Life + Faith

Category: On Life

  • A Spacious Place

    A Spacious Place

    “I just need some space” is a common refrain that rotates in my head when life gets overwhelming, busy, and tiring. It’s a phrase I might say out loud to myself, or a response I might give when someone asks how I am and I’m being honest in reply. As I muse over life with a friend or with my wife, I reflect in such a way that highlights the sense of being crowded in by responsibilities and ‘adulting’. 

    To say this is stating a fact which demands reflection. Yes, I need some space, but is there so little time for me? It’s difficult to get space away from the tasks, demands, challenges, and responsibilities that build up over time. We all need space away from people, particularly those of us who are more introverted than others and enjoy their own company. To that end, this quiet thought said out loud is a wish for a quieter life. A life that is sustainable and slower than what we’ve got now. 

    Whether we’re on our own with a diary filled with tasks, whether we’re in the midst of a busy family life going from one activity to the next, or whether we’re empty-nesters or retirees who are busier than we thought without the paid work, sometimes we just crave the space to breathe. 

    It’s ironic, running about as we do even though we don’t like it and want to keep up with whatever we feel we need to keep up with. We try to make subtle changes in our life, less screen time, have a morning routine, read Atomic Habits and incrementally make changes, habit stack, or put the phone on ‘Do Not Disturb’. Sometimes we just need an overhaul. A forensic examination of all our rushing about and what we might be crowding out. It’s a cycle that hampers our walk with God and our ability to know Jesus deeper and be fruitful in our lives. 

    A Spacious Place in Scripture

    The second half of Psalm 31:8 has stuck with me for some time. I’ve been pleased to find this truth while reading through the Psalms of David. It is a reminder for us in these days of over-activity. 

    This is a psalm that describes one who is trapped and chased by enemies, but in all the struggle this brings there is God. God, who is powerful to rescue, and who plants feet in a spacious place. We read this short phrase at the back end of v8, 

    “You have set my feet in a spacious place.” (Psalm 31:8b)

    There are instances in our lives when we want space. Even every day, as we talk to a colleague, we don’t want to be interacting with a close-talker who speaks to us while in our personal space. We want adequate space between us and others so we can have a helpful conversation. 

    We are people who need space. We need physical space to interact in our world, and it should not surprise us that we need space in our heart, our soul, and our mind. We need space to flourish as people, and as the people of God. 

    Space to Flourish

    A helpful image that comes to mind is that of a garden. For plants and vegetables and trees to flourish, there needs to be space. Space between seedlings, space between trunks, space between fruit trees. When the garden is too full or the plants are cramped together, then they do not grow to their full potential. They don’t develop as they should. They need space between one another to access the right nutrients and sunshine in order to flourish. 

    This is the case for us as faithful followers of Jesus. 

    We need space to be able to grow, expand, and flourish in the things of God and the ways of God. 

    We need our feet to be planted in spacious places, where people, attitudes, stuff, and sin won’t crowd out our faith. Like squashed plants and unattended flowers that weeds grow up and choke, we too need space that the Lord provides. Like the parable of the soils (Mark 4:1-20), we want to not only be planted in healthy soil, but we also want to be planted in spacious soil. Soil that is ripe for depth and growth.

    I’ve come to realise that this teaching in Psalm 31 is connected further to Jesus. Jesus himself is depicted as a gardener after his resurrection (John 20:11-16). As the Lord has come to set us in a spacious place, the Lord Jesus is the gardener who picks the weeds and prunes the branches in order to help us flourish. After all, as we abide in him we will produce fruit and grow into a healthy fruit giving tree (John 15:1-11). 

    See how profound this is!?

    We are planted in a spacious place, and the Lord has given us nutrients for fruitful faith in him. 

    As we reflect on our over-filled lives that hinder us from spaciousness, we must examine what is crowding out our space. As we turn to Jesus, he will guide and help us relax into the spacious place he has for us. 

  • From Milk to Meat

    From Milk to Meat

    Growth in faith is a slow and patient work that is more than likely seen in the rearview mirror. 

