Wednesday 27 June 2018

my shame

I share this because I know I am not the only one who experiences the deep pain of brokenness.

I want you to know you are not alone. I want you to know there is no shame in your pain and brokenness, that you can open up, be honest about the darkness that threatens your life.

This is not about telling you everything will be OK, or even that there is hope in the end. Maybe that's not where you're at.

This is a call to be honest about where you are at. To be honest first with yourself, and then when you have the courage, with others.

"Shame can't survive being spoken." - Brene Brown
 
Confessions of broken human in a broken world.

The truth is I’ll never be good enough.

Never. No matter how hard I try, I will fail. I will miss the mark.

The pain of failure, of not being good enough, is sharp and persistent.

At times the busyness, achievements, beers dull the pain, but it is ever present, a low hum waiting to return, to remind me of who I am, who I am not.

Sinking in to the darkness, letting go of hope, embracing the self-hatred; like an old friend who never disappoints, never far off, always showing up.

That’s the end.

I want it to be. I want to wallow. I want to rage and hate and hurt. I don’t want to hope or to smile or pray.

I want to hold onto my pain, hating myself, hating you, hating the world, hating God.

But I can’t. I can’t deny the small quite voice that is beckoning me.

He is calling me, into His love, into His peace, into His way of life.

Jesus is calling me out of the darkness into His light.

Darkness will not win, not today.

I will breath. I will live. I will hope for a better day.

Wednesday 10 January 2018

Angry God

How does God feel (not think) but how does God feel about us after we’ve sinned?
This is not a salvation question, that is to say, this not a question whether one is saved or not.
This is a deeply relational question.
I think many of us, I know I have, developed a sense that we are disappointing God, letting him down. 
I think many of us believe that when we sin God becomes angry at us and pulls away from us.
I read this article[1] that has blown me away – or rather God’s great love for me has blown me away!
The argument in this article is that in all our fickleness and failures, through all our cold and callous days, in all our wandering and waywardness, the heart of God in Christ is drawn out all the more warmly to us
The article argues that God is not angry at us when we sin, but rather all his anger is against sin. Rather like a parent of a child with cancer would never be angry at the child for having cancer, but rather is angry at the cancer and wants to rid the child of the cancer, not get rid of the child! Likewise God is angry at sin in our lives and wants to rid our lives of sin but not be rid of us!
Of all the “diseases,” sin is the greatest! Jesus loves us, and hates our sin, because he loves us and wants us to be free of the destruction and death that sin brings! 
I think some of us believe (even if we don’t realize we believe this) that God has to “muster up” love for us, because we are such wretched creatures that keep screwing it up!
This is not true. 
As we read in both the Old Testament:
“Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth.” (Exodus 34:6)
And the New Testament:
“God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions.” (Ephesians 2:4)
The father of the lost (or prodigal) son is a great illustration of God’s heart towards us when we have sinned … the Father comes running to the son, yes the son came towards the father but the father went running to him before the son could even make it to the father. So it is with God he comes running to us. 
All we have to do is turn towards God, and God will come running! 
Actually I think we will discover God is running after us before we even turned, like we read in the parables about the lost sheep and the lost coin found in The Gospel According to Luke chapter 15, just before the parable of the lost son.
So you see our sins do not push God away from us, but rather they pull him closer, like a father who wants to embrace his hurting child.

I can already hear the accusations of this being a “cheap grace” message. 

Let me finish by quoting the Apostle from  Romans chapter 6 “What shall we say, then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means!” (Romans 6:1-2) And later in chapter 7 “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! ... Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 7:24-25; 8:1).





[1] “Does God Like Me? Thomas Goodwin on Our Deep Insecurity” by Dane Ortlund; https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/does-god-like-me

Friday 5 January 2018

Little Miss Perfect

I was asked to prepare chapel very last minute, so as I walked to the bus this morning I was thinking about what God had been teaching me lately… 
I started to think about why we make New Year resolutions. I think it largely has to do with our desire to improve ourselves, to be better people, to perfect ourselves … 
The verse where Jesus says “[t]herefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48) popped in to my head.
Whoa! Whaaat!? That’s a tall order! 
Is it even possible? I mean to be perfect? Is it even possible to be perfect? I don’t know about you but I haven’t managed it yet.
Whenever I read something in the Bible that doesn’t seem to make sense I take a wider and deeper look.
First we go wider, that is we read the verse in its context:
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on therighteous and the unrighteous. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?48 Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
So the context is love. 
More specifically Jesus is clarifying who we are called to love – our enemies, those who don’t like us, those who we don’t like, those who hurt us, those who we hurt or at the very least want to hurt, those who are cruel, those who do terrible things – Jesus is calling us to love them. 
He gives us the reason we are to love are enemies, those people who do terrible things – because if we call ourselves children of God then we will love like our Father loves, and God loves his enemies, those who do terrible things. 
Jesus takes it a step further and basically says “you love those who love you, so what!? You treat those who treat you with kindness and respect with kindness and respect, so what!? You help out those who help you out, so what!? Even the tax collectors (to the original audience they are the enemy, those people who do terrible things) and Gentiles (non-believers or pagans) do that!”
Jesus is basically saying “If you only love those who love you – you are no better than your enemy, those who do terrible things.”
Ouch! That hurts! 
Yup. That’s how Jesus’ rolls – he tells it like it is, even or maybe especially, when it hurts because he loves us and wants us to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.
That brings us to the verse in question “Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Now we go deeper, what does Jesus mean by perfect?
The word perfect, in the Bible, can and does mean complete or finished.  In Hebrews it says that Jesus was made perfect through suffering (Heb. 2:10; 5:8–9). That is to say he completed or fulfilled God’s plan for Him as our Savior by suffering for us.
Perfect can also have the meaning of mature or grown up In Philippians 3:15, the apostle Paul speaks to "as many as are perfect" - the word perfecthere can also be translated as mature - "as many as are mature."
We now have a wider and deeper understand of what Jesus means when he says, “Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” 
I think he is meaning, "love completely as your heavenly Father loves completely."  
As God loves all people, even his enemies, even those who do terrible things – we are also to love all people, even our enemies, even those who do terrible things. 
This is how we can be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect – to love as he loves.
Now the question:  how do we love our enemies? What does that even look like? Where do I even get the ability to love my enemies from?”
This is a huge question. And I don’t have an answer.
But I think the process of wrestling with this question is the answer. What I mean is that as we wrestle with the question of “how do I love my enemies?” and as we make attempt to love our enemies - we grow, we mature - and as we maturewe are able to love our enemies more and more completely
This is a lifelong process. 
Some really good news is that this is a process we do not do alone. We have been given the Holy Spirit and the fruit that the Holy Spirit produces in and through us includes love as well as joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control (Gal. 5:22-23 – everything that we need to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.
As the Apostle Paul prays over the Philippian Christians I also pray over you:

For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus… And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ; having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. (Philippians 1:6, 9-11)