Thought for the Day 23/04/21 - COVID and contentment

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Oh boy.

This is a ticklish subject!

How CAN you be content during COVID?

You look at your social media feed and it is heaving full of comments that are anything but contented.

You listen to radio phone-in programmes and the airwaves are FULL of people who are ... what should we say (?), 'frustrated' with the rules that constrain them, the economic consequences that the lockdown has brought to them and the vitriol they vent freely is pretty fearful.

Contentment, you say? What IS this 'contentment' of which you speak?

Brace yourself, now.

Here comes the massively encouraging Verse for the Day:

(Here's Paul speaking ...)

"I know what it is to be in need, 

    and I know what it is to have plenty. 

I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation,

    whether well fed or hungry, 

    whether living in plenty or in want."

                                  Philippians 4:12

The situation about which Paul is speaking

Paul is writing to a church he has seen spring into life as he preached the Gospel for the first time in Europe in a pagan and Emperor-worshipping city.

Paul didn't take money in this patronage culture (where money was given in return for unquestioning favours) from folks he couldn't totally trust to be heart and soul for the Gospel.

That's why he sometimes (but not always) worked himself to earn money for his living  alongside preaching the Gospel in places where it wasn't yet established.

But the Philippians were now established in Christ, and they had partnered with Paul in sending a gift to meet his needs ... which he thanks them for in the verses just before this.

Two useful things

Paul is sharing here with us two useful things that will help us in our COVID frustrations.

Firstly Paul tells us that when it comes to facing the frustration of privation he knows what he's talking about.

He establishes his right to speak before he does so.

Paul had been a prestigious and wealthy man of good family, but suffered the loss of ALL things for the sake of faithfulness and obedience to Christ.

But Paul's at pains to say 'it's not about the money', and then expands into the theme of Christian contentment.

That's the second thing, he tells us he's learned the secret of being content.

That's the trouble with us, though, isn't it?

We by default think the answer to lack of contentment is more things. Amazon has never been busier than at the height of COVID lockdown!

But we're still as disconented as we were before we clicked and paid, when the empty boxes get put out for the dustman.

The answer to the lack of contentment is not more things.

The answer to the lack of contentment is to find that rare jewel (as someone called it) of contentment.

It is really rare.

It doesn't come easy to humans ... as if most of us just haven't got it in us ... and that would be exactly Paul's point ...

The SECRET of being content

Paul doesn't just tell us he knows what he's talking about because HE's known some very hard times.

That in itself doesn't help me with mine.

Neither does he just tell us that he's learned the secret of dealing with this and finding contentment in the face of frustrastion and privation.

By itself, that wouldn't help me cope with COVID's hardships at all, either!

In the very next verse to the one we just looked at Paul tells us the secret of being contented ... this thing that we'd all love to do, to meet hardships and frustration with contentment.

Here's Paul giving away the secret of contentment:

"I can do all this 

through him who gives me strength."

                               Philippians 4:13

The Point

You won't find the contentment that Paul is talking about here in this world by looking inside yourself.

Your strength alone won't get you and keep you there.

It's a miracle we need to be content in hard times, in the way that we so deeply long to be.

I can do all this even through a time of COVID, but the only way I'll manage it will be through Him Who gives me strength.

In the sort of world we inhabit where advertising millions get poured into making us discontent with what we've alreadty got every day, finding contentment in such an acquisitive cultre wedded to the lie that the quality of a man's life DOES depend on the abundance of his possessions, living contended will NEED His fresh help every day.

The Takeaway

Everything that pours in through our eyes and our ears from the people who spend the advertising billions seeks to profit from making us discontented.

The forces stacked up against our contentment our powerful.

We need help, and says Paul we can have it.

The secret of finding and retasining Christian contentment is to secure the direct intervention of God:

 ""I can do all this 

through him who gives me strength."

                               Philippians 4:13

Here is Paul's path to contentment:

• get into a right relationship with the One Who can helps us, then 
  
  
• pray for this gift of contentment as we 
  
  
• hit all sorts of troubles in this life, but
  
  
• trust in His astonishing power to be able to achieve contented peace for us, and 
  
  
• worship Him for the all-sufficiency of our Saviour ... 

The secret of contentment lies simply in this: HE's the One Who gives Paul the strength to be contented!

Thought for the Day 22/04/21 - The Unsnatchables

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I was in my early thirties and we had taken on a chapel without a people to restore it as a place of worship and community outreach for a people that were lacking a chapel.

