Western Worship

Is it just me or does it sometimes feel like the Western church is in a bubble?

We've got ISIS storming towns, brutally murdering innocent people, we've got people in North Korea being sent to prison camps for their faith, we've got millions in the 3rd world starving and thirsting and dying of HIV.. And we are going to church, Sunday by Sunday, in our suits and comfortable cars, hearing sermons that make us feel warm and fuzzy inside without really making us feel uncomfortable.. singing songs and letting the words come out of our mouths but not letting them penetrate our hearts..

It all feels a bit wrong to me. I don't know how I can fix it.. How do we empathise with our brothers and sisters all over the world who are suffering? How do we seek God's face and plead for him to intervene? How do we act to change things whenever the problem is just too huge and we can't? How should these tragedies all over the world shape our worship? How do we do all of this when we are simply too comfortable?

Stripping off.

"...let us strip off and throw aside every encumbrance (unnecessary weight) and that sin which so readily (deftly and cleverly) clings to and entangles us, and let us run with patient endurance and steady and active persistence the appointed course of the race that is set before us." - Hebrews 12:1 (Amplified Version)

There are some people in this world who just lift you right up. They challenge you and inspire you and make you hope and dream again. Sometimes, it takes a lifetime to meet just one person like that. I'm so fortunate to have a few friends like that in my life and I am so thankful for them.

I was chatting to one such friend a week or so ago about life, and she said to me, "I'm becoming increasingly aware that it is the things which present themselves as 'good' in our lives that prevent us from fulfilling our God-given potential." That instantly struck a chord with me. Sometimes, we forget that the things we need to 'strip off' aren't just the bad + sinful things we know are wrong. Throughout my life, I have fought for the things I thought were good for me. I have clung onto the 'good' with everything I've got, and the whole time I've been clinging on, God has been gently whispering, "Let go. Strip off. Never mind the 'good', I've got the BEST for you." 

If God is saying that to you about something in your life, just listen to Him and strip it right off. Even though it's sometimes a bit scary, the freedom and release you will feel will be incredible. God's plans for you are so much bigger than your own. Don't ever forget that.

Fingerprint.

So I was in England at the weekend, and when I'm travelling I NEED some music to listen to or else I crack up. Actually, I need music pretty much all the time or I crack up, ha. Anyway, I couldn't find my earphones, so had to buy some new ones at the airport. Found the most decent cheap ones I could and bought them in purple (of course). They are the kind of earphones that have a little plastic inline volume control on them. Anyway, when I was on the plane, I noticed a dirty mark on the volume control, so tried to rub it off. It wasn't budging. Tried scratching it off. It still wasn't budging. After licking my finger and rubbing it with a tissue and my jumper it still wasn't budging. I tilted it and looked at it in the light coming through the window of the plane and the dirty mark was actually part of a fingerprint embedded into the plastic. Someone in the manufacturing place probably touched it before it had set properly. I just thought it was so cool, how I could see the fingerprint belonging to someone I had never met or come into contact with. I don't even know what country the earphones were made in so I'm not even sure where the person is from. I see that fingerprint as a representation of that person. Not just their biological makeup and what they look like, but their thoughts and feelings, their problems, their hopes and dreams, the essence of what makes them them. Isn't it incredible how we are all unique? There is only one of you on planet earth, and there will only ever be one of you! Seeing that fingerprint made me feel so tiny. It made me remember that me and my little circle of friends and family and acquaintances aren't the only people on this planet. 

Isn't it incredible how one little grubby mark on a set of cheap earphones can make you think? :)

Failure

"Failure is not final." My grandma keeps saying that to me. It's only really in the last few days that I've actually thought about what she actually means. To me, it's something like the following...

Failure does not define you.

Failure doesn't take away from the person you are and the person you are going to be in the future. So don't let it!

Grasp the opportunities that failure gives you with both hands. Failure allows us to examine ourselves and to see where we went wrong and how we can fix it. Failure is part of the refining fire that we all go through to become more Christlike.

Failure is what Jesus looked for in people. He looked for the down and outs, the outcasts, the rejected, the people who had failed miserably. Can you recount a single time in the Bible where Jesus chose the 'perfect'? Nah, that wasn't His style. He understood that perfection is something that human beings created out of pride and a desire to be respected and powerful. What's perfect in God's eyes? Not us, but Jesus. If we lay our failures down at the foot of the cross, take on board the valuable lessons we have learned and accept forgiveness, God won't see us as failures. All He'll see is the gorgeous, irresistible beauty of Christ being worked through us, rather than the stain of sin.

If failure pulls us away from people but draws us nearer to God, it's totally worth going through all the pain and confusion and everything else that comes with it. Don't you think?

