I’m currently hiding in my room having just arrived at a conference and feel like I am doing one of those video diary things. Hence why I am typing in a whisper and feeling furtive.

I should really be going down to have tea with everyone else, but I am just gathering myself. Why the hesitation to go amongst lovely like minded ladies who all love Jesus?

COMPARISON!

Put me in a room full of ladies who do a similar thing to me and have a similar role to me and my comparison juices start flowing. The picture that comes to mind is that of a person on a diet looking longingly at a plateful of their favorite cakes. Of course this is not an accurate picture. The juices may be flowing, but not because I want to compare myself. I guess in that sense it is more like giving an ex-smoker a packet of cigarettes, a lighter and an ash tray. It is not just that I am temporarily starving myself of comparison in order to look right for a certain occasion before going back with a sigh of relief to my old habits. No, I don’t want to walk into that room and make it all about me. How I match up. How I look. How my husband’s ministry compares to their husband’s. How my family compares to theirs. How my writing career (or should I say complete lack thereof) holds up against their bestseller. Just typing it it sounds so crass and ugly, but I know it is where my brain will strain to go unless I pre-lay some alternative pathways.

So note to self:

Strategy 1: Make it about God. He is incomparable.

Strategy 2: Who I am and what I am worth is sorted in Jesus. My ego needs nothing from this conference. It doesn’t need to compete for ‘food’ with these other ladies. It is therefore free just to love and serve them in Jesus.

Strategy 3: Cut the cord between who I am and what I achieve or do. Just sever it – it is a false link.

Strategy 4: Remember humility isn’t thinking less of yourself, but thinking about yourself less. If I take ME out of the picture there is no comparison!

Strategy 5: Pray, take a deep breath and go and have a cup of tea – it is a conference full of vicars’ wives after all.

Here goes. For more on this subject read: Compared to Her – Sophie De Witt, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness – Tim Keller (see COMMENTS FROM MY BOOKSHELVES) and The Big Ego Trip – Glynn harrison (see COMMENTS FROM MY BOOKSHELVES).

See PECULIAR PARENTING for my latest parenting ramble (well it’s quite short really – more of a turn about the room!)

Go to COMMENTS FROM MY BOOKSHELVES for a review of an excellent book and some thoughts for discussion and consideration that it raised.

Don’t be soft!

Why on earth not?

When soft is good.

Soft cushions to sink into as I read a good book, pliable to accommodate my form.

The soft skin of my son’s cheek impossible not to stroke and kiss.

Fruit that is ripe and ready to please, done with being hard and unwelcoming.

The luxury of fluffy white towels waiting patiently on the bed in a hotel room.

A heart as absorbent as a sponge to the word of God that he generously soaks us with.

Hearts that are willing to go on relating softly even under a hard protective layer of thick skin.

But they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder and stopped their ears that they might not hear. They made their hearts diamond-hard lest they should hear the law and the words that the Lord of hosts had sent by his Spirit through the former prophets. Therefore great anger came from the Lord of hosts.

Zechariah 7:11-12

Please forgive me this short and pointless post in support of the word BROOK. Not the little stream that Anne of Green Gables so longs for in her house of dreams – although that too is a delicious word. No I mean to brook as in this sentence from the novel I am reading:

Canon Lytton was not the sort of speaker to brook interruptions.

I feel I would like to delve into the usage of this phrase a little more. Am I right in thinking that people generally don’t brook rather than that they do, for example? Can I use it in a sentence about myself? Is the association I have with rather forbidding people correct?

However my desire to do any more than simply register my interest and invite any fellow fans of the phrase to announce themselves is limited. So for now that’s all I’ve got to say about that!

I’ve just finished reading ‘Serving without sinking’ by John Hindley with the VWs (two lovely fellow wives of vicars) and feel the need to strap together a few planks to make a raft that I can scramble onto when in danger of sinking.

“Jesus does not want you to measure your life by your service of him. He does not want your service to get in the way of your love for him. He did not come to be served by you – he came to serve you.”

Jesus is not tricking us when he says that his yoke is a restful one. If we are feeling weary or bitter then we have got something wrong not him.

Wrong thinking checklist:

• Towards God
  • Am I serving to be good enough for him?
  • Am I serving to get something from him?
  • Am I serving to pay him back?

• Towards People
  • Am I serving to impress people?
  • Am I serving to belong?

• Towards Myself
  • Am I serving because Jesus needs me?
    • Think of Martha at this point. “What does Jesus need? He needs Martha to make all the preparations, doesn’t he? If Martha doesn’t work hard, things will fall apart won’t they? Martha is the Rock-the Lord Jesus is just the guy sitting in her front room. No….”
    • Corrective: Be God centred not people centred. Remember you need God’s words more than he needs your works!
    • “Jesus never asks your service to be at the expense of your faith, rest or joy.” Do we need to give something up? Remember, Jesus can cope without us!
  • Am I serving in a way that doesn’t need Jesus?
    • Clear indicator – how much are we begging Jesus for help?

