fresher, shorter pastures

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Faithfulness

What does faithfulness mean to you? What does faithfulness mean to our world today?

A while ago I was on a tube in London and I saw this advert up above the seats in front of me. I forget exactly what it was advertising (excellent news for its authors) but what I remember is that it was offering the male reader the chance to save money on his home and family life in some way. As a motivation for saving money, it ended with words to this effect, ‘so then you can afford a weekend away with the mistress’.

Now maybe you just had to be there, or maybe it’s just me, but I was incredibly dismayed by that. Not so much the revelation that people are unfaithful to their wives (the depressing truth today is that it is no longer a revelation when it happens), but rather that our society has come to see it as such a normal occurrence, to such an extent that advertisers are able to use it as a marketing tool.

Over the past year or so I have been thinking about faithfulness in relation to my own relationship with God. Last summer I spent a lot of time reading through the Old Testament and one of the greatest impressions I got from it was the resolute faithfulness of God. Time and time He continued to fulfil his promise to Israel despite them time and time rejecting Him and turning to others things.

I find it very easy to look down at the Israelites and wonder how they were so unfaithful however in doing so I unconsciously raise myself up as being better than them. But is this really right? Weren’t the Israelites a golden calf worshipping people? Didn’t they whine and complain when God provided them with Manna in the desert? Didn’t they always just take on the culture, deities and lifestyles of those around them? They were totally awful. I’m not like that.

In Isaiah 1 God says this to the Israelites:

‘The children I raised and cared for have turned against me. Even the animals - the donkey and the ox - know their owner and appreciate his care, but not my people Israel. No matter what I do for them, they still do not understand.’ (v3)

I’m not like that. I go to church and love the worship there. At home I read my Bible and pray. I’m not like them.

‘I am sick of your sacrifices,’ says the Lord. ‘Don't bring me any more burnt offerings! I don't want the fat from your rams or other animals. I don't want to see the blood from your offerings of bulls and rams and goats. Why do you keep parading through my courts with your worthless sacrifices? The incense you bring me is a stench in my nostrils! Your celebrations of the new moon and the Sabbath day, and your special days for fasting - even your most pious meetings - are all sinful and false. I want nothing more to do with them. I hate all your festivals and sacrifices. I cannot stand the sight of them! From now on, when you lift up your hands in prayer, I will refuse to look. Even though you offer many prayers, I will not listen. For your hands are covered with the blood of your innocent victims.’ (v11 – 15)

Oh, they did that stuff too. Maybe I’m not so different after all.

Through Isaiah God made it clear that being faithful to Him did not equate to simply going through the religious motions of the law. The Israelites brought sacrifices to the God, they had meetings and celebrations in God’s honour. They fasted and had deeply ‘pious’ religious meetings. They even stretched their hands out when they sang and prayed! Surely they must be pleasing God!

No, they were still unfaithful. God’s accusation in verse 3 was still true.

So what then is the faithfulness God desires?

God is a God who seeks to rebuke but then build up. He continues:

‘Wash yourselves and be clean! Let me no longer see your evil deeds. Give up your wicked ways. Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed. Defend the orphan. Fight for the rights of widows’ (v16 – 17)

What is God saying? I believe He was, and is still, saying precisely what He said in Jesus said many years later:

‘ “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” All the other commandments and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.’ (Matthew 22.37 – 40)

While the Israelites were obeying the law by letter, true obedience to God came from the heart, and from the heart comes a lifestyle; a lifestyle that more than anything impacts those around you.

Through Isaiah God asked of the Israelites to seek justice, help the oppressed, defend the orphan and fight for widows. This is not an exhaustive list but rather indications of the lifestyle.

As I reflected on this I came to realise that it makes perfect sense. To show you what I mean allow let me paint you a picture.

****************

A wife sits at home with the dinner on the table. It’s been there an hour. He’s late home again and with no word of warning. He arrives home gone 8pm.

‘Where’ve you been?’

‘Oh I’m sorry love, I was held up at work. Won’t do it again.’

‘That’s ok, come sit down and we can talk about that thing’

‘I can’t. I said I’d meet the boys at the pub. I told you that’

‘Oh I know but we were supposed to talk together’

‘I know I know, sorry, got to run. Kiss kiss’

Week later. Wife at restaurant. No show from husband. 40mins late. Phone call.

‘I’m so sorry love, I had to rush off to airport. Work had an emergency and need me to fly to Germany. Will be back late Sunday’

‘But it’s our anniversary, we had this planned for a week’

‘I know, but you know, work came up. I’ve sent you a gift. I’m so sorry’

Week further on. Husband comes home with flowers.

‘Hi love, here I bought you these’

‘Thank you darling. They’re beautiful’

‘I thought we could get a movie tonight’

‘Oh I would love to but an old friend is in town, I said I’d meet him for a coffee’

‘But-’

‘Well I bought you flowers didn’t I?’

*********

The idea is this; the husband may have got the letter of the relationship right, but he had totally missed the spirit and a true faithfulness to his wife. He apologised, he sent her gifts in celebration, he bought her flowers, he told her where he was going. He did all the important things, the things that could’ve been spelt out to him before the marriage begun, yet he missed what she really wanted. He did not live a lifestyle that loved and was faithful to her.

It’s the same with God. Yes the law was important, vital, to the Israelites’ relationship with Him but it was designed to be part of a lifestyle of faithfulness to Him. Faithfulness that extended through each of their lives and that influenced those around them.

