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Our senior pastor has been preaching a series on ‘church without walls’ but I hadn’t thought about it a great deal in my own daily activities.   I had thought about it with respect to reaching out to local community and outside of our church building but let me explain what I mean.

Recently some friends of ours at church were unwell and the wife had been in hospital.  I received a call from our church office asking if I’d be willing to make a meal for their family.  I accepted quickly and was delighted I’d been asked.  Whilst I’ve been involved in leadership and departmental activities I’d never been asked to take on a pastoral role like this one before and I was thrilled at the prospect.  Such a simple thing to do but it means so much to those who have need.   For me it was a short-term commitment and because I was home and available, it was easy to organise.

When I delivered the meal I didn’t want to stay long and intrude on the family but I was invited in to chat with the husband and wife for a time. They were delighted to see me and very grateful for what I’d brought them.  They asked me how my business was going and I told them about some recent events that had taken place.  And then Janet said something that I later repeated to my husband and didn’t fully comprehend until I said it.  She said ‘Some women return home to escape from the outside world.  You returned home to reach the world’.

Graham and I discussed this and he said he felt that Janet often had very insightful comments.   It is true that through my business, my writings and through speaking at churches and seminars that I have reached many, many people and yet that had not been my goal or my intention when I first came back home to work over 14 years ago.  I was fed up with the corporate world and was anxious to be home for our 5 daughters.  But God turned that into something far beyond my dreams.  All those years of experience, trial and tribulation have brought with it lessons I can share with others.

As mentioned above, our senior pastor has been preaching a series on ‘church without walls’ and I can truly say that through my working at home, and in sharing with and caring for others online I have truly reached out beyond my own walls.

As you are reading this right now it means you have internet access.  How many people do you think you can reach and touch through the ministry that God has planned for you?

Matt 7:7 For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. (NLT)

More and more I get this ‘urgent’ need to write - something that has entered my mind and won’t go away.  I should really know by now that it’s a prompting from the Spirit, shouldn’t I?

On my VA blog this week I wrote a post about ‘what you think about, you’re drawn towards’ and it was about being focussed on things that will help you towards your goal.  I’ve touched on that subject here before, when writing about The Law of Attraction earlier this year.

I was pleased with the post I’d written but didn’t receive as many comments for it as I have for others I’ve written.  However, a couple of days later I received an email from a lady who was very nervous about making contact with a man who had asked her to ring.

She just happened to read my blogpost before making that call and it ended up being a very successful connection with her gaining a brand new client.  She wanted to share with me how that post had really boosted her and given her the courage and confidence she needed.  I realised afterward that I had indeed been following the prompting of the Spirit and written something that was intended for someone else.  I just love that when it happens!

Do you ever feel like you just can’t get it all done but you’re not sure what to do about it?  I’ve been like that lately, lots of stuff crowding in - work stuff. I love what I do but there’s so much coming at me lately that sometimes I feel like I don’t know what to grab next.

I get regular daily devotionals via email and also have a perpetual calendar on my desk in front of my computer monitor, with daily scripture and commentary.

Two of these bible messages and a chance question from a prospective client made me realise that God has been trying to get a message to me - I just needed to listen.

That’s when I had my sudden revelation, an epiphany. Here I am, a Virtual Assistant of many years standing and I own and run a network of VAs. But I was still trying to do everything myself!  It’s a matter of control and learning to let go and delegate.

A few nights ago I had dinner with a woman who was insisting that I look after her, rather than one of my team members.   She’d been referred to me and the person who referred her spoke very highly of my abilities. That’s all well and good but when you’re stretched to the limit, you really just want to be able to refer clients to your support team instead.

And then she said to me, after I’d told her for probably the 3rd or 4th time in a week that I just don’t have the time, ‘can’t you just manage it all and then get some of your team to do what you can’t?’. There it was… out in the open!  It kind of hit me between the eyes and I gave her question some serious thought later that evening.

And then I rediscovered a message that arrived the previous night and which only really could have come from God, well one of his messengers anyway.  I receive daily devotionals from MarketPlace Leaders (I get Volume 2) and this one is on Time Management. I’ll let you read it for yourself:

David accomplished a great deal in his lifetime. However, he also understood life had an end to it and he wanted to make the most of it. He learned to use his time wisely. And so should we.

Peter Drucker was a renown management consultant to major corporations and authored many bestselling business books. He suggested three activities that might help busy executives better manage their time.

“First, do not start with the task. Start with your time. Determine where your time is going. Then, attempt to manage that time and cut back unproductive demands on your time. Consolidate your ‘discretionary’ time into the largest possible continuing time units.

Drucker refers to the second step as time management. After listing the activities to which we devote our time, he suggests that we ask three questions about each of these activities to help us minimize the amount of time we waste: “What would happen if this were not done at all?” And if the answer is, ‘Nothing would happen,’ then obviously the conclusion is to stop doing it. Next, which of the activities on my time log could be done by somebody else just as well, if not better? What do I do that wastes my time without contributing to my effectiveness?*

Drucker closes by saying ‘Know Thyself,’ this old prescription for wisdom is impossibly difficult for mortal men. But everyone can follow the injunction ‘Know Thy Time’ if you want to, and be well on the road toward contribution and effectiveness.”

Why not evaluate how you are spending your time and ask God how to better use your time.

There was a message on my calendar too, which made me realise that God was planning on getting my attention!  ‘it is possible to give away and become richer! It is also possible to hold on too tightly and lose everything. Yes, the liberal man shall be rich! By watering others, he waters himself ‘. Interesting passage which is taken from Proverbs 11:24-25.

To top it off, this week has been an extremely strange one with lots of things happening that needed my urgent attention (like my web server crashing and needing to help clients, etc) which added to my workload considerably. Definitely time to hand over what I can to my team so I can concentrate on managing, rather than doing what others can do for me.

