“My client is not in a hurry”

Reflections on stress, rest and fun

Somehow I’ve always felt like I should be ‘doing something’. Preferably doing something ‘useful’, ‘for others’, something that requires discipline, selflessness, sacrifice and hard work. And the more I do of this the better; so to be rushing around, super-stressed feels extra spiritual.   But I’m realising that the people who were like that in the Bible were generally called Pharisees and they were getting it wrong a lot of the time.

I want to clarify that I think discipline, sacrifice and hard work are important and they are all commended in the Bible. It’s the stressed out rushing around like it all depended on me that’s not.

I was first arrested by this concept five years ago when I read Ann Voskamp’s quote “Life’s not an emergency. It’s a gift.” I realised that I was living mostly like it was an emergency.

More recently I heard a fantastic quote attributed to Gaudi the famous Spanish architect whose plans for the cathedral in Barcelona kept on getting grander and more intricate. Someone commented on how long it would take to complete the work and Gaudi replied “My client is not in a hurry.”  I love that. I am in so much of a hurry to be ‘completed’; for God to have finished working on me. But God is not in a hurry.

In the Bible, the kingdom of God is compared to a mustard seed growing into a tree. It is not a quick, dramatic process but a long, slow unfolding and unfurling over years that results in the amazing transformation.  That’s what God’s work in us is like, a gradual growing that doesn’t seem noticeable from day to day, but over time is an incredible change.

I sometimes live like God created me because there were so many jobs He needed doing. But we weren’t created to simply be a workforce. We were created for relationship. Relationships take time. They are slow.  At the end of my life, more important than the question “Have I been productive?” will be the question “Do you know Me? Do you love Me?”

What does this look like practically? Let’s take reading the Bible as an example. Am I prepared to slow down from racing through the Bible to have ‘achieved’ reading it in a year? Reading it in a year is a good thing but is it at the expense of hearing from God? Am I reading to meet with my Lord – to hear what He would say to me or to tick off something else on my to do list? It’s easy to turn spiritual discipline into accomplishing things in our own  strength to feel good about ourselves. Far better to read with a listening heart, ready to stop and ponder and hear what He wants to show me and teach me rather than ploughing on ‘to get to the end’.

I’ve often thought of rest as ‘inferior’ and ‘weak’ until my husband pointed out that God commanded it in the ten commandments. That brought me up short! That’s how important God considers rest to be. He deliberately created us to need to spend a reasonable chunk of each day sleeping.  Maybe rest, in its rightful place, is actually one of God’s good gifts to us, to be received with thankfulness and enjoyed as His blessing.

Similarly I’ve had a wrong attitude about ‘fun’. I’ve tended to dismiss it as trivial and frivolous. But actually God invented fun. He made laughter. He laughs! When I think of my children and picking them up from school, I don’t ask “Did you work hard?” (although I hope they did) but ‘Did you have a good day?” I want them to have had fun and enjoyed their day, not simply to have learned in drudgery.  It’s been quite transforming to consider that God actually wants me to enjoy each of the days He has given me.

God has filled the world with wonderful amazing things. He wants us to enjoy them and have fun as well as knuckle down to the discipline of the hard things. As with all things, we need to walk daily in dependence on God to get the right balance.

Father, thank You for the good gifts of rest and fun that you have given us. I chose to accept them and enjoy them as part of your expression of love to me. Praise You. Amen.

What is success?

I was really stopped in my tracks the other day by this question:

What is success?

It came across it while reading Ann Voskamp's blog:

http://www.aholyexperience.com/2015/04/the-5-key-questions-to-ask-to-get-you-out-of-any-hard-time-and-change-your-life/

I was scooting through the ‘5 key questions’, ticking off in my head that I knew the 'right' answers: Who is God? Tick. Sorted. What is truth? Tick. Yes, Jesus said “I am the truth”.