The same message is critical for us to grasp today. God is not looking for one-off shows of supposed love.

If in Church we sing and clap and raise our hands when the music is playing and everyone around us is doing the same, but fail to raise our hands for Jesus through our lifestyle then it is not what God is after. It’s not that He doesn’t want our impassioned praise and songs, for sure He does, but on it’s own it’s like the husband’s token flowers.

If we make all these promises to God at home about our prayer life and then fail to deliver when life really happens then it is not what God is after. It’s not that He doesn’t want our prayer plans and promises, for sure He does, but on it’s own it’s like the husband and his best intentions.

If in home group we enjoy reading His Word and commit to continuing reading through it at home but then give up as soon as something different grabs our attention then it is not what God is after. It’s not that He doesn’t want our enthusiasm and Bible reading, for sure He does, but on it’s own it’s like the husband and his displaced anniversary plans.

What God is after is these things embedded into a life of faithfulness to Him; faithfulness in the workplace, faithfulness among our friends, faithfulness when no one is looking, faithfulness to those in need.

Unless we see that this is what God truly wants from us and strive to live that out then we, like the Israelites, run the risk of missing the point entirely in doing so unknowingly turning our backs on Him.

Salvation’s Path (Genesis 37-47)

“But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance”

- Genesis 45.7

Have you ever played that game, or at least seen it played on TV, where you see a photo of an object really close up and it slowly pans out and you have to hit the buzzer when you recognize what it is? That game is based on this idea that if you look too closely at something you might see a lot of detail in that particular spot, but you’ll miss a whole perspective on the object as a whole. In order to actually get the answer correct you need to see it from a distance. At times reading my Bible is a lot like this game.

The Bible is mostly full of a lot of stories, or testimonies for a more appropriate word. ‘Spot goes to the Zoo’ is a story, the life of Moses in Genesis is a testimony. Both are good but neither are the same. Testimonies need to be read and learnt from, and in order to read and learn, you often need to read the thing as a whole. I’m in South Africa at the moment and before I came out I read ‘A Long Walk to Freedom’, the autobiography of Nelson Mandela. It certainly opened my eyes to a lot of the realities of apartheid and precisely what Mandela did and went through to achieve his convictions. Reading the whole book allows you to build up the rhythm and pace of his life, the rises and the falls, the causes and the effects. Had I just picked one chapter I may have been able to learn more detail about a certain stage but I would have missed out on the whole collage of his great life.

The same thing happened to me again just the other night. I was at a church meeting and our leader said we were going to read from Genesis. We were to read the large chunks of Genesis 37 through to 45. That’s a lot of reading. I don’t think many of us (sadly) are excited by the idea of reading large chunks of the Old Testament but this night we were going to have to. But as we did read it all, something strange happened, the view panned out and I suddenly recognized what it actually was I was looking at.

Genesis 37 through 45, and a bit more actually, is the story of Joseph; Joseph of technicolour coat fame that is. It begins with him being seventeen and tending sheep on a hill and ends with him in second in charge of one of the most powerful nations in the world at the time. As we went through his life a number of things jumped out and me, and if I’m honest, took me aback.

The path to salvation sometimes comes through natural means

I have spent a lot of time around Christians (unsurprisingly, being one myself) and there is a very clear pattern of how we look to God to save us and solve our problems. The first is to ask him to save us now, and the second is that he save us in a flash and bang miraculous manner, preferably in a way that involves little or no effort from ourselves. So if we’re struggling with employment, or indeed unemployment, we pray for a job offer to land on our doorstep. If we’re struggling with being single, we pray for a wonderful man or woman to walk into our lives and fall in love with us. If we’re struggling with the weight of life, we pray for the skies to clear and the sun to shine on us immediately. Dear God please save me and save me now.

Far from it that I say I don’t do this because for sure I do it all the time. I look to the stories of both the Old Testament and New Testament, stories of how God turned up, clicked his fingers and the world smiled again. I read that faith can move a mountain and so if I just have faith and pray for a broken car then a new one will arrive quick sharp. This is precisely why the story of God’s salvation in Joseph took me back. There is salvation but it is not now. There is salvation but there is no flash bang.

The means by which God worked through Joseph to save His people from the famine was very, well, natural. Almost annoyingly so you might say. He obviously sees that the famine is coming but does He click his fingers and create huge amounts of food out of nowhere? Nope. Does he circumvent biological drives and prevent the people from feeling hungry? Uh uh. He picks a young boy of 17 and sets his course to bring salvation. Over the course of Joseph’s life God blesses him as he grows up, gives him the power to interpret dreams (which although miraculous, was not the ultimate key to salvation), allows him to be sold into slavery, allows him to impress his owner, sends him great temptation, gives him over to two years of unjust jail, brings him out of jail and to the Pharaoh’s attention, and then gives him responsibility over the food stores of Egypt and the vision to organize and ration sufficient food to survive the famine.

Gifting, jobs, temptation, unjust hard times, blessing, responsibilty. These are not spiritual jargon words. These are very real, very practical, very natural things. We all have them in our lives. Often we all resent them in our lives. Too often we don’t believe God is working unless there’s a flash bang here and there.

But why do we downplay the work we do in our jobs? Why don’t we think God can’t be working salvation through the hard work we do and the trials and temptations we face?

I sure don’t know, but I do know that I often think that way. So my first lesson from Joseph is this: we mustn’t resent the natural path, sometimes it is how God is bringing us salvation.

