belonging

I have been reminded a lot recently by Holy Spirit that I belong to God. He is daily repeatedly whispering to me you belong to me. It happens at the most strange moments; wiping a table at the restaurant, as I make a cup of tea.... its lovely. I like it. I want to hear this all the time. I belong to GOD! God almighty is in charge of me, has got my back; the buck stops with him not me. It makes me just say phew! It brings such profound strength and freedom.

What does it mean to belong? Definitions are quite straight forward...one is "to be bound to by ties of affection or dependence". I am tangled up and tied up with God, I am bound to him; I can't get away from him; he has got me; I am totally dependent on him, addicted to him, he has my affections completely and utterly. I am literally lost without him.

To belong is to be bound to him. To be bound means to be confined, to be limited, to have boundaries in place, to be legally obligated, to be married. How amazing to be limited to God because if I am limited to God nothing else can have any place in me. I cannot belong and be limited to God and have anything else limiting me. If I belong to him I cannot belong to any other - its one or the other, and I choose to belong to him. He loves it!

For surely O Lord you bless the righteous; you surround them with your favour as a shield. psalm 5:12.

decisions decisions and meetings with vicars

So yesterday I finally made the decision to train two days a week [part time] at St John's Nottingham. Feels good to have made a decision after having been in the process for three years now! This is a step of faith for me as I will receive no financial support for this.

It's really exciting to me the stirrings in the church of england even in the most obscure of places. The vicar who I met to discuss my training had done a study in Doncaster of all places and found that nearly everyone believes in God and yet next to noone goes to church. I am challenged daily to respond to this. How can this be? There is a whole and vast two generations of totally unchurched people in this nation. The fruit of this that I see all around me frightens me intensely every now and then and today has been one of those days. Thankfully God always whispers the same verses to me every time I have one of these days...be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted in the nations. Psalm 46.

over a year...

Ok so it has been well over a year since I blogged and it is painfully ironic that my last post was on frustration. I am frustrated with myself for not following through on writing as it's such a great outlet for my own thoughts even if only a few read it! It was quite interesting reading my own blog back to myself after a year. In some ways I was discouraged at how I still feel very similar in terms of frustration; but let's call it perseverance.

God really is calling people to go further in terms of their sacrifice of going along with the status quo. Laying down career, status and wealth is still a battle that I face daily and yet I am beginning to really ask myself why? I often can feel ashamed that I have not the flashy career, house, cash flow. I internally feel low at my status as a humble waitress surrounded by 21 year olds. My pride is bruised when I explain the randomness of the ministry that I am a part of when people don't quite get it. However all of this is so utterly utterly wrong.

Even the phrase "laying down career, status and wealth" is totally flawed. These are gods of this age. Idols in my mind. False bases for life. Temporary aneasthetics. I am not in fact laying down anything at all. I'm really not. It's only a sacrifice if these things mean more to me than the King and his kingdom. My true career is to be a messenger. My status' [stati?] are multiple superior realities that I needn't extrapolate here. My wealth is infinite in this age and in the age to come.

Anything that seems like a sacrifice seems to really be an area where I have backward priorities. Does this mean that a sense of sacrifice highlights a flawed view of something...? because God in his goodness would never ask us to do something that is inherently "mean". It may only seem mean because of our wrong view of what is truly good. To be happy and content is to be in alignment with heaven in spirit and soul. It is to be whole. It is to be totally assured and certain. If it feels like a sacrifice I need a revelation of how unfathomably trustworthy He is. He is a good Dad and leader of my life par excellence.

frustration

I am dealing with a lot of frustration right now and I am trying to work out how to live with frustration, and whether we should live with frustration!? 

My personality is one that leans towards operating under a lot of frustration and wanting more of God and desiring breakthrough, but today I am kind of sick of it! Often frustration is affirmed as a normal quality of a pioneering person but does frustration do anything? I suppose it pushes people on towards the goal in someway.  Is it closely linked with motivation? It does often lead to more prayer and desperation for the Lord. But is frustration a good thing..I'm not sure.

