Perseverance

I’ve just come back from a weekend with 30 young men eager to grow in God and extend his kingdom.

What do young men need to hear about? Well, at or near the top of the list is how to persevere. And that’s what I talked about.

One of Paul’s most powerful statements is this: “Forgetting what lies behind, I strain forward.” The last phrase in Greek is a double compound participle. Yikes! What is that? It means an ordinary word intensified, and then intensified again.

In the same passage, where he writes to the Philippians using the terminology of about the Olympic races, he has already talked about pressing on. That’s a running word: “keep running.”

Now he adds to it the picture of the runner at the very end of the race, with his body stretched out at a 45 degree angle, straining forward to get the greatest possible advantage in order to cross the finish line first.

Our culture is built around convenience, not perseverance. We want it, and we want it now. We want to make the minimum investment to gain the maximum benefit. That’s why you see people lining up at the lottery counter and the casino.

That’s why we produce charismatic preachers who explode at 30 but are finished at 40, often by some moral or character failure.

God has a different way of operating. He will take 40, 50 or 60 years of a person’s life just to prepare them for what he wants to do with the rest of it. When he’s refined the gold, he can make something beautiful and lasting out of it.

But how do we get there?

Yup, you got it. Perseverance.

We watch professional athletes, skilled musicians or gifted surgeons, and none of us has any doubt about the incredible amount of hard work it took to get them to where they are.

So why is it we think that we can accelerate the process when it comes to Christian character or leadership?

Don’t trust anyone who hasn’t submitted to training. It is good for a man (or woman) to bear the yoke when they are young. That is the Bible speaking, not me.

When I started running again 9 or 10 years ago, it took me a long time before I really began to make progress. Then one day I went out with a running club in the UK, and to my surprise I found myself near the beginning of the large pack.

When I started to learn Hebrew, for a long time it looked like nothing more than hen scratching. Then one day I began to find myself translating Biblical passages and even reading parts of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

I’m sure there were many victims of my early years of preaching and counselling. I even counselled people (confidently!) on marriage issues when I was still single. But eventually God was able to use my skills and gifts to help people, though I am still amazed how he does it.

There may be shortcuts to the gym, but there are no shortcuts at the gym.

Likewise, there are no shortcuts to maturity.

It requires perseverance.

If there is such a thing as a guarantee of success in life, it’s perseverance. It will get you further than anything else I know.

And it’s just like a financial investment -- the earlier you start, the better.

Today would be a good time.

"Enjoy the journey!" - true or false?

I’ve done a fair bit of travelling lately. The most recent leg was an 18 hour trek from Newcastle in England via Amsterdam and Toronto to the small city of Owen Sound on the shores of Georgian Bay where we live.

How many times can you honestly say you enjoyed the journey? The best I can say is I was glad to have staggered across the finish line and collapsed into bed.

And yet people often tell us to enjoy the spiritual journey we are on, as opposed, for instance, to focussing on the destination we want to arrive at.

In all honesty, I don’t really get the advice to enjoy that journey any more than I would understand a suggestion I should revel in my 18 hour trek home from northern England.

The problem is that the Bible (and certainly its last book) presents us as people on a journey, on the way from spiritual Egypt, protected yet challenged in the wilderness and tribulation of this present life, en route to the Promised Land of the new Jerusalem.

While we are definitely on a journey, I’m not certain the Bible commands us to enjoy it. I definitely believe it tells us to endure it. But enjoy?

Maybe it would be better to look at it this way. We are to endure the journey, but what we are to enjoy is knowing Christ and the privilege of living for him and walking in the way of his cross.

Count it all joy, James says, when you encounter trials. Hmmm… well, that does sound a bit like enjoying the journey. But what actually gives me joy is the prospect of getting to the destination James sets out: that I may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

It’s not the trials that give us the joy. It’s not the journey that makes us content.

What keeps us in the journey is the fact that its trials are designed to make us dig deeper into God, and that is where we strike oil. I do not enjoy the trials, but I do enjoy the benefits of knowing the Lord more deeply. His presence invades my suffering, his interventions make the yoke easy, his song comes into my heart. And somehow the hassles and aggravations bother me less.

Let me pursue this from one more angle. Life is a mixture of journey and destination.

All along the journey, we are reaching destinations. For instance, Elaine and I are on a journey leaving the local pastorate to engage in international ministry to churches around the world. The journey, like most other things we have done over our lifetime, is a pioneering one. Some people and churches just don’t get it. There has been pain in the journey and lots of testing. But along the way, there have been massive encouragements -- destinations reached. Can I say I have enjoyed the journey? No, in fact most of the time I have found it very hard. But have I found the Lord over and over again in the midst of it? Yes I have, and for that I am thankful. And I know when we launch out next summer, we will have reached a significant destination along the journey, and will take great joy in it. More than that, God will be glorified in what he has done in us and for us.

Some folk are on a much harder journey than us. Read the two posts on this website a few weeks ago by our dear friend Jan Vickers, for one example.

The journey is tough. The destinations reached along the way give us strength. The ultimate goal is certain. God is faithful.

But most of all, find him along the way.

That’s where the joy is.

