We’re now entering into the final week of Advent, Christmas is almost upon us. In this Advent series so far we’ve looked at the shalom, peace of God, how we can discover God right where we are amongst us, and about grace. Today, as I draw the series to a close, I want to talk about joy.

When my mum died, I felt immense pain, grief and sorrow. I was angry, I was upset, I was hurting deep down. It was one of the worst moments of my life. For a long time I wanted to go back in time and do something to stop it happening.

But as I started to process this grief – through prayer, counselling, talking to friends and hearing memories of her, remember the good things about her,  things began to change.

I reflected too that as a Christian she wasn’t completely gone, and that I would see her again.

This year, eleven years after it happened, I looked back and saw all the good that God brought through that pain, the transformation that took place in me as a result of it, and I began to see that it was part of the plan for her to die when she did, that God knew it would happen then and planned for it, that it was her time to die, I felt something deep inside – something I feel now every time I think of her.

Joy.  (more…)

I’ve been overwhelmed with the response to last weeks first part of this abstinence series. It’s such an important subject and I firmly believe that it’s important we discuss these things. Last week I talked about the concept and importance of abstinence before marriage and it’s Biblical basis.

In part two today I wanted to focus on the reality, rather than simply the ideal. I didn’t and don’t want to present abstinence before marriage as some kind of guarantee of success in marriage.

However much I’d like to, the reality is that it doesn’t always turn out that way. I know Christians who have been abstinent before marriage but the marriage still hasn’t worked out. Others have been abused sexually before marriage.

We live in a less than perfect world and, as all of us know, it often doesn’t work out how we plan. (more…)

Time passes so quickly. It hardly seems to be December, yet we are already two weeks into Advent, coming into our third week. Having spoken of shalom, the peace of God on the blog already this advent, and also about how we need to embrace the God who is all around us right here, right now, it seems right today to speak about grace.

I won’t pretend for one moment I can answer all the questions all of us have around this subject, or cover it wholly and completely in one short blog post. But I want to at least have a worthy examination of the subject.

What do you think of when you think of grace? Personally, I think of undeserved merit. Something given without thought of reward, without condition. We talk of people in some situations showing us grace, or being gracious toward us or when faced with difficult circumstances.

Grace is often talked about as a quality we display in certain situations or circumstances – a quality some people possess, and some don’t.

In other words, a specific type of personality.

The thing is, I don’t believe that grace is simply a quality that some possess and others don’t – not in terms of a personality trait.

No. I believe true grace is very different, much greater than that.

Read the quote below: (more…)

This weekend is the first of Advent. Can you believe it, still November and it’s advent already? Christmas within touching distance. It’s amazing how time flies isn’t it? Hardly feels that long ago since the start of the year, and advent is here already.

Personally, I love advent, largely because thus far, in its truest meaning, it’s been spared from the corruption of consumerism. As Christians we can still take this time and really focus on the heart of the Christmas message, the coming of Christ. Consumerism has it’s own ‘advent’ I grant you, with advent calendars and present buying, but the actual heart of advent has escaped the consumer trap.

Advent, for me, is a time of both preparation and remembrance.

Preparation, as we prepare for the coming of Jesus, we start to ponder anew the meaning of His coming and our own response to that.

Remembrance, because we begin to remember his coming and it’s implications for us and the world around us, and we begin to look back over the past year and see what God has been doing in our own lives.

Often it’s good at those times it’s good to stop and reflect. So during this advent, I’m hoping to write a few blog posts on some of the themes and issues we encounter at this time of year.

First, I want to look at the the theme of peace – or rather, shalom. (more…)

There’s been a lot of debate and discussion on the role of women on the Twitter/blogosphere recently, most of it healthy. All the time as I have been reading – and there have been excellent posts in the last week by both Vicky Beeching and Anna Blanch on this subject, amongst others, and indeed I myself posted on the Biblical role of women earlier in the week.

But to me there was something missing.

