Advent 2017: Getting Out of the Boat – Again!

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OK, it’s been a very long time since I’ve posted. Sometimes life gets in the way.

I’m working on getting back into this ministry properly now. Starting by getting back to the “Dream Giver” series.

I’d felt like I was in Wasteland when I was writing a couple of months ago. There was a lot of loss and a lot of hurt going on in my life and so after much thought I stopped writing for a season.

I’ve been job-hunting for the whole time, and have had more rejections in the last few months than I can count. I hit wall after wall. My wife has had a very hard few months as well. Both physically and emotionally we have had a real beating.

That’s why I feel Advent is a good time to shake myself offsdr

and get back out of the boat.

I feel like I’m writing a new chapter on a blank page… (and yes, that actually is my desk!)

So to start off, I’m looking at the last few months as though they have been told me as a story from someone else. It’s a technique that allows me to see events from a vastly different perspective, and one that has helped me break barriers of Doubt in the past.

I ask myself some simple questions and so here is the first of the answers I’ve come up with…

I think I missed it. Sanctuary. I look at the last few months and I realise what I thought was Wasteland was actually something quite different. It has been a time where I’ve wrestled to surrender my own “big Dream” to God.

In April when we arrived in England we were staying in a beautiful Bed and Breakfast in Kewstoke, Somerset called “The Owl’s Crest” for a month. My wife was in a great place in regard to her health, we had a secure income and for the first time in years I was able to simply “be” for a while.

I missed it.

I could have relaxed and let God wash the battle from me. But I didn’t.

I remember a few years ago hearing a teacher talking about Psalm 23. He said we have a tendency to become human doings, instead of beings. That’s definitely me. I’ve been busy for 8 months and I’ve got nothing to show for it. “He makes me lie down in still pastures”. He has to force me to stop and take stock, relax and recharge.

And I’m terrible at it.

My dad stopped working as a teacher when he was 49. They called it “medical retirement” and paid him the same amount to stay home that they had been to teach thanks to insurance. But he never stopped working. In fact the next 7 years until he died may have been the busiest I’d ever seen him. But the first thing he did after he accepted he had to retire was stop.

Only for a few days, but he stopped.

We took a holiday together, just him and me, to Italy. It was a whirlwind, but we managed to see Pompeii and Herculaneum, visit the top of Vesuvius and drive a rental car on an Italian freeway that made me begin to consider the concept of survival of the fittest. He rested and recharged, then he started his battles again but he fought in a different way and a different arena.

I missed that chance in April.

I even missed it again in July when we took a few days to visit the Lake District.

In a week we travel to Cape Town for Christmas. I am determining not to miss it again!

Living in a Spiritual “sinking boat” for a few months shakes you up and makes you doubt everything. So the only way to rest is to fix your eyes back on Jesus and step out onto the water – and ignore the storm.

It’s only the last few days as I’ve determined to refocus onto Jesus and I’ve found the desire and passion to write again that I’ve realised what’s been happening. A big part of it is not my story to tell, so forgive the holes over the next few entries and please don’t sit screaming “WHY????” as you read. I can only tell my story.

As the chapters unfold over the next few weeks I hope it will become clear…

 

Continuing Through Wasteland

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I had something of a revelation this week. I could write entries going forward from here as though I’m through my “wasteland” time.

But that would kind of defeat the object of this journey. My reason for wanting to share the journey I’m on is to (hopefully) demonstrate God’s Faithfulness when we stick with Him.

I found myself thinking about Daniel a few days ago. I try not to write until the thought is complete – which can lead to some long periods of silence – so although I’m still very much in Wasteland, I’ve got some stuff I can share going on.

Daniel prays twice of note in his story.

While I was speaking, praying, confessing my own sin and the sin of my people Isra’el, and pleading before Adonai my God for the holy mountain of my God — yes, while I was speaking in prayer, the man Gavri’el, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, swooped down on me in full flight at about the time of the evening sacrifice, and explained things to me. He said, “I have come now, Dani’el, to enable you to understand this vision clearly. At the beginning of your prayers, an answer was given; and I have come to say what it is; because you are greatly loved. Therefore look into this answer, and understand the vision.

Daniel 9:20-23 (Complete Jewish Bible)

The great thing is the message Gabriel (Gavri’el) brings. The statement that he was sent at the beginning of Daniel’s prayers with the answer.

Just think about it for a moment.

Daniel starts to pray. He opens his mouth to speak to God. And as he does so, God hands Gabriel the answer and despatches him.

Daniel hasn’t actually finished talking to God when the answer is sent to him. In fact, he hasn’t even got through the first sentence.

