Life Outside the Burrow; some thoughts on Romans 8: 1-11

For Romans 8:1-11, search here:
http://www.biblegateway.com/

If God were to give you a name to describe your spiritual nature, what would it be? 

It might be, say, “faithful in all things”;  it might be “cheerful encourager”;  it might be “gives thanks in all circumstances”;  it might be “always willing to help”.

I tend to think though, especially in the light of the book of Romans, that there would be a two-fold name and that for the positive name God gives us, there might also be a negative.  So, we might be a faithful worker in God’s eyes, but He who sees and knows all, might also call us “judges others too easily”.  Or maybe He would say we give generously but fall to the temptation of gossip. 

Because that’s what we are, in the light of these verses;  we are a creation always in tension between living by the urging of our mortal bodies, and the calling of God to our spirit, to a nobler, holier life.  We are a fallen creation, redeemed by Christ into a new covenant by His death;  yet still in the throes of our struggle for perfection in our earthly, imperfect natures and bodies.  And the two are pretty much always at cross purposes. “For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son as a sin offering. Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires;  but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires”. 

We aspire to live the Christian life, with it’s difficult precepts and values;  yet we often fall short of the mark.  We can never fulfil all the requirements of the law perfectly. 

And that’s what these verses are on about.  Even though we fall short, we are no longer condemned by the law because Christ has gone on ahead for us, winning our redemption with his death.  Our reconciliation to God is assured by our acceptance of this sacrifice for us. 

But that still leaves us with the constancy of our fallen human nature in the here and now. 

We tend to have good intentions of following Christ, yet sometimes no matter how hard we try, we don’t do the things we WANT to do, but do the things we don’t want to do. 

I believe we each have a weak spot;  a tendency to a particular kind of “clay foot”;  a chink in our armour through which the devil can fire his darts;  he’s a cunning being, and he knows exactly where to fire his dart so that we are brought low.  He loves to have us live without the wings of the Spirit at our backs.

So back to the name for a minute.  I think the name God would give me would be “scaredy-wearedy rabbit who freezes in the headlights of the world’s b-doubles but gets back on the road anyway”.

Because my besetting sin… and that’s what I’m getting at… that each of us are prone to certain “sins” or ungodly attitudes which, unless we’re on our guard, can take us away from living in the Spirit.  “The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace”. 

My besetting sin is fear.  I am a fearful person.  I’m like a little bunny who ventures diffidently out of her burrow, never wanders far from her hole, fears the big wide world; likes the safety of her comfort zone.  And yet, it’s the strangest thing…. my life has been a series of circumstances which have caused me to have to venture farther and farther away from the safety of my burrow.  In fact, I’ve lived most of my life outside my comfort zone.  Through these experiences, I’ve always reacted first with fear, , as I’ve scampered back to the burrow, like a timid little rabbit.  It’s seemed like the circumstances of my life is represented by a great hunter, aiming his huge shotgun at my poor little head.  At each frightening event, back I go to the burrow.  But God, the immeasurable source of power, has visited me in the dark and the terror and said “Fear not Suse.   I am with you”;  and “I have sent the counsellor, the comforter to fortify your soul, to keep you deep in the presence of God”  So, with courage, out I go again, into the harsh light of strife and conflict, out into the battle zone of being bullied or hurt;  out again into the dark night of sorrow, to face my fears. And so, over the years, I’m beginning to see that what I thought of as terrible experiences allowed by God (and they were still that) were ultimately pathways to overcoming my besetting sin.  They were the miracle of God using life’s experience to heal rather than hurt;  to enable, rather than disable;  to empower;  to overcome fear and live in the clear, peaceful stream of the spirit, no matter what the circumstances. 

So in a sense these verses about no condemnation, can be applied to our daily spiritual life in the here and now, not just our eternal salvation when we die.  I would be remiss if I didn’t draw your attention to the rest of the verses;  because it’s the Sprit who accomplishes our transformation. “The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace”.  “You are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the spirit if the Sprit lives in you.  And even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness.”

Remember the TV show “The Nanny”.  It’s on again on one of the digital stations.  It’s a silly American sitcom about a woman who arrives at a rich man’s door to sell make-up and ends up staying to be Nanny to his children.  Over time, the two begin to fall for each other, but Max, the children’s father is slow to realize.  One day, the Butler “Nyles” is trying to get Max to realize his feelings for Fran, the Nanny. Max can’t see it;  Nyles is getting increasingly frustrated and tries to point out all the little examples which show that Max is really in love with Fran.  Max still doesn’t get it;  is emotionally blind.  Finally, in desperation, Nyles drops his tea towel, looks at Max straight and says emphatically, “oh please, Sir, work with me!, work with me!”. 

