I love God's coincidences...

The most delicious red and yellow plums are growing at Villa Eden this month. As married couples arrive for the couples’ retreat this week, they’ll be able to pick their very own fruit from the “garden of Eden.” My parents are also arriving today and will be here in Spain for a month’s holiday. No doubt we’ll find time to go over to Eden to swim and sample the plums.

Yesterday morning, in the Old Testament, I was reading a story about a man called Jacob. After a conflict with his twin brother, Jacob had fled from his own nation of Israel and run away to a place called Paddam Aram, where he got married and began a family. In the course of his journey, however, Jacob turned his life around, committed himself wholeheartedly to God, and began to see God’s blessing in his family and in his farming. 

When we get to Genesis chapter 31, Jacob is about to embark on a transition, because God tells him to leave Paddam Aram and go back home again. To be more exact, God told him to return to his native country, the land of his fathers. I wonder if Jacob felt these instructions were more about leaving home than going home. You see, Paddam Aram was the only home his wives and kids had ever known, and Jacob himself had lived there for more than twenty years. But God had reasons for asking Jacob to uproot and head back to the part of the world he’d originally come from.

I experienced something similar just eight years ago, when God showed me that it was time to leave South Africa and return to Europe. I’d been living there for fourteen years and South Africa truly felt like home. Returning to Europe was one of the most difficult things I’d ever had to do, but God confirmed the step by speaking to me through the first verse of Isaiah 51: Look to the rock from which you were cut and the quarry from which you were hewn. Look to ... your father and ... the one who gave you birth. I understood it to mean that I was to return to where I’d come from, not just geographically to Scotland and Europe, but also to the ministry I’d been doing before moving to Southern Africa: working with the leadership development course and the KKI ministry in Europe.

But leaving Cape Town still felt like leaving home, and I confess that I felt “homesick” for Cape Town with a sense of loss that dragged on for nearly three years. I wonder if Jacob felt something similar when he considered the prospect of uprooting his family, leaving Paddam Aram and moving back to Israel. I knew, though, that “home” is not something static, and I remember writing in my 2007 journal about my awareness that a new place would eventually become home, if you embrace it and allow it to be. This month I look back in amazement, when I realise that I’ve just passed the eighth anniversary of my leaving South Africa, and that I’ve now lived in Alhaurín the same amount of time that I lived in Durbanville, or in Muizenberg (the two places I lived in South Africa.)

God was so faithful on my transition journey, and there were more than a few times where Bible verses He’d spoken to me took on a strangely specific meaning, in what I can only describe as one of God’s “coincidences." Just before I left South Africa, for example, He’d spoken to me through Exodus chapter 15, a story that ends with the people of Israel arriving at a place with “twelve springs and seventy palm trees.” Imagine my surprise, after arriving in Alhaurín, to discover that the town had been known since Roman times as a place of springs, a place for refreshing the troops... and in the little park at the end of my street, I was astounded to discover that there were exactly seventy palm trees.

Re-reading Isaiah chapter 51 yesterday morning, I suddenly had to laugh as I spotted another of God’s “coincidences” in the third verse. You see, in context, this prophecy was given to the people of Israel while they were in exile, and verse three promises Israel that, He will make her deserts like Eden, her wastelands like the garden of the Lord. The reason for my laughter was that the name of my town, Alhaurin, comes from Arabic and dates back to the time when the Moors occupied Spain. It’s comprised of two words: Allah, meaning God or Lord, and jardín, meaning garden. In other words, I live in a town that is called “the garden of the Lord” and one of our retreat centre villas is called Eden. 

Sometimes you just have to smile at God’s coincidences... but it’s also a reminder that He knows the future even before it happens, and He invites us always to trust Him, follow and obey Him.

