Need More Time? Give Some Away!

There are 8 760 hours in a year, roughly 720 hours in a month, 168 hours in a week and 24 hours in a day. Yet, many of us feel that there are just not enough hours in a day, and wonder how in the world we could fit volunteering into our busy schedules.

Although it sounds counter intuitive, volunteers have said that when they offer their time, it seems as if they have more of it. Serving on a team and making a difference in someone’s life often energizes us. It also makes you feel effective, which can spill over into other tasks in your life. Giving time is an act of sowing our time, and we are promised that we will reap what we sow!

If you have a desire to get involved in volunteering, but unsure where to slot in or how you will find the extra time, these tips may help you to get started:

• Consider the causes that stir your passion. Are you an animal lover? Do vulnerable children, the elderly, or the plight of those in financial need tug on your heart?  Are you passionate about people getting a better education, good healthcare, competent emotional or spiritual support? What skills can you contribute to an organization that supports that cause?  
• Volunteer with friends who will encourage you to stay committed. Find out where your friends are happily serving and join them. Alternatively, find local volunteer opportunities on the internet and inspire a friend to get involved with you.
• Sign up for a weekend volunteer role at your local church. Sunday volunteer teams are most active around the same time you normally attend Sunday services.  This is an easy way to get involved in a way that won't add to your normal time or travel cost.  Church teams are normally a safe and reliable place to get equipped and serve in an energized team, making a difference! 
• Don't bite off more than you can chew! Be realistic about your schedule and resources before committing to serve.  A mobilization coach can assist you in finding a volunteer opportunity that will prove personally fulfilling and be sustainable in your current time schedule. 

Your life contains a rich deposit of God-given purpose – determine today that busyness will not prevent you from accomplishing it. Discover how your small pocket of time can make a big difference!

Forgiving Can Be Hard

Forgiveness is a core teaching of Christian life.  We know it is a Biblical command, and yet there are times each of us may feel a resistance to forgiving someone. Our resistance is based on an underlying confusion about how forgiveness works.  We struggle to reconcile it to our need for justice. We assume that if we forgive our offenders, they will be ‘let off the hook’ while we continue to suffer from the consequences of their actions.

Does God really intend us to release the offender to hurt us again and again? Are we expected to forgive someone who has not repented?  Do we need to return to a relationship in which we have been continually betrayed?  How do we let go of bitterness and still maintain healthy boundaries?

It’s important to understand what forgiveness is and what it isn’t…

Forgiveness is trusting God to take care of justice. We release our right to exact revenge and allow God to take care of the matter. Even if the person does not repent, we still have to forgive. Forgiveness is about our attitude, not their action.

Forgiveness is a process, not a once off event. It may take time for us to process our emotions before we can sincerely forgive.  As soon as we can, it’s important that we decide to forgive, but it may not happen immediately after the offense has taken place.

Forgiveness is not allowing the offense to recur over and over again.  We don’t have to tolerate or expose ourselves to repeated lack of respect or abuse. Forgiveness does not mean denying reality or ignoring repeated offense. In a relationship with someone who refuses to change their bad behaviour, we may need to change the way we respond to them rather than expecting them to be different.

Forgiveness is not the same as reconciling. We need to forgive everyone, even if it is clear that pursuing further relationship with that person is not possible or wise.

Forgiveness is a conscious choice, not an emotional state of being. It is a choice we make through a decision of our will, motivated by obedience to God and His command to forgive. We forgive by faith, trusting God to do the work in us that will make that forgiveness complete.

Forgiveness is not an easy, once off choice. It may require a life time of forgiving, but it is important to the Lord that we continue forgiving until the matter is settled in our heart.

One of the best ways to break down our natural resistance to forgiving is to begin to pray for the person who has wronged you. As you do this, God births a compassion in which you begin to see them as God sees them, and realise that they are precious to the Lord. You also begin to see yourself in a new light and realise your own ongoing need for forgiveness.

If God has extended His forgiveness to me, why should I not extend my forgiveness to another?

Have Yourself a Very Messy Christmas!

Christmas has always been my favourite time of the year.  That is a little ironic if I take time to consider a few of our unfortunate Christmas Days past.

The year I turned one, my grandfather suffered a massive heart attack while visiting another rural mission station.  In desperation to reach his side, grandmother commandeered the first vehicle travelling past.  My father was the driver and the vehicle was a large farm truck loaded with crates of live ducks.  Halfway to the Fort Victoria hospital, one of the truck’s tyres burst, sending the truck careering into a concrete culvert.  Wooden crates toppled and released, scattering bewildered ducks far and wide!  Father helped grandmother nurse a cut to her forehead then began racing around in an effort to recover as many ducks as possible. 

