The Gift of Christmas

Lately, I’ve begun to feel more and more saddened by the realisation that so many see Santa Claus, that white-bearded, red-suited guy with his red sack of presents, as the central figure of Christmas.

Jesus is the central figure of Christmas. Christmas is the celebration of HIS birthday, and with His birth those many years ago came the greatest gift that has ever been given to anyone - the gift of salvation into an eternal life of knowing God. 

And so I’ve been saddened at the thought of those who miss (or who choose not to recognise) the real point of Christmas.

But it wasn’t till I read a blog post written by Dave Burchett (and re-published by Crosswalk here) that I began to realise that what he calls the “Santa Claus is Coming to Town Theology” has more insidious implications. After years of hearing the catchy song being played in shopping malls all through December (and now increasingly all through November as well), have we subconsciously allowed Santa Claus Theology to take root in our minds?

The idea put forward in the popular Santa Claus song is that Santa sees everything and he makes lists of who’s naughty and nice, so we’d better not pout or cry or be bad or be found on the “naughty” list if we want Santa to bring us presents.

It sounds logical, doesn’t it? If we do good, we get rewarded. If we don’t, we can’t expect anything good to come along.

But God is not Santa Claus, and He doesn’t work in quite the same way.

If God kept lists of “who’s naughty and nice” and saved His gifts for those on the “nice” list, then there wouldn’t be anyone to give anything to, because all humankind would be on the “naughty” list. The Bible tells us after all, “There is no one righteous, not even one” (Romans 3:10) and “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). However many good deeds we do in this life, we still fall short of the glory of God.

But God in His infinite mercy and wisdom knows this, and in love, He provided the way for humankind to be saved. John 3:16-17 tells us: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” – That is the gift of Christmas, the biggest and best gift there could ever be.

God does keep a list, but it is a list of the people who have chosen to accept Him as the Lord of their lives and to acknowledge that His son Jesus is the only way to heaven. “[Jesus said] I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). When Jesus was crucified on the cross, He took upon Himself the punishment that should have been ours. He paid the price. We get ourselves on the “saved and going-to-heaven” list (called the “Lamb’s Book of Life” in Revelation 21:27) not because of the good deeds that we do or because we are “nice”, but by believing that Jesus paid the price for us, being thankful for it, and accepting God’s gift of eternal life.

God does not offer us a way to join Him in heaven because we deserve it. He offers us this gift freely even though we don’t deserve it at all. That is grace. That’s what the Bible means when it says that we are saved by grace, through faith, and not by works. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

Dave Burchett ends his piece thus: “Don’t let the Santa Claus theology live into the New Year. Go straight to the gift of grace that Jesus left under the Cross. Open it. And clothe yourself in His salvation, acceptance and love. It may be the best gift you have ever given yourself.”

Jesus, not Santa Claus, is at the heart of Christmas. And His gift of salvation is offered to everyone. Nothing that we have done in the past is too bad for God to forgive. All that God requires is a heart that is willing to believe that Jesus died for our sins, that His death makes it possible for us to be reconciled with God, and that by the power of the Holy Spirit, we can live a new life from here on, walking in the ways of God.

God’s gift of salvation has been offered. Our part is to tell God that we accept it.

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Photograph (by R Tang): Our Lady of Carmel Church, Macau, taken in December 2010

What’s the most important day of the year?

An email arrived in my inbox last weekend from Dayspring Devotions. It had as its subject line “The Most Important Day of the Year”. Because I was busy with other things, I didn’t click on the email to read it immediately, but my mind did start churning out likely contenders for the identified “most important day of the year”. I wondered if it might be “Thanksgiving”, since it was the weekend just before the big American holiday. Or perhaps they were going to name “Christmas” as the most important day, since that’s just round the corner and celebrates the birth of our Saviour Jesus Christ.

Today, I clicked on the email to read it.

“… of all the days of the year, the most important one is the everyday.” (Ann Voskamp)

I don’t know why I didn’t think of that. Indeed. We so often plan our lives around days and events which we think are ”Big” and “Important”. On my wall is a calendar (yes, the old-fashioned 12-inch by 12-inch paper kind that hangs on a string, with a picture on the top half and a grid below for me to make notes in). On that calendar are scribblings in red, blue, green, purple, and black – Chinese New Year public holiday, Appraisal Meeting 9 a.m., Conference Funding Deadline, Staff Lunch, Easter!, 1245hrs – SQ318 to London, Mid-Autumn Festival (Bring mooncakes!), Exam Reports DUE!!!, XY’s Baptism, Finish marking thesis, Christmas party, etc.

And where there is nothing pencilled in on the calendar for the day, I often find myself thinking, Ah, nothing important today.

How would it change our lives to remember everyday that TODAY is important? Are we so preoccupied with focusing on deadlines that we miss the wonder of the everyday? That we miss the potential of the everyday? If nothing else, consider this …

If you haven’t yet accepted Jesus into your life, TODAY could be the day that you do. Today could be the day that you “cross over from death to life” (John 5: 24).

And if you have accepted Jesus as your Saviour, TODAY could be the day that you change eternity for someone else by helping them on their journey towards knowing God.

Says Ann Voskamp:

“How do we find ways to somehow live so that everyday is consecrated? We must find ways. For the ways we live our everydays is the way we live our lives.”

Today, I am thankful for the reminder that every day is a gift and a blessing from God. Our lives are made up of a bunch of “everydays”, and there are no unimportant days.

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If you’re interested, you can read The Most Important Day of the Year by Ann Voskamp here.

Little things

I was driving on campus one day and came up to a stretch of road where roadworks were going on. Because a huge truck was blocking the road, leaving only one lane free for cars on a two-way street, someone had to help direct traffic with the help of a hand-held road sign that said “stop” on one side and “go” on the other. As I approached in my car, the man holding the sign swung the sign around showing me the side that said “go”. As I drove past him, I raised my hand in acknowledgement, as a courtesy to him. To my surprise, his face lit up and broke into one of the most beautiful smiles I had ever seen as he returned the wave. One second later and I had driven out of his sight, but that smile stayed with me as I wondered about the person who could look so genuinely happy seated by the side of that road holding a road sign, directing traffic.

The singer Rickie Lee Jones had this line in one of her songs: “You never know when you are making a memory”. I’ve always loved that line, and I was reminded of it once again when I saw that smile. And I was reminded too that we really don’t know when the “little things” that we do in the course of our daily lives may have a lasting impact on someone else’s life.

Within the Christian context, Joe McKeever (preacher and retired Director of Missions for the Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans) has written about something similar in his blog. In a piece entitled “God loves to use the small things“, he writes about how we can never know how God will use or multiply what we do for Him. In a particularly memorable bit, McKeever writes:

“Anyone can look at an apple and count the seeds, but only God can look at a seed and count the apples.”

I love that. To our eyes, something may be tiny and seemingly inconsequential, like a little seed. But we have no way of knowing how many future generations of fruit God intends to grow from that one tiny seed. Only God knows that.

We may look at the little things we do every day in the name of living for God and wonder if they make any difference at all in the eternal scheme of things. But it’s not our job to know whether the Bible verse we share with someone at an opportune moment takes root in their hearts, or whether our refusal to participate in slandering a colleague behind their backs will have any impact at all on those present, or whether our modelling of patience and godly living will make any lasting impression on the bunch of kids we’re teaching.

We do what we can with what we have. The rest is in God’s hands. The fruit are His to grow.

