Stewardship or sacrifice...?

This  morning,  in John's Gospel chapter twelve, I read the account of where Mary of Bethany extravagantly anoints Jesus' feet with a half litre flask of very expensive perfumed oil. We see that Judas Iscariot was offended that she would "waste" something so expensive. (Although he justifies his negativity by saying that the money could have been given to the poor, we read that he in fact wanted to steal some of it for himself.)

The message of the story is unmistakable: No expense is too much, no sacrifice is too great for Jesus, who Himself gave up everything for us. But as I read the story this morning, I realised that, in my own life, I sometimes find myself in a dilemma between stewardship and sacrifice.

I love to be generous and so my dilemma doesn't arise when it comes to giving money or gifts to others. Where I do find myself hesitating is when it comes to apparently spending money on myself, and especially when it comes to those big budget expenses of plane tickets. I often find myself having to buy a plane ticket and make a trip for ministry reasons; some years I might have only two or three trips, while other years I might need to make four or five. This year, for example, I've already bought three plane tickets for short trips within Europe, and I still need to make plans for two other trips - one to the Middle East and one to Asia.

Whenever it's time to buy a plane ticket, I find myself switching into stewardship mode: I spend hours searching on the internet to find the very best deal possible, and I'll willingly put up with inconvenient hours or airport layovers if it means I can get a ticket at a good price and be a better steward of the money that God has provided for me. I feel disappointed if the dates of a trip mean that a plane ticket costs more than I would have wanted to spend.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to be a good steward of resources, but today I was thinking that a different perspective on plane tickets would be to see them as an opportunity to switch into sacrifice mode. After all, those ministry trips are not really for myself: they're steps of obedience to God's calling, and the money involved can be seen as my sacrificial gift to the Lord.

I'll always continue to look for "the best deal," but there's greater joy in the cost if I think of it as perfume poured on the feet of Jesus.

Stewardship and sacrifice.... Where do you face challenges in one or both of these areas? Do you spend impulsively, or get into debt, and fail to be a faithful steward of God's resources in your life? Do you struggle to be generous in giving to others, to the church, or to "good causes" ? Or, like me, do you find it challenging sometimes to discern the right balance between sacrifice and stewardship? 

Bring your questions to God today, and seek His direction for how you use the money, possessions, time and gifts that He has entrusted to you.

Travelling with turbulence...

Once the amazing miracle has happened (feeding thousands of people - see Tuesday's post from John chapter 6) Jesus realises that the crowds of people would want to make Him their king by force, and so He slips off, further up the hillside, to a quiet place where He can be alone - or no doubt where He could spend time in conversation with His heavenly Father.

Once Jesus was no longer there, I can imagine that the crowds began to disperse little by little and eventually the twelve disciples were left alone. Night fell and Jesus still hadn't returned to rejoin them. I don't know how many hours they waited there; we only read that, despite the darkness, the disciples made their way down to the lakeside, got into their boat and began to sail off across the lake to the opposite shore - in the direction of Capernaum.

There are two things about this decision that may seem strange to us: 

1. Why did they set off on their trip in the middle of the night, when it was already dark?
2. And why did they go away, leaving Jesus behind on that side of the lake?

Setting out in a boat in the middle of the night might seem crazy to us, but we need to remember that some of the men in this group were fishermen; they were used to going out on the lake in the dark of night. Perhaps the disciples didn't want to spend the whole night out on the hillside under the stars; perhaps heading for Capernaum was "heading home" for them at that point in time. After all, we read in vs 1 that they had taken a boat across the lake before the experience of feeding the five thousand.

But, if they didn't want to spend the night sleeping out in the open air, why did they set off and leave Jesus behind? How did they imagine that He was going to get back to the other side of the lake? Was it perhaps that they thought Jesus had left them? Did they think that the wonderful times they'd spent with Him were over now? Or had He been gone so long that they began to wonder if He'd been making His way back to the other side of the lake without them?

We don't know their reasons; we only read that they got into the boat under cover of darkness and started to cross the lake... only to run into a fierce storm when they were just a few miles out. The wind and waves were all around them. We've seen our fair share of storms here in Eastern and Southern Spain this week; in some coastal towns the waves were ten metres high, and the streets were so flooded that cars were being swept away. I can only imagine how scary it must be if you're actually out in the middle of the water, far from the nearest shore.

I found the metaphor kind of interesting, though: after setting out without Jesus and with it being too dark for them to see properly, they found themselves in the middle of a violent storm. When we run into storms in our own lives, perhaps it would be helpful to evaluate whether we set out without seeing the way clearly, or without having Jesus "on board" with us.

The rest of the story is well known. Fortunately, Jesus came to them, walking on the water, and said, "It's me. I'm here. Don't be afraid." Even when life gets a little stormy, we don't need to give into fear or worry if we know that Jesus is with us on the journey.

I found the end of the story (verse 21) really interesting. We read that they invited Jesus into the boat with them and, in a relatively short time, they arrived at their destination. We don't read that the storm stopped. (This isn't the time when He spoke to the wind and waves and they died down.) The storm continued, but Jesus was with them and they arrived safe and sound on the other side of the lake.

