New year, new challenges

My apologies for my lack of blogging, I have struggled to have time to sit down and write. I have absolutely loads to say, but just getting started has been really hard. I am really having to force myself to do this now, but I really feel I need to get over myself and make that extra effort.

As a family, we will be making some very big decisions in our lives this year, we will be setting ourselves apart from a lot of the things we are doing now, we really feel a call to be different, to see the world for what it is, which makes for some tough decisions.

I am going to leave my job this year, it keeps me from my family and from doing God's work, I need to kill this part of my life off and move onto something new.

We have our house up for sale, where and how we end up living is going to be our biggest challenge, as we feel we need to explore community at a much deeper level.

We worry for our children and the amount of compromise we make for the world, for them, to 'fit in'. Fit in to what exactly, the worlds standards, the worlds ways.
As we have been making these decisions, our oldest was attacked quite brutally at school by a large group of lads. He may have said some weird things, I found myself thinking, why did he say that, couldn't he try to fit in. Does that make his treatment right? Are we called to fit in?

I remember as a child a picture in the church study where my Dad was vicar, of the peculiar people, who were a spin off from the Wesleyans . I use to think it was a weird name. Now I think its about right, we are called to be different, that may be peculiar, but it is true.

How many of us, I know I do, base so much of what we do and how we think on what the world tells us, or how the world does things. Schools where they teach evolution as fact, jobs that compromise us ethically, things/posessions we just don't need. I'm not preaching at anyone, I am asking myself these questions and so many more. I sit in one of the wealthiest and luxurious and healthiest countries in the world with so much freedom. Thankyou God, I do appreciate it, but I look around and see people lost, sad, depressed, lonely, struggling and unhealthy, they need freeing. I am now refusing to believe the lie, the lie the world tells me what I need, what to fear, what guidelines to follow, what to do to fit in. I am going to trust in God, I want to fit in with God, what are His plans and His goals and His life, that is not in a box, that is a challenge, that is living.