Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

Where 90% of marital problems begin (according to my pastor)

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About a decade ago, Roy and I presented ourselves for marital counselling with the very busy senior pastor of the mega-church we attended in Williamsburg, Virginia.

He had a three session rule. He’d solved your problem in three sessions, if he could, and then decide whether to embark on extended counseling with you, or refer you elsewhere.
And so, we described the presenting issues. Well, very soon dishes, and laundry and shopping and cooking and childcare and cleaning and who did them entered our conversation.
And he asked “How is your sex life?”
Sex?
 
Give me a break. We had come because we each secretly hoped that the other would agree to do more of the dishes and laundry and shopping and cooking and cleaning and childcare. What did sex have to do with it?
And then said, “90 percent of problems in marriage begin in the bedroom with an unsatisfactory sex life.
But, alas, sex is only ten percent of the solution, since you can’t spend your lives in bed.”
We stared hard, again.
He was a very proper Southern gentleman. And he wasn’t kidding.
Well, we had three sessions.
* * *
And ten years later, I have come to the reluctant conclusion that he was right.

Inerrancy and Me

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I was born into a Catholic family, and so was a Catholic for a couple of decades, including 8 years in a strict boarding school, St. Mary’s Convent, Nainital, run by German and Irish nuns in the Himalayas. And 14 months as a novice at Mother Teresa’s Convent.
And Catholics believed in Biblical inerrancy, and, well, so did I.
* * *
Faith faded out of my life for about 5 years as a undergraduate in Oxford, and Creative Writing Masters and Ph.D student in America.
When it made its joyful re-entry, Roy and I attended John Piper’s Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where we lived.
Southern Baptists believe in Biblical inerrancy, and well, so did I.
Trouble is, they didn’t believe quite the same things as the Catholics did.
                                                   * * *
Well, then we moved to Williamsburg, Virginia, and attended the massive, wonderful and non-denominational Williamsburg Community Chapel. It welcomed Christians from all denominations and none. They had a theological position on millenarianism. They were pan-millenarist. They believed it would all pan out. (No, I am not joking, though they of course, were joking in earnest.)
They did, however, believe in Biblical inerrancy. And, well, so did I.
Trouble is, they didn’t believe quite the same thing as the Catholics or the Baptists.
                                                   * * *
And then, we moved to England in 2004, and I attended St. Aldate’s Church, Oxford.  Not a happy church experience for me, but it taught me to wade in the vast deeps of the Holy Spirit, and for that I am grateful.
St. Aldate’s is an Anglican, Evangelical, Charismatic Church. It believed in Biblical inerrancy. And well, so did I.
Trouble is, it didn’t believe quite the same thing as the Catholics, Baptists, and Non-denominational Christians.
* * *
After 6.5 years at Aldate’s, I made the brilliant and fortunate decision to leave. We are now at St. Andrew’s, Oxford, an Anglican, Evangelical church which has excellent, serious, meaty small group Bible studies.
As far as I can gather, St. Andrew’s permits a “free vote” on the Holy Spirit. In one of the two wonderful small groups, I attend, people talk about speaking in tongues. But we recently lunched with a brilliant, theologically minded friend from Andrew’s. “Have you been baptised in the Holy Spirit?” I asked. (You know, the kind of polite lunch time conversation well-bred English people indulge in… Not!). He looked hard at me. “I received the Holy Spirit when I was baptised,” he said. Okaaaaaay.
But St. Andrew’s believes in Biblical inerrancy. And well, so do I.
The trouble is…. Well, you get the idea.
* * *
And then, I became a blogger, and met liberal Christians who did not believe in the inerrancy of the Bible.
Not at all.
Heavens! So what’s a poor girl who is theologically self-taught to do?
   * * *
Should I pick and choose, and decide what was inspired by God, and which statements were, so to say, garbled in the transmission, the writer getting the word and intention of God all wrong?
Become a one-woman Jesus seminar, so to say?
                                                                 * * *
Roy and I have planted a massive, massive vegetable garden (yeah, we don’t do anything by half-measures) and digging in it gives me great time and space for theological thinking. I highly recommend it. (Actually, I highly recommend digging in mine, if you have time, since we’ve bitten off more than we can chew:)
And so, I dug and weeded and watered and pondered inerrancy.
And I thought of the Christians I’ve met, who appeared to be happy, joyous, assured, and inspiring. I thought of John Piper, whose church we had worshipped in when we lived in Minneapolis; Dick Woodward, whose church we had worshipped in when we lived in Virginia; and my good friend, Paul Miller, founder of seeJesus.net and World Harvest Mission.
And I thought of Billy Graham.
Then I thought of Christians I knew who did not believe in inerrancy. And I decided whom I wanted to be like when I grew up.
* * *
A leap of faith. That is what putting your faith in the Word is.
For Billy Graham, it was life-changing. As it will be for anyone.

