And now for something completely different! A little less of a challenge

Nature is amazing isn’t it!? Let’s look at three fascinating creatures. 

Ants

Did you know that Ants can carry 10-50 times their body weight? And when you see an ant hill above ground, beneath your feet is 185 square metres of a mini city where life happens for ants.

After about a year, they move on and can create their new home in around 3 days! They are hard workers.

We read a few things about ants in the Bible.

Proverbs 30:25 says,

²⁵ the ants are a people not strong,
    yet they provide their food in the summer;

Isn’t it strange how it refers to them as ‘people’?

Proverbs 6: 6-11 speaks to us about how hard working the ant is and if we don’t work hard, life won’t be good or easy. (my paraphrase!)

Bees

I first read this about a year ago and I was totally blown away.

Queen bees and worker bees are genetically identical. Queen bees lay up to two thousand eggs a day, while worker bees are functionally sterile. Queens live up to three years; workers may live only three weeks. The difference between the two is diet. When the hive’s queen is dying, a larva is picked by nurse bees to be fed a secreted substance called royal jelly. When the larva eats this jelly, the enzyme that had been silencing the expression of royal genes is turned off and a new queen is born. The queen has the exact same genes as any of the workers, but because of what she ate, different genes are expressed, and her life and life span are dramatically altered as a result. 

Wow! Can we apply that to us? Of course. How we live and what we eat is going to affect our souls and our bodies. Do some research on food and serious illness, I think you may be surprised – I know I was.

Finally and perhaps the most fascinating,

Butterflies

I think you’ll probably know that a caterpillar is completely different from the butterfly it becomes, it metamorphosises into a brand-new creature. 

Sound familiar? (2 Corinthians 5:17)

We’ve been talking about caterpillars, cocoons and butterflies a lot lately and one of things I said to John was, you can’t be a butterfly unless to go into the cocoon. 

Watch this video for a look at what takes place.

Caterpillar, cocoon, butterfly

Some of the words that I was thinking when watching that were, it’s messy, looks uncomfortable. Also, how good would it be if all we had to do was eat! 

If you’re a follower of Jesus, an obvious picture of this caterpillar to butterfly experience is the one of salvation, hands down, the best one, but I think throughout our lives we can experience a few chrysalis moments if we sign on for a life of adventure with Jesus. 

What we do and how we approach Chrysalis or cocoon moments is up to us. I imagine the caterpillar just hangs there! For us, it might be right to just hang! To be still, to listen to God. When was the last time you sat in silence? In our noisy world of distractions, it’s not easy to do, but it’s a good discipline to get into. 

Just recently I learnt that if you were to open a cocoon, you wouldn’t have a clue what was happening. You’d basically see caterpillar soup.  The phrase used to describe what’s happening was identity suicide. (Paul Scanlon)

Transition is hard, and our default can be to go back to being a caterpillar because that’s what’s known.  But if you want to become a butterfly you will have to commit identity suicide. You will have to become a different person. I’ve had a few cocoon moments in my life, just recently been through one. I know I’m not the same person I was even a few months ago. 

We must do what we’re told in Ephesians 4:22-24

“You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” 

Put off your old self. Put on the new self. We are responsible for this. 

Get rid of stuff that so easily entangles. What are your defaults? Are they healthy ones? 

Someone brought a great challenge to us in one of our prayer meetings, ‘Would you live yesterday the same again, or would do some things differently or not at all?’ Great question!

I’d like to incorporate some of the life lessons of the ant, the bee, and the butterfly. 

I’m up for working hard, I’m up for looking after my body & soul, and I’m up for the stretching/cocoon times.

Are you?

Until next time

D xx

Before I get onto this great subject that I’m learning about in this season (wish I’d known about it 30 years ago!) I have to say a huge thank you to all of you who read my blog last week. “Can I get a lift with you, no, sorry” It had a LOT of readership and I had some great comments, so thanks!

