Anita Mathias | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Yeah, Praise the Lord, Anyway

Praise the Lord anyway, because he is creative. He can bring good out of anything, creating diamonds out of mud, coal, rock and the bones of dead creatures. Make a boy sold into slavery a prince of Egypt. Things are just inert materials in his hands and from this unpromising argon, krypton, xenon, he can bring forth goodness and beauty.

I first encountered the idea of praising the Lord for everything when I was in India in the early eighties, in a book by Merlin Carothers called Prison to Praise. And for a while, I praised God for things that worked beautifully, and things that, apparently, did not. How happier and more optimistic I was then.

But then some things I really wanted did not come: prizes, stellar exam results, and I got kind of grumpy, and less “praiseful.”

I want to start living like that again, with thanksgiving in my heart, praising God for everything.

* * *

I have been reading Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts. Its insight and writing quality (generally poetic and aphoristic, though occasionally overly so, and patchy) may well make it one of the spiritual classics of our century.

Her central insight was “Eucharisteo precedes the miracles.” We give thanks in all things before we see the miracle.

* * *

I steadfastly used to praise God for everything as a young Charismatic woman.

When I was 19, I was returning by train from Madras to Jamshedpur, where my parents lived, a two day journey. On the morning of my journey, I go shopping in Madras’s tantalizing second hand book stores, and spend most of my money, and don’t have enough to buy another suitcase, and so impulsively buy a bucket to put the books in. (Please don’t laugh. I had tried to become a novice with Mother Teresa, and she refused to let her nuns buy suitcases, which she considered unnecessary and wasteful. They travelled with buckets, which she said were more useful. So that’s how I got the idea!)

So I scramble into the station, just as the train is leaving, and with my enormous clutter of luggage, get into the nearest carriage when happens to be third class. The very poorest people, noisy, crowded, and the cleanliness, well… And I planned to read Vanity Fairover the two day journey.

So when the ticket collector comes around, I explain, tremulously, that I almost missed the train, so didn’t even get to buy a ticket (an offence!) and please can I buy a second class one instead. He agrees, sells me one, and I move, bucket, suitcases and all. Settle into a bunk with Vanity Fair. Get hungry. Reach for my wallet. It’s lost in the third class compartment.

Now, this wasn’t a through ticket. So I have to get off at Asansol, with my melee of possessions, and not a penny to make a phonecall.

Fear. Cold sweat. What am I to do?

Well, I have been training myself to praise the Lord, anyway.

So I sit up in my bunk, and say, “Lord, if I leave my stuff here, and try and find that compartment, this may vanish too. And there’s no way it will be returned. I don’t know what to do. Don’t know how I am getting home. But I guess I’ll figure something out. And anyway, I will praise you.”

And I praise him in blind faith. Really do! And fall asleep!!

I am awakened by a rough shaking at my shoulder. It is the ticket collector, handing me my wallet! “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” I say, effusively, overwhelmed. What are the odds of retrieving a leather wallet from a third class compartment in India? Apparently good! “You should be careful with your things,” he says brusquely and walks away. My wallet was intact. And I had had a good night’s sleep.

And learned a lesson. It is safe to praise the Lord, anyway!

* * *

Oh, I could tell you other wallet stories, of dropping it on Magdalen Bridge, Oxford, and a man who walked to Somerville College where I was a student, and returned it. Of losing it in Wordsworth’s parish church in Grasmere, and the grumpy verger who returned it, when I returned forlorn to praise God anyway, though I had no ID, no return ticket to Oxford, no money, no nothing. Or the Chinese student who returned it when I lost in Columbus, Ohio.

But I better not. I have already painted too vivid a picture of my stupidity.

* * *

So, praise God, and you get your wallet back? Well, yes. Sometimes.

But I’ve also lost wallets several times, and never seen them again–in Mexico City, in Chicago, in Oxford, and most recently, in Sweden.

Okay, then, let me tell you a Praise a Lord Anyway story which does not end with everything sad coming untrue.

So, we are touring Sweden last summer (for the silly reason that we were in love with Norway, which we’d visited the previous summer) and go to Gothenberg. The evening before I google it, and read that Sweden is generally safe, though there have been a rash of thefts from motor homes in Gothenberg.

Now, we are in a motor home in Gothenberg, but are really the most naive, trusting family, and firmly, though unconsciously, believe we lead charmed lives. “Mathias luck” we say when something that looked dreadful and unpromising turns out well, after all: we board a plane minutes before take-off, and are put in first class since the only coach class seats are at the back of the plane, that sort of thing!

Well, not today. We visit the Botanical Garden. My spirits sink low, I suddenly feel deeply depressed, and I feel a yearning to go back to the motorhome, the husbil, and nap. In retrospect, the Holy Spirit was warning me, and I will listen to my intuitions in future. But we have just walked to the greenhouses, and I feel silly to go back. After an hour, I cannot bear the sense of depression, and the longing to return, and we do so.

The motorhome had been broken into and systematically stripped. My laptop, on which I had not backed up the last 4 months work, including on a book I was writing—vanished. Roy’s laptop with expensive software and precious family photographs he had painstakingly taken: vanished. Irene’s iPod: vanished. My brand new iPad, which I had just used a couple of times: yes, vanished. And, of course, my wallet!!