The path to salvation is not always an easy path

I am a person of great conviction (some people call it stubbornness. I reckon the answer is quietly sat in the middle of us waiting to be found) and often I have conversations with friends where I am left stunned by the opposing polarity of our opinions. One in particular was a conversation with a friend about a year ago. We were talking about relationships and I was saying how I thought that at times there is a need to fight for them and go through hard times to get to a successful end. However far from agreeing with me, she simply dismissed what my opinions and said ‘no, I don’t think anyone should ever fight for a relationship, I want my relationships to be entirely natural and straight forward. It shouldn’t be hard’ (or words to that effect). While at the time I was stunned at her utopian love story, I can now realize that she was simply saying outloud what we all often feel. The thought goes ‘I want to be happy and blessed, and I want it done in a pain-free manner and at a constant glorious rise’.

There’s a term in psychology, and indeed now common culture, known as ‘delayed gratification’. It is a concept used to measure the mental development of children. What psychologists do is they put a child in a room with one sweet, and say to the child ‘if this sweet is still here when I get back, then you can have two sweets’. The point being if the child can see a longer-term view and endure the trial of being alone in a room with a sweet and not eating it, they will gain much more. I’m not sure what age it happens but apparently at some point children do begin to be able to wait, and up till that point they simply go and eat the sweet as soon as the adult is out of the room. So the idea of ‘delayed gratification’ is being able to hold off your wants and desires for a period, enduring a temptation and trial, in order to receive later on.

While psychologists will identify an age upon which this capacity is available to us, I think even as adults we struggle to use this capacity to endure in order to gain. Whether it’s about relationships, as in my friend’s case above, or something entirely different, most of us want blessing and for it to come with no endurance and no struggle. I’ve heard it said that the Big Brother / celebrity phenomenon is simply this same issue, ‘I want to be rich and famous and I want it without any hard work’.

For me the life of Joseph shows that God does not hold this view for us. I think anyone offered the chance to be highly thought of and in supreme authority in a powerful nation would take it quickly, considering it a great blessing. While this is what Joseph was given by God, it was not handed to him and it was not a rapid incline. To begin with he was sold by his brothers into slavery. Slavery does not sound like fun to me, especially when it is through being betrayed by family and leaving home at 17. He then is faced with great trial and temptation at the hands of his master’s wife, and despite coming through that with flying colours, he is framed and thrown in jail for two years. Two years. That’s a long time, especially for someone who must’ve still been a relatively young guy. So now he’s far from home, not seen his parents in years, hated by his brothers and in jail.

That was not the end however, but merely a step in the journey. There is a promise in the Bible that says God works for the God of those who love Him, and that promise can be seen as clearly as day in Joseph’s life. In all the hard times, hard work and hard situations that Joseph went through, God was creating a way to great blessing and salvation.

So the second lesson I learnt from Joseph was this: we must stop demanding for the easy route to salvation, for God does not work always that way.

The Path to salvation can be blind

I was at a friend’s house a few weeks back and I was playing with their children. The two youngest decided they’d like to tie me up. So to begin with they just tied my hands, but thanks to some handy tricks I learnt back in the day, it was pretty easy to create space and come free. However turns out children are pretty determined when they want to be. So they began to step up their efforts and before long I was tied hands and feet, sat on the ground, blindfolded, gagged and with the lights switched off. Now when you can see the knots and see which knots are being tied and where to rope (or dressing gown waistband as it was) is hanging, it is very easy to stay calm and plan your route to freedom. When you can’t sense or understand what’s happening to you, it’s a lot more intimidating!

One of the most powerful biases in the human mind is known as ‘hindsight’ bias. I say most powerful because it has a significant impact on how much learning we can take from experience. Hindsight bias says that once we’ve come to the end of an event or experience, the ending will have a convoluting effect on our memory of the event. We will say ‘oh I wasn’t actually that scared, really’ simply because we ended up safe, or ‘ah, I was in control all along’ when actually it was somebody else that saved you from a minor catastrophe. Happy endings all too often create a guise over the experience we had and the valuable lessons we could take from them. While earlier I extolled the value in seeing stories as a whole, the same hindsight bias can rob us from valuable lessons unless we live the stories stage by stage, as if we didn’t know the ending. Only by doing this was I able to see that all along Joseph’s way to salvation, he was essentially blind, and like I was being tied up, had no idea what was happening to him.

But why is this significant? Well because as humans we like to know what’s going on. We like to be in the know. Knowledge is power, after all. Yet even, Christians, believing in an all-powerful God and all-serving humankind, have a deep demand to know and a frustration and confusion when we don’t. Yet the story of Joseph lets us see that that’s not always how God works. Joseph’s life went up and down like a child’s yoyo and surely he did not know what when and how. He was blind to salvation’s path in his life.

Now those of you clued up on Joseph’s life will say ‘but ha! He did have sight because of the vision he was given as a child that his brothers would one day bow to him’. You would indeed be right that he did receive such a vision and therefore he did believe in a promise over his life. But as far as we know, he did not receive it again, nor did he have friends and fellow Jews around him to encourage and remind him. And arguably worse than this, his life directly contradicted the promise he’d been given.

Joseph has a vision that his brothers will bow to him. Next thing that happens is his brothers have plotted to kill him and then sold him into slavery. Not exactly what you’d expect. So while Joseph had a promise over him, he was still blind to the path to it.