In the summer of 1949, my team and I were preparing for the most intensive evangelistic mission we had ever attempted, a citywide outreach in Los Angeles, California.

Just weeks before the mission was to start, however, I experienced a major crisis of faith—the most intense of my life. Some months before, Charles Templeton, a fellow evangelist whom I respected greatly had begun to express doubts about the Bible, urging me to “face facts” and change my belief that the Bible was the inspired Word of God. “Billy,” he said, “you’re fifty years out-of-date. People no longer accept the Bible as being inspired the way you do. Your faith is too simple.” I knew from my own reading that some modern theologians shared his views.

For months doubts about the Bible swirled through my mind, finally coming to a boil during a conference at which I was speaking in the mountains east of Los Angeles. One night, alone in my cabin at the conference, I studied carefully what the Bible said about its divine origin. I recalled that the prophets clearly believed they were speaking God’s Word; they used the phrase “Thus says the Lord” (or similar words) hundreds of times. I also knew that archaeological discoveries had repeatedly confirmed the Bible’s historical accuracy.

Especially significant to me, however, was Jesus’ own view of Scripture. He not only quoted it frequently, but also accepted it as the Word of God. While praying for His disciples, He said, “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17). He also told them, “I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law” (Matthew 5:18). Shouldn’t I have the same view of Scripture as my Lord?


Finally I went for a walk in the moonlit forest. I knelt down with my Bible on a tree stump in front of me and began praying. I don’t recall my exact words, but my prayer went something like this: “O Lord, there are many things in this book I don’t understand. There are many problems in it for which I have no solution. … But, Father, by faith, I am going to accept this as Thy Word. From this moment on I am going to trust the Bible as the Word of God.”

When I got up from my knees, I sensed God’s presence in a way that I hadn’t felt for months. Not all my questions were answered, but I knew a major spiritual battle had been fought—and won. I never doubted the Bible’s divine inspiration again, and immediately my preaching took on a new confidence. This was, I believe, one reason why our Los Angeles meetings had to be extended from three weeks to eight.