That used to trouble me, except then I realised God looks at our heart. Everything in Daniel’s prayer is in his heart as he begins to pray – and God sees it as soon as Daniel inclines his heart to present it to God for an answer.

King David would take his plans for battle before the Lord and never moved until he heard an answer. Moses did nothing until he’d spent time in God’s presence asking for guidance and arguing with God about what was to happen next.

Yes, you read that right. Arguing with God.

I think God actually enjoys debating the next step with His children. It’s through debate that we come to a mutual understanding of the move. We truly own the step before we take it through active debate because we get a chance to grasp why God is guiding us in that direction by interacting with Him.

These days church tells us we should have a “monkey-see monkey-do” attitude. It’s in the book, so that’s how we’ll do it.

The result is looney-tunes pastors playing with rattle-snakes, spraying their congregation with bug spray and drinking disinfectants and detergents because they latch onto one particular verse and build their entire theology around it.

In “Red Dwarf”, the cult sci-fi comedy, Arnold Rimmer, the hologram crew member tells his crew-mate Lister that his family are “Seventh Day Adventist Hoppists” thanks to a typo in their edition of the Bible that made it read “Now there are three things that last for ever, Faith, Love and Hop. And the greatest of these is Hop”. As a result on Sundays his entire family would only hop on one leg to go anywhere.

Now obviously that was written for comedic effect, and the scene made me roar with laughter the first time I watched it (apologies if the quote isn’t exactly verbatim – it’s been several years since I watched it). But it made an impression. The incredible lunacy of taking a single verse in a single translation – any translation – and making a doctrine out of it is mind-boggling.

Yet we do it all the time.

There’s a scene in “Deep Space Nine” where Ben Sisko is discussing baseball with his ds9 Baseballgirlfriend, Cassidy Yates, and she tells him about a revival of the sport in the outer colonies of the Federation. Sisko asks her about the rules they use, the size of the field and even the material the bats are made from. I had visions the first time I watched it of him suddenly screaming “HERETIC” about any detail she shared with him.

Whilst it’s funny in fiction, in reality it’s not so much.

And in the church there’s no place for it at all.

I was told today of a village in Kenya where one denomination came to distribute food to the people who are starving there. They only gave to families that belong to their particular denomination. Irrespective of need.

I digress…

Actually, not so much. Daniel’s first prayer answer is despatched before he has the chance to finish speaking it out loud. A matter of moments and the answer is given to him.

But then look at chapter ten.

 At that time I, Dani’el, had been mourning for three whole weeks. 3 I hadn’t eaten any food that satisfied me — neither meat nor wine had entered my mouth, and I didn’t anoint myself once, until three full weeks had passed.

Daniel 10:2-3 (CJB)

Three weeks. Twenty-one days Daniel has been praying, and no answer has come yet.

He’s fasted. He’s done everything he can, but there’s no sign of an answer to his cries to God.

If Daniel had been an average member of a 21st Century Western church, he would have quit.

Probably after the second day.

But Faith includes waiting sometimes. We don’t know what might be going on in the Spiritual areas.

Gabriel arrives, and tells Daniel he was delayed by a spiritual force for three weeks.

But Daniel’s answer was given to him the time Daniel first prayed!

There’s the lesson for us.

What looks like wasteland, may be a time of preparation. It may be that the enemy has recognised the importance of the answer we are waiting on and is fighting hard to prevent us receiving it.

It’s very hard to not get an instant response to prayer. I’ve seen both extremes in my own life, instant response and delayed by days, weeks, months and even years sometimes. And a delayed response isn’t necessarily God saying “wait”, it may be the enemy saying “oh crap!”

We can often delay receiving an answer from God. We limit God’s ability to Bless us by being unable to believe we are “worthy” of receiving a Blessing from God at a certain level. We may refuse to accept the Blessing as a result. God may be wanting to Bless us far more than we realise or can believe we are going to receive.

Limiting God is a far more complex issue than I can deal with in a single portion in a post, so I’ll go into it in more depth another time.

But right now, just remember that even in Wasteland times we get blessings from God throughout the journey.

 

Paradise Lost

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At once as far as angel’s ken he views
The dismal situation waste and wild,
A dungeon horrible, on all sides round
As one great furnace flamed, yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all; but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed:
Such place eternal justice had prepared
For those rebellious, here their prison ordained
In utter darkness, and their portion set
As far removed from God and light of heaven
As from the center thrice to th’utmost pole.

Paradise Lost: Book 1 [John Milton]

What a description. Milton’s vision of Hell, a realm of Darkness

This place, forged by God before time itself began in preparation for any rebellion.

