Staying alive

My blogbox is filling up. ”Where is adaysmarch?” they’re all asking.  Has he been eaten by giant gerbils, abducted by aliens, lost in the jungle?  What’s going on?

It’s just been a really busy few weeks, and I’ve struggled to find either time or inspiration to write anything in my blog.  I think that probably means I’ve been too busy, and haven’t had (or taken) enough time to think and reflect on things.

I’ll try and write something this week, but it’s looking like another busy one as I’m due to be preaching next Sunday.  After that we’re going on holiday for a couple of weeks, so it may stay quiet for a while.  But I’m hoping to then come back with all guns a-blazing…!

By the way, I’m already annoyed by the title of this post as it makes me think of the song by the same name by the Bee Gees (I think they got there first).  I don’t like that song.  I don’t like the Bee Gees.  Men who sing high?  Man up.  Sing deep.  Thank you.

Many are the afflictions of the righteous

“Many are the afflictions of the righteous” (Psalm 34.19): some internal, others external; some from friends, others from foes; some more directly at the hand of God, others more remotely by the instrumentality of the devil.  Nor should this be thought strange.  Such has been the lot of all God’s children in greater or lesser degree.  Nor ought we to expect much comfort in a world which so basely crucified the Lord of glory.  The sooner the Christian makes it his daily study to pass through this world as a stranger and pilgrim, anxious to depart and be with Christ, the better for his peace of mind.  But it is natural to cling tenaciously to this life and to love the things of time and sense, and therefore most of the Lord’s people have to encounter many buffetings and have many disappointments before they are brought to hold temporal things with a light hand and before their silly hearts are weaned from that which satisfies not.

AW Pink, The Life of David

More helpful straight-talking from Mr Pink.  Why is it so hard to hold the things of time and sense with that light hand?  How much is the reason to be found in a lack of faith?  How much a lack of love?  May my afflictions wean me, and sanctify my silly heart.

Treasure in Heaven

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Matthew 6.19-21

No moth, no rust, no thieves.  Also, no fences blowing down, no leaking pipes, no botched DIY jobs, no faults on the washing machine.  Now that’s the place I want to go!

Parting Shots

 

Paganism.  Justice.  Tree spirits.  Jesus Christ.  Shamans.  The Apocrypha.  Exorcism.  Jewish ceremonial laws.  God.  Prayer.  Morality.  Aura.  Judgment.  Chi.  The Bible.

Not a bad list for one conversation: I was trying to explain the Gospel to a man called Neil who professes to be a pagan priest.  It was a good, intelligent, engaging conversation.  We left each other with a parting thought.

If I was shipwrecked and ended up on an island with no Bible, where would my religion be?  A good question.

My faith and salvation is not in the Book, but in my Saviour.  I love the book because it tells me about my Saviour.  The Book tells me how I am saved and how to live in relationship with God.  But if I lose the Book I do not lose my religion because I do not lose my Saviour, I do not lose my new life in Him, and I do not lose my salvation.

My parting shot was this: What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his soul?

How would you answer these questions?  Can you answer these questions?  Do you know where you stand, upon what you rely and why?  Be challenged.  Think.

Responding to Rejection

Rejection comes in many shapes and sizes, and is rarely a welcome visitor.  I had been encouraged to apply for a temporary assignment at work, duly attended an interview last week, and was rejected yesterday.  My reaction was stronger, more emotional, and more complex, even confusing, than I would have expected.  So in the spirit of trying to learn my Heavenly Father’s lessons, what should I be learning, and how should I be responding to this?

The first thing I need to learn is that pride is a pernicious and persistent problem.  To some degree my problem with the rejection is that it hurts my pride.  I was not chosen and someone else has been promoted ahead of me.  I thought that I was the best candidate, with the best skills, experience and capability, and I don’t like to hear that that is not the case.  How ugly is that?  I need to repent of the pride, and imitate my meek and humble Saviour more and more.

Flattery doesn’t feel like flattery at the time.  It feels right, and respectable.  But it only serves to promote pride – see above.

Contentment and ambition make uneasy bedfellows.

More positively, my ability, worth and potential are not determined by my performance in an interview.  God has given me ability.  There are things at which I am good.  In these things I can serve and honour Him by performing them with diligence and excellence.  Rejection does not negate or even have any bearing on what I can and should do, or how I should do it.

Embracing God’s sovereignty is easier in principle than in practice.  It is also easier when the answer is ‘yes’ rather than ‘no’.  But even when it is an uncomfortable or painful answer, it is the best answer.  It comes from His loving hand, with the full weight of His perfect wisdom and understanding.

And finally, I thank God for my wonderful, supportive and abundantly helpful wife.  Where would I be without her?