Don’t let anyone shake your confidence in the Bible as God’s Word.  Face your doubts and seek answers; you aren’t the first person to ask them. In addition, read the Bible for yourself with an open heart and mind. Ask God to show you if it truly is His Word—and He will.
Your life will never be the same once you trust the Bible as God’s Word. God will begin to use it to change your life.
* * *
However, you can believe in the divine inspiration of Scripture, and grow into a more nuanced view as Graham himself did. Some fundamentalists were shocked by his famous Pilgrim’s Progress interview with Newsweek.
I quote, He does not believe that Christians need to take every verse of the Bible literally; “sincere Christians,” he says, “can disagree about the details of Scripture and theology–absolutely.”
Graham spends hours now with his Bible, at once savoring and reconsidering old stories and old lessons. While he believes Scripture is the inspired, authoritative word of God, he does not read the Bible as though it were a collection of Associated Press bulletins straightforwardly reporting on events in the ancient Middle East. “I’m not a literalist in the sense that every single jot and tittle is from the Lord,” Graham says. “This is a little difference in my thinking through the years.” He has, then, moved from seeing every word of Scripture as literally accurate to believing that parts of the Bible are figurative–a journey that began in 1949, when a friend challenged his belief in inerrancy during a conference in southern California’s San Bernardino Mountains. Troubled, Graham wandered into the woods one night, put his Bible on a stump and said, “Lord, I don’t understand all that is in this book, I can’t explain it all, but I accept it by faith as your divine word.”
Now, more than half a century later, he is far from questioning the fundamentals of the faith. He is not saying Jesus is just another lifestyle choice, nor is he backtracking on essentials such as the Incarnation or the Atonement.
But he is arguing that the Bible is open to interpretation, and fair-minded Christians may disagree or come to different conclusions about specific points. Like Saint Paul, he believes human beings on this side of paradise can grasp only so much. “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror,” Paul wrote, “then we shall see face to face.” Then believers shall see : not now, but then .
Debates over the exact meaning of the word “day” in Genesis (Graham says it is figurative; on the other hand, he thinks Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale) or whether the “Red Sea” is better translated as “sea of reeds”–which takes Moses’ miracle out of the realm of Cecil B. DeMille–or the actual size of ancient armies in a given battle may seem picayune to some. For many conservative believers, however, questioning any word of the Bible can cast doubt on all Scripture. Graham’s position, then, while hardly liberal, is more moderate than that of his strictest fellow Christians.
·      * *
·       
I loved this interview. We can be a faithful Christian, but not be afraid to think. Once, when I lived in America, I told my pastor, a good, honest man, that I did not believe that relatively good people were condemned to hell because they had never heard of Jesus, or heard of him in a winsome way. Jesus himself said that he would say “I never knew you,” to those who made public professions of their faith in him, but whose lives and hearts belied it.
As I said, he was a good honest man, and he was troubled. But then he said, “If I agreed with you, Anita, there would be no point in us sending out missionaries.” He was a mild Calvinist, and accepting that virtuous pagans might go to heaven would leave his whole watertight theological system in tatters. So he didn’t. Recently, a friend gave me this reason for accepting a difficult doctrine: If we didn’t believe this, other doctrines would collapse, and there would be nothing left.
But we do not need to be afraid to think.
·      * *
So, inerrancy and me. Where do I stand?
Since inerrant is a theological word not found in Scripture, I am not going to mess with it. I prefer to use the word inspired. I believe Scripture is divinely inspired.
(Interestingly, which books were Scripture and which weren’t was only decided by fourth century Councils and synods in Laodicea, Hippo and Carthage, all places with the Biblical and classical ring. I certainly hope they got things right, but we do need to realize that our current Bible was decided by human councils 1600 years ago. Luther disputed their choices in the 16th century.)
I also say with the older Graham, I’m not a literalist in the sense that every single jot and tittle is from the Lord,” Fair-minded Christians may disagree or come to different conclusions about specific points.
Which explains why all those Catholics and Calvinists and pan-Christians and Anglicans and Charismatics who all believed in inerrancy taught me very different things.
* * *
So I think a Christian can believe in the Divine Inspiration of Scripture, and pray and rely on the Holy Spirit to interpret it for her, and will not go too far wrong, if her thinking and interpretations stays within the river of twenty-one centuries of Christians who have grappled with the same questions, and whose thinking is now available to us at the click of a cursor.
          * * *

Scripture itself may be inerrant. But all the Catholics and Calvinists and Anglicans and Charismatics and non-denominational churches who believe in inerrancy are not themselves inerrant.
They’ve got some things right, and some things wrong.
Lord, give me the wisdom to know which ones!

Some Theological Jokes (Don’t Blame Me, Blame the Oxford Theologians!)