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Photograph (by R Tang): Mahonia berries, Winterbourne Botanical Gardens, Birmingham, 2010

Travelling on yesterday’s gas?

I often set my alarm clock for about 45 minutes before my scheduled breakfast time. The 45 minutes are meant to be my time with God. But there are days when I open my eyes and the first thing that pops into my mind is something to do with work. My mind starts going. I start planning what I’m going to do during the day. If I happen to be in the middle of a project of some kind, my mind will often pick up where I left off the previous day. I jot little notes down in my notebook (the old-fashioned paper kind), ideas that I can flesh out when I get to the office. It’s okay, I tell myself. I have 45 minutes. I’ll just take 5 minutes to take stock of my day, to get all this out of my system and out of the way, and then I can concentrate on God.

But “5 minutes” can very quickly turn into 10, then 15, 20, and 25. It’s just amazing how quickly time in the morning just flies by.

The world may see the person who wakes up and dives straight into work as “committed”, “driven”, “efficient”. But that’s not how God sees it, and I know that I am in deep trouble if I start composing emails in my head when I’m supposed to be praying.

Why? Because it means my priorities are wrong. Because it means that I think I can accomplish what I need to during my day without God’s guidance and grace.

Here’s something by John Piper that I recently read:

“Entering the day without a serious meeting with God, over his Word and in prayer, is like entering the battle without tending to your weapons. It’s like taking a trip without filling the tires with air or the tank with gas. The human heart does not replenish itself with sleep. The body does, but not the heart. The spiritual air leaks from our tires, and the gas is consumed in the day. We replenish our hearts not with sleep, but with the Word of God and with prayer. Thousands of saints have discovered through the centuries that starting the day by filling the mind with the Word of God will bring more joy and more love and more power than traveling on yesterday’s gas.” (When I don’t desire God: How to fight for joy, Crossway Books, p. 116)

When our eyes are set on God, everything else falls into place. Worldly anxieties and concerns that might otherwise loom large in front of our eyes (like who in our workplace will get a coveted promotion, or whether we will receive due recognition for having done most of the work in a group project) fade in significance in the light of Jesus and the ultimate purpose of our lives on earth. Burdens that seem too much for us to carry become lighter because we know that even while we cannot always avoid carrying burdens and responsibilites in this life, we ourselves are always carried in the arms of the loving and all-powerful God.

I know that if I don’t want to wear myself out by trying to run on an empty tank and dragging myself along with flat tires, then I need to make sure that I give God the full time that I set aside for Him each day. It’s the only way to refuel.

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The photograph of the car with the flat tire was taken by David Niblack. http://www.davidniblack.com/

Competing voices

More and more these days, we’re getting information, news, and advice thrown at us from all directions. The ever-expanding reach and capabilities of technology have meant that we have easy access to the views of more people than ever before. But when the “logic” of this world shows itself to be at odds with the word of God, whose voice will we listen to?

What the world says		What the Bible says
I worked hard for everything that I have. I have a right to be proud of my own talents, abilities, and achievements.		Deuteronomy 8: 17-18 – “You may say to yourself, ‘My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.’ But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth”. .
We have to move with the times. We can’t apply the moral yardsticks of the past to what we see today because people and society are just different now.		Isaiah 5:20, 24 – “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. …   [A]s tongues of fire lick up straw and as dry grass sinks down in the flames, so their roots will decay and their flowers blow away like dust; for they have rejected the law of the LORD Almighty”. .
As long as we are a “good person” and live a generally good life, trying to help others, not causing intentional harm to anyone, we will go to heaven.		John 3:16, 18 – “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. … Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son”.     John 14:6 – “[Jesus said] ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’”. .
It’s fine for some people to be Christians and to want to share their faith with others, but there’s a time and a place for doing that. There are some situations where it’s just inappropriate for Christians to talk about their faith.		2 Timothy 4:1-2 (NIV) – “In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.”     2 Timothy 4:2 (Bible in Basic English) – “Be preaching the word at all times, in every place.”      2 Timothy 4:2 (Weymouth New Testament) – “Proclaim God’s message, be zealous in season and out of season”. .
Freedom means being able to do what we want, when we want to.		2 Corinthians 3:17 – “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”     John 8:31-32 - “Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’”  .
We have to look out for ourselves (or “look out for number 1″ as the popular expression goes), take care of our own interests first and foremost, because if we don’t, no one else is going to.		Isaiah 46:4 – “Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.”     Matthew 6:25-33 – “[Jesus said] Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” .

I know how strong the impulse can be to play by the rules of the world we are living in. The ways of the world seem so logical, even natural. The ways of God often seem to be rather counter-intuitive — Live in obedience to God’s will in order to be truly free (James 1:25). Do not be anxious about anything (Philippians 4:6). Leave justice in God’s hands even when we are wronged (Romans 12:19). Do not store up treasures for ourselves on earth, but store up treasures for ourselves in heaven (Matthew 6:19-20).

God’s way is impossible if we want to hang on to control of our own lives, if we trust in ourselves and look to our own abilities to ensure a safe, comfortable, and secure future for ourselves. But if we are willing to see that our lives are held in God’s Almighty hand, and that He is more than capable of making sure that His plans for our lives come to pass, then it becomes easier (though not easy!!) to choose God’s way.  

In this world of competing voices, whose voice will we listen to?

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In every season

A few days ago, someone emailed me a photograph she’d recently taken of beautiful red autumn leaves. It made me think about the autumn season, which I used to love when I lived in a country which had four seasons. It also made me think about the “seasons” of life that we go through.

I’ve had seasons in my life when I’ve felt so close to God. Prayer comes easily, like talking to an intimate friend sitting right next to me. The Bible makes sense. I read it and new wisdom jumps out at me. I am walking with the Lord. Living my life in a way that honours Him seems to come easily, and with obedience to God’s word comes an amazing and awe-inspiring sense of freedom. It feels like I’m living the Bible verse that says “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17). I feel a peace and a wholeness that comes with the knowledge that I am living in the way I was created to live.

And then I’ve had seasons in my life when quite literally, as the verse from Hillsong’s “Desert Song” goes, “everything within me feels dry”. Life is a struggle. Work is overwhelming and threatens to sap all the joy out of life. Living in a way that pleases God just seems so difficult, and things just seem to conspire to knock me even further back in my walk with God. Prayer is hard, and I don’t know what to say to the One who is supposed to be the love of my life.

I don’t like the difficult seasons, and when I’m in them, I can’t wait for them to end. Often, I vainly try to hurry the seasons along. But we can’t hurry seasons of life along, any more than we can hurry summer along so that autumn will come. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that Christian believers shouldn’t passionately desire to live in a perpetual season of closeness with God, and try as far as possible to make sure their lives and hearts are right with God so as to enable that to happen. I think it’s clear from other things that I’ve written here that I think closeness with God is one of the most precious things on earth and worth more than anything this world has to offer. But we only provide the conditions for the closeness and the blessings. The seasons of our lives are in God’s hands. This is what the well-known Christian writer and pastor John Piper says:

“In obedience to God’s word we should fight to walk in the paths where he has promised his blessings. But when and how they come is God’s to decide, not ours. If they delay, we trust in the wisdom of our Father’s timing, and we wait. … [W]e work patiently in the fields of obedience and fight against the weeds and the crows and the rodents. Here is where joy will come. Here is where Christ will reveal himself (John 14:21). But that revelation and that joy will come when and how Christ chooses. It will be a gift.”  (John Piper, When I don’t desire God: How to fight for joy, Crossway Books, p. 43)

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So I’ve come to realise that God sometimes allows different seasons in our lives to grow us into the people He wants us to become – people who will choose to rejoice in Him whatever the circumstances, and people who will remain faithful to Him to the very end, in spite of deep trials. The Apostle Paul’s teaching to Christian believers was:

“Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18).

