It takes 15 years to grow a Tuart

Image: Ecoscape.

Friends recently adopted a Eucalyptus gomphocephala. They water it most days of the week. Within fifteen years it will be 10 metres tall. We too take time to mature.

It’s difficult to say to someone when they want it all now that all things take time. It’s difficult to say, you can’t have it now. Like the Eucalyptus gomphocephala (the Tuart tree), all things of stature take time to develop.

More than ever we live in an instant ‘pop-up’ world. More than ever people want instant results. I know this well even as I get disheartened on day three of a four-month campaign to lose 30 pounds. It’s so easy to say it’s all too hard.

It takes 15 years to grow a Tuart. It takes that sort of time to grow a career too, and a family, and a reputation. Most things take that sort of time to grow. The rules are the same for everyone.

This life favours those with faith enough to invest daily for the fifteen-year result. One day we will be that fifteen years older so we might as well commit to the journey.

A 365-Day Easter

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Now that Easter is over for another year, we may well forget its significance.

Perhaps Jesus is trying to get our attention. Or, keep our attention.

It might seem easy for those engaged full-time in ministry to maintain their faith. This is not the case; quite the reverse, as so many of us know. Even for those of us engaged in pivotal part-time service can easily fall foul of doing it all in our own strength.

A relationship with Jesus sets as its centrepoint the life of repentance, or of turning back to God, for guidance, for help, for discernment, for leading, and for humility, daily, moment by moment; a prayerful consciousness. Are we ever anything of veracity without His help?

When we are thankful for the cross we bear our cross without resentment. He leads us into acceptance for that which we cannot change. We are less tossed and thrown by the vicious, uncaring waves of fickledom.

When we are awestruck by His resurrection we are enthralled about the life He has given us; the faith-life which overflows with more abundance than we often readily imagine. We have courage to change what we can. A confidence that we cannot claim as ours is ours.

Easter ought to be an everyday experience. That could be His challenge and opportunity. Maybe He has so much more to reveal to us. The truth is He has so much that He wants to show us. God displays His glory to us commensurate with our intimacy, our wholehearted devotion, our sheer love.

A 365-day Easter is the way we take God’s hand as He walks with us into the vast sweeping unknown.

Lord Jesus, help me live life in You, with You, and for You;
today for today, tomorrow when it comes,
and ever more Your way and not my own.
Amen.

What a thing to face — you can’t out-sin God’s grace

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No matter how long we’ve accepted Christ’s death and resurrection as our salvation and new life, we still cannot fully comprehend it.

This is a fact by the way we live. We cannot stop living in a self-condemning way at times, and we’re so quick to judge. Judge another and like a boomerang we reveal how much we judge ourselves by the insecurities we reveal are adhered to our persona. That, or we get stuck in comparison-mode, and we cannot get over how well-endowed or fortunate or blessed another person is. And the trick here is, the more we think we know Christ or have Him, the more we’re ruined by pride. God won’t be ‘had’ by anyone. See how blessedness can never be a material asset, only a spiritual one?

The only one who is close to Jesus is the one who knows how derelict they are without Him.

The gospel is a complete paradox that none in humanity can reconcile other than let themselves be swept up in a mystery. The best position we find ourselves in with God is when we feel unworthy of His saving us, because we’re so well in-touch with our sin.

If you feel unworthy, well, take comfort in this:

He who cannot not keep His Word,

Has given up His Son, even for you,

He has given Him up,

And there is nothing more to do.

Oh, I do understand what you think,

God knows we think the same,

That’s why God did what He could,

To entirely and eternally deal with our shame.

So you think, ‘what shall I do?’

Well I think God wants you to rest,

To stop trying and competing,

And let Him work in you best.

But don’t ever think you’ve mastered Him,

It’s those who know they haven’t who do,

Those who are in touch with their sin,

Are ever the Father’s kin.

God must love it most when we enjoy grace for what it is, gratefully, knowing we don’t deserve it.

