Be excellent...

If you’re around my age, you may have gone through primary school at a time when teachers gave children coloured, silver or gold stars for good work. They would write little comments in your notebook, iike, “good” or “very good,” or even “excellent.”  Every child knew that there was a difference between good and excellent; everyone hoped that their work would be worthy of a gold star. Even a child, then, can understand what the Bible means when it tells us in Romans 16: 19 to, “Be excellent in what is good.”

Sometimes, when you’re speaking with non believers, or even when speaking with Christians, you’ll hear people say, “I live a good life” or, “I’m a good person.” That’s all very well, but what sometimes gets forgotten is that God never asked us simply to be good; He asks us to be outstanding, to be excellent.

Amidst the stories of many evil kings in the Old Testament, the first two verses of 2 Chronicles 25 tell us about a man called Amaziah who reigned in Jerusalem for 29 years and who did what was good. Yes, for nearly three decades, this king did what was right in God’s eyes... but verse 2 tells us honestly that he didn’t do it with his whole heart. Amaziah was good, but he wasn’t outstanding; he wasn’t excellent.

In contrast, we read in Numbers 14: 24 about a man who was outstanding. God Himself said that Caleb had a different spirit from those around him and was following the Lord wholeheartedly. That’s what he was known for. It’s mentioned again when Caleb, even as an old man of eighty five, was not willing to settle only for a good and comfortable life, but raised his sights higher and aimed for excellence. (Joshua 14: 10 - 14)

Excellence. Holiness. That’s what’s on God’s heart for us. When we read the New Testament with this understanding, we’ll notice that the Bible doesn’t simply ask us to be thankful; it asks us to be thankful in all circumstances. We’re not only exhorted to be joyful, but to be joyful always. We’re not instructed just to pray now and then, but to pray continually. In addition to holding on to what is good, we are to avoid every kind of evil. (1 Thess 5: 16 - 22)  It’s only when our lives are outstanding, that other people around us can truly see the difference that God makes. We can’t do it alone, but only by asking for the Holy Spirit’s power to work within us. It’s not enough, like Amaziah, to be a “good person.” By God’s grace, we can be people of excellence.

When things turn out different from expected...

This morning in my daily Bible reading, I was reflecting on two stories whose protagonists found themselves confronted by situations that simply weren't what they'd been expecting. It's interesting to observe the reactions of these different Bible characters, and to consider what my own reaction would be like in similar circumstances.

The first story was in the New Testament, in John chapter 11, and it begins with the news that Jesus' dear friend, Lazarus, is critically ill. When the Son of God and Creator of the Universe happens to be a close and personal friend of yours, I'm sure you expect that He will come immediately and perform a miraculous healing. But that's not what happened. Some verses later, we discover that Lazarus has died and his two sisters are left grappling with the question of why Jesus failed to show up.

Have you ever been in that situation? You've been praying for healing and it didn't happen; you were trusting for financial provision and it looks as if it's not going to come in time; your longed for pregnancy ended in miscarriage or your fairytale marriage ended in divorce; your talented teenager gets caught up with drugs, drops out of school or is diagnosed with leukaemia….  How do you respond when life deals you a blow that is totally not what you were expecting or hoping for?

The second story I read this morning was in the Old Testament and was the story of a remarkable teenage boy. Daniel's life turned out completely differently from what he expected. As an intelligent boy from a wealthy family, he had a bright future ahead of him…. but Daniel was stripped of absolutely everything - everything but his faith in God - when he and his people were carried off as slaves by Babylonian invaders. Instead of becoming bitter or sinking into a victim mentality, this godly teenage boy chose to hang on to his belief that God is ultimately in control and that He is not thwarted by the hard blows that life deals us. Daniel began to look for his new destiny - for God's purposes in his new situation. Later, as an old man (Daniel 7: 13 - 14), he had a vision of the throne room of God, a confirmation that God does have authority over all nations and all situations. 

(This is not the same as saying that everything that happens is God's will. We live in a fallen world and lots of things happen that God would not have planned or desired for us. But God is not thrown off balance by the unexpected; even when He has reasons for not intervening immediately, like Jesus in the Lazarus story, He is keeping a close eye on our situations and never at any time is He helpless or taken by surprise.)

So, what about you and me? What do we do when confronted with situations and circumstances that were not at all what we were expecting? The circumstances may be different: illness or accident, loss or bereavement, injustice or crisis… Have you ever experienced something like that? I can clearly remember two times in my life when things didn't turn out as I'd been expecting; didn't turn out as God seemed to be leading me.  People throughout the Bible (Joseph, Esther, Jeremiah…) and throughout history (a whole host of victims of war, disease and natural disasters….) have been in this position too.

Do we blame God, blame other people, or sink into self-pity? Do we struggle with questions of why God didn't intervene to heal or rescue or provide? Or do we, like Daniel, Joseph and Esther, push into God, seeking His redemption of the unexpected, His purposes in the new and unfamiliar, and His guidance for our own part in it. Daniel, Joseph and Esther are all teenagers when we first meet them in the pages of the Bible. Yet each one of them had sufficient faith in God to rise above life's blows and find out God's ways of giving them grace and victory. Mary and Martha still reached out to Jesus, despite their confusion and disappointment at the death of their brother… and they were witnesses to an amazing resurrection.

When we focus on Jesus and His power, instead of on our outward circumstances, we still may not have all the answers, but we will begin to see life from a throne room perspective. That's why the Bible says that God wants to "seat us with Him in the heavenlies" so that we can see things they way He does. (Ephesians 2:6)

When Joseph reached middle age, he was able to say, "People planned evil against me, but God turned it into good. (Genesis 50:20) When Daniel reached old age, he was able to proclaim, "All authority is given to the Son of Man, and nothing can destroy His kingdom's rule." (Daniel 7:14)

I want to look at my life's circumstances from that throne room perspective. Dealing with the unexpected will never be "easy"… but we can have have God's strength and grace to face any situation that life throws at us.

Summer service

Summer is a time when a big chunk of our church congregation (those who are year-round missionaries here in Spain) often head home to the US or the UK to visit their sending churches. Meanwhile a brand new group (those coming to Spain for summer outreach in our church's English Camp) arrives to swell the numbers  at our Sunday services again. This year we're hosting outreach teams from New York and Oregon, and we have forty local children and teenagers enrolled in our two weeks of English Camp.

Those of us who remain in Malaga for most of the summer usually end up recruited into service as plant-waterers and animal-carers for the families who have gone overseas. This month I'm checking up on my friends' cat, Luci, and yesterday I was also on "puppy duty" for my former housemates, who were going to the beach for Gabriela's birthday, and didn't want to leave their brand new tiny puppies alone in the house all day.

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.