And in Revelation 2: 10, we are told,

“Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life”.  

More than once, I’ve found myself in the midst of a trial and the only thing which keeps me from derailing is a faith in God that is rooted in my memory of the specific ways God has preserved me, protected me, and revealed Himself to me in the past, for the Bible says in Hebrews 13:8 that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” I believe that God in His grace gives us seasons of blessings to build us up in faith, and to equip us to deal with other seasons of life that we have to go through.

And I believe that God, also in His grace, permits challenges in our lives, to mature us in our walk with Him. As Romans 5:1-5 says:

“[W]e … rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.”

If there is never any friction in our lives, never any challenge, never any suffering, it is unlikely that we will develop in our character and grow past an infant’s understanding of God’s power and provision.

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I would be lying if I said that I didn’t find it difficult to rejoice through the difficult times. When I’m driving home at 9.30 p.m. on a Friday night, exhaused from work and with a bag full of more work to be completed over the weekend, and some random stone hits my windscreen on the expressway and cracks it, adding “go to car workshop” to my never-ending to-do list, it is more than a little hard to rejoice.

But I have learned that walking with God is a choice we make every day, even when we don’t feel like it, even when we feel like we’re in a spiritual desert. Hillsong’s “Desert Song” has been one of my favourites since I first heard it, because to me, it is a beautiful picture of how we choose to praise God and focus on Him and trust in Him, in every season of our lives. When our spiritual lives feel like a desert, when we feel like we’re walking through the fire of testing, when we feel like we’re in a battle, and when we feel like we’re living in a land flowing with all things good – in every season, God is still God. And praising Him is a choice that we make.

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["Desert Song" is streamed from Hillsong's own myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/hillsong/, if anyone is interested.]

Photograph (by R Tang):  Red leaves, taken outside the Aston Webb building at Birmingham University.

The family of believers

“Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.” (Galatians 6: 10)

For those Christians amongst us who live in countries where there is freedom of worship and where it is relatively easy to find and meet others who share our faith in Jesus, it’s easy to gloss over the phrase “the family of believers” and to miss the significance of Galatians 6: 10.

I’ve been going to church every week for years, where I see familiar faces who also go to church every week. In the course of my work over the years, I’ve seen people around me on a regular basis whom I know to be Christians. In an abstract, absent-minded sort of way, I’ve always been aware that we all belong to “the family of believers”, or as the English Standard Version of the Bible puts it, we all belong to the same “household of faith” (Galatians 6: 10).  But that phrase never really came alive to me till recently.

I was recently visiting a country where it is far less easy to be open about being a believer of Jesus Christ. [This is a true story, but I'm changing names and small details to avoid identifying anyone.] A few days into my visit, I met a new acquaintance through a mutual friend. We’ll call my new acquaintance ‘Anna’. Anna had been a Christian for many years, in a country which was not overly friendly towards Christians and churches. She was overjoyed to learn that I was a fellow believer. When she found out that I was interested in buying a particular type of craftwork unique to the region, to bring home as a momento of the place, she volunteered to bring me to a workshop run by a close friend of hers. When we got there, she very eagerly introduced me to her friend, the owner of the workshop, ending the introduction with a whispered “She’s a sister in Christ.”

In all my years as a Christian, no one had never made such a big deal out of my being a follower of Christ. These two people didn’t even know me. All they knew was that I belonged to the same “household of faith” that they did, and that was enough of a reason for them to be excited. That was enough of a reason for them to “do good” for me – I was touched by how hard they tried to help me find the perfect piece of craftwork to bring home.

The story doesn’t end there. Try as we did, we didn’t quite find exactly what I was looking for. I did buy something from the workshop, but Anna knew that it wasn’t what I’d been hoping to find. She dropped me off at my hotel, and we said our goodbyes as I was due to fly off early the next morning.

But the next morning, about ten minutes before I was due to get on a bus that would take me to the airport, there was a knock on my hotel room door. It was Anna, holding a gift for me which was tightly bundled up. It was a piece of craftwork from her own home. It had been made by her dear aunt who had brought her up, and who had recently passed away. From our earlier conversations, Anna knew it to be exactly what I was looking for. I refused to take it. I told her that I couldn’t take something so precious from her. “You can’t give that to me,” I told her.

Her reply was: “I could, for a sister, who will love it.”

I can’t describe how my heart melted when I heard that. I think that has to count as one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me. She insisted that I take it, and because the bus to the airport wasn’t going to wait for me any longer and I couldn’t stand around protesting any longer, I took it.

I didn’t even see what it was till I got home. It’s beautiful. I do love it. And I love it even more for what it meant to the person who gave it. Every time I look at it, I remember how it came to sit in a corner of my room.

This was someone who barely knew me. We’d only met about three or four days earlier. She did it because I was “a sister in Christ”.

For Anna and her friend, meeting someone new from the “household of faith” was in itself something exciting and worth celebrating. Even though they didn’t know me, they were eager to do all they could to bless me, because  I was their sister in Christ, a “family member” in God’s big family.

We who live in free countries, where we have the opportunity to meet fellow believers openly and routinely, take so many things for granted. We’ve lost that excitement. We forget that it’s no small thing to be a member of God’s family. The Bible tells us in John 5: 24, “[Jesus said], ‘I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.’”

When we accept Jesus as our Saviour, we “cross over from death to life”. We’re headed to heaven. And every one we meet in our lives who is of “the household of faith” is headed to the same destination. That’s worth more than a lacklustre “Oh, are you also a Christian?” when we meet them. That’s worth celebrating.

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The photograph above, taken in 2009, is of a craft workshop in Ironbridge, UK. It is not the craft workshop written about in this post.

What are you worth?

How do we measure what we’re worth?

• By the amount of money we have in our bank accounts?
• By the number of houses and cars we own?
• By the number of people in the world who would recognise our name and face?
• By our popularity and attractiveness?
• By the amount of power we have?
• By our educational pedigree? (How many degrees do we have? Did we graduate from a top university? How many As do we have on our transcripts?)
• By the status of our jobs? (Doctors, teachers, soldiers, and firefighters frequently top lists of “most respected jobs”.)
• By the amount of “performance bonus” we get at our jobs?
• By the number of lives we impact for good each day?
• By the number of people we help each day?
• By the number of people who depend on us every day?
• By how much our families and friends love us?

I have seen people lose their sense of self-worth because they have lost their jobs; because they’ve repeatedly received the message that they are worthless from people at home, at work, or in school; because they are no longer loved by someone who once loved them; because they received a lousy work performance report despite having tried their hardest.

And in the highly competitive academic world too, it is very difficult to resist being defined by one’s performance. Everything is graded and scored. Universities are ranked. Departments are ranked. Student assignments are graded. Students are ranked to receive prizes. Teaching performance is scored. Publication output is translated into numerical points. Research projects are awarded monetary grants based on intrinsic merit as well as relative merit (in comparison with other projects). 

One thing is worth bearing in mind in the midst of all this: 

Our worth does not depend on how much value other people put on our lives.

Our worth stems from how much GOD values us.

