Faith or faithfulness...

Reading yesterday in the Old Testament book of Habakkuk, I was struck by a well known verse which is echoed in other parts of the Bible too. It says, "The just shall live by faith" or "The righteous will live by their faith" or something else along those lines, depending which translation of the Bible you use. But I happened to be reading in my Spanish Bible, and it said that, "los justos vivirán por su fidelidad a Dios" - which  means that the righteous will live by their faithfulness to God. That got me thinking... Is there a difference between faith and faithfulness? Is it the same word in the original Hebrew? Logically, "faithful" should mean "full of faith," but in normal usage we've tended to give them two different meanings. We've made "faith" about something we believe, and "faithfulness" about something we do - about loyalty or dependability. But surely the two are inextricably linked. If we truly have faith in God, this should express itself in our faithfulness to Him and to His Word.

Sure enough, the Hebrew could be transliterated as, "the righteous shall live by his faithfulness." The word means truth, loyalty or stability, as well as faith or faithfulness. And although the syntax clarifies that "his faith" or "his faithfulness" refers to the faith and faithfulness of the righteous person, I couldn't help remembering that it really all comes down in the end to His faithfulness. It's because of the incredible faithfulness of God that we have life and are empowered to live faithfully, or righteously. What an amazing God we serve! And how very much I long to be just in His eyes, and faithful to Him till the end of my days.

Questions help bring understanding and growth

We've just completed a very intensive, and very successful, workshop in foundational coaching skills. The feedback from the trainees has been overwhelmingly positive. One of the participants, a man who has been a missionary for more than forty years, said: 
"I hate to realise how much time has been wasted in the past... when I think of all the people I talked to and all the hours I spent trying to figure out their problems... It has hit me hard to know we could have done so much more if we’d only been able to ask good questions and help them think of options for solving their own problems and making their own decisions."

Yes, one of the core competencies in life coaching is the ability to ask great questions that help people to process choices and move beyond the places where they feel stuck in their work, ministry or personal life. But it's not only when coaching that questions help to bring perspective, understanding and growth. Knowing how to ask ourselves good questions is one of the ways that we can also help ourselves keep growing in our relationship with God. That's why the use of simple questions forms the foundation of the 2013 Bible Reading Challenge that I've launched for some of our Spanish speaking young people here in Alhaurin.

When I first had the vision to write these little "quiet time journals" for young people, I was seeking to serve a dozen or so pre-teens and young teens that I have contact with here in Spain. I could never have foreseen that such a simple idea (read your Bible 13 times a month... and read from 20 different Bible books in the course of the year) would gain momentum so quickly. Since writing about Challenge 2013 in my January newsletter, I've had emails from nine different countries, from people asking if they could download the booklets for use with their children or young people. And yet the concept is incredibly simple: read a few verses in the Bible, and prayerfully consider a question that will help you draw out God's truth and apply it to your everyday life.

The February booklets are ready now, and you can download them by clicking either of these links. The March/Easter booklet will be available at the end of February.

Challenge 2013 for February: click here for the booklet in English

Reto 2013 para febrero: haz clic aquí para descargar el libro en español

The pages should be printed double sided in landscape orientation, and folded to form an A5 booklet. Hope you enjoy it.

My knight in shining armour???

We're more than half way through the coaching workshop now. It's been a really intensive week as the trainees have learned and practised lots of new skills, so everyone was thankful for a little break yesterday afternoon and an outing to the pretty mountain village of Mijas. (Just half an hour away, it's our most usual destination for a short outing with the students who work so hard during our training courses.) An unexpected outcome of our trip is that one of the trainees, a long term missionary, even managed to find us a knight in shining armour! The coaching workshop continues today, with lots of practice coaching sessions where the trainees can coach each other, sharpening their new skills and getting feedback from their fellow trainees, as well as from the staff who've been the trainers during this week. Some of these participants will leave on Saturday, and some new ones arrive for a shorter workshop that we're holding next week on the topic of how to understand people's different personality types and coach them accordingly.

Intensive workshop week

The snowy winter weather around Europe caused lots of flight delays this past weekend, and so we're thankful that all 20 of the trainees for this year's intensive workshop in foundational coaching skills (FOCOS) have arrived safely in Malaga. This year's group includes missionaries from two different organisations: Youth with a Mission and Campus Crusade for Christ. 

The workshop got off to a good start today, with four of us staff sharing the teaching and leading of the different workshop sessions. The first day is always stretching for the trainees, as they begin to learn new skills, new ways of relating and asking questions, and start to practise those skills in groups of three (we call them "triads") - always with one person coaching, one being coached, and the third observing and giving feedback.

Such workshops always involve an intense schedule for me too, as I have to leave home around 8 am, and usually only get back to the house again at 10 o'clock in the evening. Of course, there are some breaks throughout the day, but not long enough for me to drive all the way home and back again. However, it's very stimulating to see these missionary leaders gaining skills that will help them to invest in the lives of those they lead and work with, in nations as diverse as Romania, Hungary, Switzerland, Germany, Russia and Thailand.

