Seeing with new eyes

If you have been blessed or just plain lucky for most of your life, (like me) you can read all sorts of good advice and it makes little long term difference. I am reading a book I first read in the year 2001, at the turn of the new millennium. Thirteen years  later I am reading the same book with a different set of eyes.  The book is in no way different to the book I first read, however my life experience is very different from the first time I read it.

 

The last four and a half years have been very different. I have always had a safe secure job through most of my career. I left one job to move to another, usually a promotion. Then 3 years ago God and circumstances dictated that I was required to just walk away from my job, with nowhere to go other than home. This brought with it a journey of pain, renewal and healing. God has used this time to rebuild my foundations in a way that could not have happened had these events not occurred. Painful and difficult yes' but absolutely necessary to bring me into a place where something different can happen. It is said that repeating the same things over and over and expecting a different result is in fact a definition for insanity!

 

 I am not insane! ( Probably a little crazy, but not insane). As I stand looking toward the promise of  a new year, it is with renewed hope. Although in some senses  I have no more security than I did when I walked away from my job 3 years ago. This year will be different because I am different. The experience of the faithfulness of God and my own growth means that I am better equipped than I was to take the same situation and look at a much bigger picture in 2014.

 

God has walked an journey with me that I could not have experienced any other way. I look forward to a brave new world where I will be forced to go beyond myself and into the realm of faith and for that I am duly grateful. I had not previously led a life without difficulty or challenge, but it was not at the level of personal struggle that rocked me to my core. Who am I? What does it mean if I can't what I have always done? Who will I be at the end of this?

 

So as I reread this book about life and being creative in life, I do so with a vastly different experience base. I have become "long sighted" rather than "near sighted" ( which comes from paying to much attention to myself rather what God might be up to in this process, "navel gazing" by any other name) I can take on board the author's shared experience of pain, failure and renewal without the response "Oh that would never happen to me."

 

It can and it possibly will!

 

Until next time.

 

 As Trevor Yaxley once said to me " Never waste a good Trial!!"

Different Time Frames

I haven't written for a while and decided I need to start again. I am looking at the situation I am facing which in this case is unemployment and thinking why is this happening? I have been here before; why again?

I guess I have grown a lot in my faith walk since the the first time 3 years ago, but it doesn't stop me asking the question WHY??? I understand in my head the need to transition and develop one's faith but why does it have to feel so bad?

No matter what I try it doesn't seem to work, I apply for jobs; lots of jobs but without success. I must admit that God has never failed to provide our material needs. I just feel incredibly vulnerable. I guess that is what I am supposed to learn about is that God has a very different set of outcomes and priorities to me. His time frame and mine are different and His sense of urgency and mine are very different. I guess some lessons are just difficult.

It maybe as simple as  Life is difficult!!!

Until next time

Only one way to eat an elephant!

If change is going to be significant and long term I am coming to realise that it has to be taken in very short steps. If it is not taken in very short steps, it quite often doesn't last. I guess we have all started that new diet or that new fitness scheme and we dive into this great and life changing program to find after a week or two (sometimes less) we have given up. We simply bit off more than we could chew, we tried to change too much too soon.

I guess on a converse note sometimes we get frightened by what we see as the sheer enormity of the change required. We then consequently come up with the only logical conclusion .... to procrastinate! I once did a study at university on procrastination and procrastination not is the problem. Procrastination is actually our answer to something that frightens us - to simply delay doing anything about this thing that frightens us.

A baby does not make huge progress all at once but takes small steps over time to develop any skill. I believe we should do the same as the baby, it gives us time to practice a little bit at a time. It also allows us to practice our new skill, habit or idea in the least threatening way. It also allows us time to think carefully about what we are doing and why we are doing it. We can give it back to God in prayer, we can meditate on it. "As he thinks in his heart so is he." (Proverbs 23:7) As we do this we enable God to enter our lives in a meaningful way, rather than relying solely on our own will power to "guts" it out.

This is very real for me as I am changing the way I work in my daily life. I am now doing 3 days at one job and 1-2 days at another, rather than doing one job a week as I have for 34 years. This is a big change! How do I adapt.... one small step at a time! ... I will keep you posted.

How do you eat an elephant?

One bite at a time!!

What If? (2)

As I started to think through the "What If?" questions I asked last time, God drew my attention to Luke 14: 15-24. The Parable of the Banquet. Have a read before you read the rest of this blog it may help you to see where I am coming from.

I am coming to see that it is not so much what we do that interests "the Father", but who we are. I must admit that as a parent I can see that, because my geneartional legacy lies in who my children are, not what they do. From things that I've read and experienced it is things about you that are just like your mother/father/grandmother/grandfather that people remember. The good, the bad and the downright ugly character traits passed through generations. Our heavenly Father really wants us to share who we are with Him. Who knows...we may learn and change a little on the way.

I have heard that love is spelt TIME and that is what the Father wants. He wants our time to be given to him and to share ourselves. Most of us think that "the Father" wants our time in service, not just spending time with him. I am not sure this is the total picture, a partial picture maybe.

In the parable of the Banquet we see that everybody was too busy attend the feast given by the King. They all had what they saw as legitimate things things to do rather than spend time at the "Kings Banquet". What if we are like that, too busy serving the King to actually spend time with the King?  It would seem to defeat the purpose of Jesus dying on the cross to gain access for us to the the throne room of heaven in the first place!

When we read the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15, we see that the son decides that he is going to come back to his Father as a servant. But the Father has other ideas and throws a banquet for his son. The parable leaves the ending open...we don't know what happens. But it would seem to me that many Christians today have reverted to Plan A, which is being a servant rather than joining in the festivities of the banquet for whatever reason of their own....fear, self condemnation, guilt or just plain laziness!

I have tried having more personal conversations with my Father in heaven and I am pleased and if not a little surprised to say I have even got some fairly instant responses. I might have a gold thread here...I am going to follow it for a while. I am going to stop fighting the Father and spend time with Him.

I am away for a few weeks and may not get near a computer till the end of January. Hopefully I will have some more thoughts.

Cheers Paul