More “New” Things…

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I don’t usually write an entire post in response to a comment, but “Nip” commented that, after reading “New Things… Again…” I should do what other over-qualified people do – get a job at Tesco rather than expecting God to “do it” for me.

I found it a rather troubling comment and I’ve spent the last 10 days pondering how to respond.

Scripture, both Old and New Testament, shows us time and again that when God’s children look to Him, it delights Him to open up the windows of Heaven and pour His Blessing down on them.

It’s easy to sit back and blame God for nothing happening in your life.

It’s easy to blame God for lack.

It’s easy to say we have to do ourselves.

There’s nothing wrong with relying on God. Abraham left Ur with only his household. A few sheep, servants, but basically just his Faith.

Joseph had only his Faith in prison until Pharaoh promoted him to Prime Minister.

David simply asked God about every move he made. He didn’t apply for any position.

Jabez simply asked God to increase his circle of influence and God did.

The crazy thing in this world we live in is that God’s own children have lost how to really hear His voice and live each day in a constant conversation with their Heavenly Daddy.

On 22nd August, my life changed in the most massive way. My son was born.

My life will never be the same. I have the tremendous Blessing that I write this Blog and do the other things associated with the Ministry from home (or a local coffee shop with WiFi!) It means I get to be an “at home” parent because I have the privilege of setting my own hours for work – although now my son sets the hours available to me.

The point of my post was that we can and must learn how to call on the Lord as our provision. Sometimes He will provide through a job at Tesco. Sometimes, Tesco will be the ones who tell you you’re over-qualified for the job, but thanks for applying. That’s God’s way of saying “Not this door”.

I have a box of samples now from Kenya of traditional tribal beadwork made by some of the village widows. I’m getting them ready for sale to raise funds for the villagers after raids left their cattle slaughtered, some of the villagers dead and orphaning more children. They can make blankets of pure wool too with vibrant colours. My ministry partner in Kenya, Peter, is trying to get some samples to send to me so I can get an online store open.

In the area, teachers earn around 10,000Kes a month. That’s about $60 (£50). That buys food, rent, travel expenses and all the necessities of life.

Peter is hoping we can start to sell the items being made so that the proceeds can build the orphans a school house in Isiolo. As an example, one wool travel rug in a store in the UK sells for around £40. So just two blankets can provide the average monthly income for a teacher, plus any admin fees, shipping etc. He just has Faith.

So do I.

It doesn’t mean he is just sitting around doing nothing.

It doesn’t mean I am.

Faith in God’s provision is nothing more than trusting He will open the doors for us to receive the Blessing that He wants to give us.

I love the story of Jabez.

Jabez was honorable above his brothers; but his mother named him Jabez [sorrow maker], saying, Because I bore him in pain. Jabez cried to the God of Israel, saying, Oh, that You would bless me and enlarge my border, and that Your hand might be with me, and You would keep me from evil so it might not hurt me! And God granted his request.
[1 Chronicles 4:9-10 AMP]

Two verses that challenge us to redefine our constructed ideas about God and His Provision.

I’m not into the “Prosperity” Gospel the way it’s been forced onto us recently.

But I’m not afraid of being prosperous. I’m not afraid to really look at God the way my son looks at me when it’s time for his bottle.

Jesus said we had to come into the Kingdom like a little child. I never truly understood that until two weeks ago.

My son has no doubt that I will give him his bottle of formula. He does not call out to me and beg me repeatedly to be certain his bottle will be made up with clean water in a sterilised bottle and the correct ratio. He doesn’t worry whether his nappy will be changed.

He does nothing whatsoever to earn my love for him.

And he will never have to earn it.

God tells us that this is how we must approach Him. He will give us what we need on a daily basis. For some people, that may be a private jet – if what He has called them to do requires they have access to one. Others may just get a good pair of walking boots. Whatever it is we need, He longs to provide it for us.

Maybe we need to look at the Provision Gospel instead of the Prosperity Gospel.

I don’t particularly want to be a millionaire. I don’t care if I work in a supermarket as a cashier or as CEO of a Fortune 100 company. I just want to be where God wants me to be, so I push doors and see what happens.

And for now I am content to write this blog, slowly develop the website to allow the sale of the goods from Kenya, and most importantly learn what it means to be a Christian by watching how my baby son looks to me.

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…

 

True Grit

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I’m a HUGE fan of John Wayne. My favourite of his movies is, without a doubt, “True Grit“. The rugged character, rough around the edges and more at home in the wasteland outback than in 19th Century “civilised” society.

Aside from having both eyes, I’m starting to feel like a Rooster Cogburn type.

This current spell in Wasteland is pushing my limits, but at the same time I’m finding myself beginning to become comfortable in the environment.

That’s a red flag in the biggest possible way.

