Living the Life

Frogger

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Ever feel stuck?  Like there’s no way forwards?  Like you’re living in the consequence of decisions made a long time ago, and that the dead end you’re now in is inescapable?  You need to think about Frogger.

Frogger was a game I got mildly addicted to a long time ago when my teenagers were still toddling.   It mostly involved hopping a little frog around on lily pads and getting it to the other side of a road or a river.

The picture I had today was of a frog who had hopped out along a particular line of lily pads, and then got to the end of the line.  He looked across and saw other frogs hopping along another line of lily pads and thought ‘oh well, that’s it then, I went the wrong way, I blew it’.

It’s easy to feel that one choice you made or that was made for you has messed everything up… that you’ve gone off on a diversion from the main route and can never go back.  Like somehow you will never be able to live fully in the goodness of what God intended for you because of one foolish/stupid/scared choice you made and there is no way to get back onto the right track again.

Of course we do often have to live with the consequences of our choices… but the truth about frogger is that there’s always an alternative route… even if it looks like there isn’t.  Any moment now a new lily pad will pop up, or even better, a floating log will come along to hop on to and take us somewhere completely new!

When we get to one of these ‘dead-end’ places, we have another choice: We can sit on our lily pad feeling sorry for ourselves, wondering if God has forgotten us, berating ourselves for the decision we made that has got us into this place, putting all our faith in our stuckness or we can call out to God and trust that he is able to do something about it.

And of course- he can.   There’s never only one route across the river, and as I was thinking about last week when I wrote this, our God is a the master of reversing impossible situations.  He isn’t just creative -he is Creativity.  Finding new ways to get you to where he wants you to be is as natural to him as breathing is to you.

‘You are stuck, it’s hopeless, there’s no way out’ is one of the regular often-used lies of the enemy.  It’s designed to paralyse you, to stop you from realising that there never was one perfect, easy route across the river; that everyone either makes stupid choices, or encounters obstacles and that our creative father constantly builds new routes for us.

If you’re feeling stuck today, like you hopped off the main path and onto an inescapable road to nowhere, take a real step and ask God to help you let go of that lie.  Reach out and catch a hold of the truth that he has never for one moment forgotten you, and ask him to help you grasp the truth that your life is a constantly growing ‘new creation’ and that he has more enough power to build you a new route across the river and into the places he has called you to be.

My problem is often that I want to see the path marked out in front of me.  I want to be able to think, “oh I’ll hop there, and then there, and then there and that will take me to where I want to be”.  My life just isn’t like that.  I often cannot even imagine how God is going to take me into the things he’s spoken to me about, let alone plan the route!

So my struggle is to choose to trust in the God of floating logs and suddenly growing lily pads instead of trying to plot my own course all the time… frogfeat

Whatever your struggle is, I pray that God would speak to you today and that he would open your eyes to trust in his extraordinary creativity and love for you.  It will be worth it.

 

Living the Life

Everything changes

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But now…

Do you know, I think those might be two of my favourite words in the Bible.  For me, those two words capture something wonderful, beautiful and essential about the Gospel that it’s easy to lose sight of the wonder of..

They also remind me of this card. It’s from one of the games that we used to love to play endlessly and noisily with the youth group we led in our twenties, back when our idea of a great way to spend a Wednesday evening was to fill our living room with teenagers and talk to them about Jesus.  (Actually that still sounds like a pretty great way to spend an evening to me, but that’s another story)

The card means change direction.  If anyone plays it, play stops and then goes back the other way, instantly and without question. It turns things around, reverses them – changes everything.  And I love the picture because in it I see what Jesus came to the world (and to me) for: to turn things around, to reverse them and to change everything. You can just imagine what the ‘cardboard testimonies’ of people who met Jesus in the gospels would have been like:

“I was sick for years and years, but now I’m healed”

“My brother was dead, but now he’s alive”

“I was an outcast, but now I’m a treasured friend”

“I thought I knew everything, but now…”

So, back to my favourite words, so that you too can whisper them to yourself and feel their power pulsing in your veins.

But now…

They actually come from the first chapter of Colossians, and they tell you exactly what happened the moment that God looked at you and me, and through Jesus decided to play the ultimate change direction card onto our lives:

Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.  But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation— if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel.

Colossians 1: 21-23

You were alienated, cut off, at a distance, separated, but now –  you are brought near.

You were an enemy, but now –  you are a friend of God.

