testimony

I've been chatting to a lot of people lately about testimony, and was just remembering how awesome it is to hear bits and pieces of other people's stories of how they met Jesus.
I am also very often put to shame by the vigor and excitement of my comrads who have given their lives over to Jesus as an adult or teen. I can see their fresh fire burning so intensely, sometimes I wonder whether mine is fizzling, or cooling, or just getting hotter....but then that would be comparison, and we are not to compare ourselves to eachother, but only to our Maker and Perfecter, Jesus. He's the only one that will give us the true evaluation of our soul situation.

There are two things I love about Bangor, that not many others share in.
1)my one-day a week at the thrift store
2)driving the van

I love working at the thrift store, sorting and reorganizing other people's trash. It's an endless tedious kind of work, but for some reason I love the torture. (Must be the years of repetitve music training in the background.) It's unnerving the amount of stuff people have in excess in North America. It's easy to sort through someone else's cast-offs, and put it in a save or trash pile. Much harder with my own stuff. It reminds me of my spiritual baggage that I carry around with me...sometimes I need someone else to help me sort through and help me part with some of my sentimental trash I've been holding on to. Good thing I've got Jesus with me. He's helping me organize, minimize, and liquidize spiritual waste in my life, while at the same time uncovering some lost or forgotten treasures.

As for the van, it brings me back to the place I first heard about Jesus. It was at an open-air magic show put on by the Salvation Army corps in St. Thomas, Ontario when I was five years old. One of my mom's co-workers from the Bank of Montreal had invited us to go with her one Saturday, and I got invited up to the front to help out with a magic trick. We found out about a Salvation Army van that happened to drive through our own neighbourhood every week to take kids to Sunday School, and that was how I started coming to church and learning about Jesus. I never remembered much about the van rides at first, other than the fact that if they were never in our neighbourhood, I never would have come to church. One of my first spiritual battles as a child was choosing Sunday School over watching Owl TV. I loved my TV shows, and I loved sleeping in on Sunday mornings, but something about seeing the Salvation Army van pull into our complex week after week was drawing me. Now I know that it was Jesus drawing me. I also know now, that much of what I've experienced in my life of the love and protection and grace of God has to do with the prayers of the saints who were warriors of the most High, fighting on their knees.
Sometimes we overlook the mundane activities in life, and forget that there are huge spiritual lessons to be learned in them, and victories won through them. Lord, help me to find you even in the mundane activities in life, and to turn them into prayer to you. You call your people to be a people of prayer. Thank you for answered prayers in my life and in the lives of those who I am praying for. In the words of Clarice, one of Bangor's fireball prayer warriors, "We love you, Lord Jesus, because you first loved us." Amen.

"maintain love and justice, and wait for your God always." (Hosea 12:6)