Peace & Sword

There is a careful distinction that we must make between ministering to one another’s strongholds and serving them. When we serve someone’s strongholds, we are adding power to them.

It might make more sense if I put it in terms of a practical example. Say that you were beginning to pastor someone who was hurt by an authority figure when they were young and now struggles with trusting leaders. We can minister to them by taking care to be gentle, by repatterning their perceptions and experience, by encouraging forgiveness and praying for healing and by challenging the person to seek freedom from the rule of the wound in their behaviour patterns.

Serving the stronghold would mean becoming dictated to by it –avoiding exercising any kind of authority whatsoever. If somebody’s issues move from the realm of “struggle” into “opposition” to what we believe God is doing, then it is probably time for confrontation.

I had this in mind last week when I read the story of Stephen:

Stephen was falsely accused of blaspheming against Moses. Instead of smoothing things over with the religious leaders by reassuring them that Moses was indeed, the bee’s knees, Stephen preached a sermon that went straight for the jugular of the idolatry and religious spirit that was making these insecure men feel so threatened. Their nerves ripped raw, they stoned Stephen to death.

Not a good day for Stephen’s mortal body but just look at what happened in the Spirit realm: He died already-in-glory and fell at the feet of the Jewiest Jew himself, Saul. Saul who sat prize-like at the pinnacle of this pretension that had set itself up against the kingdom. Stephen’s actions precipitated a fresh wave of intense persecution against the body culminating in a confrontation between God and Saul at Damascus and his transformation into Paul. Paul the badass body builder-upper.

I am praying at the moment that like Stephen, I can look at Him and know which and when. Peace and sword.

For You

So high, so far above, so mighty.

With me, under me, in me, through me, over me, for me.

No low too low, no dark too dark, no weakness too great, no bind too tight– for You.

A Culture of Opinion

There’s a Sufjan Stevens song that contains the line “I’ve made a lot of mistakes, in my mind, in my mind.” I can really relate to that. Over the past few years, God has scissored, repatterned and downright-delivered me from many of my mind mistakes.

I wanted to write something about opinions about other people. It may seem harmless, healthy even to be in the habit of forming opinions but I think that they can actually be problematic. It’s almost as if multitudes of human-wisdom, sight based opinions can spring weeds all over one’s mind garden and make it difficult for God’s higher thoughts to move freely. Habitually articulating opinions also impacts those around us.

Somewhere along the line, as a child, I began to take a lot of undue notice of opinions. Every time an opinion was expressed about another person, I logged it. I took great care to note the things that people were either praised or derided for. As this inroad into my mindset grew, I began to feel a weird satisfaction when other people were criticised (the critic wouldn’t be telling me their opinion if they thought I was like that too) and a sense of insecurity when they were praised. My entire sense of self was being constructed around this complex matrix of opinions that I noted.

I didn’t know what I was doing but for me, opinions became a much more powerful shaper of my inchoate identity than God. The fact that I assumed that everyone was forming opinions about me all of the time also meant that I found it hard to be at all visible. I began hiding and being passive.

Then there were the opinions that I had. I was in an environment of “opinions” and it became part of my thinking to form them. Despite the fact that they seemed quite anodyne, I think that just participating in this culture made it hard for me to see things how He sees them and, at times, made room for critical thoughts to come in. It’s as if I was laying tracks of soulish, human reason in my mind that the enemy could then use, even though that was never really in my heart.

When you begin to trust too much in your own opinions and get in the habit of forming them without it being part of a conversation with Him — then you are essentially building a human wisdom based system of right and wrong. It is religious, it lacks grace, it lacks real insight and it is of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and not of the Tree of Life. Your thinking is not led by the Spirit and can easily wander into unfruitful or even sinful territory.

A journey out of this begins with a lot of weeding. For a long time, I had to be as innocent as a dove when it came to thoughts about others. Whenever I thought about people and I didn’t sense Him in it, I would simply switch it off (or tell it to switch off in the name of Jesus — sometimes, it’s an authority issue). Similarly, I exercised a rigorous watchfulness over any conversations about other people. It is soberingly easy for “processing” to simply be a way to mask (possibly unintended, but all the same–) criticising. I know, I’ve messed up there before and it ain’t pretty.

When our gaze towards others becomes submitted to His gaze and our thoughts to His, higher thoughts and ways, something changes. We consider people with Him, through Him and in Him. Our thoughts about others become much more distinctly part of our ongoing conversation with Him. Their tenor is full of love and prayerful listening. We become excited by just how beautiful and special people are and the Spirit leads us into fruitful thinking about the people that He is connecting us with, as opposed to idle wonderings about anyone and everyone. There is no opinion culture in our lives anymore because it is not part of His nature; the Father’s thoughts are very intentional and He considers each one of us with unfathomable tenderness and individual care. Any hard-edged thoughts we have, quickly become prompts for forgiveness and/or self-insight (when we judge specks, we normally have logs).