We too are in precisely the same situation. I have already mentioned one of the promises that God holds over us ‘I will work for the good of those who love me’ and there are many more; others of us too have other more specific passions and callings in our lives. Yet in both these cases most of us cannot deny that our lives so often don’t fit the pattern we expect. Why do bad things happen is God is working for my good? Why is my youth group struggling so much when I feel so called to working with young people? Why can I not find a job in healthcare when I feel so strongly about serving the sick?

Joseph’s life tells me that God’s plan to bring about salvation in our lives is not in our sight. The indicators of success that we use to ‘see’ if things are working out are not the same as those God uses. Sometimes the path to salvation for us will be essentially blind.

So my final lesson for Joseph is this: we must learn to live through trust in the faithfulness of God’s promises, not just the sight of our circumstance, thought and emotion.

When I am old and have worked hard to learn these things in my life I pray that I, like Joseph, will be able to say about the events of my life ‘God has done these things in my life to bring about salvation to His people’.

The Shepherd’s Voice (Called to obey or obeying the call Part 2)

This was a hard topic to write on a) because I’d said I would write it so it put more pressure on me, and, more importantly, b) because it’s an area of my life where I am by no means all clued up. If anything I have a tendency to err on the side of extreme caution. I’ve been in cultures where ‘God told me…’ is as common as phrase as ‘Good morning’ and where the idea that we might be wrong, and worse that our being wrong will cause significant problems, doesn’t cross our minds. So I’ve grown to be very careful in ever using that phrase. In fact I don’t ever use that phrase anymore. But am I right?

The story I’ve been reflecting on for this, from time to time anyway, is the story of Eli and Samuel. It’s in 1 Samuel 3. If anything it’s a story of a young boy learning to hear God’s voice, and so it’s perfect to try to understand how we too can learn to do it. In reflecting I have stumbled upon three aspects of God’s voice and how we can interact with it. The first is the nature of God’s voice, the second is our requirement in order to hear and understand it, and the third is a very real way of discerning God’s voice.

So first, the nature of God’s voice.

‘…the LORD called Samuel…then the LORD called yet again…and the LORD called Samuel again the third time’ (v4, 6, 8).

You know when a sales caller is on commission or being watched over because even if the person they are calling for is out, they’ll ask for when the person will be back in. They don’t leave a message or even give a number to call back, they insist on them calling back. There seems to be this cosmic battle, no hyperbole attached, going on between callers and ‘customers’. Callers invent new ways of making you stay on the phone while customers counter with new ways to make the caller give up. The best customer tactic I ever heard was ‘I’m afraid Mr. Smith passed away last week’ and then start crying. Genius. However, even the best sales callers would circumnavigate that by pausing and then saying, ‘I’m sorry to hear about your loss, is there anyone else I can speak to who might need some toner?’

Point is, yes I know it’s amazing that there was a point in there, that God is like the best ever sales caller! Not in that He’s very annoying and always calls at the worst moment, but in the sense that when He has a message to get through He won’t give up lightly. Young Samuel managed to dodge, albeit innocently and somewhat amusingly, God’s call THREE separate times. I mean the passage doesn’t elucidate the heavenly goings on here but I bet every time Samuel got up, put on his slippers and dressing gown (and yes Samuel blatantly wore those things) and ran to Eli’s room, God was banging His omniscient head on his heavenly table. But God kept coming back for more. He had chosen Samuel and Samuel was going to get the message whether it took Him all night or not.

This same pattern is found elsewhere. Moses, Gideon, Jonah. When God wants a message delivered or a job done, he picks a guy and makes sure he or she knows what is to be done. God’s true voice is clear and repetitive. If you hear something once and once only, chances are it wasn’t God. On the other hand, if you’ve got that nagging conviction in your life that you shouldn’t be doing that thing and it won’t go away, you may well have God banging his omniscient head. Or if you have a passion of serving the homeless, or the youth, or the poor, that you can’t get that passion out of your heart, it maybe well be a voice to listen to. And not only listen to it, but take it above those things you think are best to do, but really have no especial conviction or passion.

God’s true voice is clear and repetitive

So the second aspect of this passage in understanding God’s voice is found in verse 7.

‘(Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD, nor was the word of the LORD yet revealed to him.)’

Samuel did not yet know the LORD.

Samuel had been living in the temple with Eli since he was young, which no doubt meant he had probably helped out a lot with setting up and helping with many priestly duties of Eli. 1 Samuel 2.18 says that Samuel was indeed heavily involved in priestly ministry in his service to the LORD. However, one chapter on from this activity he did not yet know the LORD. What does this mean? To me it means this: it takes time to get to know God and that simply doing things in the Church will not make that happen.

From time to time my friends will respond to something I’ve said or done and say to me ‘that’s not like you’. They know when messages I appear to be sending out are not really from who I am. They know that I don’t mean to say what they think I’ve just said. And they know that because they know me. They know me because they’ve spent time with me and I’ve told them about what I care about and what I don’t. They’ve seen what gets me going and what really doesn’t. They know what kinds of things I do and what things I don’t. Thankfully for us, God has allowed us to see all these things about Him too. Throughout the scripture God has continuously stressed His passion for people. He’s shown his hatred of evil. He’s actioned His compassion for the lost. He’s gotten angry at the pride of the Pharisees. It is only when we spend time in His Word, in prayer and with no desire but to be with Him that we can know the LORD.

Obviously Samuel was to go on to become a great Prophet for God. After all he would first anoint Saul as king and then be obedient to God’s spirit in skilfully selecting David as his altogether more successful successor. However we can see that Samuel did not always know God. In order for Samuel to move from this stage to becoming a great Prophet, two things had to happen. One God had to reveal himself to Samuel, and two Samuel had to learn to know God. Without either one, God’s voice would not be understood clearly.