Please don't make me rich

Among the writers of the Old Testament, there’s a little known guy called Agur, who wrote some of the proverbs. In Proverbs 30: 7 - 9, we find Agur pouring out his heart and asking God for two things. Firstly, he prays that he would be a man of integrity and that his life would be kept free of falsehood and lies. Secondly, he prays that he would have sufficient provision to live in financial integrity: in essence, what he says is, “ Please don’t let me be poor, but please don’t make me rich either.”

Agur understood the seductive power of possessions, and knew that the love of money could prove to be a snare for him. And so he prayed that he would not be too poor, which might tempt him to steal... but also that he would not be too rich, which might tempt him to become proud and forget to depend completely on the Lord. This man had a healthy sense of what is “enough” - a characteristic that seems to be sady lacking in our modern generation.

Hundreds of years later, a writer to the early Christian believers urged them to have the same attitude that was found in Agur’s life. Hebrews 13: 5 says, Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have, because God has said, “I will never leave you; I will never forsake you.” Contentment comes largely from knowing that the most precious thing we have is God’s presence with us. Nothing is worth more than that.

So what about you and me? On a rating scale of one to ten, how content are you with what you have in life? And how much do you treasure and seek after the presence of God with you every day of your life?

Who is watching you?

They say that, “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” but did you know that it is also an integral part of discipleship? Jesus Himself said that He only did what He saw the Father doing... and He urged His disciples to imitiate Him - in the way they lived and the way they loved.

Some years later, the apostle Paul said the same thing to those He was discipling: “Imitate me as I imitate Christ,” or “Follow my example as I follow the example of Christ.”  1st Corinthians 11 verse 1.   Paul lived with such moral and spiritual integrity that he had no qualms about urging others to copy his example. Part of being a discipler is being a good role model.

Last week, at the end of the LDC, the delegates made up a funny song (to the tune of the “Twelve Days of Christmas”) about all the staff members. For the fifth day of the song, they used a phrase that one of my young mentorees in Africa had confessed to asking herself when facing challenging situations in leading an outreach team: “What would Barbara say?” As a joke, one of the LDC delegates had made me a woven bracelet with the letters WWBS. Although we all laughed about it, it’s actually a humbling thing to realise that someone else is following the example of what you would do or say.

Whether we’re leaders or brand new Christians, we can be sure that someone is watching us. Are we worthy of imitation in what we do and say? Are we imitating Jesus, so that others can imitate us?  And it’s not only about how we look on the outside; it begins with how we think in the secret of our hearts. Are we allowing the Holy Spirit to disciple and purify our innermost thoughts, so that our outward speech and behaviour will be an example of imitating Jesus?

Obedience that saves lives.. (the warning of an undiscipled generation)

I've been enjoying doing some basic obedience training with my neighbour’s puppy this week. She’s six months old, which is slightly older than my usual puppy pupils, but she’s learning fast. It brought back memories of my Rusty in Scotland and my Kylie in South Africa who, by eight or ten weeks old could sit, lie down, stay and come on command. Why did I intentionally teach them these things at such a young age? Quite simply because it could save their lives! No one wants their puppy to dash into the path of a coming car because it wasn’t trained to stop and lie down when instructed to. 

Here in my town, I know a couple of people whose dogs are about a year old and yet still don’t consistently respond to these basic commands. I feel nervous when I see those dogs bounding around near traffic, because I know they haven’t yet learned the kind of obedience that could save their lives.

What’s true of dogs in the physical realm is true of people in the spiritual realm. This morning I was reading what I consider to be one of the saddest verses in the whole Bible: in Judges 2:10, it says that Joshua’s generation followed the Lord wholeheartedly, but then a generation grew up that didn’t know God or the things He had done for them. And the result, in verse 11, is that this "undiscipled" generation served false gods and did evil in the eyes of the Lord.

How could this be possible? How could the generation that saw God’s miracles in the desert, and experienced God’s victories in conquering the Promised Land, have children who didn’t know God and weren’t obedient to His commands? The answer is very simple: they failed to understand that discipleship needs to be intentional. It’s not enough to get people into the Promised Land and assume that they can work the rest out for themselves. We need to have a clear plan for helping people become disciples who love and obey God with all of their hearts.

