I realise that the title of this blog may scare a few people but lately I have read so many thoughts and platitudes on social media, even from high profile speakers that I am compelled to write. I write with a heavy heart because I believe, generally speaking, we are giving out false information to believers. Let me try and explain what I mean.

Here are some of things we often say as Christians:

“Good morning, this is God, I will be taking care of your problems today so just relax and let me take care of them.”

“Remember that God is always with you and He wants to fight for you. When he allows difficult situations to come your way, you can put your trust in him to be in control and cause everything to work out for good in the end (Romans 8:28) so no matter what happens, hold your peace, remain at rest.. and trust God to fight your battles.”

“God is in control”

“It must be God’s will for this to happen.”

“Whatever happens must be God’s will”

“The Lord will fight for you, you need only be still.”

You might be thinking, ‘what is wrong with any of those sentiments – they sound lovely and we’re only trying to comfort each other.’ Unfortunately, that is just what they are ‘nice sentiments.’ Don’t go away yet… We have been so blasé with these kinds of comments, that when it goes badly wrong, the church is left floundering, disappointed and confused as to what actually just happened. The devil is more than happy for us to spout out these words because he knows they won’t work automatically. Stay with me, this will get better – honest!

I’ve got lots of stories I could tell to illustrate what I’m saying but here are just two.:

We once worked with a guy who was very high up in the Elim movement in Africa. We thought he was a great guy (in the main, he was) and we worked very well together. One day we awoke to the news that he had been killed in a motorcycle accident and we were devastated. We couldn’t understand why this had happened and we talked to God about it. We asked things like, ‘where is Psalm 91?’ ‘What about Romans 8:28?’ and so on… As the days went by, it came to our attention that this guy had been living a lie. He had been deceiving many people that felt too afraid to speak out whilst he was alive. Why do I tell you that story? Because if we had heard that he had died, without knowing the full story, we would have spent the rest of our lives wondering why on earth this happened to someone who was a leader in the Church and seemingly a man with good character. Living the way he did most certainly did not affect is eternal status – he went to heaven BUT did it affect his life on earth? Did it affect his connection to God? I absolutely believe it did. God will not be mocked and, if we don’t take his word seriously, we are asking for an early exit.

The devil is too clever for disconnected Christians to fight him.

 Another guy we worked with in Africa also worked for us in Sporting Marvels (a sports ministry in Wales) as a prayer co-ordinator and he died prematurely. We were all shocked!! Big tributes were paid to him because we thought we knew him inside out and then we found out he was married to two people. He had two families and they didn’t find out about each other until the funeral. Has he gone to heaven? Yes I believe he has. Had he lost his connection to God and the ability to be effective for Christ on earth? Yes he had.

The problem is, we think we know. We think that we know a person. If we don’t ask the tough questions, the church just thinks, ‘Oh well, this must have been God’s will!!” We get passive. The truth is, in a lot of instances, if we knew the person, if we knew some background, we’d be more likely to say, ‘Oh… maybe that’s why that happened, maybe they were disconnected’ Much, much harder to take this approach but, in my opinion, it’s far better than the random way we just say, ‘God’s in control’ that’s too easy to say.

Don’t you think that’s an easy cop out? I do. I think we say, ‘God is in control’ far too easily. I think God, occasionally but more than we imagine, is saying, ‘this is nothing to do with me!!’ It’s because of your choices that you are where you are right now.

The verse mentioned above in Romans is the one quoted very often… ‘All things work together for good.” And we leave it there…. It actually says, ‘All things work together for good FOR THOSE WHO LOVE THE LORD.” I could explain what I think loving the Lord might look like but I’m going to say what it doesn’t look like instead. Let me stress at this point that I am talking about deliberate, long-standing choices in the following list and NOT a one-off blip. It’s important that you understand that. We all mess up most days if we’re honest but, if we are close to the Lord, we quickly confess and keep a short account with Him. I’m honing in on prolonged bad choices here with no care for God or others:

• Holding un-forgiveness
• Lack of commitment to church
• Too much alcohol
• Pornography
• No prayer
• Lack of understanding of the Bible
• Control and manipulation
• Anger
• Jealousy
• Sex outside of marriage
• etc. etc.

As Christians, our job, after we’re saved, is to give ourselves the best possible chance of making it on earth. I believe, I know not everyone does, that whatever you do after you’re truly saved, you will go to heaven but if you want a John 10:10 life, you’re going to have to work at it. The days of being passive and saying things like, ‘God is in control,’ yet living exactly how you want, are over. We MUST be more responsible than this and make sure that when our storms come, and they will and sometimes they are fierce, that we are in a great position to fight! The key: Prepare before the storm hits.

