Interrupting normal service

To bring you some news from the étrange life of Grier - a slight explanation of the reduced frequency of blog posts of late. Delighted to announce that I'm engaged to be married to Chris Statter. Chris works for Birmingham City Mission and comes from Manchester (via Oxford). 

Chris dropped to his knees and proposed during a game of Poohsticks in Belvoir forest park in Belfast! We're thankful to our Father in heaven and pray he'd fill us with his Spirit to show the glories of his grace to us in Christ Jesus, in and through our engagement and future marriage.

Your call is important to us

Deep reflections on online bookings websites (ok, this one), bookings lines (10 minutes of 'Your call is important to us.' followed by, 'We can't do bookings online because the web traffic is too high'), and on the difficulties of trying to book accommodation for disabled people, in competition with everyone else:

Vapour! All is vapour, grasping for the wind!

Don't tell people what to do!

I met a lady today and tried to invite her to a Priceless event. She replied that she goes to church. I asked her what it means to her. She proceeded to tell me off rather forcefully, saying that religion was a private matter, and that I should never tell anyone else about it because that was to force it on them. It was horribly wrong to do more than inform someone of church and let them be. I suggested with a smile that if I didn't tell anyone of the priceless treasure I'd found Jesus to be, it would be horribly selfish of me.

The lady disagreed - apparently, it is selfish not to let people continue with what they each privately believe. Going to church is the important thing, after all. (I'll tell that to my doctor friends - you each have your private convictions about a person's diagnosis and cure, but don't selfishly tell anyone! Keep them to yourself. The important thing is that they're attending a surgery.)

Now this lady told me in no uncertain terms, with increasing volume and repetition, that I must go to Taize. I absolutely must experience Taize. It seemed that at Taize I would be enlightened of my bullish insistence of sharing with others the joy of knowing God in Christ. I said I knew something of Taize worship experience, and found that whatever the style and experience, the Bible says that Jesus is all we need - He is our wisdom, our goodness from God, our increasing goodness lived out... She interrupted loudly: You must go to Taize. There they tell you not to go around doing this: not to go around telling people what to do!

There are moments when irony turns on a light and sadly, you see the blindness.

Too good to be true?

God is good. He's good to us in a small way by giving us a pattern of Sabbath rests, celebrating His gracious provision to us and trusting in it in future, looking forward to future rest with Him. As for Sundays, celebrating the resurrection life of Christ which has won this Rest for us, meeting with other Christ-ians: wonderful. But as my Sunday was rather packed (with such things!) this week, I enjoyed the Bank holiday as an extra opportunity to remember and receive God's goodness.

Spending time with friends, in the lovely spacious grounds of Ragley Hall complete with assault course, picnicing in the Great British weather(!), being bad at frisbee and throwing (like a girl of course!) some whistling bomb-like thing, grabbing a pub tea with friends and orchestra rehearsal enjoying Sibelius 1st symphony (and being appointed as co-leader for our 2nd concert this season, gulp). I know these things are small, ordinary kind of things, but in a world rebelling against its creator and sustainer, when my heart is so cold to the reality of God's goodness, no goodness I receive is 'ordinary'! I will give thanks for these things and declare God's extraordinary goodness to me!

Paul Tripp has a wonderful reflection here on Ps.73: "Surely God is good to Israel,..." May the busyness and business of day to day life never drown out that most tremendous truth.

Parables on the motorway

Just arrived back from New Word Alive in North Wales, where in the evening celebrations we were treated to some of Jesus' parables. I was caused to ponder one as I travelled home this afternoon:

What if... after the Priest and the Levite had passed the Jew stranded by the side of the road, someone came by who really wanted to stop and help especially as he was a friend, but his pony was on a headlong rush with a a herd of elephants intimidatingly thundering on his tail, and by the time he spotted the friend in need of help, he couldn't possibly rein his charging beast over out of the way of the stampeding elephants, to stop? What if, furthermore, with the herd of elephants filling the ravine all rushing in one direction, there was nowhere to turn round and go back? I bet he'd have felt awful about it all the way home.

