online meanderings

Lessons learned from the dark valley of depression - These lessons learned through suffering sound very familiar.

How to work in a job that you don't love - For young men unsure of the future, but relevant to us all.

How far is too far? - Well, would you passionately kiss your neighbour? A helpful article. (And a book review - Sex, dating and relationships - with yet another alternative to "dating" and "courtship" - a dating friendship!)

Is it okay for Christians to be bemoan an unexpected pregnancy? - There's lot to like about this post.

Is your complementarian culture bordering on crazy? - Some ways that culture can take over from theology when it comes to men and women.

Christians should pray long enough and honestly enough, at a single session, to get past the feeling of formalism and unreality that attend not a little praying. To enter the spirit of prayer, we must stick at it for a little while. Eventually we will come to delight in God’s presence, to rest in his love, to cherish his will. Don Cason

Embrace the vulnerability of partial knowledge. If we “know in part”—in our parenting, in our counselling, in our decision-making—we must move toward our God for his wisdom. Mike Emlet (on Zack Eswine)

To see more links and quotes, click here (Facebook) or here (Twitter).

God’s gifts in suffering (3) suffering tests and refines our faith

In this [living hope] you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith--of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire--may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed. (1 Peter 1:6-7)

I’m no Job. The words I used to sing so blithely, with such theoretical appreciation of their beauty, such bland conviction that I’d sing them whatever came – “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21)1 – don’t, apparently, spring to my lips when suffering comes. My lips are sealed, silent.

And that’s the first thing suffering teaches me about myself: my faith is weaker than I knew. I am riddled with doubt. I am shot through with unbelief. My trust in God is fragile.

When I was young, I thought of myself as strong. I would never lose my faith! I would never stumble! My obedience was sure, my faith certain. Life, at times, has felt like a successive stripping away of self-delusion. Tempt me, and I am prone to habitual sin. Test me, and I am prone to anger. Try me, and I am prone to unbelief.

Suffering brings me low, which is exactly where I need to be:

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. (Psalm 51:17)

Suffering undoes me. It unravels the pride and self-reliance that were woven together with my faith. What’s left is alarmingly slender, so it’s just as well that it’s God, not me, who holds me here. Faith hangs by a thread; yet it holds, tested and true, stronger than spider silk, for the One to whom it clings is faithful. When I am weak, God proves to be strong; and, seeing this, my faith grows stronger.

Suffering refines my faith. It becomes more resilient, less dependent on circumstances. I come one step closer to believing in God as he really is, not as I want him to be. I long for heaven, and the ties that bind me to this earth are loosened.

It’s true: suffering both tests and refines my faith. I’ll write more about the second of these in the weeks to come.


1. The song being Matt Redman’s Blessed be the name of the Lord.

online meanderings

7 in 10 Christians killed worldwide last year came from just one country - Pray.

What do you do when the word leaves you cold? - Great suggestions for times of spiritual dryness.

When I heard God's voice - How God spoke to Challies. How he speaks to us.

For perfectionists in imperfect marriages - Helpful reading for perfectionists, married or not.

12 ways to support parents of babies and young children - "Offer advice only when invited", "Encourage", and more.

Fight spiritual ADD, "in which we bounce from blog to book to sermon in ways that don’t promote deep engagement and growth". A constant temptation for me.

If I'm failing to demonstrate the same fruit of the Spirit in "real life" as I do online, it's probably plastic fruit. Lindsay Carlson

People like to say life is a marathon, not a sprint, but it’s actually more like a track workout. We run hard and then rest hard. Kevin DeYoung

To see more links and quotes, click here (Facebook) or here (Twitter).

in the middle of a story

Love this quote. So true. (And it's one reason I can rarely write about anything until after it's over, or at least until my thoughts about it have settled into some kind of order - and that rarely happens in the middle of it.)

When you are in the middle of a story it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It’s only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else.

~Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace HT Ali

Couch to 5K: week 6, day 1

Week 6 day 1.
A brisk 5-minute walk, then 5 minutes of running, 3 minutes of walking, 8 minutes of running, 3 minutes of walking, 5 minutes of running.

Day 1: that's all I've done of week 6 so far. I'm e-a-s-i-n-g my way through a combination of weeks 5 and 6, nursing my knees (so far so good), working up gradually to my first 25 minute run.