And this is how much God values us: He saw that we were going about our messed-up lives and would have no hope of joining Him in heaven by our own efforts. But because He loved us so much, He decided that He would pay the highest price for us — He would sacrifice His own beloved Son, Jesus, for us. God sent His perfect Son, Jesus, down from the beautiful glory of heaven to this earth, to die a horrible, painful death on a cross, just so that WE could have a place in heaven with Him if we choose to believe in Jesus.

The Bible tells us:

“God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8 )

“Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.” (1 Peter 3: 18)

God did not sacrifice His son for people who were grateful to Him and who already loved Him. That would have been difficult enough. But God sacrificed his Son whom He loved intensely, for people who couldn’t care less about Him or His Son, just so that we could have the hope of joining Him in heaven. That’s how much love God has in His heart for us. That’s how much we mean to God.

So, regardless of what society or our families or our employers or our employees think of us, whether they think highly of us or nothing of us, the truth is that we are all valuable in God’s eyes. We are all worth the life of Jesus, His Son.

We (including me) need to stop calculating our worth based on what people think of us, and we need to start remembering that our worth is equal to what GOD was prepared to give for us.

And one other little thing: no matter what we think of others who cross our paths in this life, they are worth the life of Jesus, God’s Son, too. That’s something we need to remember as well.

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The photograph of the old-fashioned cash register was taken in 2008 in the Colman Mustard Shop in Norwich, UK.  

Already in God’s plans

I look back sometimes at the successes I’ve had in my life so far, at the disappointments that made no sense at the time, at the trials, at the intense mental struggles that I’ve been through, and looking at them in the light of where I am now, I find myself wondering, “Is it really possible that all this that’s happening in my life right now was already in God’s plans way back then?”

Life is an exciting ride, and very liberating, when we realise that our lives are in God’s hands. My job is to do the best that I can where I am, and to do all things in a way that honours God. As long as I am walking with the Lord, I believe that God’s purpose for my life will prevail and it will be infinitely better than anything I could ever plan for myself. We may plot and plan and strive and tire ourselves out to be someone we think we should be. Others may plot and plan for us, or against us, but the Bible says in Psalm 33:8-11:

Let all the earth fear the LORD; let all the people of the world revere him.

For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.

The LORD foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples.

But the plans of the LORD stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations.

I believe that God knows what He has planned for me. He has the big picture. He is not surprised by “the turns that life takes”. We may not be able to see where the jigsaw piece that we’re standing on fits into seeming puzzle of our lives, but God can. He sees where all the pieces fit, and He sees the completed picture.

Roy Lessin wrote in his blog Meet Me in the Meadow one day:

“Corrie Ten Boom once said, ‘God doesn’t have problems, He only has plans.’ God doesn’t make bad days for you and good days for you. God makes each day fit perfectly into His plans for you.”

I think that’s very worth remembering.

Serving God by serving others

“The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve” (Mark 10: 45). 

Jesus turned this world’s logic on its head when He was on this earth. He was (and is) the King of kings, and the Saviour of the world, and yet we read in the Bible that He “did not come to be served, but to serve” (Mark 10: 45). And He taught His disciples to have the heart of a servant too, saying that whenever they served or helped a needy person, they were in effect serving and helping Him. 

“Then the King will say to those on his right [his faithful followers], ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ 

Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ 

The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’” (Matthew 25:  34-40) 

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Serving Him by serving others is what Jesus still desires of His followers, and many faithful Christians around the world labour to do exactly that. It isn’t easy, and even if we start out with noble intentions and our eyes fixed on God, years of trying to help people and meet their needs and minister to them in their problems can take its toll.   

I read something today in Bruce Wilkinson’s book You Were Born For This that I think is a great encouragement and reminder for any believer who may perhaps be feeling worn out after years of serving others. Wilkinson writes of having confided in a mature Christian friend one day years ago that he was getting tired of trying to serve and meet the needs of other people. This was the conversation that unfolded: 

“Well, why do you do it?” my friend asked. 

“What do you mean, ‘Why do I do it?’ God tells us to serve one another!” 

“Yes,” he replied, “but is that all He tells us about serving people?” 

I didn’t understand what he was getting at. 

He continued, “Bruce, if you’re determined to serve people for the sake of people, you’ll eventually burn out and quit. And you’ll quit for a very good reason.” 

“What is that?” I asked. 

“Serving people just isn’t worth it.” 

I was shocked. I had no idea that such a mature and highly respected Christian leader could feel that way. But he wasn’t finished. 

“Look, you have been called to serve God — and that’s always worth it. But one of the ways you serve Him is by serving others. You have to keep your eyes on Him, because otherwise you won’t last. Once you’re focused on serving and pleasing God, the rest becomes irrelevant.” (Wilkinson, You Were Born For This, Multnomah Books, 2009, p. 74) 

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WHATEVER YOU DO, WORK AT IT WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AS WORKING FOR THE LORD, NOT FOR MEN, SINCE YOU KNOW THAT YOU WILL RECEIVE AN INHERITANCE FROM THE LORD AS A REWARD. IT IS THE LORD CHRIST YOU ARE SERVING. (Colossians 3: 23-24)

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Cain and Abel

A number of people have asked me about Cain and Abel. (Cain and Abel are brothers, the sons of Adam and Eve, by the way.) The passage of the Bible in question is Genesis 4: 2-5

“Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the LORD. But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor.”

The question that I’ve been asked is: Why was God so unfair? Both brothers brought to the Lord the results of their hard work. Abel tended flocks, so he brought an offering from his flocks. Cain worked the soil, so he brought an offering from the soil. Why did God favour one but reject the other?

The answer has to do with obedience, with giving to God what He asked for, and not what we think is best.  

In the book of Genesis in the Bible, we note that after Adam and Eve sinned by eating the fruit from the one tree that they were not supposed to eat from, they sewed together fig leaves to cover themselves.

“When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.  Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.” (Genesis 3: 6-7)

However, we read a few verses down that once God had chastised Adam and Eve and the serpent for sinning,

“The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.” (Genesis 3: 21)

There could not have been “garments of skin” unless some animal(s) had been killed, so we see here therefore that fig leaves were not sufficient to “cover over” the sin of Adam and Eve. Blood had to be shed to atone for (to make up for) the sin of the humans.

Thus, years later, when Abel brought his offering (which involved killing some of his flock), his was deemed to be acceptable. However, when Cain brought “some of the fruits of the soil” as his offering, this was not acceptable because God had in fact already cursed the ground in Genesis 3:17 (To Adam [God] said, “… Cursed is the ground because of you …”). So Cain was in fact bringing something from the cursed ground to God as an offering.

Now, some people might ask how Cain and Abel were supposed to know what God wanted. After all, they were not Adam and Eve. God did not kill an animal in front of them and clothe them with the skins. Well, to answer this, we need to draw on what God revealed through the book of Hebrews and through Paul’s letter to the Romans. In Hebrews 11:4, we read:

“By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was commended as a righteous man, when God spoke well of his offerings.”

And in Romans 10: 17, we read:

“Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.”

How exactly God revealed His wishes to Cain and Abel, we don’t know, but we do know from Hebrews 11:4 that it was because Abel’s offering was offered by faith that his offering was approved of by God. Abel’s offering from the firstborn of his flock was offered by faith, and since “faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God” (Romans 10: 17), we can come to the conclusion that God must have somehow revealed to Cain and Abel the kind of offering He desired. Since Abel brought to God what God asked for, but Cain brought to God something else, God was perfectly within His rights to approve of the one and reject the other. 

