Knowledge of good and evil. (Helen)

It doesn’t take much to be ‘going wrong’ in your life for you to feel like life wasn’t supposed to be like this. When things are ‘going well’ though we are often as quick to feel like this is exactly what life was meant to be like.
Are we too quick to moan, or are we too quick to settle for less than we should?

In the garden of Eden where life was really ‘as it should be’ and everything was genuinely good, Adam and Eve had one command to obey. Not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Can we suppose then that unless they ate of that fruit they would not ‘know’ good and evil? I think not and here is why.

God gave Adam and Eve everything good to enjoy. Food, relationship with each other, a job to do that was productive not stressful, relationship with God and all the creation to enjoy. They would have been able to grow in their experience of all that is good and they would have been able to understand through experience of goodness what the absence of that goodness would have been. The more they valued what God had given them in the garden the more they would have been able to ‘know evil’. But not like we know it, with memory and fear, but with an innocence and yes a total lack of experience and worry. If Adam and Eve had lived out God’s design for goodness they would not have lacked any ‘knowledge’ but would have been freed from many experiences. Instead they were impatient, proud and ungrateful. They were easily lied too because they trusted God lightly not deeply.

So what now? God’s blessings on all the earth haven’t stopped despite our sin, He still sends rains and the sun to shine. We still get to have oneness in some relationships, food, shelter and productivity in life. But is that the way that we get to see that God is good like it would have been in the garden of Eden? I think that while some people may get to be thankful for God’s blessings leading them to look for Him to thank but more people are ungrateful and therefore very quick to get cross with their idea of a ‘god’ when things aren’t all rosy. When we lose a loved one or face illness or injustice we are quick to accuse an idea of a ‘god’. What we have the chance of though is to see the goodness of God in the face of the suffering and the pain in the world. Like Adam and Eve would have been able to know goodness so thouroughly in Eden so as to be able to realise that God was to be thanked for all good, we know get to see God’s goodness most when it is absent. In our suffering humans get to long for the world we were made for. In our suffering humans get to see the goodness that is missing from this broken world and realise how great God is by the need we have for His blessing.

Before Sin came into the world the gifts that God gave people were not fully appreciated for what they were. Now we face struggles and trails of all kinds in life and our hearts yearn for the existence we were created for. People who know God and people who don’t face lives of uncertainty and pain. How ever hard a non-believer in God tries he/she cannot create for themselves a life free from the struggles that I believe God is letting us face so that we see our need for Him. And all humans who face struggles know that as Switchfoot sing ‘We were meant to live for so much more’.

What is the application for christians then? We struggle like everyone else to see Gods goodness for what it is and love Him for it. We struggle to love God when our worldly happiness is threatened and rocked. But we should have the opposite response. We should be really grateful for anything that shows us God’s goodness even the removal of His blessings that throw us on our knees before Him. We should not regard anything in this world as more important than seeing God for who He is and bacause our future is secure, and we know that all the blessings we can want are ours, we are only going to gain if we get to love God more through trials now.

Christians with weak faith and a poor ability to love the future that God has secured for us more than the world we see know will still get to love God in heaven by His grace. The quality of our faith does not save us, but it does bring us blessings and the peace of assurity of our salvatioin which I am coming to see is worth all that this world can throw at it. But do you?

grace-full parenting

There is much about parenting that I am constantly amazed by my ignorance of. Mostly this is manageable, you don’t have to get it ‘right’ all the time to raise your kids well. Kids are humans and no interaction in their life will be without the consequences and effects of sin, so ‘perfect’ is not the standard to hold oneself up too. But in some aspects there is an example set for us that is worth aiming for and is important to strive toward. I am talking about the Gospel.

The book of Romans tells us that Gods plan for our lives is to use all circumstances to make us more like Jesus (8:28-29). Jesus’ life, death and resurrection should therefore impact every aspect of our life. How does is impact our parenting? This blog is just looking at one application of this that I think is most key in my experience.

I have been trying to teach our boys about grace since they have been young. But I realised recently that I had forgotten the point of grace. I was teaching the definition of grace, giving them things they didn’t deserve, but not the context of grace, God giving us forgiveness and righteousness that we don’t deserve. So Jon and I tried the odd incident where Fin would get a toy instead of sitting on the naughty step etc. We liked the idea of this but it didn’t sit well with us aswell. It involved such an explanation of Jesus taking our punishment and giving us his righteousness. And he didn’t need encouragement to think of toys as God’s greatest gift!!!

