Prayer Pressure

'I’m tempted to think that the act of praying is one thing, but on top of that there’s a pressure.  A pressure to really mean my prayers.  And so I leave prayer meetings with furrowed brows and sage nods and an intangible fear that I wasn’t ‘engaged’ enough.  Perhaps – Oh dear – I was just ’going through the motions.’

But I wonder whether I’m labouring under a pretty serious misapprehension.  Maybe I’m imagining that my prayers themselves establish a connection between myself and the Father.  Perhaps I’ve been duped into thinking my prayers must make the journey to the throne of grace.  In which case, they’d better be good! They better be sent up with a fair bit of impetus.  What kind of thrust do rockets need to escape the earth’s gravitational pull?  Well surely I need to match that intensity – emotionally speaking!

But what if my prayers don’t travel to the throne of grace.  What if Christ has already made that journey? What if I’m not shouting up to heaven.  What if I’m at the Father’s right hand – whispering in His ear?  What if my prayers go, not in my name, but in Jesus’ name?  What if their efficacy is not determined by my heart towards God, but Christ’s heart?  What if the Spirit is Himself praying within me (Gal 4:6)?  What if I genuinely have the Father’s ear before and apart from any of my “prayer-righteousness”?

Then I can just pray.'

Glen Scrivener, Christ the Truth.

The Hidden Life

A line I seem to be repeating a lot lately is a paraphrase of Colossians 2:20-23.  Basically, the things we do and the restraints we put ourselves under in order to appear godly have no power to actually change the heart.  You can look great on the outside, but on the inside you can be as rotten as you like.  Other people may aspire to be like you, but nobody can see your soul's decay.

And this is where I found myself yesterday, sitting in front of my computer attempting to figure out exactly how many hours of precious time I had redeemed, and how many, of course, I had frittered away.  As part of my Relay year with UCCF I am accountable for my hours as well as my finances.  Simple as it may seem though, the task turned out to be one that would illuminate the most subdued corners of my conscience.  A little tweaking here, a little alteration there.  Be sure to mellow the words 'wasted time' with 'time spent in contemplation', 'much needed coffee date', or even, 'fatigue left over from the many conferences you have sent me on lately meant that I forced my tired frame to rest in bed just a few more hours.'  It's easy to manipulate facts.

Quite simply put, the temptation was to lie.

In its barest form lying is blatantly ugly.  I think there are few people who actually revel in open lies, either in their telling or in their receiving.  Many of us, however, just can't stop telling 'little' ones.  We tell white lies, assuming they're not as bad as the ones in technicolour.  When we make excuses we're more often telling twists on the truth, or, even worse, shifting the blame onto someone else.  It's amazing, during all my years of being late for things I have become the master of excuses.  At the end of the day, all I'm covering up are my failures and guilt by tricking myself into believing I am actually in the right.

Lies trip quite easily from our tongues almost like steam from the spout of an ever-boiling kettle.  The problem is not the hot water vapour as much as the turbulence inside the pot.  The boiling liquid is what we need to cool and contain.

So, how?  Let's just say I carried on as normal trying to fill out my monthly time sheet, being as honest as I could but all the while seething at the prospect of divulging my life to a person I, as of yet, hardly know.  In ten months time when I will have come to the end of Relay, I'll be the same as when I started.  The same old Vicky who makes excuses and slants reality in her favour because she can't admit she was wrong. 

So, say I go about it a different way.  Every month from now when submitting my time sheets I pray beforehand, I remember that my time has only be given to me because Jesus paid for these precious hours by going to His appointed hour.  I thank Him that even though I have frittered away some time, that I am not condemned for doing so, nor is the next day dependant upon the successes and failures of the previous.  I trust Him that the errors I have made are a trait of the character He is gradually eroding in His work of transformation and that His grace means I will have the power to resist temptation daily.  I believe the promises of His Word, that He will return one day though I know neither the day nor the time; I wait expectantly.  I commend Him for His justice and for His mercy while pleading with Him to bring that soothing calm of the Spirit whenever my soul threatens to burst its banks.

Only a change of master results in a change of heart.

My Quinta Extravaganza

2012/13 Relay Workers- can you spot the doctoring?

 

After nearly 2 weeks of conferences, amazing fellowship with Christian brothers and sisters, profoundly convicting teaching on Colossians, 2 Timothy and Luke, I returned on Sunday 9th to what is now my home for the next 10 months, loaded with a rucksack of smelly washing and an expectant heart.

So now that I'm finally settled in it's time to start properly digesting the savouries of sermons and seminars with the sweet of song, experience and fellowship.  What have I learned?

It may take me months to feel the full effects, but perhaps I can share just the tip of the iceberg.  Relay 1 conference was a time for drinking in the power of God's grace.  If there were a motto for the week, it would probably have been 'be rooted in and strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus', or even, 'continue how you started'.  Remembering grace is the heartbeat of 2 Timothy and Colossians.  Since we're prone to forget the basics and definitely prone to believe that there is something more to be had in the Christian life than possessing Christ in all His fulness, it is essential that we bathe in the glory of God's grace revealed to us in Jesus every single day.  It's the only cure for legalism, discontent and Satan's deception.

Robert Murray McCheyne summed it up quite well: 'For every one look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ.'
Maybe we girls ought to stick that one to our mirrors.