The last place God wants us to be comfortable is a barren wasteland. In Wasteland, there’s nobody around to touch your life, and nobody who’s life can be reached. The Christian Walk is not an easy one, but it should place us firmly in the face of other people. Walking around in Wasteland is actually what the entire world is doing.

Let me just say that again:

Walking in Wasteland is what the WHOLE WORLD IS DOING.

There is a real danger in getting comfortable in Wasteland.

Conformity.

Just consider for a moment. In the story of Ordinary that I’m walking through right now, he begins his life in the land of Familiar. OK, that sounds like a description of where we are in the West. But he is “comfortable” there.

“Comfortable”.

It’s a dangerous situation. How long does it take for Wasteland to become “Familiar”?

Disturbingly, not long. We get to be so used to fighting the same fight over and over again that we lose sight of the Truth. We are more than conquerors.

Paul writes:

And do not be conformed to this world [any longer with its superficial values and customs], but be transformed and progressively changed [as you mature spiritually] by the renewing of your mind [focusing on godly values and ethical attitudes], so that you may prove [for yourselves] what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect [in His plan and purpose for you].

Romans 12:2 (Amplified)

It’s heavy to read, but I love the Amplified translation because I don’t understand Greek, Aramaic or Ancient Hebrew, so it helps to get the full context of what was being said. I read an article a few days ago by an “educated” atheist who based that the Bible couldn’t be true because Jesus didn’t speak English, and there were so many differing accounts of His words (translations).

The lunacy of the argument was completely lost on the individual. The same person told me my argument about science being able to replicate the molecular structure and chemical composition of an acorn, yet on planting it would never become an oak tree was a terrible argument about evolution – because they thought I was saying an acorn had to evolve into an oak – not knowing it was the seed of an oak tree.

I didn’t know whether I was being “punked” or if they were in earnest.

This week I was accused of being a “liberal” theologian because I argued that Donald Trump might not be the best president the USA has ever had, and also that an individual in England born female who had been having hormone treatment to “become” male and insists on being called “he” now had given birth.

Granted, many Yanks who hear me talk of 45 might paint me “liberal”. If that means I reject the inhumanity, sexism, racism, fear-mongering, lying, backstabbing and betrayal he has brought to the office, then all I can say is “Thanks”. But if it means they think I dilute the Gospel and twist the words to make the message more palatable to the 21st Century listener, then they are in for a shock if they bother to get to know me.

It takes courage to stand up for unadulterated Christianity today.

This is a time when the pressure to conform to the pattern of this world has never been greater.

Paul had to deal with people living in a time when there was a brothel on every corner or a temple to a false god, or both. Some homes might have an altar to a Roman god, but many didn’t. Today, our altars sit in pride of place in most living rooms with their little false gods we worship beamed in directly, be it sports teams, singers, actors or televangelists. We sit waiting for St Arnie to say “I’ll be back”, or a crumb of wisdom to fall from the lips of St Jeremy or holy father Donald. Or we keep our deity in a special room attached to our home, lovingly taking it out to wash and wax it weekly so it looks good when we go to the social club we call “church” on a Sunday morning.

It’s nothing for us to sit for seven or eight hours a day in front of the altar, as it tells us who to adore, who to watch, what to wear and what to think. And then the clowns that buy into the message admonish Christians for being “brainwashed”.

I’m actually glad I’m brainwashed. Something needed to clean our the garbage that the world has dumped in there like an open sewer.

I looked at several translations of Romans 12:2 by the way. I could be wrong, but they all seem to indicate that the transformation of our minds is not something we do, but rather something God does in us – if we will let Him.

Another thing that has his me recently is this: Even Christians today can’t tell the difference between “meek” and “weak”. We have the world’s definition of “humble” drilled into us.

Now Numbers 12:3 says Moses was more humble than anyone else on the earth. We read that. We accept it.

But consider the human author for a moment.

Moses wrote it.

Humility in God’s eyes – if you look through the whole Bible – is not seeking to make yourself out to be more or less than God says you are. It means standing up for yourself sometimes. Jesus was humble. He never sought to be seen as anything more or less than He is.

So to be imitators of Christ – “Little Christs” or “Little Anointed Ones” is what “Christian” actually means – we must be prepared to be humble the way He was humble. Quit putting ourselves down. Stop making out we are less than we know God created us to be. It’s not Godly to be self-deprecating.

It insults our Creator.

Have the nerve to declare ourselves boldly to be exactly what God created us as.

That’s real Grit!

Mindless Drones

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In the news recently there have been a lot of shots of supporters of various people and organisations. Something struck me as I went through the reports.

All the supporters in the crowd in each picture were the same. No evidence of original thought anywhere. Each of us is merely a passenger as we walk through this life, carried along by the society we live in.