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Calvin, Luther and Barth all arrive at the pearly gates… Calvin is ushered in to have a chat with God and after 30 mins comes out saying “at last I understand predestination!”

Luther then goes in to have his chat with God… another 30 mins later he comes out saying “At last I know why James’ epistle was included in the canon!”
Karl Barth goes in for his chat with God…………… 2 hours later God walks out shaking His head saying “I STILL don’t get his Church Dogmatics!”
                                         * * *

Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr, and James Cone find themselves all at the same time at Caesarea Philippi. Who should come along but Jesus, and he asks the four famous theologians the same Christological question, “Who do you say that I am?”

Karl Barth stands up and says: “You are the totaliter aliter, the vestigious trinitatum who speaks to us in the modality of Christo-monism.”

Not prepared for Barth’s brevity, Paul Tillich stumbles out: “You are he who heals our ambiguities and overcomes the split of angst and existential estrangement; you are he who speaks of the theonomous viewpoint of the analogia entis, the analogy of our being and the ground of all possibilities.”

Reinhold Niebuhr gives a cough for effect and says, in one breath: “You are the impossible possibility who brings to us, your children of light and children of darkness, the overwhelming oughtness in the midst of our fraught condition of estrangement and brokenness in the contiguity and existential anxieties of our ontological relationships.”

Finally James Cone gets up, and raises his voice: “You are my Oppressed One, my soul’s shalom, the One who was, who is, and who shall be, who has never left us alone in the struggle, the event of liberation in the lives of the oppressed struggling for freedom, and whose blackness is both literal and symbolic.”

And Jesus writes in the sand, “Huh?”

                                             * * *

What did the Calvinist say when he fell down the stairs?

A – Ughh! Sure glad I got that over with.

·      * *
Jewish chap, Reuben, goes to see his friend Mordecai. He shares distraught: “You wont believe this but my son has become a Christian.”
Mordecai responds in amazement: “You wont believe this but my son has become a Christian too.” They decide to go to the Rabbi, and when they tell him what’s happened, the Rabbi says shaking his head “You wont believe this but my son also has become a Christian too.”
Reuben, Mordecai and the Rabbi kneel in prayer and tell Jehovah what has happened – suddenly an awesome voice booms from the heavens “you wont believe this, but my son…..”
 This appeared in my Facebook newfeed from my RL and FB friends Luke Tarassenko and Simon Ponsonby. Too good not to share. Goodness or badness all theirs!

A Christian Blogging Dialogue: What do you think?

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Here are a few snippets from a interesting exchange i’ve had with Stuart over the last couple of days. Any thoughts? Specifically, do you think Christian blogging can advance the kingdom? If so how?

Here are snippets from Stuart’s post (blush).

WARNING: This is one of those self-indulgent blog posts on Christian blogging that’s a little random.

Anita Mathias is one of those lovely, reflective, spiritual bloggers, that I love to read, as you get a real shot in the arm of the stuff that’s really important.

I do honestly wish that I were a little more spiritual full stop in my blogging. I know full well that I’m rough around the edges and a little aggressive combative forthright at times. But I can’t pretend to be someone I’m not. I’ve often not got my spiritual head on and this spills over into my blogging. Yes I am Worzel Gummidge.

Anyway – as usual – Anita has a few blog posts that have given me pause for thought.

The first was entitled: One Way To Get A Lot Done When You Are Very Busy and cited Martin Luther as saying that the busier he was, the more time he spent in prayer. I noted that I wish I were like that, to which Anita responded:

Me too. I am sure it works though. So much of what we do is unnecessary. Perhaps with practice, the unconscious tunes in to the mind of God, and we stumble upon clever ways to do things, things we can eliminate, and the Gordian knots which can be slashed rather than unravelled.

My confession was:

The truth is that in the parable in 1 Corinthians it says:

If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. 15 If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames.

At times (most of the time) I feel that I build on wood, hay or straw.