The Swedish police are uninterested. They refuse to come to the scene and ask if anyone had seen anything. We go to the office, and it’s like a scene out of Smilla’s Sense of Snow. Surreal. They ask if there were signs of forced entry. We were shell-shocked, and hadn’t checked, so say No.

Turns out that that was an expensive error. We had two sets of travel insurance. One didn’t cover us because there were no signs of forced entry. One had an exclusion for thefts from cars.

We replace everything out of pocket, and upgrade to top of the line computers: I buy a MacBook Pro which I love. We even replace the iPad, because I can get so much email and social media stuff done on it in the car.

* * *

And so the next six months look different from the ones we had envisoned. For one, it cuts into our cash reserves. We are self-employed and keep the recommended 6 months salary liquid. Well, we had been getting lax, and the replacements set us further back.

In 2010-2011, we had gone to Prague in autumn; Granada in December, and Rome in February. In 2011-2012, we go to Lee Abbey in October, and make a retreat. In December, we go to Ffald-y-Brenin, the Celtic retreat centre, where Irene, 12, has a spiritual experience and changes deeply. Well, it was a healing, sacred experience for all of us. And we spend a week in London over the New Year. In February, we go to the New Forest, and stay in a beach flat.

And we enjoyed all these simple holidays, and grew spiritually—though the complete rest and change and re-setting of the brain was not as dramatic as when we went to Europe, and had intense stimulating, educative experiences through looking and walking and wandering!

Besides, Irene broke her iPod addiction. When we replaced hers, she wasn’t addicted!!

* * *

God can make anything work out for good. That is one of my core convictions.

The day before the theft, interestingly, fascinatingly, had been one of the most important days of my life. While the rest of my family swam on Silvik Beach, Gothenburg, or sat on the beach and read, I sat on the massive rocks and prayed. I didn’t have any agenda, I was just resting in the presence of God.

And it was one of those days when I felt Jesus right next to me, lying next to me on the rocks, on his side, looking at me, smiling.

And without my asking him anything, or for anything, he began to speak. He told me what his plan was for this blog and what he was going to do with it. Really, Jesus, really? I said, again and again, in delight (Not aloud!:-) and I felt him look at me, with laughing, amused, equally delighted, affectionate eyes, and say “Yes.”

I felt him give me a very simple strategy for how to manage my writing, blogging and time, so simple and so brilliant, and so effective that I would never have thought of it myself. I have often heard God speak advice, for instance, in our business, and that is the hallmark of the guidance God gives me: it’s simple, it’s brilliant, and I wouldn’t have thought of it myself.

So I return to the motorhome, buzzing with enthusiasm and excitement. I have heard God speak before, several times since I was 21, and what I have heard him say has always come to pass. I have no doubt this will too.

And the next day, the laptop disappears. We have another six days in Sweden. Gosh, it’s the first time in years, that I have found myself stuck with no writing materials, no mobile broadband or WiFi

Well, actually, those days turned out to be crucial. God had told me what he was going to do with my writing and with my blogging. But now, minus a laptop, oh the irony, all I could do is pray. “All I could do” is activate the nuclear power of God, continuing to ask him, in every deeper layers, for guidance and blessing.

The prayer was crucial for clarifying the vision and driving it deep into my heart.

And what other good came of it?

* * *

Habit. Iron chains. Powerful, either for good for bad.

I had some pointless habits. From when I was establishing our business, and trying to keep in the black, I looked at bank accounts, credit cards, incoming cash etc. every day. And then, when we were safely black, I continued doing that, first thing in the morning. What an uninspiring start to the day! No wonder, I’d often sleep in!

We use print on demand technology. The printer prints books as orders from bookstores, bricks and mortar of online come in. Once a day, starting from 8 a.m. and ticking on for hours, they show each book that’s been sold as they print it. There is something fascinating about watching the numbers tick upwards, and knowing how much money (or not) you’ve made that day. Which gambles have worked, and how well.

It’s addictive watching it.

But quite unnecessary! And how distraction

The lost laptop help me break the habit of looking our finances, and looking at our sales first thing each morning. Instead, I read a 2-3 pages of a Christian book—which helps me get going. I have never looked at sales again, but ask Roy every few days.

* * *

I was different. More focused, more in love with my work than I have ever been. I began to turn down invitations to parties (though I enjoy meeting people one on one). I dropped out of groups, both Writers in Oxford and one of my church small groups. I wrote seriously, well, and in a focused way.

Am I happy I lost those laptops, which cost almost £3000 to replace? No. But I did enjoy the quieter holidays of otium sanctum, holy leisure, rather than the very busy holidays of otium negotissimum, very busy leisure. And the simpler holidays, and the few months of quieter living have helped us replenish our savings to a sensible level. So I can say, Praise the Lord, anyway.

I am, however, going to visit Istanbul next month, and am very excited about it. Yay, PRAISE THE LORD!