Who can find a virtuous wife?

For her worth is far above rubies.

The heart of her husband safely trusts in her;

so he will have no lack of gain.

She does him good and not evil all the days of her life.

Proverbs 31.10-12

 

“Him”

The story is told of an elderly Christian woman whose age began to tell on her memory.  She had once known much of the Bible by heart.  Finally, only one verse stayed with her.  It was, “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day” (2 Tim 1.12).

By and by, part of that slipped its hold, and she would say, “that which I have committed unto Him”.

At last she hovered on the borderland between this and the next world, and her loved-ones noticed her lips moving.  They bent down to see if she needed anything.  She was repeating over and over again to herself one word of the text: “Him, Him, Him”.  She had lost the whole Bible but for one word, yet strangely she had the whole Bible in that word – “Him”.

Borrowed from The Messenger (I’m sure they won’t mind…)

I feel it in my fingers

I don’t listen to a great deal of music, but when I was doing some decorating the other day I did have the radio on (I felt it almost obligatory, cos that’s what workmen do, isn’t it?  Radio 2.  Rock n’ Roll!).  I heard a couple of songs that I know reasonably well, but made note to listen to the lyrics.  One was “Love is all around me” – not the mid 90s version by Wet Wet Wet, but the original Troggs version.  I know, how cutting edge am I?  It includes the lyric, “My mind’s made up by the way I feel”. 

It’s not exactly a new thought, but how careful we need to be about what we hear, and what effect it has upon us.  Although not many people would say that pop songs are a great source of wisdom, their lyrics do infiltrate our ears, minds and thinking.  The phrases we hear become part of our consciousness, part of the way in which we understand the world, and part of how we respond to it.

The lyric in question seems to sum up how my generation is living.  (Maybe every generation behaves like this, but you can only be part of one.)  We let our feelings lead our behaviours, and leave any principles following on behind.  This is a road to ruin.  Note to self: my feelings are a God-given part of my humanity and manhood, but are to be subject to Godly, Biblical principles, worked out in my redeemed conscience.  They do not and must not rule the roost.

The nesting season

Build not thy nest in any earthly tree, for the whole forest is doomed to destruction.

Puritan counsel

We don’t like to think of destruction, and we cherish the comfortable familiarity of things.  In this we lose perspective, and forget the end which is inevitably coming.  How precious will Christ appear in that day!  Who would not want Him to be our hiding place?  How fearful to hear those words, “Depart from me; I never knew you”.

May this solid counsel be of practical benefit to each one.

Showing off

Adumbrate.

1. To give a sketchy outline of.

2. To prefigure indistinctly; foreshadow.

3. To disclose partially or guardedly.

4. To overshadow; shadow or obscure.

Good word eh?  And now well within my (and your) vocabulary.

This post was sponsored by The Free Dictionary.com

 

Losing the corpse

Imagine the scenario: money is tight, and things are tough.  Each month you struggle to make ends meet and provide for yourself and your family.  In fact, much of your income comes from the benefits that your father, who lives with you, receives.  Then your father dies.

A cunning plan forms in your mind.  Your father didn’t go out much, and you collected his benefits for him.  Why does anyone need to know that he’s died?  Keep quiet and you can keep claiming the benefits.

Bizarre and grotesque as this sounds, this is the rough outline of a case which made the news recently when the man responsible was convicted of fraud.  His father’s decaying and long-dead body was found in his flat, with the stench only partially masked by air-fresheners.

Of course, you’d never do such a thing, and nor would I.  But what about your sin?  Sin paints itself in vivid and vivacious colours.  Like the man and his money, you want it.  You want it, and you will have it.  You want the pleasures, and you cannot or will not see anything past the pleasures.  And there is pleasure in sin, it is sweet to the taste.

The man had the money: he spent it, and he enjoyed it.  But there was the slight matter of the stinking, rotting corpse lying in his flat.  Oh, and the day when he got caught, and had to face judgement.  And if you will have your sin, you can have your pleasures.  But do not be deceived.  It may taste sweet, but afterwards will be like wormwood in your stomach.  It may have some pleasure, but the putrid and foul consequences will plague and infest your life and conscience.  You might try to mask the odour, but you cannot be rid of the stench.  And there is a day coming when you too will face judgement, and then you will fully, finally and fatally realise why God says that the wages of sin is death.

But it doesn’t have to be like this.  You can be rid of your sin.  “But now, once at the end of the ages”, at the climax and pinnacle of history, Christ “has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself” (Hebrews 9.26).  This is what Christ came to do.  This is why Christ died.  This is why there is good news for all people, even those of us who have lived with the festering corpse of our sin for many years.

Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many.

Hebrews 9.28