It’s not nice but that’s how I feel.

I wonder if any other Christians ever feel this way? Thinking specifically about blogging, I wonder if it furthers the cause of the Kingdom in any way. Truthfully, I don’t think it does, but I still feel compelled to blog. It was this sort of thinking that made me change my bio from a “Christian blog” to a “Christian that happens to blog”.

Today Anita blogged: Christian Blogging: Ministering Without Preaching and I had to laugh at point number 3:

The things which are glaringly obvious to everyone else, but which we are oblivious to. Bloggers, despite themselves, make these dreadful revelations about themselves—unwittingly revealing their emotional contours, their prejudices, their fears, their secret patches of pride, shame and sensitivity. Many personal blogs can be decoded by an alert reader. Anyone who chronicles the ongoing story of their personal or spiritual lives on the web makes these unconscious revelations, and must make peace with this.

I recently blogged that psychiatrists can determine our personality traits – or more accurately flaws – based on our social media interactions. I find that you often get a feel for a blogger that you follow; it’s like you get to know them to a certain extent.

I try to be honest here, but obviously there are some things I don’t divulge; although, having said that, I can’t think of anything I’ve not revealed one way or the other. Anyway, it makes me wonder how accurate the impression I give of myself really is. And how important is this for Christian blogging?

Doesn’t going honest just put people off Jesus? I mean, revealing that we are just as weak, biased and frail as anyone else, isn’t conducive to the Gospel is it?

To which I responded
I guess birds sing because they must, and it adds a little joy and beauty to our day, and their days. Writers write because that is how they are wired.

 

The point of revealing that “we are just as weak, biased and frail as anyone else,” is partly that readers sense it anyway. If we were to make out a character sketch of the bloggers we read regularly, we wouldn’t be far wrong, though, as in the paragraph you’ve quoted, we may observe blind spots the writer is oblivious to.

 

What’s encouraging–and part of the reason to embark on Christian and spiritual blogging in the first place–is to watch someone else’s Pilgrim’s Progress in action. The slough of despondency, Doubting Castle, Giant Despair, the precious lessons of the Valley of Humiliation. We identify with Christian precisely because he is “weak, biased and frail.” When he gets himself out of the Slough of Despondency, we are encouraged to believe that we can do likewise. When he escapes from Vanity Fair (or the blogger escapes from the temptation of our contemporary Vanity Fair) we too are motivated to live intentionally.

 

Does blogging serve the cause of the Kingdom? We are part of the body of Christ. And if our gift is to write, we try to write honestly, and as well as we can in the time given us, and then leave the results in God’s hands. Insofar, as we are better for the effort to think and write honestly about things which are really important, it advances the kingdom by at least one little starfish.

 

Just as listening to a good preacher every Sunday subtly changes one’s thinking—and hopefully one’s living—a blogger one reads every day also subtly changes one’s thinking. IF in the course of her journey, she finds herself thinking a little bit more like Jesus might–and thus subtly, and unconsciously, her readers’ thinking changes too–she is perhaps doing her mite to advance the Kingdom.

 

My blog is read by non-Christians as well, simply because I grew up and went to school in India, so have many Hindu, Muslim and Sikh friends. I try to refrain from blogging about Church traumas, as I don’t want to make the church a laughing stock to my readers.

 

But to reveal myself as someone who struggles to live a loving, disciplined, worthwhile life as much as anyone else, but who gradually (hopefully) finds a way, cannot undermine the Gospel. In fact, the Gospel is only good news for the weak and messed up who so need truth, beauty, and God’s incomprehensible love.

What do you think?

Curses: Medieval Idea or Scriptural Reality?