Repainting life with your teeth: Tanya Marlow muses on the beauty of suffering in “Joni,” the autobiography of Joni Eareckson-Tada (Guest Post)

By Anita Mathias

Joni: An Unforgettable Story

When I was twelve, I was asked to give a book review to the rest of the class. It was supposed to be on our favourite book. Lots of other girls stood up and talked about Black Beauty, Charlotte’s Web, Enid Blyton…

When it was my turn, I went to the front of the class. I normally dreaded speaking in front of a group, but though I was nervous, I spoke passionately about my favourite book. It was not like the others, and when I finished, I could see that the class and teacher were not sure how they were supposed to react.

The book was ‘Joni’, by Joni Eareckson-Tada. It is the autobiography of a Christian who was paralysed from the neck down after a diving accident at the age of seventeen, and how she comes to terms with her disability. The story gripped me from the beginning; how would I respond if I were in that situation? It was fascinating because of the emotional complexities that she explored: her hope, her disappointment, her depression, her relationship with God. I also loved it for its outcome: a happy ending that was not dependent on her healing but on her outlook and trust in God.

******

Twenty years on, and I now find myself disabled and encountering similar emotional and spiritual wrestlings. I wonder at my twelve-year-old self choosing that book above all the others. Could it be that God placed that book prophetically in my heart?

******

As I think back now, it is not so much the words that leave the impression in my mind but the pictures. She is an immensely talented artist, and (re)learned to paint using only her mouth, holding the paintbrush in her teeth. Her paintings are detailed and beautiful.

As I look at them now, I see not only the aesthetic artistry of the images, but the beauty of suffering. This is the hidden, powerful beauty that comes from painstaking discipline and endurance. There is meaning and value and depth and intention in every stroke of the brush.

Her character is as her paintings; beauty wrought from affliction. My twelve-year old self saw that a little; I now see it more. I look at those pictures, and it gives me hope.

Hebrews talks about being surrounded by a ‘great cloud of witnesses’, those Old Testament heroes and heroines of the faith who inspire us to ‘run with perseverance the race marked out for us’ (Heb 12:1). We all need the example of great women and men of God who have gone before us, who can help us to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. Joni is definitely in my ‘cloud of witnesses’. Who is in yours?

*******

Tanya Marlow

Tanya Marlow is passionate about teaching the Bible, answering tricky questions of faith and training others to do this. In the past she has done this in student and church ministry and as Associate Director of the Peninsula Gospel Partnership (PGP) Bible training course. Right now she does it by reading Bible stories to her toddler, as she learns what it means to be a stay-at-home mum who is also housebound with severe M.E. Her blog is called Thorns and Gold: on the Bible, illness, emotions, life.

“Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament” by Christopher Wright: A Guest Post by Leslie Keeney

By Anita Mathias

Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament

Why does a particular book “speak” to one person and not another? I suspect that it is often just a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Or rather reading the right book during the right stage of one’s life.

Christopher Wright’s Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament is not particularly well-known, nor was it ever the “must-read” book of the season, but it spoke to me at a time when I desperately needed—in a “dark night of the soul” kind of way—a new way of understanding the Bible.

You see, I was “saved” in a traditional evangelical church in the early 1980s. Essentially what this meant was that I had walked the “aisle” during an alter call and promised to give up drinking. Although the Christians there were faithful, loving, and filled with good intentions, they viewed the Bible very much as an “instruction manual”—a kind of flattened-out guidebook for getting to heaven. The Old Testament, especially, was a foreign land into which few ever ventured. We were, after all, already saved. What was the point?

Many years later, God decided that it would be a good idea to drag me kicking and screaming into Seminary. Oddly, what terrified me most was not being a woman in a sea of complementarian men, but that after all those years of loving and following Jesus, I might discover that the Bible was what I had always secretly suspected it was—a confusing collection of stories that meant whatever the pastor said it meant.

It was with much fear and trepidation that I started my first class. One of the course requirements was a “scholarly” review of Christopher Wright’s Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament. While I did get an “A” on the paper, I also walked away with a lot more. In just 250 pages, Wright managed to undo all those years of bad exegesis and blow the locks off the doors of the Old Testament. Not bad for an unimpressive little paperback.

Wright’s thesis, while profound, is also fairly straightforward:

“The Old Testament tells the story which Jesus completed. It declares the promise which he fulfilled. It provides the pictures and models which shaped His identity. It programmes a mission which he accepted and passed on. It teaches a moral orientation to God and the world which He endorsed, sharpened, and laid as the foundation for obedient discipleship.”

Each of these five themes–“story,” “promise,” identity,” “mission,” and “values”–are explored in a separate chapter of the book. And although there is something valuable in each and every chapter, it is the first, seemingly most arcane section about Jesus and the Old Testament Story, that drastically impacted how I read the Bible. It is this chapter that I think should be copied and handed out to every Bible Study in North America (I assume that I could say the same about the UK, but I don’t want to generalize).

Here in 2012, the idea that “the Old Testament tells the story that Jesus completes” is finally beginning to gain some ground among traditional evangelical churches, but when I first read this 10 years ago, it was explosive stuff. What Wright manages to explain in his uncomplicated, winsome prose is that the Old Testament matters, not just as a kind of “foreshadowing” of Christ, but as the story that Jesus resolves. He succeeds in shattering the “instruction manual” metaphor without ever mentioning it by reframing the Old Testament as the rising action of God’s story of redemption. In doing this, Wright also convinces us that the plot of the Old Testament—its action, conflicts, and themes—matter. The Old Testament matters in the same way the first six books of Harry Potter matter—because without them the end doesn’t make sense.