Leading straight into UCCF's annual student conference, Forum, I swapped my warm abode for the more rustic canvas option.  With over 1000 people (996 students to be exact!) attending, the campsite was so packed that it was difficult to hear anything remotely belonging to nature above the raucous chunnerings of closely pitched campers.  Hearing one CU group rouse their spirits every morning with a war cry of 'ahhhh...WOLFPACK!' and to be assailed by torpedoed water balloons one afternoon meant the week was far from dull.

Above all it just seemed to me to be the most perfect time of fellowship with Warwick CU.  Close quarters and campstove-cooked food drew us together every dew-filled morning.  And as the warmth crept back into our frames through bacon butties and copious cups of steaming-hot tea, we laughed at the foolishness of what we were all doing in the middle of the countryside, humming songs and discussing yesterday's teaching.  Shared experience soon led to shared adoration of our Lord.

And really, what I keep on finding is that the more I try to go it alone, the more God puts me with people I can't escape from!  As we kept on hearing from Mike Reeves, community is in the very nature of God because He is triune.  This perfect conversation, fellowship, submission and faithfulness between the three Persons of the trinity revolutionises how we see community.  If even God is not an island, then what makes us think it is good for us to be alone?  So, both Relay 1 and Forum chipped off pounds of pride from my weary individualism and I hope the Relay year will hack a little more both out of me and out of Warwick CU.

So as I round off this trip through the first two weeks of Relay, as I reflect on the lessons learned, I am once again beginning to realise just how much work God is going to have to do in me this year.  Whether it's my eagerness to be legalistic, my insatiable desire to be utterly autonomous, or my reluctance to simply love those around me, I'm going to need to do more than look at Jesus.  I must gaze.  Ten times for every one look at self.

Warning: graduate in transition.

Time lurches on and I'm just beginning to feel the effects of transition.  No longer a student, I enter the graduate realm of unemployment and sarcastically-framed comments on the use of my degree.  Well, almost.

No, it's 4 days until the first Relay conference and really I'm just kicking back and waiting for this new chapter in my life to get started.  There's the usual practicalities of packing and how I'm going to get my stuff on the train on Tuesday without the aide of a packhorse (or two).  And don't forget the 'study' I haven't quite finished but am weaving -though somewhat feebly- between my hours of looking for a new bicycle, enjoying my parents company and just doing things I've had no creative space to do since academia took over my life.

But really, all's well in the Parsons' land of ee-by-gum and guinea pigs (my Mum's).  Warning--the accent has already taken multiple downward turns for the worse...

For those who know nothing about the Relay discipleship and training scheme, I suggest you look here because UCCF explains it with more brash, gusto and wholeness than I can at this hour.  In short, I'm returning to the Warwick area (after a couple of conferences at the Quinta Christian Centre near Oswestry) to help out the Christian Union at my -sob- old university and to be equipped, through study, personal work and learning new skills, to better share my faith as a Christian with students around campus. 

So, with no academic timetable in hand I'll be skipping the railroad tracks down to the Welsh border for fun and serious stuff with people I've never met before, at a place I've been to more times than I can count on fingers, with only a vague idea of what's actually going on.  Nothing new there then.

Amazingly though, my anxiety levels are low.  This time last year I was coming to the end of my stint in France and contemplating my return to university with utter dread.  I remember that for at least the first six weeks of that first term I was constantly on edge. 
While walking to lectures I couldn't help but feel deeply nervous, I think maybe because I felt incapable of tapping into those academic brain cells after my year abroad, which, in comparison to uni-life, felt like mental vegetation. 
Getting stuck into CU again brushed me back hard against my self-elevated thoughts of being needed.  I clearly wasn't. 
Some of my closest friends had already left, some to other countries, and this made me cling to the friends I did have left.  I am grateful to those who helped me settle back in to Warwick in ways they didn't even themselves perceive.
I came back to a country which spoke my language but where I felt I had no place, or at least one I had yet to discover.

It sounds like doom and gloom but I'm just being honest.  I found it hard and for weeks I was constantly anxious.
But there was one passage of Scripture I had running through my mind daily.
'Do not be anxious about anything, but in all things, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.  And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.'  Philippians 4:6-7

And it's to that passage that I turn now daily for strength, even though I am relatively calm compared to this time last year.  Reading Jerry Bridges', The Discipline of Grace, has refired those apathetic spiritual nerve-endings to revive the great truth that no day is so good or so bad that I do not need God's grace in my life.  So, anxious or not, coping with stress or going grey with the pressure, I have to turn to Jesus.  Why?  Because whether I perceive it or not, He is sustaining me.
Jesus is Lord.

The fast lane.

Vietnamese rice paddies: just one of the sights I was treated to this summer.

Since the last time I blogged I have:

crossed the country more times than I can count on both hands
visited five different countries (OK, I am being true to my Welsh roots by counting Wales in that number)
flown over ten thousand miles
graduated from university with a 2.1 and got to throw my cap...whoop!
moved house
been a bridesmaid for a friend's wedding
made the final touches to a summer newspaper
done a beach mission

...and am now finally 'resting' (i.e. getting my head around what I have just done and preparing for what I am about to do) in the North West.  Roll on Relay.


PS.  More photos to follow soon.

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