I have to confess that I wasn’t brave enough to totally abandon myself into God’s hands, but I did make myself take a few steps along that path. It felt completely counter-intuitive and pretty scary.  I was giving up a half time job with no obvious prospect for replacement on the horizon.  I was giving up a job that I enjoyed - at least most of the time; a job that I knew I could do reasonably well, and contact with a large number of people whom I had grown to know well and whose lives I felt a deep connection with.   I was making a decision that didn’t make much logical sense and yet which I knew absolutely was the right thing to do.

I had just enough trust in my ability to discern God’s will for me to be able to take that step - to trust that I wouldn’t find myself hanging out to dry in the following months.  Over the years I’ve talked about the process of discernment.  It’s not necessarily difficult, but it is often time consuming.  Essentially it’s about making the space to listen to what God is saying - not what we hope he might be saying or even what other people tell us they think God is saying.  The only thing that matters here is what God is saying to me about my spiritual journey and what God is saying to you about yours.  My experience has mainly been that I need to create a lot of space in my life and that God then fills that space with nudges and niggles that, eventually, even I can’t ignore.  For me, the real test of whether something is of God is to check out whether or not the thought or impulse goes away. 

So, I took that pretty scary step and resigned from my job here at Christ Church.  The amazing thing is that within two weeks new doors were beginning to open.  It became absolutely clear that my ministry, at the moment, is as a Chaplain in different places.  I’m currently focusing mainly on my HIV work and looking at developing the Napier University work a little bit more. I’m going to be licensed as a Chaplain within the Diocese.

And that takes me to the second half of that quotation by St Ignatius which describes allowing oneself to be formed by God’s grace.  I can’t imagine anything other than grace that could have got me to the position I now find myself in. I am the only dedicated HIV Chaplain in Britain, working with some of the most socially disadvantaged and stigmatised people within our society.  This isn’t a job anyone could have been trained for because there isn’t a model around for pastoral work with disadvantaged communities.  It’s a unique job which I manage only through the grace of God.  It seems clear to me that this is where God wants me to be; that I am in the privileged position of being supported both spiritually and economically to minister to people who would otherwise be completely neglected by the faith communities. 

Well, that’s probably enough personal disclosure for one morning.  Let’s see where my experience translates into more general principles.  What would it mean for you to abandon yourself into God’s hands and allow yourself to be formed by God’s grace?  Well, it has to mean something a little less dramatic than taking 2 months out and then walking away from whatever you’re doing at the moment.  If we all did that, we’d be in a pretty horrendous mess in no time at all. However, there is nothing to stop each one of you taking some time over the next 2 months to really listen to God. Now, that’s actually a 2 part process - we need to listen and then we need to take the time to reflect and to ensure that we have heard.  There’s nothing to stop each one of you from making the space to engage with that process; there’s nothing to stop you noting the movement of the Spirit in your life and considering how to respond to that movement.  You might need 2 months; you might need 6 months, or longer.  That’s fine - this isn’t a race, it’s a process that God invites each one of us to engage with.  As baptised members of the Body of Christ, we commit in baptism, and again each time we renew our baptismal vows, to respond to the God who is constantly reaching out to us.  We don’t have to strain to find God in our lives, we just have to respond to the presence that is constant and unchanging. 

Let’s just return to the Ascension Day imagery, that reminder of the powerful ministry that can be exercised whether or not there is an obvious visible presence.  The truth is that very few of us are called to very visible and public ministries.  For the vast majority of us, ministry is something that we manage in a low key and discreet way. We don’t often even label it as ministry.

What I’m suggesting this morning is really very simple - if we allow ourselves to respond to God, however or wherever that might take us, we can be certain that God’s grace will give us all that we need to fulfil the task that has been set before us.

And so my prayer this morning is for each and every one of you:

May you find the courage to abandon yourself into God’s hands and allow yourself to be formed by the grace that will then be poured upon you.