God gives the growth (a reflection on 17 years)

Seventeen years ago, I walked into the chaplaincy office at a university in Melbourne.

I'd just been given a job: the first staffworker at a very young Christian university group. There was a chaplain (male), a part-time staffworker (me), 5 committed members, an old chaplaincy building, and a few rooms that were ours for the booking. Those were our resources.

At our main meetings, we'd get 20 people, maybe 30 on a good day. I might be exaggerating the numbers. I remember the hard work of sitting next to strangers and welcoming them and following them up.

I mentored 3 girls in those first years. A year or two later, the chaplain left, and my husband took over the ministry. Six months later, I left to have the first of 4 children, and the work slowly grew.

That was then.

This is now.

Last Saturday, I walked into our annual dinner. My husband, Steve, was supposed to be there - he leads the ministry, after all - but he was home and voiceless with the flu. I took my two oldest children instead. We had trouble finding the venue, so we arrived late, hot-faced and sore-footed.

I munched on my entree and listened to Peter Adam speak about Jesus the Word of God, and the wonder that is university student groups still standing up for the truth when so many evangelical groups have fallen by the wayside.

There were a few tears in the eyes of our staffworkers - I'm sure I saw them! - as they said goodbye, one at a time, to a bunch of shaggy-haired (male) and well-dressed (female) graduates, who have served so well while they've been with us these few years.

A young man spoke about how he's learned to stand up for his faith. A young women talked about how she's learned to put God's kingdom before her own. We farewelled a student who came to Christ and was baptized last year, now headed back to her own country.

Seated at the tables were 150 people: students, parents, supporters. More on the waiting list, who couldn't fit in the room (we'd better book a bigger venue next year). When I got home, I asked Steve how many people are involved in the group this year, and he told me it's about 120. A bit of a contrast to the tiny group we started with 17 years ago.

And it's not just the numbers.

What I saw last Saturday were two men - my husband's co-workers - leading the meeting in his absence, and doing it seamlessly. Two men my husband helped to train. It was good to know that, under God, we have more than replaced ourselves. It felt like a glimpse of the future: one day, when we leave, the work will go on.

Their wives sat at the tables, faithful women who were also part of our ministry. One of them was among the first 3 women I mentored. Now they help their husbands, offer hospitality to students, pass on their wisdom to younger women, and teach and train their children. Another generation raised to know Jesus.

I looked around and saw many others we taught and trained. One couple planted a church last year. A few lead ministries in other churches. Lots study at theology colleges. Some serve in overseas mission. Many share their faith in the workplace. Most serve God in local churches, using skills picked up at uni.

God's work goes out, to times and places we will never see.

My husband works hard, and comes home tired. He's not one to see beyond the place he's in. Yet on Saturday night I was given a glimpse of the God-given impact of the ministry we've poured ourselves into. It's not always easy to see it, here at home, here on the support team; but last week I saw it. I have seldom been more encouraged.

Others planted, we watered, but God gives the growth (1 Cor 3:6). Praise be to him.

a reflection on twelve years in Pakistan

When I was a child, I thought of missionaries as super-spiritual, going places I'd never dare go, with more courage than I'd ever have. That's just one reason I love this beautiful poem by my friend Jenny, a missionary in Pakistan.*

A Reflection on Twelve years in Pakistan

Striving, surviving, thriving -
yet not quite the outward-bound,
ever-moving, onwards and upwards
imagined adventure.

Rather, each year taken on
its own flavour, layer upon layer
and nothing remains constant,
only the unsettling uncertainty
of what tomorrow could be.

I’ve felt
none of the perfectionism,
none of the spiritual giantism,
that I mistakenly expected.

It’s been slow – oh, so slow -
to come to pass
and yet has passed too soon,
with some gain; not without pain.

Much is veiled and dimly lit,
the secret workings of the Spirit,
who alone has been faithfully
persevering, pruning, working
in this barren soil, his toil.

His wondrous grace and tender mercy
never ceases.
And this brings peace, his peace alone,
so we continue striving, keep surviving
and be sure of His work thriving.

* I've added a few paragraph breaks for ease of online reading - apologies, friend!

how we change (14) conclusion: my story

Many months ago - on July 13th, 2009 - I started this series with a post on God's grace. It seems appropriate to finish it in the same way: with some reflections on grace I wrote last year soon after reading Tim Chester's You Can Change.

I lie there and soak myself in God’s love.

It’s starting to dawn on me – after 30 years of being a Christian! – that nothing I do can change his love for me. No quiet times faithfully or unfaithfully performed. No backsliding into over-spending or over-eating. No failures to fulfil my responsibilities to husband or children or neighbours.

As a teenager, I’d write vows in my diary - “I promise to pray every day. I promise to read the Bible every day. I promise never to complain again.” – then wonder if God would strike me down when I broke them.

As a young woman, I’d wake in the night with a sick feeling in my stomach and write yet another midnight list of rules to control my spending, agonizing over whether I could possibly be a real Christian and give in to sin so often.

As a mother, I’d create elaborate plans for every aspect of marriage, homemaking, child-rearing and ministry, only to burn out after a month of trying to do everything and swear never to write a plan again.

None of it worked. Not for long, anyway. Until I realized that at the deepest level I’m a legalist, a perfectionist, a fulfiller of expectations, constantly trying to prove myself to God, myself, and others.