Reading the Old Testament this way, says Wright, has several effects. First, it means that “whatever significance a particular event had in terms of Israel’s own experience of God…is affirmed and validated. ‘What it meant for Israel’ does not just evaporate in a haze of spiritualization when we reach the New Testament.” Another advantage of this paradigm is that it helps us understand the full significance and brilliant complexity of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. No longer can the reader assume that “taking away my sins” was the only thing Jesus had on his mind.

Finally, says Wright, understanding how Jesus completes the Old Testament can deepen our understanding of the original events, providing “additional levels of significance in the light of the end of the story.” I didn’t realize it at the time, but what Wright does here is provide the foundation for a Christocentric hermeneutic that both values the Old Testament as the historic record of God’s interaction with Israel and interprets that story through the lens of the gospel.

It is this hermeneutic that has transformed not only how I read the Bible, but how I view the world. It is the realization that knowing the end of the story changes how we understand the beginning that started me on the path toward narrative theology. It is this insight that drastically changed how I teach the Bible, read novels—even how I watch TV. (To see a perfect example of this, click here)

I recommend this book to anyone who loves Jesus, but is afraid to look too closely at the Bible. I recommend it to anyone who “gets” the New Testament but just can’t figure out what to do with the Old. I recommend it to anyone who is so content with the idea that Jesus’ primary purpose in dying was to save them from their sins that they never venture any further inside the heart of God.

*******

Leslie Keeney

Leslie Keeney is getting her Masters of Philosophical Studies at Liberty University. She is interested in moral & imaginative apologetics, and how myth, narrative, and pop culture can reveal the best of man’s universal moral intuition. (Don’t worry if you don’t know what that means. Sometime she doesn’t either!) Her current project involves trying to figure out how narrative theology and a Christocentric hermeneutic might fit together to provide way of reading the Bible that’s both faithful to its purpose and helpful for the church.

She blogs at www.theruthlessmonk.com. Follow her on Twitter @lckeeneyMonk

Narrow Gates and Dark Sluggish Nights

By Anita Mathias

I have not been particularly happy, spiritually, for the last couple of weeks, and I am not sure why.

I suppose as with weight gain (which, yay, I am tackling, having lost 6.5 pounds) or depression, there are a complex of reasons.

I blew it with a sweet lady who was working with us, and wrote a hurtful email. I took long to repent because I honestly could not see how else I could have reacted. And then I did see. I could have reacted in humility, and not in pride. Explain how things were making me feel rather than going on the attack.

Ah, not repenting. The heart becomes a stone. I remember a mentor saying that she got fed up of apologizing to her husband, and decided to stop apologising. And her heart become hard and cold.

And then, I am trying deferring–“submit to one another out of reverence to Christ,”–in a church relationship, which is new and unaccustomed behaviour for me. I guess I will just have to pray my way through this.

* * *

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. Matthew 7:13

What are these narrow gates into the Holy of Holies, into the presence of God?

Perhaps we each have our own. Ann Voskamp in One Thousand Gifts says her way of entering in was always giving thanks. Hmm. I have occasionally thanked God, while swimming, for everything lovely in the universe that I could think of, and got myself into an ecstatic state. But thanksgiving hasn’t been my gate, though I need to practise entering his gates with thanksgiving in my heart, entering his courts with praise.

* * *

My gates are murder. And they usually work.

One is absolute surrender, the title of Andrew Murray’s brilliant book. Oh gosh, just the phrase makes me squirm, I am so far from it.

But God is merciful, and a master builder. A builder works methodically, beginning with firm foundations, and basement, working upwards, ending with the fancy, finishing touches. One thing at a time, and the most important first, generally: digging deep, laying firm foundations.

So fortunately, when I say, “My life is yours, have your own way,” it’s just a single thing which goes. He reminds me to spend more time with the children. Or reminds me that my blog is his; that my fitness efforts are his; that the group I am leading is his. That my writing is his. That I should give in on some petty issue on which Roy and I are waging war. Stop stressing, stop worrying, hand it over. Let him work.

Repentance is another narrow gate we have to wriggle and squirm through to enter into life. Again, one of God’s outstanding traits is his mercy. We don’t need to go through our lives with a lice comb to find what to repent of. We generally know. It could well be our area of current unease. For me, alas, it’s often a species of idolatry, getting over-obsessive about writing, or blogging or success or money, about other Gods before him.

Sometimes, the spiritual unease is simple estrangement. I haven’t read Scripture long or deeply for a while. I haven’t been immersed in those eternal salty seas. No wonder then, I gasp and pant like a beached whale longing for her native element.

