Caught in a crisis...

If you turn on your TV these days (something I don't do very often) and especially if you tune in to listen to the news, it won't be very long before you hear a report about Spain's current "housing crisis" or "rental crisis." Social and economic happenings over the past fifteen years - ranging from the financial crash of 2008 to the covid pandemic of more recent years - have led to a situation where there simply isn't enough available housing in the nation. Not only is there an actual shortage of places to live, the few places that are available are out of reach for most.  Rental housing has risen so sharply in price that renting is now a luxury available only to the very rich or to short term renters from wealthier nations. And current home-purchase laws are making it impossible for most people to make the down payment necessary to secure a mortgage.

There are thousands of people all over the country who cannot find a place to live. Even in my local church, there are five families at the moment who are searching in vain to find new housing. 

I know the crisis is not unique to Spain... (if I google "housing crisis," I find dozens of articles about the Spanish situation, but also a good number about the housing crisis in Australia and even a few about a growing rental crisis in the UK)... but of course, I just happen to be one of the people "caught" in this Spanish crisis and unable to find a new place to live... despite six months now of searching for a new home.

I got a bit of a shock the other day when reading a newspaper article about the situation. It referred to the many people in Spain who are living "below the poverty line," and I had to do a double take when I saw that the monthly income level described as the "poverty line" was almost double my current monthly support level.

So, I know that sometime down the line, I'm going to need to trust God for an increase in my missions support.... but for now, I haven't felt that support raising should be my priority. Even people who do live "above the poverty line" are finding it impossible to secure housing at the moment. There is literally none available in many parts of the country. So I've felt that my focus needs to be on finding a new home... and then I'll know how much increase I need to trust God for in my new situation.

As June draws to a close, I'm preparing to move yet again.... this time to an inland area that's about 20 miles from the town I've been living in for the past fifteen years. Some friends from church need to go to the UK for a family emergency and have asked me if I could look after their house and dog while they are  gone, as well as managing a little AirBnB cottage that they have on their property. (Washing laundry, cleaning the cottage, making up the bed for new guests, etc.) This means that I now have a temporary place to stay during July... while I continue the seemingly endless search for a more permanent home.

Teddi, my poor cat, has discerned this week that something suspicious is afoot. He's seeing the furniture being moved out of the little granny flat we're in at the moment (my host family are having to put all their things into storage before going overseas for three months to raise support) and perhaps he's beginning to anticipate the trauma of a third move in as many months. He sometimes just wanders around miaowing loudly as an expression of his discomfort. Thankfully the dog is taking it in her stride and seems pretty relaxed about the whole thing. As long as I am there, she doesn't seem to mind where we are or how often we move. 

As I wrote in a previous blog post, this is what I want to be like in my relationship with God: I want to be able to relax and trust like Maiki, knowing that God's presence is with me even in a constantly changing situation, and not become stressed and panicky like poor Teddi who doesn't handle the changes and unpredictability so well.

Of course, moving further inland to Coín means that I'm going to be leaving all my friends behind. I've already experienced the loss of relationship with people that I used to converse with on a daily basis, but I have at least managed to keep connecting with those people once a week. I've continued to be able to walk some of my former neighbours' dogs, even though it's meant driving over in the car to pick them up and take them to the forest with us. On a free morning this week, I went with a friend and four of the dogs on one of our favourite hikes, up to the mountaintop where the "wolf's lookout" offers us stunning views of the Mediterranean coastline on the other side. But that will be our last opportunity for a while, as we'll move soon to a country area further inland. So I've been saying some goodbyes this week, without really knowing how long that will be for, or even if I'll be able to return to this town again at any point.

In some ways, it seems like singularly bad timing - that I would just happen to become homeless at a time when the entire nation is in a housing crisis. But all I can hold on to is the fact that God is bigger than any crisis and that, somewhere down the road, He has a good solution for me. In the meantime, I'd like to say a big thank you to all of you who have been standing with me in prayer and who have sent little notes to share what you were sensing from the Lord.

Watch this space!!

When breakthroughs are slow to come...

I'm now in my sixth month of looking for a place to live and there still hasn't been any breakthrough. While I'm making a choice not to worry from day to day, I'm nonetheless beginning to notice some symptoms of the underlying stress of living with the effects of my homeless status... 

I get tired of not having access to my summer clothes, my books or my kitchen appliances. I'm noticing a fair amount of lower back pain and suspect it may be due in part to some months now of not sleeping in my own bed with its nice firm mattress.  I realise that I get tired more easily than normal and sometimes I fall asleep when I get home from church on a Sunday afternoon. (I'm one of those people who can normally never sleep during the daytime.) I find myself feeling annoyed by things that would normally only be a minor cause of frustration, and discouraged by things that aren't really such a big deal.

