Watching and waiting...

I can hardly believe that we're at the end of May - almost half way through the year - and I still find myself with no permanent home to move to. We moved on 12th May to our second temporary accommodation, this time with an American missionary family who have a little granny flat attached to their house. It's not for long, though, and soon they too will be homeless. They'll be moving out of that house around 20th June, as their landlord is increasing the monthly rent to a staggering €2700.

But I'm thankful to have a place for these few weeks as I continue the ongoing search for something more permanent. As the weeks and months have gone by, I'm discovering that I'm far from alone in my predicament. At least five other families or individuals in our church are on the verge of finding themselves in the same position, and I even meet random people in the street (dog walkers, usually) who tell me that they're currently in temporary accommodation. It just seems to be a crisis time for housing at the moment.

My search continues, but it's slowing down a bit as summer approaches. Many homeowners like to take advantage of the summer holiday season, when they can rent their house out to tourists for €1500 a week instead of €1500 a month. So I'm still spending a lot of time each week looking at property listings, but there are far fewer possibilities at the moment.

All my usual summer travel (for outreach, etc) has been put on hold, but I'm continuing with ongoing local and international ministry commitments: teaching, translating, writing, coaching...

I have no housing lined up for the last week of June and first weeks of July, but I do have another temporary possibility from mid-July onwards. How I hope, though, that there might finally be a more permanent solution before we enter the second half of the year.
 

Just for fun...

More than a month has gone by since we filmed our last YouTube video at our temporary accommodation. We've moved to yet another temporary place, and the search for a more permanent home (an exhausting and rather discouraging process) still continues.  Our new temporary accommodation also has a garden and this has allowed us to film a new video in some of our spare moments. Just for fun, click on the photo if you'd like to watch Maiki's guide to "Songs of the 20th Century." You may be too young to remember them all, but here are more than a dozen songs from almost every decade of the 1900s.

To watch the video, you can also click here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mzjn7BDNaXA

 

What does hide and seek have to do with learning obedience to God?

My dog has a favourite toy. It's plastic chicken that goes by the Spanish name of "Pollo." When Pollo was new, the toy made an awful crowing noise when squeaked. Now that he has a few puncture wounds, he is, thankfully, almost silent!

"Find Pollo" was our favourite rainy day game at our old house. When torrential rain stopped us going out for a walk, we'd play hide and seek inside the house. Maiki would wait in the kitchen while I went to hide Pollo in another part of the house. Then, when given the command, she'd rush off to sniff out the toy and bring it noisily out of hiding.

Now that we're living temporarily in a house with a huge garden, our "Find Pollo" game has risen to a new level. Scent games can tire dogs out, so it has become our pre-bedtime game. Maiki needs to sit patiently in some part of the garden while I go off to find a good hiding place for Pollo. Then, when the release cue is given, she bounds into action and the enthusiastic hunt begins.

Sniffing out the toy is the exciting part of the game for a dog. The harder part is having to sit patiently and out of sight during the couple of minutes while the toy is being hidden. It's a real test for the dog. Will she sit faithfully until given permission to search, or will she leave her "stay" to find out what is happening and get a head start on the hunt? And so this "hide and seek" game is a test of the dog's willingness to obey, her willingness to wait out of sight until given the command to move.

When it comes to Pollo, the "stay" command or the "emergency stop" is just a game. But in a different situation, it can save the dog's life - as we experienced yesterday.

I was just saying to someone last week that we almost never encounter snakes on our walks in the mountains and so I can pretty much ignore Maiki's obsession with stalking lizards in the undergrowth. Well, wouldn't you believe it.... on our morning walk yesterday, a rather large snake slithered right across our path; I almost stepped on it. Fortunately, all four dogs froze when I gave the command, without any attempt to pursue the reptile or grab hold of it. (It wasn't venomous, but could have caused some damage in a fight for freedom.) The photo above shows my four super-heroes. I was proud of each one of them. They had illustrated in a real life situation that learning to obey promptly could one day save our life.

So what does all this have to do with my Bible reading this morning in the book of Judges?

Yesterday, I wrote about how the people of Israel failed to obey God and how they allowed idolatrous, heathen peoples to continue living as their neighbours in the Promised Land. Today, in Judges 3 verses 1 - 4, we read that there were actually two reasons why God allowed peoples like the Philistines and the Amorites to continue living in the land of Canaan.

The first reason, as I'd already seen in chapter 2, was to test whether the Israelites were truly willing to obey the commands that the Lord had given to their ancestors at Mount Sinai.  Just as having to sit and wait in some corner of the garden (while Pollo gets hidden) is a test of Maiki's willingness to obey, the presence of pagan peoples in Israel tested whether the Hebrews would obey God and refuse to worship idols.