Sometimes we do face storms in life, even when Jesus is with us. God's presence with us doesn't guarantee that everything will be smooth sailing, that our journey will be free of turbulence... but it does guarantee that we can give our fears and worries to Him and that He promises to bring us safe and sound to our destination.

Broken!

I've got a little tired this week of dealing with things that are broken and don't work properly. 

First it was my car: it won't start - not because there's anything wrong with the engine, but because the key simply won't turn in the ignition. I'm waiting for a new ignition unit to arrive, and it should hopefully be installed within the next week or so. 

Then it was my computer. It's been giving me problems on and off since last summer, and today they told me I need to take it into the shop and they'll try completely replacing the keyboard. As I don't want a Spanish keyboard, I'm waiting for the shop to get the UK keyboard. The repair will hopefully also happen within the next week.

Of course, some broken things can't be fixed - like my broken tooth, which needs to be extracted this month. No replacement parts are in the pipeline for that one.

Realising this morning that I felt a bit fed up of putting up with all the broken stuff, I couldn't help thinking of God and how He has to deal with broken people, every moment of every day. People who don't do what they're supposed to do; people who cause problems for themselves and for others.... I am so thankful that God doesn't get tired of us. He is unfailingly patient and gentle with us in our brokenness, always seeing who we can become instead of only who we are in our weakness and dysfunction at the moment. Thank you, Father.

When it seems inadequate...

Still in John's gospel, this morning I read that well known story in chapter six, the one where Jesus feeds more than five thousand people. I was struck by the different perspectives and reactions of the people in the story when they were faced with a huge challenge.

When Jesus asked Philip, "Where can we buy food to feed all these people?" Philip's answer was the logical, practical, sensible one. He made a quick calculation in his head and he said, "Lord, it would take eight months wages to buy enough food for this many people." The underlying assumption was: it's impossible; we just don't have enough.

How often do we have that same attitude in our lives, and especially in the faith challenges that we face. We look at the challenge, we look at our own resources, and we say, with the conviction of realism: we don't have enough money, we don't have enough people.... or whatever. Sometimes we look at our own resources and we feel totally inadequate; we say, "I could never do that." Philip takes that realistic approach, and we can't really blame him for that; it's the natural response.

In contrast, there's a little boy in the crowd who somehow knows of the dilemma. We don't know exactly how it happened, but it seems he came and offered his picnic lunch to Jesus. I'm sure he was old enough to recognise that it wasn't nearly enough, but he seems to have had an attitude of, "At least I can offer the little that I have. Perhaps every little helps."

And then there's another disciple, Andrew. Perhaps he's the one that the child spoke to. He brings the boy to Jesus and says optimistically, "Here's a boy with five bread rolls and two little fish." Perhaps he felt foolish doing it, because he quickly adds, "What good is that with such a large crowd?" I suspect that Andrew felt torn between the hope that Jesus could do something amazing and the harsh reality that what they had to offer was totally insufficient. If you've been a Christian for any length of time, you'll have faced that dilemma: you hope that Jesus will do something special, but your inner voice tells you that the resources aren't enough,  that you aren't enough.

Of course, we all know the end of the story: Jesus took the little they had to offer and did something incredible with it.  I'm challenged when I think of how often I tend to have Philip's realistic attitude instead of John's hopeful attitude or the little boy's sacrificial attitude. Perhaps I'd see more miracles if I were more willing to bring my "insufficient" loaves and fishes to the table.

So this week, as I prepare to teach in the upcoming Spanish coaching workshop, I once again find myself very conscious of my foreign accent or my imperfect use of formal language. (I speak Spanish fluently and have no problem chatting with neighbours and getting by in all kinds of situations, but I don't often have to use my Spanish in a formal teaching situation.) 

And so I make the decision to take yet another step of faith and to bring the "loaves and fishes" of my Spanish to Jesus, knowing that, as He's done before, He will take it and use it to bring good fruit.

What situations are you facing in 2020? Where do you feel that your resources are insufficient or that what you have to offer is inadequate? Bring your offering to Jesus anyway. He can take something small and use it to achieve something big.

Trusting for the best...

I've been reading in the gospel of John this week, and was struck by the implications of what Jesus did at the wedding in Cana. If you remember the story, from the first twelve verses of John chapter two, they ran out of wine at the wedding celebration and Jesus did His first recorded miracle: he turned water into wine.

As if that wasn't amazing enough, the man in charge of the feast recognises that it's wine of particularly good quality and asks why the best wine has been saved until last. 

I often refer to this passage when I'm talking with people who don't believe in a God who created the whole universe. Such people often refer to things like carbon dating (which claims that our planet is millions or billions of years old) and point out that this would make the universe much older than the Bible says it is.

Irrespective of the fact that carbon dating has been shown to be notoriously inaccurate, this story of the water into wine gives us one possible answer to the dilemma. What makes "good wine"? I'm not a wine drinker, but even I know that good wine is old wine. The older the wine, the better it is considered to be. So, if Jesus could create "old wine" in just a few minutes, I have no problem at all in believing that He could create a seemingly "old" universe in just six days.

