Better than “Good”?

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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.

 

The Peril of People Pleasing

Posted on by

So my journey through “The Dream Giver” is continuing.

I’m onto chapter 3 now, which tells of Ordinary’s encounter with the Borderland Bullies.

Sometimes when we move towards what we believe God has called us to do we encounter resistance. The resistance most often comes from people we know well, and who we love and respect. So we have a choice. Standing at the precipice of a choice that will change our lives, what do we do?

Around 20 years ago I had that choice.

I went to the first of several conferences where Andrew Wommack, Dave Duell, Wendell Parr, Don Francisco and some others were the central speakers and leaders. When I sat for five days in that atmosphere and watched people change, lives transform and saw miracle after miracle of healing it impacted me in a massive way. This, I thought to myself, is what Christianity is really supposed to look like.

I felt God’s presence in a more urgent way than I ever had done before. When I left, I knew I could never be the same again.

On getting home, I met up with some much loved (and sorely missed) friends from church. I shared what I’d seen that week, but there was one person missing. Marmaduke (not his real name) called and asked us to pick him up. When I got there, I could see there was something not right. His normally unstoppable smile was gone, and there was a great heaviness on his shoulders. A good friend of his who was not a Christian had been killed in an accident that day, leaving a widow and a young family.

The Spirit leaped inside me. Go and pray – Signs and Wonders Follow the Believer!

I immediately said to Marmaduke that I wanted to go and pray, and that I was absolutely certain we would see the man raised from the dead. And I mean ABSOLUTELY certain. I was more sure of it than I was that the car could carry all of us or that the sky was blue.

Marmaduke smiled and said to me “You don’t get it, Dave. She’s not a Christian either.”

I said “So what?” and he replied “What if you pray and nothing happens? It would destroy everything God’s been doing in that family.”

I thought for a moment, and then looked around the car. Everybody agreed with Marmaduke. Then came the crunch. “After all, why should it happen when one of us asks? We’re not ‘famous’ like that.”

I should have recognised the smell of brimstone. Or at least spotted the sulphur on the words. But I didn’t.

Deflated, I agreed that we weren’t “famous” Christians. That kind of thing was “beyond” us. God only really did that sort of thing for people who are “somebody” in the Kingdom.

I’d been formulating the idea for this ministry at the time as well. Blogs were still rare back then. In fact, most households still didn’t have satellite television and coped on only four channels. I was unusual in the church as I had satellite TV and a computer with internet access. I’d even registered eagleswingministries.org with a host – but had absolutely no clue about building a website, operating a blog or anything else that I’d need. All I had was a name and an idea.

But I wasn’t famous. So I didn’t renew the domain name, I let the idea for an internet presence fall away, and I stopped planning my book.

A year or so later I tried to re-register the domain, but it had been taken by another person so I gave up.

The bullies in my borderland had won that round.

Now at this point I need to say something critically important. Border-bullies often aren’t people who want to tear you down. Some are, but most are people who genuinely love us and want the very best for us. That’s why we listen to them.

Even Jesus had a border-bully.

Don’t believe me? Check it out:

 And He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He spoke this word openly. Then Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him. But when He had turned around and looked at His disciples, He rebuked Peter, saying, “Get behind Me, Satan! For you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.”

Mark 8:31-33 NKJV

Moments earlier, Peter had told Jesus he knew He was the Messiah. Jesus outlines exactly what that means, and Peter becomes a border-bully. Not because he doubted Jesus, but because he loved Him so much he couldn’t bear the idea of Him going to the Cross and dying that way. He missed the part where Jesus points out He would rise again because he got caught on the bit where his best friend dies the most horrific death imaginable.

In “Risen”, Clavius describes crucifixion to one of the disciples. He throws the nails onto the table with a clatter. They are driven through the wrist and the bones rub on them. Breathing is like sucking in air through a wet rag and you realise for the rest of your life you will never breathe easily again. Nails through the feet mean you have to choose between the agony of your lungs collapsing under your own weight and the pain in your wrists, and the equal agony of trying just for a moment to ease that main by taking your weight on your feet. Most take days to die. From the descriprepossessed giftions in the Gospels we know Jesus took around six hours to suffocate.

From man’s perspective.

What truly happened was that He chose the exact moment. He gave a cry, more like the roar of the Lion of Judah, and yielded up His Spirit.