But when I realised that the grace I needed to be teaching and showing was in the context of what God has already done for our boys, things became clearer. The boys are often asked by us to ‘listen to my words’ ‘do what i say, first time straight away’ and ‘obey’!! Big asks for a 3 and 1 year old! So how do I stop myself from getting frustrated when they don’t do what we say, and how do we show them grace. Well with conversations like this:

 “Finlay, I have asked you to listen to my words and you haven’t. You have just said sorry for this and done the same thing straight away. Finlay that is really naughty. Do you know that mummy loves you? Do you know that I understand? God understands too, He says ‘no-one does good things all the time’. So why does it matter if you disobey? Because God is holy and our wrong behaviour and broken heart keeps us from Him. But that is why Jesus came. Jesus took our punishment and now we get to say sorry to God and He will help us obey. Do you wantt to say sorry? Now there must be a consequence for your actions so (insert appropriate consequence), but you don’t have to have a cross Daddy God when you trust in what Jesus has done for you, and God will help you when you ask Him to.”

I always try to come back to this conversation later on. especially to show Finlay when he is able to do the thing he was struggling with earlier. Yes it involves conversation so it is not an easy way to address Rory. But I think it is ok to work on obedience and then show our children how much obedience with the right attitude is beyond them.

Teaching children the Gospel and showing them grace is essential to pointing them to God. But this doesn’t mean giving them lots of clever answers and never helping them to see this as a relationship they can have and need for themselves. Only when we are able to see our need for God will we come to Him. And the more we can see and understand this need the greater our love for His grace and rescue will be. If we don’t show our children that they can’t obey then we don’t show them that they need grace. We may well be leaving them to rebel and reject him as they grow up, for God to chose to show them that they need Him. God in his grace doesn’t need us as parents to rescue our kids, but I’d rather He chose (and I allowed Him) to use me now. I’d rather my kids see God through my parenting now, not despite it in years, and probably hardships, to come.

redeeming the Gospel (Helen)

There was a time when I didn’t understand that the Gospel of Jesus is the best treasure and most amazing gift of all time (matthew 6 19-24 and 1 Timothy 6 11-19 stylee). I’m not talking about when I wasn’t a Christian.

 

Despite being saved by Jesus and getting to be in relationship with the living God I believed that living out Christianity was based on something else. I didn’t see how the good news of who Jesus is, why He came to earth and what He accomplished, could show me how to live. I didn’t believe it could help me to ‘not sin’ like John says in the Bible (1 John 2:1).

 

Now that I have changed I feel like this is so basic to Christianity that I cannot imagine how i lived without it. I don’t deserve Jesus’ righteousness, I don’t deserve God’s forgiveness, I don’t deserve Gods Spirit to change me. I deserve to be cut off from God because I don’t appreciate Him even now! But instead I face a future of knowing God better. I have all the happiness of getting to see God in the world now, see His goodness amongst all the badness, see His patience to save, see His faithfulness and unchanging nature that is so far from my own natural fickleness. And I love Him.

 

This treasure is better than all the other gifts I have been given from God, and worth all the disciplining that I face through my own sin, other peoples behaviour to me and the sad or difficult circumstances that I may face.

 

My heart aches for the Christians I see whose lives are so fraught with struggles that seem too large for them to cope with. When Jesus is truly our treasure these circumstances actually take one a very different dimension, they don’t change themselves instead we change in how we cope with them. But I have learnt one thing from my journey and that is that this love of God for who He is and what He has done is only achieved through God himself. I can’t teach it to you, but you can ask for it. I can’t give it away, but God has more than enough to spare.

 

The Gospel shouldn’t lose it’s power to thrill a Christian, but we should grow in our excitement, gratefulness and understanding of how it touches every aspect of our life.

 

Redeeming Rudeness (Helen)

For most of my life I have struggled with the unique and often rude interaction that occurs between Christians. People sometimes; talk to you without introducing themselves, interrupt your conversation with someone else because they want to talk to them, look around the room when you’re having a conversation, don’t wait for you to come back to chat if you have to go and ‘deal’ with your kids for a few minutes, don’t say hello or goodbye or ‘how are you’, the list goes on and if you know what I mean you will have your own list! If you don’t know what I mean then you might well be the people I am talking about 😀
Now in this blog we are writting about how we are learning to redeem the experiences we have. So this blog is not to excuse rudeness. The book of Titus tells us to show ‘perfect courtesy to everyone’. An important instruction to Christians but why should we need it? Surely as forgiven, loved and rescued people, care for others would come very naturally to us?? !! But it doesn’t does it.
So this is my attempt to redeem why we appear rude sometimes and the ways that I get to rejoice over this uncomfortable interaction because of what it points to.