You were a foreigner and an alien, but now –  you are family.

You were stained, dirty, marked, grubby, but now –  you are washed absolutely clean, without blemish, but more than that, you are Holy.

You were guilty, but now – you cannot be accused.

It’s an extraordinary card that God has played in your life.  The ‘but now’.  Costly, powerful and irrevocable… and yours to accept.

LIke many of you, I’ve known this is true for ages and ages and ages… But somehow I still struggle to confidently live in the reality of it.  I still fall into thinking about myself as grubby and stained and failing, as I was before Jesus rescued me from the dominion of darkness, brought me into the light, hosed me down, gave me a new place to stand and new song to sing.

So, if you’re like me, and you need reminding – take five minutes now to remember it again… breathe it in…  feel the glory and the power in those two little words:

But now

Living the Life

Running on empty?

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This is my fuel gauge this morning. I’m not actually sure how far I can drive with the fuel light flashing, but I do seem to test it quite regularly…

Stupid, because I really don’t want to run out of fuel in the middle of a dusty nowhere or worse, a noisy junction… But there are some jobs that you just keep putting off until ‘there’s time to do them’.

It was what happened next that ‘winked at me’ though, (in the way that things do sometimes when God wants to tell me something through them).   Although the little light had been flashing angrily at me all the way to school and back early this morning,  when I got back into the car after leaving it for five minutes sitting on the driveway the needle was back up to nearly a quarter full and the accusing light had gone out again!

I know why of course –  the driveway slopes. It happens all the time, the slight incline pushes fuel into the tank at the back of the car and gives a false reading. It looks like I have plenty of petrol to make it to pick up the girls and back, but probably I haven’t.  Fortunately, on this occasion I’ve been paying attention, so I know that the truth is that I’m down to fumes and need to go to fill up.

What I feel like God has been saying to me today is that there are things in our life that can give us a ‘false reading’ about where we are in our relationship with Him.  Ministry and busyness especially can keep the gauge reading high, when actually the tanks are running empty.  How many of us have found ourselves running dry in the middle of serving the Lord?  The answer of course can’t be to just give up being busy, or give up doing ministry (The church would suddenly become a lot less effective if we all did that!) But we perhaps need to accept that those things can leave us with a malfunctioning ‘fuel gauge’…

When I was a student I had a car which had a completely broken fuel gauge (amongst other complaints).  Until it was fixed the only way to keep it running was to choose to top it up every other day!  I wonder if for similar reasons that it’s necessary for us to keep coming back to Jesus for a top-up of his forgiveness, grace, love and Spirit as often as we can.  I’ve sometimes rebelled against the ‘daily quiet time’ idea as it seemed like legalism, and although I don’t think the time of day matters and believe that some people hear God better outdoors, or indoors, or in a church, or in silence, or with music on… I have realised that finding a way and a time to meet with God EVERY SINGLE DAY, although it isn’t a rule, is just really sensible advice.

Great journeys are made of little steps.. So here are mine.  Today on the way to pick up the girls from school I will leave the house early enough so that a) I can stop at the garage and get some fuel  and  b) I can sit in the park next to the school with my Bible for 20 minutes and chat to (and listen to) Jesus.

What about you?

Fuel Gauge Feat

 

 

Living the Life, Surviving Tough Times

Landrover Choices

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Which of these should go first?  Fairly obvious answer?  It will be if you’ve ever tried reversing a car with anything at all hitched to the back of it!  The caravan is a bit like one our family owned when I was a kid (at least, it had a red stripe) and I well remember the slightly stressy summer-holiday moments of trying to reverse it into little plots on French campsites.

The Landrover goes in front.

A very very long time ago I did a Discipleship Training School with YWAM (A kind of year-out programme) and this picture dates back to one of those lectures.  I’m not even sure who was speaking, so I can’t give them the credit…  But the image has remained in a corner of my imagination, and God has been reminding me of it a lot in the past few weeks.

The Landrover is my will and the Caravan is my emotions.

In my case, the caravan is fairly large in proportion to the towing vehicle. (It may actually be more of a smart car/6 berth van kind of a relationship).  In different people comparative sizes will vary enormously, and both are important… but it’s still clear which one of them needs to be out in front and in charge of the steering!