Eventually the journey resumed and grandmother arrived in time to spend some very precious moments with her husband.  Grandfather asked dad to pray with him and read aloud his favourite passage, Psalm 23.  My grandfather Willy passed away early that Christmas morning.

Despite this very sad beginning, and a few challenging Christmas’ since then, I have an unusually passionate love for this time of the year.  Festive décor, trees, gift wrapping and cookie baking all transport me to an emotional happy place each December!  I have made peace with the truth that pain, and the messiness of our humanity, almost always co-exist alongside the most exquisitely beautiful moments of our lives.

Mary would have understood this. She agreed to the highest possible mission; to carry the Christ child in her womb - despite the pain and uncomfortable implications this holy task required.  She gave birth to the world’s Redeemer in a stable filled with rough straw and animal smells.  Her first guests were humble shepherds sent by a glorious host of angels!  Mary sat gazing and wondering as God himself lay helplessly in her arms.  Life cannot get any messier or more wonderful than that first Christmas!

Your own situation may feel less than ideal this December.  Relationships could be strained, finances tight and your future insecure.  No matter what your circumstances may be, God has a plan designed to bring beauty and hope into the mess of it all.  The Jesus whose birth we are celebrating did not come to transport us out of life’s challenges, but He did promise to be with us as we walk through them.  

Jesus Christ himself intends spending this Christmas at your house, visiting you in all His wonder and in all your weakness.  His gift to you is the best gift of all, Himself.  His promise is still “…in this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”  

From One Man He Made Every Nation

A kaleidoscope of colours and cultures thrills me as I walk into church every Sunday morning!  Zulu, Setswana and Khoza brothers and sisters braid themselves through the front entrance in animated conversation.  Elegantly garbed French and North African couples sweep past the fascinated eyes of Afrikaans children.  Americans smile and wave as Asians politely select their seats.

Perhaps my excitement is a natural result of growing up as a missionary child living between three nations. But more than my past, I love the hint of my future that our worship services hold; the peek preview of a heaven populated by believers from every corner of our globe!

Each of us has a unique national, cultural and family legacy containing many aspects worth celebrating this Heritage Day.  As diverse as our backgrounds are, it is important to remember they all originated from one Godly creation.  Acts 17:25-26 says “He himself gives ALL men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.”

And just as it pleased God to make many nations out of one man, it has pleased him even more to make us all one family again through faith in our Lord Christ Jesus. “Now therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God…”(Ephesians 2:14). We are being fitted together, grown into a holy temple in the Lord, for God himself to dwell in!

Sadly, even in this remarkable family we often see one another as strangers and foreigners.  We need deliverance from blind spots created by ignorance and fear. We need the help of the Holy Spirit in “discerning the Lord’s body” (1 Corinthians 12:29).  This involves recognizing the full worth of the redemption and reconciliation that Jesus Christ accomplished on the cross.  The blood Jesus shed unites every believer into one family and establishes an even greater spiritual heritage for us than the earthly ones we so dearly cherish.  

Revelation 5:9 describes a scene in heaven when the four living creatures and the twenty four elders fall down before the Lamb to sing a new song,

“You are worthy to take the scroll,

And to open its seals

For You were slain,

And have redeemed us to God by

  Your blood

Out of every tribe and tongue and

   people and nation,

And have made us kings and

   priests to our God;

And we shall reign on the earth.”

May we all revel more fully in the wonder of our uniqueness and the joy of our shared heritage in the Lord!

What standard are we called to?

There is an individual purpose, a destiny, each one of us has been called to fulfill.  Paul wrote, "I urge you... live a life that measures up to the standard God set when He called you." (Eph 4:1)    

On the lowest level, this could be a moral injunction (Behave; stay on the straight and narrow!).  I don't think that is where it was meant to end.  I wonder if it is not more about the fact that God put huge potential in me (and you) and that He wants me to live that out in confidence.   We all have various obstacles to overcome, but like high jumpers, we can delight in lifting the bar and testing our ability to do more and more in His power. 

I think the standard God set when He called you and I is a place of  living out our potential in a way which fully accomplishes God's purpose.  At the point of complete expression, our individual purpose is to positively impact this world with bold acts of unselfish service.  I live up to the standard God set when He called me when I stop being the centre of my own universe and grow, day by day, in my ability to reach out to others. 

So far I have set my own bar to a really moderate height.  I have hardly dared to dream I could do more to influence the world I live in.  Suddenly I am hearing Him whisper, " When I established your purpose, I set a standard that you have not even begun to imagine." 

I am certain this standard has nothing to do with self-centred pursuits like accumulating wealth or recognition.  It has everything to do with laying our lives down in obedience and seeing this world transformed as we attempt to bring His light into it's dark corners.  It's all about giving more (and more, and even more!) of the stuff that is hard to give (our money, our time, our hearts) to those who need it most.