I ran on Sunday afternoon (I'll do my next run today if I can). The first 5 minutes were sluggish and slow; the 8 minutes, a test of stamina; the last 5 minutes, joyous. It reminded me, again, why I'm doing this whole Couch to 5K thing.

I've been feeling worn out, flattened by life. After my run, I felt happy, energised, ready to face the week. Exercise isn't the key to life, but it's a good cure for blah-ness. It's a great gift of God, isn't it?

And I ran with my daughter! It was her first run for months. Despite that, she powered ahead of me through the first 5 minutes, long legs taking in big gulps of ground. "You go ahead, darling!", I panted. "I'll catch up!". The difference between 44 and 14 years.

Ah, but then she chose to sit out the 8 minute run. Okay, so she wasn't super-well, but it still made feel a bit better. Ageing legs and all, I've developed some stamina over the last few months.

We ran the last 5 minutes together, and she hit the sweet spot, where your mind gives up and your body takes over, lungs and legs doing their thing. It's a glorious feeling, best of all the first time you feel it.

She enjoyed it so much that she declared, "Mum, I want to go jogging again!" Sweet words to a mother's ears. Seems I have a new jogging companion, on weekends at least.

when life feels oh, so ordinary

My life feels ordinary. I guess yours does to. And so often we long for more. Or we wonder if we're missing out on something. Or if we could be serving God in bigger ways.

Challies tackles this feeling in Ordinary: Christian living for the rest of us.

Ordinary is a book I have lived. I live it every day. I live an ordinary life, pastor an ordinary church full of ordinary people, and head home each night to my ordinary little home in an oh-so-ordinary suburb. I preach very ordinary sermons—John Piper or Steve Lawson I am not and never will be—and as I sit with the people I love I am sure I give them very ordinary counsel. A friend recently confessed his initial disappointment the first time he visited my home and got a glimpse of my life. “Your house is so small and your life is so boring.” Indeed. It’s barely 1,100 square feet of house and forty hours every week sitting at a desk...

I want to explore this desire to be more than ordinary and this low-grade guilt that compels us to try to do more and be more and act more. I am convinced that we do not need to make ordinary synonymous with apathetic and radical synonymous with godly. I want to explore some of these themes because I encounter them in my own life, I see them in the pages of bestselling books, I hear them at conferences, I counsel against them in the people I pastor, and I often battle to convince my own wife that ordinary is good. It is all God asks of us. It is all God asks of her.

And here’s the thing. I am thrilled to live this ordinary life. Nine days out of ten I wake up in the morning overwhelmed with gratitude that I get to live a life like this. I live it without guilt and regret. I live without the desire to be extra-ordinary and without feeling the need to do radical things. But then there is that other day, that one out of ten, where I feel guilt and discontentment, where I want life to be so much more than it is, where I am convinced that I am missing out on a better life and missing out on God’s expectations for me.

Ordinary is Christian living for the rest of us. It is for people like me and, in all likelihood, people like you. It is for Christians who have tried to be more than ordinary and who just have not found what they have been looking for. It is for Christians who have never tried to be more than ordinary and who are content that way. It validates our sheer normalcy and refutes our desire to be anything greater than that.

It is about being ordinarily excellent, ordinarily passionate, ordinarily godly. It is about trusting that such ordinary saints are saints indeed, fully acceptable, fully accepted, fully pleasing to the One who created and called us.

I think we may just find that this desire to be more than ordinary and to live a life so much more than ordinary exposes as much sin as sanctification. Perhaps we will find it is one thing to pursue godliness and end up with extraordinary challenges, extraordinary responsibilities or extraordinary opportunities, but another thing altogether to pursue the more-than-ordinary as a goal. We may well find that the Christians who really get it are the most unremarkable of all.

You can read the rest here.

online meanderings

Just as I am - "She was kept wakeful by distressing thoughts of her apparent uselessness..." For those with chronic illness.

What do you do when the word leaves you cold? - 8 helpful thoughts about times of spiritual dryness.

Mums, control and worry - "I’ve been bitten by a serpent-shaped lie that says I can orchestrate all the details of my life...Worry is an acceptable sin that joins many conversations, play dates, and texts."

Leading on empty - Burnout, its signs and symptoms, and how to prevent it. Really excellent.