The place was as derelict as a derelict place could be.

The damp was astonishing, the dry rot beneath the floorboards flowed in drifts like heavy snow and the pews were growing fungus fruiting bodies like cabbages in a market garden.

We had the youth club up scaffolding with two pound hammers and bolster chisels hacking off acres of fluffy mouldy plaster.

We had men with no DIY skills cutting out structural floors with large electric saws, and making beam end repairs like you'd never believe.

And then we got in some muscle from boys that had avoided gaol sentences by consenting to community service orders.

Ah. That's where it got exciting. There were NO dull days with those guys around!

And THAT's where I saw the most mild mannered man execute the classiest  brick-snatch I ever did see.

One of our community service boys was getting as lot of stick from another cock-sure young offender in the team, and one day it all got a bit too much. 

In a flash the lad just picked up a brick and arced it back over his head ready to bring it forward at speed and down on his terrible taunter's head.

None of us was quick enough or strong enough to get there and wrench the thing out of his hand and his tormentor seemed a split second away from terrible trouble.

But behind the guy being taunted stood a quiet man from the church who took hold of the end of the brick on its arc as it was raised and with very little force, gently kept it moving on its progress upwards and snatched it away from the hand of the attacker.

It was quick minded genius as unexpected as the attacker's action, as the brick was snatched away to a place of safety.

A quick seize and snatch can be HARD to resist!

Now picture that incident alongside our Verse for the Day, and it will light up for you what the verse is going on about.

Jesus speaks of the firmness of the grip that holds His people safe from what would snatch them, in an instant, away.:

"I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; 

no one will snatch them out of my hand. 

My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; 

no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. 

I and the Father are one.’"

                                                     John 10:28-30

Jesus is doing three things here in three verses:

He is 

• first of all stating a principle, 
  
  
• before unfolding its consequence and 
  
  
• then saying why this will always hold true.
  
  

i) Jesus gives His people eternal life.
(By definition - as it's eternal - it isn't going to be going away! So ...)

ii) Once in His hand no-one is able to be snatched out of it and away

iii) This is how it works because each of those people's given to Jesus by God the Father ... and God the Father "is greater than all." (John 10:29)

The Point

There's not a lot in life that's as certain as that, or that has as much authority behind it making it so.

And given that death is fairly certain and nobody's actually going to get out of this life alive (there are exceptions in the Bible but, you see the point?) then ...

 ... this stuff is pretty important.

Unsnatchable eternal life is there to play for, or to rejoice in if you've already met the criteria by placing your life in Christ's hand.

If you've turned your life around from sin to trusting fully in Christ and are following Him by living in His Way ... then this certainty belongs to you, and it's secured by the power of God.

You are in that case already one of the unsnatchables.

If you haven't quite yet done that then do not despair, because you quite easily could do so ... and then you would be.

The Takeaway

If you are one of the Lord's faithful unsnatchables, it shows up in your following Him along His Way.

Walk CONFIDENTLY, living by the promise of God ... you're someone who's living safely in the hollow of His hand, following the Lord onwards, heading on to a safe home in Glory!

What will that look like for you, in YOUR life, today?

If you are not quite there yet but you're open or interested in the idea, then get in touch with us using the form that's at the bottom here and we'll gladly help you.

And why would we so gladly do so?

Because NOTHING is as important as this.

Thought for the Day 21/04/21 - There's no such thing as an NDA

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Non Disclosure Agreements are back in the news ... and, oh Man! They can be so counter-productive.

The basic idea of them is that somebody does something they're ashamed of, thery admit it to the person or people that they've wronged and that wronged party signs to say that in consideration of some money they will keep what has happened a secret. 

And it was the Archbishops of Canterbury and York were in the newspapers yesterday and on the TV, writhing  in honest pain at their existence and use of these NDAs in the C of E.

Justin Welby said he had not been aware confidentiality agreements were being used to stop people speaking publicly, but crucially the Archbishops haven't stopped there.

The Archbishop told Times Radio the documentary was "rightly shaming".

Mr Welby added that he was "horrified" to hear the extent of racist abuse within the Church and the way it was being covered with NDAs.

"I have said many times that I am totally against NDAs [non-disclosure agreements]. NDAs are unacceptable. I am just horrified by that and horrified by the fact of racism," he said.

Together with the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, he has taken action, and  written to senior members of the Church, telling them confidentiality agreements are no longer to be used.

