Endings are just new beginnings

 I just like this shot :-)  Sichtweise, Stern.de

Well, that's it.  No more modal verbs, hazardous passive constructions, brain-bending sessions on the subjunctive or lush literature.  My degree is over and with it four years of university life.

What can I say?  Feelings are mixed.  While it's great to have exam stress finally over and to look forward to less insomnia-filled nights, it's also quite tragic to think that yet another stage in life is at an end.  There's been times over the last few months where I've really struggled to keep going, physically as much as spiritually.  Sundays have been a real refuge, a time for blowing of steam in some cases.  Experiencing God's grace and especially that peace which surpasses all understanding has taught me what it means to be continually thankful even when I feel that what I'm about to go through is not something I have the strength or will to be thankful for!

Despite the growing pains, I've had the most side-wrenching laughs, the craziest spur-of-the-moment escapades, the most foolhardy party frolics and a good dose of docile members of the Leporidae and lusty ducks than I think is actually healthy.
I've met a wealth of people with more intelligence, wisdom and beauty than I was certainly blessed with at conception and yet who have had the grace and humility to help me attain even just a little of what they have.
I've had my mind blown on so many occasions by the things I've read and learned over my course of study, by seeing and tasting just how beautifully intricate and formidably designed this whole world is, yet sadly, how devastatingly torn by sin.
Experiencing the oddness of the English on post year abroad re-entry and how sane the rest of the world can often appear was, well, bizarre.

I can't help but stand in awe at a God who saw fit to give it all to little me.  

So here's 10 (of so many) things I've learned (often quite painfully) and been blessed to experience while at university:

1. The friendships you make here are the most influential and the most abiding.  Be wary of making short-lived acquaintances and missing out on real friends.  

2. Good grades are not the goal.  God isn't as much interested in the output as He is in the input.  Straw houses aren't fit for fire, only refined gold is so make sure that the life you're building is one founded on the right foundation.

3. The darkest of days are the ones where Christ's love pulses through my veins most strongly.  He is the God who is there even when I don't want Him to be.

4. I'm more complex than I give myself credit (no arrogance meant).  Souls are weird places, difficult to comprehend, landscapes full of adventure but also of fear: God has been strolling through my desert heart, calming storms and bringing life to a weary me.

5. Seeing precious individuals, images of God, coming to accept Jesus as Saviour, their lives being utterly transformed.

6. The thrill I experienced and the privilege it was to spend time living and working in two foreign countries.  National, ethnic, social, political borders can only be overcome by the power of a boundary-defying Lord.

7. Independance is fun.  Isolation is destructive.  Go home, once in a while.

8. The love of christian work does not equate with loving God.  It is an idol like any other.  Love the Heart that loves you unconditionally.

9. Keep keeping a diary!  It provides a barrel of chuckles for rainy days and more than just a wee bit of forgotten wisdom.

10. Learning to laugh at yourselves more than others.  Use humour in loving others and then you'll see God's sense of humour.  Believe me, you're not as serious as you take yourself.


I always thought it was clichéd to say that it was the best time in your life, but I guess it does come close...

Seeing ourselves as we really are

Although the title and frequent use of the term 'self-esteem' is somewhat misleading, for I think there is a difference between low self-esteem and godly humility, here's a snippet from an article by TGC which I think highlights what is often wrong with my own view of self and key Bible figures...

'None of us has a problem with low self-esteem. Scripture tells us we were born with the opposite issue. We all think of ourselves as a little more pretty, a little more talented, a little more worthy, and a little more deserving of just about everything in this life. Far from having naturally broken hearts, our hearts are naturally bloated with the calories of self-consumption and filled with obscene levels of self-obsession. We've been taught that there's nothing more valuable than how much we value ourselves.'

For those who do struggle with low self-esteem and even depression, I appreciate that this doesn't sound exactly comforting.  But isn't this often the emphasis of much counselling and what is thought to be psychologically wrong with people, namely that they do not value themselves enough?  True, we need a realistic evaluation of ourselves.  Humility is not disdain for self but actual appreciation, even love, of the self as God intended the individual to be.  As Christians, our self is that which is being renewed to ressemble more the character of Christ, so yes, we can love that.  The difficulty today, however, is that there is so much emphasis placed upon valuing ourselves that we can end up destroying whatever hope those with real problems of self-esteem have by telling them that the power to 'be' valuable and 'be' something rests wholly upon themselves. 