Substitute appropriate 21st Century setting and you get my thoughts on the way back from North Wales, specifically after spotting some friends at the side of the M54, just too late to do anything about it with a juggernaut bearing down behind. Even merits a rare emoticon :( But better, see here for the real thing, here soon for a download of Don Carson on the parable at NWA, of which Adrian gives a taster.

Grace for perversity

I'd just done a study with one of my CUs, a study on Mark 14 & 15 - our salvation due to no good in ourselves, but all in our substitute, our Lamb's life poured out for us, our King dying on behalf of us rebels.

And I was praying as I walked to the train, pleading for the university that God would indeed choose the weak of this world, to shame the strong; that He would show that He is working, not just our natural power. If witness in an established, academic university is strong, it's only because of His doing; but when a university with less academic students, poorer students, more local students - when it stays weak, it looks like it depends on our strength and not the power of the gospel. So I was praying for God to take the glory - to use the weak, because all recognition would go to His Son, not us.

All recognition to His Son, and not to us.

The very next minute I found myself thinking, "At least CU x are doing well. At least in 2.5 years I've done that much - I've got them doing such & such evangelism, and they've had a mission week for the first time in x years - and a brilliant one at that - they're about to do Y, I've helped them to a point where they're doing Z,..." Highly embarassing to say aloud, and takes a while, but I was caught thinking it in a split second. And that a second after praying that God would work so that all recognition would go to His Son, not to us.
"Lord, thank you for salvation in Christ alone, declared righteous by his righteousness credited to me, not by anything in me. So Lord, show that you're the One working, to get all glory. ... PS. At least I can justify myself in this that I've done, Lord."

How perverse and ugly, how deceitful my heart is, that while praying for God's mercy to His glory, I can take that mercy and use it to steal glory for myself. It is as if Barabbas, once freed because of the substitution of Christ, were to say, "Well after all, I was sometimes quite kind to animals." Irrelevant - you were under sentence of death and someone else died in your place! You are free, and it had and has nothing to do with any good in you. Praise God. Your justification, sanctification and redemption are all Christ. My boast is all Christ. My hope is all Christ. For such a perverse, glory-thieving person as me, what grace!

Love drives out fear

Love casts out fear. I've never been sure exactly how that works, because God's love for us means that we 'fear' Him rightly - though as John writes, because of His love toward us in Jesus, we no longer fear the punishment we'd deserve. Of course, it's a quotation out of context, and the full context explains it quite nicely. But it just popped into my head in one of those slight life situations that don't really deserve mention except to note for thankfulness to God that the good news of Jesus Christ does produce fruit in lives. So I wondered if that otherwise unnoticeable situation was indeed cause for thankfulness (welcome to my ponderings!):

I have an irrational fear - or perhaps more precisely, nervousness - of 'phoning people I don't know, or don't know well. It makes me feel slightly ill, and I'm inclined to put it off, and to work out exactly what to say. If they 'phone me, it's fine, and if it's a friend or even an office full of people I know well, it's ok. In fact, if they're a fellow Christian or Christian organisation so I know we share in the Lord and his Kingdom, then it's more or less ok too. Maybe I don't fully trust that God is sovereign even when I can't see the person with whom I'm talking - maybe it's a control thing (suggestions for believing the Truth in this regard welcome as comments).

Now someone just asked me to 'phone some hostels in ski resorts in France, as she doesn't speak French. That ill feeling settled in my stomach. I quickly recalled to mind demi pension, but wasn't even sure what 'ski pass' is in French (I guessed 'ski pass' or 'pass ski' - turned out I was right). No time to put it off - no time to over-rehearse - I went for it. (Thankfully the lady had a lovely clear accent - over the phone I do struggle with lazy French accents or West African accents!) I don't say this as kudos to me(!) - any half-sane person would have no issue with ringing a hostel in the first place! But I reflected after the traumatic event, "'...love casts out fear': I wonder if this is an example of it, humanly speaking?" I wonder if God enabled me, through his Holy Spirit as he changes me and gives me love, to help this person even though through fear I really didn't want to do that task? I mean, when you love someone, you don't hesitate to help in something like that. So I reminded myself of the passage from which that phrase comes:

[1 John 4.13-21] By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Saviour of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

What encouragement - God himself lives in me, casting out proper fear through the love He has given us in sending Jesus to be our Saviour. This then liberates me to love people to the extent that it overrides even irrational fear!

