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.

A challenge for the new year...

With the new year just around the corner, some people are turning their thoughts to new year resolutions. Perhaps they plan to lose weight or give up smoking, or get out of debt. Others don't bother making promises to themselves, as previous experience has shown them that they'll probably have failed before the end of January.

Talking with some young people in my church in Spain, I discovered that there were a number of teens who really wanted to make new year resolutions about reading the Bible more.... but they weren't really very sure about how to spend personal time with God. I was astonished to discover that some of the young people only ever read in the psalms or proverbs, leaving the rest of the Bible totally undiscovered.

I contacted Scripture Union and similar organisations in Spain to find out about what kind of Bible reading notes are available for children and teenagers... and I was amazed to discover that no such resource seems to exist in Spain. That's when I decided that I would need to write something myself. I spoke with some of the young teens and we have launched Challenge 2013 (or Reto 2013 in Spanish) for the new year that lies ahead.

The concept behind Challenge Twenty Thirteen is very simple and very do-able: young people who sign up for the challenge will commit to reading their Bible at least 13 times a month... and by the end of the year, they will have read from 20 different books in the Bible.

As for me, my challenge is that I have committed to writing and printing twelve Bible reading journals - one for each month of the year. Each little booklet explains how to spend personal time with God, and includes 13 short Bible readings, with a question to think and pray about, and a challenge to apply the Bible's teaching to your everyday life. So far, I'm aware of young people in five different nations who are taking on the challenge of reading the Bible thirteen times a month during 2013.

I'm producing the booklets both in Spanish (Reto 2013) and English (Challenge 2013) and the January booklet is already available in PDF format for downloading and printing. If you or a young person you know would like to take on the challenge, you can get your copy of the January booklet by clicking on the link below. (Print it double sided on A4 paper, landscape orientation, and then fold it in half to form an A5 booklet.)

Challenge 2013 booklet for January (in English)

Reto 2013 para enero (libro en español)

Just another "ordinary" miracle!

In many ways, our Christmas day was rather "uneventful." We ate a goose for Christmas dinner, we watched a movie on TV, we gave and received gifts.....  From anyone's perspective, it probably seemed very ordinary.

But deep in my heart, I knew that the very "ordinariness" of this day was in itself a miracle, and evidence of God's faithfulness to our family over the past twelve or fourteen months.

We spent Christmas Day 2011 in hospital. We seemed to have moved beyond the stage where doctors were telling us that my Dad would never come out of hospital alive, but he was still in critical condition and Christmas day was full of pain for him. He was unable to eat any Christmas dinner, and a pervasive sense of nausea caused him to throw up several times that day. Ten rather traumatic weeks lay behind us, and we didn't know that six more difficult months of hospitalisation lay ahead.

What a contrast this year! Although Dad still faces some challenges as he continues to recover from his near-death experiences, it is nothing short of amazing to see how well he is doing: to see him able to walk with a stick, to see him eating his Christmas dinner and opening his presents..... to see him doing all the "ordinary" things that doctors told us he would never do again. In the words of a song you might have heard: it's just another ordinary miracle today!

If you were one of the people who stood with us in prayer this time last year, you too have played a part in this miracle; you were part of seeing the faithful and miraculous power of God at work in my Dad's life. Thank you for that.

On Sunday, we went out as a family to a Christmas service at church. That too may seem a very ordinary thing to do.... but it was the first time in fourteen months that my parents had been able to go out to church together .... and it was all thanks to the healing power of God.

Perhaps your Christmas also seemed "ordinary." Perhaps 2012 was not particularly dramatic for you and your family. And yet I know that the faithfulness of God has been there for you too. Perhaps you have experienced His power and His answers to prayer in all sorts of "ordinary" ways this year - whether you were aware of it or not.

I pray that 2013 will be a year when God's ordinary miracles become more noticeable to all of us... a year when our hearts are filled with thankfulness for His goodness to us. I hope you had a happy Christmas this year.... and I wish you many blessings in the new year that lies just around the corner.

Christmas Concert

All that hard work and prayer paid off, and our church's Christmas concert last night was a great success. Around 200 people turned up and everyone seemed to enjoy the programme - a mix of songs, dance, music and puppets. The children did a great job with their Christmas songs, and the girls' group presented the two Christmas worship dances they've been preparing over the past few weeks. Perhaps the most enthusiastic part of the service was when the children (and the puppets) were all singing the Christmas classic, Feliz Navidad. If you don't know it, you can listen to it here and sing along. The words are very simple: "Feliz Navidad, feliz navidad, feliz navidad y prospero año de felicidad. I want to wish you a merry Christmas (x3) from the bottom of my heart."

Quite a number of the guests stayed after the concert for drinks and snacks, and we're hoping that some of them will come back again next Sunday evening for our Christmas carol service. In the meantime, though, I'll be heading to Scotland, where I'll be spending Christmas and New Year with my family. I wish you and your family Feliz Navidad y Prospero Año de Felicidad. (Merry Christmas and a New Year with much happiness.)

Dog sitting, Chinese cooking and orange picking...

My friends have gone to Portugal for a few days, and so I'm staying at Villa Rehoboth with Brandy the dog. It's a good place to work on the computer and make progress on some of the curriculum writing that I'm aiming to finish by the end of the year... and I'm also doing several loads of laundry every day: washing the bedding left by a group of more than twenty retreat participants who left only yesterday.

I'll be making a trip home every day to check on my own animals, but today was a public holiday and so my housemates and a friend came to visit and have lunch at "my house." Chicken chow mein was on the menu, and I discovered that a paella pan is ideal for stir frying all those vegetables and noodles. Then we enjoyed taking the dog for a walk down a nearby country lane and picking the ripe oranges that were growing wild there. And, finally, gathering up as many pine cones as possible, as they're great for getting the fire started in the fireplace when the evening chill sets in. That's Spain in winter!

To England.... for Africa!

I just arrived back in Spain, after making a flying visit to England. I was there for just two days to meet with some people who are involved (or interested in getting involved) in working with our "Planting Together" outreach vision in Senegal and Tanzania next year. As our time together was so short (I had to leave at 4 am this morning) we had to squeeze in meetings from morning to evening in order to have sufficient time to pray, to prepare and to divide up the different tasks that need to be done over the coming year in order to make the "Gather and Go" camp and the ensuing outreaches a reality. Finding housing in Dakar for 100 - 200 people, planning transportation to multiple outreach locations, working on the website (see www.plantingtogether.com), making a presentation at a gathering of missionaries and Christian leaders, talking through what should be included in the camp programme, planning how to link visiting teams with host ministries.....  There were so many things to be discussed and prayed over.

However short, it was worth taking the trip and making the effort to spend time together, because we did have a sense of God's favour and were able to make good process on some of the decisions that needed to be made and things that needed to be planned. The work has only just begun, though, for Tanzania Harvest (Easter in East Africa) and Gather and Go (summer in West Africa) and so we'd value your prayers as we work to prepare these initiatives over the coming months. Personally, I'm working on writing a team leader's preparation manual before the end of this year, and a young person's preparation manual before the middle of March.