I felt a man’s perspective on gender issues was just not there. You see, I think we should all absolutely be championing women in leadership, and that the Bible is pro-women, and it’s absolutely right that women find their voice. I made that clear in my post earlier this week, with some theological background.

I just know, from my own experience as a man, that one danger of going to far with feminism can be that men no longer know what it is to be a man. They grow up without a clear definition of masculinity. We are told to ‘get in touch with our feminine side’, and then criticised for not being ‘man’ enough, all the time trying to be men and be positive about masculinity, without being anti-women or sexist in any way.

I think this is a serious problem, especially in church where people have different perceptions of the role of both men and women. I’m an egalitarian, I believe the question isn’t gender when it comes to leadership and teaching, it’s about character, gifting and calling. If you have those, then your gender, although part of who you are, is not relevant.

Your gender should never preclude you from any role.  (more…)

Earlier this week I posted a short blog post promoting a new book of Advent reflections I’ve contributed to. But even before beginning writing the blog, I felt an inner conflict. A conflict I’m sure many of the creatives reading – and many more of us – have experienced at some point or other.

A conflict between wanting to share something I’d helped create with people, in order to help bless them – because I genuinely believe the book can and will do that in so many ways – and my own pride and ego, which is desperately wanting people to read it and give me great responses to boost my confidence.

It’s a conflict between healthy ambition and selfish ambition.

A conflict between that part of me that wants to honour God with what I create and see it help others in their walk with Him, and my own ego which wants success for selfish reasons.

It’s also about my own insecurities – that I can’t quite believe that I have had even moderate success at something I love doing and might actually have a gift for, because some part of me just won’t accept that I can be successful, or that God might actually have made me for a purpose and that this might a pointer to what that might be.

Promoting something you’re a part of or have helped create feels a bit selfish, and not very Christian – and certainly, it’s very tempting, especially in the self-centered ‘i-culture’ we live in, to simply promote things for those reasons.

We all want to be loved, and something we often do is look for that in people, rather than simply embracing the unconditional love & grace of God, which doesn’t value us according to our achievements, but sees us in all our nakedness, all our fear, doubt and all our sin – as well as our achievement – and loves us anyway.

A love that would love the same if we lived our whole lives and achieved nothing and got it all wrong every single moment.  (more…)

Last time I talked about Steve Jobs, about the process of death and resurrection and how in order to live a full, free live in tune with the way of Jesus, that we need to learn how to embrace the process of death and resurrection in order to truly live.

Today I want to take that discussion on. Because if this process of death and resurrection is true for us in our own individual faith journey, then it is certainly true for us as a church – a community of believers worldwide, and individual churches – and even possibly true of religion and maybe Christianity itself.

I’ve never been a fan of religion. To me it always seemed like a moral version of politics. The Oxford definition of religion is:

“the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power , especially a personal God or gods; a particular system of faith and worship ; a pursuit or interest followed with great devotion”

Contrast that with the unofficial definition of it in the picture above:

‘An organised system  or institution of belief based upon the traditions of men instead of the pursuit of friendship with God – or the act of playing church, exchanging internal truths for external performance, substituting spiritual realities with carnal rituals’

I wonder, which of those is truly most accurate about the Christian religion and what the church of Jesus looks like today? Many would say there’s a bit of both, others would point largely to the latter one and still others would ignore and disregard the latter one as cynical and dismiss it completely. Such is human nature.  The real question is, does the church today and the Christian religion accurately reflect what Jesus originally intended – and what are we willing to do to ensure we continue to be faithful to the way of Jesus? (more…)

“Death is the destination we all share. No one has escaped it.  And that is as is should be, because death is very likely the very best invention of life. It’s life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new” – Steve Jobs, 2005

How many of you have ever had a problem with an app on your smartphone or i-pad or similar? What’s one of the most often used ways of dealing with it? Yep, delete the app and reinstall it. It worked the other day for my hotmail app on my i-phone, and has worked several times. How often when your computer or electronic device seems to crash or freeze, or not be working, is the response to turn it off and on again? And it works. So often, in fact, more often than not.