As our sinfulness abounds in our consciousness, grace abounds more in our connection with God, as we seek Him.

What a thing it is to face, that none of us can out-sin God’s grace.

The passion that broke Jesus as He bled compassion

Scene from The Passion of the Christ (2004)

The betrayal in Gethsemane stands once for all time, the treachery of humanity against a God that devised us. Even of a sense that we may love God, we resist God and even repel God at times. Judas Iscariot lives in each of us; that fearful, greedy, self-obliging spirit.

The Passion of the Christ (2004) was released on February 25, 2004. I know because I was there. It was a poignant time in my life when God had my fullest attention and obedience. I was both broken and on fire.

It was a Wednesday. The preceding Monday (the 23rd) had seen me rocked to within an inch of my life — five months to the day of my very first cataclysmic rock bottom experience — and this event five months later was worse than anything else I’d experienced. I was at work in an industrial port location, a leader around many wild men, beside myself in a panic attack that lasted an hour or more, and on a helpline desperate for aid. Nothing could assuage the grief I experienced that day. There had been some conflict, and I had never felt more alone and vulnerable, ever. I took the opportunity to see the operations manager who was an empathic friend, and he ordered me to go home; a non-Christian, he even offered to pray for me to my God! The drive home was twenty minutes of mental Armageddon. I devised a plan, if you know what I mean. It was a silly plan that would never have worked, but I was frantic for escape. When I arrived home, I paced through the place in that living hell, just not able to settle, tormented within. That place represented death, and death threatened to envelope me.

I was in what felt like Gethsemane, though without the burden of all eternity’s humanity crushing me.

This experience was the perfect taster for the days soon to come — to tearfully witness The Passion seven times over a fourteen-day timeframe. I sobbed throughout each showing, unashamed for what others thought. It really didn’t bother me.

Jesus meant so much.
He suffered, and was scourged and mocked,
and He bled, and His body was torn apart, and He DIED, for me!

They brutalised Him.

Only in the unconscionable
is there the witness of a compassion that bleeds love.

What God showed me about Jesus’ passion has stayed with me. It was only as I had been rejected that I came to understand how beautiful it was that Jesus was rejected. It was only from that situation — utterly alone but for five humans (my parents and my daughters) who were inextricably invested in me — that I came to understand how His love equalled the cross. A sacrifice I too could live. Feeling alone, betrayed, abandoned helped me relate with a Saviour who Himself had died alone, betrayed, abandoned.

Jesus’ passion broke Him, and in this the Father was well pleased, for God’s compassion is resplendent for all eternity in the passion of the Christ.

Isaiah 53, the Reversal of God, a Lamb, and the Easter Bunny

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Has Easter ever struck you are weird? Half the world talks about the Easter Bunny as if that is what Easter is about, whilst the real meaning of Easter is lost. Another concept that’s weird, albeit closer to home for Christians, is that of the reversal of God: the God of Judgment for and against Israel becomes the judged.

This is seen starkly in Isaiah 53 — the absolute pivot-point of the suffering servant chapters of Isaiah 40-55.

Suddenly, the Father allows humanity to crucify His Son, the Lamb of God. And it is prophesied from nearly eight-hundred years beforehand. From the benefit of hindsight, it wasn’t a surprise.

Jesus, as the suffering servant, is rejected (Isaiah 53:1-3), He carries our sin (vv. 4-6), resulting in His slaughter, though, as a Lamb, He is silent (vv. 7-9), and, in His carrying of our sin makes atonement for us (vv. 10-12). He is the only one who could atone — the price to atone for sin, the blood of a sinless Saviour.

The Easter Bunny, however, completely blurs out the effect of salvation at Easter. Most people in my land connect Easter more with a bunny and Christmas more with Santa Claus than they see Jesus as central to both events.