'...God takes sometimes horrific, drastic measures to destroy our self-esteem. We're not told much about the personal pain Moses and Joseph experienced. We're not told of the sleepless nights spent in isolation, gripped by emotional despondency while grasping hopelessly in the dark, trying to fathom why God was doing this and whether he was even there. In hindsight, we tend to view these figures as emboldened, courageous, pillars of the faith, but it's foolishness to think that their responses were any less weak and human than ours would be. But we see a God that uses very human experiences to change the hearts of human vessels. And it hurts.'



from TGC: The Beauty of Low Self-Esteem

'If we hope to experience deep and lasting relationships as intended by God, love must be understood as an action more than a feeling.'


Read the rest here

Mission Week

Naked Christianity: Uncovering the life changing message of Jesus

Warwick CU's mission week starts bright and early tomorrow at 8am with prayer.  It'll be an entire week of extra events aiming to bring the gospel to every student on campus, whether through apologetics over lunch, evening talks on Luke's gospel, text-a-toastie to halls of residence, or Globe café for internationals.

At church today, the question I was most frequently asked was, 'so, are you ready for mission week?'  To which I confidently replied, 'er... well, yes... I think so.'

Ready?  Probably not.  If 'ready' means confident in my ability to share the gospel with other students, then I'm the most unprepared of the lot.  If 'ready' means I have no fear, then I may as well just hide myself in the library and try to forget that mission week is going on.

I'm not ready, neither confident in my ability, nor fearless.  But that actually doesn't matter.  Most of the messengers and prophets sent by God in the OT were quaking in their boots as they spoke and the disciples were intent on hiding from the world like trembling doormice before Pentecost.

But I, like they did, have a mighty God.  He supplies the strength and the courage.

Most of the CU members have had their pictures taken with a board saying, 'Ask me what I'm living for', the aim being to upload them onto Facebook as profile pictures.  Funny then that just the other day I should read in 1 Peter 3 this gem of a passage:

'But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear; having a good conscience, that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed.' (vv.15-16)

My prayer for the CU this week is that we would fulfill this verse, speaking humbly and lovingly with students of their need of Jesus.  Interestingly, this verse quite naturally couples telling others about Jesus with persecution.  That's something I haven't heard much of in CU, and which may shock some when it happens.  So please pray with us that this hope would be uncontainable, but also that when some do 'suffer for doing good', (for what's better than sharing the truth in love?) that they wouldn't be discouraged, but instead again look at Christ as their example in all things.

 Embarrassing...! Here's how the FB pictures look, so check it out! 

'For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit' (1 Peter 3:18)

Like speaking with Jesus

A picture paints a thousand words.  When you're devoid of linguistic ability, you have to rely heavily on gestures, facial and body expression to get the meaning across.  You look foolish as you painfuly attempt to act out the word you don't know or can't remember, something which not even your Grandma could guess in a game of Christmas charades.


Moses complained that his speech was not eloquent enough to address a Pharoah, yet God still sent him to Egypt to be His agent in freeing the Hebrew slaves.  The Corinthian church was exorted not to be fooled into thinking that cleverly-crafted sentences were what made the gospel into spiritual dynamite.  Paul came trembling and stuttering his words and still hearts were melted.

Is not our faith shown in our works?  Why then do we mistake it all too often for our words?  We proclaim Christ as Lord and Saviour and by professing our belief we are saved as this is an outward statement of an inward change (Romans 10:9).  But if words were the only means by which a heart were turned to God and a Christian transformed more into the likeness of Christ, then most of us would be left redundant.  Most of us can't string two correct sentences in English together, never mind gather the courage to preach like Peter on the day of Pentecost.

Our words need to be carefully thought out in certain situations.  All too often we let our tongues wag.  Yet Jesus also said that 'by this will all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another' (John 13:35)  James also exhorts believers to let their works be in agreement with their words.  Even if you do mess up your grammar, make outright blunders and get yourself tied up and twisted in a knot when sharing the gospel with someone, if the love of Christ is really rooted in you, then it will be visible.

We must speak.  By speaking the Spirit moves and saves.  But don't forget that salvation isn't for making you into a wordy theologian.  It's to transform the whole of you so that people will say they have talked with Jesus when they speak with you.

A thought from my diary

Vanity makes a woman weak.

It creates for her a vision of herself that is almosty purely imagined.  It makes her proud of assets, she may, but also may not -in her imagined vision- possess.  Her ego is enlarged and pours useless words from her lips.  Pride and self-obsession make her weak because they hinge upon the power of the self to become something.  They are like parasites, which, far from bringing gain to the woman, rather sap her of any real beauty she may truly possess.

She also has only so much strength; after it is used up all that's left is a dried out husk.  Is it not sadly so with many women who were once young beauties?  Who all their lives pursued perpetual youth, where everything they deemed to be of worth was centred around their image, and who allowed self-obsession to completely take over their hearts.  Are they not wasted, are they not now old before their time and are ceaselessly pining after their youthful, beautiful days?  They are now weak, but most of all, they are fools.