  

A Father Who Knows Where I Live!

Years before blogs were created,  I had been asking God for a particular sum of money for several weeks.  I needed the money in order to participate in something I felt God  wanted me to do. My budget wouldn’t allow for it and there was no one I felt I could ask, so I didn’t mention it to anyone except God.  After two weeks of praying about this need, I went to the Post Office to collect mail. Amongst the envelopes was a registered letter from a complete stranger who lived in a town to which I had no link in any way. The letter was addressed specifically to me, my name and address were written with complete accuracy. As I opened the letter, I was shocked to see the precise amount of money for which I had been praying.  The letter contained no letter of explanation, just the money. I knew without any doubt that only God could possibly have told this man to send this money and  so that meant God had to have also given the sender my address.  I was as stunned and humbled by the fact that this person was able to hear God so clearly as I was by God’s miraculous answer to my request. 

Twenty years later, I experienced a season of huge challenges.  For six months after moving to Pretoria, I went through a period of overwhelming emotional, physical and spiritual challenges.  Serious traumas hit me during those months, including the death of my much loved father. Feeling alone and abandoned even by God, I cried out to Him one day as I stood cooking, “Father, have you forgotten me?  Did you lose track of me after we moved?  Should I have sent you a notice of my change of address? It seems you have forgotten me or don't know where I live anymore!” 

Instantly I sensed God's gentle response, “I haven’t forgotten you.  I know your name and address so well that I can give it to someone else in precise detail; don’t you remember?”

With that, my pain broke like a fever breaks. I cried as I remembered God’s past goodness and the many times He has come through for me. I realised He would never forget me; that would never line up with His character as I had grown to know it! 

In Isaiah 49:11, God says, “Can a woman forget her nursing child, and not have compassion on the son of her womb?  Surely they may forget, Yet I shall not forget you. See I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands”. He speaks here to Zion, but His heart is the same towards us as His children.  He knows exactly where each one of us is and what we are going through and He is able to provide for us in ways we can never imagine!

The Upside Down Kingdom

My father spotted the upside down house in this photograph as we travelled a road in Kansas, if I remember correctly.  The house captured the imaginations of my sister and I and we ran to take a closer look at this unusual sight! I had images in my head of how it would look inside and wondered if I would be able to walk on the ceiling with inverted furniture suspended all around me.  Fun thoughts for a five year old!

Christians are citizens in a Kingdom which has what appear to be 'upside down' laws and principles. The way up always seems to be the way down in God's realm of rule.  Scriptures contain examples of what seems in opposition to our self-centred human tendencies:

•  to gain our life, we must first lose it 
• it is better to give than to receive
• if we want to be the greatest, we must become the least 

Leadership in Biblical terms especially seems inverted  and sounds much more like servant hood.  It usually involves abandoning our own plans and making ourselves available to others so that they may live out their calling and accomplish the purposes of God in their lives.

The criteria for becoming a person of integrity and influence is our willingness to serve in the places where there is no public acclaim. Our presence and loving influence at work and at home is meant to alter the destinies of our family and co-workers forever.  Filling our personal roles with accountability and understanding allows God to trust us with additional,  public responsibilities of accomplishing His purposes in this world. 

Simon P. Walker goes even further in his book, Leading Out of Who You Are.  He basically says not only should we see leadership as service to others, but we must be willing to let go and lay down the power of leadership completely on a regular basis.  Relinquishing leadership ensures that we are truly free of the need for approval, power and control which corrupt the calling of a leader and misuse his skills for the purpose of personal gain.

As leaders develop the skills of others, they must model this principle to enable others to  let go and lay down the power they are similarly gaining. Again, in our upside down Kingdom, this sacrifice inevitably results in reward. Walker writes:

"When someone is willing and able to give away what they possess, they find that it is given back to them transformed into something greater... I believe that it is through this act of consecration that a leader becomes aware of what may properly be called his 'vocation'... Vocation is that clarity of identity and purpose, power and freedom, that you gain when you are truly available. Vocation occurs when the gifts and opportunities you were willing to 'lay on the altar' are given back to you, now shining bright, transformed by some other power and presence."

Our upside down house in Kansas did not live up to my expectations.  The house was a sales gimmick; an empty shell with no follow through  of the inverted theme within.  The upside down Kingdom on the other hand has never disappointed me and continues to fascinate me year after year.  Although I still have much to learn and am far from perfect, every obedient sacrifice I have made has resulted in a rich internal experience as the fulfilment and authenticity of His rule and reign has grown within my heart.  My hope is that it will be even more so in your life!