The Easter Bunny apparently has Christian origins — like with Santa Claus — and is a judge of children’s behaviour. If you’ve been good you get good gifts, and if you’ve been bad you don’t.

The anachronism is that God gives us good gifts even though we’re bad! Yes, that’s right. Easter’s true meaning is that Christ died on the cross because we are bad. We need saving. God knew it from before time began. So, in a seeming reversal of God, instead of God judging us for being bad, He gives us the gift of salvation.

Easter has become a confused time, with images of bunnies, eggs and flowers intermingling with crosses and lambs. Funnily, the bunnies and eggs have a Christian tradition, but that has been forgotten.

This year, like all years, we have the opportunity to sit back and reflect over the centrality of the Easter message, which is Jesus crucified for the forgiveness of our sin, on a very Good Friday, and risen to enable us access to the gift of new life in His name on Sunday.

The gospel opportunity in apology

Clothing to reach people — shirt by Steve Grace

Many people despise the thought of genuine, heartfelt apology, unless it is something they require from another person who has transgressed them. Then it’s fundamental to moving forward relationally.

Apology is seen as a weakness, but I contend that it is paradoxically one of our strongest strengths. Particularly in glorifying God. Even for winning people back into our hearts through a ministry of reconciliation.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9:22,

“I have become all things to all people,
that I might by all means save some.”

What I think he is saying is, I don’t care what I need to do within the moral realm to reach people — it’s all about them; it’s no longer about me. Sacrificing ‘me’ is no longer something I think of as sacrifice, if the gospel is advanced.

Apology is where our sinful nature is an advantage — and there we were all lamenting how imperfect we are.

We win people over through being fallible, through being earnest in our apology, even as we get our relationships wrong. And we suddenly don’t need to be perfect or at our best at all times.

Apology is a redemptive pathway.

Sometimes all we have to offer a relationship is apology, but this is a powerful thing to offer the relationship. Our apology may not be accepted, and that’s okay. Our hearts are right about the matter. That’s what counts. We have a clear conscience. And we are ready for the Holy Spirit to work in the other person.

The gospel’s great opportunity in relationship is not when everything is fine, but when we’re in conflict, and we find a way, through apology, to restore trust. Restoration of trust is not granted without repentance. But as soon as people see how serious we are in putting the relationship first healing can occur.

Sorry is the bridge spanning the relational divide, brokenness on the one side to reconciliation on the other.

How the God of Peace won the War

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The gospel seems unattractive until there is no other way. It’s the way God inevitably wins. He does not win our hearts to peace until He has been to war with us; until we recognise that we have constantly put idols above Him, and finally having decided that it’s futility.

The God of peace won the war for our hearts two millennia ago, but we never understand until this God of peace overcomes our heart through the overwhelming circumstances in our lives. We must finally reconcile how prone we are to rejecting God.

The God of peace wins the war for our hearts when we continue to agree that we continually worship idols. When we continually agree such a thing, acknowledging it’s wrong, we determine to live for Christ. We don’t live for Christ simply because it’s a good idea.

We live for Christ because we cannot live without Him. If we can live without Him, we do not live for Christ. If we can live without Him, it’s because we cannot live without other things: idols. And even when we cannot live without Him, we continue to struggle with a range of idols.

The human condition is devastating in contrast to a holy God; devastating for us, for others, for God.

The God of peace won the war by directing the war into Himself, taking it in His own hands, and declaring a Sovereign peace over it by His own destruction.

He declares that we are to do one and the same thing; to follow Christ is to follow His example.

The God of peace wins the war in us when we prize His peace that much that we hold a living armistice.

