Lord what would you have me do? On setting resolutions....

My housemate, her fiancé and I were sitting around breakfast brunch at the weekend joking about past resolutions we had had at previous New Years. My housemate pointed out that she recalls me setting 4 or 5 goals last year and I can't for the life of me remember any of them!! If you’re anything like me you might have given up setting New Years resolutions because you think to yourself "well I never achieve them anyway, so there's no point in getting downhearted!"

I really enjoyed reading a post on Christian Woman blogging (for full article see Christian woman blogging Resolved). Blogger Julie Cosgrove quotes this passage, "To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfil every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power"  (2 Thessalonians 1:11.) In her entry she says, "What would happen this year if we each turned those New Year’s want-to-do’s into New Life’s I-can-do’s, through Him? Even better, what if we left the resolving up to God and asked Him, “Lord, what will you have me do?”   

I'm asking myself that question "What would God have me do?" I've been particularly struck this week by weaknesses in my character (I recommend my friend Scott Taylor's sermon on character transformation at Reading Family Church website on this subject. See Sermon Sunday 9th). I know that I can have difficulties with being blunt, judgemental, impatient, impulsive and proud. I've been asking God this week to highlight some key aspects of my character He would like to change. The bible is quite clear that character stuff is more important than gifting (see 1 Corinthians 13 v1-7).  I know that I can't change who I am by myself. I need the transforming power of the Holy Spirit to do this. Holy Spirit help!

This season I would encourage you to ask God "What would you have me do? What aspects of my character would Jesus like to refine?" Jesus says "I will refine them like silver and test them like gold, they will call on my name and I will answer them" (Zech 13:9) and that He is the potter who moulds us - the clay. In Isaiah it says clay wouldn’t say to the Potter "what are you making?" but "Lord….we are the clay, you are the Potter, we are the work of your hand"... so do what you want Lord!!!! (see Isaiah 45v9 and 64 v 8). This Christmas I realise that in moulding my character it can be a painful and submitting place to be. Lord please give me the grace to be refined by your fire and not question your purposes. Amen

Yes and Amen

This week I've been thinking about how God is not a God that we can fit into a 'box.' He rarely works in straight lines and often hearing His will is rather 'wiggly' and things don't turn out like we would have thought! I like to think of it as a tapestry. On one side the tapestry looks stunningly beautiful, this is the perfected us that Jesus is making us into. But the journey looks more like the back of the tapestry, rather messy, with bits of wool sticking out all over the place!!! Over these last ten days I've tried to listen hard to the will of God, in that place I have had ups and downs and sometimes I have not always heard correctly. However as always, in that place, He has taught me a few things through it. Most of all I am learning that God is a God who loves us to live righteously, to be so sold out to Him that we will say 'YES' to anything He asks. I know God doesn't always work things out the way I would plan, but I know that in the messyness of it all He is perfecting me to be more like Him and giving me greater understanding and hopefully more wisdom. Even when I mess up He uses the bits that I think are rubbish to refine me, love me, forgive me and hopefully perfect me to be a beautfiful tapestry, even if that work is not completed until I meet Him in glory. 

Through these times he seems to be continually asking me to surrender and say YES and AMEN to His will, as I am reminded by Matt Redman's song.....Yes and Amen

Snow and Surrender – relinquishing Control

In the last 10 days I’ve seen more snow than in all my 28 years. I’ve certainly not seen 20 cms of snow on Christmas Day before. Snow is beautiful and fun to play in and walk in when you have the time and you don’t need to be anywhere. But when you do it can quite literally be a nightmare! Last weekend my best buddy and I spent much of our weekend at Heathrow airport trying to get her on a flight to Australia. I’ve never seen so many people in one place except for music concerts, and this was a disorderly affair….queues and queues of people waiting for information and not able to do anything about the fact that they couldn’t fly. They said the queue to the local hotel was 2 miles long and you had to wait for four hours for the hope of a taxi. Despite Heathrow saying it wouldn’t open till 4pm we decided to trek down as Virgin said the flights were still due to go, however when check in time came you couldn’t even get into the Virgin part of the terminal. Luckily we had local accommodation with a parking permit so we were able to get ourselves warm and dry. I met a guy who had travelled 6 hours to meet someone who hadn’t got to Heathrow and would have to drive home. Two young girls had been at Heathrow for two days, they were supposed to be getting a connecting flight to Germany from the USA.

