A Burning Candle

I remember once, many years ago, someone was hurt by something I’d said and what they told me has stuck with me to this day; To make your candle look brighter, you don’t have to blow mine out.

I still like to jest and have a laugh with my mates, but this has stuck with me and made me think about many of the things I say and do. Am I saying something because I feel it contributes to the conversation and will have a positive effect, or am I trying to make myself look better at the expense of someone else.

Ecclesiastes 4:4 mentions something along these lines; “I have seen that every labor and every skill which is done is {the result of} rivalry between a man and his neighbor. This too is vanity and striving after wind”. (NASV)

Our greatest scientific discoveries have been built on the back of warfare, a desire to be stronger, smarter and all-round more powerful than someone we hate. Even the wonderful discoveries made in space are built on the back of a desire to beat the Russians and have better weapons than them by using technology used by the Nazis.

I’m not saying that technology is evil, but when I see that the best mankind can do is done because of hate and distrust, I wonder if there can be any hope for humanity.

Do people write theological masterpieces to oppress segments of society, to scientists try and work something out in order to ridicule the people they despise, do you want to excel in your work to belittle that chap who gets on your nerves?

The Bible says that as a person is in his heart, that’s him.

So what are you like, in your heart? Who are you really?

Web Browsers and Forgiveness

The UK is up in arms at the moment because of an illegal trial of software which monitors people’s behaviour on the internet. By knowing what web pages people have been visiting, this software can target advertising just for their tastes.

Understandably, people don’t want other people knowing where they’ve been on the internet. Now, I’m sure that many of these have legitimate human rights concerns, but let’s be honest about this and accept that if the biggest internet searches and image transfers are naked ladies, then what many people don’t want to have exposed is that they’re looking at pornography.

Christians can be just as tempted as anyone else and don’t have a moral barrier which makes them invulnerable to the temptations of good looking women who are also naked, and Christians can be just as careful to try and cover their tracks.

The usual habits are to try and use an anonymiser service which will block your traffic’s traceability from your ISP, separate credit cards to pay for access in a way that the wife won’t find, cleared out browsing history and even a Safe Browsing mode in your web browser which blocks all history and cookies (but leaves whole chunks of time where it looks like no browsing was going on at all).

All this in order to ensure that nobody can see where you’ve been. Hiding; intellectually denying guilt but repressing the destructive feeling of it all the same.

As with most posts here, I’m aiming my comments at priimarily at Christians but the promise is truly open to all humanity; I’m fascinated by how we can be so concerned at a man in an office knowing that we’ve looked at a picture of a naked lady while caring nothing at all of the fact that the Holy Spirit not only knows that we’ve been looking at it, but was there when we were looking at it.

This is serious and this isn’t in any way limited to pornography. Any sin which we want to keep secret is actually known of, in full, by the One who we claim to love above all others.

But guilt and condemnation are not His tools for bringing us out of these traps. His tools are confession and forgiveness. You see, if you’ve ever been to any of those websites, you may have wiped your browser history, but somewhere, there is a record that you looked at those photos. On a server, sitting in a server access log somewhere, there’s a record that you visited that website.

Yet, the really important log, the one that will hold against you in eternity can be cleared. The fact that you’ve ever looked at, thought about or considered anything even remotely questionable can be cleared from the records of eternity, if you believe what the Bible says;

1John 1:9 ; “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

The fact is that the one Person who does know about everything you’ve said, done, thought and gone wrongly, selfishly, perversely, spitefully, arrogantly etc…. that one Person who knows all this in its entirety is willing to wipe it all out, and not to bring it back to consideration, as thought it never happened, and all you have to do is take it all to Him, admit it and He will forgive you.

How is this even possible?

God had established that the list of wrongs against you has been paid for and dealt with by His Son, Jesus. When Jesus died by crucifixion way back when Romans were still doing their thing, He took our record of wrong with Him, carrying it as though it were His own, and taking it beyond our reach. It says in the Bible;

Colossians 2:14 “having cancelled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.”

So, you may want to clear that web browser’s history one more time, but then take your issues to Jesus in prayer, confess that you’ve done wrong and walk away confident that there is no record in Heaven that you ever even opened Internet Explorer for anything more dodgy than checking out the New York Times.

Adhesion – Healing For The Soul

Our souls cling to our bodies like sailors to the mast of a ship tossed about in a storm. The knocks and the tossing waves would seek to throw our souls from out of our bodies and return them from whence they came. Such power we find in these things, for we cannot dismiss our own souls from our bodies, though some say that they can do so for a time, we cannot commit to personally giving up our souls from our bodies in death until death comes to us.