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Our family listened to Louis Sachar’s children’s book Holes on CD.It, roughly speaking, is the story of how a broken promise brought a curse on a family, and how the curse was broken generations later by keeping that promise. It is a story of redemption.
And so our family discussed curses. The theme runs right through Scripture from Genesis, through Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, Haggai, Malachi, culminating, perhaps, in the chilling curse pronounced on themselves and their children by the Jewish elders in Matthew. I wouldn’t be surprised if curses (and blessings) were mentioned in every Old Testament book.
* * *
When I was a new Christian, I was given Derek Prince’s book, “Blessing or Curse?” I believe God is a whole lot more merciful than one might deduce from reading that book which details all sorts of things one could do or had done which might bring the shadow of a curse upon one’s life.
Reading it terrified me for some years, until I came to this formulation, to which I still hold: Christ became a curse for us on the cross. We who are grafted into him, and live in him, now partake of the blessings of dwelling in him. (If however, we truly do abide in him.)
* * *
What I have, however, seen in my own life, in other peoples’ lives, and in Scripture which is akin to a curse is judgement.
It’s correction. When we are going in the wrong direction, and our lives are governed by idolatry–of success, money, sex, shiny progeny, whatever–God may deliberately slow the waterfall of his blessings down to a trickle so that we may seek him rather than his gifts.
And deliberate, long-continued in, unrepented-of sin does slow down the flow of God’s blessings, so that we feel we are living under a cloud. There is then a pervasive sense of futility and dread of failure, a sense of planting much, but harvesting little, of money disappearing as though in a coat with holes (Haggai 1:6).
* * *
Sometimes one sees families for whom everything seems to go wrong. I’ve known a few. In reflecting on them, I realized that in every case, they were selfish, self-focused families, who did not put themselves out to help anyone else, and sometimes seemed over-avid for assistance from other people.
(I am reading John Piper’s book A Hunger for God, which in passing discusses this phenomenon of individuals and families living under a cloud. The way to break this cloud, he says, is to reach out to someone else, invite someone over for a meal, do something for another family. Give. Bless. Yes! And what a wonderful bringer of “rain” those simple actions are.)
* * *
The theme and reality of judgement is repeated throughout scripture. God’s people are blessed extravagantly. They grow complacent. They sin. God withholds his blessing. He sends discipline, even punishment, often using enemy nations to mete this out. Then they repent, God forgives them, and blesses them extravagantly again. Eventually the cycle repeats itself.
It’s the same pattern in the lives of individuals. Blessings–complacency–sin–judgment–repentance–blessing.
Sometimes, even while outwardly busy and bustling, churches too can operate outside the blessing of God. They can use human means of manipulation to raise money and volunteers to run ministries geared towards enticing more people through the doors to give and volunteer. They become no better than a club.
If, however, God has plans for the church, then in mercy, he might send judgment. Money may dry up. Bullying clergy may find good staff leave, to be replaced by inferior people. The best people in the congregation leave. There is apathy. Hurt feelings. A passive consumer mentality. Things dwindle–money, manpower, ministries, as a vicious circle sets in…
                                             * * *
This is how Scripture describes these periods of judgment which feel very like a curse.
5Now this is what the LORD Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways. 6You have planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.”9“You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Haggai 1:6.
Or
This is what the LORD says:
“Cursed is the one who trusts in man,
who draws strength from mere flesh
and whose heart turns away from the LORD.
6 That person will be like a bush in the wastelands;
they will not see prosperity when it comes.
They will dwell in the parched places of the desert,
in a salt land where no one lives. Jeremiah 17.
·      * *
I used to read these passages and shudder. For years, through my twenties, and thirties and early forties, until 3-4 years ago, I felt there was a shadow over my life. I was not successful or fruitful in what I did.
In retrospect, I do think the spigots of heaven were only trickling over me. I was not living in love, but rather living selfishly. Though I was a Christian, my day was not tuned into the waterfall of God’s presence and grace and power.