    As parents the growth of children into bigger children is also a slow, patient process that requires resources we didn’t realise we had before they arrived. And it’s obvious to anyone who has had a newborn that feeding them is one of the priority tasks of parents. Feeding babies their milk is a multiple times per day event that often becomes an all in effort for the child to settle, be filled, and sleep in due course. At every feed there is very little evidence of immediate growth. It’s happening before our eyes but it’s not like the child suddenly grows centimetres after each feed. It’s a slow and patient process. 

    This is the case with our walk with Jesus. 

    What we need when we start out in faith is consistent milk that we can suckle down to help us grow. Day to day it might look like not much is changing. Week to week it might look like not much is progressing. Soon enough, however, the consistent bottle of God’s Word and prayer gives growth and thickness to our walk with Jesus. 

    Milk for Beginners

    When Paul was writing to the church in Corinth he expressed how he’d been committed to feeding them appropriately. This of course is not physical food but the food and sustenance of the gospel and the scriptures. He writes in 1 Corinthians 3:2, 

    “I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.”

    Paul recognised that the maturity of a believer comes in time, through appropriate teaching and experience. 

    Feeding a child can be all sorts of fun. Depending on our mood and the temperament of a child it can be a whole lot of pain too. The time of moving from milk to solids is among battles of teething, and the ability to chew and swallow solid food needs to be tested with puree or mashed foods. If it is taken then we know we’re on the way to solid food. If it isn’t, then it’s still time for milk before trying again. 

    Reading Maturity in Others

    This is what it’s like for us, and those around us in our churches. The state of maturity can be observed, although it is more of an art than a tick-the-box process. It involves having trusted people around us, those ahead of us in the faith, asking good questions, and an openness and vulnerability to the patient challenge of Christian maturity. 

    Before passing comment on where others are at we ought to examine ourselves and assess whether we are able to digest the solid food first. Often, Christian maturity can be disguised in all sorts of religiosity that might need to be peeled back like the layers of an onion before it’s seen. Sure, some things can seem obvious to those of us who have been walking with Jesus for a while, but in others it is more subtle. 

    To add to the difficulty of helping people mature in the faith is that adult new believers can expect themselves to be more mature than their junior counterparts. This might cause tension within this person, or in those who are discipling this new believer.

    Stuck on Milk

    The writer to the Hebrews uses this milk metaphor when writing his sermon as well. This time it’s focussed on those who have been walking in faith for some time but are stuck in immaturity. Hebrews 5:12 reads, 

    “In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food!”

    Those who have been walking with Jesus for some time should be more mature in faith than they actually are. The writer says some of these folk should be teachers but they need the foundational truths explained to them all over again. They have regressed to milk after tasting the solid food of the Word of God and gospel. 

    It’s a funny thought, isn’t it? To think about our own eating and going back to milk and mashed pumpkin having been able to chew through steak and boiled vegetables. Ironically, in today’s world, many make the choice to have the protein shake and avoid having the slow but nutritious solid food. 

    Is that the story we find ourselves in too? 

    Instead of eating the solid food provided for us in the scriptures we are trying to drink a quick protein shake of the Word to get us through to the next meal? 

    It’s an appropriate picture of what we do in our own walk with God. 

    Instead of being patient with the slow and digestive work of the Word and prayer we want the quick devotional and prayer that will take all of seven minutes. It might be suitable for a season, but it could be that we’re neglecting where we should be. We might actually need to go back to the gospel and hear the message of Christ. To be refreshed in the elementary truths again so we can keep growing our maturity and communion with God.

    As you think about the developmental milestones of your faith, where would you place yourself? Is it worth asking a trusted friend about what they see? 

    The point is not to be discouraging at how we may have stalled in our growth in God, but it’s an encouragement to draw us back to the meat that holds our faith and walk with Jesus together.

  • Do You Do A Mid-Year Reflection? 

    Do You Do A Mid-Year Reflection? 

    It’s that time here in Melbourne where the days are cold and fresh and we come to the halfway mark of the year. 