I believe the lie that I have to earn God’s love. My idol, my deepest desire, is to be worthy, complete, respected. It’s time to start believing God when he says I’m forgiven. It’s time to start resting in God’s grace.

It doesn’t matter how other people see me. It doesn’t even matter how I see me. What matters is how God sees me, and he sees me through the lens of his grace, clothed in the perfect righteousness of his Son. He see me, and he forgives me and changes me into everything he wants me to be.

As I realize this, it’s like opening a door into a new world, glowing with grace and freedom. In this world, I don’t obey because I have to. I don’t obey because my self-concept will fall apart if I fail. I don’t obey because I’ll let people down if I don’t meet their expectations.

I obey because all I can see is Jesus dying on a cross for me.

images are from stock.xchng and from David Gunter at flickr

what I'm reading: when I'm still not changing from You Can Change

Have you read You Can Change and you're still not changing? Do you keep falling back into sin? Do you wonder why you've plateaued in your growth?

Tim Chester says we can plateau for a couple of reasons: we stop fighting sin once we get rid of the obvious sins of behaviour, but never confront the more subtle sins of the heart; or we only think we've plateaued, because as we grow in godliness, the more subtle sins of the heart become clearer to us (I can testify to that!).

We might also stop growing because we're missing something. Here's Chester's summary of the steps in You Can Change, which I thought would be good revision for us all:

1. Keep returning to the cross to see your sin cancelled and to draw near to God in full assurance of welcome.
2. Keep looking to God instead of to sin for satisfaction, focusing on the four liberating truths of God's greatness, glory, goodness and grace.
3. Cut off, throw off, put off, kill off everything that might strengthen or provoke sinful desires.
4. Bring sin into the light through regular accountability to another Christian.

If you resist doing these four things, and we often resist numbers 3 and 4, it's a sign that you still treasure sin in your heart: sin is still more important to you than God. Turn to God in repentance, reflect on sin's consequences, meditate on the all-surpassing glory of Christ, and beg God to give you a love for him that eclipses your love for sin.

It's scary, isn't it, how much we resist true change! Let's keep fighting, and praying for God to help us love him more than we love sin.

of trees, trains and Christian growth

There's a stand of huge old oak trees in the park where I walk. They have a slightly surprised air, as if they've been transplanted from a genteel English landscape and are wondering how they ended up here, surrounded by scruffy wattle trees under a burning Australian sun, with graffiti tags on their trunks and white cockatoos squawking from their branches like rowdy antipodean visitors.

Like all oaks, they are firmly rooted, growing down and out as much as up, offering a dense, dark shade. Every year of their long lives, they have put out new growth in spring, watched it harden into summer's dusty green, lost dry brown leaves in autumn, and bared their twisted black limbs in winter.

There's a railway track running through the park. I watch the trains gleam and flash through the trees, humming and creaking over the heritage-listed timber bridge on its sturdy, numbered trestles. The trains are always in a hurry, tooting their horns, bustling self-importantly to the next station.

For over a century, the oaks have grown steadily as the trains have shed old fashions and adopted new ones—steam trains, red rattlers, blue trains, sleek silver trains, silver trains with green and gold, silver trains with blue and yellow stripes. (This is a Melbourne story; no doubt in your part of the world, the trains have different fashions.)

The trees and the trains bring to mind a Bible verse I read recently:

Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. (Col 2:6-7)

We don't grow as Christians by hurrying from place to place, taking on the colour of each year's new spiritual fad—second blessings, signs and wonders, slayings in the Spirit, guiding visions. We grow in the same way God's people have always grown: by sinking our roots deeper into Christ. Here, fed and nourished by the gospel, we gain an enduring wisdom. We give shelter. We stand firm through all the seasons and storms of life.

May God help us to be more like trees than trains.

This is reprinted from last Friday's post in The Sola Panel.

images are from formalfallacy and Mugofevil at flickr

how we change (1) my story

I have been a legalist all my life. Perfectionist, rule-maker, guilt-wallower; self-confident, self-reliant, proud; ashamed, discouraged, overcome. Legalist.

Why has it taken me so long to realise something so foundational to my faith? – that growth in Christ, just like conversion to Christ, depends entirely on God’s work in me through Christ by his Spirit.

It’s because I’ve been born again into a new life that I change. It’s because my old self has died with Christ that I change. It’s because Christ lives in me that I change. It’s because the Spirit transforms my heart that I change. It’s because God guarantees that one day he will complete the process he began in me that I change. It’s because I’m forgiven that I change.

It’s only as I begin to realise the immensity of what God has done for me in Christ – that he has done all that is necessary, and that I can’t, by any act of mine, add or subtract one iota from his loving work on my behalf – that change begins to come from a changed heart.

God has taken my heart, wrung self-confidence out of it, and filled me with the knowledge of his grace: and I rejoice to give him myself.

Let me share with you the ultimate secret of Christian growth: that it happens only as we give up our lists of hopeful rules and desperate vows, and look to Christ alone, remembering what he has done for us, fixing our thoughts on him, and placing full confidence in his finished work on the cross.

Welcome to a new series on in all honesty, as we begin to look together at the grace of God and how it changes our hearts. You might like to grab a copy of Tim Chester's You Can Change (or perhaps Elyse Fitzpatrick's Idols of the Heart or Tim Lane and Paul Tripp's How People Change) and read along with me.

images are from stock.xchng