Time-Out...

"I'm supposed to be the soldier who never blows his composure. Even though I hold the weight of the whole world on my shoulders I ain't never supposed to show it, my crew ain't supposed to know it Even if it means goin' toe to toe with a Benzino it don't matter. I'd never drag them in battles that I can handle unless I absolutely have to. I'm supposed to set an example. I need to be the leader, my crew looks for me to guide 'em. If something ever does pop off, I'm supposed to be beside 'em."
(© Shady Records)

These are the lyrics of a song by Eminem. I've had these words circling round my head for days now and I'm battling with the lies that they're feeding me. The past few weeks, months even, have been stressful. Issues with churches and politics, the dead-weight of a dissertation hanging around my neck like a millstone, organising rotas for various worship teams, applying for the ministerial recognition process, trying to organise a place to play football, picking up the pieces of this and that and over and above it all trying to hold it together...

I'm feeling empty, tired, fatigued...
I feel as though I'm running out of stuff to give...
I feel as though I've still got to hold it together and maintain this facade that everything is fine and that I'm coping... But that last feeling is a lie!

I'm realising and remembering that I don't have to hold the weight of the whole world on my shoulders. I'm remembering that I am allowed to show it and let my 'crew' know it.

"Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly."

I'm calling time-out. I'm re-learning lessons I thought I'd nailed ages ago. I don't have to live like this. I'm re-learning to get close to Jesus again; to listen to him, learn from him, follow his example.
Perhaps better lyrics to get lodged in my brain are these...

Drop thy still dews of quietness till all our strivings cease. Take from our souls the strain and stress and let our ordered lives confess the beauty of thy peace.

New Song: Reaching.

All Change... well, kinda.

I figured, since we're well and truly into autumn and less than one hundred days til Christmas, that I would reflect the more seasonal... er... season with a revamp of the blog layout.

Therefore it's basically changed from blue to red. The thought processes are the same. The random gibberish will be unchanged. The colour is pretty much all that's different.

Thanks for taking time out of your day to read these ramblings. I hope they're worth it.

Jimmy x

Thinking about thinking...

Philippians 4:6-9

This is one of those Biblical Ronseal passages; it does exactly what it says on the tin. If you’re looking for peace of mind, if you’re looking for sanctuary in contemplation, if you’re looking for a healthy thought life, this is where you look. In three simple verses Paul explicitly lays out the way to achieve it.

Verse Six dives straight in - “Don’t worry about anything, instead pray about everything.”
Everyone has worries. Worries about jobs, money, home life, love life, health… we could spend all day every day being worried about something and everything.

Everyday we’re bombarded by the media with negative news and spin about this issue and that pandemic and the other threat… and we absorb that negativity, and it fuels what we worry already about and gives us twenty other things to worry about, that we didn’t even realise affected us until we read the paper that morning. I can tell the days my granddad buys the Daily Mail because he actually starts sentences with the words ‘well, what worries me is…’

Worrying. We’re told quite bluntly in black and white “DON’T DO IT!”

Don’t worry! About anything! Just stop doing it! STOP IT!
Does worrying ever stop bad things happening? NO!
Will worrying about stuff add extra time onto the end of your life? NO!

Instead: why not be productive with your time and turn your worrying into praying?
It’s not like Paul just tells us to stop doing something, he gives us a way of channelling all the worry-energy into a more positive avenue.

Worrying often turns us in on ourselves. We get blinkered to reality.We focus on the problem – Analysing every little detail and aspect of it. Then we start imagining the worst-case scenario as the most likely outcome. But by praying, we can turn to God and by turning to him we can open ourselves to receive his perfect peace. And this peace guards our hearts and minds. He will protect us.

Our problems won’t mysteriously disappear.
But his peace will miraculously appear.

Sometimes the problem won’t go away, but the peace of God will help us deal with it more effectively than worrying and panicking about it. He’ll give us time to regroup, compose ourselves and fix our eyes and thoughts on the things that will help us – ‘thinking towards God’.

