A Fairtrade Christmas Greeting

Little Town of Bethlehem

Motivation - Conclusion

Over the last month or so I have written three posts on Motivation. If you missed any of them you'll find them:

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

These posts were regarding the things that motivate me to run. Essentially the motivating factors I talked about were:

• Enjoyment - it is something I really enjoy doing (but it is more enjoyable in the daylight when it is warm and sunny, rather than in the winter when it's dark, cold and wet).
• Targets - if I enter a race then I need to train to make sure I go either as fast as possible (say for a 5K) or simply am able to complete the course (in the case of a marathon).
• Accountability - if I share my training schedule or my short term goals and targets with others, then I'm more likely to achieve them.
• Give yourself no choice - in part 3 I said that the best way to complete a long run is to make sure that the half way point is a long way from home - this way the option of cutting the run short is not really there.

One of the things about motivation is that it will be different for everybody. I am very competitive and therefore the thought of just entering a race and getting round doesn't really cross my mind. Even if it was my intention at the start, as soon as the race starts I want to set a new personal best.

But how does all this relate to my life as a Christian? Discipleship and discipline go hand in hand and the Apostle Paul used illustrations from athletics to draw conclusions about the Christian life (e.g. 1 Corinthians 9:25-27).

Enjoyment

There will be times when it is easy to be disciplined in the Christian life - to attend church, to pray, to read your Bible, to talk to people about your faith. But those times won't last forever. There will also be times when it is 'cold and dark and wet and 4.30am'. What we need to remember is that these times are not a sign that God loves us any less. Rather they are a natural part of our spiritual discipleship.

Of course our ultimate motivation is love for God. But there will be times when we need a little help to keep us on the right track.

Targets and Accountability

All too often we see our Christian life as a thing that is between God and us - as an individual. And yet something is always a lot harder when we're trying to do it on our own. Having someone who turns up at your door ready to go for a 5 mile run with you, or having someone who will ask you how many miles you ran in the last week, are both incentives to keep training.

Likewise having someone to pray with regularly; or agreeing to follow a particular Bible reading programme - and share that goal with someone who will ask you how you're doing and what you're learning; or meeting with a house group every week - these are all ways that will make the hard task of discipleship that bit easier.

Stepping out in Faith

Being 7 miles from home half way through a 14 mile run, requires that you run 14 miles. If you just do 14 one mile loops around your house there is always the option to cut the session short when you start to get tired.

Sometimes we are aware what it is that God is asking us to do - we're just reluctant / nervous / scared about doing it. And so instead we look for mini-steps, so that there is always the option of bailing if things don't turn out as expected. Instead we should trust God and take the risk. When we're '7 miles from home' we don't have any choice - we have to trust in God.

As I said earlier, we're all different. What motivates you?

It's the end of the world...

People seem to be posting Mayan calendar jokes like there's no tomorrow.

The evening news had a story on the Mayan calendar and how it is predicting that the world will end tomorrow - and the measures that some people are going to to be prepared. A very few have access to end of the world proof bunkers (although I'm not sure how they're supposed to work) - but most of those who were interviewed seem to see this as a chance for one last party - but I'm guessing that most of those people will have done their Christmas shopping, just in case...

If we truly believe that the world will end on Friday, we don't bother making plans for the weekend. We certainly wouldn't have spent a whole heap of time and energy getting ready for Christmas - and I wouldn't have planned a Carol Service for Sunday morning. Nor would I have written and scheduled three more blog posts to go through to the 24th.

Jesus tells us that the world will come to an end, but no one knows when it will be, and therefore we are to be ready at all times. This does not mean having a bomb shelter at the bottom of the garden, or having the kitchen cupboards stocked with tins of baked beans. What it does mean is that we are living right. It means our relationship with God is right and our relationship with others is right.

The news that the world might end tomorrow should not cause the Christian any great concern...because as a Christian I should be living as if the world could end tomorrow - and that's how I should be living every day.

A Song for Sunday

I'm starting to put together the list of carols for our carol service on Sunday. Some of you may not have heard this version of a traditional favourite.



The original words were written by Isaac Watts based on Psalm 98 and was first published in 1719. The music is believed to be based on a melody by Handel. Handel spent some time just up the road from here at St. Lawrence church on Whitchurch Lane. I'm sure he would have liked what Chris Tomlin has done.

Jubilee

Following on from the instructions on Sabbath in Leviticus 25, God gives instructions on The Year of Jubilee. This event was supposed to take place every 50 years in Israel - after 7 x 7 years. Essentially it was the year when debts were cancelled. If at any point you had fallen on hard times and had been forced to sell either your land or yourself, as a slave, then the Year of Jubilee was the year when you got your land back or you were freed from slavery. Future generations of your family were not saddled with the consequences of your misfortune.