And in a sense, this is what the Spirit tries to say to us “work with me...give me your life; give me your soul;  give me your fears;  let me live in you and infuse your life with my strength because I have already overcome all the besetting sins of all mankind.”  There is nothing which can take hold of our lives, either fear or pride or lust or jealousy or any of the other deadly sins, which the Holy Spirit hasn’t already conquered.  God made the rules;  we break them. Jesus makes our atonement but it’s the Holy Spirit who gives us access to the power to live by Christ’s commands.

So, what would be your besetting sin?  What do you think is the thing most likely to come between you and the risen, victorious Christ. It’s helpful to have an inkling where the chink in our armour is – we can be on guard;  we can confess it continuously as we need to.

May the HS himself be the indwelling bridge to take you from whatever tempts you to sin, to that triumphant happy, spirit-guided life. 

Acts 12:1-11

Acts 12:1-11.  About that time Herod laid violent hands on some who belonged to the church.  He killed James the brother of John with the sword, and when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also.  And when he had seized him,  he put him in prison, delivering him over to four squads  of soldiers to guard him, intending after the Passover to bring him out to the people.  So Peter was kept in prison but earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church. 

Now when Herod was about to bring him out, on that very night, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries before the door were guarding the prison.  And behold an angel of the Lord stood next to him, and a light shone in the cell.  He struck Peter on the side and woke him, saying, “Get up quickly.” And the chains fell off his hands…..and he went out and followed the angel.  He did not know that what was being done by the angel was real but thought he was seeing a vision.  When they had passed the first and the second guard, they came to the iron gate leading into the city. It opened for them of its own accord, and they went out and went along one street, and immediately the angel left him. When Peter came to himself he said, “Now I am sure that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from the hand of Herod and from all that the Jewish people were expecting.”

James was killed by Herod and Peter was imprisoned.  Peter was rescued by the angel, but James died.  God allowed the one to be killed but sent help in miraculous ways, for the other to be released.    It is thus in our lives too.  For some, there’s victory, success, triumph.  But others aren’t rescued. There’s not a happy outcome;  the marriage fails, the loved one dies, injustice prevails.  Peter is saved, but James is lost.  Does God favour the one and not the other?  No.  It’s all about what is God’s plan;  what He can see;  what He wants.  He had a good reason  for rescuing Peter;  Peter went on to build His church.  But for James….  the end was also in God’s plan.  It’s just that the outcome and the purpose are hidden from us.  As F B Meyer puts it “eternity will explain the mysteries of time”.  Our course is to keep trusting.  To trust when there is no deliverance and when things don’t go our way, builds faith which accesses the power of heaven;  it builds faith which can break evil strongholds;  it builds faith which can bring all the joy and strength of God to the lives of others. To trust when there is no miracle, is what following Jesus really means.

The other thing I noticed about this passage, was that God waited until the last minute to rescue Peter.  It seems to be how He works, and this is hard to understand.  We wait for rescue, or healing, or help, and it may come at the last minute and we wonder why God waited. Or it may not come at all, at least not in ways we imagined. Meanwhile, the church prayed for Peter’s release. Here is something we can understand.  We can pray.  The verse says they offered “earnest” prayer.  Within that word is a host of meaning.  It bespeaks commitment, honesty, steadfastness and purity.  We should confess our own sins to God, before we can ask and intercede on behalf of someone else.

Then, the angel comes and Peter thinks he’s dreaming.  We know the rest.  He is brought forth to light and freedom.  So, this passage is about miracles and answered prayers and happy endings.  It’s about safe release and restoration to friends and family. There is rejoicing.

But I can’t help but think of James’ mother, keeping  her lonely watch at his tomb.   Not for her the happy ending or the triumph over Herod.  Not for her the jubilant homecoming. She treads  a dark path of sorrow.  

But God is in both circumstances.  He rescues the prisoner, and He also walks the path alongside the stricken mother.  He knows the end from the beginning;  he knows the number of our days and we can trust Him for them.  His plans cannot be thwarted, though hell’s fury threatens.  He who knows all our days and all our plans, keeps them and us by His power

you left your little toothbrush.....

For my daughter;  she would often leave her toothbrush behind after she visited;

You left your little toothbrush;  I found it all depressed. 

I asked it what the matter was, and here’s what it expressed:
“I’ve had a lovely holiday but happy days have flown,
 ‘cos Emma went back home again, and left me here… alone.
How could she be so careless”, it sobbed in great dismay. 
The tears fell down it’s little face;  I had to turn away…

When Em went off to sleepovers, she’d take her bathroom sack;

with all of us tucked up inside; it must have weighed a whack!
So snug and warm and happy;  it was a cheery place,
unless her snobby hairbrush got it’s bristles in my face!
But all of that has gone now;  I feel so all forlorn;

I’m stuck here now against my will.  Oh, why has Emma gone?!