And Paul gives us a list of good things to focus on.
True – Don’t dwell on lies. Jesus is the truth. The Bible is truth
Honourable – Trusted sources, not spin or corruption
Right – things that are the way God intended them to be. We know the difference between right and wrong.
Pure – not things that are tainted or distorted or drenched in lust
Lovely – the beauty of God’s creation. I love Love.
Admirable – look for the good in people.
Excellent – Don’t settle for second best. Think about excellent things. Martin Luther once said to “dream dreams so big that they’re doomed to fail unless God is in them”.
Worthy of Praise – We’re back to ‘thinking towards God’. God alone is worthy of all praise.

All of these things sound brilliant. But it’s got a distinctive ring of ‘easier said than done’ to it right?
Living the way God has designed for us in a world that is full of depressing, evil, lustful, dirty, and disturbing attitudes that are being constantly thrown around by people around town and the media is not easy... if we continue to operate with the same mindset as those around us.

That’s why Paul wrote in his letter to the Christians in Rome “let God transform you… by changing the way you think”. Don’t conform to the world around you. Don’t be so comfortable with the world that you fit in without even thinking about it. But be transformed. Think towards God and let his Holy Spirit change you.

And it’s only by this change of mindset that we can achieve Paul’s strong suggestion in verse 4 – Rejoice in the Lord always. Celebrate God all day. Revel in Him. Enjoy your life with him. It’s ok to be a Christian and have fun at the same time. We don’t have to be miserable and grumpy and bitter.

To steal the atheist bus slogan:
There probably is a God,
so stop worrying (start praying) and enjoy your life.

Dawkins has got it exactly right!

Very rarely do I agree with an outspoken atheist on matters of spirituality. However, whilst watching an interview with him on CNN's 'Connect the World' program, I found myself agreeing with Dr. Richard Dawkins.

When asked "If irrefutable evidence of a Supreme Being existed, what religion would it have most likely founded?" Dawkins answered;

“If evidence for a Supreme Being was ever discovered, the Supreme Being would be so much more supreme, so much grander, so much more intelligent than any religion has ever conceived of. It would be something far, far better than the paltry, puny productions of existing religions.”

I agree with Richard Dawkins.

God for Dummies?

I’m a big fan of Derren Brown: He’s a TV psychologist, illusionist, magician, mentalist.
I find his work and the psychological skills he uses fanscinating. On Derren Brown’s blog there was an article from the Telegraph which claims that people with a higher IQ are less likely to believe in God.

Professor Richard Lynn, emeritus professor of psychology at Ulster University, said many more members of the "intellectual elite" considered themselves atheists than the national average. “A decline in religious observance over the last century was directly linked to a rise in average intelligence” he claimed. Professor Lynn said most primary school children believed in God, but as they entered adolescence - and their intelligence increased - many started to have doubts.

At first, I thought this to be quite negative and offensive until God nudged me on the shoulder and said “this is exactly how it’s meant to be.”

Because this article and this research has been carried out and written about from an exclusively worldly perspective. Secular Academia has a very different idea of what intelligence and wisdom are compared to God’s.

Just read 1 Corinthians 1:18-31...

When Paul writes in Romans to be transformed by the renewing of your mind, he wasn’t joking was he. When he says ‘you’re going to need a whole different mindset to get through this life in a Christ-like style’ he knew what a challenge that was going to be.

Because Paul writing in Ancient Greece had the same head-on collision that we struggle with today in this ‘post-modern’ contemporary world we live in; Society’s version of intelligence and wisdom Vs God’s version- and they are total opposites. In both cultures – then and now – the social system was founded on who was the best, the cleverest, the richest, the sharpest, the most philosophical. But we hear in Paul’s words that God doesn’t operate within that system.

Paul, operating in God’s mentality, surrounded and engulfed in this melting pot of culture; Greek/Roman/Jewish/Pagan; in amongst the religiosity of his time Paul passionately preaches the most bizarre message –

"JESUS CHRIST WAS CRUCIFIED". It didn’t make sense.

