Making the most of the moment

I have just listened again to the UK Blessing, the wonderful song given to the nation at the height of our first lockdown over a year ago. Surely this song, written by Kari Jobe and others, came from the throne of God to remind us all that in the midst of the pandemic, God is for us and is blessing us.  Many nations blessed their people with this song. 

I realise that every country faced their pandemic differently but I hope these British centred words will apply even to your situation. 

I am still surprised when someone who is a CEO of a large organisation recounts how they had to work from home in 2020 and try and home school their children at the same time. I know people like me had to do this but surely CEOs and other were important people were exempt? Pandemics and lockdowns are great levellers. 

One of the things we learned from that first lockdown was that there were no exceptions for the rich and famous. Everyone from the Queen to the humblest worker had to stay home. We were in this together and as Christians we had to adapt and adapt fast to how to do our lives and Church in a new way. We had to learn quickly that the message of the Gospel was still the same, still relevant, and the hope it brings needed like never before. Whether we met in a church building or online, God was still with us. We all had to learn where our hope was truly based – on Jesus Christ and his promises and not on our own efforts.  

In the UK, we are coming out of the worst of this pandemic and with the vaccine programme in full swing, we are all hopeful that we will not be going back that way again but have we learned the lessons that God was teaching us from the past year? 

Did we make the most of the pandemic and discover that God really is our provider?  Maybe you lost your work, your business or even your home. Has God been faithful?  There is much talk of mental health and how this has been affected. As Christians have we found that God is our strength, our strong tower, our encouragement?   Has our prayer life fundamentally shifted and our relationship with God closer than ever? As we have been unable to meet our family and friends, have we learned to value relationships more than we did before? Maybe you lost a loved one and were unable to be with them at the end, has God been your comfort?

I do hope the answer to these and many other similar questions is ‘Yes’ because as we go forward, it is not going back to the old ways but into a new season, a new era even. None of us knows what that looks like but the lessons learned during the last year are essential for this new day. God is faithful and we are going to have to trust him as never before. 

I have no idea how it’s all going to look a year from now but I believe God wants to do something new and extraordinary, something we haven’t seen before and it will require us to be turned inside out so our worlds can be turned upside down with the presence of Jesus. 

The key now is how to live in this moment well, how to make the most of this time so we can advance and not hanker for the old. If God pours out His Spirit in revolutionary ways are we willing receptors or closed wells? All I can do is keeping pressing in, keeping prioritising my relationship with Jesus and be ready. It will be hard, because unlike lockdowns, the distractions are now great. Already I can feel so many ‘old’ things demanding priority in my life. It’s not that they’re wrong, they just need to take their rightful place.

The question is - have I made the most of the last year so I am ready and willing for the new season ahead? Only you can answer that.

Persevering to victory

And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life. Matthew 19: 29

I was reading something that Joyce Meyer wrote about the difficulties she experienced in the early days of her ministry and how glad she is that she persevered and did not give up. I think we would all say ‘Amen’ to that as the Church would be a poorer place without her ministry and practical encouragement to us all.

The Scripture she quoted was the one above and I remember how relevant that was in our early Christian walk.  God called us to leave the church we were going to and join a new church where we knew hardly anyone. I remember grumbling and complaining to God about this and why was it all so hard and God reminded me of this verse.

Nearly 30 years later I can smile as it all seems so silly now. The things that were so hard then are not hard now and God has been so faithful because as we have faced harder and harder trials somehow things have got easier and easier which sounds so unlikely. However as I think about it with each and every trial that we face we have to draw closer to God and depend on him more and more. As we do that it makes the whole of our life easier because of the greater dependence and trust we have built into our lives.

However the converse is also true.  Imagine Joyce Meyer had given up when things were so hard or imagine we had not been obedient to God and stayed at the church where it was all so much easier. Today we would not have the blessing of Joyce’s ministry and we might still be living compromised lives in the church we were going to having things easy but unfulfilling at one level but not knowing the joy and satisfaction of having pushed through to greater heights in our walk with God.

I marvel that any of us have survived some of the spiritual lows and difficulties that God has taken us through but it is so true that there is nothing we go through where God is not with us every step of the way, holding our hands, encouraging and strengthening us and whispering to us all the time, ‘Don’t give up.’  Jesus showed us that the Christian life may not be easy but it is always worth it. If Jesus could ‘for the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.’ Hebrews 12:2 we too can endure our difficulties so we too rise triumphant to greater glories for him.

Be strengthened if you are facing trials and difficulties and remember it is worth it and if you are in an easier time, thank God and rejoice in his faithfulness and love.

God sees

‘You are the God who sees me ….. I  have now seen the One who sees me’ Genesis 16: 13

There can be a tendency on our part to believe that God neither sees nor cares about us nor our situation in an individual way; we are just another believer in the midst of millions of others. When our prayers don’t seem to be being heard or not as we would like or within our time frame, our cry can echo that of both Martha (Luke 10:40) or the disciples in the midst of the storm (Mark 4:38 ) ‘Lord, don’t you care?’

The story of Hagar though is a source of comfort that God knows, sees and cares about us. He sees and acts and it has nothing to do with good behaviour on our part or a faithful prayer life. God sees and intervenes on an individual basis out of his great compassion for us. 

Hagar was Sarai’s Egyptian maidservant. God had promised Abram that he would become a great nation but at the age of 86 and Sarai 76, no child was in sight. Sarai came up with the plan that they should build their family through a child from her maidservant and gave her to Abram to sleep with. She duly became pregnant and then having had the child Sarai could not have, Hagar despised her mistress. As a result Sarai started to mistreat her. Hagar ran away and on the desert road the angel of the Lord met her and asked her what she was doing. She told him her story and he told her to return to her mistress but not to worry she would have a son and so many descendants that ‘they will be too numerous to count’. Knowing that it was God who had spoken to her, she declared that ‘you are the God who sees me.’

14 years later when the child of promise, Isaac, had been born, on the day he was weaned, Abraham held a feast but Ishmael mocked the occasion. Sarah demanded Abraham get rid of both Ishmael and Hagar. Reading between the lines, there had probably been quite a bit of tension between Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael and Isaac. Abraham was not keen to send them away but God assured him that it was alright to do so and he would make both boys into great nations.

Hagar was again in the desert and this time dying for lack of water. No doubt feeling very resentful at her mistreatment, she and Ishmael lay down waiting to die. Again the angel of the Lord appeared to her and reassured her that God knew her situation and had not forgotten his promise to make her son a nation. He showed Hagar a well and the situation was saved. The final encouragement from this story is that ‘God was with the boy as he grew up’ (Genesis 21:20).

God promised Abraham and Sarah a son who would become a great nation and even when they conceived their own version, he extended the promise to cover Ishmael and Isaac. God is faithful even in the midst of our devising our own plans and will continue to work out his promises despite us.

Today if you are feeling that God has forgotten you or the promises that he has made to you, let us take fresh heart from the story of Hagar. Despite her weaknesses God did not turn his back on Hagar or Ishmael. He saw them and today he sees you. On both occasions that the angel met with Hagar in the desert he called her by name. The angel was not just passing by; he was sent by God to Hagar personally to meet with her in her hour of need. He will do the same for you.