I miss her gentle presence;  I miss the way she hums.
I even miss the moss that grows, upon her little gums.
I love her tiny teeth and tongue;  I love her cutey nose

I love it when she uses me to scrub between her toes…

O please come back and get me”;  it’s shabby face implores
You mum might start to use me;  I’d rather still be yours.
She brushes with such vigour;  I’d have to work so hard.

And every time she’d use me…

she’d say “Hey Em! I’m using your stuff!;  you better come and pound me!”

Does God intervene when bad stuff happens?

I’ve been reading my journal from 1993/94.  It makes harrowing reading;  entry after entry of how strained and difficult everything was.  It was only a year after my divorce, I was working full time in a very busy job and I had my three children to care and provide for, without any help from their father.  I had just taken out a loan to pay him his portion of our house. Writing it all down was a bit of a coping mechanism.  There are some positives, but in the main it’s testament to stoic endurance.  It made me see that God doesn’t intervene very much in practical ways during difficult times.  Or at least, He didn’t for me.

Perhaps when I get to heaven, I’ll see it differently.  And I suppose I can only see it through my own viewpoint and it’s a very emotionally-charged viewpoint.  I was the one rowing the little boat.  I had no time or resources to look dispassionately at what else I could have done.

I was meeting each new thunderclap;  each new swamping wave with the only resources I had – my own moral compass;  strength;  my commitment to my children;  my decision to do the right thing, even when it was very difficult.

God didn’t seem to intervene.  I realise now, after so many decisions which impacted my life so significantly, that He doesn’t.  He’s not like some good fairy who waves her wand and fixes things or changes things or fills up the gaps our decisions have created.

It’s the expectation of mild, compliant, trusting souls.  We commit our way to a Shepherd God, expecting him to lead us and look after us. 

And he does, but not in the temporal sense;  He looks out for our souls.  He will always ensure we are looked for and found in the wild wood, should we wander from our spiritual fold. We belong to Him, and all the verses about shepherds and lost sheep and care, relates only to our spiritual safety.  I didn’t realize that. We, in the west, are so entrenched in our materialistic world, that we relate everything to tangible things, even the biblical stories of Jesus;  we think he’s talking about physical/material things, when all along, he’s using everyday stories to teach us about spiritual truths. This was my mistake.  I expected the wrong thing from God.

I believed in a Good Fairy God, and discovered instead, through trial and testing and aloneness, a suffering Jesus, willing to sacrifice himself to do His father’s will.  When he calls us to follow Him, why are we surprised when He leads us, or allows us to be led, through a cauldron of scarcity or dishonour or injustice?

I discovered the living presence of God, not so much at the time, but afterwards, I knew it was His strength which kept me from going under. I discovered a multi-faceted God; a divine nature with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, steadfastness;  a nature brim full of happy, enriching, bright attributes which gave my soul the ability to soar, despite my circumstances. I discovered a Jesus who put my feet on a path to follow Him, and then tested my sincerity.  He knows that testing produces hope – hope in the divine nature and mercy of God – not hope that He’ll make everything better. Testing produces hope and hope stands us in good stead.  Hope is the wings we use to fly through, rather than trudge over the mud of our circumstances. But it didn’t happen easily, or immediately.  It took me years of turmoil and criticising God, before I knew I was expecting the wrong things from the Divine Hand.

The change in my financial/emotional/physical circumstances was all down to this feckless man I married.  I allowed him to bully me;  I allowed him to take more than his share.  Then, I expected God to help me financially, and that didn’t happen, so I doubted God. 

The fact that I had no strength to make my husband do the right thing by his children, is just how it is.  It was just another inevitable result of marrying him in the first place, and that wasn’t God’s fault. If I had been able to make him do the right thing, I probably would have called it God’s provision, when in fact, it was just me standing up for myself.  This still puzzles me – the decision to behave as Christ did, knowing it will cause us to be disadvantaged.  Perhaps this is the great mystery of why the gate is so narrow, and so few find it.

My husband knew that I couldn’t stand up for myself, especially after all the years of emotional abuse.  And God couldn’t change that – he can’t make people do what’s right, if they are determined not to. So, he has to let people oppress others and He doesn’t always intervene.  If he did, it would be to deny us our very humanity and our free will;  the right to govern ourselves.  We would be like puppet people. 