It’s that time of year again, festival time, and people all over the country will be sharing a damp field, united in love of music and random hats over the coming months. At a festival you make ‘festival friends’, people you interact with often (in the loo queue or in a crowd or over food) but you may not know their name or actually get to know anything about them. What makes you friends is the uniting power of being in the same place at the same time for a shared experience.
As Christians we get this experience with each other whenever we meet. We have become family with one another because of what Jesus has done for us. Now how do family interact? We act familiarly, we don’t always see a meeting as a chance to get to know each other better because we know there will be many more meetings and get togethers. Our comfortableness in each others presence leads to a relaxed and un-pressured relationship that knows it won’t end soon. Can you see where I am heading with this. It is to Gods Glory if His people are relaxed with one another, it speaks of heaven and our future relationship in perfect family and with God uniting us. We have the same future awaiting us, united in God forever in Heaven. Our relationships are much greater than any we will have with non-Christians in this life, because they will last so much longer.

Now, I’m not saying that Christians get to excuse being unconcerned with one another’s needs and lives, as I said earlier, this blog is not here to justify rudeness. But it helps me to redeem the odd interactions that I am so often faced with by remembering that they point to the truth of our relationship, that we are united by God and will live eternal lives of relationship with one-another in Heaven. So next time a Christian appears rude I will (try to!) enjoy that we have the sort of relationship that can cope with rudeness and awkwardness and still last forever 🙂

Can you sleep through a storm? (Helen)

In Mark 4 Jesus and His friends are in a serious storm on the sea. Jesus however is asleep.
We know that as Christians we are being made more like Jesus. So what does it look like to apply this part of Jesus’ character into our lives? Well, we get to see some of the application of this in the life of Peter. In Acts 12 he is imprisoned after his friend James has just been killed and he must have known that persecution if not death was in store for him very soon. But when an angel of God comes to free him the night before he is to face his accuser, guess what, he is asleep. The impetuous, emotional Peter is asleep on what may well turn out to be his last night on earth! Peter, who saw Jesus sleep through a dangerous storm and was scared so many years before, is now asleep in real danger just like Jesus. And why? Well, when we trust in God’s complete authority and control of the world He has made, then we know that even if there is danger or death ahead He is look after us. This assurance is huge and will affect our actions, even our ability to get a good nights’ sleep in very difficult circumstances!

However I often see a tendency, in my life and the lives of others, to act in a way that is the opposite of this. Rather than resting in confidence of God at times of real crisis, I see stress and unrest in lives where there is discomfort but no real crisis. We moan about illness that isn’t terminal, we grumble about people not being as kind to us as we think we deserve, we fret about redundancy, having to live in a house that is so small some of us have to share bedrooms, about lack of sleep, and about the effort that it is to get our work done. We make small events in a gift of a life into an opportunity to show our lack of faith in God and His goodness, and we seem unaware of how sinful this is. Instead God calls us to trust Him in really dangerous and scary situations; when we’re on a boat that is sinking, or are facing death only because we love Jesus.

I am really challenged by this. I have always been my own worst enemy, acting like I am suffering when I am actually being blessed with a very wonderful life and very little grief. Life is graft, there is no escaping the effects of sin in this world, so why do we act like we’re surprised when we see it or that we are facing something unique. Next time I am tempted to grumble because I am tired or the boys aren’t behaving in an ‘easy to manage way’ I am going to remember instead to be grateful that I have them and look for rest in Gods Word. I am going to remember that God gives us all we need to serve Him, but that we have to serve Him and service is never without effort. If I think this life is hard and I get to live in Gods strength not having to rely on myself, then maybe I am just showing my self-obsessed, sinful, idolatry and laziness for what it is and I need to say sorry and get help to change!

Where do I belong? (by Helen)

I was born in England, so was my dad, my dad’s dad, my dad’s dad’s dad….you get the idea. I have lived in a few different places in this country and most of the people I know come from here too. And yet I am not ‘English’, nor am I ‘British’. I gave up my nationality here when I realised that my real Dad actually comes from somewhere else, and that my real home was with my real Dad.