All that stuff gives me hope. If other people want to define me by my failings then I'm cool with that. But in the end, only God has the right to define who we are. As His child, I'm pretty sure that regardless of what the world thinks, I'm precious to Him. You are too - so start living like it! :)

I'm with stupid.

I don't like feeling stupid. In fact, I don't think anyone does. There have been many times when I've felt so stupid I just wanted the ground to swallow me whole...in my Greek/Hebrew classes (I knew nothing!), in a job interview where I was so nervous I just gave the most ridiculous answers (interviewer: 'so, when would you not be allowed to serve someone alcohol?' me: 'ummm...when they're pregnant?'), leading worship on Sunday morning in church when I played my guitar in the wrong key and had to stop the entire church singing (by yelling "STOOOPPPP!!" and waving my arms around like a lunatic) so I could fix my mistake...the list goes on and on. I think everybody feels stupid on at least a daily basis (or maybe it's just me?), and it can be for silly reasons, or it can be for slightly more embarrassing ones (the church incident being a prime example!). Either way, nobody really likes feeling stupid.

So where am I going with this? Basically, I think that there's one area of life that I definitely should not have to feel stupid about. That area is my faith. I'm a Christian. I believe that Jesus died to save me (and the whole world). I believe that I've been forgiven and that my time on earth is a precious gift from God which I need to use to glorify and honour Him. A lot of the time, I fail miserably at being a Christian. I don't pretend to have it all sussed out, because I really don't. I've made loads of mistakes (some really bad ones :/) and a lot of the time, my head is rammed full of questions which cause me to doubt. But you know what, in the midst of it all I know two things: 1. that I am loved by God and 2. that I love Him. I have weighed up the evidence against believing in God so, so many times (sometimes for academic study, sometimes because I'm doubting!), and I have come to the same conclusion every time: God exists. Not only does He exist, but He is active in the world and desires to have a relationship with us. If I've come to those conclusions, should I have to feel stupid? Should I have to feel a little awkward when someone asks me if I'm religious and I look at my shoes and mumble "I'm a Christian"? I don't want to be someone who apologises for believing in God despite the scientific evidence which screams that God doesn't exist. I guess though that attitudes towards Christianity will only change once people actually stop apologising for their faith. We need to speak up with authority (i.e. not wanting the ground to swallow us up) about what we believe in. Only then will attitudes shift.

3 things i learned from a 3 year degree in theology..

So, it's June 24th. And it's been AGES since I've written a post. A lot has happened in the past few months! I had to make a decision about which direction I should go in the next few years, and it was the toughest decision I've ever had to make. I wish sometimes that God would speak in a big booming voice rather than a still whisper...but don't we all! Aside from that, my degree is over. I received my results a few days ago and I'm very happy with them! Got a nice wee 2:1, with a very surprising result in my dissertation. It was a nice surprise, rather than a nasty one :D I was curious to see what my tutors thought was so good about it, so tonight I sat down to read it the whole way through for the very first time. I know, I know, very irresponsible of me to not read it thoroughly before it was handed in...I wouldn't advise that method either - I found about 5 mistakes which made me facepalm at my own stupidity! The word 'following' is definitely not spelt 'followinf'... Anyway, I finished the read through and immediately wondered how on earth I managed to write it all. I also wondered how on earth I managed to know so much about the stuff I was writing about (the title of the dissertation was "Theodicy in Contemporary Fiction: the novel, 'The Shack', as a case study"). This thought got me thinking another thought: what have I actually learned from my very expensive 3 year theology degree?  I'm obviously not going to bore you by listing off every wee tiny theological point (there are FAR too many!), but I thought it would be a neat way of rounding off my degree and reflecting on how much I've grown (or maybe shrunk?) over the last 3 years. 

I think the first thing I've learned is that I'm definitely a Methodist. Anyone who knows me well enough will know that I don't particularly like labels when it comes to Christianity - mainly because they sort of create division. Division shouldn't be happening though - the Church is the Bride of Christ, all working together for the same purpose. Labels such as Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists etc should not be thought of as dividing. They should be thought of as distinguishing. I know people will probably be thinking "but...distinguishing leads to division emma...DUH!" but I view 'distinguishing' as a positive thing. I like the way that we have the freedom to take theology from scripture, reason, tradition and experience and interpret it in our own way. I like the fact that Christianity is such a rich and diverse faith. I like the fact that I can sit down opposite a friend and debate with them about some theological matter and realise at the end that, in the long run, it doesn't really matter. One of the key things I've taken from my degree is that Methodism was completely radical - it turned conventional thinking upside-down and worked hard to rectify the injustices that society faced. I've also taken quite a liking to the Arminian nature of Methodism. I really think though that the vast majority of Methodists don't have a clue about the incredible history and theology that lies behind the label...which is really kind of sad :(

The second thing I've learned is that we should learn from those who went before us, rather than thinking we've got all the answers! I used to take the mickey out of special John Wesley services in church, and roll my eyes when a 3,957,012 verse hymn from the 1700s was being sung with this ye olde language that I didn't really fully understand and didn't feel I could relate to. To some extent, I still cringe a little at the John Wesley services, but I think that it's actually a really good thing to get challenged and inspired by the incredible men and women who have gone before us. I've also majorly warmed up to old hymns. In one single line, they can hold such profound theological truths and challenges. We need more worship songs like that today!