This is the particular responsibility of parents. As the psalmist said, a few generations later, “What we have heard and known, what our fathers have told us, we will not hide them from the children; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, His power and the wonders He has done.” Psalm 78: 3 - 4. Surely no one would be crazy enough to “hide” the ways of God from their children. But that is exactly what we are doing if we are not intentional in discipling our kids, teaching them to read and obey the written Word, and to hear and obey God’s voice.

The same is true in our churches. Sometimes we make great plans for evangelism... but then we forget to be equally intentional in our plans for discipleship. And so a generation of believers grows up who have experienced salvation in the true sense of the word, but who live lives shaped by the values and customs of the world around them, instead of learning to love and honour God in all things. They’ve entered the Promised Land, but they’ve never learned to enjoy its blessings or to conquer the cities and the giants that live there. Let’s remember that it’s not enough to get people saved; we need to be intentional in teaching them the kind of obedience that could save their lives. 

What is a disciple?

In my personal Bible reading this week, I’ve been reflecting on what is means to be a “disciple” of Jesus. That’s a lot different from simply being a regular church goer, or being someone who believes in God. A disciple is a lifelong learner; someone who is always able to tell you what they’ve been learning and how they’ve been growing in God this year.

This morning I read a short Bible passage, Hebrews 10 verses 24 - 26, that really sums up two of the main things involved in being a disciple of Jesus. Being a disciple means:
vs 26 abandoning sin, and
vs 24 - 25 embracing community.

The command for Christians to turn away from sin is clear, but sometimes we don’t fully understand what that means, and we discover that it’s not so easy to do it without the support and encouragement of others.

In a football team, basketball team, or any other sports team, each player is responsible for his own training and physical fitness... but they probably won’t win any games unless they all help each other and learn to work as a team. Likewise, in the church, we’re all responsible for our own relationship with God, but we also need to encourage, help and disciple each other in becoming more like Jesus and obeying His instructions for our day to day lives.

What about you? Are you still wearing your L-plate and learning new things from the Lord every week? 
And what about your church community? Are you helping each other to grow stronger as disciples of Jesus?
How can you be more intentional in growing personally and discipling one another this week?

Drawing breath...

Whew! The leadership development course was such a busy season, that I haven't had a chance to do any blogging since my last post at the end of April. LDC was not only busy with teaching and leading process groups, but also with life's little "emergencies" like having to drive delegates to hospital at midnight. However, it was easily one of our most encouraging and fruitful seasons of the year, and we are thrilled at God's faithfulness when we hear the testimonies of transformation in the lives of those who were with us for those six intense and impacting weeks.

With LDC behind us now (and all the admin work submitted to the University), I have a couple of weeks in June where I can draw breath and enjoy a more flexible schedule. It's not exactly a holiday yet, as I have coaching appointments, computer work and various ministry planning meetings this month, but it will be very different from the pace of LDC.

My mysterious knee injury, which made the start of LDC rather challenging (see previous post) was well prayed for, and recovered slowly throughout the several weeks of the course. It seems almost back to normal again now, and this has allowed me to get a bit more exercise again. I'm back to using the new open air gym equipment in my street, I'm trying to swim a little whenever possible, and twice a week I'm making time to walk my neighbour's puppy and do some basic obedience training with her. (The cats are not very impressed to have this exuberant stranger visiting the house now and then, but I'm thoroughly enjoying having the opportunity to train a dog again.)

My short term housemate, Sue, has returned to the UK, we're also saying goodbye to Trudie who has served in the retreat centre kitchen this year, and tonight we're having a meal to welcome two new volunteers who are coming to help us over the summer months. New people and new adventures lie ahead…. but for now, we're enjoying drawing breath.