Or I am running, in the way Jonah ingenuously says, “I am running away from the Lord.” No spectacular sin, really, just idolatry. Auto-pilot: wake up, read, blog, exercise, garden, hang out with family. Avoid getting face to face with Jesus, looking into the blazing eyes of him who dwells in the bush which blazes and is not consumed; avoid stepping onto his holy ground, for then I will have to bend, and remove my sandals, and who knows what He might say. The longer I drift pleasantly at sea, far away from him, the harder it is going to be to hear him send me off to Nineveh.

Yes, these are my narrow gates for entering the Holy of Holies: repentance, surrender, read scripture, hang out with God. Stop running.

* * *

Are there short-cuts into the presence of God?

For me, listening to worship music of surrender and devotion awakens my sluggish, bored, grumbly, snarky heart and ushers me into holier realms. Matt Redman, Misty Edwards, Michael Card, Rich Mullins, Ernesto Rivera are some of my favourites. Or anything Celtic! Yeah, such joy in the spiritual life, I realize. Such joy! And I am missing it!

You know when you just simply get bored in your spiritual life. The monastics called it accidie. Spiritual sloth or sluggishness. Torpor. Though at a pinch, you can still talk the talk, while your heart says, “Shut up. Fraud.”

It scares me when that happens. I remember reading The Gospel of John around 2003-2004 and it was electrifying. I felt Jesus walked into my bedroom, early each morning, in his majesty and radiance. He spoke to me though that Gospel. Oh how alive it was!

But I am reading it now, and the words which were like an electric shock then, leading me into worship, are not quite as alive. My mind decodes and translates the words. Jesus says “I am the light of the world; whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life,” and instead of worshipping, my mind says, “Okay, so I need not struggle about the balance of writing books and blogging. Or how to lose weight. Jesus is the light. And he will not let me walk in darkness. I will ask him what to do.” Nothing wrong with that, but it sure doesn’t beat worship.

So then, what are we going to do with this Anita, and her cold, dry, dull distracted heart?

I know what I am going to do. And it is, like almost all my spiritual solutions, a monastic solution. Benedict thought of it first.

Lectio Divina. Spiritual Reading. I read books written by men and women who have dwelt far more deeply in the holy places of the Most High.

George Mueller. Hudson Taylor. Bill Johnson. John Piper. Frederick Buechner. John Eldredge. Simon Ponsonby’s “More”. “Joy Unspeakable,” by Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Dallas Willard. Richard Forster. Brother Lawrence. John Arnott. Oh, anything good about experiencing the Holy Spirit.

Ah! See what I was missing. See the joy I was missing. My heart starts beating faster. Excitement floods me again.

I read how Frank Laubach lived in the presence of Jesus though his Game with Minutes. Goodness, so living in the presence of God is that simple? All we have to do is train ourselves to pray through the day. I re-read the lovely books of my friend Paul Miller, Love Walked Among Us and A Praying Life, and my heart beats faster. I want to pray like that!

I browse through my spiritual bookshelves. The Filling of the Holy Spirit. Miracles. Grace, Forgiveness. Prophetic words for the ordinary woman—“all flesh.” Guidance in one’s work or writing. Discerning the will of God. Spiritual treasures: Rubies, diamonds, emeralds of joy and excitement. And here I am drearily reading Proverbs and Leviticus and they are not speaking to me.

I place my dry, distracted heart in the fire of these writers, and it is strangely warmed.

You have made my heart come alive again, dear spiritual writers, friends, forerunners on the Way. And for that, I thank you.

Yeah, indeed this is the way to live. As a child of the Father, hand in hand with Jesus, overflowing with the Holy Spirit, feasting on the bread of life. Allowing ancient vintners, the Trinity and other lovers of God to pour the bubbling wine of joy into my heart.

And I am made new again!

“My Utmost for His Highest” by Oswald Chambers: A Guest Post by Ruth Bond

By Anita Mathias

My Utmost for His Highest

Oswald Chambers

Updated Edition in modern English

Sometimes the best gift a friend can give you, is the gift of another friend. To introduce you to someone who blesses and enriches their life, in the hope that you too will be blessed in the knowing.

Nell was a lady who had lived long, lost much and loved still. A woman of prayer, she shone with the radiance of having spent much of her life in God’s Presence. Over 25 years ago now, she introduced me to one of her most precious travelling companions. Oswald Chambers.It was a life changing meeting, and he has journeyed with me since, through thick and thin.

My Utmost for His Highest should come with a spiritual health warning. “This may seriously affect your spiritual life.”

It is not for the faint hearted. A series of devotional reflections on a verse for each day, drawn from his teachings to his students when he was principal of The Bible Training College in London, he packs a punch. Like a search light on the soul, he misses nothing, observing “the thoughts and intentions of the heart” allowing no self-delusion. He was a man sold out on God, abandoned to Him utterly, and his passion is seriously infectious.

He died in 1917 at the age of 36, while he was chaplain to the Commonwealth troops in Egypt during World War I . He died from complications following appendicitis. He had refused to take up a bed needed by wounded soldiers, and lost his life to a clot in his lungs following his eventual operation. One very brief life, but offered entirely to God, he is truly a grain of wheat falling to the ground and producing a hundredfold.

Instead of being gone and forgotten, more people know his name and writings today than ever did in his life time. This book and those others bear his name have been translated into scores of languages, and are read daily by millions around the world. The Book Depository describes this book as “The most popular devotional book ever published”.