What does this look like in our world, today? Consider these words of the apostle Peter:

⁸ And finally, all of you, be of one mind, sympathetic and full of brotherly affection, good-hearted and humble of mind. ⁹ Do not return evil for evil, or insult for insult, but on the contrary, bless — for this is what you are called to do, so that you may inherit blessing. ¹⁰ For those who choose to love life and see good days must stop the tongue from evil and the lips from speaking deceit, ¹¹ They must turn from evil and do good; they must seek peace and pursue it. ¹² For the eyes of the Lord are on the just and his ears are open to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is set against those who do evil.^[1] (1 Peter 3:8-12 [NRSV])

These are words to ponder…

Prizing God’s peace is what gives us the will and the power to live the apostle Peter’s words.

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^[1] Michaels, J. R. (1998). 1 Peter (Vol. 49, p. 173). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

Seven ways Tears beat Fears

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This article is brought to you today by the concept of tears of depth when the heart is moved. A vision God gave me in those tears: there are multiple ways tears help us to feel alive every day and remove fear.

1.     Tears in being touched. In worshipping God, for the moment of being touched is true worship. In seeing prayers answered, no matter how small. In seeing hope realised. Worship negates all fear.

2.     Tears at injustice. Rather than an anger that loses itself in rage, an anger based in fear, tears at injustice prove the power of a righteous anger that commits to doing what it can, and merely accepts what grieves God’s heart.

3.     Tears for sadness. It’s obvious that tears are for sadness, but did you know that without awareness and expression of sadness when we’re sad there is only fear left because we have nowhere else to run… with courage to sadness or with fear to anger.

4.     Tears of connection. When two people connect through tears something is happening, whether it is empathy, lament or forgiveness, and fear has been overcome.

5.     Tears of joy. Nothing quite beats those tears that are shed on instinct when euphoria takes over. There is no semblance of fear in such a moment.

6.     Tears of laughter. Yes, such a momentary joy for the brief excursion into connection with absurdity. Again, the absence of fear.

7.     Tears at truth. Sometimes the truth floors us, and in the surprise of it all we simply give way to waterfall of emotion. Where we face truth, fear is also faced.

No such thing as an article for all persons and all seasons

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God was doing business in me recently when I had to realise something well beyond my control. In 400-words I cannot satisfy all His truth; I can only hit one angle.

Most books cannot cover all the territory the author would want to cover.

The concern came in how I lead others in understanding how acceptance comes through the process of grief. Within a few weeks I wrote two articles[1] that could seem to contradict each other. God made me aware of this having written the second one — He gave it to me to wrestle.

Having wrestled, the key issue is they both, individually, reflect different truth — two different persons’ truth. In this case, as far as recovery from grief is concerned, two people’s responses are polar different. The first one experiences no immediate recovery to acceptance, and suffers for a decade or longer, grieving at times traumatically. The other has the opposite experience: tragically loses a child, yet, having grieved for a time, has an epiphany that reduces all the sorrow to meaning. It seems for the one, that God hasn’t stepped in, yet for the other He has. I do not think in such terms, though.

Both responses to grief are equally valid because they’re both real case scenarios lived out by real people.

The conflict I experience in writing what God lays on my heart is the torment at times that I’m leading people wrongly. In writing about one perspective of truth, people are bound to read these words in the absolute sense — like the truth I write is the only truth. It is truth, just not all the truth; just one sliver of truth within myriads.

I don’t know how many times I’ve seriously considered giving up writing, and the many times I’m made such an attempt. But either God goaded me back or other people did. I certainly cannot stop. The Lord speaks too much to be ignored. He has chosen this medium for me. (Like it’s taken only 19 minutes to write this… and still He’s speaking…)

This article is an attempt to reconcile how I feel about the possibility that I may have betrayed the reader.

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[1] Those articles can be read here: http://epitemnein-epitomic.blogspot.com.au/2018/03/accepting-things-that-cannot-be-changed.html AND http://inspiringbetterlife.blogspot.com.au/2018/03/that-old-long-arc-of-grief.html

Accepting the things that cannot be changed as chosen

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“Those things I would not have chosen, have become things I would not change.” — Elizabeth Oliver

There is something incredibly stark about wisdom; those pithy little statements, often alliterated, and often so profound they cause more than a moment’s captivation.