I can see now, how the impoverished, straightened circumstances of my life have been all my own doing.  They are the result of allowing people to take from me, instead of give;  of my giving to them instead of taking.  I played by the “do to others as you would have them do to you” rule but others were playing by the “I’ll take what’s best for me" rule.  Am I sorry I let this happen?  Yes. But I don’t think I could do otherwise at the time.  It’s easy to look back with perfect 20/20 vision in hindsight.

It’s not wrong to stand up for what should have been mine and my children’s. I wish I’d had the strength to do it.  I didn’t, and I live with the regret of that.  It was a mistake too, to expect restitution and justice from God.  It just added another level of turmoil and disappointment to all the other disappointments.  I became disappointed with God.

I have been able to come to terms with that too. I discovered, surprisingly, that even though I was bullied by people, I came out of it with a much better self-esteem than I’ve ever had in my life.  That was down to God. So, it’s not so much that God didn’t provide for me, during my years of strife – it’s just that He didn’t provide in ways I expected.

a scan on the liver

I had to have a scan on my liver recently, because incidentally, a spot was found there, after a general scan on my heart and upper abdomen. 

It’s always a bit of a worry to be told “there is a slim chance it could be cancer”.  I’ve had to have another scan on my liver, which showed a lesion so small that it could not be determined what it is.  So I have to have yet another scan in three months time.  If the lesion has increased in size, it will be assumed it is malignant and will have to be removed.

However, the doctor said the chance of it being malignant is remote. Nine out of ten spots on the liver are benign.  I’m happy with those odds and I’m not going to think about this again, until I have the next scan. 

But I admit to having a few negative thoughts about how I would cope if it was cancer. 

I have felt as happy lately, as I have since Ben died. (Ben is my son and was killed in a work place accident in 2006). I think my “wellness” brain chemicals are finally rising to levels which are more normal. So I asked God not to allow more bad stuff, especially now, just when I’m feeling so much better at last.

I know this is the superficial attitude to being a Christian… “make my life comfortable and bump-free”.  Life is very rarely without some bumps in it.

A truer picture of what being a Christian is, and what our expectation of that should be, can more realistically be found in verses like “I have learned in whatever state I’m in, to be content”.  The rock-solid mercy, provision and dependability of God are reflected in verses such as “my strength is made perfect in weakness”;  or “suffering produces hope and hope does not disappoint us”;  or “give thanks in all things”;  or “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”. 

When these verses are taken on board and “lived”, they have the power to mitigate the terror of bad things;  things we have no control over.  Like cancer (well… some cancers we have control of because they are affected and caused by lifestyle.  Even liver cancer is 4 or 5 more times more likely to occur in a person who is a diabetic.  Diabetes is, in a lot of cases, a lifestyle disease.)

But I don’t want to have to prove these verses and their power, again, against the all-engulfing fog of cancer.  I thought I’d done with big suffering and would much rather reserve these verses and this stoic enduring type of faith against the “normal” stress of encroaching , but natural, old age.  I don’t want more bad stuff;’ stuff that’s in addition to ordinary life stress and strain.

I thought I’d served my apprenticeship of suffering in a myriad of discomforting and testing ways. I’ve lived close to the cliff edge enough times already, I thought.

As much as anything, if I had cancer, it would have presented me with another grim reality in which, in order to accept and cope and soar in the face of bad circumstances, I would have to choose to believe and apply the aforementioned verses.  Again. I would have to choose to honour (not criticise) God in all things. I would have to go back to living a day at a time, relying on God to get me though the minutes and the hours of each and every day.  It sounds a wonderfully spiritual way to live, and it is. But living with sorrow and suffering, even with God’s strength, becomes, as well, a burdensome and gruelling journey.  After a while, you just long to be “normal”;  to have “normal” problems.

To live a day at a time, with the above-mentioned verses,  takes strength of will.  And strength of will is something I’ve had to use a lot, and it requires… well…. strength;  and resources.  I just wasn’t sure I was up for it. 

The alternative though, is to face cancer anyway, but without God’s help.  And really, when I thought of that, I knew that trusting and relying on God was a much better way.  The very character of God, with all it’s strengths and richness, is available to the one who chooses to invite God to walk with him/her, whatever the journey.

The difficulty lies in overcoming the natural desire to rail against God and the circumstances he’s allowed. Perhaps this censuring is part of accepting the circumstances. Once you’ve decided to “let go and let God”, it becomes easier.  God shares His power with us.

It’s the decision to give up the “right” to blame and criticise and reject God which is hardest. The conquering of self is always full of turmoil and destructive emotions.  I suppose it’s a battle which must be fought.  And perhaps, if the scan had showed cancer, I would have chosen, as I did when Ben died, to skip the whole “why me?” mantra.  And move straight to acceptance. 

But I am very thankful that, so far at least, the spot on my liver is very unlikely to be anything serious.