Your church is too small - Just finished Sam's article on Hillsong. I thought it was clear and fair.

Patience is not an emotion that we feel, it's the control of an emotion. It's not felt, it's exercised. Lisa Thompson

Gluttony is the soul’s addiction to excess. It occurs when taste overrules hunger, when want outweighs need...Feasting on God is as foreign to most of us as an empty stomach. Jason Todd

To see more links, click here (Facebook) or here (Twitter).

the 5 tasks of friendship in marriage

What a great list: the 5 key tasks of friendship in marriage.

Know each other’s worlds intimately – knowing what are the other persons stresses and worries, feeling like the other person is interested in knowing you, asking open-ended questions and remembering the answers.

Admire the positive qualities in your spouse – what do you like about them and do you regularly tell them. Are you scanning for your partners mistakes or for things to admire. It has a significant impact to say something you appreciate.

Respond to your spouse’s attempts to connect with you – people make bids for connection, empathy etc, which form an emotional bank account, and you can increase your mindfulness of how your partner (friend) makes bids to connect. You can turn away, against or towards a person in response to their bid for connection. This behaviour is apparently the basis of romance, passion and sex. For example, one person looks out the window and says “isn’t it a beautiful sunset tonight” – you can ignore them, say you don’t have time to look at sunsets, just say “yeah”, of you can say “how about we go outside and take a look together” etc.

Time – hang out with each other to catch up. They talked about the importance of making time for this. And that if during this time you can communicate how you feel, that leads to a greater emotional connection.

Enjoy – have fun together. No laughter or fun is a bad sign. It takes five positives to make up for each negative in an emotional bank account, so fun times are important and will help you survive the lean times.

From Keith and Sarah Condie via Ali.

prepare yourself for suffering

Brace yourself for suffering:

Every trial we go through is “Father-filtered,” meaning that nothing takes God by surprise. Every tribulation that comes our way is permitted by the God who holds our future in His hand....

Preachers like to say that people are in one of three stages:

About to encounter suffering
Going through suffering
Coming out of suffering

If this is true, then we should prepare people for all three stages. Why? Because suffering well is one of the best ways we witness to our faith and joy in the Lord....

No one wants to take the Suffering Class. We steer clear of studying about this subject. We don’t want that course checked off our list. We start thinking, If I’m prepared for suffering, God is going to send a portion my way! Better to ignore it and deal with it when it comes, right?
Wrong.

Take the suffering class. Study what the Bible says about suffering. Don’t neglect Job, the psalms, or the words of the Apostle Peter.

Let’s prepare for suffering so we can be a powerful testimony to the grace and goodness of God in the midst of pain.

Do yourself a favour. Read the whole thing.

what I'm reading: suffering brings me to the cross

How easily I become self-sufficient! How easily I worship comfort and money and ease! How easily I forget Jesus' demand to give up everything to follow him! How easily I lay down the cross he asks me to bear! 

Then suffering steps in. It takes away the idols I refused to give up. It exposes the lie of my self-sufficiency. It brings me to my knees at the foot of the cross. It teaches me, once again, to bear my cross for the One who died for me. 

I've seen this dynamic in my own life. Joni talks about in When God weeps*:

The cross is where we die. We got there daily. But it isn't easy ... The cross? We dig in our heels. The invitation is so frighteningly individual. It's an invitation to go alone...

We know it as a place of death. "Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature..." (Colossians 3:5). Who wants to do that? Crucify his own pride? Kill his own daydreams and fantasies? Dig a grave for his pet worries?

We simply cannot bring ourselves to go to the cross. Nothing attracts us to it.
Thus we live independently of the cross. Or try to. As time passes, the memory of our desperate state when we first believed fades. The cross was something that happened to us "back then." We forget how hungry for God we once were. We grow self-sufficient ... We would hardly admit it, but we know full well how autonomous of God we operate.

This is where God steps in.

He permits suffering ... Suffering reduces us to nothing ... To be reduced to nothing is to be dragged to the foot of the cross. It's a severe mercy ... Suffering forces us to our knees at the foot of Calvary. 

Joni Eareckson Tada When God weeps 135-136, 142.

* I don't love everything about what Joni writes on these pages, or perhaps I haven't quite got my head around it. What I loved and agreed with, I have shared with you here.