If you are a regular on threedays then you will know that we are firm believers that our Christian lives are a journey. A journey that started long before we actually “became a Christian”. So in that sense I have always been on a journey as has the Church to which I belong. However, there seems to be a sense at the moment that, not only are we on a journey, but we are aware of it, and indeed, trying to find our way up the path.

Matthew, our vicar, has long been singing the praises of an official Therapeutic Community; Christ Church Deal, in Kent. This Church is the home of ‘The Rapha Journey’ and links between our two communities are continuing to grow; strengthening all the time.

You can find out more about Rapha from their website but to give you an idea, the name comes from one of the names of God in the Old Testament; Jehovah Rapha (God who heals us). For many years people have gone to them in desperate need of emotional, spiritual, and physical healing and found the tools they needed at CCD. It’s a truly awe inspiring work.

The essence of what they do is to empower individuals to be the people that God made them to be. Not in an airy fairy, I’m a Christian, so now I can work on my road rage, and generally being a better person kind of way. But actually discovering what makes us uniquely us and how we can grow and flourish in being that person. Jesus doesn’t need His Church to be full of very nice clones but is longing for us to be the individuals He created us to be.

The process involves discovering and dealing with your baggage, (the rubbish we carry around with us as a result of life’s events; the very big and, more often, the very small.) and rewriting, with Gods help, your scripts (the things we automatically do to protect ourself from having the same things happen to us again.). I confess to being a little sceptical really. I only actually attended the men’s workshop because Matthew (our Vicar) is so enthusiastic about this is the way forward for us as a church. However, I did get a number of things out of it and have also seen the impact it’s had on our church as a whole, which has led me to believe that there is defiantly something in this.

This post is really by way of introduction. I will give you more as I work through the implications of the journey I’m on, but just to kick us off, I am discovering that God wants to work on my spiritual sensitivity. I think that this is actually something He wants for all of us but specifically He is talking to me about this at the moment.

God wants me know what he is saying, what he wants and how he wants to achieve it without having to hit me with a big neon sign. I think He wants me to get to a place where I just simply know. A gut reaction if you like, to be in a place where I can trust my instincts because I know they are God given in a given situation.

This is something that I have been pondering for a number of years but this is not the kind of thing; until Rapha, that I have heard discussed in a Christian context before. I guess it’s all a bit ‘mystical’ for our western Christianity. Bizaarly, I now almost feel that I have permission to explore it. *smile*

So, I’m on a journey. I’ll let you know where I end up.