Nothing To Add

Good Friday.

 

The day we remember that Jesus died for us.  He died to take away our sins.  All of them.

 

Sometimes I think we find it easy to 'sanitise' our sins and to imagine that Jesus only died for the stuff we don't mind other people knowing about.  The I-know-I-really-shouldn'ts of life.  But we think He couldn't really have died for the things that we don't want other people to know.

 

Or we can get to thinking that whilst His death certainly gave us a 'leg up' on our way into God' good books, we still need to add to it, or 'top it up' by our own good deeds.

 

But God has done it all.  We can add nothing to Jesus' crucifixion.

 

Paul writes,

"If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily."

[Galatians 5:21 MSG]

and

"The God-setting-things-right that we read about has become Jesus-setting-things-right for us. And not only for us, but for everyone who believes in him. For there is no difference between us and them in this. Since we’ve compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we’re in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ."
 

[Romans 3:21-24 MSG] 

 

Jesus died for our sins once and for all.  There is nothing to add.

 

 

 

 

I Am Not 'Good Enough'

I am not good enough.
 
This is the fear that follows me through life like a shadow.  The fear that, no matter what I do, I will always somehow be lacking.  I will never quite be enough.

And so I find myself constantly striving, constantly trying to be just a little bit better.  I think if I work just a little bit harder or a little bit longer, if I get up earlier or go to bed later, I will become "good enough".

But whilst I might be able to do this for a short while, I inevitably fail.
 
I am not good enough.

And I realised last weekend that it's true.  I am not "good enough".  But not in a depressing, self-deprecating way.  In a liberating, bigger-than-I-can-imagine way.

Last week at church we looked at the description of God creating humans in the book of Genesis.  We picked out three key characteristics from the description: we are eternal, we are relational, and (for me, the most significant), we are good.
 
       "God created human beings;
       he created them godlike,
       Reflecting God’s nature.
       He created them male and female.
       God blessed them:
       'Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge!
       Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the air,
       for every living thing that moves on the face of Earth.' [...]
       God looked over everything he had made;
       it was so good, so very good!"

       [Genesis 1:27, 31 MSG]


I am good.  Because I am made by a good God who declares me to be good.  Undeniably, irrevocably, unarguably good.
 
I am not "good enough".  I am good.  So very good.

Winning And Losing

I hate losing.

 

I'm hugely competitive and, although I'm nowhere near as bad as I used to be, I will still probably sulk for a while if I lose a board game or a card game.

 

I have been thinking about this a lot over the past few days, as I have realised that a lot of my competitiveness links in with a desire to be the best, to always be number one.  To be the winner.  And so I feel insecure when I think I am in competition with someone else and I might not win.

 

But over the last day or so, God has been showing me how I don't need to see myself as competing with anyone. 

 

In the competition for being me, I win.

 

Paul reminds us of this in Romans when he writes,

"So since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ’s body, let’s just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren’t."

 

[Romans 12:6 MSG] 

 

Rather than looking to the people around me and comparing myself to them, or feeling as though I am competing with them, I want to discover what it really means to be me.  I want to know what it means to be the person that God made me to be and I want to grow more and more into that person.

 

 

 

Why I Needed To Stop Blogging

I haven't blogged in a few weeks.

When I started writing back in June last year, I never intended to write every day, it just sort of happened: I kept finding and noticing things to write about. Things that I wanted to share.

But over time, I think writing almost became a religious ritual. It was still interesting to write, God was still revealing Himself and truths about Himself, His world and myself to me, but I felt a pressure to write, rather than always writing because I wanted to.

I also have a tendency to get caught up in patterns which I think will make me feel better - usually because I think that, with the right formula, I might just crack this longing-to-be-perfect thing and might finally attain it.

Now, writing a daily blog may not seem like a massive thing - certainly not a reflection of perfection, but I can get so caught up in doing things 'right' or 'well' that for me, making sure I wrote daily was becoming a god to serve, not a way to serve God.

Writing about a relationship with God was starting to replace a relationship with God.

So I stopped.

And I needed to not do something 'perfectly', to not keep it up, to be myself, to be real and, most importantly, to accept those 'imperfections' in myself.

The prophet Joel writes,

"The Lord says, 'Turn to me now, while there is time. Give me your hearts.'"
[Joel 2:12 NLT]

God is not interested in the content or regularity of my blog, so much as He is interested in the contents of my heart and the regularity of time spent with Him.

