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I thought a young adult od’d while on the phone with me this week. In reality, the precious child just fell asleep and texted me once they woke up the next day, but it disrupted my night a bit. I’ll always consider it a privilege when young people consider me safe enough to drunk call, but it’s also a heartbreaking place to be a continent away from someone so hungry for human connection and Gospel truth. As I work with teenagers and young adults figuring out their lives, I’m still learning to live well and grow as a follower of Jesus which means I don’t always know what to do in every circumstance.

When my physio was recently asking me about my job and the time commitment, I admitted I don’t work a full 40 hours, but I do have a pretty emotionally demanding job. I also have these inconsistent hours with 5am, 6pm, or midday Saturday meetings for TeachBeyond and the occasional weekend camp or conference for church that throws off my office hours for a week. Sometimes (often) I laugh about how ridiculous it is that I chose a career path that is so relationally demanding with such an irregular schedule as such a high introvert who values structure and patterns.

Yet here I am taking risks to get into crazy scenarios where a room full of teenagers can encounter the Holy Spirit on a Friday night in Christchurch, New Zealand.

If you were to ask me how competent I feel about my job, I’d tell you I know I’m good at it.

But it you were to ask me how I feel on a deeper level, I’d tell you that I can do all kinds of planning but I’m not working with a tame lion and there is always something new and exciting to show up to and the love and joy these young people and youth leaders bring into my life is unparalleled as we chase after Jesus and seek transformation in our own lives and across our city.

I had a really full week which included some beautiful celebrations of my one year anniversary in New Zealand, but when I showed up for work on Friday afternoon, I was pumped about what God was going to do. I’d just hung out with Ruby and shared about how our worldview gives us open eyes to see the work of God in the world and how we’re willing to believe friends with stories of miracles when our non-Christian friends try to explain the supernatural without God. Then one of my youth leaders came to my office to let me know some pretty significant medical concerns she’s facing. When we gathered as a leader team before youth group, she asked for prayer from the whole youth group. I shared what was happening with the leaders, and we prayed together for our night which included a year 13 boy sharing his personal testimony in place of a Bible talk.

What an absolute privileged place I have to be among this team of leaders willing to be a part of the work of God in this city. Any observer might have thought we started out with a normal night as young people signed in and chatted with friends. Our freeze frame games seemed inconspicuous before we sent the youth into the auditorium for a couple worship songs. A few of our youth band were away, so the five left led a low key couple of songs as we invited the Holy Spirit into that space.

Then I invited our leader up to share what was going on, and her small group came around her to pray for a miracle inside her body. Before we prayed for her though, she asked for the microphone so that she could pray for me. I am so humbled to have people who continue to lift me up and ask for infinitely more than we can imagine. Once we finished the prayer time, I invited the young person up to share his story, and he seamlessly flowed into sharing his own struggles and how God met him in difficult places.

There was nothing flash in our programme, but there was something holy that entered the auditorium that night. We didn’t have as much time for small groups as normal, so when I got up front at the end of the talk, I told the group to turn their chairs into fours and fives and share what they felt was being moved in them before praying together. After about ten minutes, I closed in prayer to wrap up the night, but lots of them lingered in the auditorium before going to supper. Four separate young people came to talk to me about baptism before they left for the night. Another young person asked for a Bible. Our city is being transformed, and it is such a privilege to be a part of it.

Ephesians 3:20 has been rolling around in my head for weeks, and I asked a former student to make me a motivational poster with the sentiment of God doing immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine. Her wildest imagination came up with this image.

There’s an inside joke with a handful of my students about vodka in my house, so that shows Esther’s humour, but there’s actually incredible detail in her theological richness of imagination in this drawing. The most central and obvious celebration is that I’m walking – but not just tentatively on ideal surfaces: I’m carrying things and taking off my green Toms on lush, green grass. Second, I’m sharing spicy shrimp pasta with Esther. This is my favourite meal, and Esther is my favourite person to share it with. We’ve not lived in the same country for something like seven years, so this picnic possibility is a big ask. Esther packed in her biggest dreams as she prays for me, and she has absolute confidence that God can do even more.

Each week when God blows me away with the hunger and growth in my young people, I feel like God is telling me we’re just getting started. One year into this assignment, and we still have so much more to come.