliberately and He showed Himself to me and got me saved and all that - but there's some really big issues in this one.

Like - how much does the physically, spiritually, morally, relationally and environmentally polluted world affect the details of my life and formation? Like - is it God's choice that a child is born with congenital defects, brain damage, or into an horrific abusive environment or deadly poverty? Like - I KNOW He cherishes our individual lives and has done everything to make freedom possible for each of us and is literally working miracles of rescue and rebuilding in people's lives daily but does He plonk us into outrageous circumstance and then rescue some of us - or do we exist in the circumstance and have the potential to discover His rescue? Like - can I ever hope to understand?

I don't want to think like that but I do want to think like that. The people who live a life of suffering deserve that I care about why.

Right now I know when I read about Jesus, He is the likeness and personality of God. And I know He is really connected to us, with particular deep love and healing for the isolated, sick, poor, and searching. So I can safely say ' it doesn't make sense to me but I trust His love and what I know of His character'. He's God and I'm not. I know He loves us and has this beyond this earth rescue plan that I need to be part of NOW. Maybe I can be part of that plan for others too.

One more question - how many more days of this???

DAY 1: 18th April, 2004

So here I go, 40 days of purpose. Hopefully there'll be more than that!

I'm not big on 'campaigns' and I've gotta admit I felt a bit jaundiced about the whole thing - fully packaged deal complete with key ring (!), and it's American not Australian - eek.

But...I got a big nudge from the Lord the other day, as in - He has His purpose in this, and it's not 'just a program' to Him because He's involved and so are people, therefore it will never be 'just a program'.

So Ann, pull your head in and bless the Lord and the people who put the whole thing together and released it to the world. Hmmmm. I relent. I'll stop being patronising and get into it. Sorry.

So...I start the 40 days with THE QUESTION - What on earth am I here for? I start the 40 days with THE QUESTION - what on earth am I here for?

Twenty-three years ago I probably would have answered that question similarly but with a very different focus. I didn't know Jesus or believe He existed or mattered but I knew there was something. I would have answered 'I am here to make my mark'.

Now I still believe that, but I'm not doing that for me. I've given my whole life to Jesus and the individual mark I make on the world is for His benefit (and mine I'm sure) and comes through His presence in me. It'll be unique but it's no longer all about ME and my little kingdom.

I'll be really interested to see where we all end up at the end of 40 days. I hope there is a LASTING definition and inspiration for everyone who does it and the people who live around us. I hope we're all swimming in communion with God and each other. I hope.