If I may quote from a biography of him, by David McCasland called Abandoned to God, he asks, “Why the continued interests in the words of a man who was born before automobiles, telephones and electric lights? Why do his statements sound as if they were written right after he read today’s newspaper? The answer lies in the message and the man. The two are inseparable.”

Oswald Chambers: Abandoned to God

After meeting Oswald for the first time, one serious young man said, “I was shocked at his undue levity. He was the most irreverent Reverend I had ever met!”

A British soldier in Egypt described Chambers as, “ the personification of the Sherlock Holmes of fiction- tall, erect, virile, with a clean cut face, framing a pair of piercing bright eyes….a detective of the soul”

“A detective of the soul’ could not be a more apt description of Oswald, and of this book. It was published by his wife Biddy, after his death, taken from her verbatim notes on his teaching. I have read and reread him over the years, using the book as a daily spiritual check up. He points me to the God he loved and trusted. He allows me no self pity in suffering, no self satisfaction in times of success. He pushes me onwards when I am flagging and encourages me always to give my utmost for God’s highest , as he endeavoured to do.

As I have explored the rocky and dangerous territory of a vocation to ordination, he has been at my side, like a personal trainer, urging me on to more of God.

One of the CDs inspired by “My Utmost”

I have pressed this book into the hands of many friends over the years. Whether they too, have been enriched and blessed as I have been, by this man after God’s heart, I will never know. What I do know, is that whatever steep climb or twisty valley you may be travelling, you couldn’t take a more worthy companion.

*******

Ruth Bond

Ruth is married and has two adult children. She trained as a nurse, and a midwife, latterly specializing in palliative care. Over the years she has been a school governor, classroom assistant and for a time, ran her own business as a holistic massage therapist in a GP’s surgery, called Hands on Health. She has been a Reader, and is currently training for ordination in the Anglican Church, doing an MA in Pastoral Theology. She is also steadily working on her ‘bucket list’.
Ruth blogs at www.afeatheronthebreathofgod.com.

Blogging and Real Life Ministry

By Anita Mathias

I usually try to do some ministry at church, no matter how busy I am. Give and you shall receive is one of my key convictions. Short of money: share money. Short of time and energy and inspiration? Share those. I’ve lead and taught 8 small groups over the decade—and usually at times when time, energy and inspiration were short.

But I hadn’t done any ministry last year, and began to feel uneasy. I blog on faith, and the pursuit of God and the spiritual life. On life lived in the interstices of heaven and earth.

Blogging on the spiritual life, I came to feel, absolutely has to be done in community. With close Christians friends with whom you can thrash our your ideas, see when they are too extreme, too negative, too impractical. Just wrong, theologically or otherwise. Just a little bit stupid!

And even more, it’s wonderful for a Christian blogger to have a real life ministry with real people. To see if and how faith works if your friend’s husband has just lost his job. Left her. If a biopsy shows a malignancy. If one is battling depression, mental illness or death. Or your son has had an overdose. Then, when you see how Scripture has real treasures for real people, and what you blog is not theoretical. It is real.

And so I was pleased when asked to co-lead the group I have been attending for a year. It’s a special group of accomplished, highly-educated, successful, professional women, but far more importantly, they are kind, and their kindness and acceptance has been balm to me after a traumatic church experience in my previous Oxford church. (Yes, church and blogging do not mix well. I have now resolved NEVER to blog anything even slightly negatively or controversial about my new church, St. Andrew’s, Oxford.)

Leading Christian small groups is a funny business. I have lead some single-handedly and found it a strain. But when I co-lead, almost always with friends, that is a strain too, simply because my friends are as opinionated as I am!! Every friendship has shown the strain of our co-leading a small group–and some have not survived it!

And so, I get asked to co-lead with her by the woman I like best in the group. And she is so much like me, equally, or, if possible, more opinionated.

I have heard people say that God will keep you in kindergarten until you have learned the lessons. Then you graduate!

And I so want to make a success of this relationship with my very sweet co-leader, so want to pass this test (though I’ve flunked some of the former ones). Want to graduate.

God obviously sees I have things to learn, and ways to grow in this, and so he keeps giving me opportunities to co-lead small groups though I’ve failed in the past (not in the leading, just in co-leading with humility, mutual submission, charity and grace).

And what are my strategies for succeeding in a task in which I have previously failed, and in which God has oddly chosen to give me a new chance? (Though he knew every single failure of mine over the last decade, which no one else did!)

First of all, surrender it to God. It’s God’s group, not ours. Not mine. Second, keep praying for it, and our leadership constantly. Keep reminding myself we are leading to serve. Thirdly, defer. My relationship with my co-leader is more important than me getting my way. Fourthly, if I defer, do it with a good grace and with a smile. These things are simply not that important.

I read this and smile. My husband who eagerly reads each blog I write as they are published will read it and smile too.

You see, all these things are applicable to co-leading a group with an equally opinionated friend—but they are far more applicable to marriage with an equally opinionated man!!

Surrender the marriage to God. Keep praying. Defer. Defer with a good grace. These things are simply not that important.