It is only when we spend time in His Word, in prayer and with no desire but to be with Him that we can know the LORD.

So third we turn to how Samuel managed, in this instance to work out God’s voice. It took him four times to get it right, so what was it that he did?

‘And the LORD called Samuel again the third time. So he arose and went to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you did call me." Then Eli perceived that the LORD had called the boy.’ v8

The answer is that Samuel did…nothing. Samuel had no idea that it was God and for all we know if he had been left to this own senses he’d have been up and down all night and known nothing different. Indeed it took the intervention of an older and wiser person to realise what was going on. It took Eli to realise that it was indeed God who had been speaking to Samuel.

Now I’m quite impressed with Eli in this story. We’ve been told that Eli’s eyesight was failing him so chances are he was no spring chicken. So old man Eli is asleep and this is how I see the scenario unfolding…

Eli: ‘Good night young Samuel.’
Samuel: ‘Good night Eli old boy. Let me know if you need anything.’
Eli: ‘Will do.’

An indiscriminate passage of time

Samuel: ‘Eli, Eli! Did you call me? What do you need?’
Eli: ‘Oh no, I didn’t call you. Go back to bed’ Oh isn’t Samuel a good little chap. I’m so glad that the LORD enabled his medically barren mother to bear child and thus was so grateful to the LORD that she dedicated him to His service for his entire life. I would not be able to cope without him.

An indiscriminate passage of time

Samuel: ‘Eli Eli! You called again? Are you ok? Do you want me to put ointment on your damaged feet? Or maybe pour you some water?’
Eli: ‘Samuel Samuel my dear boy, I didn’t call you. And I really must sleep tonight; I have to do five services at church tomorrow. And the morning is family service. Those ones are always a nightmare. Kids crawling everywhere…’
Samuel: ‘Err…ok Eli. Sleep well.’
Eli: ah dear, I can’t keep up with the practical jokes of these young whippersnappers these days. I do hope tomorrow’s family service goes well…

An indiscriminate passage of time

Samuel: ‘Eli! I definitely heard you call, what is wrong?’
Eli: ‘Ok ok, this is a joke…that’s the third time you’ve come in here when I’m trying to sleep. I don’t know if you’ve been hanging out with my disobedient sons and drinking the ceremonial wine again but…wait a minute…you say you heard a call of your name?
Samuel: ‘Yes Eli, I’m sure of it. As sure as I’m standing before you in my Moses PJs’
Eli: ‘And you’ve heard it three times now…’
Samuel: ‘Fo sho’
Eli: Hmm…next time you hear the voice, answer ‘Speak, LORD, for Your servant hears’

Now obviously I’ve used some creative licence to bring the story to life there (and I’m sure Samuel didn’t speak Snoop Dogg) but I think Eli showed a remarkable patience to stick with Samuel and have the presence of mind to realise that, despite it being the middle of the night and that he’d been woken up twice already, it was in fact God who was speaking to Samuel. I’m pretty sure that’s not a perspective I would’ve kept had I been in Eli’s position. I think I would’ve gotten some gaffa tape and ensured Samuel got a good night’s sleep. That is one of the many reasons why I am not a temple priest. However the point is this: it took a person of great wisdom and understanding to enable Samuel to truly discern God’s voice in his life.

You see there was no problem in Samuel hearing from God. God was getting through to his senses. Samuel knew a message was coming in. The problem was in the deciphering of that message. The world we live in is full of messages. Everywhere we go we are bombarded with new messages. Messages about this product, or this way of life, or this activity, or this person. It’s not the messages that are the problem. It’s the discerning where each is coming from. If we want to effectively hear God’s voice then we need to know how to discern this and the story of Samuel’s calling clearly shows that there can be a key role of other people in this. For us it might be a church leader, or a close friend, or a parent. Someone who both knows you and, more importantly, knows God. Someone who knows when He might be speaking and what He might be saying.

If we want to effectively hear God’s voice then…the story of Samuel’s calling clearly shows…a key role of other people in this.

So there are my reflections on hearing the Shepherd’s voice. If we truly want to be able to know when God is speaking to us then we need to find the repeating message, know God and His character, and use those around us to help us discern what is really being said.

Last Sunday someone spoke at my Church on Jesus as the Good Shepherd. He told this story of a court of law where two men had laid claim to the same sheep and could not agree between them whose it belonged to. So in a sweep of Solomon-esque genius, the judge hatched a plan. She ordered the sheep to be placed some distance outside of the court room door. She then instructed both men to call out to the sheep and draw it to himself. So the first man called out but as all attending watched the door, no sheep appeared. Then the second man called out, and immediately the sheep recognised the distinctive sound of her master and walked into the court room and up her shepherd.

Whether we would say that we are so in-tune with Jesus’ voice to respond like this sheep I don’t know, but Jesus declared that ‘My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me’ (John 10.27) so the response of this one sheep is an example and a challenge to us all.

A Pharaoh’s Sin

I think that among the worst feelings in life – a group of feelings that includes that immediate reaction when you think you’ve got your hand stuck in something. That sense of utter panic and onset of sweat. Think about it, it’s so true! – is that kick in the gut when you make a decision and then in an instant regret it. That sudden epiphany of impact of what you have just done. New information that apparently you didn’t know the second before you decided. It’s almost as if you had a flawed perspective on the realities of what you were stepping into but now you’re there, oh how different that perspective is. Suddenly you realise what you had before and now all you want to do is somehow get back onto the ledge you just left.