To me, the real point of the Cain and Abel story is its application to our lives today. Because Jesus has already died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins, God does not require us to offer to Him animal sacrifices any longer. However, the call that God makes upon the lives of His followers these days is still the call of obedience. When God reveals to us what He desires us to do, He wants us to do exactly that. He does not want us to substitute something we think is just as good or something we think is “even better”. 

For instance, when God impresses on our hearts that He wants us to go and apologise to someone, do we say “Yes, Lord” and do it? Or do we tell Him, “You know what’s a better idea, God? I’ll buy her the biggest bunch of flowers I can find. From now on, I’ll do whatever she asks me to do without complaining. I’ll quietly wash her car for her every day for a month. See, I’ll show her that I am sorry.” Those may all be great things to do, but they are not what God said to do.

Or perhaps God gives us a vision that we are to start an after-school class for kids struggling with their studies, and run it. We think it’s a great idea, but running it would involve turning our well-planned, comfortable lives upside down. Or we don’t feel we have the confidence or experience to do something like that. So we set the plan in motion, but get someone else to run it, someone who is great with kids and has a reputation for turning kids’ lives around. It may look to an outsider that we have done “what’s best”, but again, it’s not what God said He wanted.

If there’s anything we can learn from the story of Cain and Abel, it is that God desires us to bring Him what He asked for, by faith, even if it terrifies us, even if it’s inconvenient, even if we don’t understand why something else is not better.

I know that I sometimes foolishly try to reason out in my mind why MY plan makes more sense than God’s word to me. But I forget that God’s ways are not our ways (Isaiah 55: 8). God has declared:

“As the heavens are higher than the earth, 
so are my ways higher than your ways 
and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55: 9)

We do not see what God sees. God is God. Our job is simply to trust Him, and do as He directs us.

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Photograph: The Kerry Bog Village, Glenbeigh, County Kerry, Ireland, taken in 2001.

Come and talk with me

When I was much younger, my mother and my grandmother told me to “read the Psalms”. I didn’t get it. Back then, I didn’t particularly like the book of Psalms in the Bible.

Lately, though, I’ve been reading more and more of the Psalms, and I’m discovering how wonderful they are. I recently stumbled upon Psalm 27: 8 in the New Living Translation of the Bible:

My heart has heard you say, “Come and talk with me.” And my heart responds, “LORD, I am coming.”

This was written by the Psalmist David, and there are three things that I love about this:

(1) David hears in his heart an invitation from God to come and talk with Him. How wonderful is that? We all know how special we feel when someone we love or someone important wants to spend time with us. And here was the God and Creator of the universe extending an invitation to David to come and meet with Him. And the great thing is – this invitation is extended to all of us. God does not want us to get so caught up in the affairs of our busy lives that we have no time to step aside and just talk with Him. He wants to cultivate a relationship with us.

(2) The Lord says, “Come and talk WITH me”. He doesn’t say, “Come and talk TO me.” Our God is a living God. God wants us to talk to Him and He fully intends to respond! Whether it is through a quiet word spoken deep in our hearts, or through a thought that appears in our minds, or through a sudden flash of wisdom which allows us to discern what we should do, or through an audible voice in our ears, or through the Bible passage that we happen to be reading that day, God speaks. And when He does, absolutely nothing compares to it. There is nothing in this world that is as beautiful as hearing from God. 

(3) I love David’s simple and immediate response to God’s invitation: “Lord, I am coming.” It’s a reminder to me that when God calls, I am to go. I am not to say, “Lord, I’m really busy now. I’ll come talk to you tomorrow.”

 

What made David so ready to respond the moment He heard God call? I believe we see the reason four verses earlier in Psalm 27: 4. It was because David’s eyes were completely fixed on God; God was the most important thing in his life, the only thing that mattered:

One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.

I’ve come to realise that if I want to hear what God has to say to me, then I have to seek Him with all my heart (Jeremiah 29: 13). And my mind has to be tuned to the “right channel”. I have to make time for Him, and I have to make room in my mind for Him. Imagine a radio: If my radio is perpetually tuned to Class 95 FM, then I can’t expect to hear what’s being broadcast on the BBC World Service. In the same way, if my mind is perpetually tuned to work, friends, food, TV, music, it is very hard for God’s voice to be heard. I don’t think it’s because God can’t talk above everything else. But we have to ask ourselves honestly: Would He want to? Would we want to talk to someone who isn’t listening? David wanted one thing. David sought one thing – to dwell in the house of the Lord all his life. David wanted nothing more than to be close to God, and God spoke to Him.

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Photograph of lantern and Bible by David Niblack, http://imagebase.davidniblack.com/

He will make your righteousness shine

I was just reading Psalm 37: 4-6:

“Delight yourself in the Lord
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the Lord;
trust in him and he will do this:
He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn,
the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.”

It constantly amazes me how much great practical advice there is in the Bible. These verses remind me that God knows our hearts, even if the people around us don’t. I’m pretty certain that we’ve all been in situations where our good intentions have been misinterpreted or misunderstood. We do what we know to be right, or what we think is best in a given situation, but end up getting chided, challenged, or yelled at. No one likes being scolded, especially when they feel they haven’t done anything wrong! 

In times like these, my natural instinct is to defend myself, to argue back, to try to make the other party see that I was only doing what I thought was right. Trying to explain myself is probably not in itself the problem. The problem starts when I get angry in the process. And this usually leads to the other party getting even angrier, and so the whole situation escalates.

Psalm 37 is great to remember in times like these. The Psalmist says that we are to commit our way to the Lord (this means that we do our best to do what is right in God’s eyes and leave the outcome to God, trusting that He will do what He thinks is best for us in our lives), and HE will make our righteousness shine like the dawn. WE don’t strive to make our righteousness shine. WE don’t strive to vindicate ourselves. ”HE will do this” (Psalm 37: 5). Our part is to delight ourselves in the Lord, and trust in the Lord. And if our ways are truly committed to the Lord, HE makes our righteousness shine, in His time.

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Already known to God, already chosen

This is for someone who, I know, reads this blog. I read this a few days ago, and loved it:  Wanted, from Heart to Heart with Holley.

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What do you get out of being a Christian? (Part 2)

I wrote about this in January of this year, in response to a question asked by someone I’d invited to my church. (See the original post.) Now, some six months later, there’s something more I’d like to add …

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I was standing in front of a beautiful stained glass window in a church I was visiting (as a tourist) a few weeks ago, and all of a sudden, I found myself saying to God, “God, I’m really glad that this is not where you live.”

1 Corinthians 3:16 says: “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?” I suppose I’ve always known in my mind that God’s presence resides in human hearts and not in church buildings. But that day was the first time that that truth became so real to me. It suddenly dawned on me so clearly that God was with me. He’d been with me all morning. He had come in through the door of the church with me. He was not in the church building waiting for me to come visit.

The Psalmist says in Psalm 139: 7-10

Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?

If I go up to the heavens, you are there; 
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn, 
if I settle on the far side of the sea,

even there your hand will guide me, 
your right hand will hold me fast.

For those who believe in Jesus as their personal Saviour, there is nowhere in the world that we can go where Jesus will not come with us. God’s Holy Spirit lives with us and will be in us (John 14:17) wherever we go. We do not have to run to a church to “find God”, because God’s presence is within us.