I doubt that there is frustration in heaven and therefore surely this means it is not something we should live under. In heaven there is life, peace, joy and contentment. What is the opposite of frustration? Contentment and satisfaction? Is frustration closely related to impatience? If so, since patience is a fruit of the spirit, frustration surely is not a good thing? The Bible is committed to the view that contentment in all circumstances is how we should live...

But I am sure that Jesus was sometimes frustrated... at Peter when he 'got it' and declared that Jesus was the Christ, but then shortly later Jesus rebuked him as Satan! Or at the disciples when they were unable to cast the demon out of the boy. Or when they missed so many things that Jesus tried to teach them. Or when Jesus went into the temple and market stalls were set up and in anger he trashed the place! This leads to the question is frustration akin to anger in someway? Perhaps in the same way that the Bible teaches that anger in itself is not sin ["in your anger do not sin"] perhaps frustration is in the same vein. Its not sin, but perhaps can lead to the sin of impatience or unthankfulness or just plain being annoyed!

So how do we get breakthrough from a place of frustration...prayer and perseverance [Lk 18], thankfulness and testimony, fasting and just getting more passion and oomph. I am in a season of real perseverance and its not that fun to be honest. But I am believing for the breakthrough. Perhaps is it that God allows us to live under frustration because he is waiting for us to sort some stuff in another direction. Perhaps he is encouraging certain things to be on the back burner while he works in another area. Maybe frustration, because it pushed you into more prayer and desperation before the Lord, it is a tool the Lord can use to get our attention. All I know is I am thirsty for something...for the king and the kingdom. I want more. I am not satisfied with the same level of experience in the miraculous, provision, intimacy in relationship, evangelism...there is so much more.

I am working my way through Mike Bickle's teaching on the Song of Songs at the moment, I think God is getting my attention on some alternative areas that are his priority although not always my priority., Perhaps frustration is when our priorities aren't totally in line with God's. He is more bothered about our hearts, rather than results. Help, I need to get in tune!

we are all like drug addicts!!!

Paul Mac was speaking today on some very interesting perspectives on sin and the way we function and live so below how we were meant to. We are slaves to our fallen nature, we have access to freedom but we don't embrace this fully because we all have addictions and attachments to things in our lives that take the place of God...idolatry in other words. We live life less fully than we were intended for too...we are sinners and we fall short of the glory God intended for us. The stuff on attachments and how we are all essentially addicts came from a book about a psychiatrist's journey from atheism to faith due to studying drug addicts and his finding that the only ones who got freedom, had had a spiritual experience.

Paul took it further and said that the way God has to deal with us is like how a rehabilitator has to deal with an addict...we are generally deceptive, we try and do disciplines and we can't, we say we love God then we do something that reflects the opposite, we are broken and a mess! 

I have been thinking is this perhaps why we don't see more breakthrough in the supernatural and in our ministries? God can't give us the fullness because in the same way you can't trust an addict, God can't really trust us with the full measure of the anointing until we get rid of the addictions to work, stress, money, TV, food, relationships, dysfuntional ways of thinking....we need to be holy and set apart from these things. The naff thing is also that these things like an addiction also become not as fun to us the more we do them...actually fullness of joy will come in His presence alone and not through these things. That's not to say we can't enjoy these things but if we are looking to them for relief or happiness a lot of the time then we need to reasess...

Ephesians 3 says we will be filled with the fullness of God [that would lead to breakthrough in the supernatural] when we know his love and that we are adopted sons, not slaves. God loves us even though we are needy, messed up addicts and we need to know his love a whole lot more. I think there are a lot of us that need to humbly see ourselves as needy before God, we really cannot attain anything unless he changes us. We need to taste Life and position ourselves to receive a double dose of his love and presence than we have been getting as a step towards more freedom and the fullness of God in us.

grieving and questioning

Bit of a serious/personal one but a couple of people [strange how things come at the same time!] have asked me recently about how i processed faith and the death of my father...i answered some jumbled thoughts I thought I may as well include in my blog...this is obviously not everything I could say on the matter but here goes...