Adam and Eve were sent from the Garden of Eden, but Satan was sent to Hell. Milton’s imagery is stark and unrelenting. There is power in the words, but as vivid as the description is it does not begin to describe the war we are fighting.

 In the beginning [before all time] was the Word (Christ), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God Himself. 2 He was [continually existing] in the beginning [co-eternally] with God. 3 All things were made and came into existence through Him; and without Him not even one thing was made that has come into being. 4 In Him was life [and the power to bestow life], and the life was the Light of men. 5 The Light shines on in the darkness, and the darkness did not understand it or overpower it or appropriate it or absorb it [and is unreceptive to it].

John 1:1-5 Amplified

“The darkness did not understand it or overpower it or appropriate it or absorb it [and is unreceptive to it].” How much more of a description of the situation in the World today do we need than these words, penned by John, the Beloved Disciple around 2000 years ago?

Prophetic? Maybe. Accurate? Certainly.

We walk as figures of Light in a dark world, just as Jesus did. Soldiers of Christ in a war that makes the Normandy Invasion look like a kindergarten outing.

The World – especially in the West – stands against everything the Gospel stands for. We must live in the World, without being corrupted by it. And that’s not easy.

We start out as children of darkness, then we are born into the Kingdom of Light when we accept Christ. But this transformation is an ongoing process. It only truly ends when we pass from this fallen World into the World to come, where Christ makes all things new, wipes away every tear and Death itself is vanquished.

Some of my wording in this entry is deliberately reminiscent of the older hymns I grew up singing as a child and young Christian.

“Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to War”L_Middle_Ages_-_Crusader, “Soldiers of Christ! Arise and put your armour on”. Calls to battle. Powerful words from an age when Christ and Christianity was taken seriously, when Christians shaped all walks of life by building schools, prisons, hospitals and a welfare system to support the poor – which in the majority of places have been taken over by Government and the Christian beginnings eradicated until we are left with schools where God is eliminated from the curriculum in favour of the religion of Atheism; prison systems where if you weren’t a hardened criminal when you went in, you are by the time you come out; hospitals where religious influence is minimised at best and usually restricted to prayers over the dead; and a welfare system that encourages the poor to stay poor rather than seeking to help them find a way out of their poverty – it encourages the disabling of the most vulnerable.

Where did I lose youHow can we not see the darkness in this change? As Christians, how can we live with the bastardisation of what was created by our forefathers to uplift and help all people, beaten into a tool to keep the weakest weak and protect the most powerful and rich?

I think Jesus would look at the Church today, or rather what passes itself off as it, and wonder what happened. There were so many things in the first hundred or so years of Christianity that were done by Christians without hesitation. They gave up possessions, land, houses, family and ultimately their lives rather than see another person in need or deny the presence of Christ in their life.

Today, things are somewhat different. Too often church has become a social club we go to on a Sunday – sometimes – rather than a description of the people who make up the group.

I had the experience of living in the lives of about 30 or so young Christians when I was in my 20s, from the area around Totnes in Devon, England. We lived in each others lives, ate at each others homes. If one person had a car and another needed transport there was no question of demanding petrol money – it was practically forced on the car owner! We would go over to see someone for coffee and end up staying three days. We met together as a group, yes, but the group didn’t define us. Our presence in each other’s lives did that. It was the most amazing time of my life, Spiritually, and although it somehow evaporated those people remain fast in my heart. I would not, no: I could not be the man I am today without the input from those young men and women of God. At 25/26 I was one of the oldest in the group. I was regularly admonished and corrected by younger members, some of them still under 17, who held wisdom and insight far beyond many adults – and I deeply miss their presence in my life on a daily basis.

There was Light in that group. A Light that the darkness of the World couldn’t grasp and couldn’t overpower. We shared everything and thought nothing of it.

But the driving force wasn’t from us, the members. It wasn’t from the church eldership either. The power behind it was we were drawn together by something much bigger than ourselves. Bound together by love, respect and a desire to grow ever closer to Christ as one body. Young men and women sharing space with no question of impropriety even occurring to anyone. We’d crash on the floor together at the end of an evening, sleep on sofas and beds in spare rooms without any question of “motive”. It was simply we were drawn by a desire to grow together.

Darkness never entered the group.

It couldn’t. We looked out for each other too much for it to have a chance to.

It was a reflection of Paradise for me. Heaven on a smaller scale (with less gold on the floor).

It’s not too late. If it could happen in a small group of youth, it can happen on a larger scale.

We can build a vision of a reflection of God’s World in this Fallen state simply by returning to the principles of the Church as led by Peter, Paul and the Apostles.

Paradise does not have to be lost.