Yeah!! Now to remember this!

Oh never mind. Roy will remind me!!

Victory over emotional and comfort eating by the grace of God: A guest post by Deborah Walton

By Anita Mathias

“Disorderly thoughts about food are a common source of unhappiness in this world of plenty.” (Finding Happiness, Abbot Christopher Jamison, Phoenix). It is strange and disconcerting when you read something that clearly and succinctly describes your experience! I only realized I was having such disorderly thoughts about a year ago but my story of weight gain and loss began some time ago.

I started putting on weight when I stopped being a student and entered the workplace as a Solicitor in London over 20 years ago. I was travelling by train and tube, spending all day sitting and doing very little exercise. I did nothing very determined to lose weight until after the birth of my son, some 10 years later when I joined a slimming group and managed to lose a significant amount of weight. Over time the weight crept back on, and again I joined another slimming group and lost weight.

About 3 years ago following the death of my mother-in-law, after a long and brave battle with cancer, I decided that I really needed to sort out my weight which had reached a new max! So, I joined a different slimming group and in the space of a year lost over 2 stone and dropped 2 dress sizes. I was very determined not to regain the weight and to try to break the vicious cycle that I had been trapped in for so long. I would love to be able to say that I prayed my way through the slimming process but that is not true, I just followed the set slimming plan and did not bring God into the equation.

Losing weight is hard work, but once you change your mindset and actually start dropping the pounds, it can become a little addictive. The sense of gaining control of something that has so often seemed out of control is a powerful feeling and builds a sense of confidence and inner strength.

Having lost 2 stone by April 2009, the challenge of how to maintain this lower weight presented itself. Linked to this was the challenge of retaining the same sense of confidence and strength in the absence of dieting and the weekly reward of weight loss. I realised that my relationship with food was complex and not often healthy. My own sense of wellbeing was very much linked to feeling physically full and satisfied as a result of eating. I like to eat to comfort myself and also to reward myself. In fact, any feeling of extreme emotion was, and perhaps still is, a trigger to eat.

After a year of maintaining my lower weight and dress size I came to the uncomfortable realization that food and meal planning was dominating my thinking in an unhealthy way. While I had control over what I was eating and preparing at home, I would have a sense of panic and defeat when facing a meal out with friends or a weekend away. I was fearful of what that food would do to my weight and how much work I would need to do in terms of exercise and denying myself food treats during the following week to maintain weight loss. In the moment I would enjoy the food and then perhaps over indulge, feel guilt, punish myself with exercise and dieting and so the cycle of weight gain and loss was in fact self-perpetuating. To the casual observer, however, my weight was under control because my clothes still fitted and I was significantly thinner than I used to be!

I was concerned that, as a Christian, food had become such a destructive focal point and I did begin to pray about it, but I felt defeated, although I looked thin! Offering hospitality is an important expression of our Christian faith, but at that time my relationship with food was presenting a real barrier to giving and, more particularly, to receiving, hospitality. I had a moment of unexpected revelation about a year ago which led me to link food, faith and freedom in Christ for the first time. I read the book Finding Happiness by Abbot Christopher Jamison to keep a friend happy as she had recommended it and wouldn’t stop talking about it. It turns out she was right – it is a very good book!

The chapter on Gluttony spoke quite profoundly to me. Father Christopher takes us back to ancient monastic teachings and traditions about food and suggests that readers consider how to spend less time thinking about food and simply enjoying modest but regular eating. He recommends awareness while eating and avoiding impulsive eating as well as being sensible and choosing to eat enough but not more than enough. The monastic tradition encourages eating only at appointed times and accepting the food we receive at the hands of others.

I have found that prayerfully following these simple steps and not weighing myself has helped me break the patterns of destructive thinking and behaviour that I have been experiencing around food for so long. I am taking regular exercise as a matter of routine to promote health generally rather than purely to combat weight gain. I believe that God wants to work in our lives to bring us to wholeness rather than thinness. For some people wholeness will mean weight loss. I suspect that this will always be an area of weakness and struggle, but on a daily basis I am giving this issue to God in prayer expressing thankfulness for the food that I have and asking for help in breaking unhealthy attitudes. Obviously as I no longer weigh myself, I am not able to say for sure that I have maintained my weight loss; however I am still in the size 10 clothes that I purchased 2 years ago!

*******

Deborah Walton

Deborah Walton is leader of City Lights, the ChaplaincyPlus work amongst young adults. ChaplaincyPlus is a Birmingham based Christian charity that offers support, encouragement and resources to those working in the professional and commercial sectors in Birmingham City Centre.

Before this, Deborah spent 20 years in legal practice in both London and Birmingham having been called to the Bar in 1991 and then qualifying as a Solicitor in 1997. Deborah lives in Wolverhampton with her husband Peter and 13 year old son Caleb.

In addition to her work with ChaplaincyPlus City Lights, she is secretary to the Birmingham Lawyers Christian Fellowship and is also a volunteer member of the Transforming Church Co-ordinator’s Team in the Birmingham Diocese. Deborah is a member of Birmingham Cathedral Chapter and is active in the life of her local Church leading a home group and being involved with pastoral care.