This morning, for example, I fought for almost three hours with erratic internet. As can often be the case here in wet or windy weather, the wifi kept cutting off every two or three minutes, completely sabotaging all the plans I had made for the early morning time slot - including an online connection for someone with a special birthday and an online payment that I needed to make. After many dozens of attempts to re-connect, only to be cut off again a few minutes later, I found myself dissolving into tears. That's not normal! No one breaks down sobbing over internet problems! And so I'm aware that, although I'm doing well on the whole, there's definitely a level of stress that comes with living with constant uncertainty about the future, not to mention the frustrating and tiring process of following up on every new possibility of a place to live.

And so I'm needing to be even more intentional than usual about spending time in God's presence and drawing on His peace amidst challenging circumstances. As a number of old songs expressed it: we may not know what the future holds, but we know who holds the future.

I was reminded this morning of one of the Bible accounts of a seemingly delayed answer to prayer. In the Old Testament book of Daniel, we see Daniel praying and fasting on behalf of the people of Israel. In chapter 9, God had answered Daniel's prayer before he had even finished praying, but in chapter 10, a few weeks go by and there seems to be no answer at all to his prayer.

Finally, an angel appears to him one day while he is praying on the riverbank. The angel tells him (Daniel 10: 12 - 13) that on the very first day Daniel began to pray, God heard his prayer and began to answer it. But there was some enemy opposition to that answer and for three weeks the angel had been fighting against a spiritual entity called the Prince of Persia who was seeking to delay the answer to Daniel's prayer.

It can be easy for believers to think that God isn't listening or that He doesn't care, when in fact the delay may be due to a battle in the spiritual realm. This demon in Daniel 10 was not able to stop the answer to Daniel's prayer (at least, not as long as Daniel continued to pray) but it seems that he was able to delay it.

It might not be accurate for me to assume that there's a element of spiritual warfare around my failure to find a new home; after all, there are thousands of people all over the country, believers and non believers alike, who are in the same position as I am at the moment. It seems hardly a week goes by without my hearing of yet another person or family who is looking for a place to live.

However, when there's a preponderance of such delays going on (my Mum is Scotland is also having to battle with a number of situations that are still unresolved) it would certainly seem that the enemy has a hand in it.

Our response needs to be twofold. Whatever we do, we mustn't stop praying, thinking that God's not doing anything. We need to continue in prayer until the delaying spirit has been overcome. 

And secondly, we need to protect ourselves from discouragement and fatigue... and we do this primarily by spending time in God's presence and declaring our trust in Him.

Thank you to those of you who have been standing with me and my family in prayer during this challenging season. Thank you for trusting with us for a breakthrough.

How unconditional is your obedience?

I've been reading through the Old Testament book of Jeremiah, and this morning I came to three very short chapters (41, 42 and 43) that contain a valuable warning for us.

To set the scene: the powerful nation of Babylon has invaded Judah, Jerusalem has recently fallen and most of the people have been carried off into exile.... exactly as Jeremiah and other prophets had been warning them for a very long time. Only a small remnant remains in the promised land and the Babylonians have appointed a man named Gedaliah to be the governor there.

In chapter 41 of Jeremiah, this man Gedaliah is murdered and, fearing retaliation from the Babylonians, some of Judah's military leaders want to flee to Egypt for safety. 

But first they ask Jeremiah to seek God's guidance for them and, in chapter 42 vs 6, they declare that they will obey the Lord, no matter what. "Whether we like it or not, we will obey the Lord our God... for if we obey Him, everything will turn out well for us."

Jeremiah seeks God's will and gives the people the news that they are not to fear the King of Babylon, but are to stay in Judah and God will protect them there. He warns them not to flee to Egypt.

In chapter 43, despite having declared themselves willing to do anything God said, the people completely ignore the warning and go to Egypt anyway, taking Jeremiah with them. There, Jeremiah prophesies that war, famine and disaster will catch up with them.

It's easy to say that we will obey God unconditionally. It's quite another thing to be radically obedient when we don't like what we hear or when it makes us nervous or uncomfortable. But, as happened with the servant in the parable of the talents (Matthew 25), fearful disobedience will never bring a good conclusion for us. 

When God asks to stay in a challenging work, school or church situation; when He asks us to persevere in a difficult relationship... or perhaps asks us not to continue in a toxic relationship; when He urges us to persevere in prayer rather than trying to take matters into our own hands... it can be hard at times to follow through with that and not to seek an easy way out.

In my own situation at the moment, it is incredibly hard to be here in Spain, homeless and in my sixth month of looking for a new place to live. It would have been much easier to leave and grab hold of one of the options offered to me in other countries.... But for now, I really sense that God is still asking me to stay here and to trust Him.

When we need to "hang in there" in a challenging situation, we can pray for ourselves what Paul prayed for the Colossians. (See Colossians 1: 11) - "We pray that you will be strengthened with all His glorious power so that you will have all the endurance and patience you need.... and may it spill over into joy."

