Who has GOT your back?

Today is Remembrance Sunday here in Britain, when we honour all those who sacrificed  their ‘tomorrows’ in the First World War, and onwards through the years of continuing conflict, so that we could have our ‘todays.’

As we stood with heads bowed for the long, silent minute of the Act of Remembrance, in church this morning, I reflected on the sacrifice that others had made so that I could live in freedom. I was reminded of the words of Jesus in John 15:13 as he spelled out the true meaning of love.

 “Greater love has no-one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” he said, knowing what lay ahead of him. Years later, on the other side of the Cross and resurrection, the apostle John remembered those words and commented “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay our lives for our brothers.”

I never cease to be amazed at the total commitment soldiers seem to have to one another. They have shared so much, that even when they are injured, they are often utterly determined to return to their regiment as soon as possible. The phrase ‘I’ve got your back’ means that they can step out into danger, confident that the man behind them is on the alert keeping watch, sheltering them from the enemy that they can’t see. As the Three Musketeers used to say ‘One for all and all for one!’

Who looks after your back? As Christians we’re definitely in a war zone. We need those who ‘understand where we’re coming from’ and will pray for us and protect our backs. We need encouragement, a listening ear, and sometimes a hand to pull us up and get us back on the right path again. There’s no room for ego’s and personal kingdom building in God’s army. Satan loves it when we stumble and sometimes get wiped out altogether. 

When a soldier is hit by the enemy, the cry goes up ‘Man down.’ and immediately the whole focus is to get that soldier back on his feet and fit for battle.  I wrote this to honour those who have given their all, and to remind me that I have a responsibility, to watch out for those who seek to ‘fight the good fight’ by my side..

“Man Down!” That’s what they shout Lord,

when one of those they call ‘comrades in arms’

sprawls wounded on the desert sand,

or, worst of all, lies dead.

And this man was so young, dear Lord,

just three days short of twenty one.

But now he’ll have no use for gift wrapped packages

so neatly stowed beneath his army bunk….

In ambush, snipers watched and waited

while he, and many like him,

searched for, and then disarmed

those lethal IED’s.

He made the sandy path a little safer

for those who came behind,

hoping that by his skill and courage,

he would be able to prevent

another agonising shout -‘Man Down’ ….

You know about self sacrifice, dear Lord.

For ‘Greater love’ you said while here on earth

 ‘has no one showed than this,

That one man lay his life down for his friends.’

And that is what you did.

No bombs or bullets took your life.

But knowing very well what lay ahead

and sweating blood, you chose

the whip, the thorns, the spittle and the taunts,

and for Your enemies,

as well as for Your friends,

You chose the nails.

And now Lord you have called each one of us,

to fight against the enemy of souls.

Not flesh and blood,

but rulers, powers and evil spiritual force

in heavenly realms.

Unseen, but prowling nonetheless

to weaken and destroy.

Today please help us so to stand,

arms linked

strong in Your power,

protected by Your blood

so that whatever strategem he may employ,

 the shout will not go up from us

“Man Down!”

Any time will do - or will it?

A centipede was happy until one day, in fun,

A toad said ‘Pray which leg goes after which?’

which strained his mind to such a pitch

he lay distracted in a ditch

considering how to run.

In writing circles, November is known as the month of NaNoWriMo, when many would be novelist, and probably as many published ones, set themselves the task of starting a new piece of work, and writing 50,000 words in the 30 days of November. This wouldn’t be sufficient for a full length novel, but should produce the raw material for the major part of one.

‘I’m going to write my Christmas novella’ predicted one prolific writing friend confidently. She has done it before and while others of us dither and try to decide if there is any hope of spending so many hours in front of the computer, she just gets on with it.

Are you a procrastinator? You may have read about the mule that had two bales of hay put into his stable. While he tried to decide which one of them to tackle first, he ate neither and starved to death!

Perhaps you don’t put things off altogether, but you never really throw your heart and soul into a project. I was challenged recently by the story in 2 Kings 13. The prophet Elisha was on his death bed and King Jehoash thought that he’d better consult the prophet while he was still alive. Elisha commanded the King to fire one arrow though the window, and then to bang the rest of his quiverful on the ground. We don’t know whether Jehoash felt embarrassed, got tired of the whole thing, or felt it was a pointless exercise. But after three hearty raps he gave up, and Elisha told him that in the light of that,God would only give him partial victory over the enemy.

It’s easy to give up too soon. For it’s not just the opportunity, but the attitude with which we meet that opportunity, which determines the size of our victory. It may be sticking to a diet, getting our Christmas shopping done before the hordes descend on the shops, or writing 50,000 words in a month.

How would things be different if for 30 days, we invested our most valuable resource, our time, into our most important possession, the opportunities that God has given us? NaNoWriMo anyone? 

How much would you pay?

                                                 

                                                           

I’ve just come back from a trip to America. I don’t rate flying very highly, but we got on the plane, had a seat each, if rather a small one, were fed and watered and arrived safely at our destination.

