Starting to Live As Jesus Says – By Tim Walker
Tim and Maz Walker (married 18 years, three boys, Chris Josh and Arron)
Aug 2005 – Aug 2006 has been the most eventful year of our lives, this all
started when we decided to start living as Jesus says…..
Oct 2005, we give away our most expensive possession (except for the house
and the bank really owns that.!) our car to a couple who didn’t have one,
this sounds OK, but you must understand that we live in a small village 5
miles from the nearest town/shops and schools, we needed our car to
transport the boys to school, we had cancelled their Bus pass cause it was
too much money, the car wasn’t a battered up old rust bucket, we had saved
hard to buy the best car we could afford, ABS, Power Steering, Air
Conditioning, Air Bags, CD Player etc, but God called us to do this and so
we did…it wasn’t easy and we struggled at first but God is our provider and
in March of this year he provided another car ‘free of charge’ to help us
out, we have subsequently given that away.!…but God keeps on providing.!
Dec 2005, we (Maz, me and the boys) had already decided to give up our
Christmas in the UK and visit an AIDS project in Cape Town for Christmas,
9th Dec we set off to Cape Town to spend a month with Thembalitsha
(Christian Charity who work with Babies and young people with or affected by
HIV AIDS)..what an amazing time we had, visiting the AIDS Clinic, playing
with the children from the ex street kid shelters, painting and decorating,
tidying play areas in the Townships….loving the children as Jesus would, our
boys had no Christmas presents, just the knowledge that they were doing just
what Jesus would have done…..the story is to big to tell here.
April 2005 Maz returns to Cape Town for two weeks to work with the charity,
at the same time God places it on my heart to buy a property in South Africa
to use as a base for international volunteers who go to visit the
charity…that cost me over £70K, money that I didn’t have, still don’t but I
know that God gave me the property to buy, the estate to buy it on etc…you
wouldn’t believe it but we have bought the house via the internet, never
seen it but found out afterwards that it’s just opposite the Township that
the Charity (unbeknown to me) were just starting work in.!…amazing…the
estate agent turned out to be a white middle class Christian lady, she has
now been out to visit the townships and projects that the charity are
working on (that’s an amazing story in it’s self if you know white south
africans …!
Summer 2006, we have created strong links with the charity, Adrian Lange
from Thembalitsha visited the UK to help spread the news about HIV AIDS in
South Africa and we had opportunity to speak to many about the charities
work…we also have had the pleasure of welcoming Simon Guillebaud from Great
Lakes Outreach in Burundi into our home to speak to friends and family……God
is amazing at setting up networks….
This is a very long story and I can’t go into all the nitty gritty of it now
but I hope that it might start to inspire others to step out into the
calling that God has for their lives, it might cost you, it might cost you a
lot but if it’s Gods will then pursue it with all your heart mind and soul.
That’s a great story.
i read it on friday, when i was at work.
when i got home on friday night, my partner told me that a friend had called her an asked to borrow $200. she had $197 in the bank, and $7 in her pocket. she thought that he had really made himself vulnerable by asking, and she didn’t want to turn him down and have him never ask a favour again. so she went to the autoteller and gave him the cash.
I thought of Tim and Maz, and i was happy.
this is excellent. simon g is a member of the church i go to in london. he is challengingly radical in his discipleship. as are tim and maz and the family.
thank you for inspiring me. perhaps its only when we step into what Jesus asks of us that we are truly happy. perhaps that’s what living by the be.attitudes actually means.