Now look, I am certainly no card-carrying Anglican ... but you've got to respect such plain honesty and respect this sort of bold moral leadership.

And repudiating the bribing of people who've been wronged to purchase their connivance in covering it up is going to be on the right side of history.

NDAs are on the wrong side of history

There's a very encouraging reason for saying that ...  so please let me tell you  a story.

One day Jesus went to the home of a Pharisee because He'd been invited to go there for dinner.

As dinner began to unfold it emerged that He was going to be 'guilt shamed' for not going thriough the outward trappings of their religion.

He was put in an awkward position by people claiming to occupy high moral ground to protect their personal high status ... people who were actually something very different inside.

And Jesus denounced them for this pretending to be better than you are, and He calls it by its name ... it's hypocrisy.

Jesus opened up the big guns on their pretending

 It's all there to read in black and white: Luke 11:37-52

And so for good theological reasons this week the Archbishops have banned putting such hypocrisy in written legal agreements with their ban on these wretched NDAs ... documents designed to cover up (in this case) institutionalised racism in parts of the hierarchies of the C of E.

In this they are following in the footsteps of Jesus ... check this out:

"when a crowd of many thousands had gathered, so that they were trampling on one another, 

Jesus began to speak first to his disciples, saying: 

‘Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. 

There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, 

or hidden that will not be made known. 

What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs."

                                                                     Luke 12:1-3

The Point

There's no such thing as a Non Disclosure Agreement ... at least there's not one that is going to work.

Get this: by the solemn word of the Lord Jesus you can find peace, there's no way you've been wronged that can actually be covered up.

God isn't keen on hypocrisy and no-one can cover up and avoid the consequences of their actions ... there will come a revelation of it all and a reckoning on it all from the Lord.

At first that looks 100% good news ... but the problem with it may already be occurring to you ... 

We ALL have things that we'd rather cover up.

Now please don't switch off at this point because there's much better news to come and you REALLY don't want to miss out on this bit.

There are two GREAT things that need to be said about this

You can't cover your faults with any NDAs or threats or violence that you put in place  ... no-one can deal with their shortcomings that way because ultimately NOTHING is going to be hidden.

But that doesn't mean there's no way for our (very human) sins, errors and failures to be covered.

And here's where the second very encouraging thing about this comes in.

The Lord Himself has got a cover job sorted on this for you, but you need to qualify by not being a hypocrite, and by putting the task 100% into His hands.

Way back in the Old Testament, when he'd messed up again, David discovered a GREAT thing about all of this:

(He's singing!)

"Blessed is the one

whose transgressions are forgiven,

    whose sins are covered.

Blessed is the one
    whose sin the Lord does not count against them
    and in whose spirit is no deceit.

When I kept silent,   

 my bones wasted away

    through my groaning all day long.

For day and night

    your hand was heavy on me;
my strength was sapped
    as in the heat of summer.

Then I acknowledged my sin to you

    and did not cover up my iniquity.
I said, ‘I will confess
    my transgressions to the Lord.’
And you forgave
    the guilt of my sin.

                                      Psalm 32:1-5

See?

NDAs are just not going to work, because God hates hypocrisy and cover ups.

But there is hope for the person who renounces the wrong they have done and trusts their whole package of problems to the mercy of God.

The Takeaway

The takeaway is summed up neatly in Proverbs 28:13

"Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy."

Following the Lord is not compatible with pretending to be anything better than we are, but (like David) rejoices in making much of His grace to ME, a sinner.

If this raises any issues for you please feel free to contact us using the contact form below.

Thought for the Day 20/04/21 - Changing the bad news agenda

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Politicians, advertisers, journalists ... they all want to grab your attention.

Have you thought about the way that they do it, and the impact it could be having on your mind?

Look, think this through with me?

It's coming up to election time in Wales at the moment so there are television debates going on between the main party leaders and it just seems to me they WANT you to be angry and afraid, and they use that to motivate you to vote for their agendas.

Now it is NOT that there's no good news out there, although it's not that there's no bad news out there either!

Even leading UK politicians (not often our greastest supporters, as believers) have gone on the record recently thanking Christians and churches for their service to the poor and the vulnerable during the course of the pandemic ... and make no mistake it is not just believers, but a LOT of positive people have done some really great stuff out there over the last year.

There is a LOT of positive, good news out there in this world.

It's the BAD news that gets all the 'clicks'

But in the online journalists' world, it's the BAD news that gets all the 'clicks'!