Then I looked at some pictures of churches I’ve been to…

I stood out at one church in terms of appearance. I was a biker, could sit on my hair and tuck my beard into my belt quite comfortably. I raised a lot of eyebrows on visitors when I was part of the welcome team, and even more when I helped out in the youth church activities – especially with the youngest kids!

But for the most part everyone looks the same. Suits in some churches, and hats for the ladies. Jeans and polo shirts all round in others. Even the preachers sounded the same, no matter how many there were in any given church. Everyone follows the same pattern of behaviour, the same dress code, manner of speaking and association. Everything is predictable.

Every so often something comes along and shakes things up – thankfully.

Change for the sake of change is pointless. There has to be a genuine need for the change. And the change must, must drive us towards the Gospel.

Read my last couple of posts and you’ll see where my heart has been for the last few days. It’s about returning to the basics. What drove me to Christ in the first place.

I don’t mean the events. Robin’s death, Yvonne’s, could have pushed me away from God – especially with the pseudo Calvinistic stuff I was being taught about God’s Will and nothing happening unless He allows it. Free Will and Predestination are fascinating thoughts, and not in complete opposition to one another. Our future is foreknown, not written. God does not exist within the confines of Mortal man and Time. Rather Time exists within the confines of God. And as such, for God, everything is now. The last dinosaur is in the same image for Him as the last man.

In the late 70s and early 80s my dad had a few children’s plays published in England. He had written them to use in his job as a Primary School Teacher and I’m sure in today’s “politically correct” environment they would never have made it. One reason I believe this is he included jokes that were aimed at lampooning the religious leaders of the first century. He had the shepherds on the hills just before the angels appear asking each other “What do you get if you ask 2 rabbis a question?”, “3 answers!”. The humour appealed to his (and my) sense of humour and is accurate even today if you look at any leaders – especially religious ones.

The anecdote may not seem to “fit” here, but bear with me!

One of the issues I had, and often still have, with leadership is the problem of unity in the Church.

I have a friend whose father is a senior minister in his denomination. The denomination teaches that certain spiritual gifts – tongues, prophecy, healing in particular – passed away with the Apostles, and that the 11 Apostles and Paul had a “special” anointing for that particular time and place and the ministry of “Apostle” died with them. One worship leader in the church was instructed not to use certain songs that spoke about healing because it might make people think God could still heal today.

Mainline denominations all have these oddities reducing Christianity to a moral code and supporting the concept of pre-destination to an extreme view in some cases.

There’s no Grace in that. It’s highly intellectual, even reasonable in its logic. But logic is cold. Would you want a typical Vulcan to babysit your child? Of course not. (Mind I wouldn’t want a Klingon to either).

Every denomination produces clones. It’s truly scary.

I loved going to conventions a few years ago because they shatter the cloning process. 2000 people from different denominations, backgrounds and religious rituals camping in a field for a week, sharing worship drawn from all their backgrounds, is an amazing experience. The only common factor is usually God and a hunger to deepen relationship with Him.

Andrew Wommack talks about needing to live in the balance of Grace and Faith, and there is much wisdom in that. Learning to find that balance is a very personal walk for all of us though. For some it means letting go of repetitive actions in order to find a way beyond the purely intellectual and learning to feel God. For others the opposite is true. I went through a stage a few years ago where I waas so far into the “feeling” side of things that I was getting into dangerously shaky foundations. My pastor at the time suggested I say a Rosary twice a day. It freaked me out until he went through it with me, explaining that the purpose of the repetition is to cement the foundation in both my heart and mind. Otherwise we end up hopelessly stuck in an overly liberal all-encompassing everyone’s-the-same-anyway theology with no power behind it or the opposite, a group that is all an exclusively about power where forgiveness and Grace have no place.

To paraphrase Tolkein, our quest walks the blade of a knife, stray but a little in either direction and it will fail, to the doom of all.

The best way to deal with conformity is to shake things up. The problem is we like our comfort zones. Jesus told the disciples to go into all the World, so they went to Jerusalem and sat on their behinds. If the Sanhedrin hadn’t begun to persecute them and forced them to run then the Church might have ended within a few years. Instead, persecution made them finally do what Jesus had told them to do in the first place, leave Jerusalem and tell the whole World about Jesus.

 Do not be shaped by [conformed to; pressed into a mold by] this ·world [age]; instead be changed within [transformed] by a new way of thinking [or changing the way you think; the renewing of your mind]. Then you will be able to decide [discern; test and approve] what ·God wants for you [is God’s will]; you will know what is good and pleasing to him and what is perfect.

Romans 12:2 EXB

Paul was concerned two millennia ago that Believer’s minds were corrupted by the morals of the day. Acceptable behaviour not very different from the society we now live in was the norm.