My friend and I decided after that experience that we had a love/hate relationship with snow! Snow is OK when you’re not busy, trying to get somewhere and life doesn’t have its complications. When you’re in one place, you’re on holiday and don’t need to get anywhere, you can have play fights and have all sorts of fun! And snow is generally OK for us if it lasts a short time, but if it goes on and on it makes travel difficult – especially at complicated times like Christmas! Snow wouldn’t have caused so much chaos 75 years ago, but because of the means of travel we have nowadays and our ability to go just about anyway in less than a day on a plane; we get extremely frustrated when we can’t go places.

Over this Christmas season I’m reminded again of something else God seems to be doing in this season in my heart…SURRENDERING to him. A big something came along this week which was gut-wrenching for me to surrender to God. But if God asks us to wait, we have to do it…even if it means waiting for a season. I particularly hate surrender because sometimes I like to control things…particularly my future. I like to know what I will be doing next year and to have plans, even though I like spontaneity in other things. Sometimes I think God will show me His will straight away; after all why wouldn’t he want me to know the right path to go? But sometimes in the waiting place He brings us closer. God has reminded me again and again in the last three months that I have to surrender all my plans to him and wait on him. Oh how I hate it sometimes! But you know what? I think I had a breakthrough this week, in that gut-wrenching place of surrender…I think I realised that I’ve come to a place in my relationship with God this week where it was as if I could only say ‘Yes God’ to His will to ask me to wait. After some blubbering I knew there was no ‘No’ left in me. As I was thinking about this I was reminded of a worship song I’ve been listening to by Misty Edwards (You won't relent). The lines are….

“You won’t relent until You have it all (i.e. my heart)

My heart is Yours”

Phew! Sometimes that’s hard. Especially when you don’t know whether the thing you surrendered will be given back to you.

So how does surrender relate to the affect snow has on us??!!!

Well when things are easy we can cope with the snow, we’re not busy, life isn’t complicated. But when things are hard and we have to get somewhere special at a particular time etc…snow is horrid. Similarly, it’s easy to surrender to God when life is easy, but when its not surrender can be gut-wrenching. But in these surrender times I realise God is bringing me closer to Him and that maybe this is what it’s about.

I surrender Jesus…Help me to surrender even when the going is hard. Amen

Stale breadcrumbs or fresh bread from heaven?

One of my favourite Christian speakers ‘Heidi Baker’ (co-founder of Iris Ministries http://www.irismin.org/) had a vision of the Western Church (see U tube clip Heidi Baker: Intimacy for Miracles). She saw us feasting on stale breadcrumbs rather than fresh bread from heaven in terms of our relationship with the Lord. This got me thinking about the time I spend with Jesus. Am I feeding on "stale breadcrumbs" or is my relationship with Him fresh, exciting, hunger quenching, and filling like beautiful warm fresh bread? Jesus said that He is the bread of life and no one would go hungry if they come to Him! (John 6:35). We cannot live life without being in His Presence. As Heidi says we need Him 24/7 else we are pretty much dead! I don’t know about you, but my time spent with Jesus can be sometimes more like breadcrumbs than a nice big tasty loaf….

Example of an early morning time we God:

Sit in my chair in the morning (still half asleep!)

Quick prayer: “Lord please help me to concentrate on your word and hear from you today. Amen”

Open my Bible and daily reading, read the section…

(Random thoughts come into my head: "what am I going to eat tonight? Oh my goodness mustn’t forget to take so and so to work’..... Whoops sorry Lord concentration gone again.!”)