For those who don't know, my father was hit by a car and died in 2002, he wasn't a christian and I had been praying and fasting for him for as long as I could remember.

Reading and thinking and talking were very important...grief cannot be ignored it must be faced and grappled with and God SO wonderfully shares in it and leads you if you let him in [though this for me has come in hindsight]. A few books in particular helped me...

• 'on grief and grieving' [its a secular book - takes you through the steps of what generally happens to people when they grieve - although not christian it was VERY helpful]
  
• 'A grief observed' by CS Lewis - he was single for years, then got married in his forties and his wife died very short after their marrieage of cancer. his account is very real, very raw and honest.
  
• 'When heaven is silent' by someone Dunn. He was a very charismatic believing christian who saw miracles yet his son suffered with mental illness and committed suicide. this book is EXCELLENT on all thiss stuff.

• "God on mute" by Pete Greig...also about his journey of seeing loads stuff happen yet his wife being very very ill.

• the books of Job, Ecclesiastes and Psalms [bread and butter]!!!
  

generally grief is something that is raw for at least five years, its a journey, there are no instant results, there are no formulae or definite ways of dealing with it.  when my dad died my whole world turned upside down...there were some unusual circumstances in that the last time i saw him i was VERY upset for no reason - as if i knew it was the last time i'd see him. Grief is often accompanioed with weird things like that that may be made up or God preparing you.

I suffered with a DEEP mental pain that psychologists call cognitive dissonance pretty much up to last New Years!!! last new years God really healed me/gave me a boost out of a deeper sense of grief and confusion that had been continuous since 2002. The last year has been such a different year than the years previous. God just shifted something in me - I do remembering deciding to receive this as a gift from God. Cognitive dissomnance is where your mind very much believes two things very strongly and yet they completely contradict. It is a very painful thing to live with but life and the christian journey does include living with mystery.. I had to live with and process the fact that my dad had died, not a christian, very young and I had had a hard relationship with him that I wanted to work out but that opportunity was taken away. but yet I totally had believed he would meet Jesus one day and I strongly believe that God answers prayer. I still do for the record.

We never reach full resolution of things like this but the call as Christians is when we face difficulty we MUST press into God closer, push through the confusion barrier rather than follow the tepmtation the enemy offers us which is to blame God and pull away from him [I wasted a lot of time doing this, but God brought me back and he was incredibly faithful and fathered me through the dark times].For me I knew nothing else would work, I knew God enough that he was the only answer even if I didn't get it, i had to trust him, i kept praying and talking to God about it, i kept going to church, i kept reading the psalms and journalling. I held on. Ephesians 6 says to stand on the day of evil and to stand. just stand! 2Corinthians is my fave new testament book and theres loads in it about being "hard pressed on every side but not destroyed, struck down but not abandoned...we carry around in our bodies the death of jesus..." these words along with the Psalsm kept me. Being a Christian is hard -mark 4 -the sower; stuff gets in the way...the enemy sowed a whole load of garbage but i had to pull through anyway. We are following someone who was murdered anda people group who are attacked...we live in a fallen world where the enemy seeks to kill steal and destroy and he does do these things.

A new book called "strengthen yourself in the lord" by bill johnson is amazing and the most practically life transforming book I've read in the last two years...i do wish i had had that during my grief...the base default truth is that God is good and that we must see the things that happen to us through this truth. It talks about how we must choose to worship, give thanks and thus be strengthened in every life situation. It talks about this as a discipline in hard times and we must do it even if we don't feel like it...this is a very releasing truth because I felt it was wrong to say words in worship that I didn't totally mean...actually choosing to turn our mouths to truth and to God will cause faith to be released in us and change in our hearts and minds will result. 