Sabbath v. day off – If you’d have asked me a few months ago whether I took a Sabbath, I would probably have answered, ‘yes’. Since we began in ministry back in 1989, we have always taken a Tuesday off. I don’t know why we took Tuesday, but it’s always worked for us. And, unless there has been an emergency or a meeting we had to attend, we’ve stuck to it – our churches have known it and it’s been great. Then we read ‘the ruthless elimination of hurry’ by John Mark Comer and we realised the huge difference between a day off and a Sabbath!

Before we go to the Sabbath, let me challenge this – over the years, I’ve often asked ministers if they take a day off – so many say, ‘no’ I don’t have the time. I don’t have to say much on this, I’ll just leave it to God and then pose a question and a challenge.

“By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work” Genesis 2:2

Who do you think you are, with allegedly no time to rest, when God rested? If you’re in full time ministry and you don’t take a regular day off, in mine and apparently God’s opinion, you’re doing it wrong. Yolk easy, burden light. This isn’t about an easy life, but we should all be carrying easy yolks. If that’s not your experience, then as the girls in Frozen say, ‘let it (some things) go. We can’t possibly function better than God.

The challenge now, for me, is the Sabbath and what that means.

Here is the first time we hear about the Sabbath:

“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. ⁹ Six days you shall labor and do all your work, ¹⁰ but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. ¹¹ For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” Exodus 20:8-11

It’s the longest commandment and the only one with a reason to do it, and that’s because God did it.

When I was a kid, we weren’t allowed to go to the shops on Sundays, I never understood why, it was just that way. Learning about the Sabbath 50 years on, I kinda get it now.

No one was allowed to work for one day a week. I want you to imagine what our world would be like if everyone just stopped! Of course, shops used to be closed on Sundays – no one could shop, no one could shop! The UK stopped and probably had a much more relaxing day than they do now because of that. Sundays don’t work great for Christians of course because of church commitment which I am fully supportive of – don’t be taking a Sabbath on a Sunday! I’m not saying that.

Comer’s great description is this: Sabbath is meant to be a day when you stop and rest. Switch your phone off and do something for 24 hours that is either rest or worship and that fills your joy shelf up! (My paraphrase) If you’re not sure what the difference is between a day off and a Sabbath, let me give you an example that happened to us recently that convinced me of the difference!

We went out in the car to a shopping centre to look for something we needed to buy. On our way there, John was on hold to HMRC – do I need to comment any more on the ‘stress’ that was causing – can you hear the tune they play for 3 hours before they answer the call? You have to work your self up to be ready to make that phone call. As we pulled into the car park, our car decided to break down! Thankfully it was there and not on the roads we’d been driving along. So, that meant another call to the RAC and a 6 hour wait all while sorting out an issue with the tax people! John and I rarely get stressed and we weren’t really stressed during this time because we’ve learned to be a peace, whatever is going on, BUT, this was definitely a day off and NOT a Sabbath.

If we’d taken a proper Sabbath as I’m beginning to learn, we wouldn’t have gone shopping or had the phone on. We’d have stopped for 24 hours and none of the above stress would have happened. Can you see the difference?

A day off is where you go shopping either on line or physically, you deal with the bank, the tax man, amazon, etc…On a Sabbath, you rest or worship. And a Sabbath will look differently for everyone.

Remember,

“Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” Mark 2:27

So, we’re not going to all do the same like the Israelites did, although Jewish communities today still practice the Sabbath in all the traditional ways and something about that is very attractive in the sense that they are all doing it together as a community, but the flip side is, it can turn into religion rather than relationship with Jesus and something that is done because you have to rather than you want to.

I’m skimming the surface of this great subject but it does seem to be raising its head in a number of different sources, so maybe God is wanting to get our attention. Apparently, something like, the difference between working for 55 hours and 65 hours a week is nothing as far as productivity is concerned, they wield the same results. That’s kind of like the difference between working 6 days a week compared to 7. Maybe God was right? Shocker!

