The Watershed

For most of my songwriting years, I had been diligently writing love songs to God, songs about my personal walk with and before Him. Arriving in the UK, I felt I would need to adapt my style so I could get into the pubs - to get a foot in the door, so to say, and from there to sing more openly about God. What I found was that my songs became more and more washed out, and in the end I had stopped writing about God and really was not going to make any impact. Without even trying, I found myself writing love songs to God again. I had come full circle. I do accept that sometimes we need to be sensitive in our approach, but there was one principle I learnt: in the end, the "God" issue will still cause offense to those who won't accept Him. Jesus confirmed this in John 7:7, "The world...hates me because I testify that what it does is evil." You can take whatever approach you choose in presenting your Christian songs, but the God-factor is still going to be incisive and sometimes divisive. At some stage, you'll have to get to the point.

Saviour of the World

I was struck this evening while reading in the book of John how the Samaritans came to believe in Jesus as the "saviour of the world". Maybe it's just the wording that caught me, but it's an encompassing statement. If you want to know why Christians are so in your face about their religion, then this statement captures the spirit of their message. With so much emphasis on relativism and localisation of beliefs, here is a statement that one man - God within a man, but one physical man - is the be-all and end-all of creation. That's the first surprise of that statement; the second is the concept of "saviour". We would all like the world to be saved - in general I'd say people know something is wrong and that the world needs fixing. Some like to believe we can do it ourselves, despite our failings since the beginnings of our existence. Here is a man whose claim was to be the one to save the world as we so wished. This statement is a good starting place then for the question: who is this saviour of the world?

The New Wizard of Oz

It's been fascinating to read Richard Dawkins' "Blind Watchmaker". I promised to read it along with Lee Strobel's "Case for a Creator" so that I had a balanced view. I was a little overawed by how clever Dawkins must be and a tip-toed my way into the book, slowly gaining confidence as I realised his arguments were nothing I couldn't handle. Even better, as I prayed to God for a counter-argument to everything Dawkins would say, I found it incredibly easier to spot how weak his arguments were. Wow, it's encouraging and incredibly invigorating to realise the main rival to your faith is a little Wizard of Oz, a wimp in a big mask. What's important now is to clarify his main arguments, remembering that Dawkins is a champion in his field, and be ready to pour dust on them when given the chance to speak with an intellectual about evolution and creationism. As Paul writes to Timothy: always be ready to give an answer for the hope that you have.

The Faith Gap

It's been about a year now. In that time I've looped around a few times trying to link up all the logic about Christianity and form a clear line of reasoning from start to finish that proves it. I've come up with some pretty good ideas, but not delivered the coup de tat. Today a breakthrough. Three days ago I had a miracle when God provided a 50% discount on my train fare. I know personally that I had undeniably heard God's voice. No question. So I know God exists. And I also know God's Word says without faith it's impossible to please God. So it would appear that there is a gap left in reasoning where you have to take a leap of faith. I know there's been a move recently to improve reasoning and apologetics, but we've still been left with this difficult gap that just seals the matter. But now, knowing that my lack of complete reasoning doesn't disqualify my faith, and also knowing that I really know that God exists, I feel like a burden has lifted from my shoulders. Eureka.

Superman Without a Cape

Paul throws an incredible punchline in the book of Galatians as he explains the purpose of the law before the arrival of Jesus. He says that the law was put in place to lead us to Christ. My understanding of that is simply this: that in our attempts to fulfill the law, we find ourselves unable and we cry out for somebody who can help us. And yet, what crosses my mind as I read that statement is just how stubborn I am. I fall and fall and each time get up again and assert how much harder I'm going to try next time and how I won't do it again. And I fall again. Oh, to fall over and admit defeat! I'm loathe to do it and yet it's the key to my freedom isn't it? In one ear I hear the voice saying, "You must be holy as I am holy" and in the other I hear "all to Jesus I surrender". Both good truths and both pulling me, but one thing I do know, and that is that I'm one incredibly stubborn man.

Under-selling God

When we ask God to do something, how often do pray for Him to do something that we can imagine is possible with a little bit of His help? Actually, we are unintentionally misrepresenting His ability. How can God prove His worth and His power if we never give Him something to do that is completely impossible? Giving the Creator of the universe small odd jobs is like assigning firemen to a full-time post of taking kittens out of trees. Actually they're trained to put out raging fires. Let's step out and make some space for the One bigger than the universe to do His dance.