John Bevere, on p. 53 of his book Drawing Near, says that

… it is God’s presence that separates us from all the others on the face of the earth. It is not that we confess Christianity; attend Bible-believing churches; or are nice people who once prayed the sinner’s prayer with a friend, or in response to an altar call. It is His very presence that distinguishes us …

Bevere then asks the very piercing questions: “Why then have so many resigned themselves to an intellectual relationship with God? Why have we settled for Christianity void of the presence of God? How did we learn to be content without intimacy?” (p. 53).

I have to admit that, for the longest time, that was me.  I knew I was saved by God’s grace. I knew in theory that God’s presence was with me (which it was), but I really wasn’t feeling or experiencing the nearness of God. And because I wasn’t experiencing it, I couldn’t enjoy it or draw strength from it. Just as we need to spend time with our friends and family if we want to get / stay close to them, I didn’t start experiencing the nearness of God till I consciously told myself that I needed to spend time with Him, till I came to God on His terms, not mine:

“[Jesus said] Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.” (John 14:21)

This is a promise that Jesus has made, and He always keeps His promises.

A. W. Tozer writes in his book The Pursuit of God:

God wills that we should push on into His presence and live our whole life there. This is to be known to us in conscious experience. It is more than a doctrine to be held; it is a life to be enjoyed every moment of every day. (A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God, p. 34, quoted in John Bevere’s Drawing Near, p. 53).

God’s presence is ours to enjoy, every moment of every day. And He makes great company, the best that I’ve ever known. That’s what I get out of being a Christian.

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“IN YOUR PRESENCE THERE IS FULLNESS OF JOY” (PSALM 16:11, ESV)

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The photograph is a detail from the Burne Jones Window, St. Martin in the Bullring church, Birmingham, UK, taken in 2010.

Flowers – God’s amazing creations

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to take a short trip, and decided that I would use the time to spend some “alone-time” with God. As part of that (and for the first time in my life), I spent many hours in parks and gardens around London and Birmingham, just strolling and taking time to appreciate the beautiful flowers that God created.  

Walking round the gardens, I was amazed at the variety of different flowers that kept appearing round every corner I turned. Just when I thought there couldn’t possibly be any other shape of flower, or any other combination of colours, a new one appeared. It led me to wonder: Why did God create so many different flowers?

I wonder if it’s because He wanted to show us that His power, His mind, His creativity, His provision, and His mercy know no bounds? The Bible tells us that He is capable of “immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20). When we think that we’ve seen the fullness of all the blessings God has to give, we haven’t. There’s always infinitely more that God is capable of giving.

Looking at the flowers, each a little masterpiece in its own right, it was (to my eyes at least) plainly obvious how right the Bible is when it says that God’s power and divine nature can be clearly seen from what has been made (Romans 1:20). Have a look here if you’re interested in some of the flowers that I saw. It’s not so hard to see evidence of a divine Creator if we look with a heart open to seeing it.

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Photographs taken in July 2010, in Regent’s Park (London) and Winterbourne Botanic Gardens (Birmingham).

Radical identification and radical difference

Taking off from my last post about Christians being salt and light in this world, I want to highlight something that I just read in Rebecca Manley Pippert’s book Out of the saltshaker and into the world, which got me thinking:

How can we relate to people in a way that will change the world? Jesus did it in two ways: by his radical identification with men and women, and by his radical difference. Jesus seemed to respond to people by noticing first what he had in common with them (John 4: 7). But it was often in the context of their similarities that Jesus’ difference came crashing through (verse 10).

As people discovered Jesus’ profound humanness, they began to recognize his deity. God’s holiness became shattering and penetrating as Jesus confronted people on their own level of humanity. But the point is that it took both his radical identification and his radical difference to change the world. So it will be for us.” (Rebecca Pippert, Out of the saltshaker and into the world, Intervarsity Press, p. 27)

Jesus was God, and yet He came down to earth to become “one of us” so that He could bring us to the Father. That’s “radical identification” indeed. Am I willing to invest enough of myself in the lives of others that they will give me the privilege of having a place in their lives? And is there enough in my life that’s different, if people are looking, that makes them want to know Jesus?

Break my heart for what breaks yours (Part 2)

The song “Hosanna” by Hillsongs (written and sung by Brooke Fraser) has been one of my favourites for a long time, and I’ve written in here before that I love the bridge in particular:

Heal my heart and make it clean
Open up my eyes to the things unseen
Show me how to love like You have loved me
Break my heart for what breaks Yours
Everything I am for Your kingdom’s cause
As I walk from earth into eternity

For a long time, whenever I sang the line “Break my heart for what breaks Yours”, my mind naturally turned to all the people who do not yet know Jesus, and whom Jesus is just longing to welcome into His kingdom. I’m sure His heart is breaking for all those who can’t, or won’t, for whatever reason, accept the gift of salvation that He is freely holding out to all.

But recently, I’ve begun to see that line of the song in a different light. And it dawned on me that God’s heart can break over those who are already His children as well, and perhaps even more so because we are already family.

Why and when would God’s heart break for those who are already His? I think there are a number of reasons, but I believe that one of them is when His children absorb and participate so much in the things of the world as to be virtually indistinguishable from the rest of the world.

In Matthew 5:13-16, Jesus teaches His disciples:

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.

You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.

Jesus says that His followers are to be salt and light to the world. Salt preserves from decay, has healing properties, and enhances flavour. Light shines in areas of darkness, and shows the way to those who are lost. Salt and light stand out. They are immediately discernible, either by taste or sight. That’s what we are called to be.

Is that what we are? Is that what I am?

I used to be an avid watcher of television programmes of all kinds. But recently, God has laid upon my heart that I need to examine what I consume with my eyes and ears.

What would Jesus think if He stopped by today and saw all the things that we regard as “entertainment” these days? The movies that we watch, the TV programmes that we make a date with each week, the music that we listen to, the books that we read, the internet sites that we surf to … If Jesus were to happen to stop by today, would we be rushing to pull our headphones out of our ears, scrambling to hide our books under the bed, hurrying to switch windows on our computer screens, diving for the “off” button on the TV remote control? (Not that any of that would make any difference, by the way, since Jesus knows everything, and we can’t hide anything from Him.)

Lately, it’s been on my mind that many things in this world which grieve God have become so “naturalised” on our screens, in our music, and in our reading, that many people (Christian believers included) no longer bat an eyelid when we encounter them. If something is seen enough times and heard enough times without anyone ever questioning it, then gradually that mode of entertainment comes to be regarded as “normal”. People start consuming more and more of it, and it becomes difficult to see that there could be any other realistic response to it in this modern world. But I believe there is.

Just because “everyone” around us accepts something as “normal” and “harmless” does not make it right in God’s eyes.

The popular hit drama on TV where the lead characters (portrayed as brilliant, attractive, flawed but generally moral and upright citizens whom everyone admires) are a couple who are living together without being married – Is that our favourite TV show? Should it be?  (Have a look at Hebrews 13:4.)

The crime drama that shows in horrific detail people being killed in various ways every week – Is that what we settle down to watch before going to bed? Should it be? (Have a look at Philippians 4:8.)

The latest music single whose chorus details multiple ways of getting even with someone after being wronged – Is that what’s blaring into our ears as we drive, wait for the bus, take the train? Should it be? (Have a look at Romans 12:14-21.)

I could go on, but I’m sure you get the picture. The Bible states very clearly in James 4:4 that those who choose to be “friends with the world” are enemies of God:

“[D]on’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.” (James 4:4) 

(By the way, point to note: being “friends with the world” means to embrace worldly values and passions which are at odds with God’s values. When the Bible says that believers are not to be “friends with the world”, it absolutely does not mean that Christians should not befriend non-Christians. Jesus himself befriended people who were not His followers wherever He went.)