There we were in the dark, out the front of the church, musing about our experiences of grief, when Mrs Oliver said that exact thing!

The reason this wisdom resonated with me is it spoke to my lived experience — grief that was excruciating and lasting, a hellish process, but through which new light and life is now known. For without the grief, there would be no grace.

I make a caveat for the person who thinks this wisdom is bizarre — even an impossible folly. I guess we must agree that faith must decide whether it believes God can make of what happens to us worth the pain. I would suggest that God can make it not only worth our pain, but that He can show us things we otherwise could never know.

Indeed, God can change our entire mindset in a moment — nothing is too much for the Lord. Does God always break through in these ways? No, not always, and certainly rarely with immediacy. But if God can speak through a little mother bird who chirped serenely having just lost her chicks, then it is possible.

Back to the concept of this article. If we turn it around and test it, I think the same thing is possible: we can learn to accept as chosen the things that cannot be changed, particularly if we’d choose now not to change them; that we accept life as it is now, without regret. This is no betrayal of those we have left behind us. Perhaps eternity will make sense of it, and that is a reasonable hope.

If we cannot alter the flow of change in our lives, there is much to be said for changing the flow of our attitude toward whatever we cannot alter. It is very wonderful, in that it works.

Another way of looking at this is, accepting something that happens to us beyond our will is logical, especially as we cannot change it. God is faithful and helps us adjust to it.

Blessed is the person who, 

whatever happens to them, 

can eventually move forward.

Jesus not for Superfluousness, Jesus for the Soul

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In teaching children about the cycle of recalcitrance-ruin-repentance-restoration, God has made it clear to me that we are people of His heart who continually reject His heart.  

Chrysostom (349—407) puts it this way: “While we leave unattended the fountain of our ills, we still hope to have the streams unpolluted.”

As a humanity we constantly look outside the problem to solve it. The spirituality is easy to explain. None of us wants to come under the dominion of anyone or anything else, least of all God. We want life our way, thank you very much.

Disobedience is in every single one of us most of the time — especially even in the ones who the world thinks ought to know better. It is a scourge against us all. By the sins of both commission and omission. We are only a matter of misfortune away from misdemeanour, and merely a season of such malevolence as to completely walking away. Anyone who thinks they are beyond this is kidding themselves.

There is in all of life, the great I AM; the all-powerful EVER WAS, the all-knowing WILL ALWAYS BE. He is the eternal Father, the Jesus from the Ages, the Holy Spirit of God.

God designed life in the inextricable way of us needing Him. Whenever we disparage this idea our lives go poorly — we become people who insist on the stream being crystal perfect, yet we put up with the ills that come from the filth we insist upon drinking. Even us so-called followers of Jesus.

Our only hope is a momentary repentance graced by heightened awareness of our nature. Not pointing our finger to the sin of others, all the while minimising our own sins. Jesus told us we must get the log out of our own eye before we can even hope to see the speck in the other person’s (Matthew 7:1-5).

Jesus is not for the superfluous. Jesus is for our soul. He is the Vine of truth who shows us our error for our good; for our freedom. Where are we ignoring Jesus today at our peril?

Jesus’ heart is for followers to live authentic lives, not as those who continually contrive an act.

Jesus is not interested in how much we know about God, but what we do with God in our own lives.

Jesus is looking for genuine sacrifice, not for something that looks good.

Jesus wishes us to bless the world without us insisting on the world loving Him.

We must admit we are very good at getting Jesus wrong. Being honest about this is blessedness.

Jesus seeks and speak to the heart, beyond superfluousness; He desires connection to our soul.

If we seek His heart, Jesus will give us His heart. And He will ripple outward into the reaches of our world from within us.

Did they really say you’re suffering because of your sin?

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If Job’s life teaches us anything, it’s that we don’t have to do wrong to suffer. Indeed, that’s the point of Job — to show us that righteous people will suffer.