Now depending on your perspective this is either a really good or a really bad idea. For those at the bottom, clearly it is a good thing - a year to look forward to. But for the rich and the wealthy clearly it would not be looked on in the same way - how are you supposed to build up a property portfolio if every 50 years you're supposed to give everything back?

It is perhaps no surprise that there is little or no evidence in the Old Testament that the Year of Jubilee was ever celebrated as God intended. We do find a possible reference in Jeremiah 34:8-11. Here it seems as if the people become aware that they have not been doing what they're supposed to do, and so they let their slaves go - but afterwards they changed their minds, and enslaved them all again.

What we think about the Year of Jubilee very much depends on the perspective from which we read. But we should never forget that God is concerned for the poor and the powerless, and his disciples we are called to that love and concern too.

 

Christmas Flash Mob

How was your weekend?

How was your weekend? I'm guessing that weekends this close to Christmas are fairly busy shopping days - lots of stressed shoppers all preparing for the season of peace and goodwill by getting angry and cross at each other...

Regular visitors to this blog will know that we have been going through Leviticus since September. And a couple of weeks ago we had a visiting speaker come and cover the topic of Sabbath from Leviticus 23:3-4 and 25:1-7.

Christmas is traditionally a time for lots of people to get stressed - and there are lots of reasons for this - but one is simply that we try and do too much. We don't get the rest that we need. It is important that we see ourselves as total human beings - and so the physical, the mental, the spiritual...all the different bits that make us who we are - they are all interconnected. So when we are physically run down that will affect everything else. When we are tired we don't perform as well as people - we react to situations in ways that we wouldn't do normally.



In the Sabbath regulations of Leviticus, God builds a day of rest into the lives of people. Six days of work. One day of rest. Each week. Every week. But it is important to realise that it is not simply a case of what you don't do on the Sabbath that is important. It is also important to think about what you do do. The purpose of not doing certain things is to make space for things that are more important. It is a day that is special. It's a day when there is a specific opportunity to focus on God and on our relationship with him. It's a day to spend time with family and friends. To rest, to relax, to recharge the batteries, to refocus, to get things back into perspective.

For most Christians Sunday is the obvious choice for this day off. We are able to meet together with others at church and worship God together. But increasingly we find more and more people who are required to work on Sunday. What are they to do? Which ever day of the week is your day off - make sure you take it - and don't fill it with so much busy-ness that you go back to work the next day totally exhausted. Get enough sleep. Maybe your church has a house group you can attend that day. Listen to a sermon on the internet. Take the time to read and pray that you don't normally manage in the rush of the normal working week. Meet up with a friend for a long lunch. Go for a walk in the park. Schedule in a long run. If you are able make sure you spend time with your family - eat together.

If you haven't had a day off this week maybe it's time to take one. That's how God designed you.

It's about Santa - right?

Someone showed me this at the weekend; thought you might enjoy it...

Making Sense of Leviticus (part 3)

If you were to divide Leviticus 19 in to those bits that still apply to Christians today; those bits that don't apply to Christians today; and those bits that apply to some Christians but not to others - and colour those sections green, red and yellow, the chapter would end up looking something like this:

But who gets to say which bits should be red, and which bits are still green? And if you can do this for Leviticus 19 then why can't you do it for any chapter of the Bible? What is to stop you finding the bits you don't like and claiming them to be yellow or red sections?

This is exactly the problem we get in to when we forget that none of the Bible was written with us in mind. When Leviticus was written down, or when Jeremiah was speaking or when Luke wrote his gospel, or when Paul wrote the letter to the Christians in Rome - none of those authors had you in mind. They were not writing to you. They were writing to people in a very different culture, in a very different situation, a long long time ago.

But, as I said last time, we read from a position of faith believing this to be the word of God. In the pages of the story we encounter God, and we live our lives in the light of that encounter - rather than following a series of rules that we have read and therefore obey.

So, when we read, the first thing to do is to ask what the text actually says. We read it through a few times, carefully. This part, for Leviticus 19 is fairly easy - for example, verse 11 simply states: do not steal, lie or deceive each other. That is what is says.

But then we need to try and put ourselves in the shoes of the original audience and understand what the words meant to them. And this is often the tricky bit - because we are so far removed from the original audience. So we need the help of Bible teachers, commentaries, a study Bible or the kind of books I recommended last time. So for example, after reading a commentary we might learn that the instructions about not cutting your hair or beard in verse 27 are not simply fashion statements, but they are instructions that relate to not adopting the mourning rituals of Israel's pagan neighbours. They are about not getting involved in the sorts of things that are linked to worshipping other gods.