I went to Pompeii and Herculaneum a few years ago with my dad, on the last holiday he and I took together. The official guided tour insisted on taking us to several houses excavated that had been identified as brothels. Each room had a mosaic on the wall beside the doorway depicting the “speciality” of the prostitute within. These days we find that online instead on door posts, and the “actresses” would have a fit if they were to be described as prostitutes – but that is, to all intent and purposes, what they are.

It’s too easy to turn a blind eye. But we do. We repeatedly fail to stand up to the society we live in because we will be ostracised for doing so.

I heard some time ago of a young person confined to a mental hospital for hearing voices and seeing an individual telling them how to behave, tormenting them. The individual was put on major anti-psychotic drugs to control the “hallucinations” and silence the voices. But the more I looked into the situation, the more apparent it became that this individual might actually be experiencing something spiritual rather than psychological in nature. The description of the complaints and behaviour is not without similarity to the youngster who Jesus drove a demon out of, who had thrown himself into the fire. Self-harming, abnormal physical strength, all the symptoms that today get you thrown into the loony bin were encountered by Jesus and treated as possession. Yet today suggesting such a thing is enough to get you locked up with them!

We stop thinking for ourselves and become slaves to the society. Drones who do anything we’re told to preserve the “status quo”.

It’s time to shake things up a bit I think.

Better than “Good”?

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I’ve heard some dumb things the last couple of weeks as I’m making my way through the current Wasteland experience. Many that made me cringe.

But the worst is just one word: “Better”.

Read Genesis, specifically the story of Creation. God says as He completes each stage that it was “Good”.

Then He makes Man. And Man invents “Better”, with a little assistance from Satan.

It’s about deception.. Eve was deceived into believing there was something God was witholding from her. That there was something “better” that was contained in the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.

It was a lie then, and it’s a lie now.

“Better” is a lie.

God made things a certain way and said it was Good.

What amazes me is the Tree Eve was tricked into eating from was the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Yet somehow that has got confused in the 21st Century.

It began with little things. Language changed. Words’ meaning became inverted. “Wicked”, “Bad”, “Sick” all took on a meaning through slang that was the exact opposite of the original meaning of the words. Other words changed their meanings too, and eventually things slipped through that began to make behaviours God expressly condemned into acceptable parts of behaviour to our “better” society.

A while ago one particular website, Ashley Madison, was the embodiment of this. Life is short, too short not to have an affair, was the “concept” behind the marketing.

And it worked.

Lie built on lie, and ministries were toppled, marriages destroyed, families torn apart. All for the desire for something “better”.

I heard an interview a while later with a man whose marriage had fallen apart after his wife had found out he visited the site – not that he actually had an affair, just that he’d considered it. Another search for “better” instead of working on what is “Good”. The man said he knew he was in trouble when a woman he wrote to wrote back calling him “Tiger”. He explained that it wasn’t the moniker itself that was the issue. It was the effect it had on him because of who had said it. He described how he realised he longed for someone to think of him that way again. He was just “Bob” or “Jim” (I can’t remember his actual name) to his wife. Not “Darling” or “Sweetheart” or any of the pet names they’d had for each other twenty years before when they got married.

So his “good” marriage fell prey to “better”.

Recently a tower block in London burned down, taking 80+ lives with it. Babies, children, parents, the elderly all died. Because a business thought it would be “better” to use a particular cladding on the outside that was slightly cheaper than the fire resistant type.

Sometimes, “better” can be catastrophic.

Yet we don’t learn. Paul writes that the point of the Scriptures is so we don’t have to learn by making mistakes – we can learn from the example of those who came before. It’s the First Century equivalent of “those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it”.

Yet we sit watching tyrant after tyrant elected by “intelligent” populations. Policies from both the far Right and Left wing get thrown at us ad nauseam that historically have proved catastrophic for the countries that have adopted them. Fascism, communism and everything in between being touted as the “latest” ideas.

In England, Jeremy Corbyn wants something “better” than the Tory manifesto – so he suggested policies which were shown in the 1970s to be disastrous for the country. But the youth who voted for him en masse weren’t born then, and haven’t studied history to see the mess the country was in as a result. But on the other side is Theresa May, who seems to want to be Margaret Thatcher. And the policies she’s suggesting are no better. Thirty years ago they may have worked, but it’s 2017 now, not 1987.

Most days it feels like it’s 1984.

The news coming through from America is no better. Donald Trump seems to be bent on making sure his maladministration simply undoes everything Barak Obama did during his administration. If someone had presented the last 12 months as a script to a Hollywood executive twenty years ago they would have been thrown out because any script must be able to withstand the concept of “suspension of disbelief”, and it would have been deemed that the current insanity was too deranged to pass that test. The closest we got was “Demolition Man”, when Stallone got to fight Snipes in a post-apocalyptic future ruled by a crazy leader (Nigel Havers) and Schwarzenegger had been President. All things considered, that was less unlikely than what we’ve ended up with.