Inconsequential pondering over. But I will rejoice for the very small sign of what Paul noticed in the Colossians, and what I've been praising God for all week in the Christian students in BUECU -

We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and growing—as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth...

Free with BUECU - day 4

There seem to be a lot of francophones around this FREE week - a fact that Marion, Tom Trump & I are enjoying rather as we surprise them with witness in French! I spent the evening at the quiz event talking with a French girl about Jesus, faith, the cross, and Mark's gospel - one genuine question after another, from which she concluded that she really must read Mark's gospel. Brilliant conclusion! Jonti's mid-quiz talk on what it means to believe in Jesus was spot on and fitted exactly into our ongoing conversation.

The lunchbars continue to be well attended as Paul Clarke expounds the gospel from Mark - each day we rearrange the seating in the marquee to try to fit more people in, as today we hit 120 in one of the 2 repeated sessions. But more than attendance, people are really engaging with what's said, reading Mark's gospel, and spending time asking questions of Christian friends or CU Guests.

More joy than midnight snow

Have you ever been out before anyone else, and alone in the still air, crunched across newly-laid snow as flakes fall thickly around you? It's a thing of beauty and joy in the early morning, when the snowy sky is red with dawn, but this time, it was beauty and joy at midnight, with not a sound on the street.

It was for a very practical reason - I was coming home from BUECU's FREE week acoustic night, and need to get back to campus for an 8am prayer meeting in the morning, so as it was snowing heavily, I parked my car in a nearby street which is on a bus route, in the hope that it will be safer to drive from there tomorrow morning. But it's a lovely touch of grace that I have a car to drive in and give lifts - when late at night, cold and snowy - and that I got to enjoy the snow for a few minutes, until I shook myself like a wet Spaniel in my porch, and my coat shed its candyfloss and returned to charcoal grey.

On a not-completely unrelated note, in an excellent acoustic night, Matt Churchouse spoke in the vein of C.S.Lewis and Augustine, with a note of personal testimony, on finding satisfaction. It resonated with me as he shared of his teenage search for satisfaction in the jazz, until he realised that it was an god that didn't deliver - and by considering that all the good things we pursue are temporary, pushed us in the direction of finding Jesus to be our satisfaction and joy. Some non-Christians who came were struck by it, one girl telling me she totally agreed but found herself still living in pursuit of those temporary things anyway (pray for her & her Christian flatmate as they continue this conversation), and another saying Churchy should've said more: pray they'd come back for more about Jesus! Satisfied in Christ, we're free to have such joy in beauty as above. It doesn't have to be spoiled by the fact that it's temporary. It can be received with thanksgiving to the Creator, and enjoyed in hope of Eternity.

Suspect innovation

I've been working on a seminar track for a conference coming up, and while being thankful for this work, which I love, and for sitting in a comfy chair with my laptop, the warm weather, a breeze blowing through from the garden, white tea in a china mug and the strains of the Korngold violin concerto, found myself frustrated that most of the work for this seminar had been done before, by someone else - I'm mostly copying, with a few variations in style. All that I would want in the seminar, even the ways I'd express things: it's all there.

Why would I be frustrated by that? What desires are being frustrated? I've no need to prove myself: I'm in Christ. I've no need for innovation: truth is old, and I've no desire but than to reflect what God has revealed. Our culture currently seems to have a love affair with the new: if you have nothing new to say... But we are called to pass on the good news which was decided and put into place before the beginning of time - not to fanfare my own new invention. I don't need to be the one even seeing this truth for the first time, or describing it with particularly aplomb. I just need to be faithful in serving others with the truth of God's word - and if in that I find I'm relying on someone else's work, that's fine. After all, I'm not autonomous or independent: we're created dependent on God and each other. And thus faced with the truth, the idols come tumbling down. They always look so silly when the light of truth shines on them, like grotesque statues which my heart was courting prettily, thinking them captivating. Ha! They no longer have power to frustrate - the light of Christ shines and my desires reorient on Him.