How to spot wrong thinking? Dull drudgery and cheerless duty. “They (wrong motivations for service) lead us to be bitter with God; annoyed with others; desperately disappointed with ourselves.”

Major warning bells should be ringing if in our hearts “Christ Jesus is not a good God”, but “a distant taskmaster.”

But enough of the early warning systems – I know I am sinking – where is the life raft?!

Plank 1:
Remember Jesus came to serve his people not to be served by them. Nothing depends on our service of him. Everything depends on his service of us, both in his saving work on the cross, and in the present as he intercedes for us and equips us with all that we need.

Plank 2:
Enjoy Jesus, don’t be worried and distracted by service.  Sit at his feet and listen the “One who has done all we need”.

Plank 3:
The relationship we have with Jesus.

• We are his friends. This means both that we don’t have to impress him (or our co-workers) and that our service is in the context of getting stuck into our friend’s business. We are not merely clocking in and out, ignorant of all but the small fraction of the work that we get paid for. He shows us the big picture, and more importantly he shows us himself. We know the one we are serving and we know what he is about. “We can trust Him to be more than good, to be good to us, to be at work for us.“ 
• We are his bride. He loves us sacrificially, undeserving as we are. How our service could be transformed, lightened as it were, by remembering that it is our Husband we are serving. How could our works of service sit more beautifully on our shoulders were we to remember that they are his gift to us, our wedding dress to beautify us?
• We are his sons and he delights to have us work alongside him. We haven’t earnt our place in the business, no we work as little children dependent on their Father’s patience and help. Work could be so wonderful if we could see it as it is: working in the family business, working with God our Father.
• He is our perfect, good Master. All people serve one master or another. Ours is wonderful.

Plank 4:
Our view of the job. “Being able to serve in the way you do is a good gift from your Father. What we sometimes think of as chore to be done, the Father thinks of a gifts to be unwrapped.” Our individual service and gifts contributes to the unity of the church and draw us closer to Jesus and make us more like him and more dependent on him. In the midst of loathsome service ask God to help you think along the following lines: this is “a gift from Jesus to make me more like Jesus; and it’s a gift from Jesus to enable me to show what He is like. I get to understand Him and to imitate Him. Both of these draw me closer to Him and show His love for me.”

Plank 5:
Ask God for more love. [Not for more niceness!] Service in love is joyful and satisfying. The answer to grudging service is not trying harder to obey, but asking for more love. Loving service is God’s wonderful gift to us – the givers.

And the rope that holds it all together? Go back to Plank 1 and Jesus’ service of us.

Now please be aware that I’m not claiming that this is a voyage worthy raft. Like they say about those inflatable crocodiles that are fun to play with in swimming pools – this is not a lifesaving device.

I have not thought carefully about the theological structure of my raft, but rather pulled out some of the brilliant pointers in the book that felt grabbable onto in a crisis.

Jesus saves us – he is the raft! BUT, by his grace he has lovingly served me as I have read this book and I think I will be able to look back at this summary and throw off some of the wrong thinking that pulls me down and find some truths to cling to, and even string together and rest on by God’s grace.

For a more fully equipped, regulation lifeboat with a lot more substance read: Serving without sinking: How to serve Christ and keep your joy.
John Hindley

How?

How can something be so full of sadness and yet be OK?

So wrong and yet in some unsearchable way right?

So painfully out of our hands and yet so held?

How can we grieve and miss and ache for things to be other than what they are and yet be content?

How can we want so hard that we feel we will break and yet lack nothing?

How can we cry and accept?

How can we be broken and whole?

How do you even take the next step or breathe the next breath?

Because God is good and glorious and great and generous and gracious and gentle.

Because we don’t have to understand.

Because this ending is not THE END.

Surely he is coming soon!
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!
The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you. Amen.
Rev 22:20-21.

Sitting in bed on a grey mood morning, the NTV praying for the Lord’s help as we faced a ‘depression day’ a sparrow came and perched on our window sill. The window was open and for a few bold moments he looked at me.

“Don’t be afraid!” he could have said. “For not one sparrow falls to the ground outside of the care of the Father and you are worth more than many sparrows.”

There are certain things that are best found indirectly. Laughter, for example, is not something that tends to be found at the end of an intent search for a giggle, but something that is discovered by chance when your attention is elsewhere. Of course there are people and things that can be relied on to bring a smile to our face – but the attention is on them not on the laughter itself. Fun is similarly illusive, nothing sends fun running for cover more than pressure to have fun. When someone tells me to relax my general reaction is to tense up! It isn’t that we can’t plan in the general direction of these experiences  – but they tend to thrive better when out of the spotlight.