The story of the wise and foolish builders in matthew 7 is one of the most important of Jesus teaching...the rains will come, being a christian is not all hunky dory, but God is good and he will give us the grace if we turn our face toward him just that little bit. We must build our lives now on the rock because grief and crappy stuff happening is inevitable. We are in an exciting time of seeing God move more, healings and hearing his voice; we are seeing more breakthrough...its fantastic. But we will still see and be impacted by shoddy stuff and we must be prepared or we will be offended at God and that is a very sorry place to be...don't go there!!!

buildings suck!?

So I am the worst consistent blogger the world has ever seen! Thanks everyone for encouraging comments about this blog though..I intend to get back into it this Jan!

I will get straight to the point of what prompted me to start blogging again today... [on New Years Eve of all days!? and when I should really get packed and showered as I leave to go away in under two hours!]....one of my Form "huddleees"; the amazing Franklin Mason sent me a book today called Pagan Christianity. I am sure that a lot of it I will agree with but the first chapter has made me kinda frustrated and confused.

The whole book is about how most of our Christian practices are not biblical and in fact are more sinisterly influenced by pagain practices and therefore we should not be doing them. The first chapter is all about church buildings and how we should not have church buildings for a number of reasons. The book so far is very weak in convincing me that we should not have church buildings...its main reasonings seem to be the following:

1. The early church did not have buildings. So what? They couldn't have buildings because it was illegal to be a Christian, let alone build a church. Yes we must learn from the principles of the NT church in terms of community and not having a building as the focus of our community but this is niot a strong enough argument to do away with church buildings.

2. Jesus predicted the destroying of the temple and when he cleared the temple it also pointed to his anger at the temple even being there. This is simply a pants argument [sorry frankie!]. The fact that Jesus overturned the tables in the temple argues almost in favour of buldings having at least some level of importance to God. Nowhere in that passage does it infer that Jesus is angry at the building being there. Ridiculous.

3. Buildings were brought in by Constantine for his own gain and building "temples" was a move by Christianity to copy Paganism. To debate about Constantine is a massive area that I cannot really go into but again...so what? Why must our response be "buildings are bad?" As far as Christianity copying paganism - have the writers [Frank Viola and George Barna] read the Old Testament? Whole books [i.e. Numbers] are about the building of the temple and tabernacles...Paganism has hardly had the monopoly on buildings...the Bible is full of them. Obviously with Christ the new overtakes the old and we now have Christ in us and we do not need to go to a particular place to meet God; we have the Spirit. Similarly in John 4 Jesus said to the Samaritan woman that no longer would people need to worship in a particular place but would worship in spirit and in truth.

The issues surrounding the use of church buildings in the church is not going to be argued away by saying that buildings are pagan and therefore we should get rid of them. That to me sounds so religious! God can use and work through anything and everything - including "pagan buildings." The issue for the church today is whether they are going to care more about the buildings than the community inside them AND the people not meeting inside them. In the circles of Christians I generally find myself in I rarely find someone who genuinely thinks they must go to a sacred building to meet with God.

Buildings are not necessary for church but they are necessary for life and as long as they are viewed properly surely they can be a help rather than a hindrance to the kingdom of God. Buildings are where people can be fed and clothed, where people can be rehabilitated; others can be taught and trained so they can go out and plant oragnic churches. Buildings can be a place of prayer, a place to go to get away from the messiness and jobs and computers and TVs we find at home that distract uis form spending time with God.

If we want to see revival in this nation it will most likely come through Organic Churches - because its a multiplication method [read the book Organic Church] not an addition method [like Alpha etc]. However to sustain such an evangelisic method and see continuity in this we need centres for training, for healing, for rehab, for prayer, and for meeting. Being at St Thomas Church Philadelphia is brilliant because the buildings generally are not that nice and are certainly not a focus or an ideal and yet they are used for amazing things...young people can meet there, assylum seekers can come, single mums, children, students. Its only if we cared about the buildings more than these things that we have a theological and biblical problem. Buildings are not pagan - people can be! and they don't need a building to be.