And then once we've worked out what the passage meant then, we can ask the Holy Spirit help us apply it and determine what it is that God is saying to us now. This is that all important 'So What?' question.

This application may well be different depending on who is doing the reading. Those reading the Old Testament from a very rural, agricultural setting, surrounded by communities who practise ancestor worship, for example, may well find the application of Leviticus very different to those reading from their office in London. They may even find it easier to apply because their context is not so far removed from the original setting.

None of this is particularly easy. Therefore we need to ask God for help, and we need to find other people who will help us on this journey of discovery - ideally a good local church.

Getting the big picture

As we've been talking about making sense of the Bible a bit recently I thought I'd post this video, which I came across on Wednesday. 

I find N.T. Wright challenging and stimulating as an author - and here he has some interesting things to say about reading the Bible.

(Unfortunately I could not embed this video so you'll need to click here - this will take you to youtube)

Making Sense of Leviticus (Part 2)

Last Friday we started to think about how you make sense of a book of the Bible like Leviticus, which seems so out of touch and out of date with our lives as Christians in 2012.

Our starting point has to be a position of faith. We have to believe that the Bible is the Word of God and that God continues to speak through the Bible. I could back those statements up with verses (such as 2 Timothy 3:16 and Hebrews 4:12) but of course if you don't believe the Bible you're not going to be convinced by those kind of arguments.

We also read believing that the authors were inspired by the Holy Spirit and the same Holy Spirit will help us to understand and apply what we're reading - so we read prayerfully, asking God to help us.

If you wanted to you could sign up for courses, degree courses, you could write a PhD all on the subject of understanding and applying the Bible - so a few lines here isn't going to do more than just brush the surface. So just a few pointers.

Parts of the New Testament were written about 2000 years ago, and the Old Testament is much older than that. And it is not until relatively recently that we have moved from reading the Bible in community, to reading it as individuals. Obviously this was because people simply did not have a copy of the Bible, or they could not read. But as we struggle to understand and apply the Bible we need to remember that we are not doing this on our own, but we are part of a wider Christian community - maybe a local church, a house group, an on line forum etc. And so we are always able to share with others what we think God may be saying - and those who are further along this road than us will be able to affirm, question or challenge our interpretation and application.

We'll look at how to read in a couple of days time, but if you are looking for a couple of really good books on this subject you could do a lot worse than How to read the Bible for all its worth by Fee and Stuart. They also have another very good book called How to read the Bible book by book.

Are you ready for Christmas?

Are you ready for Christmas?

Usually when we ask that question we mean: have you written the cards, is the food all ready, are the presents wrapped, is the Christmas tree up...

As a minister it often means: are the posters printed, have the invitations been distributed, are the services planned...

Last Sunday was Advent Sunday - the first day of Advent. Advent is a period of preparation in the run up to Christmas. Not preparation in terms of those things listed above, but the kind of preparation that comes from reflecting on the true significance of Christmas.

Preparing to celebrate Christmas really only makes sense when we recognise the past, present and future nature of our faith - this has nothing to do with Dickens' Christmas Carol!

Past: We celebrate that Jesus came and was born as a baby about 2000 years ago. 

Present: We thank God that we can know the reality of Immanuel - God with us, right now in the present, through the Holy Spirit.

Future: We look forward to day when Jesus will come again.

Our lives in the present should reflect our belief in the past and our hope for the future.

So, are you ready for Christmas?

Of course there are some people who just can't wait...

Youngest daughter caught red handed on December 3rd

Motivation - Part 3

This is the third of four posts on Motivation. If you missed part one or part two click these links and read them first.

One of the inevitable things about training properly for a marathon is that you have to run a long way in training. Depending on the programme you're following this will usually mean at least one run of about 20 miles a few weeks before the big day. Of course you build up to this slowly, adding a mile to your weekly long run over the months leading up to that final 20 mile training run. And for most people who enter a marathon I'm guessing that the furthest they would normally run (when not training for a marathon) would be somewhere about 10-13 miles.

So once those long runs get beyond about 12 or 13 miles, and start taking over 2 hours to complete, you start to ache a bit during the last few miles.

One thing I realised during this week's 14 miler was that running anywhere close to home with about 4 miles to go provides incredible temptation to take a short cut and call it a day. After all, 11 or 12 miles is still a good effort - right? Instead it would be much better to be 7 miles from home at the halfway point because then the motivation to run 14 miles is simply the motivation of getting home. 

So this week, this is roughly where I'll be at the half-way point of my long run - and once I've got this far I have no option but to turn around and run the 7.5 miles back home again.