Life Lessons

Isn't it amazing that you can read the same Bible passage again and again, and still discover new things in it? But sometimes it's the opposite that happens, and it's the old lessons that come flooding back to your mind. This weekend, while reading in Joshua chapter three, I opened my journal and made a note of four principles that stood out to me as I read. As I paused to look back over my notes and pray, I was struck by the fact that these were not new insights; they were "life lessons" - things that had cropped up several times over my lifetime. I could remember writing some of them in a notebook way back when I was a teenager. I could remember when one of the verses had been significant in a time of personal decision making in 1985. I reflected on the time God used that passage to speak to us as a ministry in early 2000...

Do you have verses or passages like that? They played an important role in your journey with God, and when you re-read them, you are reminded of some of the life lessons that God has taught you throughout your lifetime? Here are four of my recurring life lessons that God has taught me through the events of Joshua chapter three. (It's the story of how the waters of the Jordan river part, in order to allow the people to walk across and enter the Promised Land.)

Vs 4 - when you're in unknown territory ( you haven't been this way before) it's particularly important to follow God's guidance, and not rush ahead too fast.

Vs 5 - intentional purity is a prerequisite for seeing the power of God work in you and through you.

Vs 8, 15 - 16 - sometimes you need to take a seemingly risky step of faith (the priests needed to step into the flooding river before a path appeared) before the way ahead becomes completely clear.

Vs 6, 17 - leaders need to be willing to take such steps,of faith, and also willing to hang in there and see the task through to completion.

These four lessons from Joshua chapter three are insights that I have built my life around when it comes to hearing God's voice and taking steps of faith? What are some of your life lessons, either from Bible stories or from the stories and events of your own life?

An inseparable pair?

For some weeks now, I've been meditating daily in the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy and, as I near the end of the book, the final chapters continue to re-emphasise a major theme that has emerged throughout the book: obedience is the fruit of love.  In the second half of chapter 30, for example, the people are being given a choice between life and death, and are urged to "choose life." Verse 20 unpacks how they can make this choice in practice: by loving the Lord your God, obeying Him, and committing yourself firmly to Him.

The pairing of these two words - love and obedience - has raised some questions throughout centuries of Jewish and Christian history: Is it possible to obey God without loving Him? Is it possible to love God without obeying Him? Or are these two an inseparable pair?

From my perspective, the first is more possible than the second. It is possible to obey God without loving Him... but it results in cold and joyless legalism.

I'm not so convinced that it's possible to love God without obeying Him, because that kind of warm sentimentality doesn't seem to measure up to the Biblical definition of love. Jesus Himself said (in John 14: 15): If you love me, you will obey my commandments.  The apostle John unpacks this even further (1 John 5: 3) by writing, This is what loving God looks like: it means keeping His commandments, and His commands are not burdensome for us.

The New Testament seems to be picking up a truth that was a major theme of the book of Deuteronomy: that authentic love for God goes hand in hand with a genuine desire to do what He says. The proof of love is our joyful, willing obedience to our Creator.

Exploring some pueblos blancos

It's already two weeks since the leadership development course finished but, for a variety of reasons, I didn't manage to get a break after the end of the school. Unexpected things cropped up that meant the past two weeks turned out to be busier than I had planned. So a friend and I made a radical plan to get away for a "real break" and to have an overnight stay in one of southern Spain's "pueblos blancos" - those picturesque white villages that are scattered across the mountains in this part of the country. We chose Vejer de la Frontera as our destination, deciding to drive there by an inland, over-the-mountains route and return home by the coastal route.

My little car had just passed its annual ITV inspection (like the British MOT) at the beginning of the week and, small as it is, we felt confident it could cope with the 500 kilometres we would cover. From my home in Alhaurín de la Torre, we began by heading north (the grey route on the map) until, for the first time since living here, I crossed the boundary from Málaga province into the neighbouring Cádiz province. Our first stop was in the quaint little town of Olvera, in the heart of the olive growing region. We enjoyed a picnic lunch on the little square between its old church and Moorish castle.

Then we kept driving westwards, past olive groves and fields of sunflowers, until we came to Arcos de la Frontera, another pueblo blanco perched high on a sandstone cliff. There we also explored the old part of town, with its castle, churches and narrow winding streets, before taking refuge from the sweltering heat by going into a tapas bar to have an afternoon snack and a refreshing glass of ice-cold, home-made lemonade. Our thirst quenched, our journey took us southward again, towards our overnight destination: Vejer de la Frontera.