Outrageous Grace

Grace.

 

My first thoughts when I hear the word grace are of forgiveness and second chances and 'how sweet the sound'.  But they're quiet, unassuming, gentle ideas.  'Grace' conjures up someone who is just too nice, someone who is slow to anger and quick to forgive.

 

It is a sanitised, domesticated, safe word.

 

But it is not what God means by 'grace'.

 

Yes, God is slow to anger, quick to forgive and quick to love.  But His grace is also outrageous.  It is offensive and provocative and unbelievable.

 

It doesn't make sense.  It doesn't add up.  It isn't fair.

 

Those who are 'good' are no more entitled to it than those who are worse than the worst.  It has nothing to do with us and everything to with Jesus.  It is free for those who want it.  It is available to Christians, Atheists, 'good' people, charity workers, those in need of charity, the homeless, teachers, the uneducated, doctors, the sick, lawyers, law-breakers, children, adults, men, women.  It is available to all who want it.

 

It can't be bought, it can't be fathomed, it can't be exhausted.

 

I love this verse in Romans which describes it:

"Sin didn’t, and doesn’t, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace.  When it’s sin versus grace, grace wins hands down.  All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that’s the end of it.  Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into life—a life that goes on and on and on, world without end."

 

[Romans 5:20-21 MSG]

 

The aggressive forgiveness we call grace.

 

Grace is not gentle, or softly-spoken.  It does not tiptoe around the edge of awkward situations.  It does not turn its back on our sin.

 

Instead, it plunges into our chaotic, sinful mess and invites us into life - deep, fulfilled, whole, true, eternal life.

 

Perhaps instead of singing John Newton's famous hymn, we should sing,

 

Outrageous grace

How fierce the sound

That saved a wretch like me.

 

 

The Problems With Being Over-Prepared

I like to be organised.

 

I don't mean just a little bit organised, I mean completely, utterly, totally organised.  I like to be prepared for a range of events; I like to anticipate alternative outcomes and I like to feel that I would know how to react or respond to each of them.

 

To this end, I am often thinking about the future - I will run through things in my mind which could occur tomorrow, or next week, or next month, or even several years from now.

 

I like to be prepared.

 

But sometimes this obsession with the future leads me to forget about what's going on right here, right now.  I end up thinking so much about what might happen, that I forget to live in what is happening.  I worry too much about tomorrow that I forget to enjoy today.

 

Jesus warns against this fretting about the future in his sermon on the mount.  I love the beauty of this verse -

"Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow.  God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes."

 

[Matthew 6:34 MSG]

 

The thing about tomorrow is that we have no idea what it will hold.  And I can imagine a thousand different possibilities, but I won't know if I am right until they do - or don't - happen.

 

There is no point me fretting and worrying and 'preparing', and wasting time doing all of these things, when I don't know if the things I am preparing for will actually come to pass.

 

Instead, I want to learn to give my entire attention to God right now - to live in today and to entrust tomorrow to Him.

 

 

 

 

Here I Am To Worship

We've been talking this evening at worship: what worship is, what it means to worship, how we worship.

 

Taken from the Old English 'weorthscipe' meaning worthiness, worship means to acknowledge the worth of. 

 

When we worship God, we are acknowledging who He is and, therefore, are acknowledging His worthiness.

 

But worship isn't something we do for half an hour in church on Sundays.  Or during the week when we listen to a 'worship' CD.  It's not even really about singing.

 

Yes, singing is a large and significant part of worship, but true worship is about living a life which acknowledges God's worthiness in all areas.

 

Jesus said to the Samaritan woman at the well:

"It's who you are and the way you live that count before God.  Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth.  That's the kind of people the Father is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship.  God is sheer being itself - Spirit.  Those who worship him must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration."

 

[John 4:24 MSG]

 

 

I love that line - those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship. 

I love it and I am deeply challenged by it.  I'm not sure that I've very comfortable simply and honestly being myself: I'm not sure I feel enough.  Sometimes I like to dress myself up in different layers of disguise.  I'm not even sure I know what it means to be simply and honestly myself.

But I want to start to find out.

I want to say, as Tim Hughes sang, "Here I am to worship."

No pretense, no disguise, no distraction.  Not just here I am for 20 minutes.  But every day, every moment - here I am to worship.