But when I came to 'What is success?' I faltered. The 'right' answer didn't come in a quick, succinct phrase. And I felt God challenge me: No, stop searching for the neat little response to fire back. Look at your life. Look at how you actually live. Look at what goes on in your head. What is the success you actually spend your effort trying to attain?

And then the answers came flooding quickly and easily:

What am I trying to achieve?

• for my children to be happy all the time - to always have the solution ready whenever they cry
• for my children never to misbehave as evidence of my excellent parenting
• for my husband to always be happy and pleased with me
• for my house to be clean and tidy all the time (but without me being OCD about it!)
• to have done something meaningful and helpful for someone approximately every 18 minutes
• for everyone who has ever met me to think I'm great because I'm always meeting up to their expectations and doing thoughtful things for them
• to never lose anything, forget anything, break anything
• to always know where everything is that any member of my family may want whether I was the last person to handle it or not
• to be effortlessly beautiful, fit and stylish
• to have done everything on the 'to do' list
• to never let anyone down

I think I'll stop there. Maybe your list has some elements in common with mine. An invisible list that we carry around in our heads, measuring ourselves up against.

And so you can see why feeling like a failure is a part of my everyday life. Maybe it is for you too. I'm discovering that not meeting up to the standards we set ourselves inside our heads is more the norm that the exception. And yet so often we feel like we’re the only one.

And I can see so clearly reading my own list how stupid and unrealistic these goals are. How totally unattainable and unachievable they are. How I can beat myself up for not achieving burdens that no one is putting on me except myself. Actually writing them down and looking at them in the cold light of day has been a huge first step to breaking free from their power over me; their ability to condemn me and make me want to throw in the towel and give up.

Where do we get these crazy goals from? There are many answers to do with things such as our upbringing, personality and key relationships in our lives. In addition, the internet, Pinterest and social media mean we open our lives to hundreds of messages that each have an impact and influence on us:

“Look! I ran a marathon three days after giving birth”

“Look at the amazing birthday party I threw for my two year old”

“Look what a perfect happy family holiday we had”

“The key to everything is . . . prayer . . . fasting . . . exercise . .  flossing . . . resting . . .”

I let myself get bombarded by these messages. I let others’ achievements make me feel like a failure. I decide to try this, that and the other but never get anywhere with it because the next day I read about something else.

This year has been a year of God opening my eyes to the fact that He is not laying any of these burdens on me. It's not what He is asking me to strive for.  I can see that but it takes a while to change the habit of a way of thinking, the habit of a way of living, the habit of listening to these voices rather than those of my Saviour.

What if he says,  “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

So how does God define success?  I'm far from having developed a theological thesis on this. The whisper I feel in my heart is that it's to do with relationship. Relationship with God and relationship with others. Loving being loved.  Accepting being accepted. Enjoying the gifts God gave us to enjoy. Saying ‘yes’ to the simple opportunities to pass on the love I’ve received that He shows me.

Father, thank you that your love for me does not depend on my performance. Set me free from chasing after success in ways that are not in line with what you have called me to.  Shift my focus from striving to achieve to spending time with You and walking in the paths you show me. Amen.

Post script: In the days I’ve been working on this post I read this quote which redefines success by Heidi Baker in Reckless Devotion:

‘Competition and comparison with others don’t suit our DNA. We feel no pressure to succeed and excel, but we find joy in doing things well by the power of the Spirit.  God’s ways are the reverse of the world’s. We waste our time on the un-influential and the few, stopping for the one . . . . The truth is, we are doing what Jesus has told us to do where He has placed us. You must do what God has told you to do where He has placed you.  . . .  If you can learn to humble yourself and depend fully on Jesus, in reckless devotion, you will see miracles. . . as you determine to empty yourself and be filled with His presence, you will begin to see His life spilling out all over.’