I was totally enamoured with writing and success at it, and if I had been successful then, I would have been condemned to a life of hard work, burn out and idolatry of writing.
 An editor who had worked with me in my early thirties, Ted Solataroff wrote a famous essay called “Writing in the Cold.” In this, he said that a writer’s life is an exchange of one level of uncertainty, and disappointment for another. Anxious till the first publication of a poem, let’s say; anxious till your book is published; disappointed when you don’t win prizes; disappointed when you don’t win bigger ones.
The only way I could be happy as a writer would be to turn over management of my writing to God. And if I had had early success, this would have been hard to do.
The motor of my life was writing, and success at it. I read and wrote till exhausted, and it took less and less time each time to reach burn-out. I didn’t know how to pace myself.
·      * *
·       
What changed? For most of my life, I have been rather selfish. I was born to parents in their late forties, and praised and indulged. Nuns at school were rather fond of me and gave me more leeway than the others had, perhaps because I was creative and unusual and a good student academically (though always known as “the naughtiest girl in school.” I married someone who is unselfish and nurturing.
However, in Oxford, the girls were doing well but not brilliantly at the State schools we put them into. I like schools with high expectations for every student. I thought my girls would rise to them (and they did). When I was invited to dine at High Table at my old College, Somerville, I asked the Dons where they sent their daughters. Without exception, it was to a high-performing school, Oxford High School, among the top ten or so in the country. Which would cost £20K a year for both of them.
Asked why he climbed Everest, Mallory said, “Because it was there.” I guess I chose the best school around for the same reason. Because it was there. Because they have studied Chinese, Classical Greek, Latin and French. Because they’ve thrived.
Paying for it was not as easy as I blithely imagined. I was confronted with a challenge I did not have the experience or energy to solve with my own strength and wisdom.
And it was through a period of exhausting overwork in the publishing company I founded to pay for school, that I learned to hear God’s voice, listen to his precise guidance, and dwell in the waterfall of his wisdom and guidance.
Most days now, I feel like I don’t know how to do anything without relying on God. Some days I take 2, sometimes 3 short rest breaks, and literally lie down and pray because joy and energy can ooze out of me, and I need to pray to recover purpose, direction, vision and joy. And to check in with God to see if he has any better ideas for what I was purposing to do next, and next, and next. (He almost always does).
And that’s a better way of doing life than by will-power and ambition. And I wouldn’t have come to it without brokenness.
And when I returned to writing (well, blogging actually) my style had changed, become more lucid and less contorted, and I began to find writing easy, satisfying and joyful. In the past, I had driven myself through ambition. Now in blogging, I try to listen to what God is saying to me, and write it down quickly and relatively easily, and there is great joy in it.
And laying the idol of writing down for a few years to give the girls “an unbeatable start in life,” sort of dispelled the cloud which selfishness and relational failings have brought over my life. I now feel that I do live under God’s blessing. And that is where I want to live for the rest of my days.
“But blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD,
whose confidence is in him.
8 They will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit.” Jeremiah 17:7
·      * *
·       
Interestingly, John Piper’s suggest on how to disperse a cloud over your life (if you sense one) –i.e generosity towards God and people–is the same as in Scripture. Give. Serve. Bless.
And there are simple checks one can run on one’s life if you don’t sense the fullness of God’s blessing on it.
Am I doing anything which I cannot ask God to bless? Then, stop. Repent of it.
Are there logjams of unforgiveness? Forgive. If you cannot immediately forgive, ask God to start melting and changing your heart towards those you need to forgive.
Picture the waterfall of God’s beauty grace and power flowing through you and your life. Will it meet any impediments? Any ugliness? Ask God to show you what these things might be, and resolve to remove them.
One of the stupendous things about God’s economy is that we get things simply by asking for them. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. John 15:7. The catch as the astute reader will notice is the abiding.
And when we do repent, ask, abide, as surely as seed and rain and sun produce a harvest, we slowly move into the realm of blessing and abundance.