The uphill drive to the mountain top setting of the old town of Vejer was the steepest part of the trip and my little car (which only has a 1.1 litre engine) went very slowly for that last couple of kilometres. Soon we arrived, though, and found the "hostal" (cheap hotel) where we would spend the night. After a welcome shower, we were ready for action again and headed out to visit the old, historic part of Vejer. It's a walled town, still with the watchtowers and ramparts that formed the fortifications of these old settlements during the centuries that Spain was occupied by the Moors. The landscape is also dotted with windmills - some of them the enormous modern kind that produce electricity for southern Spain, and some of them the really old wood and plaster kind that made for great photos as the sun was beginning to set.  (This sunset photo was taken by my friend, Lisa, of a windmill that was just fifty metres from our hostal.)

We wandered around the old town, with its narrow cobbled streets, picturesque plazas and rundown old castle. We climbed on the ramparts, looked out from the towers and took photos of quaint corners and archways. We chatted with the locals, watched children in a flamenco dancing class in the castle, and then (as Spanish dinner time finally came around) we decided to eat fresh, locally caught fish in a little restaurant. Lisa had tuna steaks and I had swordfish, and both were delicious. In fact, my piece of swordfish was so large that I couldn't eat it all, so I took half of it home with me and today I ate the leftovers as we enjoyed our picnic lunch at a roadside stop that had such a amazing view of nearby Morocco that you almost felt you could reach out and touch it.

This morning, after a cup of coffee in Vejer, we started our homeward journey along the coastal route. (That's the blue route on the map at the top of this post.) First we drove downhill to the seaside town of Barbate, where the Atlantic Ocean was a deep shade of blue, and I had to dip my feet in it to check the temperature. Onwards to Tarifa, the main ferry port for ships to North Africa, and the southernmost point of Spain, the part where the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean sea meet. We had planned to eat lunch there, but couldn't find parking, so we simply drove around the town a bit, past the port and the old fortifications, before heading further east to our roadside stop with the stunning view of Morocco.

From there, we started driving northeast again, past the rock of Gibraltar, and all the way up the coastline of the Costa del Sol, until we were finally back in Alhaurín again - which seemed the best place to stop for a delicious ice cream. We had driven 500 kilometres and walked another 10 kilometres on foot, but we had thoroughly enjoyed our short break visiting some "white towns" of southern Spain.

Walking and holding...

How do you show that you love someone? Well, you share life with them, walking together for part of your journey here on earth. And perhaps you also hold them: hugging them (if it's a child, spouse or friend) or petting and brushing them (if it's an animal.)

Walking and holding: two different ways of expressing love.  The thought came to me this morning when I was reading in Deuteronomy chapter 11, where Moses reminds the people (in verse 22): Show love to the Lord your God by walking in His ways and holding tightly to Him.

Walking and holding. One is about obedience and the other is about intimacy. Walking in His ways is about doing the things God asks of us. Holding tightly to Him is about nurturing a close connection to Him and continually developing our intimate friendship with the Lord.

Both are needed. You can share life and live in the same house with your spouse, your children or your pet.... but if there's never a hug, a kiss or another expression of affection and friendship, those relationships will not flourish.

It's the same with the Lord. Obedience is important and is a way of expressing our love and trust towards Him. But holding tightly to Him is about something even more personal and intimate: it's about knowing Him as a Father and a Friend and expressing our commitment to a close and loving relationship with Him.

Only two weeks to go...

Time is flying by in the LDC. Last week our topics were self leadership (being intentional in setting growth goals for our different roles and relationships in life), healthy lifestyle and leadership integrity. Now that week four has come to an end, only two more weeks remain.

So this week was an opportunity to invest in friendships, new and old, with staff and delegates from the LDC. On Friday night (photo above) a few people came round to my house for a meal. On Saturday, I was invited to a barbecue and a games evening with my KKI friends, a family from Switzerland. Today (photos below) I took three of the ladies to Benalmádena, where we ate fish down by the sea, and took a walk in a beautiful park.

Looking ahead to week five of the LDC, we'll be covering topics such as values and vision, as well as coaching and mentoring. I'll be teaching on three days, and would value your prayers for that. We'll also be having a small group processing time where four of our ladies present one of their own values in a creative way. And we'll be kept busy marking some of the delegates' homework assignments.

Now that I've been free of crutches for a few weeks, my foot is almost pain-free and I'm walking fairly normally again. At weekends, I like to go for an early morning prayer walk with my four legged friend, Buba. I'm being careful not to walk too much, but I'm enjoying being out and about again.

May, meals, MCs and marathons...