Its not a very elegant analogy but do you get the point? I belong with my father in heaven. I am a child of the Living God. Heaven and Earth will not remain as it is, but be renewed to make it my real home. For now I get to live here and happen to live in England, but I belong here as much as I belong in the Ocean.

Why does it matter as a Christian that I hold onto my identity with God more than my experience of life so far?

It is so easy to get too focussed on the things of this world for our identity; on stuff that we get, on where we live, on our job. While that is to be expected in people for whom this world is all there is, it is a sin for Gods people to show so much care of the things here that we forget our bigger reality.

Are we really in danger of forgetting our true reality? Well you don’t have to read the histories of Israel for long to see that even though God gave them real things here on earth to enjoy as the picture of their inheritance with Him, they couldn’t keep their hearts for God. How much more do we, who are looking forward to a future reality, need to keep focussed on that reality to keep hold of God.

So if you hear me not showing patriotism or loyalty to the country of city that I get to stay in while I’m passing through, I hope you’ll understand.

Some thoughts from reading Deuteronomy…

Deuteronomy 13:1-4

If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and announces to you a sign or wonder, and if the sign or wonder spoken of takes place, and the prophet says, “Let us follow other gods” … you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer… It is the LORD your God you must follow, and him you must revere. Keep his commands and obey him; serve him and hold fast to him.(emphasis mine)

We don’t often find people these days in church calling us to follow other gods so explicitly as the Israelites. But we are all very aware that the ‘gods’ we are tempted to follow take many forms and putting our trust in anything other than the true God as He has revealed Himself to us is dangerous ground. Putting our own opinions and bias onto Gods plans has the same capacity for leading people away from God and to find their hearts following things that have no power to save. My concern is when these things come out of the same mouths that ‘proclaim truth’ ‘uphold Jesus’ and do all sorts of other God given gifts. Do we put our testing minds to sleep as soon as someone has the appearance of godliness and therefore follow them off the path we should be holding tightly too. An eloquent speaker or learned Bible scholar can still bring their own values and beliefs to bear on the Bible more than letting God speak His message for Himself.

I suppose I have called this danger ‘Gospel plus’ but it is more subtle than that. Although I have once seen a leaders’ theological bias in their summary of the gospel I have more often seen other opinions held too tightly to result in a behaviour or attitude to others that was not in keeping with the gospel. However it is shown it is a serious concern. Taking your own heart away from Gods clear path has consequences that can be deadly for you and anyone who follows you.

I once heard the Gospel summarised in its most basic form as ‘Jesus Christ’ meaning that Jesus’ life and his role as the ‘Christ’ the rescuer of all who belong to Him is the basic Gospel. I didn’t love this when I heard it, I thought it too simple and not easy to apply. I now believe I was wrong! It is a great summary because it adds nothing to Gods Word revealed in Jesus, it makes us take seriously our own responsibility to know God well and understand the fullness of this truth, and it points to Him more than to us.

So I suppose this is my warning to beware of any ‘gospel’ or teaching that adds anything to these truths. They may be Biblical principles and words and values, but if they are held as highly as the life and accomplishments of Jesus then they may well take our eyes so far from Jesus that we lose Him. This is life and death.

get off the boat and get off it now (redeeming negative influences)

2 things. thing one: this is part of a series, probably best read the first one (redeeming Titanic) if you don’t get the context. Thing two: if I could use this wordpress blog i would’ve changed the last title the …(redeeming hate-mongers). The reason being to keep in line with one of the main ideas of what drives this blog: that God is good and so powerful that he can and does use even the bad things that happen for good, every day. And so… redeeming bad influences…

What about the kid on the lifeboat already. His parents aren’t stupid, they got him a place as soon as it started to kick off and they’re on there with him. it’s while they’re waiting for the lifeboat to be lowered that it all goes a bit wrong. See, they got their kid on the same boat as them but not at the same end, so they can’t quite see him all the time. he’s left to be influenced by those around him. Here’s the thing: although the people on the boat are in one sense the same, they’ve realised they needed to get off the boat and they’ve put their only hope of rescue into the puny looking lifeboat, it’s not enough to make them, well, nice. So it turns out this kid is getting spat on and having names called at him. He’s being marginalised and made to feel left out. Just like the school yard – except it’s people who should know better. They’re luckly to be alive and lucky be on a boat. You’d think there might be an ounce of humility in them from their situation but no. To add to all this, even though his parents have done their best to get him on the boat, he’s pretty mad at them for not being there with him now to give him a bit of help and support. We can see they did well getting him on the lifeboat in the first place, but we can also understand completely that he feels a bit let down by them, as yet he doesn’t get the magnitude of the situation he is in.