So as Christians, what can we do to fight this slide towards chaos?

Firstly, we need to return to a basic set of concepts.

Jesus put it best when He was asked what the greatest Commandment was:

Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

Matthew 22:37-40 NKJV

To find the original “Good”, we need to return to the source: God Himself.

As a society, we are devolving at an alarming rate.

I try not to engage too often with atheists online as the results are predictable. If, as a Christian, I challenge them about the issue of Creation the result is universally ridiculed. I get the “so you believe the earth is only 6000 years old” argument – even if I preface my answer with rejecting that notion clearly and unequivocally. If I bring up the example of life itself, using the example of a seed growing into a plant I am always responded to by someone trying to argue nonsense about another clause in my sentence, never the issue of the question itself.

This week I (foolishly, I know) tried to argue a point on the Huffington Post about life. I asked an atheist to explain, if there is no creator, why a scientist can mix the chemical components that make up an acorn into something that on a molecular level looks like an acorn, and to the naked eye looks just like an acorn, yet when placed in soil it simply rots and doesn’t become an oak tree. The response I got was that it was a poor argument for evolution!

I replied that I wasn’t trying to prove or disprove evolution, but that an acorn doesn’t evolve into an oak, it is the seed from which an oak tree grows.

As yet, the atheist has yet to respond.

I’m not surprised. Their own argument defeats them every time.

First we must seek God.

Wholeheartedly. Unflinchingly. Unwavering in our search.

My time in Wasteland – again – is reminding me just how essential it is to do this.

Wasteland is not a waste of time. I think of it as a time of preparation. A time to shake off the dust of the past, to drop everything that is not absolutely vital to our moving forward with God.

It’s not an easy time. And I think how long we spend in the wastes is determined by us. We tend to limit how fast God can work in us by refusing to let go of the past, or daydreaming of a decidedly ungodly future. I’ve been guilty of that in the past, and even a little this time through.

My last major trip in Wasteland cost me 20 years. I’m hoping right now that I learned something from that time I can apply now.

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.

 

Losing my Security

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Some days I feel like Linus in the “Peanuts” cartoon strip on washday. His blanket ripped away from him, forcing him to face a harsh world without the security he longs for.

I know I’m not alone.  We all feel like that sometimes.

The key to keeping a sense of Peace it to identify what has taken the “blanket” we’re using. And Why we feel insecure.

This has been my thought pattern reading the second chapter of “The Dream Giver”. Then I put on an audio file of Andrew Wommack’s (I so miss saying a “tape”). He was saying in the teaching something that I hadn’t reached in the chapter yet, but that fits perfectly.

Ordinary feels uncomfortable because he’s where the Dream Giver has directed him to go. When Jesus finishes feeding the 5000, He tells the disciples to get into the boat and cross the lake. Several hours later, they are being thrown around, the boat is sinking and it looks desperate. But they were exactly where God told them to be!

Not every storm is because we’re not where we should be.

Not every lack of comfort is because we’re out of God’s Will.

My quiet time today has been centred around this thought too. It’s taken me a week to write this post because I’ve been struggling.

As I’ve possibly alluded to in the past, I was diagnosed with ADD a few years ago, and I already knew I was a hoarder, but found out 2 years ago the it is a manifestation of OCD. Combine the two and life can be tricky – unless you’re prepared to surrender control to God. Give up the “security blanket” of control.

For me, that has been brutal recently. I hadn’t realised just how muchFB_IMG_1487358294822 I’ve still kept my security in things. Now I’m back in England, but my belongings for the most part – including Maggie and Sam, my beloved and much missed dogs – are in Cape Town.

I’m in the middle of an emotional storm. And it’s because I’m doing what God told me to do. I didn’t see it coming in all the upheaval of getting ourselves to England, but I’m feeling it now.

Trusting things is decidedly unhealthy, I have realised. Not that I didn’t intellectually know that before this move. But sitting with only 11 DVD sets of “Bones” instead of them, “Angel”, “Stargate”, the “Marvel” movies, “Lord of the Rings” – books as well as discs – and 99% of my Christian reference library including about 9 translations I can’t find online and them not being a ten minute drive away like they were last time I had to move without them has given me a very rude wake-up call.

I’m applying for “traditional” jobs as well at the moment. Not because I feel particularly that I have been “called” to any of them – although I’m targetting things that will be a stimulating challenge for me so I don’t get bored and/or go nuts with frustration – but because not having a job or conventional “purpose” here is frustrating all on it’s own. Employment, while not only beneficial financially, will also help me stay out of my head-space. Which in all honesty has been (with one exception) the reason for me applying for every job I’ve ever had.

But being called out of my comfort zone, although in semi-familiar physical surroundings, is forcing me to look to my “Dream Giver” and ask Him to carry me.