And finally a quote from Michele Cushatt’s memoir Undone in which she shares her unbelievably tough story including her struggle with perfectionism and what she learnt about relationship through it all:

‘I’ve long held unrealistic expectations for myself, inhuman standards, and then judged myself according to how I met – or didn’t meet – them.  . . It took time to unlearn my insufferable independence and self-sufficiency. I’d thought them to be noble qualities, proof of worth. But I’d missed the pride and insecurity that often festered as a result.’

Her conclusion: ‘I needed help . . . I discovered life is far more beautiful – and endurable – when you don’t have to do it alone . . .  in the relinquishing of independence, I discovered community. My brokenness gave me connection, relationship. I thought asking for help was an admission of weakness. Instead, I discovered it a declaration of strength.’

Better than a fairy tale

Recently I watched trailers for a new Cinderella film coming out.  My favourite bit of such films is where the hero is desperate to win the girl's heart and yet has many hurdles to overcome. Romantic films vary, but there is usually a fight, a pursuit or a struggle and the hero shows the strength of his passion by what he is prepared to endure or the persistence and determination it takes for him to win the heart of the girl he loves.

I wrestle with whether it is right to play these scenes over in my mind, imagining myself as the heroine. However I believe that my desire to be passionately loved and pursued is not wrong. It's meant to be fulfilled! I was made to be greatly loved and to love greatly in return.

Jesus is the hero who passionately loves me. Unlike Cinderella, his love for me is not just based on one magical evening of dancing. Jesus knows everything about me. He know the worst I've done and the worst I've still yet to do. And yet he loves me faithfully, unswervingly.

Jesus wants to bring me to live with him in his Father's palace. All the powers of hell have combined together to do everything they can to prevent this. It looked like they had won when Jesus died on the cross but they hadn't. In order to rescue me, Jesus chose to endure humiliation, torture, separation from his Father, injustice and death. He considered it worth it. His love for me does not fluctuate or waver like mine does for him.

And His desire is that I would have that same passionate love for him in return. That now, as He has done all that is needed to make it possible for me to come to Him, that I would 'consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus' (Phil 3:8). That I would pursue Him with a love like Paul’s, prepared to leave anything and everything else behind. Paul was not perfect but he loved Jesus with all his heart. Jesus does not want me to be striving after being perfect to deserve him somehow. He wants my heart to be full of love for him so that I pursue him and am clothed in his robes of righteousness (Is 61:10): more incredible and beautiful than any dress a fairy godmother could conjure up.

Jesus, forgive me. I find it so easy to think about, read and watch fictional romances and yet so hard to wake up to the reality of your love for me. Help me grasp the truth of your unchangeable love, Your total knowledge of who I am and Your unstoppable power to defeat the power of sin in my life. How amazing you are. I love you. Amen.

Postscript (taking the cling film off!): I've recently been reading Songs of Solomon and just want to add that God has created romantic love between people as a beautiful wonderful gift. I don't want my post to imply that we're not supposed to desire or enjoy romantic love. Romantic love between and man and woman is beautiful and precious. However, it pales next to the greatness of God's passionate love for us and it cannot bring us the ultimate fulfilment we find in being know and loved by God.

Praise is powerful

The other week I heard a testimony of a man with horrific injuries, having been hit by a truck at 50mph. God spoke to him about praising Him in and through the pain and trauma and praising Him for every little bit of healing as it came. This man, who was not expected to live, was eventually completely healed. Not in one dramatic moment, but over time and he attributed it to the power of praise. He listened to praise music even right through the night, and that brought healing to the nightmares and flashbacks he would have at night. His testimony really got me thinking about the power of praise.

It reminded me of the story in 2 Chronicles 20 where a huge army is coming against Judah. King Jehoshaphat calls a fast and humbles himself before God, praying “We do not know what to do but our eyes are on you” (v.12). The Lord brings a word of prophecy through Jahaziel: “Do not be afraid . . . You will not have to fight this battle . . . stand firm and see the deliverance the Lord will give you . . . go out and face them tomorrow and the Lord will be with you.” (v.15-17).

