Our lives are all a journey aren’t they?

Like many journeys, along the way we often get disruptions – like death, end of a relationship, people moving away, illness – which are almost forced upon us. We don’t choose them, they simply come upon us when we least expect them, and nothing at all can prepare us for them. They are painful, overwhelming, emotional and a real struggle.

Valley experiences. Losing my mother was one of those for me. You may be in your own one right now.

But there are other valleys we walk too. The ones we choose.

Jesus chose a valley when He chose the cross. He didn’t have to do it, it wasn’t forced upon Him, it wasn’t a complete shock – and He could have escaped it.

He chose instead to surrender Himself completely to it – and fortunate for us that He did.

About 14 months ago I was sitting in a pub with a good friend. We were talking and one of the matters that seemed to come up was the issue of me trusting God. Those who know me well know that trust is always a struggle for me, because of my background being bullied, coming from a broken home and losing a parent at young age.

But this was God. (more…)

For so much of my life I’ve tried to control everything. Relationships, work, creativity, circumstances.

Even my faith.

Yes, I’ve tried to control God.

Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it? On the face of it it sounds patently absurd, no matter what your view of God is like, when you hear the term ‘God’ you don’t think of a being you can control. The whole idea is impossible.

But I’ve tried to do it nevertheless. There are several cunning ways my soul comes up with to do this, many of which I do without even making a conscious decision to do so.

First, I can get angry with God and make demands and accusations of Him, which are patently ridiculous and make assumptions about His character which in reality I know aren’t true.

Second, I don’t give Him a chance to respond. I don’t spend enough time listening to Him to hear what He has to say in response.

Third, I restrict God to human boundaries – I treat Him like He’s human and sees things from my limited perspective. This above all is something that it’s so easy to do that I often don’t realise I’m doing it. (more…)

Depeche Mode once recorded the song, ‘Enjoy the Silence’ – a great tune. But how much do we ‘enjoy silence’?

In my experience silence is something that can be, certainly at first, very uncomfortable.

Awkward.

Strange.

Thoughts rush through our mind, things from within. You suddenly remember things you had to do, errands you had to run, things you need to buy, places you need to be.

As silence wraps its cloak around you, your mind begins to churn out things just to fill the gaps.

Because silence exposes us.

It strips us bare.

It makes us naked. (more…)

Lent is upon us. It’s a time when we decide to give things up, to stop doing things, make a sacrifice for God. I’m giving up chocolate and chips, and limiting myself to one dvd a week for Lent.

So why do we give things up for Lent?

Do we do it because it’s ‘the thing to do’, or do we have a deeper motivation? This is the question I was confronted with in preparation for Lent. Giving up chocolate and chips is fine, but why am I doing this, what it’s purpose? What positive response does it lead to?

The reason we give up things for Lent is meant to be to deny ourselves, to prepare ourselves for Easter and the death and resurrection of Jesus. To make a small sacrifice in order to remember and connect with the huge sacrifice Jesus made for us.

But there’s more to Lent than simply giving things up. It’s also about taking positive action.

When we choose what we are going to do for Lent, there has to be some kind of purpose to it. We need to be thinking about positive action that we take.

That’s because Lent is not just about giving things up, but taking positive steps in our faith.  Making decisions not just to give things up, but to take positive action that may involve sacrifice and giving something up, but will ultimately help us grow in our relationship with God. (more…)

Romance. We all love it don’t we? This week was Valentine’s Day – which our consumer society has made a day about romance (I don’t say love, deliberately…if only it were a day about real love) – and there’s nothing like a great romantic story.

Many of us daydream about our own (it’s okay, you can admit it) – and when we’re fed such a diet of rom-coms and Hollywood endings, it’s very easy to get sucked into thinking this is normal.

But this romanticism isn’t something we apply simply to relationships.

It can be easy to over-romanticise every area of our lives – work, relationships, creativity, and of course the supernatural  – and these romantic films certainly encourage this view. It’s so easy, that we can do it without even realising.

For example, I could easily romanticise my writing and creativity.

The romantic in me would simply quit my job, finish my book and then sell it to a publisher. Then of course there’d be the happy ending to the story when it sold millions and millions of copies and was a roaring success.  (more…)

Regular readers will have seen part 1 of my interview with writer and blogger Jeff Goins earlier in the week, where we discussed his journey so far, his new book and the difference between writing a book and writing a blog. Today we move on to discuss the creative process overall and how Jeff experiences that. So here goes.

James Prescott:Jeff, what have been your biggest struggles overall when it comes to creativity – not just on your book, but overall, and how have you dealt with them?

