We need a new God

Imagine a day without the internet or your cell phone? These two technological advances have literally changed everything we do on planet earth today and I often compare these small, but profound discoveries to the new perspective I have of God. New revelations and discoveries about His true nature and character have caused such a shift in my thinking and living that it feels like I met a new God!

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us,” A.W. Tozer, an influential American pastor and author once said. He went onto say,

“Were we able to extract from any man a complete answer to the question, ‘What comes into your mind when you think about God?’ we might predict with certainty the spiritual future of that man.”

After 40 years of journeying with Jesus, I continue to discover facets of His nature and character that intrigue and inspire me. I developed most of my thoughts about God during my young, formative years. Unfortunately, I remained committed to following my idea of Him, but not to following the reality of Him—there is a big difference. Those initial ideas confined God to my box, making Him comfortable and controllable—just big enough for me to handle. Not only had I put Him in a box, but also, I had wrapped this box in neat, pretty paper, with a beautiful bow and then labelled it. If you have known God for any length of time, you too, would have discovered that He doesn’t like to be contained in any box, even if it’s wrapped with pretty paper! He also doesn’t like to be labelled according to our idea of who He is. Time came for me to think of God in a new way. In fact, I came to a point where I needed a revelation of this new God. I believe many of us need a new perspective of God; one who lives outside the limits of our finite thinking. I often use the phrase, “Think outside the box” to challenge my sons and daughters. 

Many of us are like a mental picture I had several years ago, of a sheep attempting to pass through a barbed wire fence. Halfway through, it got caught in the wire with its back legs stuck in the old pasture and its front resting in the new pasture. My opinion is that most of us want to move to the spacious, new pasture, but we keep getting stuck in our old ideas and religious thinking. A verse which has challenged me is, Proverbs 23:7a, “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.” Meaning that, whatever we think about God will influence our actions and attitudes.

(Taken from the book "The Treasure Within" by Kathy Gooch)

Worth Remembering! (Part 2)

The best cure for the common case of criticizing is remembering from whence we came! I believe the reason we criticize or make judgments is because we have forgotten who we have been to Jesus (or still are!). For the most part, the reason we initially enter into a relationship with Christ is because we recognize our sin, and not wanting to continue walking a road that leads to death, we receive the only One who can save us. We’re grateful. Gratefulness has us doing what we believe is right in order to please the One who saved us. It seems there is a slow fade into compromise and complacency, and before we know it, we’re living not remembering what we’ve been saved from and Who saved us. Life is now about us. When we are the centre of our world then all of a sudden we are the experts at how and what to do in any given situation. Hence, criticism and judgment are commonplace. It’s like we want to be remembered and honoured for our contribution. It’s like we want to be someone’s saviour. 

A character in the Bible who comes to mind is Mordecai, the cousin of Esther. This man overheard two of the palace workers plotting to kill the king. He forwarded the message to Esther who in turn told the king. Although Esther had told the king that it was Mordecai who had discovered the plot, the king neglected to honour Mordecai privately or publicly. This would have been a perfect opportunity for Mordecai to criticize and judge or even to think of himself as the king’s saviour. Instead, he graciously and humbly continued performing his duties. Of course, Haman didn’t think he was either gracious or humble as he refused to bow to him. Mordecai was more concerned with the honour of his God than his own. Once he heard the news that the Jews were to be annihilated, he challenged Esther to use her God-given position to intervene. Mordecai’s thoughts weren’t centred on himself and the honour that wasn’t paid to him for saving the king’s life. He was remembering where he came from – the rock from which he was hewn – Abraham. The Jews were his people and they needed a Saviour. God did turn everything around, and although the decree to annihilate the Jews couldn’t be reversed, they were given permission to defend themselves against their enemies. 

Was Mordecai remembered? Yes, he was, and honoured by the king for his part in saving his life. On top of that, he was given a second-in-command position in the king’s palace. 

It’s true, not all stories turn out this way. Not all people are remembered and honoured at the end of the day. I don’t believe Mordecai was looking to be remembered. For whatever reason, God chose to have the king remember him and subsequently honour him. What happens when we aren’t remembered for our contributions? Do we quickly turn to criticism or judgment? Or do we quickly turn to God - grateful that He chose us to serve Him and His people? I remember my spiritual mum saying that if you aren’t remembered and honoured here on earth, then you will be in heaven. Where would you rather be remembered – here on earth? Or in heaven? 

