Knowing where to settle...

Have you ever had to make a decision about “where to be”? Perhaps you needed to decide where to live, or which job to take, or which church to join...

One of my personal values is to make every decision though prayer and hearing God’s voice. I truly believe that Father God is the one with sufficient wisdom to guide us in our decisions about where to settle. But that doesn’t mean that practical criteria aren’t important too, and this morning in my daily Bible reading I came across one little sentence that explained how some descendants of Simeon made their decision about where to live in the Promised Land. In 1 Chronicles 4 verse 40, it says, They found rich, good pasture, and the land was spacious, peaceful and quiet.

In deciding where they were going to settle down, these were the important factors:

• good pasture: Would they, their families and their animals be well fed there? Would there be an adequate source of provision?
• spacious: Is there room to grow, space to fit in and opportunity to be fruitful?
• peaceful: Is there freedom from contention, and room for healthy community relationships?
• quiet: Will there be “rest for your soul” in this place? Will you find sufficient space for personal renewal and “sharpening the saw”?

Seeking a peaceful and quiet place didn’t mean that these settlers were looking for a lazy and uneventful life. They were still ready for action and adventure, and just a couple of verses later (1 Chron 4: 42) they invaded the hill country and defeated the Amalekites. They were still ready to do battle when needed, but they had clear criteria about what their home settlement should look like.

These four things could also be good criteria for us, whether we’re deciding where to live, what church to join, what job to apply for or which ministry team to be part of.

Just next to my front door, there's a little picture of a cat watching the sunrise. You'd think it was my Tamba, down at the Costa del Sol. I've printed a Xhosa word on the photo, and I see that word every morning when I'm heading out the door for the day. It says Thembalitsha - which means "new hope" - and it's a reminder that every new day brings new aspects of hope and promise for the future. One of my own criteria for where I "settle," live and work is that it's a place that reflects God's promise in Jeremiah 29 verse 11: there is a future and there is hope.

Writing….. for Planting...

Summer outreach season is approaching fast and, over the past week, we've been making decisions and preparations for the Planting Together initiative in West Africa this August. Among other things, we've decided to hold our orientation camp this year in the inland city of Thies, instead of in the capital city of Dakar.

Knowing that the balanced ethnic and cultural mix of our group had been one of the keys to the success of last year's camp and outreach, we've been praying that as many African participants as last year would apply. In fact, we do have a lot of interest from Africans in Mali and Senegal again this year; the surprising part is that we have fewer foreign teams than we were expecting. However, we're encouraged that the teams coming from overseas are bringing whole families with them this year, as we know that the younger children play an important role in building friendship with local villagers.

With this year's outreach teams all being either English or French speaking, I've begun work this week on writing quiet time journals in English and French for the three weeks of outreach. The goal of the booklets is to help participants spend personal time with God, hear His voice, and apply the Bible's teaching to their summer outreach experience, as well as to their lives back home.  The Bible passages I've chosen are built around themes such as: Planting Together, Serving Together, Worshipping Together, Obeying Together, Praying Together, Growing Together…. and so on. Thanks for your prayers as I complete the work on those booklets this week.

Avoiding the exile...

I’ve almost come to the end of the journal notebook that I started at the beginning of this year; only a few pages remain now. And I have come to the end of my readings in the historical books of the Old Testament. This morning I read the last chapter of 2nd Kings - the sad story of the fall of Jerusalem and the beginning of decades of exile for the people of Israel and Judah.

It struck me that whenever the enemy gets the upper hand, it seems that he always does the same two things:

1. he takes us prisoner
2. he steals or destroys our vision

So here, in 2 Kings 25: 7, Zedekiah has to watch his closest family being put to death. Then the enemy gouges out his eyes and binds him with bronze shackles. It’s an echo of what the Philistines did to Samson, several centuries earlier. Reading in Judges 16: 21, I noted that, at the end of Samson’s life, the enemy had sapped his strength and stolen his vision.