I believe God grieves when He sees some of what people are choosing to be “entertained” by these days, and I believe His heart breaks just that bit more when He sees His own children embracing the same kind of “entertainment”. Why? Because by permitting something contrary to God’s will to reside in our lives, we make it difficult for ourselves to fully enter into God’s presence, and God loves for His children to enter right into His presence, to sit with Him, talk with Him, and hear from His heart.

No matter how popular a singer is, how spectacular the special effects of a movie are, how many awards a TV programme has won, I believe God smiles down at us when we choose to say “God is more important”. Break my heart for what breaks Yours. If the people who know full well what God says in His word do not show a recognition of what grieves Him, then who else is going to?

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Salt, Borough Market, London, taken in 2009.

Hallowed be Thy name

In the city of Coventry in England, there stand the ruins of the old Coventry Cathedral, which was bombed in World War 2. When I first visited the place many years ago, I noticed that around the walls of the ruins were several small panels, each of which contained a prayer for God’s name to be revered (“hallowed”) in a different sphere of life (e.g. in education, in recreation, in commerce).

I found it to be beautiful then, and years later now, I still find those prayer panels to be a beautiful reminder that being a Christian is not something we do on Sundays. Living for God is something that should permeate everything that we do, every day.

I found myself thinking about those prayer panels on the walls of Coventry Cathedral today, because I’ve lately been asking myself: As a follower of Jesus, does my life truly reflect His glory to the people around me?

I believe that if I truly want to reflect the light of Jesus in this world, then I need to allow God to be the centre of everything that I do - in work and in play, when people are watching and when they are not, when times are good and when times are bad.

Lord Jesus, hallowed be Thy name in all of my life.

    
 

The prayers on the walls of the old Coventry Cathedral:

Hallowed be thy name in industry. God be in my hands and in my making.

Hallowed be thy name in arts. God be in my senses and in my creating.

Hallowed be thy name at home. God be in my heart and in my loving.

Hallowed be thy name in commerce. God be in my desk and in my trading.

Hallowed be thy name in suffering. God be in my pain and in my enduring.

Hallowed be thy name in Government. God be in my plans and in my deciding.

Hallowed be thy name in education. God be in my mind and in my growing.

Hallowed by thy name in recreation. God be in my limbs and in my leisure.

    

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The photograph of the ruins of the old Coventry Cathedral was taken in 2009. (The rather blurry photograph of the prayer panel was taken in 2001, in my pre-digital camera days.)

A gift specially chosen by God

God blesses us all with different gifts, different talents, and different opportunities to use those gifts and talents. We don’t all get the same kinds of gifts, talents, and opportunities because (a) we are all different, unique individuals and God knows that and knows what is perfect for each of His creations, and (b) because He has plans for us all to use our gifts to serve and bless others in different ways.

Yet we sometimes look at other people and wish that we have what they have. I know that I have been guilty of this at times.

The bible tells us that “godliness with contentment is great gain” (1 Timothy 6:6). I know this, and I believe it, but sometimes I forget it.

A couple of days ago, however, I read Psalm 139 and it dawned on me what a beautiful picture it was of how intimately God knows each and every one of us. God knows us inside and out. He made us. He knows our hopes. He knows our thoughts. He is everywhere that we are, everywhere that we have been, and everywhere that we will be. God knows us better than we know ourselves. And it occurred to me: if God really does know me that well, then surely I can trust that He knows exactly what is right for me. 1 Corinthians 7:7 says “each man has his own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that.” What God has given to us, He has specially chosen for us. And I have to ask: Why would I want something else?

Psalm 139

1 O LORD, you have searched me and you know me.

2 You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.

3 You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.

4 Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD.

5 You hem me in—behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me.

6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.

7 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?

8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea,

10 even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.

11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,”

12 even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.

13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,

16 your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

 

Photograph taken in 2007, Wollongong coastline, Australia.

 

Jesus is the Lord of my life

I discovered the wonderful world of onetimeblind a few days ago. They are a group of four from Detroit who have, since 1994, been using skits and stories to bring God’s word and God’s truth to people in vivid and accessible ways.

This video entitled The Stool was the first of their videos that I watched (there is a onetimeblind channel on YouTube, with videos posted by the group themselves), and I thought it just captured so well how divided the human heart is. So often, I say “Jesus is the Lord of my life”, but have I really allowed Him to be the Lord of every part of my life? Am I willing to choose what pleases Him, not just sometimes, under certain circumstances when I feel like it, but all the time, in every sphere of my life?

The bible tells us that when Jesus was asked “Which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”, He replied, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22: 36-37). God does not want us to be divided in our loyalties. Either Jesus is first in our lives or He isn’t. Jesus does not offer to share “The Stool” with us …

Humility mistaken for arrogance

I’ve always been aware that it is entirely possible for pride to be disguised as humility, in myself as well as in others. Being humble is not just a matter of saying that our victories are the result of God’s work in our lives. It is genuinely believing that they are. If we present a face of humility while nursing a heart of self-congratulatory pride, this may fool some people, but it doesn’t fool God, who sees right into our hearts. “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4:13).

It was just a few days ago, however, that I first learned that it is in fact possible for humility to be mistaken for pride or arrogance. This was something that I read in John Bevere’s book Drawing Near (which is a truly wonderful, life-changing book, by the way).

Bevere gives the example of David in the bible. In case you’re not familiar with the story of David and Goliath, here it is in a nutshell (you can read the full account in 1 Samuel 17): 

Goliath was a giant, over nine feet tall, from among the Philistines. He threw down a challenge to the people of Israel. The bible tells us in 1 Samuel 17: 8-11:

Goliath stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, “Why do you come out and line up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and are you not the servants of Saul? Choose a man and have him come down to me. If he is able to fight and kill me, we will become your subjects; but if I overcome him and kill him, you will become our subjects and serve us.” Then the Philistine said, “This day I defy the ranks of Israel! Give me a man and let us fight each other.” On hearing the Philistine’s words, Saul and all the Israelites were dismayed and terrified.

For forty days, no one in the Israel camp dared to take up the challenge, until one day, David, a boy who had been tending sheep, brought some food up to his brothers in the Israelite camp. He took a look at the situation and approached King Saul (1 Samuel 17: 32-37):

David said to Saul, “Let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine; your servant will go and fight him.”

Saul replied, “You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a boy, and he has been a fighting man from his youth.”

But David said to Saul, “Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. The LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.”

We see that David’s offer to go and face Goliath is born out of his absolute faith that the God who has been so faithful to him up to that point in his life will surely protect him from Goliath. David’s brothers, however, thought he was a “conceited” little fool who didn’t know his own limitations. David went anyway, and ran towards Goliath with nothing but a slingshot and some stones, proclaiming to Goliath: “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the LORD will hand you over to me … and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel” (1 Samuel 17: 45-46).

It took David just one stone to topple the giant.

Reading this got me thinking … For the Christian, being humble has to do with recognising that we are nothing in our own strength and God is everything. Yet so often, we stop short at the first part: We are nothing, and I have to say that this makes us appear to the outside world to be weak and spineless people. BUT we forget to emphasise the second part – God is everything. This means that nothing is impossible if God wills it to happen. Romans 8:31 says “If God is for us, who can be against us?”

It truly is a challenge to all of us to see the situations that we are in through the eyes of God, and to dare to dream for Him. Holley Gerth said something beautiful about this in her blog entry today: “God-sized dreams start in His heart and then He places them in ours.”