What a joy and privilege to be reminded of this by God's word: that he doesn't leave us to our foolishness, but rebukes, corrects, teaches and trains in righteousness, until we will see Christ as he is... and that'll really show up those old lying idols!

What a privilege also that my work involves doing a seminar on this very topic. Yes, it was in preparing a seminar on addressing the heart with the truth, that I found myself going after lies. The heart is deceitful above all things... but God's grace in Christ is greater: praise Him!

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Therefore I intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them and are established in the truth that you have. [2 Peter 1.3-12]

Long days and always Christ

Yesterday I:
travelled for 14.5 hours;
had my purse stolen on a bus in Athens, within 15min of leaving the house;
had a 2.5h delay for my plane;
added 2h time change;
finished 2.5 books (Les Grand Meaulnes, Trueman's Minority Report, Grisham's A time to kill)
took 2.5h to get from London to Birmingham due to an earlier train taking down overhead lines;
missed my church members' meeting :(

I'm thankful that:
My strength is Christ;
I'm back in the cold UK, away from oppressive Greek heat;
My treasure is Christ;
I had everything I needed to get back home despite the purse being stolen;
My glory is Christ;
The church members' meeting ran late so timing it just right that I got a lift from the station on arriving exhausted;
My rest is Christ.

Ambiguous noise

I was so puzzled by the rumbling loud noises in the middle of this wildly windy night, following a day when it poured non-stop, that I actually went to the internet to see whether it's thunder or fireworks. I checked first for flashes of light against the night sky, of course, but I don't know why: unless I'd spotted a particularly colourful one, it would not have determined which phenomenon I was witnessing. I think it must be fireworks. Cannon Hill Park is close enough to where I am in Birmingham for me to hear them, and too far away to see them. I'm just amused that I actually looked it up and found it, online. Ah, modern life.

Quote of the day: doing the impossible

"This train has 6 coaches: please board using all doors." Taken in normal English usage, this is a physical impossibility. We assume an announcement addresses each individual unless otherwise stated - and I cannot use more than one door at once. Ah, the limitations of English: we need a way of addressing a collective! Note too for Scriptural imperatives, which are more often plural than particular.

Hear

Quietly, in shades of grey, the park lives deserted. I intrude, slipping into its pace, its time: in the steady calm of the evening-scape, the tunes rehearsed fade into the melody of my violin case bumping on my back. Ahead along the path, grey flows strangely into living green, as warm yellow slips down from an old-fashioned lantern. My footsteps wade lightly through its puddle. On this night I could pluck an arm from the lantern and cast it into the soft grassy earth: on this night it would spring and bud and grow - so the still air whispers. The warm night air is sweet; sweet as leafy lungs breathe. On this night, if you listen, listen below the shallow, distant hum of city, you may almost catch a murmur of a Lion, singing low a deep sustaining song, holding together the grassy atoms, the towering trees, the human city lights, the haze above; giving this sweet air, breathing a song to which the silver sliver above smiles a faint reply in keeping with her orbit.

Contentment

I read Bish's thankful post about supervisions on the beach, and it got me thinking about contentment. You see, my first reaction was gladness that Dave and Kenny could have supervisions on the beach. My secondary reaction was, 'I wish I could be beside the sea!' Landlocked Birmingham. Big smelly city Birmingham. No mountains, no sea Birmingham.

But yesterday, even this morning, I was very happy in Birmingham. It was beautiful weather, I've been cycling everywhere (OK; I get the train to Wolverhampton), meeting students for frescatos and enjoying the gospel together, and even if I get tired and headachey in the heat, cycling gives a lovely breeze and I'd taken the evening off. I do miss the sea and the hills, but I was content and thankful to God.