What is worth remembering? That you were lost sheep with no idea who you were or where you were going. Now you’re named and kept for good by the Shepherd of your souls       (I Peter 2:25 The Message).

Worth Remembering! (Part 1)

I couldn’t help but notice the awkward silence. Probably because I was the one who created it. I came to the end of the worship song that I was leading my outreach team in, and we waited in silence. This one wasn’t the awkward one, but just silence. Then I posed a question, “Is there anyone who has a prayer they want to pray out?” Silence. Then my assistant leader said she sensed there was someone who needed to release a prayer. This is when the silence became awkward. I wanted to be a good leader and let the students have a chance to hear God’s voice and respond accordingly. The problem was that no one was responding. During our time of worship, as I strummed the guitar, I was looking at the pictures on the church wall of William Carey, and other missionaries. The words that ran through my mind were, “Remember the blood of the martyrs.” Still, no one was responding. I remembered what had passed through my mind previously, and not because I believed I had the prayer to pray, but rather to break the awkward silence, I voiced my thoughts into a prayer concerning the missionaries who had come to that nation and given their lives. 

We finished our time and went about preparing for evangelism in the afternoon. As usual our host picked us up, but told us we wouldn’t be doing our usual dramas, testimonies and messages in the villages, but rather, he was taking us to the village of his aunt who had just died. There we would join his relatives in their mourning. We arrived at the village and were ushered into a tiny, dark, smoke-filled room where we sat on the floor and waited for our host to share with us. The villagers had congregated outside the hut and were peering through the windows to catch a glimpse of this team of foreign, white faces. The host proceeded to tell us that 50 years previous, two missionary ladies had come to the home of his aunt and shared the gospel to his relatives. After that, half his family decided to follow Christianity, and half Islam. This particular aunt and her family had become Muslims. The prayer I had prayed that morning came racing back to my mind and my assistant leader looked at me saying, “Remember the prayer you prayed.” My heart started to pound and I knew God wanted to say something through me. I asked our host to interpret. In tears, I proceeded to share with the family and the onlookers what had transpired in the morning. I explained that just as God sent those two missionary ladies to them 50 years ago with the message of salvation, He had sent us missionaries to share the same good news, and give them another chance to receive His gift. I wasn’t the only one crying at this point. Although I left the village not knowing if any responded, or would respond to the message, I left knowing that this was God’s way of remembering the blood of the martyrs and those missionaries whose steps I was walking in. 

Today is National Youth Day in South Africa. Most see it only as a public holiday, many don’t know why. This is a day when we are to remember those students who lost their lives protesting against the apartheid government who were introducing Afrikaans as the medium of instruction in their schools. This was deeply resented by the students as Afrikaans was considered the language of the oppressors. On June 16, 1976 an estimated 20,000 high school students in the township of Soweto took part in the protests, only to be gunned down by the police, leaving hundreds dead and thousands injured. The freedom we are reaping in this nation 38 years later is because those students, and many others like them, sowed their lives. 

This is worth remembering!

Mentoring Unawares (Part 2)

Spoken and written words have power - no doubt about it. The scary part is that we give our permission, or let so many voices into our lives, without even realizing it. Before you know it they have influenced or “mentored you unawares.” Let’s get down to some nitty-gritties of what this could possibly look like. I am a user of WhatsApp, but as I shared in my blog posts at the beginning of this year, I don’t want to be an abuser of it, nor let it use me. Having made a conscious decision for it not to be the first “words” I read in the morning, I can now see the influence those words were having on my life. Since getting my priorities right and spending more time in “The Word” I can now compare what I was communicating and reading over the WhatsApp forum and generalize it as ambiguous, godless, fruitless and potentially hurtful chatter. Have you even thought about the name you use, your status or profile picture and what truths or lies you are communicating through them? Or the “mentoring unawares” you are doing? 

For me the answer is not to obliterate the forum and revert to phone calls and face to face encounters, because those are not always possible in this highly transient world. Rather, it is to harness this potentially wild animal and bring it under the control of the rider – or more aptly, the writer. 