So what would you do if you were that kid? What conclusions would you draw?

This is what the kid does. He gets off the lifeboatboat. Of course he does, he gets off the lifeboat. For one, he knows some of the other kids who haven’t made it onto the lifeboat and they’re friends. Why would he stay and tolerate the abuse? So he gets off the lifeboat. As far as he can see he’s surrounded by nasty people, and who was it who made the excellent choice to put him in that position? His parents. The kid can’t really see that was a loving thing to do. The poeple who say they love him and want what’s best for him have put him in the company of some pretty horrible people and deserted him. Dunno about you but so far I’m with the kid. stupid parents; stupid lifeboat full of stupid people.

The tragedy is obvious. The big ship with the friendlier people sinks and they all die. The parents and the not-so-friendly-to-put-it-mildly people live (well actually, probably some of them fall of the lifeboat and drown too, but thats another story…)

What’s your advice to the kid? Seriously, it breaks my heart but so that he can live I’d beg him to stay on the lifeboat even though it means suffering the abuse. I’d also find it hard not to push some of the others out of the lifeboat myself but like I say I’ve a feeling some of them will fall out anyway!

Being on the lifeboat is more important than negative  experiences you might face while on there. And who knows, after sharing the experience of being out at sea in the freezing cold, sharing rations and battling for survival the kid might’ve learned to love the idiots and the idiots might’ve become, less, um… idiotic and learned to love the kid.

get off the boat and get off it now (even when you want to shoot the person telling you…) Jon

There i am in the main dining / dancing area. I’ve eaten well, had a few glasses of wine with my beautiful wife. Life is good. Sure I heard the bump a while ago, who didn’t but this ship is unsinkable, no need to worry. Got to take the rough with the smooth. All seems to being going well now… the wine, the wife, the dancing…

Then all of a sudden there’s a family of four shouting at everyone from the middle of the room that the ships going under and waving brightly colored placards in my general direction. They’re claiming to be the ship’s Lifeboat Committee. One placard says “You deserve to die scum” another “No room for you in my lifeboat” I’ve got to be honest, it seems a bit weird. I’m not sure exactly what they’re shouting but I’m pretty sure I heard one of them saying something about drowning in salt water being too good for us and something else about drowning in our own blood being more fitting.

Lifeboat Committee? you must be joking. Who’d follow them to a lifeboat even if the ship was sinking? In all fairness, it’s enough to put me off lifeboats for life, sinking ships or not. They can keep all the lifeboats, I’d rather stay here and drown than go with them.

you get the idea…

but what if they’re right? total a-holes granted, but right? What if the ship is sinking? (it is) Then what? Stay on the ship because you’d rather be anywhere than associated with these freaks. No, that’d be that whole cutting off of the nose to spite the face job. Here’s what you’d do, you’d work very hard to verify the facts then You’d get to a lifeboat, form a better committee so that on your way to your lifeboat you can tell people nicely.

…and then, as you sit in your boat watching the ship go down, you’d thank God you were persuaded it was sinking and hope the freaks who were shouting about it like a bunch of neo-nazi nut jobs are in some other boat or no boat at all!

get off the boat and get off it now (Redeeming Titanic) -Jon

Ok so you’ve probably got on this analogy before. The general idea is that you’re on Titanic. The ship is going down. you’re on it but you don’t believe it’s going down cos you know it’s unsinkable. Unless you get off the boat at get off it now you will die. Two things need to happen. First you need to be persuaded that it’s going down. Second you need to re-align your trust from the ship, to the lifeboats (even though the ship’s big and ‘unsinkable’ and the lifeboats seem a lot less likely to save, a lot less available and a lot less comfortable – at least for the time being!)

So that’s the analogy. The idea is to do a few brief blogs to reflect on some different situations or personality types or methods of communication that you might come across as different people try persuade you to get off the boat and get off it now. I’ll give you the punch line now – it’s that in all the scenarios that follow the fact that the boat is going down doesn’t change and remains unaffected by any other factor.

lets see how its pans out. I literally have no idea!