Jeff Goins: Yeah, I definitely appreciate what that struggle is. The biggest struggle I feel and experience as a creative person is finding my harmony in the tension of what Seth Godin calls ‘shipping’, getting your art out there to the world, and getting it to good enough.

I tend to have these two opposing extremes when it comes to my emotions. One side is perfectionism, like nothing feels good enough, and that’s what keeps me working on something for months and months and years and never sharing it with a soul, because I’m afraid – of failure and what people would think, and there is something holding me back from sharing this with the world.   (more…)

As a follower of Jesus, it would have been irresponsible to conclude this series on masculinity without discussing how the life of Jesus should influence our attitudes to masculinity, and indeed, femininity as well.

It’s a theme that will continue in some of my posts on a more irregular basis in future – I hope to have another guest poster posting on it soon – as it’s a subject I’m passionate about, that’s very important to our discipleship journey.

I find it very frustrating when some pastors (and I won’t name names, but most of you will know the ones I mean) come out and say Jesus had to be this this tough guy who could beat someone up.

But it’s just as frustrating when he’s portrayed as some wimpy loser, a total walkover, man in a dress. The Jesus-is-my-boyfriend, all-smiles ‘nice guy’. The picture sums this image up perfectly.

Frankly, neither version of Jesus seems manly, neither is the kind of man I want to be and neither is a Jesus I can follow.

Jesus wasn’t simply a ‘tough guy’ who would even consider beating someone up and put violence first, nor was He a total pansy, wimp and a walkover, all smiles all the time – and neither are what, in my eyes, a real man should be.

(more…)

After writing a lot on relationships and the role of women in the last few months, I felt it appropriate to share a little on the issue of masculinity. So in the next few weeks we’re going to be having a series here on this issue – including a guest post next week, with the female perspective on masculinity.

When writing on masculinity there’s always a danger that you can be accused of being under-qualified. In the church even more so – as a single man in his 30’s it can be easy, both culturally and in a church context, to be seen as not a ‘real’ man because I’m not married.

This kind of sums up the point I want to discuss – that a lot of what we have been reliably informed is what makes a man a ‘real man’ is not actually Biblical, but just cultural traditions which have come through misinterpretations and misunderstandings of scripture.

This post covers both singleness and masculinity – partially because so often the subjects are linked, especially in a church context and partially because that’s largely my experience – often I’ve felt that because of my singleness, that somehow I’m not a real man, not as masculine as married men – that is partly my perception, but also partly down to the attitudes and language of some people I have met or heard speak on the subject. (more…)

I have spoken a lot this past 12 months of the process of death and resurrection. Usually, what comes out in my writing is a reflection of my own journey, and this past year, 2011, has been one where this reality of this truth has been manifest in my own life.

Now you may think, entering into a new year, that death isn’t exactly the best place to start, especially after we’ve just celebrated the birth of Jesus. But paradoxically, I believe death is actually the very best place to begin if we’re to experience a year of transformation and growth.

I have experienced death – and of course grief, something I will speak of in a future post – first hand. I lost my mother when I was 23.

It wasn’t actually my first experience of grief, as I’d lost grandparents before. But it was the first time a person in my direct family or network, who I had a very close relationship to, had passed away. It wasn’t even the biggest shock. My mum had suffered from asthma for years and we had all come to accept that the asthma would eventually claim her life – but none of us had really expected it so soon.

But death is something that wakes us up to who we are – and by death I don’t merely mean facing our own, or others, or going through grief. I mean experiencing the emotion, the power and ultimately, the process, of death in our own lives.

You see death is the engine room of life. (more…)

Christmas has now been and gone. It’s less than a week and we’ll be into the new year – which is only two months away from my next birthday.

It’s a time where you naturally come to reflect on what God has been doing in you in the past year, what might lie ahead in the year to come and begin to get some perspective on things. It’s a natural process and one I tend to go through in the last couple of months of every year.

It’s strange, looking back, just what God has been doing. To be honest, it’s nothing like I expected at the beginning of the year. I realise now looking back, that I had all these plans of what God was going to do this year, how I was going to grow, what was going to happen.

It hasn’t happened anything like I planned – and I thank God for that.

One thing that I am feeling overwhelmingly right now though, at the end of the year, is thankfulness.

I have seen people I love pass on to be with Jesus this year. I have seen good friends lose their jobs, homes or in some cases loved ones. All this has happened in my immediate community, and impacted my world. I have been praying this year for people to find jobs, find homes and for God’s comfort in their grief. I have also had the privilege of seeing people I care for make a public commitment to Christ and be baptised, which has been a source of great joy.

At the same time, God has been taking me on a journey inside myself, into my own heart. He’s been exposing truths about me – some I knew existed, some I didn’t, and it hasn’t been pretty.  (more…)