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.

He died for the depraved.

On Thursday I visited a concentration camp in Nordhausen, just over the old border with the GDR and into north Thüringen. This used to be a working camp where the V2 bomb, responsible for some of the damage during in London and also in Antwerp, was manufactured.

Looking around the place in the bright, hot sunshine, the birds singing and the flowers and grass in bloom it was really difficult to take in that in only the space of the first 7 months about 5000 prisoners lost their lives. Many of them were political prisoners arrested for their affiliation with resistance groups, though there were still quite a few Jews transported there for their skills in engineering as well as many prisoners of war.

The bombs had to be made in work chambers in the heart of one of the hills. 12 hour shifts in temperatures between 0°C and 8°C, plus the damp atmosphere; lack of warm clothing; disease and beatings; prisoners having to watch while others were hanged and left hanging sometimes for hours above their heads while they carried on working underneath the swinging bodies; lack of sleep and the almost daily occurance of waking up to find that you were sleeping on a dead body; just some of the horrible facts I was told. Only if a prisoner was of apparent use to the system by way of his qualifications would he receive marginally better treatment.

The accounts of brutality, executions, pure torture and the sheer death toll were quite emotionally overwhelming. If I was in any doubt at the utter depravity of the human heart I certainly do not doubt it now. True, we're not perhaps as bad as we ever could be, but it's a sobering thought to think that some of the officers had families themselves and were capable of providing a loving and warm home to their own wives and children, all the while either enforcing or inflicting torture upon other fellow men for the sake of a wicked, racist endeavour. Not every officer always conceded of course, though neither did they remain in service long if the Gestapo got a whiff of their 'treachery' to the Nazi regime. However, the fact that the human heart is capable of being so treacherous, so deceitful, evil and contradictory should make us all shudder.

Jeremiah 17:9 says, 'The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?'

The average person, when he hears of incidents on the news, of murders or rapings, of arson or terrorism can't quite believe how or why anyone would do such a thing. Often the only way he tries to explain it is by condemning the perpetrator as particularly evil and so as an almost completely different species to himself. Either way, he tries to distance himself from being classed as evil. He kids himself into thinking that he could never commit something so despicable, so evil.

The scary news of the Bible is that every heart is deceitful, every heart is rotten at the core and desires anything other than to do what is right. I may look on in disbelief and sheer horror at the Nazi crimes of WW2, but I can never say that I, left to my own devices, would never do such a thing. God's Word doesn't let me.

John 2:23-25 says about Jesus, 'Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus in his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man.'

The same people who believed in his name would soon be shouting for him to be crucified. Jesus is not fooled by notions of good-will, by emotional eagerness, or outward signs of affection and love. He sees right to the core and what He sees He declares as utterly depraved. He doesn't need anyone to tell Him the thoughts and intentions of anyone's heart. He sees the evil of our nature and He condemns it as evil. So in God's sight, without His intervention, His grace, I am just as capable of committing the same despicable crimes as a Nazi officer. Shocking, but true.

But how much more wonderful then are those verses in Romans 5:

'For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.
For one will scarcely die for a righteous person -though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die- but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Since, therefore, we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God.
For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life.
More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.' (vv6-11)

Thank God that He does not leave our souls to rot in the stench of evil but that through His Son, through the Spirit working in us, He provides a way for the human heart to be saved, transformed and regenerated to His praise and to His glory.

While I'm in the spirit of catching up on old photos (and because I've got my USB working again, yay!) the next few posts might be lacking on content but will hopefully be a little prettier and interesting than my usual messy ramble.

From my balcony. Early January

My Mum has been sending me such lovely postcards which always cheer me up :) Aren't these pretty?!

And here's my 85 Euro bike (Bike no.2). After one week the dynamo head came off, so that had to be replaced. Whilst in the shop I found out that the wire attached to the front lamp was faulty and needed replacing, so that had to be redone. Then in the second week I fell, quite spectacularly, off my bike after skidding on ice and smashed the front lamp. Then in the third week my chain broke and had to be fixed. I tell you, God gave me A LOT of grace to deal with this and not get angry.

Help Even the Unrighteous Poor

Helping the poor is not as easy, nor even always as rewarding as we may think it is. Too often we approach it with a kind of superiority as if the person we are helping ought simply to be grateful for whatever we give to them out of our own abundance. Think again. See the poor as God sees the poor and it will soon remind you of the weave, knit and thread of the gospel: grace.

'I have found that helping the unrighteous poor is perhaps also the best way to remind myself of the gospel by which I am saved. I did not receive mercy because I deserved it. Jesus Christ did not give his life for me because I was a good person. No, I was his enemy and full of sin when he died for me. I never did and never will earn his grace. Grace is always unmerited. So when I see how the unrighteous poor respond with bitterness to my acts of kindness, I am reminded of my own spiritual condition. Even now, I often fail to thank God for his continuous and abundant grace towards me. Thank God for the gospel by which I am being saved!

We must see our service to the poor through this gospel lens. Actually, our ability to help those who don’t deserve it is an indicator as to whether or not we have actually received the mercy and grace of God ourselves. As Jesus says in Luke 6:32-33 and 35-36:

If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. . . . But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and you reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.'

Joel Brooks, from The Gospel Coalition.