An Anglican or a Christian? A Church Lady or a Christian?

By Anita Mathias

At a social media lunch last year, I met an Anglican. There were 8 of us seated around a table, but she dominated it with a constant stream of strident patter, mocking Rowan, deriding Sentamu, attacking an apparently nefarious, but certainly boring document called the Anglican Covenant, telling us about the gay lovers of various Anglican priests she knew, so many troubled priests, so many troubled parishes. And oh, so much, so very much gossip.

That the lady was an Anglican, I had no doubt.

But was she a Christian? That wasn’t immediately apparent!

* * *

Now if Jesus was reading this (which he is) he might rap me over the knuckles for my definition of a Christian. Or he might not!

When you become a Christ-follower, you begin to quieten down. It brings an interiority to your life. You begin to pray, for starters. Shut up and pray. You begin to read Scripture. Shut up and read Scripture. Someone else is now involved in directing the drama of your life, and you shut up through the day, and discern the plot he is writing in your day, your life, and carefully listen to his whispered prompts and stage directions. You become quieter.

That manic hour or two of exhausting, loud Anglican gossip about those in high places—what did this have to do with the gentle, mild, lovely Jesus or following him?

* * *

Have you ever got entangled with a church lady? You know, who will come up to you with the brightest of smiles, ask you if you are going to an event you hadn’t heard of, and when you say you are, just to be nice, you find yourself corralled into serving the coffee at it. No Out now!

Or the very worst type of church lady like one I knew in my previous Oxford church. You know, whose life is the church. Who knows every shred of gossip about everyone, and shares it with you. Who worms out your weaknesses and vulnerabilities, which you share naively, hoping that you are so adorably special that surely she will not broadcast them. Oh but you thought wrong!! Who gets visibly excited, turned on and alive at news of who hates whom, who is upset by whom, church politics, who’s in, who’s out. Who knows everyone’s backstory, which she repeats with a patronizing air. Who’s in dire financial straits, mental health straits, marital straits, oh any old straits, oh how she worms out and shares these details with visible schadenfreude!!

That she is a churchgoer, one has no doubt. Why, it is her life!

But is she a Christian? Ah, that gives me pause. Would Jesus know her? Oh, on that great day, when all shall be revealed, we shall see. (All of us, writer and readers, no doubt will blush, at least a little!)

* * *

Seek Jesus first. Seek righteousness first. Hard precepts. No wonder so many lose their way and become hung up on minor issues which bolster their own sense of superiority.

I knew a Christian who became convinced that he had a ministry of deliverance, and would eject demons if people had ear-aches, a fear of swimming, a fear of flying. Demons and deliverance: that was his obsession. He even founded a small, short-lived church and ministry around deliverance.

When I lived in Williamsburg, Virginia, where homeschooling was immensely popular, I met people who were, perhaps, home-schoolers first, and Christians second. All their chatter was on the brilliance and virtue and superiority of home-schooling; it became a religion, displacing all the other quiet precepts of Jesus—love for the poor, for instance, or humility. And when it comes to moms, who—abomination!!–worked, well, charity flew out of the window!

A month or two after I recommitted my life to Jesus in 1989, I answered an ad for a Christian roommate. The woman who advertised, Barbara Magera, was the national secretary and spokewoman of Operation Rescue, the militant pro-life organization. She went to Randall Terry’s church. It was a good church, though Barbara, who became my roommate in Binghamton, New York, and many of the church members were continually in jail, for their disruptive shenanigans at the Democratic Party Convention, for instance. Of their commitment to Life and opposition to abortion, there was no doubt. And the church, Resurrection Life, was a sweet nurturing place.

But through the years, I’ve noticed pro-life activists become obsessional, consumed by hated and moral disgust of the abortion industry, become strident and self-righteous, losing some of the sweetness of Jesus.

Similarly, I have seen Christian friends become so consumed by hatred of President Obama and his policies that they will rarely speak or write of Jesus in social media, just tear down Obama. Oh they despise Obama, link after link, screed after screed—and I glance through these, and feel sad. Is their obsession with politics perhaps depriving them of the quiet places of reflection, renewal and sweetness which are found in the presence of Jesus?
* * *

So what’s going on? Following Jesus is just not easy. When he speaks rhema words to me, I cringe.

Or who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.

I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. (Mt. 16:24).

That’s tough. How much easier to just do a bit of campaigning!!

“I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God that which costs me nothing,” (2 Sam 24:24) David says. I have noticed that when Christians major on the minor, it is frequently on issues which cost them nothing. How much easier to deride Rowan, or Obama, or church ladies than quietly serve.

We tend to get strident in our areas of strength, or in areas which cost us nothing. Someone who built up an discipline of prayer and scripture will choose this topic when he’s asked to speak (as I do myself!!) but you won’t hear the same person speak about fasting, humility, or agape, if those are not his strengths.

Seek Jesus first. Seek Jesus first. That is the only way to continue a straight and joyful Pilgrim’s Progress in a world full of annoyances and distractions–Mr WorldlyWiseMan, Mr Legality, Giant Despair, the Slough of Despond, and Doubting Castle.

Jesus, hold my hand and be my guide!

anita.mathias