So, has God got anyone’s back? Yes He has. Can anyone be confident in such scriptures as, ‘The Lord will fight for you, you need only be still?’ Yes they can. I have two very dear friends who are going through health battles right now but I’m confident they are fighting from a strong position. God has the backs of those who are seeking to follow him, who are seeking to love him with all their heart, soul, mind and strength, to love their neighbours as they love themselves and, the hardest one of all, to love one another as he has loved us. Yes it’s a tall ask but, if we’re not at least trying to work at these things, in my opinion, I don’t think he has your back…….

If you’re interested to read more of my thoughts, here is the link to one of my books:

“Get your feet off the Table”

 

 

One of the things I used to hate about high school (there were a few but I will stick to one!) was walking home in the cold and rain – the rain thrashing my legs as I lugged my body up the hills to my house – I shudder as I remember those days! During my time in high school, I had a paper round – the things you did for money! I earned the grand total of a penny per paper and it was just once a week, I couldn’t have coped with one every day I’m sure. I could either do it on a Wednesday or a Thursday. So many weeks I made the fatal error of not doing it on the Wednesday meaning I HAD to do it on the Thursday come rain or shine. Occasionally I would make the decision to deliver the papers on a Wednesday which made the Thursday afternoon walk home on these weeks, bliss! For these 5 years of my life, I had a routine. I knew my way home, I did it automatically, I didn’t have to think about the streets I was walking on – I knew it well. Our lives go in seasons and so my ‘challenge’ for this blog isn’t really about seasons of routine but rather lifetimes of routine.

I heard a speaker once talk about going home a different way and his point was, if you do that, you will see different things, meet different people, possibly meet new challenges, especially if you’re on foot.

When we first moved to Tanga, 4 months ago now, we knew no one except the Tanzanians who we’d worked with for 17 years – we had no social mates and, fortunately for John and I, we love each others company and so we made it work and it gave us the time to write and develop ourselves. I have to admit though I really missed doing coffee or lunch with girlfriends. I did. In fact, let me interject here, I hope you’ve all freed up your diaries for November! I’m happy to say, it is beginning to change and just the other week, we were invited to a BBQ and I was like a little girl going to a birthday party! I felt so excited that we were going to a social event! That night turned into the start of a friendship that we feel will continue to grow into a close one. We’ve talked recently about the challenges that living in Tanzania bring – and, again, there are many frustrations, BUT I would not swap it because of the richness it has brought into our lives.

We’ve talked on our ‘Under the Banda’ broadcasts (you can access these here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0HhuWHmhj4) about spaces and about how God sometimes leads you into openness that seems lonely and scary for a while and you have to learn new lessons whilst in that space. What we have found though is that, after a period of emptiness, He begins to fill that space with people, experiences and things that we would never have known had we not taken those steps. I can’t imagine my life if I had stayed as that schoolgirl delivering newspapers once a week metaphorically speaking. What about you? How do you know what is ‘round a corner’ if you always ‘go home the same way?’ Has your life become such a rut that you never do anything new or different? Maybe you always have the same meals on a Thursday, maybe you take the same thing to lunch every day, maybe you ‘crawl’ into work every day yet you can’t stand what you do. How tragic is that? What you eat is neither here nor there – it’s not tragic but you should try something new, you never know, you might even like it; however, spending your everyday life doing something you’re not enjoying, and you’ve been doing it for years, is. It is tragic. I’m not saying you should walk into your dream job at age 15 and you’re sorted for life – we all have to go through a process of getting to that place of satisfaction in our work/life balance. I have done my fair share of naff jobs so I know all about that season. But what I am saying is, life should be good! God breathed his life into us for us to have an adventure – I’m having one and I hope you are too and, if you’re not, change it. It is in your hands. If you’re in work reading this (I hope you don’t get sacked!) let me challenge you to find a new route home tonight! Who knows what you will see.

Beth and I will be talking in more detail about how to live a John 10:10 life at our conference, ‘Brave,’ in November. We have some amazing plans so you should think about coming – the only proviso is, you must be a girl! Sorry boys! Go to our website and click on ‘events’ for more details, I promise you won’t be disappointed! www.agapelife.co.uk.

The world doesn’t care anymore about what Christians disagree with – it really doesn’t! It really doesn’t! So we are just going to have to go about it in a different way. We are going to have to show that, if lived properly (that’s another blog!) the Christian life holds the most benefits both on earth and in heaven. Who is that up to? You and me! It’s our shift, so let’s get on it! John 10:10