Abandoned - or abandoned?

It’s a strange title -- but I’ll explain.

Some of you will know Elaine and I are transitioning out of leading a local church into a wider ministry next summer. Out of her experience of nine pregnancies (we lost one baby through miscarriage), Elaine decided that transition, the point just before birth, was the hardest point in labour. And it can be the same in other areas of life.

Transition is that point at which it all begins to happen. It’s too late to go back, yet seems impossible in the searing pain to move ahead. But in the end, the baby is born.

When we determine to move ahead in God, and when that determination involves radical change and steps of faith, the birthing process will be contested by the enemy with all the power at his disposal. He will use everything from external circumstances to pressing the buttons on all our weaknesses.

Our transition process has turned out to be longer and more complicated than I had envisioned. My previous experience was step out in faith, obey God, plant a church, and trust that he will provide. It wasn’t easy, but it was simple. We never had any money or support to back us up, but God showed up. Twice. But that was a long time ago.

Now our step of faith involves other churches and other people, and it’s not just God and us. And we have to honour how God speaks to and works through others.

So things really began to get on top of me.

But in that moment, a couple of weeks ago, I had a revelation.

Don’t worry -- I didn’t see seven angels, seven lampstands or four living creatures. No, I had a revelation of a basic truth of the Word of God.

In that moment when the enemy was telling me I was abandoned, God spoke to me to abandon myself to him.

I opened my Bible and began to read Matthew 6 out loud. God feeds the birds and clothes the grass. He asks which of us through our anxiety can add an hour to his life? And he tells us to live in his grace for the only day for which he will give it, which is today.

Our problem is this. We try to control tomorrow by our thoughts. We think of all the positive outcomes we can imagine, but we never win this battle because all the negatives come flooding in and overwhelm us. In truth, our efforts to control the future in our thinking are a mild yet still deadly form of divination.

There is only one possible solution to our anxiety, and that is to abandon ourselves to God. Cast all your cares on him, as Peter puts it. Roll them into one big bundle and throw them into his arms.

In times of fear, stretching and transition, it can appear that God has abandoned us.

That is never true. The problem is the opposite. We have not abandoned ourselves to him.

Jesus said his yoke was easy and his burden light.

He will give you grace for today. And when tomorrow comes, he will look after that as well.

Our transition continues. But Jesus is in charge.

Jan Vickers: Hope in the Valley (Pt. 2)

Psalm 23:5 “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies, you anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows.”

As I am walking through the valley of the shadow of death carrying a diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer, and my dear husband is walking it with me we are well aware that there is a battle going on around us. A battle where the enemy would whisper accusations both against us and against the nature of our loving God, where the enemy seeks to throw disappointment and sometimes a threat of despair our way. One of the important lessons we are learning is how to deal with those whispering undermining voices.

We talk about the valley of shadows and it has been interesting to stop and ask ourselves “Is there an enemy we need to fear here – or are they just shadows?” Some fears come from a perceived threat, which isn’t real danger at all, whereas some enemies are a clear and present danger. We live in a culture of fear, despair and hopelessness – felt quite strongly sitting in the hospital waiting room with others awaiting results. We can so easily come under the atmosphere of the world around us. When the enemy of our souls whisper lies at us – it is helpful to ask “Is this true?” No! It is just a fog, a shadow. The Lord is with me. Whom then shall I fear?

From my husband’s military experience, I know that to sit at a table and have a picnic is not the normal behaviour in the face of your enemies. Our biology lessons from school tell us that in fear we respond with either fight or flight. When we spot the enemies’ tactics there is a time to fight and to resist the devil. And there is a time to flee, run into the strong tower that is Jesus and His victory on the Cross, and not engage in debate with the enemy. But I love this alternative presented in Psalm 23 to sit at a banqueting table prepared by Jesus!

In our military life we moved house 19 times in 20 years. I love people, community and belonging so one of the most difficult things for me was entering into a room full of strangers, taking a deep breath and having the courage to engage in making new friends once again. And how wonderful it was to enter a room where people looked pleased to see me, greeted me and said “Come over here Jan, we have saved a place for you.” This is the sense I get when I read this verse, that Jesus has prepared and saved a place for me with Him at His table. He loves me and is so pleased that I am with Him. It is a place of intimacy. And it is in the face of my enemies! As those enemies look at me they cannot touch me as they also see Jesus, and they have taken Him on before and they lost! It is the safest place for me to be.