I love this quote from CS Lewis:

“Faith is the art of holding on to those things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods”  C.S. Lewis

Isn’t that great.  One way that this works is hearing what God says, and then choosing to act like it’s true (however you’re feeling) and I wrote about that here…

Another way to think about it is a  determination to do what I know to be right, even if I really really don’t want to, and hoping that my emotions will eventually line up.  Right now I’m calling these Landrover Choices.

I’m sure you can think of a million times when your emotions (hurt, pain, fear, jealousy, anger…) have been shouting loudly at you to run, hide, blank someone, yell *delete as appropriate.  And yet maybe in those moments, your reason, or your knowledge of the choice God would have you make has been telling you that there’s a better way to handle this…

I once nearly missed out on a wonderful friendship because I was jealous of the young woman’s gifting and opportunities.  On that occasion I managed to put my will in front and override the envy and choose to get to know her.  I am so glad that I did.

Today I’m asking you this:  What is the Landrover Choice that you have to make this week.  In what decision do you need to choose to make your feelings run behind and let your will be in front?

landycaravan

Dealing with Change

Gappiness

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This is my beautiful nearly-six-year-old’s new smile.  Gorgeous isn’t it?

I’ll admit though, that when she ran to me yesterday, yelling with excitement that the wobbly front tooth was finally out, I did have a little moment of grieving for that pearly toothed little-girl-smile that I will never see again.

And then, before I knew it I was wondering what her big teeth will be like: Will they come through straight and strong? Will they look too big for a while in her little mouth? Will she still look like my Katie?

I was stuck there for a moment in an emotional whirlwind, caught up between grief about what has been lost and worry about what is ahead…

And then… she smiled!

…And I heard God whisper  “Gappiness is just so beautiful, isn’t it?”

And it is…

A long long time ago, when I was an architecture student, we spent a month or two talking about liminal spaces: porches; walkways; vestibules; corridors; thresholds; all ‘in-between’ places. We talked about how important it was to help people realise that they are making a transition, to sense that a change is taking place, and to prepare them for space they were about to experience.

I often remember those lectures as I see people around me passing through liminal life-spaces, passing over the threshold between what was and what will be, moving and adjusting from one season to another and travelling the gappiness in between. It helps to recognise the liminal spaces for what they are: temporary places of rest, or refreshment, or preparation.  Gaps where God can prepare us for the next season.  They will pass.  And although they can seem awkward or uncomfortable, they do have a beauty of their own.

Kate showed me this morning that she can just see the tip of the new tooth poking through… before I know it she will have her big-teeth smile… but it will take a while, and for now, I’m going to lean back and enjoy the gappiness.

gappiness

Living the Life

The Bouncing Ball

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In case you don’t know (having had the sense to avoid all sing-along movies for the last eighty-nine years) the bouncing ball is a little animated dot that bounces brightly along the words of a song to keep the sing-along-ers in time (and on the right word!)  It says – THIS IS WHERE WE ARE – PAY ATTENTION.

In my extensive research 🙂 I read just now that when the bouncing ball began life in September 1925 it wasn’t even animated, but a studio employee bounced a tennis ball on a long stick merrily along the words of My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean. Wikipedia even tells me that on the latest sing-along version of Disney’s Frozen the little ball has become a bouncing snowflake… *shudder* As if there can be anyone left in the world who doesn’t already know all the words…

Enough history… I don’t think God gave me this picture this morning so I could celebrate 89 years of sing-a-long movie technology…

The ball is all about focussing your attention on what needs to be done right now, on what is happening right now.  As I said – THIS IS WHERE WE ARE NOW, PAY ATTENTION.

It helps avoid confusion between that and what’s coming next, or what’s just gone. And it makes you keep a steady time.   Someone put it there, on purpose, to help you stay in the right moment.  And let’s face it, the whole thing sounds better if the vocalists are in time with the music!

To follow the metaphor, I am the kind of person who rushes ahead to the chorus instead of letting the verse play out. And although the chorus often has a better tune, the words of the verse are nearly always more interesting.

But the message I’m hearing through this week’s postcard is: Focus on the now. Don’t get distracted by the just gone and the not yet. Learn. Keep time. Find me in the present.

So that’s what I’m going to try to do.

I’m cheating a little because I wrote this poem for my very first post… but I’m all for recycling… and since I seem to need to hear things more than once, I’m going to assume that it might help you too…

I search for you:
I strain ahead to look for you
to see where we will go together
Longing to know, longing to be there, longing to see
and I just glimpse your face through the mist.

