Lent 09. Come on, Future!

It is tempting here, on the Saturday night between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, to sum up my Lent journey. I had set out to ‘focus on Jesus’ and seek to learn something fresh or new about Him every day. I could look back and try to summarise what I have learnt, where the journey has taken me and where it has brought me to tonight.

But I cant help looking forward. Today is a kind of waiting day, an in-between day. I’m pleased to have been on the journey, but my interest lies in what happens tomorrow and beyond. Easter is a day when a new world opens up before us, and I just can’t help expecting far more from the future than I have experienced in the past.

I like that. Easter is a promise of a better future, of New Life opening up before us. Whatever journey I’ve been on with Jesus, I’m constanly looking to the future and anticipating more adventure up ahead. I have hope and expectation, thanks to my journey with Jesus so far.

Today is good and roll on the Future too.

Lent 09. He is patient/longsuffering/loving.

After yesterday’s post I made my way to a monthly gathering this evening to discover that tonight’s theme was ‘Patience’.

Tonight I learnt that the Authorised Version of the Bible lists the fourth Fruit of the Spirit as ‘Longsuffering’ and that this is closer to the original Greek than the translation ‘patience’. The connotation here is not so much about the length of time that we wait, but the content of what we are putting up with while we are waiting.

Patience, then, is more like handling those strong feelings about stuff that we put up with in a good way, because we are motivated by love. We react with patience rather than depression, or outbursts of rage, or deisres to dominate or control.

This is what Jesus is like. In love, he holds it all together while he puts up with what he knows about how things are and how they are meant to be. He has done this for a very long time!

His patience means he always responds in a way that demonstrates his motivation of Big Love.

Lent 09. He is patient.

“I am patient.”

This is what I felt Jesus wanted to teach me about him today.

Of course, my first thoughts were about me, about my impatience. I felt that Jesus was telling me that life isn’t a race. This Lent journey isn’t a race. As the finishing line approaches, the temptation is to speed up, to squeeze as much out of it as I can, to throw myself at it.  I shouldn’t be so impatient.

Sunday isn’t a finishing line, just as Good Friday wasn’t. I don’t need to throw myself at it or squeeze the life out of my lent journey. It is not a race.  I need to stop being impatient.

Thought I’m grateful for these lessons, they might not be the main point. The point was looking at Jesus and learning about him, so when I heard him tell me that he is patient it wasn’t necessarily a cue to uncover my own impatience.

Do I do that a lot? Rush past the positive, beautiful picture of God, headlong into the negative about myself? Surely that must be a strategy of the enemy? If he can’t stop me hearing from Jesus, he can maybe try and distract me or rob me of what I hear.

So, Jesus is patient. 

With you, with me, with the world…..

Beautiful thought, huh?

Lent 09. Embracing death.

It’s lent and I’m surrounded by death.

 

Last year, Lent marked the end of an 18 month period of dying. God had taken me on a journey of dying to self, to preservation, and to self preservation. I lost my home, my job, my ministry, my reputation, my status, many relationships, and the life I had been devoted to for 16 years or so. As I prepared myself to walk again through the death of Jesus, a good friend died and plummeted me into mourning. Death became very real and dominated my experience until Easter Day, when that period of my life was over.

 

Of course, I expected that, at last, the long expected new life would come. After several months of slightly confused waiting, someone pointed out that there was a Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Sabbath. A deliberate break, a time of rest and non-productivity, an acknowledgement that we cannot provide for ourselves and are not masters of our universe. Freedom from death is here, but the fulness of life has not yet arrived.

 

So it is in this nether world of Sabbath that this year’s lent arrived, and with it a commitment to blog my journey. You can read my journey so far and see where I had got to last week, wrestling to apply the lessons learned so far.

 

Then death came. Though the death of my last remaining grandparent did involve some release for her, and though I have no regrets and plenty of happy memories, I have been overtaken by grief and steeped in sadness. Quite right too, I’m glad to have loved my Nan and feel the pain of her loss.

 

It’s been interesting to listen to the talk around the family. Amidst the loss, heartache and sadness, is relief and joy, but somehow also an awareness of a changing landscape. This I did not expect. In some mystical way, a door closes for all of us involved and another one opens. Life will not be the same again and here is a marker, a moment of change. What will this new life be like for each of us? Here is a moment of great freedom and openness.

 

On Good Friday the world of those disciples of Jesus came crashing down. Like the proverbial train hitting the buffers, the future that they had given up their past for came to an abrupt, traumatic halt. All their hopes and dreams were lost in the death of this amazing man they had devoted themselves to. All they had worked towards and lived for hit a brick wall. Or a stone wall. Which, a couple of days later, moved. The stone wall rolled away to reveal a totally new and unexpected reality. They had lost everything. Now all that they had lost was to be fulfilled in this new era. We could talk caterpillars and butterflies here.

 

Coming back to my lent journey, maybe, just maybe, God was silent to me on some things last week because there is no way I could hear answers that belong to a new reality that is somewhere around the corner. All my wrestling has certainly been interrupted, superseded even, by mourning.

 

I’m vulnerably, tenderly, tentatively wondering about what comes next.

Lent 09. The battle to apply the lessons…

During this Lent 09 journey I have been reflecting a lot about “Be still and know that I am God”. My last post on this was on 25th March. Over the next few days, I felt like Jesus was giving the practical lessons following the theory. 