At the table the Lord provides for me the anointing of oil, which was a tradition of Oriental feasts. But it also reminds me that in the valley and in front of my enemies my anointing and calling in the Holy Spirit has not been lost; in fact it is often a place where our calling is reinforced. I have read that shepherds used to run oil onto the heads of sheep to prevent ticks getting into their ears and noses. These could be very destructive to them. At his table Jesus gives us the means to deal with the little irritations, offences and lies that can wrangle their way in, especially in our valley times.

It is also a place where my cup overflows. There will always be lavish provision of comfort and goodness for my soul, and it is not just for me but it will be overflowing so there will be plenty to share, to touch and influence those around me. Life in all its fullness is still reality even in the valleys and even in the face of our enemies.

Sitting at the table Jesus has prepared is the most wonderful response we can make whatever situation we are in. The invitation is given, we choose Him and His goodness and mercy is extended to us every day of our life! What peace that brings!

Rob and Jan at home.

Jan Vickers: Hope in the Valley (Pt. 1)

Today's post is written by Jan Vickers; Jan and her husband Robin reside in the UK and are close friends of David and Elaine.

Psalm 23:4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me, your rod and staff they comfort me.

Dark valleys can be very different for each of us. They can come upon us very suddenly; a worrying diagnosis, a relationship crisis, a financial problem. Sometimes they can creep up on us slowly from within; anxiety, depression, addiction.

For my husband and myself we have walked the valley of the shadow of death over the past few years. Robin was an officer in the British army (now safely retired!) and he was posted to Iraq for a year working in a very dangerous area of Baghdad. He walked the valley of the shadow of death daily, but so did I waiting and hoping and praying at home. On his returning home, I was then diagnosed with breast cancer and went through the usual treatments of surgery and chemotherapy. This time Robin had to walk his own dark valley of supporting me. On my recovery he was then posted to Afghanistan for a year – we continued walking. Again on his return, not to be outdone, I was diagnosed with metastatic cancer which means the cancer is spreading and I am now under palliative care. We continue walking!

Coming from a theological background which believes in God’s supernatural ability and desire to heal, and faced with the medical prognosis and reality of my health, it would be understandable that that could cause problems for me! Yet I have found that I can walk with one foot on the path of expectation that today could be the day I am healed, and this is God’s desire for me, and the other on the path of my as yet unhealed life-shortening illness. OK, sometimes both feet leap onto one path but then soon I am back on both paths again.

The reason why I am walking in so much peace and faith I can only put down to the truth of the verse above. “I will fear no evil for you are with me.” The presence of God.  Life has become very simple. Jesus is my Saviour. Jesus is my Healer and He is with me. So I hang out with Him! He knows how to lead me in paths of righteousness. He is not confused and bewildered by the valley I am in. He encourages me to keep walking through, not to settle and make my camp in the valley. He provides what I need for the journey as He is the God of all comfort, endurance and encouragement. He has the wisdom, the tools and strategies and is able to protect and comfort my heart within the valley.

Where God is there is goodness and as I look to Him I see it all around me. He has said “surely goodness and mercy shall follow me every day of my life.”(Ps 23:6) That means every day! It means the days when I feel the “same power that raised Christ from the dead is working in my mortal body”  (Rom 8:11), as well as the days I feel pain. It means the days to come of joy and sadness, of enjoying and leaving my loved ones. It means the day when “I know in whom I have believed” (2 Tim 1:12) and will step into eternity with Him.

That is why we can say with the Psalmist “I will fear no evil.” I once heard said, there are no longer good days and bad days but days of grace. That grace may be expressed through supernatural intervention, of being sustained with favour and good things, or it comes in strength, endurance and courage. There will always be sufficient grace.

Hope is the confident expectation of goodness and sometimes we try to define what that looks like. “Goodness is that I get healed.” That would be good! But if we do not get healed does that mean our lives are without His goodness and therefore we lose hope? No! In everything the Good Shepherd is doing good and His goodness is so much more than our limited definition of good. Therefore we never have to be without hope.

When I imagine the days to come, good or bad, I think of the Lord’s presence in them and that settles my heart. He will be there, my source and my salvation. I need not fear.

Rob and Jan at home.

The eleventh hour

How many times have you heard it said, “God moves at the eleventh hour”? That statement is both incredibly true and undeniably false.

How can I so obviously contradict myself?

Let me explain.

We often make the observation that God’s ways are not our ways. But just as often, we miss the equally important truth: God’s timing is not our timing.

And this explains the apparent contradiction. The time at which God moves is often the eleventh hour to us, but not to God.