The second reason was to teach warfare to the generations of Israelites who had no experience in battle, the generations who had been born after their parents crossed the Jordan and had to fight to conquer the Promised Land.

In our own lives too, God seldom leaves us with completely plain sailing, with nothing but peace and harmony on all sides. He allows us to face some challenges in life, and it's for exactly these same two reasons.

Firstly, God wants us to learn to do spiritual warfare, so that we won't simply be passive victims when the enemy mounts an attack against us. If young David hadn't previously faced and killed the lion and the bear, he would never have had the faith and the courage to face the giant Goliath. Likewise, God allows us to face smaller battles in life so that we learn how to fight and aren't easy prey when the larger battles come along.

Secondly, like Maiki waiting obediently for permission to "find Pollo," our response to the difficulties and challenges we face allows us to demonstrate that we are making a heart choice to obey and to do things God's way. That demonstration is important to our own awareness that our allegiance to God is solid and trustworthy, but it's also an act of spiritual warfare in itself, as it is a demonstration to the enemy that we are wholly committed to trusting God... just as Job in the Bible refused to give up on God when Satan threw all kinds of trials and injustices at him.

When we're in school or university, we sit exams to prove that we have understood and mastered a subject. To get our driving licence we have to sit a test to prove that we know the rules of the road and are able to handle the car safely. Let's not be surprised that in our Christian lives there are also times that test our obedience and that teach us how to defeat the enemy. 

Generational failure...

As May begins, I'm reading each morning in the Old Testament book of the Judges. You probably know that it's a book full of incredible biographies (some of them have been made into Hollywood movies) but, oh my, it gets off to a dismal start. 

Yesterday I read chapter one, which is basically an account of how, despite some initial victories, the people of Israel failed to claim their inheritance and completely conquer the promised land that God had given them. Today, in chapter two, we find out a bit more about the reasons for that failure.

God had commanded the Hebrews to drive out the heathen peoples that were living in Canaan when they arrived there. Instead, they often lived among those people, intermarrying with them and idolatrously worshipping their gods. This prepared the way for the roller coaster of peace and war, victory and defeat, commitment and corruption that we read of throughout the whole book of Judges.

Have you ever wondered why God doesn't miraculously get rid of all the difficulties and temptations that could cause us trouble in our Christian life? Chapter 2 of Judges makes it clear that, although many of the predicaments and challenges we face may be from "the enemy," many are of our own making. Rather than simply wiping these challenges out of way, God sometimes allows us to face them (see verses 22 - 23) to test how we will respond to them and whether we will obey the things He has shown us.

The Israelites had created their own difficult circumstances: by not driving out the heathen peoples as God had instructed them, they had left those people to be a constant trial and their gods to be a constant temptation for them.

While the people were responsible for their own disobedience to God's commands, the previous generation also bore some of the responsibility: the fact that the generation who didn't personally see God's miracles when entering the land (vs 7 and vs 10) was so quick to fall away from following Him suggests a serious failure in mentoring and discipling. The "parent generation" had failed to keep telling them about what God had already done or to give them opportunities to experience God's power for themselves.

So what about you and me, whether we're parents, Sunday school teachers, or just ordinary church folks whose lives interface a little with today's children and teenagers or today's emerging church leaders? Are we faithful in sharing our stories of the ways we've experienced God at work in our life, in our family, in our church? Do we talk about the things God has spoken to us, the things He has instructed us to do? Are we diligently sharing the lessons learned and the ways we discovered more about who God is?

But, perhaps even more important, are we giving today's young people opportunities to experience the reality of God in their own lives.... or are we shielding them from the sorts of experience that would help them grow in their faith and know that God truly is who He says He is?

When our young people need finances to go to a camp, for example.... do we just hand that money to them, or do we help them step out and trust for God's supernatural provision?

When there's an opportunity to reach out and serve the homeless people or the refugees.... do we leave our children at home watching TV, or do we take them along with us on that ministry opportunity?

When there's some kind of outreach or evangelistic project in our town..... do we assume that our kids wouldn't be interested in that, or do we take them with us, giving them opportunities to give testimonies or to pray for people in the street?

When there's an all-night prayer vigil at church.... do we find a babysitter for our kids, or do we take them with us so that they too can pray and be part of hearing God's voice?

Things went better for the Israelites each time God sent them a judge, a hero to deliver them from their predicament (see verses 18 - 19) but it was an external restraint: whenever the judge died, the people returned to their corrupt ways.

Let's not be part of raising up a generation like that, a generation that will only do the right thing when they have parents or youth group leaders telling them what to do, a generation that will turn away from God once they've left home or moved away to university, or got married and had children of their own...

Let's be part of raising up a generation that knows the ways of God and that has experienced His goodness, His love and His power in their own lives.