Christian Blogging: Ministering Without Preaching

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(My post was originally published as part of the Big Bible’s DigiDisciple initiative.)
Typewriter Art
Christians who are digital natives will, quite possibly, encounter two ministries of the Word each week–the Sunday sermon and Christian blogs.
A bad sermon tells you what you should do. It lays down the law. Your shoulders hunch when you hear you should give more to pet projects, pray more, read your Bible more, love more. More, more, more.
* * *
Now, who in their right minds, would come to blogs to be told what to do? Not I.
Like everyone else, I know what to do, you see. The trouble is the doing of it. As Portia says in The Merchant of Venice
* * *
The effective Christian blogger, the digital disciple, ministers the word, but without overt preaching. She has to.
She does not have the preacher’s advantages: the captive audience, the theology degree, the automatic respect.
And so, she must be winsome. Like the poet of old who beginneth not with obscure definitions, which must blur the margin with interpretations, but cometh to you with words set in delightful proportion–and with a tale forsooth he cometh unto you, with a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney corner (Sir Philip Sidney. Apology for Poetry).
While our intention might be to bless, trust is not instantly handed to us. Yeats wishes for his daughter,
“In courtesy I’d have her chiefly learned;
Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned.”
 So too for the blogger: trust is not had as a gift, but trust is earned.
How? Paradoxically, by sharing our weaknesses, rather than our strengths.
A blogger could tell us of hours in prayer, scripture study, fasts, watchings, and we will feel tired, one more To Do.
But tell us how the Christian life really plays out: how you can snarl at those who delay you on your way to worship God on Sundays; how you can feel maddened by noise during your lovely quiet times; how you knew someone was gossiping at prayer request time but asked a curious question in the guise of concern; how you medicate yourself with chocolate rather than Scripture, because, let’s be realistic, it’s quicker. How you love Scripture and prayer, but sometimes find them boring; how you love Christ and love your children, but, frankly, find this whole Proverbs 31 business hugely overrated!
And because we too have visited those shadowlands, we’ll laugh, and we’ll believe you.
And then, when you tell us of prayer, visions, revelations, high altitude glories, we’ll believe you too, because you have earned our trust when you told us of the muck and mud, the disgraces and breakthroughs which are the Christian life.
While the preacher shares the conclusions, the QED of the theorem of faith, the personal Christian blogger, the confessional blogger, shares the process—the falls, the slipping backward, the rare raptures.
* * *
Above all, she tells a story. A story unique in that no one–not the author, not the readers–no one but God himself, knows how it going to end. And as she tells it, she understands it better: the story of her own life.
It’s a story which can be read in multiple ways. Very post-modern! She may think it’s a straight narrative, but there are at least four narratives, mirroring the four quadrants of human personality:
1.    The things we know about ourselves, and everyone else knows.
2.    The things we know about ourselves, but no one else guesses, and we would die rather than confess. 
3.    The things which are glaringly obvious to everyone else, but which we are oblivious to. Bloggers, despite themselves, make these dreadful revelations about themselves—unwittingly revealing their emotional contours, their prejudices, their fears, their secret patches of pride, shame and sensitivity. Many personal blogs can be decoded by an alert reader. Anyone who chronicles the ongoing story of their personal or spiritual lives on the web makes these unconscious revelations, and must make peace with this.
 4. The last quadrant, is the vast, deep submerged world of buried potential–the heights of love and nobility to which we are capable of rising; the depths to which we are capable of sinking; talents and abilities unguessed at, save by the Creator, who alone knows how it is all going to end, and, I like to think, reads the unspooling account of our spiritual and actual lives on our blogs with interest, tenderness, and not a little amusement!

Thought for the Day: Consistent Effort, No Matter How Small

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“I still don’t get why people are so surprised that the turtle beat the rabbit over the long run. Consistent effort, no matter how small, sparks magic, fills sails, butters bread, turns tides, instills faith, summons friends, improves health, burns calories, creates abundance, yields clarity, builds courage, spins planets, and rewrites destinies.”

Signed
I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
Henry David Thoreau