God's Gift of Confidence. In Him...

Firstly tonight, I wanted to take a minute to thank all of you who read this blog.  I'm very grateful that as of the writing of this tonight, I have had nearly 1600 hits on my blog since it started, over 1100 of which have been in the last 45 days!  I have had people tell me that I talk a lot.  It's true.  I appreciate that I believe most of you work through the length and I hope you can see my heart.  I allow myself to be pretty transparent on this blog.  It's kind of my diary, so to speak.  I certainly would never put extremely personal issues that (I hope anyway) would make anyone struggle, but please let me know if you do have any concerns.  That said, as you can see I do have a lot on my heart when I do write, mostly because it's been a few days, or more, since I last sat down and put my thoughts on the internet for all to see.  What I'm trying to say with all this, is that I apologize for the length of some of my posts.  This is definitely written for me to just get things off my chest (good and bad) and for my family and friends to share this incredible experience with me.

Today was absolutely beautiful in Berlin.  The sun was out and it was warm and just amazing!  I was stuck in the house most of the day, but finally later in the afternoon, I had to get out.  So I decided that I wanted to go to Charlottenburg Palace (Castle?).  It looks more like a palace to me, but either way, it's very beautiful. I'll share photos on here and on facebook. Anyway, the grounds of this palace are pretty amazing. It's pretty large and I walked around most of it and through a good part of the gardens.  It was great with the sun starting to go down to just sit at a fountain and pray.  Not too many tourists around at 7pm, so it was nice and quiet. I remember coming here in 1992 but somehow it seems different now.  Not in a bad way, just different.  Might just be that I look at a lot of things with different eyes than I did before.  Not sure though.

Picture taken by me tonight 6/6/13 at about 8pm

I have to be honest, I'm still not used to the fact that I can go look at castles any time I want.  This country and this city are so amazing to me. For my German friends, you have such a special land.  I hope you appreciate it.  I hope I never take things like these for granted. I want to always be impressed by such things,  God willing....

Sunday at church I spoke with one of the leaders in the church here and said I wanted to be able to help out in some way in the Singles.  This particular person and I got together on Tuesday as well for lunch and just to hang out and had just a really super encouraging talk.  He assured me that my story isn't crazy (which seemed to indicate that I'm not either... whew!!)  and I was just able to share with him some of my dreams and some of my pain as well.  It's so good to have someone to just listen and not judge, but empathize with some rather painful things in my past.  I was very grateful to be able to do that with him.

Anyway, on Sunday, after I said I wanted to feel more useful, he suggested that I lead a short introduction sermon to the Singles group on Wednesday night (last night).    I had to make sure that I heard him correctly.  First I said I could do it in English and he said he could translate.  I figured either way, it was a good challenge and I decided to go ahead and try.  I sat down to write and everything just sort of flowed in German. As I practiced, it seemed like I could do it just fine in German.  Huh??? Really?  I was pretty shocked actually.  I did ask him to be ready just in case I couldn't think of what to say.  He agreed, of course. 

I was actually giving a short 10-15 minute intro to a older sister from Boston (64 years old) who lost her husband after 30 years, 12 years ago.  She basically said that she has learned more about love since his death than in their 30 years of marriage.  Everything that she had to say was very impacting about how she loves being single.  I talked a little bit about family and how we as single disciples should be just as much a family to each other as our physical families.  That God intended the church to be a family.  I used Mat 12:46-49,  1 Cor 12:7, 24b-26 and ended with Ecc. 8:15 as the scriptures.  Afterward, I had a lot of positive feedback on my lesson and I was super encouraged.

Oddly, I really wasn't too nervous, a little, yes, but not too bad.  I was confident of my own convictions on the subject of family in the church and my German has definitely improved, but really it was totally God who worked.  On that subject, it's been very encouraging, but somehow kind of hard to explain.  God has definitely blessed my being here in ways too numerous to mention here, but I think what I'm learning is that I am really trying to love and trust God and I've really put myself out there not only to get to Germany, but to improve myself.  God hasn't just answered prayers, he's blown them out of the water.  Not just little blessings but with seemingly HUGE victories for me. Really for his glory, but I'm just so humbled by it. I've never seen God move quite like this and it's really, well, humbling to be on the receiving end of such incredible things. I'm quite speechless about it, I'm really so blown away by how God has worked here. Can't wait to see the job he has in store for me! :)

Backing up a few days, on Friday (May 31), I had the chance to talk a bit with my landlord, letting him know that I was going to try to move out on 6/15 and that I would not be paying rent this month, seeing as how I paid already from 4/15 to 6/15, plus 300 Euros security deposit (about $400).  I figured then if I moved out on 6/15 I could at least get my deposit back and have some money to move into another place that was coming open.  Basically he told me that was not our agreement, that I paid for the full month of April on the 15th when I moved in!!!  I told him that was not my understanding.  Naturally, I agreed to pay rent on the 1st and did so for May. Anyway, to keep a long story short, I wasn't getting any money back was sort of the bottom line.  I was super angry with him, hurt and felt like he was just a swindler.  I tried to explain that this was the last of the money I came here with and that he has taken it all from me.  I was angry and frankly, became despondent. I finally told him that "I made a mistake and I'll have to live with it."  He tried to continue to explain to me and I responded sharply "Didn't you just hear what I said?  *I* made a mistake..." He stopped and left the room.  I was just L-I-V-I-D.  I called him the next day to say that I would go ahead and stay the whole time and he seemed very excited that I came to that conclusion.