 We took a train from Chicago to Grand Rapids which was very different from travelling on British Rail. Because there are few protected level crossings, the Amtrak train was sounding a mournful horn almost all the way. But the seats were comfortable and the journey, if slow was safe enough.

Later in the trip we went from San Francisco to Monterey for a Writer’s Retreat. The bus broke down, but we sat in a comfortable hotel garden until a replacement came. Some people had lost their luggage on their journey, others had experienced delays of all sorts. But none of the journeys compared to this one being undertaken by a man in Africa en route for Media Associates Littworld conference in Kenya, this coming week. This is what he wrote:

Thank you so much for the sacrifices made to help me attend this conference. By the Grace of our God, I have the ticket and will start the journey from tomorrow; Wednesday 24 Oct. I will sleep at Kigali(Rwanda) and Thursday morning, I will take the bus from Kigali to Kampala(Uganda) hopefully, around 03h00’P/M, I will be connected to another Bus from Kampala and I will get at Nairobi Friday morning. The problem is that; I don’t know the Bus companies I will be using, especially the one from Kampala to Nairobi!

Buses in Africa are not comfortable and the roads can be potholed and very dangerous. You might well share your seat with livestock or someone else’s luggage. Breakdowns and accidents are frequent occurences. And yet … for this African writer the chance to meet others and to learn writing and publishing skills so that he can spread God’s word in his own country is so compelling that he is more than willing to pay the price.

Which makes me ask myself ‘How much am I prepared to pay in order to obey God”

Not in money perhaps but in time and effort. What about you?

For more information about Littworld go to www.littworld.org 

Leaving a Legacy

It’s over! Well nearly! Slowly the excitement of the Olympic Games is dying away, and the question that all of the great and the good seem to be asking is ‘Will the Games leave a legacy?  Will all the positive feelings and excitement translate into a fitter  nation, where talented children get the opportunity to do sport at the highest level and everyone else has the opportunity to take part?’ At the moment we have no way of knowing, but it has set me thinking about the legacy that I would like to leave.

One of my favourite modern worship songs talks about ‘serving the Kingdom of God in my generation,’ and ‘giving my life, for something that will last forever’ – the question is   … what will that be?

 As a writer, I hope that my words will linger in the minds of some of my readers, and perhaps make a difference to the way that they live or serve God. It’s like tossing a stone into a pond. The ripples spread outwards and you have no idea how far they will spread.

 Ethel and I started a coffee morning to share our faith with our neighbours.  Many  good things came out of that five years. People were encouraged and strengthened in their spiritual journey, but, as far as I know, no one met Jesus for the first time.So I was thrilled when I read a review of my book ‘What Me Lord?’ I wrote it because other people caught the vision of using their homes for evangelism, and I was asked to write about how we had done it. The lady who had written the review hadn’t even bought the book, but found it in the library. She was excited and challenged by the ideas it contained and gathered some friends to begin a coffee morning in her village.

A number of people came to faith over the years that she opened her home to her neighbours, including her husband. Then she moved and left her friends to carry on what she had begun, while she started again in her new area. The she moved again  I met her when she invited me to speak to the third group she’d formed – she had cancer and died a few months later, but what a legacy she left behind her! And I had a small share in that legacy, even if it was once removed.

So how do you create a legacy? A successful writer in the USA, Cec Murphy, gives hundreds of dollars away each year to allow beginning writers to go to a writer’s conference. Other experienced writers invest time in helping the less experienced put their dreams into words. But of course it isn’t just writers who leave a legacy. We all leave something behind us – the question is will it be for good or for ill?

 As I watch children passing our house on their way to school I’m reminded of the elderly lady who prayed for a group of teenaged boys who scuffled their way to a school near her home. One of them was George Verwer, a teenager who came to faith and a within a short time started Operation Mobilisation www.uk.om.org . This organisation now  has 6.100 people working in 110 countries reaching out to people through literature, the creative arts, relief and development work, and so many other ways, to tell people how their lives can be changed when they meet Jesus.

One elderly lady. I wonder if she felt that there was little she could do?  Maybe she was housebound. I’m not sure if she ever knew what her prayers had been the foundation for. But she did what she could, where she could, by using whatever she had. And God increased her giving a hundredfold.

Digging ditches

I’m not much of a one for digging in the garden. A combination of a creaky back acquired from heavy lifting in my working life as a physiotherapist [no slings to move the patients around in those days] and our heavy clay soil, makes it a daunting task.

So I have a lot of sympathy for the soldiers in 2 Kings chapter 3. The three kings whom they served had taken them on a route march through the wilderness in order to creep up on the King of Moab. But after seven days of trudging through the sandy wastes, they arrived at their destination to find that the river had dried up and there was no water for the men or their animals. It was a very uncomfortable place to be.

Wisely, one of the kings consulted the prophet Elisha and was told that the soldiers were to dig ditches in the river bed. And although they wouldn’t hear wind or see rain, by the morning the ditches would be filled.