And it has occurred to me too, today, that just as it is wrong for us to mask a proud heart with humble words, it is just as wrong to be afraid of acting for fear that people will mistake us for being arrogant. If I fully trust that God can do all things, and God has placed on my heart that there is something He wants me to do, then I need to take the step of faith and do it, even if that “something” appears to be huge and insurmountable, and even if everyone else thinks it is foolish and arrogant to even try.

I have been there. In the face of a difficult situation in which there appeared to be no viable options, I dared to imagine that God could change the circumstances and the hearts of the people involved. But I was soundly told off for the plan that I suggested. How can you suggest that? How can you expect that of people? That will never happen. In the face of people telling me that I was being completely irrational, I backed down and accepted that what I had dared to dream was probably impossible.

But I think now of David. What if David had thought to himself, I know that I can defeat Goliath because I believe that God will deliver me from this battle. But if I volunteer to go and fight him, everyone will think I’m an arrogant brat … and I can see their point of view. I mean, look at the size of Goliath! It’s really illogical to think that a small boy like me could defeat him.

The bible tells us that God is “able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us” (Ephesians 3:20). I believe God is looking for people who are willing to dream God-sized dreams for Him, and to bring them to pass, in faith. And I pray that one day, I will be ready for that.

Photograph of pebbles by Angie Perkins, http://www.publicdomainpictures.net

Hide God’s word in a mobile phone?

For the longest time, I resisted carrying a mobile phone. I could never understand the logic of people who told me that carrying one would allow people to reach me at any time. I didn’t want people to call me “at any time”. There are times when I would very much like to be uncontactable.

When I eventually gave up the fight and started to carry a mobile phone around with me at work, it was primarily so that I wouldn’t have to borrow my students’ phones when the computer or data projector in my classrooms failed to work in the middle of my lessons, and I had to call up our university helpdesk technicians for help.

But one day, I discovered something which made me start looking at my mobile phone in a completely different light. I discovered that I could load a bible on it.

Now, I’m not someone who likes gadgets for the sake of having gadgets, but I like having a bible on my mobile phone because it means that I can pull out my phone and search for a verse any time I want. And I always have a bible on hand to show people a verse if the opportunity presents itself. I mean, isn’t it kind of exciting to be just chatting with a friend at a cafe table, or walking across a half-deserted university campus with someone late one winter’s night, and be able to look up a bible verse for them? Well, I think it is.

Having a bible on a mobile device is no longer out of the ordinary. I’ve noticed, for instance, that more and more people in my church are reading bible passages from their phones and PDAs. And while I love the fact that tons of people are nowadays walking around, literally with a bible in their pockets, it struck me this morning that this new fashion could breed a false sense of security in us. The Psalmist says in Psalm 119: 11 “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.” When we hide God’s word in our hearts, it guards our thoughts and it guides our actions. Hiding God’s word in our pockets doesn’t work in quite the same way.

This is a reminder to me as much as to everyone else. Having a bible with us at all times does not necessarily mean that we have God’s word in us. And having God’s word in my pocket (or in my bag, as the case may be) does not lessen the need for me to have it in my head and in my heart.

How important is one lost sheep?

Something that someone said to me recently got me thinking, and I woke up at six this morning with this on my mind …

One of the biggest decisions that I’ve ever made in my life for God was to move from one country to another, without fully knowing why He was asking me to do it. I didn’t want to move. I didn’t see why I should move. But no matter which way I turned, I couldn’t escape the fact that God was speaking to my heart and asking me to leave the country that I was then living in to return to the country that I had come from. I’m sorry to say that it took me a while to obey, but eventually I moved.

I have never regretted that I followed God’s call, incomprehensible as it was at the time. And I will never forget the day (shortly after my move) when someone that I was speaking to about Jesus Christ suddenly asked me why I’d moved back to this country. I told her, “I had a strong sense from God that this is where I should be.” She looked puzzled, so I added (and I meant it), “I don’t know yet why God wanted me to be here. Perhaps it was for you.” I will never forget the look that went through her eyes as it dawned on her that Jesus might just consider her important enough to send someone specially to talk to her.

Do you know? Jesus does consider everyone that important. The bible says clearly in 2 Peter 3: 9 that “[The Lord] is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” God does not desire that any should perish. That means that He will go to great lengths to ensure that people get to hear about His love for them.

To all who are out there who are still wondering if you should listen to that friend, that neighbour, that teacher, or that colleague who’s been telling you about Jesus, let me just say: There are no coincidences in life. They are there because Jesus considers you important enough to bring the two of you into the same sphere.

In the bible, in Luke 15: 4-6, Jesus tells this parable: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’”

So the shepherd leaves 99 sheep in order to search for the ONE sheep that’s wandered off, and he is overjoyed when he finds the lost sheep. The implications of the parable should be clear. The individual matters to God. Even if there is just ONE person in need, open and ready to hear of God’s love, God would deem it “worthwhile” sending someone to reach him / her.

To all believers who are wondering why they’ve been called to a particular place when there are so few people for them to reach there, and wondering if there is “more” to their being there, I would say, Perhaps. Or perhaps not. I don’t know. But the size of our ministry shouldn’t matter. What matters is that we are faithful to seek God’s will, and to do what God has called us to do. If God has deemed ONE person in a particular place important enough to send us there to reach out to them, who are we to say that we need a few more “lost sheep” in order to make our time there “worthwhile”? The bible says that heaven rejoices when ONE person comes to Christ. (“There is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” Luke 15:10) ONE is all it takes for heaven to rejoice. Why is it then that we sometimes act as if ONE lost soul being found is not reason enough to rejoice?

Photo by Petr Kratochvil, http://www.publicdomainpictures.net

Mothers – bringing forth new life

We read in Philippians 4: 8-9 in the bible:

… whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.

I truly believe that what we fill our minds with has a direct impact on how we live our lives, and that if we want to live in a way that pleases God, then we need to watch the things we fill our minds with each day.

It is in this spirit that I want to highlight the absolutely beautiful blog of Holley Gerth at http://holley.dayspring.com/ It hasn’t been that long since I first discovered it, but I’ve been a regular reader since I first stumbled upon it, and reading her entries never fails to bring to my mind Philippians 4: 8.

This special day, Mother’s Day, my mind keeps going back to an entry that Holley wrote a week ago, on mothers: http://www.incourage.me/2010/05/eves-daughters.html It’s a beautiful, alternative perspective on ”mothers”, and it brought tears to my eyes when I first read it. Mothers - bringing forth new life, not just literally and physically, but spiritually and metaphorically as well.

Two different people wished me “Happy Mother’s Day” today – an usher at my morning church service, and a restaurant manager at the place we went to for lunch. (I am, if you didn’t already know, single.) I couldn’t help wondering at the time if there was something different about me this year that made those two people beam at me and wish me “happy mother’s day”. (This has never happened to me before.) But then I got to thinking about Holley Gerth’s little message, and it dawned on me that perhaps God was giving me a little reminder that He really does see beyond the literal. Pastors who selflessly guide and diligently pray for their congregation, teachers who love and nurture their students, aunts who become “second parents” to their nieces and nephews, friends who support and care for other friends like they would their own family, babysitters and live-in helpers who look after their charges as they would their own children, and certainly anyone who helps to lead another soul to Christ (bringing forth “new life” in the most important sense!) - these are all “mothers” in His eyes.

So … Happy Mother’s Day to all who have the heart of a mother.