When a woman mistakes vanity for strength, outward beauty for the eternal and self-obsession for the fufilment she could have found in cultivating a beautiful soul, she slowly dies inside.

The realisation of every Christian woman at some point in their life, which perhaps some women understand more profoundly than others, is that this body is corruptible and is passing away.  Our stunning eyes, rich, abundant hair, tender skin and smooth curves will one day give way to crags, lines, sagging, dull eyesight and balding.  We will look hungrily on old photos of by-gone days and may stare despairingly at teenage girls flaunting their legs on street corners, yet all the while inwardly covet their youth and beauty.

Yet, the Christian woman's hope is that she will one day be made more beautiful than she could ever have imagined.  Her body will grow old and die, but her soul is eternal.  Her real self, where all her treasures are hidden, will remain.

Cultivating a beautiful soul is paramount not just for remaining beautiful in old age but to that eternal joy when we will be completely beautiful once again, like Eve would have experienced had she not sinned; that full and beautiful unity of flesh and spirit, an uncorrupted flesh and a beautiful soul that has been bought at a costly price.

Women become more beautiful the more they are in the presence of the Beloved, the Beautiful One and we will have an eternity of that.

Obsession with Identity

In my studies I have been reading a lot about identity, whether in a 19th Century French anarchist context or for a German literature module on the study of the 'self' and the 'other'.  Identity never fails to enthrall us, intrigue, confuse and drive us, more than often, to depair.  'Who am I?' appears to be the fundamental question in everyone's mind.  The way in which you introduce yourself hints at what you think about yourself and what you would like others to know about you.  We commonly start with a brief greeting, an exchange of names, job titles, where we originally come from and whether we are married and have children.

However, I think Elisabeth Elliot puts it well in her book, Let me be a woman.  The question in the search for identity, which often leads people into all kinds of sorrow and heart-ache, should not be 'who am I' but 'whose am I?'  Attempting to discover your identity in complete isolation never works.  It only leads to destructive naval-gazing and a deeper confusion and discontent over the question of identity.  Why is it that when we introduce ourselves we always start by talking about our outward actions and those we have chosen to spend time with?  Because they are a reflection of our feelings, beliefs, tendencies, joys, hurts, decisions and choices we have made.  In essence, they are not our identity, but they do help explain who we are or who we aspire to be.

The problem, however, is that no relationship with another human can ever fully satisfy us.  No job, amount of money, wealth of education or future prospects can conclusively tell us who we are.  We may find parts of ourselves sated for a while.  Our thirst and longing after a defining principle to be quenched momentarily, but it will never eternally satisfy us.  Our identity is far deeper and greater than can be comprehended through a collection of deeds, writings, facts and emotions, otherwise why would even the greatest of writers, thinkers and leaders have carried on in this quest for identity?

Neither can we find our complete identity in simply tracing back our family history.  My Mum works in a cemetary and often has people coming in to trace their ancestry back to local celebrities or, more often, ordinary working-class people!  After all, if we can't discover our identity in our present surroudings we resort to the past.  Family traits (in our family it's the Jewsbury nose...) are passed down, and I daresay even some characteristics, but not one of them ever fully explains our rhyme or reason for being the way we are.

We see ourselves partly then in the reflection of others.  Yet, I would argue that this is completely the wrong way around.  If we start with ourselves, creatures who are limited in our understanding and knowledge of the universe we live in, then we will never, within the short span of our lifetime, discover who we really are or what is our purpose in life.  Instead, we need to look into the face of the One who from the very beginning not only reflected but gave us His likeness.  Our identity as individuals is dependant upon God's identity.  So in looking to the present and the past for clues to our identity we are not wrong, in fact, it simply reveals a more profound trait of the God we have sought to drive out of our own self-fashioned identities.  We were never meant to be isolated, unrelational, stagnant, self-fashioned and destructive.  Rather, we were created with identities that are unique and highly complex, yet which all have their root and fulfilment in God. 

So, our mistake as humans is not our obsession with identity, it is more that we are looking for identity in the wrong place and in the wrong people.  In asking 'whose am I?', we recognise that, in the basic sense, we are all God's in that each human being has been created by Him and for Him.  But just as we find out who we are by tracing back our roots, by asking questions, by seeking knowledge of and intimacy with the ones who have physically brought us into this world, that is, our parents, so we will never find the answer to this identity question until we seek intimacy with God through Jesus Christ, who is the revealed identity of our heavenly Father.