So, what does this mean for you or me? It’s a reminder that, whenever we’re aware that our enemy the devil is having a go at us, it’s really important for us to concentrate on safeguarding these two things:

• our freedom and strength
• our God-given vision and perspective

There are lots of ways that the enemy can sap our strength: through conflicts and misunderstandings, through disappointments and discouragements. These things make us physically and emotionally tired, and they can rob us of freedom in ministry and in relationships. Likewise, they can steal or crush our vision, leaving us confused and uncertain about the way ahead.

So how do we safeguard our freedom/strength and vision at such times, so that we don’t get carried off into exile?

At its simplest level, we can make sure that we get enough sleep and physical rest, so that our resilience is built up again. We can also do as young David did several times in the books of Samuel and “strengthen ourself in the Lord” - spending time in His presence to gain perspective, as well as new spiritual and emotional energy. (See here.) This time spent with God will also help to safeguard and renew our vision, rather than allowing the enemy to overwhelm us and steal that from us. We need to view our reality through God’s eyes, and not allow the enemy to interpret it for us. We don’t always have to go into exile... if we can grab hold of God’s ways of restoring our strength and our vision.

The second thing that struck me in this chapter (See 2 Kings 25: 18 - 21) was the four different kinds of people that the enemy captured and killed:

• the doorkeepers - thus allowing the enemy an entry point
• the priests - representing our relationship with God
• the head of the military - symbolic of our ability to fight and do warfare against the enemy
• and the secretary - which speaks to me of our ability to communicate and “recruit” prayer support. The enemy will attempt to isolate us if at all possible.

Being aware of his strategy means that we can also be vigilant in those four areas of our lives.

So where do I need to be intentional when facing seasons of attack or discouragement in my life? I need to commit to being a doorkeeper and not allowing easy entry to the enemy. I need to be careful not to neglect my priestly and military roles of spending time with God and doing warfare against the enemy. And I need to guard against isolation, being careful to reach out to others and draw on the strength of community.

Exile is avoidable.... if we can recognise the enemy’s schemes when he comes.

Failing to learn from experience...

I’m almost at the end of my reading in the Biblical book of 2nd Kings, and this morning I read about how King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon attacked Jerusalem and took many people into exile, as well as carrying off treasures from the temple and the royal palace.
Even so, when Zedekiah becomes King of Judah, he reigns for eleven years in a way that is still displeasing to God. What is it about human nature that makes us fail to see the warning signs and learn from the mistakes of the past? You’d think that an impending and already partial exile would make this new king turn back to God... but no! He just goes right ahead and does evil anyway.

Father, what are the areas in my own life where I fail to learn life or leadership lessons from past experience? I don’t want to be like Zedekiah, who kept living the wrong way, even though there was overwhelming evidence that it brought bad fruit.

What about you? What "evidence” has popped up in your life over the past year or two... and what lessons have you learned on this recent leg of your journey? If we can’t remember what God has been showing us over the past year, we might be in danger of making the same mistake as Zedekiah.

Don't die in Egypt !

This morning, in my daily Bible reading, I arrived at the story in 2 Kings 23 where King Josiah leads the people in renewing their covenant with God, and ridding the land and the temple of all the terrible evidence of years of idol worship.

One of the things they did at that time, was to begin celebrating the Passover again. Way back when they were slaves in Egypt (see Exodus 12: 14) God saved them from death and oppression, and gave them the Passover as a “lasting ordinance” to be observed throughout all generations. He wanted them and their children to remember who God is and what God had done for them.

It seems that they did remember to celebrate the Passover in the early days of settling in the Promised Land, but somewhere along the line, perhaps during the time of the judges or perhaps around the time that they rejected God’s rulership and demanded a human king, the people stopped celebrating this feast that commemorated what God had done for them. (See 2 Kings 23: 22.) And this led them to slide into all kinds of evil and idolatry. By the time Josiah came along and the lost Book of the Covenant was discovered, the Passover hadn’t been celebrated for hundreds of years. 

The warning to me is simple: if we don’t remember and express thankfulness for what God has already done for us, it will be much easier for us to slide into behaviours that are not honouring to Him. 