Jehoshaphat and the people respond in praise and worship instantly. They don’t wait to see the fulfilment of the prophecy before they praise God for their deliverance. What an incredible act of faith – they’re praising God while the enemy is still advancing against them, before the battle has been won.  They took God at his word and received the victory by faith. They then respond in obedience to go out to the battlefield.

Further evidence of their faith and trust in God’s deliverance is shown in verse 21:

“Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing to the Lord and to praise him for the splendour of his holiness as they went out at the head of the army”.

The worshipers were in front of the army because actually it was the praise and worship of God that was winning the battle in the heavenly places:

“As they began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushes against the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir who were invading Judah, and they were defeated.” (v.22)

What if they had decided they wouldn’t praise God until they had seen the victory? Would those ambushes have been set against their enemies? We don’t know the answer to that, but in a way we cannot often see and cannot understand, praising God is a powerful weapon in fighting spiritual battles.  Here are a few reasons to praise God:

1) Praise lifts our eyes to God and that reminds us how great and powerful He is.

“I will lift up my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.” Psalm 121 v 1, 2

As we declare his greatness and meditate on it in song, our faith rises and is strengthened.

2) Praise takes our eyes off the circumstances which so easily drag us down.  

When I look at how sinful and broken I am, I despair. When I look at the things I cannot control, I feel hopeless. When I try to understand everything in order to sort it out myself, I am left crushed and helpless. When I lift my eyes and sing “How great is our God”, I remind myself of how great the One is in whom I have put my hope. He is my reason to praise.

3) Praise blesses us.  

The enjoying of God and expressing it is not simply a duty and service to Him, but something that does us good too.  When I enter into His presence in praise and delight myself in the greatness of my God, it is one of the greatest pleasures – praising Him who is truly and completely worthy of all praise. 

Hezekiah Walker’s ‘Every praise’ is one of my favourites at the moment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuuZMg6NVeA

I recommend turning the volume up and try dancing for joy to this one.

For those who prefer a more intellectual response, there’s a C S Lewis quote that expresses all of this much better than I’m doing on this website: http://www.cslewisinstitute.org/God_Invites_Us_to_Enjoy_Him#.VTTroxcn5lE.facebook

4) Praise brings us into the Lord’s presence.

“Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.”  Psalm 100 v 4

God is everywhere and we can never get away from him, and yet there is also a very real variation in the experience we have of his power and presence. As we worship and praise God, it is as though in the spiritual realm, we come closer to God. It increases our awareness of the reality that was there all along – God with us. It clears our gaze to see that God is present.  It tunes us in to hear what He would say to us. It removes the barriers that block our hearts from receiving the love and grace He wants to pour in.

5) Praise changes the atmosphere.  

I found our home was more peaceful and relationships seemed more harmonious on the mornings I spent time in worship first and continued to have worship music playing through the morning routine. It’s not a magic spell to make everything rosy, but as the words of the worship songs kept bringing my heart back into a place of worship, God was able to minister to me and the family to receive His love and so be able to let that love flow between us, when our own love falls so woefully short.

Finally I want to share a beautiful song that blessed me greatly  recently – a simple, lovely song which has helped me praise God:

http://bethelmusic.com/praises-be-lifted-up-acoustic-josh-baldwin

Father, I praise You. You are worthy of all praise. Thank you for the privilege of praising You – that it is not just a duty, but a means of receiving even more of your blessing in my life.  Teach me to praise You more and more each day. Amen.

I’ve struggled for several weeks over writing this post – partly because I’ve felt that I haven’t expressed myself very well and there’s so much to say about praise that I’ve not covered.  And also because I have been falling so woefully short of truly learning this lesson myself. I’ve had a really struggly time where I’ve felt really low. I have found praising hard work and it hasn’t transported me effortlessly onto fluffy clouds of ecstasy. When I have praised, it hasn’t instantly lifted my spirits or stopped arguments in the home.