Watching and waiting...

I can hardly believe that we're at the end of May - almost half way through the year - and I still find myself with no permanent home to move to. We moved on 12th May to our second temporary accommodation, this time with an American missionary family who have a little granny flat attached to their house. It's not for long, though, and soon they too will be homeless. They'll be moving out of that house around 20th June, as their landlord is increasing the monthly rent to a staggering €2700.

But I'm thankful to have a place for these few weeks as I continue the ongoing search for something more permanent. As the weeks and months have gone by, I'm discovering that I'm far from alone in my predicament. At least five other families or individuals in our church are on the verge of finding themselves in the same position, and I even meet random people in the street (dog walkers, usually) who tell me that they're currently in temporary accommodation. It just seems to be a crisis time for housing at the moment.

My search continues, but it's slowing down a bit as summer approaches. Many homeowners like to take advantage of the summer holiday season, when they can rent their house out to tourists for €1500 a week instead of €1500 a month. So I'm still spending a lot of time each week looking at property listings, but there are far fewer possibilities at the moment.

All my usual summer travel (for outreach, etc) has been put on hold, but I'm continuing with ongoing local and international ministry commitments: teaching, translating, writing, coaching...

I have no housing lined up for the last week of June and first weeks of July, but I do have another temporary possibility from mid-July onwards. How I hope, though, that there might finally be a more permanent solution before we enter the second half of the year.
 

Just for fun...

More than a month has gone by since we filmed our last YouTube video at our temporary accommodation. We've moved to yet another temporary place, and the search for a more permanent home (an exhausting and rather discouraging process) still continues.  Our new temporary accommodation also has a garden and this has allowed us to film a new video in some of our spare moments. Just for fun, click on the photo if you'd like to watch Maiki's guide to "Songs of the 20th Century." You may be too young to remember them all, but here are more than a dozen songs from almost every decade of the 1900s.

To watch the video, you can also click here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mzjn7BDNaXA

 

What does hide and seek have to do with learning obedience to God?

My dog has a favourite toy. It's plastic chicken that goes by the Spanish name of "Pollo." When Pollo was new, the toy made an awful crowing noise when squeaked. Now that he has a few puncture wounds, he is, thankfully, almost silent!

"Find Pollo" was our favourite rainy day game at our old house. When torrential rain stopped us going out for a walk, we'd play hide and seek inside the house. Maiki would wait in the kitchen while I went to hide Pollo in another part of the house. Then, when given the command, she'd rush off to sniff out the toy and bring it noisily out of hiding.

Now that we're living temporarily in a house with a huge garden, our "Find Pollo" game has risen to a new level. Scent games can tire dogs out, so it has become our pre-bedtime game. Maiki needs to sit patiently in some part of the garden while I go off to find a good hiding place for Pollo. Then, when the release cue is given, she bounds into action and the enthusiastic hunt begins.

Sniffing out the toy is the exciting part of the game for a dog. The harder part is having to sit patiently and out of sight during the couple of minutes while the toy is being hidden. It's a real test for the dog. Will she sit faithfully until given permission to search, or will she leave her "stay" to find out what is happening and get a head start on the hunt? And so this "hide and seek" game is a test of the dog's willingness to obey, her willingness to wait out of sight until given the command to move.

When it comes to Pollo, the "stay" command or the "emergency stop" is just a game. But in a different situation, it can save the dog's life - as we experienced yesterday.

I was just saying to someone last week that we almost never encounter snakes on our walks in the mountains and so I can pretty much ignore Maiki's obsession with stalking lizards in the undergrowth. Well, wouldn't you believe it.... on our morning walk yesterday, a rather large snake slithered right across our path; I almost stepped on it. Fortunately, all four dogs froze when I gave the command, without any attempt to pursue the reptile or grab hold of it. (It wasn't venomous, but could have caused some damage in a fight for freedom.) The photo above shows my four super-heroes. I was proud of each one of them. They had illustrated in a real life situation that learning to obey promptly could one day save our life.

So what does all this have to do with my Bible reading this morning in the book of Judges?

Yesterday, I wrote about how the people of Israel failed to obey God and how they allowed idolatrous, heathen peoples to continue living as their neighbours in the Promised Land. Today, in Judges 3 verses 1 - 4, we read that there were actually two reasons why God allowed peoples like the Philistines and the Amorites to continue living in the land of Canaan.

The first reason, as I'd already seen in chapter 2, was to test whether the Israelites were truly willing to obey the commands that the Lord had given to their ancestors at Mount Sinai.  Just as having to sit and wait in some corner of the garden (while Pollo gets hidden) is a test of Maiki's willingness to obey, the presence of pagan peoples in Israel tested whether the Hebrews would obey God and refuse to worship idols.