I turn around to look back
at the place I saw you last
felt your touch, saw you move, joined the dance
but it's gone.

and yet
when I open my eyes
I see you are with me now

bouncing ball feat

What about you? What is God saying to you through this picture? Do you need to rewind or fast forward to get your focus on to what God is doing now?

Living the Life, Surviving Tough Times

When climbing a mountain…

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Intrigued?  Well, I’m not surprised.  I didn’t know what one of these was called either (had to google it 🙂 ).  It’s a piton.  Mountain climbers hammer them tightly into crevices in the rock face so that they can attach their safety ropes through the hole.  A vital piece of rock-climbing kit.

When God showed me this picture, I imagined what it would be like if, exhausted from a difficult climb, beaten back by the weather, you were to come across one of these, already firmly in the rock face and ready to clip your harness on to.  What a relief I would feel if it were me, and how grateful to the climber that scaled this wall before me and left me something to take a hold of.

So today’s postcard is an encouragement to start nailing in some of these beauties, both for those who scale the walls you’re climbing after you, and for your own benefit (just in case like me, you have a tendency to revisit the same challenges).

The first time I really noticed how this could work was when I was in a tiny church choir.  One day the choir leader played us a piece he planned for us to sing. It was extraordinarily complex and difficult with solos and harmonies and even a rap(!), so we reacted in some disbelief!  But he believed we could do it, and as a group we somehow just chose to take his faith and believe it.  It was as if we reached out with our Karabiner clips in our hands and clipped our harnesses onto the faith he was holding out.

Our faith in God is like that, we have the ability to hold it out to others and say “here-  hold on to mine, I’ve scaled this wall before you”.

I can’t tell you exactly what the pitons you put in will look like, they might be a word,  an action, scripture glued to a mirror, a testimony, a song, a journal entry, a book, a blog post, a status update, a tweet. But I do know that when we start to hold out the faith we’ve gathered to others it will multiply.  Whatever they say about problems, faith shared is faith (at least) doubled!

While a piton has to be strong, the real strength is in the rock.  The job of the piton is simply to enable someone to anchor their heart to the Rock of Ages, into the ultimate strength and safety of the Living God himself.

piton feat

If you’re climbing in a storm,  look out for what others have left for you.  When you see it – choose to reach out for it and clip yourself on!

If you’ve taken on a difficult face and made it to the top.  Look for the faith that you grew on the journey and then choose to find a way to hold it out for others.

And please, please comment below about the ways God is speaking to you that you could hold out the faith you’ve collected to to others and then comment again about the ways you’ve done it and seen faith multiplied in other people.  In the words of the Lego Movie – that would be awesome!

If you’re interested in more of what I think faith is and isn’t you could read this:  Faith and the Flying Fox or this: Ready to Walk on Water

Identity, Living the Life

Clean Water

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Ever had a problem with your water supply?

This week, my city has a problem.  The water pipes supplying some of the outlying villages have decayed and started releasing something toxic into the water.  No-one is sure where the problem is exactly, or how long it will take to fix, but you really don’t want to drink that water until they have!

So God has been speaking to me this week about the importance of keeping the supply pure, because the fountain of water that he has placed in each of us that chooses to follow him is not just for ourselves but also for all those around us.

“Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them” John 7:38 NIV

(In case you haven’t realised it yet – you are not just a kitchen tap, you’re a public water fountain.)

What the Nicosia Water Boards current problems have been whispering to me this week is this: “the pipes matter”

Have you ever drunk water through an old plastic bottle spout, or (if you’re really lucky) through your own sock at at youth event?   If you have, you’ll know that water inevitably tastes of whatever it has passed through.  And whatever living water you give out to others will pass through your heart on its way.

I’m feeling challenged this week because our dodgy water supply has reminded me that any bitterness, unforgiveness, cynicism or hatred in my heart will pollute the water that flows out me in my friendships, my relationships and ministry.  And if I don’t want to have these things in my heart slowly leaching toxic waste into the people around me then I need to do something about them.

All you amazing, extraordinary, wonderful fountains of living water reading this post, it’s time for us to get cleaned up  – there’s a world full of thirsty people out there and it’s time to get them a drink.

