I gave the talk at my staff meeting last Tuesday. I had really encouraging feedback so I thought I'd share it with you all! Unfortunately you won't be able to see the DVD clip I used coz I don't know where I can get it from, plus I wouldn't have a clue how to upload it anyway!

Here it is....Hope you enjoy!

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Good morning everyone!

Well, usually when I’m standing in front of a microphone it’s because I’m singing. While that doesn’t phase me in the slightest, public speaking is a different matter altogether and it petrifies me! So when I was asked to give the staff talk I tried to avoid it by not settling on a date and saying ‘one day in the future’, but Archie pinned me down eventually so here I am. I think 2 ½ years of being on staff and getting away with it is long enough!!

I was also given 2 months notice, so you’d think I would have begun preparing what to say back then, but alas, there’s nothing like leaving it to the last minute. I picked up my pen and paper only a week ago!

To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure what to speak about. My conversion story isn’t very interesting and certainly not very dramatic, so I knew I didn’t want to speak about that as my main topic for fear you’d all fall asleep. But to understand who I am now, it’s helpful to know where I have come from, so allow me to give you brief summary of my Christian life.
I was born into a Christian home and attended church services regularly from the age of zero. There was never really a time when I didn’t believe in God, but at the age of 10 I said ‘the prayer of commitment’, however, because I didn’t FEEL any different I think I prayed that prayer another dozen times in the following few months!

Anyway, skipping the detail and jumping ahead 14 years passed teenage fun in church youth groups, university independence and general Miss. Goody two-shoes lifestyle we come to me aged 24. This was the year I moved to London. I look back at this time as the start of a period where my faith really accelerated and deepened quite considerably.

April to May 2005 were two months of learning to trust God fully in many areas of my life. I had left my old job, my parental home and my church, and I was in the process of moving to London. I began temping at various places in the city and was sleeping on a friends floor. During this time, my friend and I, plus a few others, were in the process of securing a rental contract on a house where employment references were required. However, I found myself in a slight predicament because I had no permanent employment and was ‘in between’ temping jobs. I asked my temping agency to write me a reference but they didn’t hold out much hope for success because I hadn’t received work for a few weeks and they couldn’t lie (not that I was asking them to!).

Looking back I’m not entirely sure how much I actually did trust God because I remember feeling anxious quite a lot of the time through it all, but ultimately I didn’t have a choice! It was either trust God for everything to fall into place, or just panic and change my plans. So I chose the former!

And God came through for me. After lots of prayer, my references were accepted on the house, and I was also offered the job at HTB. I moved and started my new job within one week of each other. Talk about God’s timing being at the last minute!

Despite knowing that God can be trusted and having many a testimony to that in my life already, learning to trust is something I’m forever coming back to.

Trust is a word that can so easily be thrown around in our every day vocabulary, for example, when someone is going through a difficult time we might advise them to ‘just trust in God’, yet it’s so hard to put into practice. It’s especially hard when everything in us wants to take control of a situation and ignore God’s thoughts on the matter because we’re not entirely certain He’s got it in hand because we don’t see his plan or how it makes sense to ours.

Proverbs 3 v5 from the NIV reads like this:

“Trust in the Lord with all of your heart, and lean not on your own understanding”

Let me also read to you The Message Translation:
“Trust God from the bottom of your heart; don’t try to figure out everything on your own. Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; he’s the one who will keep you on track.”

I would say I’m a person who trusts others very easily – maybe too easily and too quickly even. I like to see the best in people and would trust them unless they give me a reason no to. But I actually struggle to trust God with all of my heart. It’s not that I don’t believe He’s trustworthy and that God knows what’s best for me and is sovereign over my life because I do. I know these truths in my head, but somehow it’s difficult for my heart to agree and put this trust into my every day living.

But what do I have to trust God for?

It’s simple for me to trust in God’s provision when I live in a wealthy city and can buy anything I need from a shop probably no further that ¼ mile in any direction. My daily bread is purchased from a Sainsbury’s local only 30 seconds up the road!

For me, my biggest struggle of trust is regarding my relationships - the things in life that really matter to my heart & it’s a practice much more testing to live out.

I so often strive to take control of situations and it’s a battle to stop myself proactively doing those things that I’m sure God is screaming at me to leave in His hands, and I’m just not listening!

I remember one incident  where I was trying so hard to fix a friendship where a lot of hurt had been suffered by ‘doing the right thing’, whatever that was exactly. But it was only when I surrendered the friendship to God and sought His advice that it was repaired in a way I could not have imagined!

I don’t know how many of you have seen ‘Evan Almighty’, but the film is littered with dialogue portraying strong Christian messages that I think are just so spot on but delivered in humour. For those of you who don’t know the story, let me give you a brief outline. Evan Baxter is a Junior Congressman who prays to God one night his wish to ‘change the world’. Of course, God hearing his prayer appears to Evan with the perplexing request to build an Ark, and Evan is sure he’s losing it. But soon mysterious deliveries of wood and tools are dropped on his doorstep, animals of every shape and size are flocking to him two by two, and his self-absorbed life goes from overnight success to almighty mess!

I want to show you a clip now from the film that sums up how most of us probably feel when God asks something of us but we’re not sure whether to trust Him, and our tendency is to carry on with our happy, comfortable little lives for fear that God’s request rocks the boat a little. And like Evan, although it’s in line with what we prayed, it’s not quite what we had in mind or how we expected it to turn out!

SHOW CLIP. (Scene 7. Timing: 29:17 – 32:16)


Sometimes we can feel that when we are following God’s plan, we don’t know where to begin, and in worldly terms our life is one almighty mess. But we do not see the reason behind God’s purposes. We can only see what’s in front of us right here and now and quite often it makes no sense. Yet if we believe God to be loving, gracious and trustworthy, then we must continue to trust in His promises for our lives and live according to His will, not our own. The outcome is one of a more fulfilling life because we've followed God's plans.

So my encouragement to you all today is to trust God WITH ALL OF YOUR HEART – holding nothing back – and He will not let you down, because he is faithful. I still have a lot to learn, and a long way to go, but I’m going to persevere with all my might to trust in the Rock Eternal.