It’s a spiritual battle. The enemy doesn’t want me praising. I’ve finally felt that maybe the reason I’ve felt so much ‘opposition’ to writing this post, is because the enemy doesn’t want even one more person to be encouraged to praise God more. So here it is, rather imperfect like me, but I offer it with a prayer that God may use it to encourage you to find out more of the power and blessing of praise.

What am I supposed to be doing?

The answer to that question is something I have agonised over long and hard many times, but ever so more intensely since becoming a mum and finding a huge range of options before me. I want to share a couple of quotes that have helped me with this question recently.

The first is a quote from Heidi Baker:

“All fruitfulness flows from intimacy.”

This is something Heidi frequently says. She talks of the importance of time spent in the ‘secret place’ with the Father. She knows what she is talking about as she spends hours daily with the Lord and is seeing thousands coming to Christ and many miracles in Mozambique.

I always want the ‘quick fix’, the instant answer. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it! But there is no short cut to intimacy. It is simply developed through regular, daily investment of precious time with God.

My relationship with my husband has continued to grow, deepen and develop through our ten years of marriage. I loved him so much when I married him but I couldn’t have the same depth of relationship with him then that I have now because that has only come through sharing our lives together.  My husband expressed amazement just the other week that he is still learning new things about me! I guess that’s a life long journey and one we can have the Lord as well.

The second quote is from a sermon by Bill Johnson:

“It is the Spirit of God that takes the simple things we do and makes them supernaturally effective.”

The word ‘simple’ really jumped out at me and I realised that actually God is not asking me to do anything complicated or work out some difficult instruction. I don’t have to find the exact right thing to do and do it perfectly to be used by God.

The core thing God wants me to do is spend time with Him, deepening my relationship with him, my love for him and my knowledge of him.  And then really I just need to walk on into my life and it will be natural to share out of what I’ve received when spending time with him. 

By spending time in His presence, I will carry some of that into the way I respond to people and situations in my day.  In some ways it doesn’t matter so much what I am doing but who I’ve been with that makes the difference.

Jesus, you died to bring me into relationship with you. Help me put that relationship above running around thinking I’m doing things for you. Teach me what it means to seek you above seeking instruction, information or direction; to want to know you more than I want to know what you want me to do; to stop thinking everything has to be achieved by my effort; to stop wanting to look good in others’ eyes; to realise seeking you is the most valuable investment of my time. Amen

Linger until you have met him

Last year I was reading John 20 about Mary and the disciples coming to the empty tomb on Easter Sunday morning. As I reflected on it, God showed me how it is an allegory of Bible study. I felt it was something I should share back then but didn’t know how to.  I remembered about it today and think that the blog is the way I should share it now.

In the chapter, first Mary comes and sees the stone rolled away. Then John comes and looks in at the door of the tomb. When Peter arrives he actually goes in and sees the grave clothes.

How does this relate to Bible study?  Mary seeing the stone rolled away is like the simple immediate observations we can make when reading a Bible passage. She simply saw the stone rolled away but didn’t know what to make of it.

Then John looking in the tomb is like looking more closely at a Bible passage. Looking carefully at the words and thinking about them. John examined the tomb more closely to check that not only was the stone rolled away but that the body of Jesus was no longer there. He still did not know what this meant.

Peter going into the tomb seemed to me to be like delving more deeply into the meanings of the words and their interpretation. Peter was the one who saw that the grave clothes were lying there. He found out some more information by going deeper. But he still did not fully understand that Jesus had risen.

The next bit really blew me away. Peter and John go away again but Mary stays weeping. She then sees the angels in the tomb, one at the head and one at the foot of where Jesus lay. I felt God whisper, “The angels were there all the time. I just opened her eyes to see them.” I felt God showed me that for those who linger and long for more revelation, he opens our hearts to truths and messages He has for us in His word that cannot be found by mere intellectual study and digging. The angels were in the tomb when Peter and John went there but they were in a hurry and on a fact finding mission and so they missed out on this further revelation.