Ps Rob had a great message last night (as he always does). He told us about the demon-possessed man in Mark 5. You know the story? The one where a herd of pigs ran down a steep embankment and drowned after the demons left that man?

I’d never really given that story a great deal of thought before, other than it was a story of healing and release, but Ps Rob showed us how, in verses 18-20 he begs Jesus to go with him, and instead Jesus tells him to stay, go home and tell his family what the Lord has done for him.

The man takes it further than that and tells the whole of his region in Decapolis. He begins to tell his story and evangelise. A couple of chapters later Jesus returns to that area and performs a healing and also feeds the crowd of 4,000+. Without that man telling his story to the people in that region, Jesus wouldn’t have been readily accepted sometime later for more miracles to take place. When the first miracle happened (the removal of the demons) the people begged Jesus to go away, but when he came back (after that man had evangelised) the people wanted to hear more from Jesus and brought a man for healing. It was probably a few weeks or months later but what a difference!

Now I see those verses in an entirely different light. Ps Rob told us how important it is for us to tell our stories, because there will always be others that can relate.

So, I’m here to tell you my story of how I came to know Christ as my personal Saviour.

I grew up in the church. My parents aren’t Christians but they were going for awhile while I and my siblings were young. Once we were old enough to go on our own, mum and dad stopped going. I have no idea if something happened to stop them, or whether they saw it as an opportunity for time alone for a couple of hours a week, but the result was that my sisters, brother and I grew up in the church without our parents present. Once in our late teens, early 20s we all left for a period of time but I returned after a couple of years, and then my brother too. One of my sisters has since begun going to church again. I pray that God touches their lives in a way that they know what they have and that they are able to reach out to others too, to tell their stories.

And so I’ve always known who God is and who Jesus is, but it wasn’t till August 1972 that I made a personal commitment.

Standing in the assembly hall in high school, I was 14 years of age and surrounded by several hundred high school girls. We had been standing for the school anthem and then the visiting choral group followed with a song called “He is My Everything”.

It was in the days of Engelbert Humperdinck’s highlight years and the tune was his very well known song of an almost similar title. I had known of Jesus all of my life, having grown up in church and Sunday School but the song somehow brought it all very close to me – in fact inside my heart. As I listened to the words I had a sudden growing realisation that Jesus was very real and my attempt at prayers and conversation with Him in the past would no longer be a mechanisation, but was instantly made real and personal.

The other girls in the hall faded from view and suddenly I was in a room that had become white and bright and the only people in it were Jesus and me. A part of me knew that the rest of the assembly were still there, I could hear them coughing or sniffling in the background, and the choir was still singing, but somehow their sound was now angelic and something was happening inside of me.

Tears streamed down my cheeks unchecked as the knowledge of a real Jesus took hold within me. I pulled out a hanky to start blowing my nose and wipe my tears as I saw Jesus smile and nod at me and then fade away again as the current ‘real’ images began to reappear. I looked around and saw the occasional girl wiping tears away from her cheeks and I wondered if they saw the same vision I had. A personal encounter with my Jesus that has stayed with me now for well over thirty years.

A love for singing took hold and over the years I have sung in duets, trios, groups and choirs. It seems that whenever I am singing for Him I am singing my best. I feel it go through my entire body and when the harmonies are right a shiver moves through me and I break out in goose bumps. I can’t explain; it just does and I know the sound mix is right. I have written many songs about our Lord, and the very first was probably only a few short weeks after I accepted him as my Lord and Saviour back there in 1972.

The visiting choral group that came to my high school in those days will probably never know just how many people they brought to the Lord through their wonderful gift but I am eternally grateful for their music and their introduction to a personal Jesus. Just as I will never know how many people I’ve touched with my story or the things I’ve been doing since, but every now and then I get a hint of what has transpired when I get a note, an email, a phone call or something else from someone whose life has been touched. One day, in the future, when I’m called to be with my Lord, I know I will see lots of faces of people I’ve met through my life, but in whom I didn’t know a seed had been planted. What a wonderful day of celebration that will be!

I’d like to encourage you to tell your story and link back here in the comments.  Let’s build a whole community of people telling their story for all to see.  Your story might not be for everyone, but as Ps Rob told us last night, there will always be someone who relates to your story, so why not share it?

My husband and I spent the long weekend away from home, enjoying some of what nature has to offer in our beautiful Victorian countryside. We spent a day at Mt Buffalo and in reality, we probably needed a good week there. So many tracks to wander along, so many sights to really take time to stop and enjoy. Our visit was fleeting but pleasant on a beautiful sunny but cold winter’s day.

I took this picture because it reminded me of someone I know online who recently felt like he was at the end of his tether. So much so he almost took his life but friends stepped in at the crucial moment. I like to believe that’s because God wasn’t ready for this man to leave this world yet.

Often there are times when we feel like we’re stuck between a rock and hard place, with nowhere to go and life being squeezed out of us. But when I saw this fern growing between two large rocks on Mt Buffalo I felt God saying to me that there is life, even between the rock and the hard place.

This fern found something to grab hold of and grow upon, just as we must grab onto our own personal rock and foundation, our Lord Jesus Christ. In Him there is always hope and people can always survive and flourish, even if it appears to many they are in an impossible place in their lives. If you are reading this right now and feel that you are in this place of nowhere else to go, then know there is something you need to do.

Psalm 46:10 Be still and know that I am God. He wants you to be still and listen to Him, reach out to Him and really listen. That deep, dark place you are in right now is only temporary, it is not permanent. Know that tomorrow, God’s tomorrow, will be a very different place for you and there is still hope, there is still life. Be still and know that He is God.

Psalm 46:10, Be Still, a rock and a hard place, Jesus Christ