I found out a few minutes before we talked that I was out of minutes on my phone, so I had to leave to go put some more money on it.  Of course, I always find these things out JUST after the store closes where I can do that close to home, so I had to cross town to do it.  I figured on the way, I needed to go pray.  I went to the bridge over the river Spree by where I usually catch the train.  I was really struggling with this.  I was in shock that someone would treat another human being that way.  Either way, I prayed because I was very sad for him, like Jesus said when he was on the cross, "They do not know what they are doing".  I really thought about it, if I can't show him Christ, and even love the guy despite how much HE was clearly in the wrong (in my mind at least), I HAD to show him Jesus.  After I got done getting my phone working again, I just sat on Alexanderplatz and thought and thought and thought.  I was really so devastated by this whole thing I was starting to just feeling numb.  For the next day or two I just didn't want to do anything.  Didn't want to do something good, didn't want to do something bad, just didn't want to do anything at all. Finally I chose to just be selfish and indulge my selfishness.

What I finally concluded was that either way I had a place to stay up to July 15th because I had paid that far in advance already and he agreed originally that I could definitely stay that long.  Not my first choice, but it was an acceptable compromise for both of us.

Here is where my last post about Billy Joel's "You're Only Human (Second Wind)" came in.  The song just reminded me of some very tough times in my life where I really didn't feel like I had any friends.  People liked me, but nobody wanted to spend any time with me.  You think I might be exaggerating, but I'm not.  For a time, I felt like I couldn't buy a friend.  It was an incredibly sad and discouraging time in my life.  One that I will prayerfully never experience again. I hope nobody has to ever go through that.  Despite the pain of that, I decided to (as the song says) get "a little faith so I could catch my breath and face the world again."  I can't think of more appropriate words.  I realized shortly after this time in my life, my faith is not based on how I'm treated by men and women (even brothers and sisters in the church).  It's all about me and God.  If I really believe God loves me and can truly do ANYTHING, I need to rely on him, not on friendships.  This was a HUGE revelation for me.  This song really spelled it out for me.  More than that, it challenged me on my selfish and sinful behavior that I had been wallowing in the past couple days.  It brought me to tears because the song reaffirms that we all make mistakes, you just have to get your second wind (God).  I felt so bad that I had allowed myself to take my eyes off God and just think about myself.  I felt the song was God saying, "Tim, I forgive you. Move On."

All God wants from us is to have a relationship with him.  When we are selfish, we can't be close to God. He's still there, but we have the choice how we live.  With him in purity of heart, or away from him doing things he has warned us will cause separation in our relationships with him.

So last night after the devotional, I got to hang out with Samea and Katja and we went to a little gyros place near his apartment. He invited me Monday to go with him there, not knowing that gyros (next to Mexican food) is like my favorite food.  So this was the 2nd time we went.  (Truthfully I went again today, because their gyros are soooooooo amazingly yummy.)  Anyway, after we had our fill of gyros, we all went back to his place until like 11:30pm.  I figured at that time I had better start heading home.

So Katja and I walked back to subway and as is my custom, I got on the train in the wrong direction....  I ended up at a place where I could change and go by another line home (not the way I had planned, but would have been fine).  So I got back on another train going the way I had originally intended.  I went to change to the regional trains and got on the train, only to realize it was going the wrong way. Now, in my defense, they were doing track maintenance or something and they didn't indicate WHAT direction they were actually going in, so I had to guess. As usual, I guessed wrong. There were no trains AT ALL going in my direction.   Hm. Anyway, I ended up one stop further away from home.  Then I was able to change there to a subway line to the very same subway line (and in the same direction) that Katja caught an hour earlier.  Of course, by the time I got to my stop on the subway, my bus had stopped running.  If I would have just caught the train with her, I could have caught the last one or even the one before that.  At any rate, I was able to catch a bus that got me closer to home, but the whole journey took me 1 hour and 45 minutes!!!  I finally got home this morning at 1:20a.m!
 Ugh....  I think I just need to stop over-thinking it and just catch the one I usually catch. Would have had some more time to chat with Katja if nothing else....

So I think that's enough for tonight.  It's midnight now and I'm meeting Christian tomorrow at 8am to pray, so I had better wrap it up!  Thanks for checking in on me and I appreciate everyone's love and support.  Please keep praying for a job for me. Thanks!!!!