Yes, we can so wreck our own bodies that our souls have no option but to leave, but such is the nature of what we are that we cannot force our souls to leave by mere willing them to go.

And so is our human condition, that we have to face the daily struggles, the turmoil and the issues that not only touch on our bodies but also our souls. Only there’s no running away;

If an issue is outside of my body, and it becomes enough of a burden, I can place myself away from it; I can move my body away from the influence and find peace elsewhere. But when an issue silently breaks through my skin and touches my soul, then there is no walking away, there is no running to a paradise beach whereupon I may rest in peaceful bliss for wherever I go, the issue goes. It will follow me to the grave for there is no massage for the soul, there is no plaster or ointment that can bring gratifying solace for a wound in the soul.

Man’s most common remedies cannot remove our ailments, but numb us to them. Our sorrows are never drowned, only temporarily silenced. Our headaches are still there, but the tablet temporarily separate us from the pain which will only depart when it is ready.

Here then is the power of a One who can comfort the sailors in the storm, place a gentle hand on our invisible wounds and strengthen us though the body is weak, for He said;

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

Better than any ointment, the remedy for sickness of the soul is found in someone called Jesus.

End of Level Boss

For some time, I’ve been listening to podcasts from Celebration Church where the preacher is usually the very entertaining, yet extremely challenging Pastor Mark Gungor (you may have seen his popular Tale of Two Brains on YouTube).

His most recent sermon is called The Thin Line Between Faith and Stupid. As ever, it is very humorous but often uncomfortably challenging. There’s one point that the speaker made which really struck home for me two days ago and I’ve been mulling it over in my heart saince. He asked how come it wasn’t stupid for David to take on Goliath when he did, in the way he did (we’ve all heard the story, but you can refresh yourself here in 1Samuel 17)?

And so I got to asking myself the same question; how come David could have been so confident in taking on this giant of a dude who may have looked not dissimilar to Brian Blessed on stilts?

You know, if you’ve ever played any computer games at any point since the 80s, you’ll be familiar with the end of level boss. You face the end of level boss after you’re managed to get through all the other smaller bad guys as they come against you in wave after wave of merciless attack.

If you can’t fight the little spaceships, you’ll never be able to take on the mother ship.

David had experience of what God can do in fighting off the threats he faced in his life. In fact, such was David’s attitude with God’s strength that if a lion came and stole one of the sheep he was shepherding, he would actually get up and chase the lion, get the sheep back and kill the lion for its trouble! He did the same also with a bear!

It’s precisely because David had tackled the lion and the bear in the strength of God that he knew he could tackle Goliath. If he’d killed the lion and the bear in his own strength and self confidence, he’d have had reason to doubt his ability against an armoured lump of a man like Goliath.

Sure, he said that he believed in God, but all the soldiers in the Israeli army would have believed in God. David had experience of God and was an eyewitness to what God can do with people who trust him.

Everything we face in life is the next big thing, every problem is the biggest problem we’ve ever faced and every heartache is the darkest heartache, every disappointment is the deepest, every let-down is the biggest, but it’s because we trust God to get us through this one that we can be confident that He will get us through the next one!

If you can’t get passed this hiccup in your experience, you’ll not stand a chance with the next one. When we feel that we’re finding ourselves in the same situation, over and over, it’s usually because we’re not facing up to it as we should.

You could be looking down the barrel of  the pistol of potential disappointed-hope; But what to do? Sure, you could run away and be bitter and stew on what you feel was done wrong by yourself and/or others, or you can take back the joy that the disappointment has taken from you and trust in God to help you through it, even to kill the disappointment that’s in your heart. I know that if you don’t handle it properly, you’ll only have to come back and re-play the level and face again the same butt-ugly end-of-level boss; you’ll only have to come back and re-sit the test.

There’s an element of testimony in this post because I’m mid-way through a personal battle. It may last a few more days or weeks yet, but looking back through it even from here, I can see the changes that God has made in my heart already. He’s been able to make changes as I’ve trusted Him at various points and I can’t afford to stop now.

Dudes, you aren’t going to get anywhere spiritually if you don’t trust Him right where you are to do what He wants to do in your life. You might not like it! You might not even think it’s fair! It may even result in people thinking you’re the biggest schmuck to have been born of a woman, but hold on in there! Don’t give up! Don’t pack it in if you make a mistake along the way! Trust God, trust God’s grace, trust God’s wisdom and trust God’s love.