I feel like I am only at the very brink of the Father’s mind, but every thought of His I glimpse makes me full of wonder, cleanses me, invigorates me, radically rewires my synapses (or it feels like it!) and makes me tremendously excited about this journey of knowing Him and adventuring with Him. And always; astounded, astounded, astounded, by His love.

Procuring Hope

In my last post, I talked about adversity and the opportunity for maturation that it gives us. However, accepting the presence of adversity is not the same as anticipating it.

Anticipating adversity is dangerous. I know because I have been doing it. It is fertile ground for fear and dread. I think that these thoughts, when they become fixations can even cause things to manifest — we begin to prophesy the enemy’s plans over our own futures. We begin to adopt a stance of defeat before we’ve even received a blow.

Luckily for me, one of my prophetic friends poked at this pretty hard and stopped me laying more tracks for the dread train with my mind. Even so, my initial conundrum was — “but these things I’m fearing might well happen”. Breezy, glass-half-full, silver-lining thinking felt contrived. I needed something more solid to stand on than it might not happen.

I asked Him for some keys. He gave me four and I am practising them. They are simple but they are changing my mindset and helping me with my bout of hope deferred heart sickness.

1. Take Note of What Remains
This refrain keeps coming back to me. After a season of shaking, take note of what remains. It is the first step of rebuilding. It helps you to see the first fruits of your new season and not just the fragments and absences. It helps you to know what is strong. It helps you to find something to praise Him for rather than something to despair over.

2. Desire Pangs
Sometimes it’s super-fun to dream but after a few knocks, it can be tentative and painful. I had begun shutting down my desires because they all felt so impossible and because I’d experienced some deep disappointment. I felt like indulging them was just a cruel way to tease myself.

God sharpens our desires — but He never shuts them down. Our desires are a crucial part of Him being able to dream and incarnate through our lives. You know who wants you to shut down your desires? Yes, the enemy of the kingdom of God that’s who.

Lesson learned: Don’t shut down your desires, even when it hurts to have them. Listen to your pangs and talk to Him about them.

He has also been challenging me, for each far-off, impossible-seeming desire, what can I do today that is a step towards it? No matter how microscopal. Do not despise the day of small things. I have found much tenderness and joy in these small moments and they have made me feel less defeated.

3. Victory Songs
I learned recently that Roman soldiers wrote the name of battles they’d endured on their helmets. So when Paul wrote about the helmet of hope of salvation (1 Thessalonians 5:8), he most likely had this in mind.

He told me to practice my victory “songs”, to start orally speaking out victories that He has won in my life. When I started doing this, I was surprised by how alien it felt to me. I was also surprised by how powerful it was. Here are a couple of my favourites:

-Times of financial hardship have weakened the rule of circumstance in my life.
-I still love Him. No, I love Him more!
-He has peopled my life with great care in each season.
-He has given me strategic, spiritual understanding in the midst of every hardship I have faced.

4. Promises
Ask Him for promises. All I can tell you about this, is that if you seek them you will find them (or be reminded of them). Once you find them, keep speaking them.

The great thing about promises, is that they are the perfect antidote to wasted energy on unfruitful “what if?” thoughts.

& finally.
I love this church and am very grateful for their wonderful teaching podcasts (available on iTunes). Here is a wonderful sermon from Bill Johnson at Bethel Church about this subject that I would recommend.

Adversity Aversion

Adversity is not out of place in our lives and it’s not always a sign that something is wrong. Just look at Jesus, his adversity levels only got higher and higher (as did he!). Having victory over adversity will sometimes mean that it stops. At other times, the adversity remains and yet we don’t allow it to have more power than God in our lives. Though you slay me, yet will I worship you (Job).

We must be careful, in our mindsets to not become averse to adversity itself or we could end up fighting the wrong things and hoping for the wrong things. Paul recognised this when he learned to live with the thorn in his flesh — he was wise enough to see that in that instance, victory from adversity was won in his character.

Adversity does a work. It rains on both the righteous and the wicked — we all experience adversity but it has a way of separating the things that are alive, of the Spirit and that know Him from the things that are of the flesh and part of death. I think that we see this at the end of Psalm 34:

Many are the afflictions of the righteous,
but the Lord delivers him out of them all.
He keeps all his bones;
not one of them is broken.
Affliction will slay the wicked,
and those who hate the righteous will be condemned.
The Lord redeems the life of his servants;
none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.

Even on an individual level, I believe that adversity has this impact. That is one of the reasons why, after periods of shaking in our lives, it is good to take note of what remains — they are clear markers of what has life in Him.

When we resolve to know Him in adversity, it can give us a victory that blesses others. In Psalm 84 it says “As they pass through the valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs.” (Baca, means weeping and lamentation.) Enduring adversity can be a priestly calling — of course, Jesus is the ultimate model of this as he suffered in extremis that we could know the Father and receive the Spirit and be redeemed. If in our lives we don’t simply resist but learn to overcome judgement, poverty, fear and other such beasts, we will have some real treasure to offer those who come after us.