I wonder what the soldiers thought of that idea. Dig ditches? What with? They could have said that they didn’t have the tools, didn’t know about the technology of ditch digging in sand, and anyway it wasn’t what they were trained for. Whatever they thought, they had to get on with the job, and next morning the ditches were indeed full of water.

If we take on any task for God, it can seem as if we’re marching through the wilderness without a sign of obvious progress. It’s easy to doubt and ask ourselves if the enemy is going to get the upper hand. Like many other writers I’ve asked ‘who reads blogs?’ ‘How can I get my new book to the people for whom it’s intended, in a world where there are thousands of competing titles? God has said to me, ‘Dig ditches. If you will do the basic work required, I will fill them with water.

Have you had a ‘How on earth do I do this Lord?’ moment recently? If you feel that you’re stuck in the ‘Help! what do I do now wilderness’ ask God how you should go about digging the ditches to receive the water of His blessing, and then stand back and watch Him provide. Perhaps you’ve already done that. If so I’d love to hear about it.

One toe in ...

One toe in

What if … God has called me to something but it looks as if it might be a total waste of time, and end in tears? Have you ever grappled with that thought?

When I began writing I thought that I would be writing fiction for children, but after 3 children’s books, the direction of my writing took a very definite turn towards non-fiction, and for years that is what I did. There were plenty of gaps in the market that needed filling and God blessed my efforts.

Then about 5 years ago I went to a conference about friendship evangelism – something I’d done a number of times in the past. It was a great conference and there was a lot of laughter and helpful teaching. But somehow I felt detached. ‘Lord,’ I prayed on Sunday morning ‘What am I doing here? I’ve been here, done all the things they’re suggesting and even written a book about it. Is this a waste of time and money for me? Did I make a mistake in coming?’

‘I want you to write about it again’ God seemed to whisper. ‘But this time make it fiction and make it fun.’ I shook my head, wondering if my imagination was working over time. ‘Fiction and FUN?’ What on earth did that mean?   I knew that ‘inspirational fiction’ was a rapidly growing genre in America, but in Britain Christians were used to borrowing their fiction from their local library, which, for the most part, ‘didn’t  do inspirational’.  For that and other reasons, British publishers were not interested in publishing it. So to write the kind of book that God seemed to be suggesting looked like a spending time and effort on something that would definitely result in a dead end.

You’d have thought that I would have learned by now. There have been many times in my life when God has seemed to ask me to do the impossible. But for some reason I’ve been firmly stuck on this one … arguing, stalling, putting it off … that is until I read these words :-

“It isn’t necessary to understand the whole journey, in order to obey and take the first step. Surrendered people obey God even when it doesn’t seem to make sense.

      Abraham followed God without knowing WHERE it would take him.

              Hannah waited for God’s timing without knowing WHEN.

                    Mary expected a miracle without knowing HOW.

              Joseph trusted God’s plan without knowing WHY circumstances happened as they did.

Hmm! My delaying tactics and arguing would seem to be saying only one thing … how about you?

Something beautiful for God

What  if … I obey God’s prompting, and step out in faith, but nothing seems to happen as a result? I saw a beautiful example of the kind of dogged determination that ‘keeps on keeping on and gives up giving up’ when I was in Bulgaria last year. It moved me so much that I wrote about it in the form of a prayer for my new book ‘It’s just You and Me God’ published by Discovery House in a few weeks time.

Huddled against the early April chill

she sat there in the doorway of that little church

muffled in gloves and scarf,

her shabby winter coat was barely thick enough

to keep her warm.

And yet she sat there in the early morning chill

pulling the rope that reached the bell tower,

so that the single bell tolled out its message,

‘The church is here

God is waiting

Come and worship’.

The building has survived dear Lord

throughout the years

that  aetheistic forces ruled the land.

But now perhaps God seems quite unfamiliar

and  church attendance,

is deemed both dull and out of date,

 to those who’d never known you.

For though I watched her for at least an hour,

as far as I could tell from where I sat ….,

no one came.

Did her arms ache, dear Lord

and was her heart discouraged?

Feeling perhaps

 that it was hardly worth enduring

the cold, the early rising,

the tuneless clanging

of that solitary bell,

when no one came?

For Lord you couldn’t say it was a lovely sound.

Unlike the joyous peals that thunder out

from churches and cathedrals,

created by a team of eager ‘campanologists’,

a thing of beauty in and of itself,

Especially when in this small village

 no one came.

And little seemed to happen

to reward her work.

And yet Lord

when you whispered to my heart

“You don’t see what is going on

 within the hearts of those who hear”

I realised 

that at the very least

she had an audience

of two.

You, Lord, who saw her sacrifice of love

and treasured it.

And me,

to whom you spoke so clearly.

So thank you Lord

 for all the hidden people,

who faithfully rise early

and labour late,

doing the little things you’ve called them to,

in spite of difficulties and disappointments.

‘Tolling’  their particular bell,

so that the people all around them,

whether they seem to listen and respond

or not,

can know that God is here.

They faithfully repeat the news

He loves and values them

And waits with arms outstretched

For them to find their way back home,

To worship.