    I’m not sure about you but I long to be somewhere warm about now. The kids have just gone on school holidays, there will be more family time and unstructured time in the home. Friends have disappeared up north to get a dose of sun for the week, and most of the regular life programming has taken a pause. It is usually the case that after our summer break we walk back into life with a pep in our step but we are far removed from January energy. As we mark the midpoint of the year that pep might have gone by the wayside and we are simply trying to put one foot in front of the other. 

    In recent years, with all this in mind, I’ve taken time to intentionally reflect on the first half of the year. I love the book of Proverbs, and don’t dip into it nearly enough, but it has a couple of gems for us in terms of being reflective people. In Proverbs 4:26 we read, 

    “Carefully consider the path for your feet, and all your ways will be established.” 

    And then in Proverbs 14:8 is says, 

    “The sensible person’s wisdom is to consider his way, but the stupidity of fools deceives them.”

    Both these proverbs encourage us to be self-aware and reflective people, teaching us that it is discerning and wise to do so. 

    Becoming this kind of person doesn’t happen naturally either. It is not really in our nature to stop, think, be intentional, and reflective of our lives. More often than not we bumble along trying to keep up with whatever responsibilities we have before us, some simply day by day. And so being intentional in this way is a form of discipline. We discipline ourselves to stop, to think, to be reflective as to what is going on inside and around us. We do so in order to observe what God has been doing in our lives and where he might be leading us. 

    In seeking to do this in my life I work through 10 short questions, giving dot point answers to each of them, as an exercise in reflection. I’ve only just done it again for this year, and have found it really helpful. I share the questions below and pray they will be useful to you as well. 

    All the best, and my prayers are with you, as you consider the path of your feet and the way you have walked this year. May it be an encouragement to you. 

    Mid-Year Reflection Questions:

    1. What are the most important events that have happened to me, or in me, this past 6 months?
    2. What are the greatest breakthroughs in any category of my life this past 6 months (physically, emotionally, relationally, vocationally, spiritually, with other people, etc.)?
    3. What has been the greatest struggle in my life this past 6 months?
    4. What has been the greatest, and deepest, loss this past 6 months?
    5. What was the area that has consumed my thinking, attention, and focus this past 6 months (health, relationship, future, etc.)? 
    6. Where have I felt most vulnerable in my life?
    7. Where have I most experienced the presence of God this past 6 months and why?
    8. In the past six months, where have I experienced the greatest sense of consolation (peace, contentment, shalom, beauty, etc.)?
    9. In the past six months, what area of my life has given me the most desolation (pre-occupation, depression, anxiety, etc.)?             
    10. What is ONE word that would begin to sum up this past 6 months?
  • The Scandal of Grace

    The Scandal of Grace

    Scandals are usually thought of in negative terms like the sports star who is caught out or the celebrity news on the gossip pages. It’s negative, possibly something immoral to the world, and breaks the internet for a day or two. 

    In preaching through the book of Jonah recently I’ve continued to have it pressed home to me just how scandalous the grace of God is. God’s free gift of salvation through Jesus Christ offered to all who receive it is a scandal. Scandalous. It sounds odd to hear as we never name it as such, but it really is. 

    In Jonah 4 we find the prophet outside the city of Nineveh, sitting at a lookout point, watching and hoping that God will bring fire and sulphur down on this city like he did on Sodom and Gomorrah. Jonah has just preached his short, reluctant sermon to the Ninevites, seen an entire city turn from its evil ways, and watched God relent from the judgement they deserved.

    But Jonah is furious. He’s so angry. You’d think he’d be happy, after all, he is a missionary! 

    He says to God in verse 2, 

    “I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.”

    Jonah knows exactly who God is. He knows his character and he has experienced the breadth and depth of that tender mercy of God himself. He was rescued from drowning, delivered from the belly of a fish, and given a second chance when he had run as far as he could in the opposite direction. God showed grace to Jonah, and ironically, when that same grace is extended to Nineveh he cannot bear it. 