I don’t mind admitting I’m out of my depth right now. I even (usually) include the web address of this journal of musings on my CV. I refuse to do what the “experts” say and not declare my Faith for the sake of getting an interview. It’s going to come up at some point anyway, it may as well be a first impression on paper is my way of looking at it. If any employer is going to reject me because of Christ in me, I don’t think I’d fit in well there anyhow. Been there. Done that.

You’d think at 45 I’d be better equipped. At least more “advanced” after 31.5 years as a Christian. But there’s something I’ve learned – really learned – in the last 32 years:

  • God doesn’t leave us where we are when we find Him
  • We usually choose to sit in the mud rather than let Him wash us
  • Going God’s way is often uncomfortable emotionally
  • If I think I can do something easily, it may not be God’s idea – I need to trust Him

So there it is.

We must remember not to look to our own strength, but to Christ in us.

To Dream, Perchance to Sleep

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Pause for thought once in a while. It’s incredibly important. Take a moment to allow God to reach into the depths of your heart and ignite the fire that He placed there when He was drawing up the blueprint for your life.

As a part of that for myself, I’ve had it on my heart to go back through the Bruce Wilkinson book “The Dream Giver”. My next few posts are likely to centre around this book and how working slowly through it is impacting my life.

The first part of the book focusses on the parable of Ordinary, a Nobody from the land of Familiar. Ordinary receives a dream from God, the Dream Giver. His dream appears as a single white featheFeather2r. The first time I read the book, the day I got it a feather landed in my bedroom and I pasted it into the cover of the book. I was happy to give that book to a dear friend, complete with feather, some time ago now.

I was praying about what to do now, and the day before I wanted to start a new feather was on my doorstep. Yep, an actual feather.

Twice.

Since the copy I’m reading from now is on Kindle, it’s harder to tape it inside the cover this time. But I have it stored safely in another book on my nightstand.

Writing has become difficult recently for me. It’s alarming as I’ve staked much of my hopes for the future on the sense of God “dancing” over me when I’m writing. In “Chariots of Fire”, the future missionary, Liddel, tells his sister that when he runs he can feel God’s pleasure. It wasn’t until I began to write seriously that I really understood that statement.

When we find God’s purpose for our life, we can feel Him rejoicing over it.

Ordinary has that when he decided to set off and follow his dream. He tells his friend and his parents.

My dad’s dream was to be a published writer. Like me. He achieved it through a company called Mowbrays, who published some plays he’d written for children while he was a teacher. My favourite was “Starflight to Bethlehem”, where the crew of a space ship inadvertently arrive in Bethlehem at the time of Jesus’s birth – their ship becoming the “star” the wise men follow!

Hey, don’t judge me – I was about ten when he wrote it. They are all out of print these days, but he was happy just to have his name on a published work.

My “dream” is similar. It’s funny how Ordinary’s life in the book has such a resemblance to my own. Have a read of the book, you may find yours is there too. Almost everyone I know who’s read the book has been struck by the similarity in their own life.

It’s a jolt to the system to find something like that. A real “wake-up call” for me. In a good way.

At the end of each chapter, Ordinary takes his feather and uses it to write what he’s learned. That’s what this blog will be about for a while. I’d love to hear comments on how your dreams are growing.

Ordinary found the following:

  • The Dream Giver gave me a Big Dream even before I was born. I just finally woke up to it!
  • My Dream is what I do best and what I most love to do. How could I have missed it for so long?
  • I had to sacrifice and make big changes to pursue my Dream. But it will be worth it.
  • It makes me sad to think that so many Nobodies are missing something so Big.

    Wilkinson, Bruce. The Dream Giver (Kindle Locations 158-163). WordAlive Publishers Limited. Kindle Edition.

My insights so far:

  • God placed a dream in my heart even before I was Born Again. To be a teacher, a preacher.
  • I love writing. It seems to be something I’m reasonably good at, but when I write, like Eric Liddell did as a runner, I “feel” God’s pleasure. Even more when I get the chance to speak.
  • In order to step into everything God has for me, there is going to be sacrifice required. Some of it I’ve already made. Some of it I haven’t reached yet. It’s going to be very hard to do.
  • Ordinary was saddened by the thought that so many people were missing out on their dreams. My call is to help those people who are missing out to find the courage to step into them and find the fulfilment God designed them for. I honestly have NO idea how to do that, but God will give me what I need as I need it!

Let’s make this a journey into God’s plans for us together. Please share your journey in the comments section and let’s all pray together for one another.

Fresh Start

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OK, this New Year fits several categories…
Marathon
Capable
Someday
Exquisite
Hopeful
And hopefully Successful

The year began with the news we have been wanting for three years. My wife has been offered a job in England. For three years we have fought our way through what has felt like a monster battle, a marathon of a race, where we have lost almost everything except our lives – and even that’s been touch-and-go at times.