Finish reading my scripture passage, quick prayer, note down something that seems to have struck home from the reading, assume it’s the Lord saying something… think to myself that I should really dig deeper into the bits I don’t understand but feel I just don’t have time this morning.

Get out my prayer list, pray for some of my friends on the list. Then notice that the time is running away with me and I only have 20 minutes to get washed and dressed and leave the house for work. Ahhh help!!..........

So times with the Lord can easily become like other aspects of our lives – we put it in a box i.e. "I’m going to make this time for the Lord." Then we can rush through it, we can follow all to familiar patterns that no longer excite our relationship with God. We loose our hunger because our quiet-times are all too much about what we do and the prayers we say rather than listening to God and spending intimate time receiving from Him, hearing His voice and being in His presence. Thus fresh becomes stale and we get into the trap of not allowing time to hear God’s voice but somehow telling ourselves because we have read a particular passage, prayed for a few people we have somehow spent time with Jesus. Furthermore, I think because we are not necessarily expectant and hungry to hear God’s voice sometimes we don’t even try to do so.

Might I suggest that sometimes our time with the Lord becomes ‘busy’ because we are scared He might not speak to us and are not quite sure how we are supposed to hear Him anyway?.... Then during the day, like me, you might make snatches of prayer to the Lord, “Lord help me with this, and help me to keep calm in this meeting!” Sometimes by the evening you find you can’t even remember the passage you read that morning or the time you spent with the Lord. Why? Because there is no excitement and we are not engaging with our God.

So where did the relationship go, the fresh bread from heaven? The word tells us that, "Jesus is the bread of life!" Bread is tasty, sustainable, satisfying, hunger quenching (especially when it is warm and fresh from the oven!) The word also tells us that our relationship with God is not based on “eloquent words” or “a matter of talk” but about Christ crucified and the demonstration of the Spirit’s power (1 Corinthians 2: 1-5 and 4:20). Resting in the Holy Spirits presence enables us to understand God (1 cor 2:12) because it is the Spirit that searches both our hearts and the deep things of God (1 Cor 2:11-12).

I believe God wants us to learn to rest in the presence of the Holy Spirit. He longs to envelopes us in His love and it is He that provides healing and counsel. After all Jesus said that the Holy Spirit is our Counsellor and will teach us all things (John 14:26). As we rest in the Holy Spirit's presence we will discover more about what the Father is like. I’ve found that by resting in his presence, He often leads me to read scripture that is not necessarily on my ‘scripture reading list’ and He breaks through my routine and I hear His voice more clearly. Don’t get me wrong I think systematic reading of the Bible is a good and important to do but making sure you are also allowing time to be still and are open to hearing his voice. I find it helpful to try not to worry if my mind wanders. It may be that I find myself thinking of something the Lord wants me to pray about! Try not to be concerned if you find it hard to hear him, you have made yourself available and the Lord knows that!

I find it can be hard to do these thing when life is so busy but I don’t think busyness is necessarily an excuse for us to leave God out. I think somehow rather than fit God round our busyness we need to learn to fit our lives around spending time with Him. After all life is all about Him! Your relationship with your best friend or your spouse is a two way thing. It’s not about you talking and doing things all the time, it is also about just enjoying being in their presence, not necessarily saying anything at all!

And when you go about your day remember God is an omnipresent God, he is everywhere, and just as present in your workplace as in your ‘quiet-times’ so ask the Lord to fill you with his Holy Spirit so you can be a fragrance for Him wherever you go. Ask him to enable you to hear Him when you are in conversation with others, He wants to give you wisdom from above and maybe the words in your interactions with others.

Further reading on this subject:

Listening to God – by Joyce Hugget see Amazon

Always Enough- by Heidi Baker see Amazon

1 Corinthians chapter 2

A piece of peace....

Check out this link, I thought it was good.... Real Peace at Christmas

The Holy Spirit Part 1

I have been through a bit of a desert season recently due to ill health and in this period I feel God has awakened in me a new passion to understand the Holy Spirit more in my life. Having spent some time off work and had lots of bed ridden moments I've had an opportunity to reflect on my relationship with God and also think about things.