It’s truly phenomenal.

I have no idea why it works that way – but it does seem to doesn’t it?  Essentially you need to let the machine or phone app die, in order for it to live again and achieve it’s full function.

Which reveals a process fundamental to all life, and at the heart of the way of Jesus.

Death – followed by resurrection.

Seeds fall to the ground and die, giving birth to plants, flowers, trees – some of which bear fruit for us to live. Even vegetarians are eating something which has died, because fruit has to die in order for us to eat it. Meat, we all know, came from a living being, which had to die in order for us to enjoy the meat.

Even in drink, something has to die in order for us to have fruit juice, beer or wine. These are all things which provide us with life. Indeed, the thing that often makes the soil good for growing food is manure, which is dead waste from animals – and often the more recent it died, the more fertile it is.

It’s just everywhere

Which brings us neatly to the quote at the top by the late Steve Jobs (pictured), who passed away only this month. I think he had it spot on when it came to assessing this topic, even though he may not have realised it, and indeed as a muslim would probably not have encountered it as Christians would have.

What he spoke about was truth.  (more…)

I seem to have developed a habit of wrestling with God.

It sounds like a ridiculous idea on paper, perfectly preposterous. A six foot tall marginally overweight man against the creator of the universe isn’t very good odds is it?

But I seem to be doing it a lot more lately. I have spoken about how we need to acknowledge the battle in order to grow in intimacy with God, and deal with the issues behind the battle. This post is more about going the process of beyond the battle into the reasons for it. You see this battle is not a one-off that happens and then it’s done. It’s an ongoing battle. But occasionally you have significant ones – and I’ve had one recently.

One habit I have developed over the years – and I’m not sure disclosing this is going to make me come across so well – is when I’m waiting for a train or bus, and away from the majority of people, I tend to pray under my breath. Not quite loud enough for anyone to hear clearly, but not quite enough that no one will hear. I have a conversation with God.

I’m pretty sure if I did it loud enough and often enough in front of the same people I’d soon be moved off to the local mental asylum, but I’m smart enough to keep it quiet so that people don’t hear too much – and of course often I play the new trick crazy people use, by sticking an earpiece in my ear so it looks like I’m talking on the phone to someone.

Which actually isn’t too far away from the truth, in all truth. I’m talking to God. Occasionally I give Him some space to reply, and open my mind up to hear what His response might be.

I might be the only person that does this, I don’t know. I’ve done this since I was a teenager. I’ve always been a bit of loner to be honest, very shy and content in my own company. (My good friends are laughing right now, wondering where that person has been all these years…).

In all seriousness though, when I was a teenager getting bullied at school and unable to talk to my parents about my problems, as they were too busy with theirs, God was actually the only person I could talk to. (more…)

“James, you look like you’re fighting against yourself all the time.”

I was told this once by a friend in my home group. I knew the moment he said it – and beforehand in all honesty – it was true. I seem to be fighting with myself a lot at the moment.

Someone said to me the other night that as I was a man I needed to learn to think more, especially when entertaining women, as her husband didn’t know the date of their wedding anniversary.

I argued back that not all men are bad at thinking. Some of us – like me – think way too much.

It’s not up for debate. Honestly, I have lost count of the number of times people have said to me I over-think things and I need to slow down and relax. Admittedly, I do need to slow down and relax sometimes – a sabbath for me definitely will involve no deep thinking, no writing and no stimulus to deep thinking – films like The Matrix are definitely out.

But one of the results of being a deep thinker is over-thinking, and being very self-aware. I notice that in my head I know all the right things, even the deeper arguments and the uncomfortable questions, beyond the normal, but that something in my gut is saying no, and not happy about what this means. Something in my gut is just not wanting to join in, is angry about how his life is and frustrated with God, and no great words are going to change that.

Because of this I have noticed in my journey with God I have often found myself fighting with myself – and with God, trying to come to some place of peace and wholeness. (more…)