I was away last weekend, and had been asked to share with a gathering of evangelists. Having wrestled and struggled with an idea for a few days, I decided to put into practice what I been hearing from Jesus and be still. As the day of the gathering approached I managed not to panic and I continued to make sure I stilled myself and wait for God. Out of nowhere came an idea of what to share, which was so much better than anything I had come up with.

The stuff I shared with the group was very simple, but had such a meaningful and far reaching effect that I was astonished. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been.

Also, as those gathered shared their lives with me, I was able to see so very clearly the value waiting for God’s leading and remembering that ministry belongs to him. I also had in front of me the model which confirmed to me that Jesus’ yoke is easy and his burden is light. Never have I seen such examples of effective, fruitful ministry which burden those ministering so lightly. The ministry they carried was owned and carried by Jesus and they were enjoying being part of it.

I came away from the weekend utterly convinced Jesus’ yoke is easy and his burden is light, and that it is better to be still and know that he is God. It is better, and physically healthier, and more fruitful to aim at walking alongside Jesus, listening to his instructions and carrying only the burden he gives us than it is to make our goal the building of an impressive ministry.

I want to end it there, on that note .

But it doesn’t end there for me. I came home again.

I’m in the middle of the bruising encounter with God caused by my last post. I want to believe that I can be still and know that he is God. I want to know that easy yoke. I want to know that his grace is sufficient, that he is enough. I want to know that he has all I need for my life and ministry. I want to let go and allow God…

I want to…

But…

There is an elephant in the middle of the room whenever God and I talk. My life seems so much more messy than all of these lessons. To be brutally honest, I don’t feel in the day to day, that I am experiencing that God is enough and that he has all I need for life and ministry. I want to say “That’s nice, why don’t you hand it over, then?” 

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Lent 09. Prelude to a punch-up.

“My grace is sufficient, for my power is made perfect in weakness. I am enough. I have all that you need for life and ministry. Let go of control and allow me.”

This is what I felt Jesus say to me yesterday when I asked him what I should blog about.

What happened next was not so much a wrestling with God as much as a full blown punch up!

Hence, it has taken me more than a day to post this and I don’t have anything to add.

So, over to you… any comments?

Lent 09. “Be still…” again and again.

I’ve been meditating on “Be Still and know that I am God” over the past few days. It is amazing how this simple and profound act is something I can neglect to do.

I was reading something today suggesting this as being the primary activity of exiles. When the familiar landscape is ripped away from us, we can calm ourselves, focus on God’s presence with us, and over time, discover the new landscape of our belief and hope in God.

Rather like an episode from The Bill, where two apparently (or not, to most viewers) unrelated crimes come together at the end of the show to be solved as one, this thought collided with my thoughts on the John 5 passage of my last post. (Apologies to’ The Bill’ fans and writers if things have changed since every episode followed this formula).

Maybe “Be still and know that I am God”, if regularly practiced could be the antidote to so much of our wrong thinking, wrong actions, wrong attitudes and the pitfalls of religious institutions and leadership.

What do you think?

Lent 09. Can you feel the Love?

“Your approval or disapproval means nothing to me, because I know you don’t have God’s love within you. For I have come to you representing my Father, and you refuse to welcome me, even though you readily accept others who represent themselves. No wonder you can’t believe! For you gladly honour each other, but you don’t care about the honour that comes from God alone.”  (John 5:41-44)

I read these words early this morning and they’ve been with me since. They are somewhat stark, revealing, shocking and disconcerting.

Jesus shows us how imporatant the love of the Father is, and how it can actually be missing from religious leadership and religious institiutions. Ouch. Jesus highlights the fact that we can accept those who represent themselves, whilst refusing to welcome those who represent the Father. Double ouch!

Earlier on in Lent I was considering the acid test “Does it look like Jesus?” which could be applied to the things we think, do, belong to etc.

Maybe these verses leave us with another test to be applied similarly:

“Can we see the love of the Father in this?”

Lent 09. I can trust Him.

My thoughts about Jesus over the last day or two have been about the temptations of Jesus. I’ve always said that they were not so much about what Jesus was going to do, but how he was going to do it. They really reveal Jesus’ motivation, as he determines to put God’s word and obedience to his Father above all considerations, however plausible those may be.

In looking how Jesus overcomes the temptations to manipulate others, to follow human appetites for power and position and self satisfaction, and diplays true love for his father and us, I’ve had my eyes opened to something new to me.

It’s as I look at those wilderness temptations, and see Jesus continually undermine the enemy’s ways of ensnaring humans throughout the rest of his life and ministry, all the way through his dealings with the scribes, pharisees, High Priest, Roman soldiers, Sanhedrin, Herod and Pilate, to death by crucifixion, I realise that I am affected today.

I can trust him.

Jesus has proven that his motives are pure. He was uncorruptable then. He is still that beautiful now.

I can trust Jesus today  because his track record confirms that his motivations are pure.

Lent 09. God’s gift.

A friend gave me a book recently. It’s a book he wrote about 25 years ago. Only when I read it, it sounds like the stuff he still talks about now. The material in the book is fresh and ripe and relevant now, a quarter of a century later.

We get older, growing in our experience and adding to our knowledge as we go along, but maybe the message of our lives stays pretty much the same. The Holy Spirit may well get us to say the same kind of thing throughout our lives as our contribution to this world. We are not only gifted by God, but we ourselves are a gift from God to the world.

Have you thought about what gift you are?

What is the message of your life?