Trust.

Trust

When it comes to worry, I am the king. Nobody comes close to me when it comes to fretting, worrying and stressing over the most miniscule of matters. I worry about things that do happen, could happen, might have happened, couldn’t happen, would have happened and if I have nothing to worry about, I worry about the fact that there could be something to worry about if I only knew it was there!

Worry, which is just a friendly word for fear, is a mind killer and a soul destroyer. It wipes us out before we can say a word. It makes us tired before we get out of bed and it blinds us to the good things that want to bless us.

In recent times, my worrying has reduced somewhat, as I’ve learned to trust in Christ. The only way I can describe how I feel about what I’ve done may not be theologically sound; I’ve outsourced my worrying, so anything that I should be worrying about, I pass on to Jesus and He does the worrying for me.

At its most essential, worry is lack of trust. Preacher after preacher will encourage you to take your burdens to Jesus and people will come forward in tearful submission, leaving their worries at the altar but after the service ends, they grab their coats and their worries again before leaving.

Why do we do that? Why do I do that? Why do I ever even give my worries to Christ and then pick them back up?

As I said, I believe it is down to lack of trust. I can’t drop my worrying because I’m worried that my worries won’t be dealt with as I want.

I was preaching in a small chapel last week and my subject was the yoke that Christ wants us to carry. Part of the sermon was just this, why do I refuse to leave my worries with the One who can really deal with them?

• I know the Answer
  It’s common for us to think that because we know the answer, we can take it from here. In other words, there’s no need to bother God when we know what to do.
• God Won’t Give Me The Desired Outcome
  I know that in my subconscious, this has been floating around like some deadly jellyfish; I won’t give my worry to God because my worry is based on something that I really want and I’m not sure He’s going to let me have it, so I have to deal with it myself to ensure I get it.
• God’s Not Taking Me Seriously
  Maybe it’s because we don’t think our concerns are big enough to warrant the universe’s CEO’s attention, or maybe we just think God can’t be bothered anyway, but I can sometimes think that God can’t be bothered with me or He doesn’t see things the way I see them and so can’t see the severity of my cause for worry.

Whatever the reason, whether one mentioned above or something else, it would seem that I tend to maintain my right to worry because I don’t think that God can or will help me.

That, my buddy, is lack of trust.

And there’s no need for a lack of trust if you know the Testimonies of God. Looking back through the history of God’s dealings with humanity and the things He’s said, I know deep in my soul that I have every reason to trust God.

Psalm 55:22 says “Cast your burden upon the LORD and He will sustain you; He will never allow the righteous to be shaken.”

1Peter 5:6&7 says “Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.”

So it’s not even some kind of cold contract that should make me trust Him, it’s the fact that He cares!

There are so many examples of people worrying, not trusting God and ending up going the wrong way through life. The Children of Israel would have got in 20 years earlier than they did, if they only trusted their God. Jonah wouldn’t have had to endure weeks of smelling more fishy than Captain Birdseye. Abraham could have saved his family a whole bunch of trouble. Moses could have been a great spokesperson before Pharaoh. Peter wouldn’t have sunk. Saul wouldn’t have been dethroned…. Adam and Eve wouldn’t have eaten the forbidden fruit.

As I see it this morning, everything boils down to trust.

Do I trust the Lord?

Proverbs 3:5 says this; “Trust in the LORD with all your heart And do not lean on your own understanding.”

Asking For Stuff

When Jesus was asked (in Matthew 6) about how to pray, before He launches into one of the most famous prayers in human history, He explains that you don’t have to go on and on and on in order to get something out of God. His actual words are;

“And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words.” – New American Standard Bible

When Jesus goes on to describe how to ask for things in His model of a prayer, we can see exactly what He means and that He expects us to realise that when we ask God for something, we don’t have to try and persuade God into giving us what we are asking, but rather, just ask;

“Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” – New American Standard Bible

I once heard a preacher say that he is often guilty, in his prayers, of trying to explain things to God in terms He’s understand. I agree and would take it further by saying that sometimes, when we pray, we can fall into the trap of trying to emotionally blackmail God into giving us what we want.

