One Of Those Days

I'm having one of those days.  You know, the sort of day you wish didn't bother showing up this morning.  In fact, I've been having one of those weeks.  Too much to do, too little time etc. - we've all had them.

But in the middle of my busyness, in the middle of my panic, in the middle of my must-rush-to-get-this-done-ness, God speaks.

I have just been finishing off a bit of work I needed to get sorted this evening and one of the font choices on the website I was using was called "Loved by the King."

That was it.  Right there.  God speaking into my situation.

I wasn't looking for Him, I wasn't thinking about Him, I wasn't particularly fussed about Him if I'm honest.  But that doesn't stop God looking for me and it doesn't stop Him thinking about me.

We are always on His mind.  Not in a creepy, omniscient Big-Brother kind of way, in a can't-get-you-out-of-my-thoughts kind of way.

God says, in Isaiah -

         "Can a mother forget the infant at her breast,
         walk away from the baby she bore?
         But even if mothers forget,
         I'd never forget you - never.
         Look, I've written your names on the backs of my hands.
         The walls you're rebuilding are never out of my sight."

           [Isaiah 49:15-16 MSG]

Even if He tried, God couldn't forget us.  And He longs for us to lift our eyes from the stresses of our days and to remember Him.

And as we look to Him, the worries of the world melt away. 

When we see Him we find strength to face the day.

And that strength comes from knowing that we are the loved by the King and that nothing else really matters.

What's The Point In Worrying?

I've just been watching 'Keeping Britain Alive: The NHS in One Day' which is a fascinating insight into the daily life of the NHS from all sorts of different perspectives.

 

One elderly man had gone into one hospital for a cataract operation.  When his wife was asked how she was feeling about his operation, she said, "I'm not worrying.  I mean, what's the point?"

 

What's the point?

 

Well said!

 

She followed this by saying, "I mean, you die if you worry, you die if you don't."

 

Worry doesn't change a thing.

 

Jesus asked,

 

"Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?"

[Matthew 6:27 NIV]

 

 

Often we can think that if we worry about something, we will somehow prevent it from happening.  But do we really believe this?  Do we really believe that our worry-power can change circumstances outside of our control?

 

Worrying strips us of our peace of mind. It wears us out and eats away at us. Worry is never satisfied.

 

I think sometimes we quite enjoy worrying, because in a strange way, it makes us feel in control.  It helps us to get a grip - or feel as though we have got a grip - on something that is out of control.

 

The opposite of worry is trust.

 

Jesus continued,

 

"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 6:33-34 MSG]

 

We can choose to trust that God will help us, whatever happens.  Or we can choose to worry.

 

But what's the point?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here Comes The Sun

There is something about the sun. 

 

We, in Britain, are relatively sun-deprived for most of the year.  It is no wonder, then, that we get so excited at the slightest sign of sunshine.

 

Today has been such a day: despite still relatively crisp conditions, I have seen people out enjoying the sun in shorts and T-shirts.  I was not one of them.

 

There is something about the sun.

 

It makes us feel joyful and optimistic.  We feel hopeful and inspired and enthusiastic.  Everyone is in a better mood when the sun comes out.

 

Isaiah described how God's glory shines on His people in the same way that the sun shines on us:

 

        "Put your face in the sunlight.

        God’s bright glory has risen for you.

        The whole earth is wrapped in darkness,

        all people sunk in deep darkness,

        But God rises on you,

        his sunrise glory breaks over you."

 

        [Isaiah 60:1 MSG]

 

In Britain, we can get so used to the dark, gloomy, grey weather which is so common in our country.  We can forget what the sun is and how it makes us feel.  In a spiritual sense, we can get used to life feeling dull and gloomy and depressing, too.  We live in the shadows.  We forget that life was ever different and we doubt that it will ever be different again.

 

But when we see the sun, everything changes.

 

And when we see the Son, everything changes too.

 

 

 

 

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.