I remember during my A-levels someone in my class asked to ‘look’ at my Psychology coursework. Well actually, first he offered to pay me £50 to copy it. I declined the offer but said I’d happily let him borrow it for a while to get ideas. It seemed a nice thing to do, help out a coursemate. But the second I’d handed it over, suddenly I realised, ‘what kind of guy asked to buy someone else’s coursework?’ Is it the kind of guy who will keep his word when I asked him not to copy it but simply use it for ideas? I decided no. Suddenly it kicked in. What if he copied it and someone noticed? We would both be disqualified. Immediately I regretted my decision.

But while this was a bad decision that gave me this ‘epiphany of impact’ kick in the head, does it always happen with bad decisions? I don’t think so.

There’s this episode of Friends – if you don’t know what Friends is then a) where have you been for the last decade, and b) it can be found like the Psalms in the Bible. That is, when you’re a kid, in order to find the Psalms people say ‘just open your Bible in the middle and chances are you’ll find the Psalms’. With Friends it’s more like ‘turn on your TV to E4 and chances are you’ll find Friends’! True story. Anyways, so this episode of Friends is where Phoebe and her fiancé Mike decide they want to donate their wedding money to a children’s charity. So they wander along to the charity centre and present their generous donation to the staff. However as soon as they hand it over, the epiphany of impact hits home and now the abstract idea of their low key wedding, something that they had felt would be worth it in order to give to children who have so much less than them, gains colour and clarity and ‘Oops’. So they head back and embarrassingly ask for it back. The story goes on and after another change of mind, followed by another change of mind, they decide to keep the money. But while this was not necessarily a black and white decision to them, it certainly wouldn’t have been a clear mistake to give the money away. In fact giving that money to the children’s charity would’ve been a hugely sacrificial and life changing act, something we’d all agree is what God wants and the world needs (two things that people tend to forget are inextricably tied). Yet they still feel the epiphany of impact and it makes them waver and ultimately give in.

As I was sitting on the train station the other day, my mind drifted off to another occasion when this happened, an occasion involving much more than money and an engaged couple. This time it involved a world leader and the future of a whole people.

Now it was told the king of Egypt that the people had fled, and the heart of Pharaoh and his servants was turned against the people; and they said, "Why have we done this, that we have let Israel go from serving us”? – Exodus 14.5

It a story most of us probably know about. Moses calls God to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites out of captivity. Pharaoh says no. God makes it clear to Pharaoh that he is serious and send a series of plagues upon Egypt. Despite this message Pharaoh insists on keeping the Israelites in slavery and even increases the harshness of their working conditions. Finally Pharaoh lets them go to rid Egypt of God’s wrath (notably only when God’s wrath is turned powerfully on his own family. He could cope with the devastation across Egypt up to that point), but as soon as he shouts ‘Go!’ and allows them to leave, the epiphany of impact kicks in.

‘Who is going to build our city?’ ‘Who is going to serve us food in our courts?’ ‘Surely we Egyptians don’t want to do such hard and difficult tasks?’

Pharaoh realises the implications of his decision, a right decision, on the life of Egypt. Egyptian culture had been built on this free labour, being able to increase the workload on the Israelite slaves when the need arose. A new house? Get the slaves. More food? Get the slaves. Not getting enough done? Make the slaves work harder. The hard work for the Pharaoh, now that the Israelites were gone, suddenly became too large to bear. He did not want to do the hard work to support his decision, despite him realising at the time was the required decision to make.

Pharaoh had responded to God’s clear message when the imperative was felt, but after the relief had come, suddenly he fell back.

I think this is a classic symptom for our behaviour towards God even today. Putting aside the debate as to whether God was orchestrating the heart of Pharaoh (although surely God can’t punish someone for makes choices He was solely forcing him to make?), Pharaoh heard the call of God, responded positively, but then fell back immediately.

I’ve heard many a sermon and read many a scripture that hit me in the gut with than inaudible clang of ‘oh, that means me. I need to change’. In those times I often make a heartfelt and genuine response to God to say ‘yes I will stop saying that’, or ‘yes I will make sure I go and apologise to him’, or even ‘Lord I repent of doing that, I will make sure I work hard to obeying you better in future’. Yet after the music fades or the Bible is closed, that imperative is gone and the epiphany of impact kicks in. ‘Oh but if I stop that then how will I cope with hard times’, or ‘It’s going to be hard to resist the temptation to do it again, did God really convict me?’ Inevitably we tend to either assume that actually we’re ok, or just as bad, simply forget about the sense of conviction and maintain our behaviour, guilt free.

I know there are things in my life that I am both convicted to stop on a regular basis, and things I am convicted to start doing. Sometimes it’s a joyful passion where I have a strong sense of ‘yes, I’d love to give John’s gospel to that person and I know God wants me to’ but then I get to work and see the person and get scared of what they might think. The epiphany of impact.

So how to overcome it? Two things spring to mind. One, be ready. Know that whether it be a impassioning or convicting call, you will feel the impact and be tempted to fall back. Write it down, tell someone to keep you accountable. And don’t wait to do these things till the epiphany has fully kicked in. Do it under the energy of the conviction. This way the call remains clear and pure. And if what you felt convicted off was totally off-beat with God, then the person will inform you of that! (my all-time favourite of this is ‘I feel God wants me to do a year of singleness’ ‘oh why a year? Why not just a period of time where you can work through what you need to, but can still be open to what God might have for you’ ‘Oh yeh, good point, well made’).