And the end result is that we drink in the bad news ... so we can easily get to a point where we form the impression that if you're not worried enough about what's going on, you must be callous.

It comes to mean you simply don't care.

Worry and anxiety become seen as virtuous things, and if you're not anxious and losing sleep over BREXIT or COVID or the election that's coming up ... it shows you don't care, you're not nice.

Christians need to push back against that, and fight off the anxiety the wall of bad news brings, because it's really only part of the story.

You see, the thing is ...

Bad news plays to the depths of our biology

The negative narrative is actually playing to something deep in our biology. It's always been the bad news that got us to tune in to the radio or buy the 'paper.

It's actually a physical feature of people.

Your heart beat stays the same when you're looking at the good news as it is when you're looking at a screen full of static or when you're looking at a sheet of grey paper.

But when you're looking at bad news your heart beat and respiration rate pick up and your attention gets properly engaged with the story ... you're WORRIED about it and the anxiety gives you much greater 'focus'.

Bad news is PUSHED at you to gain your attention!

All this bad news is pushed our way to GRAB our attention, and the advertisers journalists and all the others wouldn't be telling us all this bad news if it didn't WORK!

But the thing is this anxiety, anger and negative emotion is not good for you and certainly is NOT God's will for you!

We need to know how to live with RESOLUTE hope for God in a very broken world.

This is an aspect of Christian spirituality that was well-known to the earliest Christians.

So Paul writes to the Colossian church about how to deal with this sort of anxiety, worry and fear. (There are other, sometimes clinical, sorts of anxiety and fear ... and these verses are not about them).

    "Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, 

set your hearts on things above, 

    where Christ is, 

    seated at the right hand of God. 

Set your minds on things above, 

        not on earthly things. 

    For you died, 

and your life is now hidden with Christ in God."

                                                 Colossians 3:1-3

There's a lot there to help us address our anxiety that is caused by a world of bad news.

The Christian's death - the ultimate thing that can happen to us in this world - is already swallowed up in the victory of Christ ... you have been raised already with Christ when you turned from your sin to trust Him, says Paul.

So what we need to do is set our hearts on Him, noticing well where it is that He's to be found:

He is SEATED (work completed, He sits) at the right hand of God SHARING God's throne ... at the right hand of the Majesty in Heaven.

Our Jesus sits on the throne of the cosmos, ruling all things "for the Church" (Ephesians 1:21-23).

So Paul teaches the Colossians quite clearly that what they need in a world that feasts feverishly off its bad news, is to do exactly the opposite of that.

Believers need, he says, in a disciplined fashion, to:

 "set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 

For you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God."

                                                                   Colossians 3:2-3

The Point

Fear is the opposite of faith, because faith is trusting the Lord in the teeth of your fieriest fears.

There are many good reasons to trust the Lord with your life ... not least the power of His defeat of fear, sin and death as He laid down His life on the Cross and was RAISED again from there.

And the fact that the One Who loves us to that extreme extent now sits ruling the Universe from Glory ... well ... that must give believers a fresh perspective on their anxieties!

The Takeaway

There are people out there in this world trying to seize hold of our anxieties to mould and manipulate us into giving them support.

Believers need to seize back the initiative in a positive way, and set their minds on the things they're headed towards, which are above .... where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

Our eyes and ears are BOMBARDED every day by the heralds of this world's horrible news.

To maintain faith and life and peace in the face of this onslaught, we need to be very disciplined and deliberate to set our minds daily on Jesus and the things that are above.

Here's an old acapella song to help you give this some thought.

And please feel free to contact us using the contact form below if there's something we can pray about with you in connection with anything raised by this blog.

Thought for the Day 19/04/21 - Qualifying for Jesus's Ploughing Match

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When we lived for a while in Kent we used to have regular trips in the autumn to one ploughing match after another.

It was an area with a lot of arable farming where a lot of ground gets turned over before the winter - especially on the county's heavier clay soils.

A ploughing match is quite an event. It was great fun.

A lot of skill goes on display.

Ploughing is not an easy game. It's an art. You've got to CONCENTRATE your attention continually. 

Jesus seems to know a lot about it for a preacher, and uses that to illustrate a crucial point.

Now, there's a plough here on the farm but I'm a stockman not a ploughman so I am definitely not an expert. 

But what I DO know is this, when you're ploughing a field on the farm, you need to keep an eye on what's happening at the point of the plough and navigate your way very carefully according to what's going on there. 