It’s often felt like a “someday” existence, looking for hope. The writer of Proverbs said:

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick”

Proverbs 13:12a (NKJV)

It’s certainly felt like that for us. So many times our hopes have been dashed or postponed. The torture has felt never-ending.

Depression. Heart-sick existence.

But then the year started with a call from England. An agency who had rejected her had a new person look at her CV and called to ask if he could put it forward to a hospital group he felt would be a perfect fit. We agreed, not expecting much as the group he mentioned had rejected the CV out of hand six months earlier.

The next day came the call to set up a Skype interview with the hospital the following Thursday. We agreed, and I taught my wife very hurriedly the basics of how to use Skype!

The interview went ok. I was sitting out of sight and found myself wincing at some of her answers to their questions. To be honest, had I been the interviewer, even making allowances for technology and nerves I’d have questioned if the fit was going to be right.

Friday morning, 11am South African time – 9am UK time – the phone rang. The hospital wants her so badly they are going to apply to be sponsors with the Home Office so they can employ her faster.

We were completely bowled over.

“But when the desire comes, it is a tree of life.”

Proverbs 13:12b (NKJV)

After 3 years, her ability has been recognised. The offer is there.

Exquisite doesn’t begin to describe the pleasure of that moment. Even being admitted to hospital the next day didn’t tarnish the feeling.

Of course, now we have a new marathon to run. Immigration to the UK ought to be a simple affair. After all, I’m British and we’ve been married over ten years. Nobody could possibly call the last few years a marriage of convenience. But paperwork is needed. The length of our relationship is, apparently, irrelevant to the UK. As is me being a British Citizen, because I don’t have an adequate income in Pounds. So the next part of the race begins.

But it’s a fresh start. There’s hope again. Suddenly “someday” has become “8 weeks from now”.

House-hunting, finding a suitable job to generate an income for me, organising the quarantine for our dogs, packing and re-packing boxes has become a daily ritual. Writing – which I feel passionately is what God has for me moving forward – gets pushed aside for the “practical” stuff.

It’s easy to lose sight of the truly important in the busyness of the business of moving our life to the other end of the planet. But writing, and when the doors open speaking, is what I know God has called me to do.

His timing is perfect. And He calls us to be fully alive – that is His Glory. Our success – whatever He calls us to do – brings Glory to Him.

So my prayer for us, and for anyone taking time to read this today, is to find His purpose for our life, keep Him at the centre of it through the teething time of a new beginning, and let Him lead us into success beyond our imagination!

The Safest Road

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“Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts”

CS Lewis: The Screwtape Letters Ch 12

I’ve walked a fairly “safe” road the last few years spiritually. If you’ve read much of this blog, that may be a surprise to you as my writing tends to be from my heart but my actions in my daily walk get diluted by the issues of a daily battle, complicated by studying, working, married life and so on.

We all suffer these distractions if we are not careful. I lost sight of how blinkered I’d become until recently when my wife and I were forced to take several major steps of Faith. We made them tentatively at first, leaving the flat where we had been living for a year to move back in with my mum and finally making the decision to finally and definitely move to England as soon as possible. Within a few days of the final hard decision being made, and me declaring that “No matter what, we will move to England in the next three months”, my wife was contacted by a new agency, had an interview with a company she had previously been introduced to by another agency and rejected by, and offered a permanent job in Somerset to begin as soon as possible. The interview was last Thursday, the offer made on Friday morning, just nine hours later. We went out to dinner to celebrate Friday night and…

I was admitted to hospital on Saturday morning with a mystery infection in my foot that isn’t responding to prayer (first rebuttal attack as always), oral antibiotics, steroids or any other medications. My sugar control shot to pieces and so now I write from a hospital bed, not feeling even slightly ill, but told it could be quite serious. The phrase “e-coli” has even been thrown around this morning!

All I can do is laugh! I think it’s getting to my fellow inmates, but it’s nice to be the most positive voice in the room. I have things in common with everyone, some of which I can share – a love of motorbikes, a dislike of crashing motorbikes, quality and portion sizes of hospital food and how hard it is to sleep in hospital – and some of which I have been told in confidence, and I will not break that.

Something that has been hard for me in the last 24 hours has been to sit still. I don’t have much of an option here, but with my head racing at a billion miles an hour being forced to sit still is not a bad thing. I chatted to David, the chap in the bed opposite me, for a while this morning. Neither of us slept much last night but I found myself suddenly sharing a part of my testimony I’ve not spoken out loud in over ten years with him. I don’t expect to see a harvest personally, but it felt like planting a seed for the first time in years. I’ll leave it to God what happens next for him, but for me I found a sudden peace and stillness I’ve missed for years. Then I decided to open my Christmas Present to myself – a book of devotionals called “Knowing the Heart of God” by John Eldredge. Today’s passage was 1 Samuel 3:9 “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening”.

