How do I do this by myself? Psalm 19:8-13

“The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes. The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. The decrees of the Lord are firm, and all of them are righteous. They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb. By them your servant is warned; in keeping them there is great reward. But who can discern their own errors? Forgive my hidden faults. Keep your servant also from willful sins; may they not rule over me. Then I will be blameless, innocent of great transgression.” (Psalm 19:8-13 NIV)

Sin is massive. It manifests itself in so many different forms: envy, sexual sin, deceit, self righteousness, holding grudges. Such is the existence and prevalence of it that we will never be perfect. We will always have these areas that we’re working on improving and blind spots that we don’t even know exist. Be encouraged that we don’t have to fix everything alone. When it’s hard to forgive people we can pray for grace and for God to soften our hearts towards them. When we feel impatient we can pray for an abundance of the fruits of the spirit. Not only do we have an intercessor in the form of Christ, but we belong to a God who wants us to strive for better and delights in giving us the tools. To strive to live more righteously, more like the Son He gave as atonement for our sin is only a good thing.

As you come more and more into line with scripture you see the “joy” and “light” that David alludes to in this psalm. As you forgive people your heart feels lighter, more free. As you prioritise the word (as you should), the joy you feel in pleasing your Father but also in beginning to live in the state of worship we’re intended for is incomparable. Your values and priorities shift, often away from chasing self-satisfaction to doing good towards other. Knowing and trusting that in striving to do right, in loving one another – which makes up such a great deal of scripture – “there is a great reward”, should give us the motivation to move away from the sin that the world values, which is so temporarily gratifying.

I think it’s almost easy to play the grace card. “I can sin but God will erase it because man is prone to sin”. People like to ignore the following chapters after “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). God sees our hearts, He sees straight through that laziness and almost willful sin. But when you are trying to live in love and you ask for more of Him in the process, He’s pleased. He wants you to gorge on His goodness, His limitless love for man, the creation with which He takes such joy in. We’re not trying to get better alone, at all times we’re partnered with the Living God. “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7 NIV).

God bless and keep you always x

A fist, a box and a flower, Isaiah 43:18-19

‘Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.’ (Isaiah 43:18, 19 NIVUK)

Or “it is our head noise that ruins the present” (Graham Cooke). When I was in church yesterday I saw the distinct picture of a tightly formed fist. It opened really slowly to reveal a transparent box with no visible opening. But inside was a blossoming rose. I shared this with church but I think it is much bigger than the confines of Onslow Sq.

Due to past experiences we can really close ourselves off to people or the possibility of God making major changes in our hearts. Our friends and family may think they see more, but sometimes we can be really great actors and even they don’t know. Or sometimes we just don’t allow them an entrance to see or help. We think we’re fooling everyone, but we’re not even close to fooling Him. He sees that delicate, beautiful, colourful part of us. He sees the love, good and creativity that we house and He calls it into being. He says “I made you with all of these great qualities, but due to unfortunate circumstances you’ve closed these off to the world. Share them. Tell anyone and everyone you find of them, because I gave you them to build up the body of Christ, to share in love and strength with one another.”

I was reading a book today and came across Maria Woodworth-Etter (1844-1924). As a teenager she experienced God telling her to move in ministry. The man that she married didn’t believe in female involvement in ministry and five of her six children died whilst they were still young. In desperation, she turned to the Bible and discovered some of the awesome women of God like Esther and Mary. One day she prayed to God saying “Lord, I can’t preach. I don’t know what to say and I don’t have any education”. God gave Maria a vision in which she saw Jesus who told her to “tell of the glory and love of Jesus”. So she did. She preached, prophesied and healed the sick. Often she fell into trances mid-speech, her gift of healing was so great that she was twice charged with practicing medicine without a license !

“Let us not plead weakness; God will use the weak things of the world to confuse the wise. We are sons and daughters of the Most High God. Should we not honour our high calling and do all we can to save those who sit in the valley and shadow of death?”

So often we can hear words like this and think about their relation to other people, but not ourselves. God is always working on us, growing us, changing us. Really think about how this may apply to yourself. We can all learn something from Maria. Sometimes we say we’re not smart enough for things – culturally, she wasn’t educated to minister, she was the wrong gender and a disobedient wife, but God used her in amazing ways. The blood of Jesus granted us freedom from fear, addiction, guilt and so much more but we can drag insecurities, hurt and guilt from our pasts into our presents, severing our ability to seize the futures that The Lord sees for us.

If we’re honest we either forget or struggle to accept that we are the bride of The Lord, that He loves and delights in us. I’ll leave you with a few verses from the beautiful Songs of Solomon:

“My beloved responded and said to me, “Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, and come along.
For behold, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.
The flowers have already appeared in the land; the time has arrived for pruning the vines, and the voice of the turtle-dove has been in our land.
The fig tree has ripened its figs, and the vines in blossom have given forth their fragrance. Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, and come along!” (Song 2:10-13)

God bless and keep you always x

It is never too late to cry out to The Lord, Psalm 31:22

“In sudden fear I had cried out “I have been cut off from the Lord ! But you heard my cry for mercy and answered my call for help.” (Ps 31:22)

This was me. I was laying in a bed, in clothes I’d been wearing for days, past a point of hunger, at my absolute wit’s end. I was exhausted. I felt alone. And I didn’t want to exist anymore. My last ditch attempt was to quite literally cry (and cry. and cry) out for help.

Diplomatically at first…”God, if you really are there, I’m not coping by myself. I’m really tired and I don’t want to do this life thing anymore.” As tears streamed down my face, my voice grew and I felt the release of saying really difficult things out loud. By the end, I was crying with relief, I had felt so tired and so helpless, but by the end of that prayer I knew I wasn’t facing something alone. I knew that God knew every intricacy of the illness I was facing, every knock to my confidence, every piece of scar tissue escaped words had created and I felt such peace, that I can’t describe the experience in its fullness – it’s impossible.

The Bible tells us to cry out to God in times of struggle, but when we feel distant from God or ashamed of our actions this can feel like the biggest hurdle in the world. We create further barriers and reasons as to why we won’t be worthy of His counsel, of His presence.

A lot of the Psalms, of praise and lamentation, were written by King David. He screwed up in an impeccable fashion and felt alone having lived a pious life. In light of his sin he felt shame and dejection as he’d never felt before. In numerous psalms he quite literally cries out to God too. Pleading with God’s nature, His reputation, whatever he can think of to feel the closeness with God again.

Know what God does? He responds.

Even when David felt he was surely out of God’s sight, God “heard his cry for mercy” and “answered” his call for help. This is Our Father. Even when we bring it about, he “cares about the anguish of [our] souls” (31:8). He doesn’t want you to suffer but to seek Him out, to feel convicted if necessary by the sin that may have caused it, but only so you would turn back to Him; only that you would know Him fully.

My cry to God was weak ! I pretty much said “bruh, I don’t even know if you’re a real guy. I’m doing this because I can think of nothing else. Because my self sufficiency has run out, I’m finally willing to let you have a go.” And He replied. He filled someone with diagnosed depression, with hope, comfort and relief. I don’t know how many of you have a personal experience of the illness but it is not one associated with any of those feelings.

Calling out to God changed my life and probably those around me as they saw the amazing things God illustrated through my weakness (2cor 12:9).

It is never too late, never too extreme, never too much effort to call on Him. Don’t deprive yourself of what your very being needs.

God bless and keep you always x