And at that point Satan realised what had happened…

Now people have regularly criticised me in the past for “adult” language when I talk (although I think that gif is the first time I let something into the blog). I go through phases where I swear like a trooper, and times when I hardly ever swear.

Back to the story…

Jesus reached the Cross because He didn’t pay heed to the border-bully in Peter (note: it wasn’t actually Peter). As a result, we have a relationship with God.

Things changed for me. Around 2010 I did a search and found the domain name was available again, so I bought it. Almost immediately things began to go badly outside my vision.

The difference is that now I can recognise a border bully. I can resist them (usually).

But it’s hard. My biggest cheering section is undoubtedly my wife. But at the same time, she can also be the most aggressive at trying to stop me moving into what God has put in front of me.

The last 7 years have produced enough stuff to fill a three-book series to rival Lord of the Rings in length, so I’ll focus right now on where I am as I sit here today.

A year ago we knew we needed to move to England, but the doors kept closing. We were in a flat in Cape Town and doing better than we had for a while, but we both felt we needed the move. We had different reasons, but we both felt the same thing. So when by November we were moving out of the flat to move back in with my mum we had become a little dejected.

Actually, we had become very unhappy.

Then she got the call to say there was a job in Somerset – maybe.

So an interview was set up for January. It went well and she was offered the job the next day, start date ASAP. It took nearly four months thanks to paperwork and legal hoops, but now I sit here in England writing.

My vision seems so much more viable here than it did in Cape Town somehow, but there’s a stumbling block to stepping out into it. I know my wife would feel more settled if I went out and got a “normal” job with a boss and an office and a steady pay-check. It would take the pressure off her to “perform” at the job she’s in (although she loves it) and she’d be able to relax more.

But just the thought of that kind of existence weighs on my heart. I’m praying what the way forward is from here. I know what I feel God has called me to, but I find myself questioning the timing, the form of the next step and even if now I’m here if it is the right direction.

My wife’s issues about my direction and my vision actually help me though. In order to help her see God’s hand guiding me through the next few weeks and months I will have to be far more proactive in seeking His face and listening for His guidance for what the next steps are. I need to be like King David and place my battle-plan before Him and ask His guidance. Ironically, I used to do that all the time but I’ve gotten out of the habit.

The next few days & weeks are going to be challenging, but no more so than the last 32 years have been.

So from this chapter I’ve found and remembered a few things:

  • Often times the people who will give you most objection are the people in your immediate circle. Leaving your comfort zone will upset theirs as well
  • The people who really care about you are usually trying to look out for you to not get hurt as well as trying to avoid their own discomfort
  • Just because someone is a “border bully” doesn’t mean their objections are without merit. Use them to focus your vision
  • Not everyone can be swayed to support your dreams. It’s hard, but sometimes you have to leave those people behind

One final thing…

My greatest supporters have always been close friends, but people whose lives wouldn’t be turned completely upside down whether I follow God’s direction or not – so people who care about me but care more about being right with God. They are the best ones to look to for advice and to pray through stuff with.

 

Losing my Security

Posted on by

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.

Fresh Start

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

“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.

Facing the Past to Move into God’s Future

Posted on by

We all have them. Skeletons in our closets that make us feel unusable. Things we wouldn’t want the people around us to know.

“Peter had an affair”. “John left his wife”. “Before she joined the church Anne was a prostitute”. “Alan embezzled to get where he is today”.

Maybe not as big, but we all have them. Events from our past that haunt us. Playing “doctor” as a child and exploring the opposite gender for the first time – or the twenty-first as an adult.

It’s the seemingly little things that haunt us. The accusations that come in the night when we’re alone. Our husband or wife asleep beside us and the guilt that floods our minds. Images real or imagined flood through our beings and we lose sleep. Actions whether taken or not haunt us as God’s Children. We feel the missed mark more acutely than the bullseye.

I remember very little of my childhood. My brother died when he was ten and I was 13, and the majority of the time we had together is more a memory of a memory. There’s very little clarity in my head. I remember the loss. The pain of losing Robin but not the joy of having him in my life.

I remember skeletons we shared with cousins and friends as small children do, exploring out of sight of adults the mysteries of our differences. Why did this cousin play with dolls and this one with toy guns? Robin died in 1985 and personal computers – although available – were things of luxury. We finally got one just a few weeks before he died and instantly all our friends wanted to come and see and play games on it. But mostly we went to other people’s homes and played traditional games.