I'd even noted, as I walked down to the corner shop on Wednesday morning, how much nicer Birmingham is on a hot day than Brussels, and expressed gratitude in my heart to God! You may be in a city in Birmingham, but the front gardens on my street are nice, trees line the street, and as I headed down the hill I noticed how fresh and clean the air was. In Brussels, being a compact city, I would walk between tall apartment blocks with no greenery, along the flat, with no sight of anything but the next street, and breathing in a permanent smoggy haze in hot weather. I was thankful to God for his kindness to me in placing me even in Birmingham.

But then I was wishing I could be by the sea, very close to coveting the coast that is my neighbour's.

What had changed?

Nothing had changed. Nothing had changed in my situation. God is still over abundantly, exorbitantly and lavishly kind to me in his grace toward me in his precious Son, and even in his present, passing gifts to me, of where I live, and the job I do, and so much more. Even if something in my situation had changed, it wouldn't change that fact.

So while I may plead with my sister in Inverness to spare me a little mountain (not even a Munroe - just a little one would do), or see whether the Welsh team could send us a bit of coastline (not nice beach - just waves crashing in on rocks would do), I'll not let my evil heart use God's gifts to others as an excuse for discontent.

Apart from anything else, I recalled the one time as a student when on a gorgeous sunny day I met my CU staffworker down by the lake on campus (who needs a beach?). I got horrendously sunburned.

God is so immensely kind toward us. Go and celebrate it with Bish :)

Inconsistencies

It's amazing how easily we entertain inconsistent beliefs. I thought that I strive for consistency of belief, knowing that there is an ultimate reality, there is the God who created and sustains the universe by His powerful word, and although we don't know all of reality, we do know some that He, by His grace, has revealed.

Often when someone is claiming that morality is a human invention, or that everything is relative, it is helpful to ask them questions about how they live, because it will be, in some areas, inconsistent with this pretended belief.

But on a more trivial level, I only realised part-way into the church meeting this morning that my commitment to take the 11-15 year olds out before the sermon for 'Senior Bible Class' was inconsistent with my commitment to accompany the final hymn, teaching it to the congregation as a new song. And I only realised at 12.30pm that my intention to bring the keyboard to our afternoon outreach service as usual, was inconsistent with my plan to cycle to said meeting, due to the in-the-post status of my car tax disk. It's amazing how easily one can hold several contradictory notions or plans in one's head without realising!

Week of thankfulness

1 - My cousin's wedding in Stirling brought my family together from Belfast, Inverness and Birmingham - first time the 5 of us were togther for several years. The joy of seeing my cousin, recently recommitted to Christ following years drifting, marrying her newly converted and lovely bloke. The beautiful highlands: lochs and mountains. Snow. I wanted to bring a little loch (just a wee one!) and mountain back to Brummieland (not even a Munro: just a little one), but my sister wouldn't let me. Sigh.

2) Listening to more of Piper on Romans on the way up on the train, and Haydn's Creation, Saint-Saëns 'organ' symphony, and the Barber and Korngold violin concertos. There's something about watching the highlands go past while listening to such a soundtrack that beats television hands down into the mud every time.

3) Interviewing final year students for the Relay programme - hearing them testify to God's work in their lives, in building character, teaching them his truth, and using them in serving his Church. Joy.

4) Meeting my current Relay worker, considering the humility part of "Humble Orthodoxy" with a talk from Nathan Smith. "Pride is seeking to ungod God." (Thomas Watson)

5) Good Friday with church, swimming in the grace of the cross. The privilege of leading cross-centred worship from the piano in the morning, and serving similarly in outreach services in residential homes in the afternoon. I love doing services in residential homes: these dear people need Christ so much, are mostly only too thrilled to come to a service and talk about the gospel, and yet so few seem to reach out to them.

6) Enjoying the cross with help from Mike Reeves, courtesy of theologynetwork.org

7) Surprising a friend in church with a 50th birthday party this evening - fun!