Here is an observation I have made in my own life experience: God moves at the hour of our greatest desperation. To despair means literally (in Latin) to run out of hope. The moment we run out of hope in our own resources and ability is the moment we can enter into God’s resources instead.

Elaine and I have been planning a massive transition in our life from local church leadership to a wide-ranging ministry. We will live in and travel to various places to use the gifts God has given us to encourage and raise up leaders around the world and expand the capacities of local churches to understand and apply the Word of God. We will not slow down, we will ramp up!

That is exciting, but transition means leaving a place of relative security (though not without its own challenges), into something new. Our last transition was when we got on a plane thirty years ago to come to Canada with no money and no job, only the call of God to plant a church, and where it would be we had no idea. And by God’s grace, we did plant a church, a church in healthy condition we will certainly hand over to capable hands, a church whose best days lie ahead.

Where does that leave us? In a place of faith. And dependency. When things do not develop as easily or quickly as we thought, at first it becomes disconcerting, and then finally desperate.

But that is when God starts to work.

Will it be the eleventh hour before it all works out? It may be, at least to me. But to God, it will be nothing of the sort. It will be his perfect timing. It will be his opportunity to use challenging circumstances to cast me into a greater dependency on him. And by the end of the process, he will have shown me how he was using all those frustrating circumstances to develop and reveal his perfect will for us.

Next summer, by faith we will walk into a whole new phase of our life and service to God. God will provide for us in every possible way. When that happens, will I at last be able to say I have now arrived? No. I hate to say it, but there will be more eleventh hours. As long as I walk in the steps of faith and the way of the cross, God will use circumstances to bring me into that desperation that releases his solutions and causes him alone to receive the glory from what happens.

When you feel desperate, don’t give up!

It’s often the very moment God is about to move.

Peter was a man who lived all his life in the certain knowledge he would die a martyr’s death. What was his answer? “Cast all your anxieties on him, for he cares for you.”

As you face your eleventh hour, it’s pretty good advice to take.

He will not fail you.

The back side of the tapestry

Durham Castle, in which I lived for a year, is the oldest continuously inhabited castle in England. At least, that’s what I told people I gave tours to! In 1603, King James VI of Scotland stopped in for a night on his way to London to be crowned James I of England. Later he gave his name to the famous translation of the Bible.

In one of the great chambers of the Castle hang some enormous tapestries, each of which is several centuries old. Perhaps King James enjoyed them the same way I did when I sat after dinner most nights having coffee.

Tapestries are funny things. On the back they resemble a collection of completely unrelated threads amounting to absolutely nothing. On the front, the threads come together to form a picture of great beauty. Needless to say, they take a great deal of time and effort to make. The Durham tapestries probably took years to produce, not months.

This year my life has often looked far more like the back side of the tapestry than the front.

But that’s OK, because God is teaching me something in it.

Maybe it’s the same thing he was teaching Abraham when he followed the call of God into the desert, and the promise of a son did not materialize. Maybe it’s the same thing he was teaching David when he was anointed king, only to spend years fleeing for his life in the caves and hills of Judea. Maybe it’s the same thing he was teaching Paul when he sat for years on the back side of Tarsus, wondering if the guy who appeared to him on the road to Damascus had got it wrong.

What he’s teaching me is that it’s most often when things look the worst that God is doing the most.

And usually the smartest thing to do when you’re in that place is… nothing.

Almost anything you do when you’re at the bottom of the pit will come out of a desire for deliverance from a fire in which God is refining you.

Whether it’s a life or a tapestry, the key to success is time. Most of the most powerful promises God has made to Elaine and I have taken years to come to fulfillment, and some we still await.

God always takes more time than we would like him to because he is doing a work greater than we realize. And in it there are all sorts of pieces beyond our control that he has to bring together.

But here is the most important thing. Through the days, months and even years, he takes the apparently random and unattractive threads and weaves them into something of true and amazing beauty.

Then there are those wonderful days when the tapestry is turned over. Those are the days when we suddenly see what God was doing while we waited. And I’ve had some of those lately too. And there are more to come, for God is often most at work in the very times when you think he’s forgotten you.

David, who knew more about adversity than most of us, got it just right: “The steps of a person are established by the Lord, when he delights in his way; though he fall, he shall not be cast headlong, for the Lord upholds his hand” (Psalm 37:23-24).

And a few verses later: “Wait for the Lord and keep his way, and he will exalt you to inherit the land” (verse 34).

Just be patient and wait.

The day will come when the tapestry will be turned over, and all the time, hard work, heartache and sorrow that went into its production will have been worth while.