Simpler times. No cell-phones or facebook to interrupt us. We played and explored as generations had done before.

Something happened as we grew up. Friendship got replaced with BBM and Whatsapp. Facebook dominates the time of the majority of the youth at a time when they need to find out who they are they are too busy trying to find out if Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears are wearing underwear. A few years ago in the movie “True Lies” (1994) a character laments that Axl Rose and Madonna are the one’s raising their kids these days, not mom and dad. 21 years later how much has that deteriorated. Now most parents might be happy for that influence instead of Ashley Madison…

The assault on the nuclear family in the media has been relentless. Pre-nuptuial agreements, contracts settling how equity will be divided in the event of divorce are routine contracts these days. The concept of “All my worldly goods with you I share” is replaced with an addendum “except the lake house in Virginia, the ski lodge in Aspen and the Yacht in Miami.” Marriages are entered into with the expectation of failure.

At a time when families are needed more we have fewer men capable of being real men because they have never been fathered themselves.

I was blessed that my grandfathers both survived the second World War, one as a minister on the Home Front – something he regretted to the day he died as he wanted to go to Europe and fight the Nazis, and the other as a Major in the British Army serving as a motorcycle outrider and accountant for the regiment with distinction gained for valour on the Normandy Beach assaults, D-Day, June 6th 1944.

The foundation these strong men left was passed down to me as an example of what a real man should be. Fearless in battle, both spiritual and physical, a protector.

Too many of my friends growing up didn’t have what I had. Parents had divorced, grandfathers had died and fathers had had no guiding influence because their own grandfathers had died between 1914 and 1918. Two lost generations dead physically or too traumatised to raise sons to be Men.

This is the past we must face.

This is what as Christians we must overturn.

The steady moral decay from the 1950’s through to today, removing Christian influence in schooling in the 1960’s, the rise of a powerful atheist minority who make a lot of noise while the Church stays silent has resulted in a world gone mad. Smaller wars like Korea, Vietnam, the Falklands, Afghanistan, Desert Storm along with genocide in African countries and now ISIS and their atrocities added to “ethnic cleansing” in central Europe makes for a holocaust of slaughter that Hitler himself would be proud of.

We must repent of our past.

Martin Luther King gave his famous “I Have A Dream” speech 53 years ago this year. He called on citizens to rise up and break the bonds of tyranny and segregation. Just 20 years ago my wife and I would be criminals in South Africa as I am white and she is not. I have been accused to my face of betraying my race by both black and white individuals.

It is a past we need to move beyond.

God has a plan for the future of Mankind. He called it “Incarnation”

He took our own form, lived a human life and died a human death so we could have a future in Him after His resurrection.

His plan for the future is what we need to remember.

My wife and I watched “Evan Almighty” recently. God appears in the form of Morgan Freeman and instructs a young congressman to build an Ark like Noah had been told to.

His explanation after a burst dam floods a housing project and the ark has saved hundreds of lives is that to change the world, all we need to to make one act of random kindness a day.

Act of
Random
Kindness.

ARK.

The simplicity of the message is right up there with the parables if we approach it from a Godly standpoint rather than an entertainment one.

What if God’s future were really based on building on Acts of Random Kindness? What if we could effect change simply by adopting a puppy or making peace with a neighbour?

That’s a personal dig at myself. I can forgive people who steal from me – and I do so easily. I have forgiven people who threw the first punch physically (even when I threw the last one) and gone on to have long friendships with them, but forgiving my literal next-door neighbour has caused me great anxiety. My olive branches have been made into kindling to start a new fire. After an attempted break-in on our property which sent our dogs nuts at three in the morning I went round to apologise and ask if they were ok as the intruder had jumped the fence between our properties. I left feeling like I was the bad-guy because his sleep had been disrupted.

Forgiving him has been difficult. And is a work in progress.

It’s also essential for my own growth. Unforgiveness is a cancer in the soul that prevents us moving to the next level with God. To move into the future I must forgive the ones who have hurt me.

All of them.

So do you. We all have the annoying neighbour, relative or acquaintance we can’t escape. Sometimes the easiest way is to decide to forgive, but to sever contact with that person. It’s not always easy. Especially when it’s family – believe me. But in the end we don’t need conflict in our lives. Conflict prevents God from giving us the Best He has for us. Forgiveness opens that door.

So face the past. Acknowledge it, but don’t hold onto it.

Move into the Future God has for you.

You’ll never regret it.
Mistake