Read Job chapter 1 and there are several striking ironies. Even though Job is blessed greatly, he takes none of his blessedness for granted (vv. 1, 5). Job’s children are not pure, but somehow, they are sanctified by the sacrifices he makes for them to God (v. 5). God is found in discussion with Satan (v. 7). God also appears to think Job is beyond reproach (v. 8). Satan, in accusing Job, appears to correct God (vv. 9-11). God is one with all power and apparently empowers Satan to test Job (v. 12). The theology here is amazing.

And, the most striking irony of all; Job always did what was right, and he was about to be cursed as much as anyone could be — in this life!

We should always ask ourselves why accounts like Job’s life made it into the Bible and stood the test of time and have been retained. Especially when the theology in such a compressed unit seems bizarre to our western twenty-first century minds.

Consider also the running cliché just about everyone has heard: if you’re suffering you must have some sin in your life that God is punishing you for, or God cannot and will not heal you because of the sin in your life. Most Christians have heard about this dumb and insensitive theology. From a ministry viewpoint, it has become folklore for what not to do. Yet, we still hear of it occasionally. The best thing we could ever say in response to such false teaching is to point them in the direction of Job.

Let us set the record straight, theologically and biblically, using Job. Here was a man that had every reason to complain, yet he suffered in silence. He had no idea why God had allowed him to suffer, and he suffered not only loss on a cataclysmic level, but he suffered fools as friends who were poor comforters.

God has given us the book of Job so we can be encouraged when we suffer, with the sufferings of a friend in Job, whose sufferings exemplify Jesus’ sufferings in so many ways — they did not deserve to suffer, and we may not deserve our suffering either.

Job is given to us to prove that good people do suffer, and, when it occurs without cause, it is always a mystery. Such is the sovereignty of God.

Nobody can say for sure why it is that God lets people suffer. But we can postulate, and the Bible gives us its view. Based from my own experience, my theological reflection is that suffering draws us into the mystery, where we may ultimately accept the mystery of suffering. Acceptance. The object of suffering is to lead us on a journey to acceptance. Acceptance of the mystery draws us into a journey with God where we learn the blessedness of God reliance — which seems to reconcile all manner of problems we have in this life.

Suffering for no good reason is a humbling reality in life, in a life where humility is a virtue we never have enough of. See the kind of life suffering produces? We do well not to resent it, but we are forgiven for our complaints when we do. Not even Jesus enjoyed suffering.

Perhaps the only encouragement we can receive when we’re suffering for no good reason is that it is not sin that has caused it.

It is enough to suffer, and more than enough to suffer without apparent cause. It is too much to believe that sin causes all suffering.

Why we never need to be good enough

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Preaching a message recently on Jesus being the author of gender equality reinforced an idea: I will never be good enough to preach such a message.

You see, I will always be a man. I will always see from an unbalanced viewpoint — either too much for women or too much against, or just unable to see properly from a woman’s viewpoint. Of course, this is okay. God made me a man. And the women who heard the message were encouraged. It is enough. Though I am tempted to think it isn’t enough.

It is a time to remember.

Good enough is knowing I never need to be good enough.
That Jesus was enough for all eternity for all who are not good enough.

There are so many things at which, and situations where, I am not good enough.

There are times and situations where we would all like to be more. But we must accept we are not.

It is a good reminder that in many different ways I never need to be good enough — in other words, I don’t need to rise to the standard my perfectionistic pride would set for myself. It is only ever the shadow of myself — the one who is ashamed that I’m not perfect — that asserts himself. I am more than that shadow. I am the redeemed new creation in Christ Jesus. And so are you.

Why is this liberating concept a concept of the grace found only in the gospel?

Well, let me present an eternally assuring truth for which I am ever thankful — here it is:

At times when I don’t feel I’m enough,
I defer to what Jesus did,
and I know that, IN HIM, I’m always enough.