The first week of May, which was the second week of the leadership development course, is already behind us. That means we're now a third of the way through the school, with only four weeks to go. Together with another staff lady, it was my turn to MC the week and debrief it at the end. I also did some of the teaching this week. One of our main topics was "leadership timeline" - a look at the stages of development and different processes that God uses to develop Christian leaders throughout their lifetime. The other main topic was "team leadership" - considering how our different giftings can work together in fruitful shared leadership, instead of the "one man band" style of leadership that expects one person or one pastor to lead everything alone.

I also had a birthday this week, and that made for different ways of celebrating and being celebrated. Instead of a birthday cake, a friend had made a delicious chocolate cheesecake - several of them, actually, so that all forty people in the LDC could have a slice during our morning coffee break. Various friends prayed for me and shared prayer impressions the Lord had given them for me; I also received a number of little gifts from both delegates and staff.

It happened that my processing group had already planned to meet at my house that day to talk through some of the topics and happenings of the week. We're a group of six ladies from six different nations: Hungary, Romania, Switzerland, Scotland, Armenia and Singapore. (That's from left to right in the photo above, which shows us enjoying an ice cream at my local heladería before heading to my house for coffee.) I'm quite partial to ice cream, so it was kind of fun that this group meeting happened to fall on my birthday.

Another of the LDC staff had a birthday just two days after mine, so we got together with a few of the staff  to enjoy a delicious meal of Singapore chicken curry.... and a hilarious round of the game "Taboo." What fun to eat outdoors with friends, relaxing on a sunny Friday evening after a busy week in the leadership development course.

Food and games continued to be a recurring theme as we moved into the weekend. One of my neighbours invited me round on Saturday to eat pulpo - a traditional octopus dish that she had prepared, together with a healthy mixed salad. Dessert arrived later, when some delegates who had gone to the big fruit market in Malaga dropped off some cherries at my home. I love fresh cherries and these are among the first crop of the season. Strawberries and cherries are the two fruits that are readily available during the LDC every year.

Three more delegates came to my house on Saturday evening. We had pizza together, followed by a marathon tournament of the "Phase 10" card game and a time of prayer together. Pictured with me are the other two losers of the game - ladies from Thailand and the Ukraine. The photo was taken by our Armenian friend, who shot into the lead at the last minute and ended up being the surprise winner.

The third week of LDC lies ahead, and one focus of the week is on dealing with the sort of things that could damage our teamwork and undermine our leadership. We'll be looking, for example, at Biblical principles for conflict resolution, confrontation and mediation. We'll be considering models of prayer ministry that can help people deal with old "baggage," such as unhealed wounds from the past, or lies that the enemy would try to tell us about ourselves and about God.

We'll also process a topic that we call "signature sins" and "signature virtues." We all have our own positive characteristics that we are known for: some people are known for their optimism, their generosity, their compassion, their encouragement of others, or whatever. But we also all have our own patterns and tendencies towards sin. By the time people have been Christian leaders for decades, most of the "big" and more obvious sins in their lives have usually been dealt with, but there's a danger that we become complacent about dealing with the more hidden and seemingly "smaller" sins that are a present, even if relatively invisible, hallmark of our lives.  But the truth is there are no big and small sins in God's eyes, even if it's easy for us to become negligent in dealing with character traits that don't seem such a big thing to us.

This is a week when staff and delegates can speak openly and vulnerably about their own "signature" sins: the tendency to be impatient or selfish; to have a critical spirit or a leaning towards self-righteousness; the seemingly inbuilt tendency to fall into self-pity, unbelief, self-reliance, over-eating, laziness.... or whatever it may be that the Holy Spirit shows us. It'll be a time for considering the "antidotes" that will help us partner with God in overcoming the patterns or weakness and sin that are still there in our lives as believers. It's usually a week where the Lord does a deep and transforming work in leaders' lives and we'd be very thankful for your prayers during this time.

Time to move on?

A few days ago, I began reading in the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy, and my attention was caught almost immediately by a striking contrast in the first few verses. In Deuteronomy chapter 1 verse 2, it says, "Normally it takes eleven days to travel from Mount Sinai to Kadesh Barnea (the point from where the promised land could be seen and entered.) In the very next verse, Deuteronomy chapter 1 verse 3, it says, "But forty years after leaving Egypt…" 

What a shocking contrast! You've probably heard it before. The journey to the promised land could have been completed in only 11 days. But instead, it took 40 years of wandering in the wilderness.  And why? Because the people were stubborn, ungrateful and resistant to God's work in their lives. And so a journey that could have been completed relatively quickly ended up taking much, much longer.

I hate to think that the same could be true in my own life; that my lack of spiritual understanding, my failure to obey quickly or my doubts about the character of God could prevent me from being where and who God longs for me to be.  May we learn from the sad history of the Israelites, and seek to follow God with all our hearts.

Read on in the post below for some further insights into what it means to start moving on.