Swim against the tide of fun

"Have fun!" I've often used that as a well-wishing comment. Seldom seriously meant it: more often I've meant, "I hope what you're heading to will be helpful, or enjoyable, or even painful but good for you in the long run." But I've said, "Have fun!"

Our culture militates against taking life seriously. It's one of the serious crimes against British sensibility (cf. Watching the English) - to appear too serious, too much in earnest. People start squirming, a little embarassed, feeling that such enthusiasm for things of import should be locked up somewhere. We know too much to be engagedly committed to ideals. To spend time and effort taking life seriously. We know that our ideals are broken, our previous idols smashed, or philosophies found wanting, our religion dead. We know that our lives are meaningless, our history bunk, our politics mindless and our character predetermined by biological, social and economic factors. We're either patronisingly amused or admiringly puzzled by American political zeal. We know from our neighbours that plus ça change... So we take up with the rest, in mind-numbing media, utilitarian education, and short-fix comfort government, to fill our ears, eyes, bodies and hearts with light relief.

I've found myself recently, when home tired at the end of the day, relaxing to the sound of BBC 7 repeats of radio comedy taking the Mick out of the news, while playing Minesweeper. Light relief. Satirising events in the news may help take life less seriously, but I don't think that's our main problem. Certainly my problem, tuned in to radio satire while numbing my tired mind at the end of a day, is not that I take the world or myself too seriously, but that I don't take God seriously enough.

Listening to better things this morning: Piper on Romans 2.6-10, from 1998 -

I feel such a burden for us as a church to swim against the tide of almost every current in our culture. More and more and more, America is a nation given over to play. The industries of play are huge! Houses are built today with entertainment centers. Computers and videos and television and stereo all coordinate to give us ever more stimulating and captivating distractions from the realities of the world. When we need to be dreaming, for the glory of Christ, about how to spend our lives alleviating ignorance and sickness and misery and lostness, we are becoming more and more addicted to amusement.

Make a little test of evangelical vocabulary, and calculate, for example, the increasing frequency with which we use the world "fun" to describe almost everything we like. But when do we describe our good experiences as "meaningful" or "significant" or "enriching" or "ennobling" or "worthwhile" or "edifying" or "helpful" or "strengthening" or "encouraging" or "deepening" or "transforming"
or "valuable" or "eye-opening" or "God-exalting"?

Examine yourself with this text: Whatever else it teaches, this is clear, it teaches that after death there is eternal life and glory and honor and peace, and there is eternal wrath and indignation and tribulation and distress. And in the twinkling of an eye, even before this service is over, you could be irreversibly in the one or the other. I am a watchman on the wall. And I have warned you as clearly as I know how. Get ready and stay ready.

Live in the light of eternity. And I do mean light, not shadow. When you have come to know your God, and love his Son so much that you can say, "For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain," then living in the light of eternity will replace your "fun" with deeper, higher, wider, longer, more unshakable, more varied, more satisfying, more durable, more solid pleasures than all the fun that entertainment could ever give. O come, and let us be a different breed of people for the few short years we have to live upon this earth! Dream some dream of making your life count for Christ and his Kingdom. "Only one life, 'twill soon be past. Only what's done for Christ will last."

I mean to swim against the tide of fun. Not that I won't be amused by satire. Not that I won't enjoy life to the full. But precisely because I will enjoy life to the full, knowing that under God, life is serious. Enjoying God, I suspect that life (true life) is enjoyably serious, and ultimately seriously enjoyable.

The revolution of resolutions

My New Year's Resolutions
1) Make resolutions
2) Keep resolutions
3) ...Oh pants, never mind then.
4) Try again next year.

Ever felt like that? I've never gone in for new year's resolutions - doomed to failure, surely. Generally speaking, you try to tackle all the areas you want to alter, drastically, and at once. I won't eat chocolate ever again, I will exercise for an hour a day, practise the violin 6 hours a week, go to bed by 10pm, get up at 6am,... And thus daily haul myself up by my bootstraps [note to self: buy boots in sale], and turn my life around.