Last week I shared in brief the story of Oswald Chambers, the author of my favourite devotional, “My Utmost for His Highest.” Perhaps because I’ve written a book and have started these blogs (neither of which I aspired to do) I am more aware of the mentoring I’m doing in written form. Too many times I’ve wanted to stop speaking or writing, especially when I didn’t see noted changes in the lives of those I was sharing truths with. As far as I was concerned my words weren’t taking root and were being blown away like the wind, so why bother. I remember saying this to God on one occasion asking Him what I was meant to do. He spoke very clearly the verse from Ecclesiastes 11:1, “Cast your bread upon the waters. For you will find it after many days.” In this case my bread were the words, the time, the treasures that I was casting out into the hearts and lives of these young adults. 

God’s encouragement and mandate was for me to continue casting my bread out into the open waters, never knowing who in the end would grab and eat it and benefit from its nutrients. What is so interesting is that just after I received this verse from God I was reading the foreword to my version of “My Utmost for His Highest.” Here it describes how Oswald’s wife, Biddy, wrote a letter about a friend whose life was radically changed after reading Oswald’s sermon notes. Biddy goes onto write, “It confirms me so much in the assurance I have that I am to go on getting everything I can printed. It will be like casting bread upon the waters and we’ll know someday all it meant in people’s lives.” 

Little did Biddy know that over 50 years after the devotional’s first publication a 23 year old woman would begin to eat the bread that she cast, and over 20 years later that same woman would be casting out the revelations received to those following her. Long after Oswald’s death, his life is still speaking. There is something to be said in that.

All of us are mentoring someone unawares – by our words, our actions, our lack of words, our lack of actions. Are we even considering what kind of message we are sending? Will it be a message that will reverberate long after we are dead? Remember, nothing should stop with us! 

Mentoring Unawares (Part 1)

I was sitting on a plane recently and after takeoff noticed a man, maybe in his mid 30’s, flip open his laptop and begin to watch a sitcom. He must have downloaded them onto his computer and decided this was as good a time as any to watch them, or possibly get caught up on what he had previously missed. For some reason the phrase “vicarious living” came to my mind. Perhaps I was wondering if this man, amongst millions of others who are watching sitcoms, series and soaps, are really using someone else’s experience as their own. Since then I’ve been thinking about how much people we don’t even know influence us. Like a character on a TV programme we regularly watch, the author of books we read, the singers whose songs we listen to. My mind even wondered if those we interact with over social network forums, some we know and some we don’t, are influencing us to the degree that without our asking or without their agreeing they have become our mentors? 

For me this isn’t such a scary thought, as I am very aware of who I allow into my world as an influence. I wasn’t always so intuitive and found myself “vicariously living” through the characters on many sitcoms, series and soaps. The characters and lives they lived on those shows were “mentoring unawares.” Taking into account I’m referring to over 30 years ago, for the most part, those mentors I watched on screen were positive ones. Also, because I grew up during the pre-social networking and online age I didn’t have hundreds of unabated written voices vying to influence me in their direction. 

In 1986 I was introduced to a daily devotional called “My Utmost for His Highest” by Oswald Chambers. Oswald was born in Scotland in 1874. He was not famous at all during his lifetime. He trained for Christian ministry and later opened a Bible Training College. His wife would sit at the back and record his messages, teaching and devotionals verbatim in shorthand (you younger ones may need to google what that is!). When World War 1 broke out in 1914, he, his wife and young daughter went to Egypt to serve the troops both practically and spiritually. After an emergency appendectomy Oswald died at the age of 43. A life cut short – or so it would seem. His wife, Biddy, and daughter remained in Egypt and happened to send one of Oswald’s sermons as a Christmas gift to the troops. This snowballed into a monthly printing that was sent to thousands of troops. Biddy realized that this was God’s assignment for her - giving her husband’s words to the world in written form.

“My Utmost for His Highest” was first published in 1927. It has continuously been in print and has sold millions of copies in forty different languages. As I did my reading the other day I realized that Oswald Chambers has been “mentoring me unawares” for the past 28 years. Those beginning years of reading his devotional were filled with some profound truths. I was “vicariously living” my life through him. I can now say that after all those years of praying for the depth of relationship he had with the Lord, I am finally living it experientially, not just vicariously.