Imagine the requests above in some of our evangelical churches today;

“Oh, that you would open the windows of heaven and allow not your children to starve for lack of nourishment. That you would even to us, give a crumb of your holy bread, opening up Your hands that we may take but a piece and thank you from a deep joy. For yes, each day we do ask that you would do this and that even today, we would have that which you would have for us, and even give to us that we may receive with thanks from Your generous hand”

And that’s only for “give us this day our daily bread”!!!

Of course there’s room for flowery language, especially in praise and worship as your heart seeks to express that which is happening within it. Go ahead! Fill your boots! Worship and praise and jump and dance and boogie and clap and write your own improvised psalms! Why not!? That’s cool.

But what I believe one of the things is that Jesus is saying here is that when it comes to asking God for things, you do not have to impress Him with elegant prayers, but just spit it out and leave the rest to Him.

Jesus could have tried to play a huge mind-job on God in the garden of Gethsemane when He asked if it could be possible for Him to be spared being killed on a crucifix, but even there, He kept His prayer simple and straight to the point. He didn’t try and dodge around the subject so as to trick God into granting Him something, even though (and this could be a controversial point) Jesus was asking for something He knew He wanted but wouldn’t get;

“My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will”

As I read the Bible, I become more and more certain that God just wants us to be honest. Whether we want to ask Him for something serious, or stupid, if it’s in our hearts, He wants to hear it because then He can deal with it and we will be better off for it.

Short, simple, to the point and honest.

Yeah, right. Right? Really?

In the gospel according to Luke, chapter 6, Jesus tells His followers to do something crazy. Some might say it's bordering on stupid and that is to love your enemies and bless those who curse you.

You ask anyone and the vast majority of people will tell you that they love their enemies, but they'll also have people they don't like and they won't mind telling you. Yup, this is something tho whole world seems to think it does and hold as a strange kind of fluffy ideal, but nobody actually does.

The thing is, Jesus is telling us to go against the grain of nature, transforming the idea of right and wrong into something utterly alien.

To add weight to the matter, He goes on to say that if you love those who love you, then that's no credit. Makes sense when you think about it, should your boss give you a bonus for turning up to work? Of course not! And what kind of person hates on the people who love him anyway?

What I see here is another example of how the gospel that Jesus preached is a gospel of excess. All through the New Testament (and the Old), we see that God is someone who gives more love than is containable and more grace than is required and so it seems natural that the Man who showed more grace and compassion than the law of Moses required (take the woman caught in adultery as an example - what I want to know is if the religious leaders caught her in the act, why were they even watching!?), expects more from us than the bare minimum. That's why He gives instruction to go the extra mile, give two coats instead of one and so on.

That's God's nature so it's natural that He expects His children to be the same.

So, if you love the people who love you, there's no credit to be had. After all, so what? But if you love the people who hate you? Now we're talking! If you want Jesus grooving to your beat, you've got to start doing crazy things like loving your enemies!

This is more than just excessive giving because when Jesus is talking about giving more, doing more, offering more, He's taling about something where there's already some kind of positive relationship whereas here, He talking about giving to someone who probably doesn't want anything to do with you and would be glad to dance on your grave.

You might tell me that you're selfless, you live a selfless life, you look after your mum and that proves you're great and all that and yes, that is good. It's good to do that and expected! But that's not what Jesus is talking about here. He's talking less about loving your mum and more about loving your mum-in-law or your son-in-law! Now, I don't have a mother-in-law and I've never had a mother-in-law. Maybe one day I will, but my observations are that in-laws don't always get on with each other, but whether we're talking in-laws or cross cultural boundaries or any kind of boundary, Jesus expects His followers to be oozing with love toward everybody!

Whoever you hate, I've sure you have a reason. They ignore you, make you feel stupid, make you look stupid, make you feel unimportant, show off how much richer they are than you and I'm sure the list is as long as toilet paper, but that's not the point. These are the people that Jesus is talking about.

Jesus wants His followers to love the people that any right-minded people would run away from.

And that's hard. At least, I find it hard.

That's what He did, and I for one am glad because if He started hating on those who have ever hated Him, where would you and I be right now? He loved me when I couldn't give a flying monkey's about Him, when He was nothing to me, when He was just an inconvenient religious dogma. During that time, He loved me.

He didn't even have hate for the people who crucified Him and He forgave those who slammed the nails into Him. Some people would see that as weak, but when you think about it, you must surely agree that to do that takes strength of character that not many of us will claim to have.

There's nothing for you to gain when you do this. It's all for others' benefits.

Love your enemies and bless those who curse you.

Yeah, right.