    It’s a reaction we might understand ourselves. The Ninevites weren’t just a bunch of foreigners Jonah happened to dislike. These were the Nazis, the al-Qaeda, the ISIS of the ancient world. The Assyrians were vicious, brutal, and violent. They had God’s people in their sights and everyone knew it. Within a generation they would conquer the northern tribes of Israel (2 Kings 17:6). Jonah knew what these people were capable of and he seemed to know what was coming.

    Yet, God showed them grace anyway.

    This is the scandal.

    This event and the story of Jonah asks a question of us, it turns the mirror toward us and asks, “How far does our love and grace really extend?”

    Perhaps as an illustration we might think of that Navy Seal team who was brought together to take out Osama bin Laden all those years ago. Let’s imagine that instead of this team the US President sent a crack evangelist team to convert him. And in so doing they didn’t kill him, but they reached him with the good news of Jesus. Let’s say he repented, placed his faith in Jesus, and became part of God’s family. 

    How are you going to respond to that? 

    If you feel a twinge of discomfort, anger even, while reading that then you know exactly how Jonah felt sitting outside Nineveh.  

    The scandal of grace is that God’s compassion and mercy is open to the most ghastly serial killer, the most despised paedophile, the rapist, the war criminal, the dictator, the murderer. If I’m honest, there’s a part of me that is angry at God right now, just like Jonah. It’s not fair. It doesn’t feel fair to respond to such evil and wrongdoing with grace. It’s outrageous. My human understanding struggles to believe this.

    Alongside this scandal of grace we also need to hold onto something. God is not letting anyone off the hook. He is not being unjust. In fact, in order to even offer this grace, God provided his Son Jesus Christ as the one who absorbed the full force of the justice and judgement that is rightfully deserved by all who have sinned, all who have done evil, all who have broken God’s law and God’s ways (Isaiah 53:5; Romans 5:8). Every murderer and rapist, every liar and adulterer, every person consumed by anger or greed or pride — the judgement they deserve was placed on Jesus where God dealt with evil fully and finally at the cross.

    It is at the cross where the grace is offered and it is at the cross where it remains. This isn’t cheap grace. It’s not grace that ignores wrongdoing. But it is costly, blood-bought grace that has dealt with sin at its epicentre and is now extended by invitation to all people everywhere.

    This is why we call it amazing grace. This is why I’m calling it scandalous grace. 

    God’s final question to Jonah, “Should I not have concern for this great city?”, is a question that exposes the limits we place on grace. It exposes the idols we carry in our hearts. It is that attitude of silently deciding others don’t deserve it. 

    In Luke 15 Jesus tells a story along similar lines. A father opens his arms and offers grace to a son who has wasted everything. Standing outside the celebration, unwilling to go in, is the elder brother who has been faithful and dutiful all his life. And there he stands furious that grace has been shown to someone who in his view simply doesn’t deserve it. The father comes out to him and says: everything I have is yours, but one who was lost has been found. 

    Like the book of Jonah, the parable of the Prodigal Son ends without answer. The scandal of grace toward the Ninevites and the younger brother is the same grace that God gifts us and is ours to receive. His arms are wide open. 

    The mirror has turned toward us, and the question remains, “How far does our love and grace really extend?”

    More Than: A Series in Jonah
    Part 1: More Than A Mission You Can Refuse
    Part 2: More Than Running Away
    Part 3: More Than A Prayer
    Part 4: More Than A Second Chance
    Part 5: More Than Anger
    Related: The Scandal of Grace

  • Book Review: Spurgeon’s Sorrows – Realistic Hope for Those Who Suffer from Depression

    Would it surprise you to learn that one of the greatest preachers in Christian history, the so-called ‘Prince of Preachers’, struggled with depression throughout his life and ministry? 

    Charles Haddon Spurgeon, pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle in 19th-century London, preached to thousands weekly, wrote extensively, and continues to shape preachers today. Yet behind the sermons, quotes, and books was a man who often walked through deep fog and valleys of darkness.

    I have known for many years that Spurgeon battled various health concerns, and at least a little depression, but I hadn’t realised how pervasive it actually was. In reading Spurgeon’s Sorrows by Zack Eswine I gained a better picture of the man but also the depths to which his depression and anxiety impacted his life. The other surprising thing about this was how public and how often he spoke about it. This short little volume (just over 100 pages) really opens the reality of mental illness not just for believers but also for pastors. I know it’s not talked about often, if at all, and this book is so helpful and insightful for all saints and sufferers. 