Second, make a plan! I think planning is the one of the least trumpeted Godly trait. A lot of Christians will feel the call of God to act and then just jump in with little thought of planning. But look at King David. He knew God wanted Israel to build a new temple, but that it was a task that would be given to his son Solomon. So what did David do? He planned. He compiled resources. He hired workers. He found the best materials and plans so that the call of God would be wonderfully fulfilled. And Nehemiah. He was a reputable member of the court of the Babylon king when he felt God call him to rebuilt the city of Jerusalem. Did he run off and start immediately? No, he asked his king for resources, and then he carefully set up a plan to rebuild the wall. He appropriated out the work to the people available. Each man and woman had his or her task. In the end they built the whole wall in just 53 days. I find it unlikely such a task would have been done as well or as quickly without planning and organisation.

So plan! If you want to read your Bible more, don’t plan to read the whole thing in a week! If you want to stop behaving in a certain way, tell someone to keep you accountable, to ask each week how you are doing. Talk about what’s holding you back, plan how to overcome it.

So the Pharaoh’s sin. God’s message to him. Pharaoh’s decision. The epiphany of impact. Let us not fall into the same trap.

Resonation

I was in church a few weeks ago and my vicar got up after the speaker and offered prayer ministry to those with whom the message had resonated. Resonated. It got me thinking (you’ve got the love that the main thing that got me thinking was one word the vicar said, not the thirty minutes of teaching before). But I couldn’t get this idea out of my head; the idea that sometimes we hear things or see things or feel things and they resonate. That is, they set something off inside of us with much greater energy than the original prompt itself contained.

I always wondered why some people could watch those African poverty adverts and just not care, whereas some people just can’t watch them. Or why some people always seem knocked out after Church, as if they are now occupied with something going on within, whereas other walk in and out as if nothing happened in the service. At various times I’ve been in each one of those camps, but more and more I can’t seem to shake my reaction to things I never used to react to.

Like today at work, we were discussing various deep issues such as the existence of right and wrong, as one does when there is work to do, and in a roundabout way all three of my colleagues concluded ‘life is hard, then we die’. Now it’s been all of 8 hours since they said this and I haven’t yet got it out of my system. Such a level of hopelessness about life struck a chord in me and have been resonating inside me ever since. Hmmm.

But as I thought about the concept of resonation in the sense of the scientific phenomena, I realised that it actually made a lot of sense. Resonance is the process by which a material finds maximum amplitude in vibration through an interaction with a wave of energy moving on its resonant frequency. In normal language that means if you send a matching signal into a material, it will vibrate to its maximum capacity. But only a signal that matches the materials ‘characteristics’ will have this effect (I apologise to any scientists who probably could explain how I have grossly flawed a definition the concept of resonation!).

So the point is this: things resonate when a message comes in that is on the same character as them. A heart will resonate when a message comes in that is already somewhere inside the heart, no matter how small the message is. So if the heart is on a totally different plane then it will go in and out and have little or no effect. On the other hand, if the heart is in line with that is going on in Church, or suffering, or hopelessness – things of God’s heart – then one of these things coming in in any small form will set the heart going.

This makes total sense to me. If I want a fool proof way of coming to God and coming away unchanged then I either pay more attention to being the cool youth leader at Church than coming before God, or I don’t bother to pray and slow my mind and soul down when it comes to reading my scripture. Those things always ensure that the teachings, and any message God would be saying, go into my brain and stay there for a short while before being replaced with what’s on Sky Sports News twenty minutes later.

The Parable of the Sower talks about the good soil, where just a few seeds grow into large quantities of grain. In the well prepared ground they find a place to grow and multiply. Jesus says this is a metaphor for human hearts. Some hearts are prepared and are good soil. Good soil isn’t held back by worry in the world, or too shallow to allow growth, or too crowded out by other voices. A good soil heart allows that resonation; the maximum impact of God’s message into action.

So how is this resonating heart possible? Three things immediately come to mind. One: preparation. What state is our heart in before we come before God and his Word? Is it focussed on other things? Is it beating at the pace of daily life or slowing to the rhythms of grace? Without a consciously humble and prepared heart there can be now growth of God’s message.

Second: learning. What is God’s heart? What does he care about? Reading Isaiah and Jeremiah over the last months I have seen the outrageous faithfulness and love of God for His people. He cares deeply about the poor, about the suffering, about the lost. These themes are echoed in acute form in the person and work of Jesus. In order to have hearts that resonate in the light of God’s Word we need to know what messages he is desperate to send.

Thirdly, and much more important that the previous two, is this: prayer for a new heart. Twice God promised to Ezekiel that He would give a new heart to his people (11.19, 36.26). It is only by God’s choice that we can have our hearts renewed and transformed like His own. Therefore any hope of a resonating heart must start with prayer to Him and a humility and hunger that led to Psalmist to cry out ‘Create in me a clean heart, O God’ (Psalm 51.10).