 

tap2feature

it's time to forgive


not saying I don't have a right
to be angry
or wounded
or hurt

but to stop
draw a line
make a choice

and put down those rights at the foot of the cross
with my pain
and my sin 
and my shame

and then
to walk away

free

 

Identity

Nametapes

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This is how I remember it… like a page in the much-loved story book of the children’s early lives… a moment that God used to touch my heart.

It’s more than ten years since my firstborn started school, but I still remember the day when I was battling through the pile of freshly-bought school uniform, dutifully sewing in the little white woven name tapes, and my four year old came to ask me what I was doing.

Now, I’ve read that the average four year old asks around 200 questions a day, and mine was maybe even a little above average in this department, so I cast around for an answer that would pre-empt any further questions and maybe even send him back to his lego:

“I’m sewing in little tapes with your name on them, to show everyone that these clothes belong to you; and then no-one can take them away from you and they can’t get lost.”

It must have been a good answer, because he just looked very thoughtfully at me and then disappeared upstairs to his room again.

A minute later though, he reappeared, dragging his much beloved (and slightly gruesome) Blue-Blanky. This worn and grubby cot blanket had been at his side constantly for the past three years (apart from one heart-rending moment in a motorway service station and some late-night under-the-cover-of-darkness trips through the washing machine…) and was a great source of comfort to him, and occasional stress to me!

“Sew my name on Blue-Blanky Mummy,” he said earnestly, “then everyone will know it’s mine, and no-one can say it’s not and it can never ever be lost, or taken away”

So I did.

About a week later I was reading Ephesians when this verse caught a hold of my heart:

“Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession- to the praise of his glory” Ephesians 1: 13-14 NIV

I suddenly realised that the Father has done the equivalent of sewing a woven nametape onto my very heart and soul – he has marked me with a seal.

Isn’t that marvellous?… isn’t it wonderful?  The Holy Spirit is the irrevokable royal seal on your life that declares to the earth and to the heavens for ever and ever:  “This soul is MINE”.

When I look at this picture, I hear God whispering:

“Everyone will know you are mine, no-one can say you are not, and you can never ever be lost, or taken away”

I wonder if you do too?

cashtape

Living the Life

Ready to walk on water?

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I’ve always loved the story of Peter leaping enthusiastically
out of the boat and walking towards Jesus across the water. Over
the years I’ve thought about it a lot as I’ve tried really hard to have
the guts to follow Jesus into the places he’s called me to.

There are a probably a hundred different sweet, important, challenging things you could find in this one story, but today I’m picking the three which I’ve been thinking about this summer and maybe God will speak to you through one of them…

The people in the boat were possibly not shouting ‘Go Peter!’

I wonder whether the other disciples heard Jesus’ voice above the waves. If not, then their reaction would almost certainly have been of the “where are you going you nutter” variety.  Sometimes God speaks to us through our peers, often through our leaders, and always in line with the Bible; but occasionally He calls us to do something that looks kind of crazy to a LOT of people…

He only went where he was called to go.

Peter heard Jesus and obeyed even though it looked (and probably felt) impossible.  Note that he didn’t just wildly do something that looked impossible and then ask Jesus to bless him in it… Big difference.

‘Safe’ is relative.

I’m not into taking risks.  Unlike my 5 year old, I have this inner drive to try to stay safe.   Maybe it’s a mum thing?  I’ve heard a lot of talks about walking on water that suggest it’s all about taking risks and stepping out of the safety of the boat.  But that misses an interesting question which I heard Jesus ask one day when I was struggling with this:

“where do you think is safer, Ellie? In the boat? or where I am?”

I guess it depends a bit on your definition of ‘safe’… but I’m inclined to wonder if in that moment Peter saw the boat for what it was, and Jesus for who he was…

…or maybe he was just a crazy hothead out for some adventure.

 

Here’s the thing… I really don’t want to leave the comfort of a safe, predictable boat, but I REALLY want to walk on water.  Can’t have it both ways!

I painted this postcard after spending a lot of time listening to this song, Oceans by Hillsongs. My heart is especially captured by the line:

‘spirit lead me where my faith is without borders’

That’s my prayer for today  – a yearning to replace comfort with courage… to go beyond the limits of my fragile faith… to walk on water.

walking on the water

For your journal

I guess my point from today is that if you want to walk on water in your life of faith with God, the first step is that you really HAVE to be able to hear him speak to you.  Make some time to listen to him today, about the things you’re already doing, and maybe make some space for him to call you out of the boat again…

Words and Pictures to help you hear from God