The third thing I've learned is that if you're gonna read the scriptures, you need to do so in the power of the Holy Spirit. Honestly? Exegetical essay after exegetical essay have really taken their toll on my ability to just sit down and read the Bible. I find myself constantly thinking "oooohhhh I wonder what that word is in Greek" "what's the historical context?" "what's the cultural context?" "oh, this writer uses X narrative form, so they obviously want to portray Y" "oh my goodness - DISASTER! this manuscript was most likely edited centuries later, so is it really true?!" yada, yada, yada.. It goes on and on. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed exegesis! It really opens up whole new realms of meaning whenever the little things are explored. However, I think exegesis made me look at the Bible in a slightly (very) different (and not so good) light - that it is a source of theology. That may sound crazy - of course the Bible is a source of theology! But it should primarily be about challenging, encouraging and growing us in our faith...not about analysing all the tiny minuscule details that have no impact on the things of eternity! The Bible is the Word of the Living God, and it's so easy to forget that when you're just treating it like another historical/theological source.

These may not seem like huge things to have learned over 3 years, but they are huge to me, and have totally transformed the way I look at my faith. I'm sure that over time, I'll discover other things that I have learned. When I do, I'll make sure to post about them.


On a completely different note, I'd just like to publicly thank everyone who has helped me along the long and winding road of studying theology - don't think I need to mention names here - you all know who you are. Thank you so much for your patience and guidance - it really kept me sane when I felt like I was losing the plot! Big thank you and even bigger love to you all.x

Crazy!

It is highly unusual for me to post two blog articles in one day! I also don't really like copying and pasting things into the blog that aren't mine, but this is too good to hold back from you lot. Enjoy it + be inspired by it! Another lesson in simplicity..

"How to Explain God" was written by Danny Dutton, age 8, from Chula Vista, California, for his third grade homework assignment: "Explain God" The following piece was published in Christianity Today:

"One of God's main jobs is making people. He makes them to replace the ones that die so there will be enough people to take care of things on earth. He doesn't make grown-ups, just babies. I think because they are smaller and easier to make. That way He doesn't have to take up His valuable time teaching them to talk and walk. He can just leave that to mothers and fathers.
"God's second most important job is listening to prayers. An awful lot of this goes on, since some people, like preachers and things, pray at times besides bedtime. God doesn't have time to listen to the radio or TV because of this. Because He hears everything, there must be a terrible lot of noise in His ears, unless He has thought of a way to turn it off.
"God sees everything and hears everything and is everywhere which keeps Him pretty busy. So you shouldn't go wasting His time by going over your mum and dad's head asking for something they said you couldn't have.
"Atheists are people who don't believe in God. I don't think there are any in Chula Vista. At least there aren't any who come to our church.
"Jesus is God's Son. He used to do all the hard work like walking on water and performing miracles and trying to teach the people who didn't want to learn about God. They finally got tired of Him preaching to them and they crucified Him. But He was good and kind, like His Father and He told His Father that they didn't know what they were doing and to forgive them and God said okay. His Dad (God) appreciated everything that He had done and all His hard work on earth so He told Him He didn't have to go out on the road anymore. He could stay in heaven. So He did. And now He helps His Dad out by listening to prayers and seeing things which are important for God to take care of and which ones He can take care of Himself without having to bother God. Like a secretary, only more important.
“You can pray anytime you want and they are sure to help you because they got it worked out so one of them is on duty all the time.
"You should always go to Church on Sunday because it makes God happy, and if there's anybody you want to make happy, it's God. Don't skip church to do something you think will be more fun like going to the beach. This is wrong. And besides the sun doesn't come out at the beach until noon anyway.
"If you don't believe in God, besides being an atheist, you will be very lonely, because your parents can't go everywhere with you, like to camp, but God can. It is good to know He's around you when you're scared in the dark or when you can't swim and you get thrown into real deep water by big kids. But you shouldn't just always think of what God can do for you. I figure God put me here and He can take me back anytime He pleases. And that's why I believe in God.”