Delighting in the Divine
Yes to freedom, yes to play and yes to celebrating the moment!
All tagged God's perspective
What would be your two top anti-stress tips? I bet they are not the same as Jesus’ observations on what will bring true rest in Him!
My top two ideas would probably be stopping and breathing deeply and counting to three, and thankfulness...
...but Jesus’ top two are:
Last week I wrote about how much I feel paralyzed by the inability to do big things or things I feel I should. Yesterday I was not feeling great, Mark was sick in bed and I was preaching in the morning. I find it hard doing ministry when Mark is not around as the boys still needed walking through social situations (one of our children still struggles with having so many people around in our house and interacting in socially appropriate ways around them - a lot of fun in community living!). In the afternoon it was the first birthday party of our friends' child. I was there at little David’s birth, so it was a significant birthday for me to be at and to celebrate and I wanted to be there. But by the time 5 o’clock came round, the party had started and I was asleep and wiped out! I wanted to attend the party but I also knew that I needed to make the children some food first or else they would just fill up on party food and that would not be helpful for anyone. Believe me...
Last week I talked about developing faithfulness in others but did you know that celebrating Thanksgiving can be a way to encourage ourselves to be faithful in our relationship with God?
Thanksgiving, when engaging with actual thanksgiving, is an act of remembering and God had a lot to say to the Israelites about remembering and forgetting: ...
Recently I have had the privilege to accompany two of my friends as they gave birth. I know the doctor-midwife well and had introduced them both to her and I was able to support the families and the doctor throughout the labour and delivery. Although I knew the doctor well, I had never seen her attend a birth at home before and I was very impressed and thankful for the incredible peace and patience that she brought with her.
The other thing that impressed me was her ability to know when to rest...
It is one of the most peaceful, satisfying and happy feelings to watch your child sleep. After all the noise and activity of the day, to see them (finally!) at rest and knowing they will be restored and renovated in their rest.
So why is it that we love seeing our children sleeping (not only so we can get a break!) but we think for some reason sleep is just a necessary evil for us as adults? ...
Poetry is written to be read aloud - for the words to flow off the tongue and for rhythms to mix together to add meaning. When I wrote this poem, I wanted to share it, but I also wanted it to be experienced, not scanned over quickly - then it would mean nothing.
So I thought about how I could bring the words to life and came up with this short reading (around two minutes) set to some visuals...
I would love to tell you that after 21 days writing about prayer, my days are full of joy - they are not. These last posts have been hard to write and joy has overshadowed me and then seemingly left just as quickly at times. I am living in the harshness of the kingdom coming but not yet fully come! ...
When you are in the middle of the tears, you have no idea that as they drip on the ground they are watering new seeds.
As you struggle with the sledgehammer of bad news to the mind, a descending fog and a wondering if God is bigger than the overwhelming Tsunami coming over you, you have no idea that He is already carrying you on His shoulder out of the storm, but it is a long way before the damage is out of sight...
I shared recently about pushing against resistance in order to see breakthrough. I have found this to be essential when wanting to see breakthrough in relationships with others which can lead to much joy!
Life has given me plenty of opportunities to have misunderstandings, painful relationships and disagreements with others and I'm sure you have had those too. In many of the relationships at school or university, I was able to pull away when things got hard, but marriage and living in community with others has meant that I have had to work at unity. It was really hard at first, but choosing to commit to the person and not pull away has led to joy! The feeling of joy and unity that comes when a broken relationship has been restored and brought to another level is worth it! ...
Happiness and joy are daily choices. Both science and the Bible confirm the same thing. Science has shown that it is not the circumstances in someone’s life that determine how happy they will be, but that in fact, it can often be the opposite because we find out how unsatisfying wealth and success can actually be in themselves. What makes a difference is perspective...
I was totally exhausted but I still had another meeting. I had been rushing around since 6am and now it was 9.15pm. All I wanted to do was crawl into bed, my body was giving way, but I knew I needed to go and see my friend. This kind of exhaustion I knew was not just physical but also emotional and spiritual. I arrived at her house (which is just across the street from my house,) and flopped down on her sofa. She could see my exhaustion and came and surrounded me in a hug and began to intercede for me. I had been through an intense spiritual battle that week and she knew it. She began to pray, speak out life and promises over me and my spirit. She and I cried together and brought the intense issues of the day to God...
As I have been reflecting on how God’s Word brings me joy this week, I reflected on how much the Word unlocks situations for me. It speaks directly into my situations and gives me solutions, life and wisdom. The enemy can use God’s word to bring discouragement (remember Jesus in the desert?) so it isn’t just the written Word in itself that speaks to me, but rather the Living Word, Jesus and His Spirit who bring the Word alive for me and who brings me joy...
In the last few weeks I would say I have had the foundations re-done in my faith house. It is not that I ever desired or even thought about turning my back on God, but I found myself in a some very uncomfortable soul renovations. After I had the miscarriage I felt responsible for the death of the baby. Whether that is true or not is really irrelevant and besides the point - I wasn’t purposefully trying to kill my child, but what it meant is that I struggled with an un-shruggable feeling of guilt for a while...
It’s around 5pm when I am really struggling with joy this week. I feel tired and as the children get ready for bed and peace reigns somewhere around 8pm, I feel like I should do something productive with the last couple of hours before 10pm, but all I feel like doing is nothing. My mornings feel full of joy, with the conscious effort of putting on joy, but by mid-afternoon I feel dissatisfied with my effectiveness and anxiety sets in about how to be productive with any ‘spare time’ I have.
As I sit this morning and write out all the things that are making me anxious, I realize that in all the different situations what I need to know is whether to push through or let go...
I am in a hurry to get the kitchen done. I am fed up with the kitchen not being finished.
God is not in a hurry. He is not fed up with the kitchen not being finished.
I am trying to see it from His perspective...
We are into the final weeks of our kitchen being done. Hopefully, hopefully, everything will be done in the next two weeks… Last week the worktops were laid and this week the floor was put in. I had been hoping for it all to take one month, but it is going to be more like two...
We were about four days into the destruction of the kitchen. It looked like this: ...
From the time we moved into our house, I have always wanted to change the kitchen. From the outset, I have hated certain things about it: the cracked floor tiles and the worktops which are covered in small cracked tiles, the gaps between them full of dirty and bacteria-filled grout which breeds fruit flies. I never cared for the decor either, but living simply that wasn’t something top of the priority list. Over the past four years, despite regular cleaning, we have had insects and we have had mice move in and over the summer the cockroaches took over, their babies gloating at us from behind the glass in the microwave display. Returning from Australia, the fumigators having spread their anti-cockroach gel in every corner and crack, I spent the first two jet-lagged 3am mornings trying to deep-clean the kitchen and wondered if I had just got used to living in such filth over the years or if it had really got worse over our 3-week leave from Peru...
I am a better person when I slow down.
For some reason, (probably because I am a wannabe-don’t wannabe perfectionist), I constantly try and improve my life and create perfect scenarios. Some of this is positive. It is good to take time out to evaluate different areas of my life, relationships, my home, our ministry, our marriage, our parenting and see where things are not working out so well and make a plan for change. But why do I suddenly think that with that plan in place, suddenly everything will be perfect? ...
Sometimes the questions are too big. The future is too unknown. Sometimes the answers are not there. Or not what I want to hear. Sometimes I don’t need the answers, but rather just the assurance that it’s going to be okay...