It's especially important to concentrate when you're putting in that crucial 'first went' to make sure it goes in absolutely straight, and then to do so equally though less intensively afterwards to make sure the depth stays right, the land is turning over correctly and so on.

So WHAT is Jesus saying here in Luke 9:62?

"Jesus replied, 

‘No one who puts a hand to the plough 

and looks back 

is fit for service in the kingdom of God.’"

                                              Luke 9:62

The context

In Luke 9:57-62 we get a very dramatic portrayal of Jesus.

Jesus is by this point a wanted man up at Jerusalem, plotted against for His life by the religious leaders in that city who DO NOT like at all what He's been saying and doing, far less Who He's been proving Himself to be!

He's been behaving like God in the flesh, and that was rocking the boat for the leading men in Jerusalem.

In Luke 9:51 we read that ... against this threatening background ... "Jesus set His face resolutely to go to Jerusalem". 

And then the following verses paint a picture of Jesus leading the way up to that dangerous city with His disciples streaming back behind Him, bobbing along worriedly in His wake ... keeping their eye on Him forging the way out in front, but anxious for the consequences of what was going on and what would come following on behind.

The image painted is really DRAMATIC!

And on that dramatic journey Jesus encounters ...

Three distracted (and rejected) would-be 'followers'

As He strides along three men in particular come along with the intention of following Him themselves.

None of them has grasped the consequences of what's involved in following Jesus. All are  pictured considering discipleship but they have all have come trusting to and pursuing their own personal priorities and agendas.

None of them is prepared to follow Jesus's own risky route, by leaving the consequences of their faithfulness to God.

The first man 

... is more committed to his political solutions to life's problems than he is to trusting God to make provision for his life:

"As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, 

‘I will follow you wherever you go.’

Jesus replied, ‘Foxes have dens and birds have nests, 

but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’"

                                                           Luke 9:58

Foxes and birds were nick-names for political factions fighting for the spoils of political power in the ferment of first century Palestine.

Jesus sees right to the heart of this man.

The man sees Jesus as a political Messiah, and was up for following Whomsoever he thought would feather his nest ... but following Jesus involves following Someone Who hadn't even got a nest of His own here, and is not in the business of providing feathered nests.

If he's going to trust and follow Jesus this man is going to have to trust his future this-worldy prospects to the Lord!

He wouldn't trust Jesus with the consequences of following Him.

The second man 

... is more committed to serving his still living (i.e. not dead yet) parents than to Jesus ... who could have ages to live yet (do you see the point?) He wants to be able to go and bury them first and that could take years.

The man's parents have become his priority, his religion.

He can't trust the Lord with His parents, so he can't trust the Lord.

"‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’

Jesus said to him, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead, 

but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’"

                                                             Luke 9:59-60

The third man 

... is willing to leave his family to follow Jesus but must first go home to tell his family where he's going, as if following Jesus weren't at all a priority that he needed to give his full attention to, urgently, right now.

The Point

All three of these men are concerned for the consequences of committing their lives to following Jesus right here, right now.

They have distractions that detract from their commitment to Christ because they  don't trust Him to take care of the consequences in this world of following Him.

And that causes them to be unfit for His service in the Kingdom of God.

Well here's the point.

We're talking about the Lord's service, His service in the Kingdom of God ... what we do with our lives in pursuing His work and His will.

We'd better not try to do that in this God-hostile world without firmly trusting to the Providence of God for all the consequences of our actions as we follow Him.

The Takeaway

Jesus is calling for utterly reasonable but crazy-looking confidence in the Providence of God our Provider, and apparently ridiculous trust in Him to take care of the finish on our furroughs and the consequences that will arise if our first went didn't go in quite straight.

That's called faith and it's first base for becoming and being a believer.

Trusting Him is ... trusting in Him!

How much of your dreaded 'consequences' can you trust to the Lord?

Ridiculous as it may seem but when we've received the Master's instructions and we're ploughing the Lord's furrow: "‘No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.’"

It may look ever so singularly irresponsible to trust in the Lord in that way.

Until you realise that when we plough for the One whose field we are ploughing, His instruction is to keep our eyes forward following Him, trusting HIM to take care of the furrough.

Ploughing without looking back over your shoulder seems irresponsible. Until you realise you're looking ahead to follow the One Who always ploughs a straight furrough ... and following Him you will by definition be ploughing straight!

He Himself takes care of the marks we leave on the ground.

And that's the sort of faith and that's the sort of following that puts us in the right with this Lord.