The final part of what God showed me left me weeping. Because Mary still stayed. Her heart was seeking Jesus. She did not want to go without finding him. She continued to search and long for Jesus and stayed even after the angels had spoken and it was then that Jesus himself came to her and revealed himself to her. When he said her name she knew it was him.

I felt God say “The greatest treasure is for those who truly seek Me in the scripture, whose hearts are not satisfied until they have found Me.” It is to those who seek and linger and don’t give up that I reveal myself. Then they know that they have met with Me.

Most of the time I just read the Bible in order to have ‘done’ my Bible reading for the day. How little I linger. How quickly I move on. I read for information, maybe I dig a bit deeper and read some Bible notes to get a better understanding. But am I seeking a revelation? Am I prepared to wait, to linger and to press on to seek meeting my Saviour Himself?

I want to be more like Mary and long to meet with Jesus enough to linger until I see him.

Jesus, increase my longing for you so that like Mary I seek you and don’t give up until I have met with you and heard your voice speaking to me.  Amen.

Running into his arms

John 21:7 "That disciple whom Jesus loved therefore said to Peter, "It is the Lord!" When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment, for he was stripped for work, and threw himself into the sea."

As I read this passage about Jesus appearing on the shore while the disciples were fishing, I just felt I got a glimpse of Jesus' smile and how his heart warmed at Peter's response.  As soon as he heard it was Jesus, Peter grabbed his coat and jumped in the water, abandoning his boat, nets, friends and awesome catch of fish.

This was the third time the disciples had seen Jesus since the resurrection. I guess Peter was thinking, "I don't know how long Jesus will stay with us this time. I don't know if and when I may see Jesus again. I just want to make the most of every possible moment I can spend with him."

Peter had been fishing all night without catching anything so he would have been tired, hungry and cold and yet he jumped fully clothed into the sea in his effort to be with Jesus as quickly as possible. His love for Jesus gave him an energy that overcame his tiredness, made his physical hunger less important than his spiritual hunger and burned in his heart warmer than the cold the sea could send through him.

Jesus’ heart thrilled to see Peter splashing his way messily through the water to be with him.

I have a little boy named after this same disciple who tends to wake early. We have a rule that he has to wait until 7am (“seven –oh-oh”) on his digital clock before he can come out of his room (apart from toilet trips of course!). He learnt to read the time quickly and soon grasped that “seven-oh-oh” came after 6:59am. I can be sure on any given morning that he is counting down the minutes to “seven-oh-oh”. Because of the various toilet trips and other ‘reasons’ to leave their bedrooms early from our two, I tend to get up and try to read my Bible sitting on the top stair on the landing so that I’m on the spot to police any ‘happenings’. I too keep an eye on the time, knowing my minutes of being alone are numbered. The moment the clock turns to 7:00 the cry goes up “It’s seven-oh-oh!” and he comes bursting out of his room, running, stumbling, blinking and into my lap for his morning hug.  His sister is less keen-eyed on the clock and has learnt just to wait for her brother to announce the time and comes and patiently waits her turn for the morning hug.  If I’ve not got out of bed before 7:00 then he comes and climbs on top of me, as the first essential act of every day is a hug with mummy. 

It struck me that my little Peter is a bit like Simon Peter. He wants to be with the one he loves – and the moment he can, he comes running.

In comparison, oh how reluctant I am to get out of bed to go running to Jesus’ arms. And yet he loves me more perfectly and passionately than I do my little boy. If only I could grasp the greatness of his love for me and the amazing privilege of being able to spend time with Jesus any time I want.

Jesus please forgive the feebleness of my love for you. I want to be like Peter, running to you whenever I can just to be with you. Please give me a greater revelation of your amazing love for me and set my heart on fire with love for you. Amen