Wet and wild

I sometimes feel that I can identify with tribal people who go out gathering firewood to keep their homes warm! Although we buy our firewood from a supplier in town, we still have to do a fair bit of gathering up smaller sticks and pine cones to use as kindling when starting the fire. And we've become very proficient "scavengers" - scooping up the spoils whenever a neighbour prunes branches from his fruit trees or throws out an old chair. Some time ago, we gathered up something that looked like half a tree trunk and, not having an electric saw to cut it into smaller pieces, we stored it up for a day when we knew it would be burned all at once. 

Today was that day. We woke up to violent winds and torrential rains, and quickly recognised that this was a day when we'd need to have a fire in the grate all day long. So our prize "tronco" was half in and half out the fireplace at the beginning... but, at the time of writing, is now more than half consumed and burning brightly in our living room.

We're hoping that the wild weather won't continue for too long. Yesterday we spring cleaned (or "winter cleaned") all our villas, in preparation for a couple of dozen people arriving this weekend for our upcoming coach training workshops. If it continues to be wet and wild, our sparkling clean floors will quickly be soiled by the muddy footprints and wheel prints of guests arriving from the airport.

Thanks for your prayers as we work with a new group of coach trainees over the next ten days.

Blessing, suffering and growth

Last Sunday morning, when I was speaking at the morning service in Falkirk, Scotland, my friends Alex and Amy were leading the morning service in Alhaurin, here in Spain. Inviting people to look back at 2012, they gave everyone two slips of paper and asked people to write down where they had "drunk from the cup of blessing" and where they had "drunk from the cup of suffering" during last year. Then those dozens of anonymous slips of paper were pinned to the wall of the church - for anyone to read and pray over. I saw them yesterday, and it was heartbreaking to read of the challenges and suffering that our church family had been through in 2012: relational conflicts, bullying at school, loss of employment, financial difficulties, serious illness, death and bereavement, etc. But it was encouraging to read of the blessings that people had experienced during 2012: financial provision, healing from sickness, ministry success, family members coming to the Lord, etc.

At yesterday morning's church service, we took this theme a bit further: considering how the bridge between suffering and blessing is called "my Redeemer lives." Jesus is the one who can take our suffering and ultimately turn it into blessing. The pastors asked the congregation for testimonies of ways that previous years' suffering had been turned into blessing during 2012. Several people shared their stories; I was able to tell of how my family had spent Christmas day 2011 in hospital, with my Dad critically ill... and how, thanks to God's power, we were able to spend Christmas day 2012 at home as a family, with my Dad continuing his recovery from illness and preparing to celebrate his 60th wedding anniversary in just a couple of months' time.

(Yes, this is a year of special events for my family: my Mum had her 80th birthday yesterday, my brother will turn 50 in March, and my parents will celebrate their Diamond Wedding just before Easter time.)

Last week, at the leadership development centre in Alhaurin, we had two days together as a team: thanksgiving for 2012; prayer and planning for 2013.  During one of our times of worship, Rite again picked up the theme of the cups of blessing and suffering..... and added a third cup to the table: the cup of growth. As we reflected on the good times and the hard times of 2012, we also shared together the ways that we had grown stronger or grown in God during the year that lies behind us. Isn't it interesting to see that, although growth can come both during suffering and during blessing, it's sometimes true that our growth happens more in the hard times than in the easy times? It's when we rely on God in the most difficult of circumstances that we discover He is who He says He is, and more, and we are strengthened in our knowledge of God and relationship with Him.

Whether you know hard times or good times in 2013, I pray that you'll know growth.... and that you'll be stronger at the end of this year than you are at the beginning. God bless you.

The promise or the presence?

I'm speaking at the church service in Falkirk this morning. It's become kind of a tradition that I take the service on the first Sunday of every new year. This year, I felt that God challenged me with a little insight from Exodus chapter 33, and the question of what we really care about most for 2013: the promise of God (His blessings) or the presence of God (His closeness in all circumstances)?? Sometimes, if we're honest, Christians can be more focused on having an easy life, a blessed life, than on having the presence of God with us even in the hard times.

When God tells the people of Israel (because of their sin in worshipping a golden calf) that He will still give them the promised land and still give them victory over their enemies, but that they'll no longer have God's personal presence with them.... Moses says no. He says, "I'd rather stay in the wilderness with the presence of God, than go up into the promised land and live the good life without the presence of God." Knowing the presence of God in all situations is the only thing that really makes a major difference in our lives - the only thing that makes us different from people who live without an awareness of God's presence.

If you've come to this blog today because you want the first Bible reading booklet for Challenge 2013, just keep scrolling down. You can download the booklet, either in Spanish or English, from my blog posting for 30th December. Enjoy your reading, and may you find that it helps you know the presence of God in this new year.