Apparently God has a sense of humour – but I’ve thought this for 30 years.

There is much to do before I can move to England. Our dogs must be quarantined for rabies and housed in suitable kennels for the duration. I feel dreadful leaving them for so long, but the upside will be having them with us or their twilight years as they are both over ten now, so for big dogs they are ageing now.

dsc00031Their father, Cadbury, died of cancer as a young dog, but their mum, Beamer, only passed a few months ago at the age oIMG_20160531_154122f 12.

Losing her was a shock for us, the picture to the right was only taken a few weeks before she died and she was still very much herself, just a loss of appetite. It turned out that was caused by liver cancer and she would have only had a few weeks left and they would have been very painful. Having watched Cadbury deteriorate over three weeks from cancer a few years ago we elected to not let her suffer.

What does this have to do with a safe road though?

Basically, we were tempted to take the easy road.

A week ago I was offered a small business in South Africa for no financial investment. A friend’s father has decided to stop his gardening business and I was offered the use, for a profit share, of: the pickup, several top-of-the-line weed-eaters (strimmers) and petrol run gardening tools as well as a generator and some electrical equipment. I have some experience from a few years ago in building and garden maintenance and the thought of a ready-made business is beyond enticing at a time when a white foreigner in South Africa is almost unemployable.

The offer came days after I’d made the declaration about going to England, and it’s incredibly tempting. It’s easy work for me – employ a couple of men to do the heavy work, do the business management and marketing stuff myself and a nice little business to keep things ticking over here. A month ago I would have jumped on the chance, but I felt something say “Hold Back!”

So I asked for a few days to mull it over and discuss it with Rene. She reminded me of my declaration of Faith that we were going to England. Now the offer for England is there, and I’m working on not just the move, but also a series of Kindle books to publish via www.smile.amazon.com (that’s amazon.com but with a portion of your purchase being donated to the charity of your choice – mine is Andrew Wommack Ministries, but choose your own!) over the next two months for Lent, Easter, Ascension Day and Pentecost. It’s all happened so fast even my faster-than-normal brain is spinning!

It would be easy to say “let’s stay in Cape Town” and do the gardening and Rene stay in her practice.

Easy.

Safe.

But hunting lions is not easy, and it’s certainly not safe. I may be the first person in history to be leaving living in Africa to hunt his Lion!

My passion is Christ. I hope that is obvious from these scribblings. But I’ve found it near impossible to find a church I was able to integrate into here. I know it’s me, not the churches that’s the issue, but it still grates that it’s over ten years since I’ve been an actual member of a church locally. That’s not to say I’ve not attended, or that I’ve not had regular fellowship with other Christians, in particular my wife’s family and my dear friend Thuli Nkoyana (whose poem I published on this site here) without whose encouragement I may never have got this far with my writing.

But staying put is safe. At least, it seems to be.

If you get a chance to read Bruce Wilkinson’s book “The Dream Giver” then do so. The story of Ordinary, from a land of Nobody’s who dreams of being Somebody is great, but the disturbingly accurate description of the land he comes from where the people go to their normal job in their normal car then come home and sit in their normal chair and watch their box for entertainment is such an accurate picture of society – all it needs now is to add in iPads and Tablets and it’s today’s society. Scary stuff.

But as Ordinary sets off to leave the land of Familiar to pursue his dream he encounters resistance from people he least expects it from. It’s the same for us. If we go after what God puts in our hearts to do it upsets other people’s lives as well as our own. Our sudden absence (or presence) in their life changes their familiar dynamics. I know my mum isn’t looking forward to us moving. She’s become very quickly adapted to our presence in her home and has stated how much she’s going to miss us. But sometimes we have to follow our dream even if it means disrupting, even hurting, the people we love.

The thing is, taking the safe road usually means moving away from God’s Will for our life. Satan doesn’t resist people moving in the direction he wants them to move in. Or sometimes the resistance is a token easily overcome. We exchange our grand, God-given vision for a smaller, more comfortable one. And we quietly sit in our comfortable life, taking the safe road, dying and not even realising it or living a fraction of what God had stored up for us.

Take the road less travelled. There will be risks. There may be dangers untold and losses unexpected, but the rewards are greater.

But be warned, there are things that will happen:

  • Friends will abandon you
  • Family will disown you
  • You will have to choose between your call and your day-job (if they’re different)
  • You are declaring war on an enemy who will stop at nothing to destroy you.

It’s hard on the front line of the battle. The pioneers who went West and settled America or South and settled Australia, New Zealand and South Africa faced unimaginable hardships. The men fighting in the trenches on the Somme a century ago faced death from the enemy and from the living conditions.

Some quit the battle. They turn back and look for the easier road.

But ours is not a road that is easy.

But it leads to the only truly Safe destination.