We laugh. We know better than that, as Christians. So, I will read the Institutes for 30min a day, learn 1 psalm a week, never miss a church prayer meeting, visit 1 elderly person a week, sign up for every rota in church, give more, pray for an hour each day from 6am and... thus haul myself up by my Bible's bookmark [note to self: buy nice new Bible in sale], and turn my life around spiritually.

Behold, all you who kindle a fire, who equip yourselves with burning torches!
Walk by the light of your fire, and by the torches that you have kindled!
This you have from my hand: you shall lie down in torment.

Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the voice of his servant?
Let him who walks in darkness and has no light
trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God. [Isaiah 50.11 & 10]

In resolutions we tend to look at ourselves with the eyes of the world and try to solve our problems in our own strength. If we do anything at this time of year, why not reflect on some of the prayers of Paul given to us in the epistles, and pray for grace, not to kindle our own fire by which to walk, but to trust in the name of the Lord and rely on our God.

If in our own power we could see what we really need to sort out, and then in our own power we wanted to resolve to do so, and in our own power do so, we wouldn't have needed Jesus. But the heart is deceitful and the eyes so easily blind: we fail to see what we really need to sort out before God - the depravity, idolatry and adultery of our hearts. We may catch glimpses of it ["Must be more patient with my housemate"] but don't really want to do it when push comes to shove ["But I have a right to comfort uninterrupted by any other being - I've had a hard day!"]. And even when we do want to do it, we lack the power to do so ["I'm sorry: I'm such a rubbish friend - I just..."]. But Jesus came, and said,

In sacrifice and offering you have not delighted,

but you have given me an open ear.

Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required.

Then I said, “Behold, I have come; in the scroll of the book it is written of me:

I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.”

We can't keep even our own resolutions, never mind the ones that matter. If we do keep them, they become idols, and we are proud of our own self-effort. But Jesus came delighting to do God's will. His heart beat was God's law. We resolve to go a certain way; we fail. He resolved to go to the cross: and he won - victory!

In Christ we can make huge, drastic, and humanly speaking unatainable aims for this new year, or each new day. In Christ we can make goals that certainly aren't SMART. With the same power working in us that worked in Christ when God raised him from the dead, we pray to grasp the ungraspable, understand the incomprehensible, and far more! We pray for power - His power, and so we may make godly resolutions knowing that we're not capable: but He's capable of doing far more than what we may dream of resolving, by his power working in us - so that He is seen to be glorious, not only in Jesus, but in Him, in the Church! [See Eph.3.14-21.]

So we pray with Paul [Colossians 1.9-14]

...that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

See excellent posts on new year's resolutions from David Powlison and Dave Bish.

Out of the mouths of babes & infants

A man drinking in the pub in Belfast on Christmas Eve, with his partner, was watching two little girls as they ran around away from their parents. They came up to where the couple were sitting and the seven-year-old spoke to the man's girlfriend: "What's your name?" "I'm Mary," she joked. The child turned to him: "So you must be Joseph!" she said.

The man laughed. "Do you know who Mary and Joseph were?" he asked in reply.
"Sure I do. Mary was Jesus' Mummy and Joseph was his step-dad."

The man was thrown by this. He'd never thought of it before. Joseph, not Jesus' father, but his step-father? Who did that make Jesus? Why was that the case?

He got up from his pint, and with 'Mary' (who had no idea what had made her say that was her name), walked out of the pub... Round the corner, to the Evangelical Bookshop. There he told this story to the manager and asked whether the little girl had got it right. The manager talked with him about Jesus, his birth, and who he was, for a good few minutes. He gave him a gift of Lee Strobel's A Case for Christmas. "I can't take this!" the man said. "It's Christmas - gift from us!" the manager insisted. The man departed, leaving £5 'to charity' (the charity box beside the till comes into its own here) - and promising to read the book.

Praise God for the words of a child to a stranger in a Belfast pub, and for the witness of the Evangelical Bookshop, and pray that God would give the man faith to believe in the Son of God, whose mother was Mary, and step-father, Joseph.