In the Christian life I think we find a similar situation. Joy and peace are not to be found in and of themselves, but as a result of gazing at Jesus – the author and perfecter of our faith. I came across a helpful quote by Charles Spurgeon along these lines:

“I looked at Christ, and the dove of peace flew into my heart. I looked at the dove, and it flew away.” Quoted in True Worship by Vaughan Roberts. 

In the context of the book I was reading Vaughan was encouraging us not to look to music (of whatever style) to give us a feeling of assurance, but to go directly to Jesus. A thought provoking point that I think can help us in a number of contexts.

Laughter, fun, feelings of peace and joy are more like wild animals than pets. You can’t rely on them to come when you call! But the truth about Jesus, his love for us, our status in him – that is eternally unchanging and can be relied on day by day. Not that he is a “tame lion” to quote C S Lewis, but he is who has promised is faithful (Hebrews 10:23).

“Great is your faithfulness,” O God my Father,
There is no shadow of turning with thee;
Thou changest not, thy compassions, they fail not
As thou hast been thou forever wilt be.

“Great is thy faithfulness!” “Great is thy faithfulness!”
Morning by morning new mercies I see;
All I have needed thy hand hath provided –
“Great is your faithfulness,” Lord, unto me!

For me today is a low day. I suffer from depression and life is currently in black and white not technicolour. Not the striking black and white of an evening dress, but the grey ‘black and white’ of an old crackly telly.

On days like this it is definitely best not to chase feelings of joy and fun and laughter, feelings of worship and peace. If I try and find them I will fail and panic. You see, feelings don’t do grey and the technicolour feelings that belong to depression are best left undisturbed.  In contrast, the reality of my Lord and Saviour is as reliable in shaky black and white as ever he is in the brightest colours and for this I thank him so very much.

The difference some patience could make

They say that patience is a virtue. They say that good things come to those who wait. “Just be patient” we urge people in the absence of anything more cheery or concrete to offer. In reality, however, we are not a society that does patience very well. Of course, we concede, it is a necessary evil sometimes, but generally it is an inconvenience to be avoided if at all possible. Like Adam Sandler in the film ‘Click’ we would rather fast forward to the end of the argument, or to the desired promotion and simply skip over the ‘waiting patiently’ scenes as quickly as possible. Interestingly that tactic doesn’t work out too well for Sandler’s character!

Using a prayer app on my phone this morning I was encouraged to pray for patience for the NTV (a prayer point, I hasten to add, selected from a general list by the app!) and was delighted by the picture of contentment and peace that it painted.

It urged us to start by focussing on God’s patience with us – patience in the face of both our weakness and our outright obstinacy. To gaze on it and to reflect it in our day to day lives.

I don’t know about you, but I am already feeling better!

In contrast, the graffiti that impatience scrawls across our lives is much less appealing. Consider where we end up when impatience is in the driving seat: quick to complain, accelerating towards anger, and rapidly blaming any one (even God) for the slightest disturbance to life the way we want it.

So why be patient? Well that’s easy – because our eternal Father God is and because he commands it of his children. And, like all his commands, because it is good. So let’s put on the breaks and pray for God to cultivate his fruit in our lives. Imagine the peace that would ensue from having the self control to be patient. Picture the patience that would flow out of a peace that reigned strong in your hearts and minds. What gentleness and love and kindness would become possible? How our faithfulness to the Lord and his ways would blossom? How well equipped we would be to suffer well the bumpiness of life. What joy could be ours.

So let’s take a bit of time to be patient – even if, like Mr Brown in the recent Paddington film, we need to “do the breathing” and have a “turning away face”. We could always turn away to look at our patient Father, and breathe out pleas to him for his help!

So what’s the rush?

Stop and ask yourself – what is it that I am hurrying towards? If we are getting impatient our main problem is probably not how how long it is taking us to arrive, but where it is we want to go and why it is so important to us to get there. So instead of staring at the speedometer and getting frustrated take a look at the road you’re on and check the destination on your sat-nav! So often we are impatient because we are hurrying to get our way, to get where we want to be without further interruption, to get other people out of our way. We are hurrying because we know best and so, at speeds to be envied by Lewis Hamilton, impatience drives us directly to the capital city of our natural selves – self love.

But…

…if we are lovers of God and not lovers of self – there just is no hurry. We can press on to take hold of that for which Christ has taken hold of us. We can strain towards what is ahead, not dawdling on the way. We can eagerly long for the return of Christ… But we need to do all of that remembering that God’s speed limit applies. The opposite of dragging our feet along the way is patient perseverance NOT impatience. Try as we might we’re can’t go any faster than God’s perfect timing allows. How much better to submit to it, trust his ways and pray for the patience to enjoy and endure the ride!