I think this renewed interest in the things of the Spirit started in September. I was reading Luke chapters 1-4 and was particularly struck by how often the Holy Spirit was mentioned. Many of us associated the Holy Spirit exclusively with baptism of the Holy Spirit and with the spiritual gifts and think of Acts 2 or 1 Corinthians 14. As a consequence if we are afraid of these supernatural manifestations we can shy away from the Holy Spirit and fear can stop us receiving the Spirit in its fullness. But as I read Luke I was struck at the repeated mentions of the Holy Spirit and since then have been searching the scriptures, both old and new, and have a renewed awe for the role of the Holy Spirit in all scripture. But let us start with Luke.

Many of these verses will be familiar to you in Luke but they are worth a closer look. The angel of the Lord appeared to Zechariah and prophesied that he would have a son John and that John would be “filled with the Holy Spirit even from birth” (1:15). The angel of the Lord appeared to Mary and said that the Holy Spirit would come upon her and she would give birth to the son of God (1:35). Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit when she heard Mary's greeting and the baby leaped in her womb (1:41). Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesised (1:67) after God loosened his tongue. Simeon in the temple had the “Holy Spirit upon him” (2:25) and it was the Holy Spirit who had revealed to him that he would not die before he had seen the Christ (2:26). When John later grew up and baptised people at the Jordan he said he baptised with water but prophesied that Jesus will “baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire” (3:16). Indeed when Jesus was baptised the Holy Spirit 'descended on him in bodily form like a dove' (3:2).

Later, Jesus himself “full of the Holy Spirit returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil.” (4:1-2). Then he returned to Galilee by the power of the Spirit (4:14) and taught in the synagogues. But as he read Isaiah in the temple and showed how the old testament prophecy was fulfilled in himself (“the spirit is upon me…to preach good news to the poor” 4:18), no one believed him and they drove him out of the town and tried to throw him off a cliff (4:29-30).

In these passages it was the references to the Spirit in chapter 4 which really blew me away. I don't know whether you like me assume that if we have 'desert-like times' that its because we are not following the Lord properly or doing something wrong in are walk with him. Well sometimes I think it can be this but this example of Jesus being filled with the Spirit and going into the desert shows us how the Spirit can also take people into desert like situations. Why might you ask would the Father do that???

…..Well all I know is that when I do have these times I want to go into them full of the Spirit like Jesus did. Unbeknown to me shortly after I read these verses I was lead into a desert time of illness and so thought of Luke and when I felt it was so hard to pray I just said "Holy Spirit help me!" and in this desert he has answered and the Holy Spirit has been speaking. He is speaking to us all the time, can you hear his quiet whisper?

Why am I starting a blog?

I've been resisting blogging for a long time but I have to come to the realisation that we are in a technological age where the internet is becoming a whole different way of communication. The benefits: access to knowledge you would not previously have been able to get and an ability to communicate easily with people all over the world. So what is the disadvantage? I would say the tendency to become 'obsessive' with technology to the extent that computer relationships replace 'live' ones and nobody has any 'real' time. So though I rather like pen and paper, telephones and some of the 'old ways' of communicating (I really enjoyed writing a letter the other week - when was the last time you did that?!)...There is a reason I would now like to blog...

I'm learning a lot about worshipping my creator God at the moment and feel a greater hunger for the things of God and want to know the Holy Spirit's power more in my life. I want to hear His voice more clearly and not allow the busyness of life to cause me to draw away from Him. Are you hungry? My desire for this blog is that it would encourage you in your walk with the Lord as I share my random ramblings. And hopefully your comments and thoughts will also encourage me in my walk too. We are on a wonderful adventurous journey with Jesus...through the highs and the lows he wants to talk to us. I am so glad because I certainly couldn't do life on my own. 

So Jesus help me use this blog in a way that glorifies you. Amen