Spin the World

I once quipped to myself that how you managed a box of matches reflected how well you would manage a global business empire. Maybe it's true only to some extent, but the general principle is good. If we can't obey God in the small things, then how do we expect to toe the line easily when it comes to big decisions? It's this principle that Jesus was referring to when He talked about the origin of sin in the mind. Every seed grows when you water it and if you start out with a seed of sin, you can turn it into Jack's beanstalk. It works just the same when you keep on sowing good things into your life. They seem small, but as you keep striding forwards, always moving onto new challenges, you'll find that things you had to fight through before become trivial and your shoulders broaden to take on bigger challenges.

Mr Faith & Mrs Excellence

Faith and excellence are close buddies, but why? Simply because it takes faith to be excellent and excellence proves faith. It's a small variation on what James was so deliberate to point out when speaking about faith and works. The simply question when you are posed with a non-compulsory challenge is: why bother? If you don't believe that good is rewarded and that hard work is worth the effort, then you simply won't feel the need to bother stretching the extra yard. So that's an issue of faith then. Faith is believing in God's system of rewards. Likewise, if you have faith, what is it in? It must surely be in God's faithfulness, in His Word and in His promises, and the more you believe the system of blessing described in His Word, the more you will reach out to benefit from that system. Your reaching out is a demonstration that you've bought into His philosophy on life.

Feeling the Feeling

I struggle on Saturdays. I feel the need or the want to rest and do nothing useful at all, but I also feel the pressure to be purpose-driven and even to hear God's voice throughout the day on exactly what I should do. It exhausts me to be honest, but as I ponder my dilemma, I realise just how much I depend on needing a feeling in order to do something. It's partly just my character and way of doing things, but I guess we can all identify with this to an extent. I'm sobered when I realise how many things I could do by just doing them on the spot rather than waiting for the feeling to come. The irony is that I would probably feel more satisfied and fulfilled at the end of a "doing" day than a day of rest. There's a place for rest, but I need something to rest from!

One Life Spent

I was a little frightened and shaken by a thought today. We had a member of staff at work retire recently. She had been in the business for several decades, probably in fairly similar roles, not particularly high up the food chain, as the saying goes. Thinking about how moved she was to be leaving this big part of her life behind, I realised how she had sowed her life into this position. She had been given one life and she had sowed the majority of her life into this one position at work. Now there's nothing wrong with that - well done to her. What strikes me is this: one life, what am I going to plough it into? Time goes and next thing you know you're about to retire. So what will you have ended up spending your one life on?

The Enjoyment-Expense Curve

Follow my thinking here ... you're a poor man living in Africa, earning $10 per month. You can manage to put food on the table and buy some cheap clothes possibly. If you are upgraded to $20 per month, your quality of living increases fairly considerably, maybe it even doubles. Imagine you are a millionaire. Think of all the things you can do with your money - the big house, nice car, great dining, holidays. Now imagine you become a 2-millionaire. But does the quality of your life really improve that much? Not really when you start to think about it. Your car goes from zero to 100kmh a bit quicker, your house has a few extra rooms, your clothing improves marginally, etc. Actually, your quality of life goes up 10% maybe. Now this is a great principle when you are trying to decide how to spend your money cost-effectively. Ask yourself: if I spend 100% more, does my quality of life or pleasure increase 100%? When you start to take that approach, you'll realise that a lot of your money could be given to those for whom a 100% increase in income would really make a difference.

Submission Without Cognition

It's easy to understand how there are times when a child should simply obey parents in certain circumstances, without understanding the reason exactly. The old hand-on-stove example is been reused, rehashed and hung out to dry, but there are many instances. And yet, just as a child finds it difficult to obey, we have difficulty being obedient to God when we don't understand. Of course, it does become a little bit more difficult, considering that God's voice is seldom audible. Still, there are times when I've known I've heard from God, but still question whether I've heard correctly because the direction seems counter-intuitive. The key to the whole exercise is simply to recognise that we're not all-knowing and that God is. And that is a learning curve most of us have been on a long time and are still on, myself included.

Destitute and Poor

Hebrews 11 finishes off incredibly. What a life! Beaten up, dressed in tatters, enduring only for something that couldn't be achieved in this present life. Now that is faith! Imagine living for something beyond what we see, for a supposed life in heaven that no one really has proof of, that's beyond what our tangible reasoning can show. To let yourself be treated like dirt and never see the rewards of it before death. Now either that is stupid and wasteful or it's hectically amazing. There's no real middle ground here. And yet, every now and then we make space for that glimmer of thought: is this all there is? And here are a bunch of guys who believed in something more, something presently intangible, who believed that good is rewarded and justice is served. It's incredibly otherworldy, literally.