He's here

It is said of a well-known Christian lady that she would pray until she felt the Holy Spirit had come to her. And then everything was fine. She would simply say, “He’s here.”

Now I know that in truth the Holy Spirit, as God on earth, is in fact always here. He is never absent from the earth in which he represents both the Father and the Son who created it.

From that perspective, it seems a bit strange to invite the Holy Spirit into our services as if he is somehow waiting in the foyer trying to gain admission.

And yet…

I have found that in those many times where I find myself desperate, tired, stressed, anxious and fearful, there is one antidote. I go somewhere and cry out to the Holy Spirit until he comes to me.

This morning, I simply gave all the burdens I am carrying up to God, abandoning myself and all my situations to him. And as I cried out to God, he came.

When the Holy Spirit comes to you, or at least when you open the door of your heart and your spirit to him, it changes everything.

You receive strength and comfort and power. Your attitude changes from fear to faith, from desperation to satisfaction, from hopelessness to joy.

Today (as I write this) is a Sunday morning. I am speaking three times in two churches. I have people to meet and people to pray for. And there is one thing I know for certain: without him I am nothing. Yet with him I can do anything.

The power of the Holy Spirit takes us into the place where we can do whatever God has placed before us to do.

No matter what is in front of you today, with him you can do it. It may be to preach a sermon, it may be to teach in a classroom, it may be to build a house, it may be to look after your kids. It doesn’t really matter what it is, you need the Holy Spirit to do it.

Yes the Holy Spirit is here. But have you opened the door to him? He won’t break it down. You need to invite him in.

But when that happens, everything becomes possible.

Most of us spend far too much time trying to live out of our own strength. Why not try living out of his strength instead?

“Come, Holy Spirit” is an ancient prayer of God’s people. You can find it in medieval Latin as much as modern English.

That prayer is still valid today. Why don’t you try it and see what happens.

Mystery Explained: print and e-book available!

No book of the Bible is more misunderstood in our North American Christian world than Revelation. This is a tragedy, because its true meaning is not hard to discern. The key is to interpret it in light of the Old Testament, not the latest news reports from the Middle East. This book takes what has become a mystery to most of us, and explains it in language understandable to the average church member. I give an introduction and explanation of the main alternative interpretations, explain why I choose the one I believe is correct, and then take you on a tour of the text, hopefully explaining any questions you may have.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/160750108

Buy the Kindle edition, in Canada, in the UK, or in the US.

Buy the paperback, in Canada, in the UK, or in the US.

Coming home

I am writing this from Durham. There are Durhams in Canada, the United States and likely other countries, but there’s only one original, in the far north-eastern corner of England, just below a wall the Emperor Hadrian built to keep unwanted immigrants out.

Durham is notable for many things. It is one of the birthplaces of Christianity in this country, with an illustrious Christian history going back to the time of St Cuthbert in the seventh century, who is buried in the cathedral. The cathedral itself is almost a thousand years old and is one of the finest pieces of architecture in Britain, or anywhere in Europe for that matter. How they built it with nothing more than muscle power is beyond me. The castle is the oldest continuously inhabited castle in Europe, and I lived in it myself for a year several eons ago.

And for me, Durham was the place where God encountered me, gave me a true understanding of what the church should be, and afforded me the privilege of leading a small but radical group of young people who planted a local congregation which did not look like any other church in town. It was the place where I made many lifelong friends, and most importantly, met my wife Elaine.

It was a place where I learned obedience, where I refused to compromise my faith no matter what the cost (and there was one), and the place where my heart was stirred to pursue the kingdom of God relentlessly.

For me, coming to Durham is like coming home. And this in spite of the fact I was born in Canada and lived there for only six years. Why is that?

I think the answer is this. Home for the Christian is often the place where God most radically encountered you. It’s the place where your life was set on course and where you developed convictions that have carried you through since. It’s way more than a sentimental liking for a place that has fond memories for you.

And for me, it is reinforced by the fact that God is still working in the church I originally started. In fact, it has grown beyond recognition both in its local expression and in the impact it has had in planting churches and in sending out people around the world.

Coming back this week to help encourage the latest church planted out from Durham takes me back to the same foundations so much of my life has been built on. And it’s a great joy.

Where is home for you? My wife Elaine occasionally makes the observation that some people are born and raised and live their whole lives in the very same place, and wonders what that would be like given our own different experience.

But for the Christian, home is very frequently that place on earth where God encountered and shaped us. In a deeper sense, this points us to the fact that in truth home is the place where we will live and dwell with him forever.

Peter tells us we are only sojourners on earth. We are “resident aliens,” just like the government document said I was when I was a Canadian living in Chicago attending seminary.

Our true home is not on this earth at all. The only reason why an earthly place feels like a spiritual home is that the same God who met us there is waiting for us at the end of our earthly journey.

Sometimes we feel that our whole life has been a journey moving ever farther away from home. In fact, our whole life is a journey in which we draw ever closer to home. And those places God has met us on the way become reminders of this.

It’s pointless to try to cling on to earthly securities and the home we have here. But along the way, it’s still comforting to know there are places on this earth that remind us of the great reward that is yet to come.