    Our churches are full of people who are going through depression, anxiety, and all ranges of mental illness. We may not see it while interacting with them on a Sunday morning, but they sit there, often silently, battling the melancholy of the mind. Older people carrying the weight of loneliness, middle-aged adults questioning their position in life, young people navigating their identity and uncertain future. They may not look depressed but are sure to be there in the pews. 

    As Christians it is important to talk about this. The Psalms do. So does Job. So does Elijah. So does Paul. And so does Spurgeon. One reason I found this book helpful was the normalising of this conversation without reducing it to Christian cliches or simplistic solutions.

    To give you an idea of the depth of Spurgeon’s struggle he once said, 

    “The mind can descend far lower than the body, for in it there are bottomless pits. The flesh can bear only a certain number of wounds and no more, but the soul can bleed in ten thousand ways, and die over and over again each hour.”

    He knew the darkness that makes it hard to pray, to preach, to feel anything at all. That numbness that comes over us when walking through an unending fog. He writes about this kind of depression as something that comes uninvited and stays longer than is welcome. And yet, in all of this, he saw no contradiction between faith and depression. He writes elsewhere, “Depression of spirit is no index of declining grace”. 

    This is encouraging for us as believers. It’s comforting to hear this from someone who has lived faithfully under the weight of this burden. How often are we prone to think such a thought or such a condition may disqualify us of our belief? But it is not so!

    We walk with Christ in the valleys and on the mountaintops and everywhere in between. 

    Eswine writes with care and warmth. He doesn’t overreach. He lets Spurgeon speak and then offers reflections that feel more like a conversation. 

    In one part of the book Eswine lists various helps that Spurgeon would undertake to help him recover from these periods of flatness, which again was really helpful. But he goes on to talk about how, 

    “The melancholy life thrives when it runs marathons instead of sprints, or when it sprints often, only to rest often. You needn’t try to do “the most things” in “the fastest ways” anymore. To resist this is to have seasons of rest and nature forced upon us by breakdown.”

    This is helpful for all of us who find ourselves running too fast and living on the edge of our limits. Whether it’s burnout, exhaustion, or anxiety, there is the invitation to slow down and let go of that performance mentality. 

    At times Spurgeon himself described what it was like when the overwhelm was upon him.In a sermon called The Christian’s Heaviness and Rejoicing he preached these words:

    “I was lying upon my couch during this last week, and my spirits were sunken so low that I could weep by the hour like a child, and yet I knew not what I wept for…”

    How about that!? How raw. How open. How vulnerable and honest. It’s not the kind of thing we would hear out of a 21st-century preacher would we?

    The book, thankfully, doesn’t offer neat answers, tied up firmly like a shoelace. It doesn’t promise that darkness will lift, but what it does do is point to Christ. It points to Christ to declare that He is the one who truly understands what we may be going through. 

    I would recommend this book to anyone, it’s a must read. It’s five stars. If you’re a pastor it will do your own soul a truckload of good, and also help you walk with those who suffer from mental illness themselves. If you’re someone who experiences depression, or are in it now, then this book gives you a helpful and faithful voice to that which you struggle with. And if you walk with those who do walk the road of mental illness then this book might help you understand it a little more. 

    To close I can’t but leave you with one of my favourite quotes from Spurgeon about suffering and depression. While speaking about God providing all our needs from Philippians 4:19 he preaches,

    “Then comes our need in suffering, for many of us are called to take our turn in the Lord’s prison camp. Here we need patience under pain and hope under depression of spirit. Who is sufficient for furnace-work? Our God will supply us with those choice Graces and consolations which shall strengthen us to glorify His name even in the fires! He will either make the burden lighter, or the back stronger—He will diminish the need, or increase the supply.”

    Amazing. 

    How great that the Lord our God is with us through the troughs of life and will indeed supply us with everything we need.