• If we don’t keep being thankful for the fact that Jesus died to pay the price for our sin, we will more easily fall into the sin of self-righteousness. 
• If we forget to thank God regularly that all provision ultimately comes from Him, we could end up feeling that we have provided for ourselves, and see what we have as “my” money to spend as I please. 
• If we forget to be thankful for God’s guidance and direction in the past, we could end up relying on our own understanding and making our own decisions without His input.

And so it goes on. I may not celebrate a Passover in 2014 but, Father, help me never to be presumptuous and forget to celebrate all You have done for me.

Ironically, although Josiah reinstated the Passover, reminding people of how God brought them out of Egypt, his son Jehoahaz chose to do evil in God’s sight. A Pharaoh carried him off to Egypt, and there he died (verse 34.) I don’t want to die in Egypt. Help me, Lord, to live with a heart that’s thankful for what you’ve done in the past and obedient to what you want done in the future.

Are you on track?

In 2 Kings 22, we read the story of how young King Josiah spearheaded some renovations in the temple building, and this led to the discovery of a dusty old book: the Book of the Law or Book of the Covenant that had lain lost and neglected for many years. When Josiah sat down to read this old book (verses 11 - 13) he was devasted to realise how far the people had drifted from obedience to God, and he began to grieve for how he and his people had broken God’s heart.

I remember, back in the 1980s, sharing this story in a children’s talk in my home church. Some renovations had just been done to our church building, and I’d been invited to bring a short message in a family service at the start of a new year. I remember how adults and children alike watched as I discovered a huge old book hidden at the front of the church and then proceded to blow the dust off it. (The “dust” was actually talcum powder that I’d put there in advance.) My challenge to the congregation was to rediscover and read God’s Book in the new year, and not to leave it dusty and neglected on a bookshelf in their home. If we’re not reading the Bible regularly, it’s hard to keep checking whether we’re “on track” in living for God.

There are other ways, too, that we can evaluate how we’re doing and decide whether any mid-course adjustments need to be made. This week, for example, with the leadership development course behind us now, I’ve come to the time of year where I usually take some time to re-read the personal goals I wrote at the beginning of January and to evaluate how things are going. This year I had goals relating to my ministry and missions involvement, as well as a number of personal goals relating to my prayer life, my health, my relationships, and even to improving my Spanish. It was good to be able to take an hour or so to “check in” with God and evaluate whetherI’m on track and whether I’ve really been growing in those areas He showed me at the beginning of the year.

What sort of things do you have in place to check that you’re growing in obedience and maturing in your relationship with God? If we’re not regularly and intentionally evaluating our lives, it could be easy to drift far off mark - just like the Israelites had done in the time of King Josiah. Why not take some time this month to listen to God and consider what growth goals He has for you in the last six months of this year?

End of the LDC

Click to enlarge photo

This morning in church, realising that it's Pentecost Sunday, I was amazed to think that it's been seven weeks since the LDC staff arrived - on Easter Sunday - to prepare for the start of the Leadership Development Course. The LDC is over now, and we have great thankfulness in our hearts for all that God did in our midst during the 40 full and fruitful days of the course.

Right at the end of the course, we have a special morning that we call "Stepping over the Line." Delegates are asked to pray in advance about what they want to "leave behind" as a result of these six weeks with God, and to consider what they want to "step into" as they move into the next season of their Christian leadership. It was a particularly touching time this year, as humble men and woman stood up before the group, proclaiming the changes that God had made in their lives, sometimes asking forgiveness of a spouse, and declaring the new things that God had put on their hearts for the future. The photo above shows the whole group (including children and nannies) after the special graduation meal we had at the end of the course.

Yesterday was full of many airport runs, as the delegates and staff all headed back to their own nations. For me here in Spain, the next couple of weeks have a more flexible schedule, where I'll be doing some coaching, working on some outreach planning, and preparing for a wedding that we'll hold here on the 21st. Then, on the 23rd, my parents will be coming to Spain for their summer holiday.

Thanks for your prayers during the busy but fulfilling weeks of the Leadership Development Course. They were abundantly answered!!