Emily Graves spoke with Charlotte Gambill

Emily: In your book you also talk about a revelation that you had: there was a moment when you felt that God spoke to you through the classic story of Peter Pan and you described the scene at the start of the story when Wendy's father tells her she has to move out of the nursery the next day and grow up. You then go on to talk about the decision that we all have to make of having to trust God, or do we live in a different reality of living in Neverland? So why is this so important?

Charlotte: I think it's crucial for the Church across the Earth. I think that the world desperately needs not the Church to play Church but to be the Church. That calls for maturity: it means going to places that maybe we'd rather not go to; it means saying "yes" to things that maybe we'd rather say "no" to; it means being obedient when we need to: sometimes we need to shake off our comfort. To me a mature Church is a Church that can bring healing to our world and can bring harvest in. We've got to grow our spiritual muscles to be able to cope with that demand that God wants to give into the hands of the Church. As a local pastor I've just realised if we don't grow a mature life, we can't help those that don't know that there is an answer and a solution.

Emily: Do we take on the mentality of being and living like a lost boy?

Charlotte: I think we'd like to. I think there's a part of all of us that would never like to get out of bed and never like to grow up and take responsibility for our bad attitude. I think there's a part of all of us that would like to be like those lost boys, living in a perpetual place where "What's in it for me?" is the main objective of the day. I think until you have that revelation that God sent you to be somebody's answer, that God commissioned you to be the voice of hope to somebody else's hopelessness: until that revelation dawns on you, you have no need or desire to grow up. You see it naturally with children: children think it's all about them, that the world revolves around them and as parents you can pander to that for a while or you can realise: "Actually I have to break my kids out of this mentality or they will become very self-centred". It's exactly the same in our spiritual journey with God. He's a good Father and he doesn't want us self-centred: he wants us otherly minded. In order to do that sometimes he has to break us out of that comfort circle that we're in and put us in a place that will make us have to make that choice of growing up.

Emily: You also say that you don't have to be qualified or a set age for God to use you in certain situations, whether that's a job or conversation. Can you tell us a bit more about this?

Charlotte: I am living proof that God uses the foolish things of this world and I say that everywhere I go, because I think sometimes we look at people or we see people on a platform or we see that there's a book on the shelf and somehow feel that they have a ton of degrees and qualifications that somehow make them able to do that, where more often than not you find that it was just someone that was willing to say "yes" and put the work in and be diligent. The Bible's full of examples like the Gideons and the Davids and the Esthers and the Ruths and the Naomis - the people that other people would have discounted, but there was something inside them that said: "I am going to put myself forth and I'm going to see what happens next." I think when we get hung up on accolades and qualifications, we miss the whole point. We can spend our whole life wishing we had something that we don't currently have and I've found that if you are willing to work like David with the bear on the hill and defeat that enemy, that that is your qualification for going down to the giant on the frontline. If you are willing to overcome your bad attitude now in your marriage, that qualifies you for then going and helping that couple in their marriage; if you are willing to work through your faulty thinking about that situation, that helps you then train somebody else in how to put good seed in and have good thoughts. Our qualification is that we act out the Gospel. The disciples were not qualified to do what Jesus was about to tell them to go and do. They were not qualified to get demons out, or to teach or preach: they were fishermen. Yet he said, "Come with me, watch how I work, see what I do and begin to walk a journey where you become qualified by being a doer of the word." And that's all God asks from us.

Emily: What if God doesn't turn up in the way we expect?

Charlotte: I think that is what happens more often than not. Sometimes we miss God and he's been there all along. Sometimes we can't see God because we've so pre-packaged the way that we believe he should answer and we have to remove that box that we put on God, that: "God, you know, I need this answer, I need it on this day and I need it to look this particular way". God has a way of answering us in a way that we don't even see. I know for me that when I found out that I couldn't have children, I gave God the date, the time and how it was going to happen and I found myself going on a journey with God where it didn't happen quickly and I would have liked it to. I realised God's the God of the suddenly, but he's also the God of the slowly and I realised I was in the process of learning and I was in the process of testing and I was in the process of pulling something out of me that the quickly wouldn't have got out of me. We have to remove the limitations on how we want God to answer and maybe by reading this book some people will realise the answer has been there all along.

Emily: What have you learned from trusting God and letting him take the steering wheel in your life?

Charlotte: I've learned he is a better driver than me in every sense of the word: he doesn't kill people on the freeway of life like my carelessness can. I have just learned that the best life is the life that's God-led. The Bible talks in Isaiah 61 that the Spirit of the Lord is on me and it is on me for a purpose. I think if there's an awareness that God's on you then therefore he wants to lead you and our job's to keep in step with the Spirit, not to tell the Spirit what we think he should be doing. I think that goes back to maturity and I think it goes back to learning how to hear the voice of God and learning how to listen to the promptings of the Spirit, as it were, have your antennae up to what God wants you to see and do. I think God being in the driving seat means you go places that you could never get to on your own. I often look at my life and I have no idea how I ended up here, but I think it was the day I said to God: "I'm not in charge of this: I'm just a servant" and I think that's all that we're ever called to be: it's a servant of him and therefore we follow his lead, whether we understand it or not. In the brilliance of how God wired things he takes you exactly where you need to be at the exact time you need to be there, so I am spoilt for anything else now. I tried to drive my own life for a season and it was a disaster and I gladly gave the wheel over.

Emily: How do you demonstrate this to your children?

Charlotte: I hope what my children see is that their Mum and Dad God, pray, worship, serve God and are willing to lay things down and are not precious about what we want or what our desires are, but instead are very much submitted to the bigger plan. I see it now with my children - I have spoken to my kids about sharing with their friends everything that we have and being kind and being compassionate and I saw my ten-year-old daughter lead her 11-year-old friend, who's not got any background of Church, to Christ only a few weeks ago, but she did it all by herself: she just took the relationship and love to her friend and began to share with her and then asked her would she like to come to Kids Church. I watched my kid be guided and led and sensitive to the Spirit so that she didn't offend her friend or force her friend but she won her friend over to find a friend in Jesus. Your kids learn by what they see: it's not what you say; they learn by your natural flow with God and your willingness to stop and say, "Hey, let's just pray right now," or, "Let's go drop by that person's house: I think we should take them a basket of groceries". When your kids see that you flow that way it becomes natural for them to flow that way.

Emily: Why does God want to get involved in our lives?

Charlotte: We are the Jesus the world sees; it's as simple as that. You are his love letter and introduction; you are the walking gospel. If we don't get involved then the world sees a Jesus that doesn't care: he is not concerned, he's not bothered about the people that are in need or the abuse that's happening, or the injustices. If we don't do anything then we say without realising it that he doesn't get involved in that stuff. It's critical the Church get involved; it's critical that the Church don't just invite the world to Jesus and expect people to walk through the door. I think sometimes we pat ourselves on the back because we invited someone to Church, but we expect people that have no concept of Church, no concept of God, to walk through the doors of God's house when the Church is not willing to go through the doors of people's homes. Jesus didn't do that: he asked Zaccheus to come down the tree and then he got involved and went to his house for tea. I'm challenged by that: I'm like, "What if we're going to reach our neighbours?" We're not going to reach them by putting a flier through their door or praying at a distance: we're going to reach them by being involved, by having them over for dinner, by being great neighbours, by being concerned about things that concern them: it's the Church's job. Jesus was involved with sinners, with religious people, with broken people, with hurting people, with crazy people: he got involved, he rolled his sleeves up and he got involved and that is our greatest call.

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