I don’t know what your week looks like, and you might be saying, ‘I don’t have time for a Sabbath’. If that’s true, and I would question it because of God, then take half a Sabbath. Get your kids involved, our daughter and son-in-law are months ahead of us on practicing the Sabbath and they have a 5 and 3 year old and a 5 month old – it’s doable or God wouldn’t have said or done it. Don’t know where to start? switch your phone off for half a day (when was the last time you switched your phone off?) and don’t buy anything! It will set you free. John and I have only done one full Sabbath in the last few weeks but I know we want and need to make it a regular part of our week. I know we will function better because of it.

If you want to understand more I can’t recommend John Mark Comer’s book enough – ‘The Ruthless elimination of Hurry’

Until next time,

D x

It’s Thursday the 8th June, 7.00am. We are waking up to the story that 100 people have now come forward to say that Mike Pilavachi abused them. When John told me this, I said, ‘I have no words’

I sat down with a heavy heart and began my quiet time (another discipline that is being quashed by some – but that’s another blog!) but I couldn’t fully concentrate as I knew I had to write. I prayed for Mike, despite the allegations, and other things, did my Bible readings which I love to do and now I am at my Ipad to say this….

If we dismiss the Billy Graham rule which basically says, don’t be alone with a person of the opposite sex who isn’t your partner, (maybe we should add the same sex in today’s society? The Billy Graham rule plus!), I believe we will do so at our peril.

I can almost feel the eye rolls of some, but hear me out.

It doesn’t really matter much now whether all the stories about Mike Pilavachi are true or not. I’m pretty sure some will be but others won’t. If he’d have had strong boundaries in place – however silly they may have looked, and a team who weren’t afraid to call him out, he might not be in the predicament he finds himself in today.

John & I have been in ministry for over 30 years and I’m not even sure why we made the decisions we made, but make them we did and we’ve almost never been in those situations and if we ever were, it was an emergency situation. We never counsel the opposite sex on our own and we don’t get in cars on our own with members of the opposite sex.

If you make it a principle, you’re covered. It’s not personal to the people around you, it’s a protection. Boundaries are there to protect us. Let’s take a scenario. You regularly get in cars or offices with people of the opposite sex, no problem, everything’s great. One day, one or two of these people fall out with you, all they have to say is, ‘they touched me inappropriately’, ‘they bullied me’, ‘they spoke inappropriately to me’ and we don’t have a leg to stand on.

Or what about these scenarios, ‘I wish my partner laughed at my jokes like you do’ ‘I wish my partner got the vision of the church like you’ ‘you look good today pastor’ – ‘my partner never tells me that’ seems innocent? The devil is writing it all down, making a list, checking it twice until an appropriate time to let it out.

At this point, we’ve handed over the pencil of our story to the enemy who doesn’t care one bit if it’s not true. It just takes one.

Whereas if policy is in place, the devil can’t write this story because he has nowhere to go. The enemy has accused John and myself of other things, but he can’t get us on this, why? Because we’ve never given him the pencil.

99 times out of a hundred could be just fine. You feel safe, they feel safe – then, wham. We underestimate the schemes of the devil. He is the accuser and he hates us.

The Chinese Bamboo plant is a great teacher. You plant this in the ground and for 5 years you see no progress whatsoever. No shoot coming through at all. You water it, nothing, you feed it, nothing. Then in year six it sprouts 90 ft in just 6 weeks.

Don’t think for one minute that you’ll get away with it.

The enemy of our souls is very patient. He is also the father of lies.

Genesis 4:7 says this, ‘If you do what is right, will you not be accepted, if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door, it desires to have you, but you must master it.’

The abolishing of the Billy Graham Rule (plus) is creeping in, not sure why, maybe for equality, human rights, it’s old fashioned. Whatever the reason, I end how I started, if we do this, we do so at our peril. And ‘the white envelopes’ which are now emails, informing us a colleague has fallen, will increase.

Let’s wise up and not give the devil a foothold in this area.

Until next time,

D x