To the Jews, who were expectant of a mighty warrior messiah who would defeat the Roman Empire and restore the Kingdom to Israel and they would all live happily-ever-after; the thought of the Saviour being executed by the very army they hoped he would free them from would ludicrous.

To the Greeks and the Romans, no person worth listening to or following would let themselves be murdered. No hero worth giving ones allegiance to would die. The message that Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, was crucified, and died so that he might save the world from sin... it just didn’t add up.

But Paul explains that God has chosen the foolish things through which to show his glory. He has chosen to value the lowly things. God chooses weakness over power. He chooses the things that are not. That way EVERYONE can hear the message and receive new life (without the need for ‘necessary’ qualifications). That way no one can boast. Because it is everything He has done. That way God gets all the glory.

God could’ve sent Jesus to have been the smartest, strongest Messiah Hero the world had ever seen: Imagine it; Jesus with Two Roman centurions in a head-lock whilst simultaneously bamboozling the top Greek philosophers – “Is there another word for thesaurus?”; “What is the opposite of opposite?”

But instead the Almighty came to gently demonstrate to us;
Love your enemies. Look after the poor.
The Genius God that designed and built the universe came down to our level and said “love one another”. And even in his profound simplicity, the ‘Wisest’ of the world missed him. And still miss him today. If we live by the worlds system of what is wise and what is foolish we run the risk of missing something beautiful.

When we come to the cross, we come before Christ in his weakest, most humiliating, most foolish state.
When we come to the cross, we come before Christ in his most glorious, most regal, most heroic state.

The foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom
The weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.

Don’t be afraid of looking stupid for Christ. Be prepared to take flak for going to church, for buying a homeless guy lunch, for holding doors open, reading a bible on the bus. The academic world might look down their noses at us. Richard Dawkins and Derren Brown and a whole host of other atheist intellectuals might ridicule us for being foolish. The message of the Cross seems like foolishness to those who are perishing. But for to us who are being saved... it is the power of God.

Even in foolishness weakness, Jesus has saved us from sin and death and is victorious! And in foolishness and weakness we believe in him and receive new life. Amen.

Stars

I've just come in from sitting in my garden at home; gazing up at the clear night sky, watching the meteor shower and losing myself in the vastness of what lies beyond this odd little blue and green ball we all live on.

The meteors were the headline act tonight as they shot across the darkness leaving their dramatic trail behind. Left-over debris, from a comet that passed by almost twenty yars ago, burning brightly in the earth's atmosphere. Cosmic drama unfolding on a backdrop of stars...

Billions and billions of stars. Some scientists even guess that there are 10x more stars in the visible universe than grains of sand on all the worlds beaches! It's a mind-boggling number and an incredible concept to think that there is that much stuff up in space.

And yet, so often, the stars go unnoticed - either lost in the blur of the light polution from our 24/7 cities and towns or just taken for granted and rarely marvelled at anymore. So why is it that when Paul wrote to a church in Philippi that he said that they "shine like stars"?

I think it's because the stars are our role models.

Whatever the weather, whoever is looking or not looking, whether they're taken for granted or being studied intently; whether day or night, whether they are upstaged by meteors or have the sky to themselves, the stars keep right on shining. And I think thats what Paul means.

In a world where fame comes and goes - we keep shining.

In a world where the economy is struggling - we keep shining.

In a world where people ignore us or take us for granted - we keep shining.

It's the time of year that thousands and thousands of people attend festivals and gatherings all over the world. I'm not saying anything negative about these festivals, I think they're great, I've been to them, I've experienced God in fresh ways there and felt blessed to be a part of them. But my prayer is this...

That the temptation to be a meteor - to feel fired up and burn brightly but briefly and fizzle out quickly - is replaced with a desire to be a star; to do what God designed you to do and to do it always. Day-in. Day-out.

You're a star. Shine.