Called to obey or obeying the call? (Part 1)

(for Jenny, owing to an epic conversation in an Indian restaurant in Waterloo)

I think one of the most common frustrations I hear from my Christian friends around my age is ‘I just don’t know what God wants with my life’ or some variation on the theme (my particular favourite is ‘I’m waiting for God to tell me what to do’). Indeed I myself have spent many times in prayer and many more times in abject annoyance and floundering inaction asking the same question of my own lifetime. But right from the outset I want to make clear that I think this is a wonderful frustration to have, if indeed any frustration can be wonderful. This frustration says ‘I care so deeply about doing God’s plan for my life’ and ‘there’s only one thing I want to do in life; what God wants me to do’. At its best it says ‘God tell me what to do and I’m you’re vessel’. I think that if more of us had this attitude genuinely at heart then the Church would get a lot more done. However (it was always coming), at worst I do feel us who ask these questions can do ourselves, and sadly often times God’s kingdom, a disservice by paralysing themselves in fear of getting it wrong and believing in a vacuum of guidance. How so? Let me explain.

When we ask the question ‘God, what to do you want me to do in life?’ and then effectively wait, begin to sweat, and then often panic worrying about getting it wrong, to me, are making two key assumptions. Firstly, we assume God hasn’t already told us what to do, and secondly, we assume God is going to clearly and specifically tell us to do something. I suppose the aim of this piece is to suggest that these two assumptions may not be entirely accurate and maybe that if we hold them to the letter we are at risk of not only hurting ourselves with undue worry and concern, but also maybe passing up opportunities lain in front of us to do good things for God’s kingdom.

So, assumption one; has God already given us any indication of what we should do? Anyone on speaking terms with the Old Testament will know that a good chunk of it is dedicated to God’s instruction and laws on how the Israelites should live and how to obey God. Then there are over ten books detailing the clear and important messages that God gave to His people about how they are living and how they should be living and empty space between the two oft big enough to drive a bus through it, badly. Into the New Testament Jesus taught a huge number of things, including many directed to those who wished to follow him. Evidently God is a God of instruction. Not only that but if you are like those British weathermen (who tell us we need more rain and when it comes say ‘sorry, it was the wrong kind of rain because there was too much of it’) then Jesus made it ‘bitesize’ when came and summarised the entire Law and Prophets into two lines:

‘Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."’ Matthew 22.37-40

This is Jesus’ ultimate call to obey. And what context was this answer? ‘Teacher, what is the greatest commandment?’ I think this isn’t far off our original question ‘God, what do you most want me to do with my life?’ It is obvious from this that God isn’t always a micro-manager. In this somewhat sweeping statement, Jesus encompassed the only key instruction that will apply to our entire lives and every moment we live. Therefore I would suggest that if we love God with all our hearts, souls and mind, and loving those around us, we will be doing what God wants in our lives. What does this look like? Well there are hundreds of manifestations, many of which are displayed in the stories of heroes preserved in the Bible, and many in God’s own words through both the Old and New Testament. Whilst this is too many to go into now, I submit that this presents God’s ultimate call to us; the call to obey; the call to love both him and those around us.

So what of the second assumption, ‘God is going to clearly and specifically tell them to do something’. Well firstly I’d argue that, as I have just suggested, He has already said something clear and specific, but on the matter of extra revelation, perhaps a sign of which vocation you are to go into, or where you’re wife is coming from, or which church to join, I would say that those things are by and large the exception and not the rule.

Like all good perspectives, I feel this way because of what I find in the scripture. Two big points to be made here. Firstly from some of the most encouraging parts of scripture; those that speak out God’s loving sovereignty over our lives. The classics include these two:

“For I know the plans I have for you," says the Lord. "They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29.11

“And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them” Romans 8.28

Two wonderful verses! However until recently I took them to mean God has good plans and he’d tell me them. I’m now not so sure about the second part. In the first verse God has just spoken to Jeremiah to tell His people to stop listening to Babylonian prophets and that He was the one who knew what would happen. He was making a special intervention to protect his people, and in doing so he assured them ‘I know the plans I have for you’. As much as I for one would love there to be, there is no assurance of Him telling us those plans! It is ‘just’ (and a ‘just’ is still pretty fantastic) an assurance that He can be trusted. The second verse details a similar line. It is part of a rolling passage of Paul listing the things of God for which we can be sure and confident in, including his working for our good. However Paul again stops short of saying we will know what those good things are, it is an assurance of trust, not a promise of knowledge.

The point in this is not to downplay this promises but rather to qualify them as they are, outworking of faith, or ‘the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see’ (Hebrews 11.1). Things we cannot yet see.

The second point to make from scripture is one that has walked with me since I was a young boy. It takes a child’s mind to ask ‘ok there’s Abraham, and Moses and David, but what about the other thousands of Israelites who lived across that time? What were they doing?’ An interesting question young Phil. Did they too spend time hearing direct revelation from God about their actions and future plans? Nope. God picked Abraham and later Moses to be his communicator, much the same way as the Prophets acted as God’s megaphone during the exiled years and beyond. The Israelites called out to God whilst in Egypt for many years and God spoke only (so far as we are told) to Moses to outwork his plans and for Moses to tell the rest of the Israelites what to do (otherwise know as the Pentateuch!). Indeed later when God speak directly to Joshua as Moses heir, the people rebelled and wouldn’t believe. Evidently God was leading through Joshua and Joshua only.

So, our two assumptions. Has God already given us good instruction about what to do? Yes, to love Him in all we are and to love others with all we do. And will God necessarily give us situation specific directions? No, but He does assure us that He has got good plans for us all.

Are we too often looking for more to do when already so much has been given?

Note: One question that arises however is ‘well what if God does have a specific call to me? How do I understand it?’ I do not wish to deny the importance of this question and I fully believe that God does call specific people to specific things, so I plan to write ‘Called to obey or obeying the call? (Part 2)’ in the near future to look at the answer!