Over the new year, I was really struggling with fear after some particularly nasty violent crimes in my neighbourhood. Part of me wanted to just get away for a while but it wasn’t at all practical. But then I realised that if I didn’t learn to stay in peace in my situation, then what good would I be to my sons if they are ever faced with worse? As the world shakes, adversity is not going to go away but as the kingdom advances, our victory in its midst will be brighter and stronger.

I am trying to learn to base my hope for the future not on things like comfort, happiness and wealth but on victory — more of Him in all things.

Blood & Water

“Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water.” John 19:34

I was considering how part of Jesus’ mission was to create distinction. Through his life, he revealed a distinction between the Father and the Son. Through his death, he revealed a distinction between the Son and the Spirit.

Every time God revealed a new part of Himself, it gave us not only a greater understanding but more access and relationship to another part.

It seems significant to me therefore, that at the moment of his death, there was this symbol of distinction — Jesus said that he needed to leave in order for the Spirit to come and here we see his blood being literally parted from his water.

Blood and water– both of which he’d used very overtly to teach us the way. After communion he said “do this in remembrance of me”. After he washed his disciples’ feet he said “you also should do just as I have done for you”. These aren’t just abstract metaphors, they are paths.

His offered body is giving us both; two baptisms — the justification of his blood and the sanctifying work that the Holy Spirit works in us throughout our lives. Sealed and delivered.

The People of His Pasture

When English people think of sheep in pasture this is what we see:

I was reading the Good Shepherd passage in John this week and thinking about being called a sheep. And what does it mean to be in His pasture? It seems like a lot of us understand the getting through the gate part but what does it really mean to be lead out further than that, as Jesus says– to “go out and find pasture”?

One thing is for sure, in Jesus’ time, pasture did not mean a lush green field enclosed by a fence. Pasture was wild. It was the art of being able to find food in the unlimited expanse. Sheep roamed the land with their shepherd. Pasture was dangerous — a shepherd had a staff and a harp and was probably quite a contemplative and tender sort but he also needed to be able to lamp a wolf one with his rod.

The whole idea of pasture rests on the relationship between sheep and their shepherd. He quite literally becomes their boundary. They learn his voice in the fold and at watering holes, in the chaos of many thirsty herds, they follow his voice to rejoin their flock. Apparently sheep are unable to find their own way back into the pen even if it is in their sight — they only follow the voice that they have learned. Because of this way of herding animals, shepherds were committed to their sheep in quite an extraordinary way; they were with them at all times. It was not just a job, it was a commitment to be ever present, to be alongside.

To be in His pasture then means to walk into ever changing and potentially dangerous terrain. To be so attuned and dependent on His voice that we no longer trust the logic of our own sight. To trust Him to lead us to food and water, to trust Him to separate us out from chaos into our own flocks, to trust Him to protect us and find us. He has chosen to be our Shepherd, he has committed to be ever-present with us–in our waking, our sleeping, our cooking, our friendships, our coffee-drinking, our school runs, our work, our TV watching…all of it. That He should choose that says so much about who He is.

Take Note of What Remains

After a season of shaking, take note of what remains. Ask Him about it because it will be significant.

Jesus Wept

A short thought for the shortest verse:

I had always thought that Jesus was crying because Lazarus was dead. Re-reading it this week however, I think that he was crying more for Mary, Martha and their close friends.

Jesus really loved Mary, Martha and their brother Lazarus– John makes a point of emphasising this at the beginning of John 11. It was a special and deep relationship. After Lazurus dies (or falls asleep) , Jesus arrives in Bethany and one after the other the distraught sisters come to him and express profound feelings of abandonment: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died”. Mary is the second sister to ask him this and when she asks, she has thrown herself at his feet, weeping. There are others gathered who are also crying. Confronted with this scene, it says that Jesus was greatly disturbed in spirit.

Imagine being looked in the eye by those you love and seeing that they have felt completely abandoned by you. Imagine holding the tension of seeing the “only sleeping”, episodic nature of Lazarus’ death in the midst of high-running feelings and the heavy hearted, weighty atmosphere of profound grief. Imagine seeing your closest friends in deep pain and all the while, the question hanging heavy in the air, in the minds of everyone you most love — where were you? Why didn’t you help?

I love Him. He is never glib or dispassionate about our suffering, even though He can see greater stories. More than that, the moments when we feel abandoned cause him searing pain because nothing could ever be further from the truth of the burning, passionate, present love He feels for us. In the tension between our momentary troubles and flickering perception and the greater glory and full union, he weeps.

Some advice from those that have walked the path:

The world’s longest married couple, Zelmyra (101 years old) and Herbert (104) have been married for almost 86 years and this is what they have to say about the subject:

“Marriage is a commitment to the Lord.”

I want to say amen to that statement, I think it cuts to the heart of what marriage is. It’s not just that I want to be with my man because he is a good life partner, it’s not even that I am simply committed to him as a person; it’s that I have committed to God to be committed to him.

That’s the rock — that’s the source of true help and the thing that really keeps you together through a crisis. I am so frail, I could never still be married without the very real and present help of my Father. If you let Him be the one that joins you, He will join you on every step (and fall) of the way.

(Full article here).