When I was leaving South Africa in 2007, I had a number of questions about what my future ministry would look like. I was leaving just at the point where we were beginning to see the fruit of nearly fifteen years of ministry investment in that part of the world, and I wondered what it would be like to "start from scratch" again. Would it take another fifteen years before I could see the same level of fruitfulness back in Europe?

I was encouraged when God spoke to me through verse 10 of this chapter, where the wedding caterer says, "You have kept the best until now." Although I was relocating to a brand new ministry situation, I felt God was reassuring me that, "The best is yet to come." I realised that, although it normally takes years of faithful investment to lay the foundation for a mature and fruitful ministry, God was able to bring maturity and fruitfulness much faster than that - the same as He'd done with the wine at that wedding.

Well, here we are, a dozen years down the road, and this week I was asking myself, has this past decade in Spain turned out to be "the best" so far?

I'm not sure there's a simple yes or no answer to that, but I was amazed to look back at these eleven years in Europe/Spain and see very many encouraging instances of great fruitfulness - from the Planting Together outreaches to the leadership development courses and also my more recent involvement in coaching missionary leaders. God has been faithful to what He promised at that time. I don't know if it's "the best" yet, but it's certainly been a decade of opportunities and fruitfulness.

I wonder where you're at in your life and your walk with God. Are you in an encouraging season of investment and fruitfulness or are you at a place where you feel that the best years of your life are probably behind you now? It's good to remember that, no matter where we're at in our journey, God is able to bring good things out of it if we simply trust and obey Him.

Target 2020

I'm back in Spain again, having flown back here yesterday. To my great relief, the coughing was not a problem during the flight, and this morning I could feel that my breathing was continuing to improve. There's still a bit of a lingering cough, but the attacks of whooping cough seem to have subsided now and I'm more noticeably on the mend.

This means that I can get out and about again, instead of spending my days indoors in pyjamas. It also means that I can slowly begin working towards this year's exercise goal. Target 2020 is, of course, one up on last year. Our goal - for me and the dogs - is to walk 2020 km before the end of the year. 

Yes, I know that this figure is actually less than the 2324 km we managed to walk in 2019, but we're all a year older now and there's no sense in setting a goal than can easily be sabotaged by arthritic injuries or lung infections.  (Last year I spent several weeks on crutches and several weeks with respiratory infections.) So, even though I'm trusting to go "from strength to strength" this year (see previous post) I'm sensible enough not to overdo things or push myself too hard. So I'm aiming for 2020 km in 2020, and hoping that we might even go beyond it again this year.

As we did last year, we donate our kilometres to medical research - a Spanish charity raising funds for multiple sclerosis. If you also walk a lot and would like to donate your kilometres too, let me know and I can tell you how to sign up. Swimming and cycling kilometres can also be counted.

Going from strength to strength...

It's my first blog post of 2020 - largely because I've spent the last few weeks with a respiratory infection, seemingly whooping cough. I've coughed my way all through Christmas and New Year; my two and a half weeks in the UK have mostly been spent in pyjamas!!

Tomorrow, though, I head back to Spain for the new year that lies ahead, and so it was kind of interesting that my Bible reading this morning was in Psalm 84. I remember a January day, eleven years ago, when I had only been living in Spain for a few months. A South African friend gave me a word based on vs 5 in this psalm: that God saw me as someone who had "set my heart on pilgrimage" (one translation of the part that says "whose heart is set on seeking you") and that He would be my strength in the years ahead.

As I meditated on the psalm later that day, I remember praying that verse 6 would also be true in my life: that, even though I'd moved to live in a new and potentially dry place (without the community and vibrant ministry activity I'd known in South Africa) that God would turn it into a place of refreshing springs.

I didn't know at the time that the town I'd moved to live in, Alhaurín de la Torre, was historically famous for its springs and as a place for refreshing the troops. There is still an area of town that is called Manantiales - the Spanish word for springs.

Looking back now on eleven years lived in southern Spain, I can see that it truly did become a place of springs. We planted a church and we established the leadership retreat centre - a place of community and hospitality, worship and refreshing for Christian leaders from all over the world.

This morning, as I re-read that psalm, I found myself praying that verse 7 will become true in my life during this new year: that I will "go from strength to strength" during 2020. In one sense, that has already begun to be true: from being nearly crippled with arthritis in my feet a few years ago, these past two years have seen me daily walking the dogs and gradually building up my physical strength and capacity again. But in another sense, it feels as if I've been growing increasingly weaker on a physical level: I've had a perplexing series of musculoskeletal injuries, and I seem to be having an increasing amount of lung infections over the winter months every year.

So this morning I prayed that 2020 will be a year when I go from strength to strength: that my lungs will be strengthened and that there will not be so many infections this year; that my physical body will be strengthened and that I won't have so many sprains and injuries this year... I prayed for a strengthening of my health in this new year.

But beyond the physical, I prayed that 2020 will be a year of going from strength to strength spiritually: in ministry, in community, in evangelism and in fruitfulness. It's my prayer for you, too. May you know good health in 2020 and may you be strengthened in your relationships (with God and with others) and in your inner self. I wish you God's richest blessings and encouragements for the year that lies ahead.