The second reason was to teach warfare to the generations of Israelites who had no experience in battle, the generations who had been born after their parents crossed the Jordan and had to fight to conquer the Promised Land.

In our own lives too, God seldom leaves us with completely plain sailing, with nothing but peace and harmony on all sides. He allows us to face some challenges in life, and it's for exactly these same two reasons.

Firstly, God wants us to learn to do spiritual warfare, so that we won't simply be passive victims when the enemy mounts an attack against us. If young David hadn't previously faced and killed the lion and the bear, he would never have had the faith and the courage to face the giant Goliath. Likewise, God allows us to face smaller battles in life so that we learn how to fight and aren't easy prey when the larger battles come along.

Secondly, like Maiki waiting obediently for permission to "find Pollo," our response to the difficulties and challenges we face allows us to demonstrate that we are making a heart choice to obey and to do things God's way. That demonstration is important to our own awareness that our allegiance to God is solid and trustworthy, but it's also an act of spiritual warfare in itself, as it is a demonstration to the enemy that we are wholly committed to trusting God... just as Job in the Bible refused to give up on God when Satan threw all kinds of trials and injustices at him.

When we're in school or university, we sit exams to prove that we have understood and mastered a subject. To get our driving licence we have to sit a test to prove that we know the rules of the road and are able to handle the car safely. Let's not be surprised that in our Christian lives there are also times that test our obedience and that teach us how to defeat the enemy. 

Generational failure...

As May begins, I'm reading each morning in the Old Testament book of the Judges. You probably know that it's a book full of incredible biographies (some of them have been made into Hollywood movies) but, oh my, it gets off to a dismal start. 

Yesterday I read chapter one, which is basically an account of how, despite some initial victories, the people of Israel failed to claim their inheritance and completely conquer the promised land that God had given them. Today, in chapter two, we find out a bit more about the reasons for that failure.

God had commanded the Hebrews to drive out the heathen peoples that were living in Canaan when they arrived there. Instead, they often lived among those people, intermarrying with them and idolatrously worshipping their gods. This prepared the way for the roller coaster of peace and war, victory and defeat, commitment and corruption that we read of throughout the whole book of Judges.

Have you ever wondered why God doesn't miraculously get rid of all the difficulties and temptations that could cause us trouble in our Christian life? Chapter 2 of Judges makes it clear that, although many of the predicaments and challenges we face may be from "the enemy," many are of our own making. Rather than simply wiping these challenges out of way, God sometimes allows us to face them (see verses 22 - 23) to test how we will respond to them and whether we will obey the things He has shown us.

The Israelites had created their own difficult circumstances: by not driving out the heathen peoples as God had instructed them, they had left those people to be a constant trial and their gods to be a constant temptation for them.

While the people were responsible for their own disobedience to God's commands, the previous generation also bore some of the responsibility: the fact that the generation who didn't personally see God's miracles when entering the land (vs 7 and vs 10) was so quick to fall away from following Him suggests a serious failure in mentoring and discipling. The "parent generation" had failed to keep telling them about what God had already done or to give them opportunities to experience God's power for themselves.

So what about you and me, whether we're parents, Sunday school teachers, or just ordinary church folks whose lives interface a little with today's children and teenagers or today's emerging church leaders? Are we faithful in sharing our stories of the ways we've experienced God at work in our life, in our family, in our church? Do we talk about the things God has spoken to us, the things He has instructed us to do? Are we diligently sharing the lessons learned and the ways we discovered more about who God is?

But, perhaps even more important, are we giving today's young people opportunities to experience the reality of God in their own lives.... or are we shielding them from the sorts of experience that would help them grow in their faith and know that God truly is who He says He is?

When our young people need finances to go to a camp, for example.... do we just hand that money to them, or do we help them step out and trust for God's supernatural provision?

When there's an opportunity to reach out and serve the homeless people or the refugees.... do we leave our children at home watching TV, or do we take them along with us on that ministry opportunity?

When there's some kind of outreach or evangelistic project in our town..... do we assume that our kids wouldn't be interested in that, or do we take them with us, giving them opportunities to give testimonies or to pray for people in the street?

When there's an all-night prayer vigil at church.... do we find a babysitter for our kids, or do we take them with us so that they too can pray and be part of hearing God's voice?

Things went better for the Israelites each time God sent them a judge, a hero to deliver them from their predicament (see verses 18 - 19) but it was an external restraint: whenever the judge died, the people returned to their corrupt ways.

Let's not be part of raising up a generation like that, a generation that will only do the right thing when they have parents or youth group leaders telling them what to do, a generation that will turn away from God once they've left home or moved away to university, or got married and had children of their own...

Let's be part of raising up a generation that knows the ways of God and that has experienced His goodness, His love and His power in their own lives.