A few things I've learned

I have approximately 1500 e-mails sitting in my account that have gathered there over the last five or six or seven years, desperately asking to be deleted. Today, I started the cull. I didn't get very far after getting far too distracted by old e-mails from old friends. It's fair to say that things have changed in the last few years! In there, amongst the e-mails from banks and the physio board and charities needing money, were a few gems.

I found this one e-mail that I had sent to a girl I met during Streetworks, 4 days of serving the communities of Belfast. We were on the same team; she was a few years younger than me, having just finished school. At the end of the few days, she asked me if I had any advice for her and I told her I would e-mail her. I didn't know much and didn't have much to share at that stage, but there were a few things I had learned. Here's what I told her...

1. Take a gap year after school - whatever u do, I guarantee you'll learn a whole heap about yourself and about God which will set you up nicely for the rest of your life

2. On that note, a wise person once told me "it's not where you go or what you do that matters, but who you are when you get there." It doesn't matter whether you're serving God in Ireland or Africa, as long as you're serving him.

3. If you ever visit a waterfall (I learned this one the hard way on a trip to Victoria Falls), don't wear a white top! Waterfalls produce spray, spray makes you wet, white tops are see through when they get wet!

4. You are under construction: God's working on you so it's ok not to be 
perfect. 2 Corinthians 12:9 says "My grace is sufficient for you; my power is made perfect in weakness." I read something about that verse that helped me a lot. "Wonder why God won’t give you a skill? If only God had made you a singer or a runner or a writer or a missionary. But there you are, tone-deaf, slow of foot and mind. Don’t despair. God’s grace is still sufficient to finish what he began. And until He’s finished, let Paul remind you that the power is in the message, not the messenger. His grace is sufficient to speak clearly, even when you don’t…You wonder why God doesn’t alter your personality? You, like Paul are a bit rough around the edges? Say things you later regret or do things you later question? Why doesn’t God make you more like him? He is. He’s just not finished yet. Until he is, his grace is sufficient to overcome your flaws." (Max Lucado)

5. On that as well, God will keep working on you if you let him. If you struggle to forgive and keep refusing to forgive, he'll keep sending people to offend until you learn it. If you refuse to be patient, he'll keep sending people to try your patience!

6. Ephesians 2:10 "For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so that we can do the good things he planned for us long ago." YOU are God's masterpiece - he has a plan and a purpose just for YOU. 
No one else can do what he designed you to do.

7. 1 Timothy 4:12-16 "Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are 
young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity." Don't ever let anyone tell you that you can't do something (unless it's robbing a bank or something like that - then you should listen to them :)

8. Don't hang out with negative people

9. It's easy to forget how amazing the stars are... "As we walked down the gorge, I looked up at the sky and I saw a beauty that can’t be described. Beauty I had forgotten about because it was only when it was pitch black with no interfering lights that I could see the stars. Pinpricks of light scattered across a veil of black. Sometimes, when there’s a lot of light around, it’s easy to forget about the stars. They’re always there. I just can’t always see them…
Sometimes, when things are going well, it’s easy to think we’re strong and we are the reason that things are good. It’s easy to forget about God. So, sometimes, it has to get a little darker to show us that he is always there." Just remember that one when things are crap.

10. Always do your best at everything, even if it seems like it's 
pointless. "If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well "

11. Sometimes you just need to go crazy! I highly recommend listening to 
McFly and dancing round your room with some friends (great around exam 
time, trust me!)