Tag: God

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faith suffering

Hope Inside

Baby seals at Angel Bay, Conwy. Photographed by myself Oct 2024

The seals, whether with babies or alone, always make me smile. There is something hopeful about them. I’ve been told that their numbers started to increase when the wind turbine were put in the sea because this made it harder for big fishing trawlers and so the fish population could increase and so things like seals could increase too.

At our last Upper Room gathering we finished up, after many roundabout routes, looking at the verse

Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you – 1 Peter 3:15

But what is our hope? Is it just that we believe we’ll go to heaven when we die? I don’t think that’s what was meant. To be something that people will ask us about our hope has to be visible. It has to be a hope that we have enough time, energy, money but it has to be more than that. I know lots of people who don’t have a faith in God that believe that, especially after they’ve done some inner healing.

As I write this I can feel myself struggling to know how to put the hope I feel inside. It makes me realise why believers need to gather together. When we were all sat around the table together we could encourage each other and remind each other what our hope is, what goes on in our lives that we lean on God for, what goes on that we know without it we couldn’t make it.

One of the Alcoholics Anonymous steps is to give things to a higher power. Most addicts say that once they can pass things to a higher power, whether they call that power God or not [and sometimes names are not important] they let go of trying to fix things their way. Their hope for their future was placed in the hands of a higher power.

Someone recently suggested that even if we are not addicted to something noticeable we are too often addicted to our own way of doing things. They were working through the twelve steps replacing the word “drink” with “think” and handing over their thinking to a higher power.

I believe that hope comes when we fully acknowledge ourselves, fault, failings and all, and hand them over to a higher power. As I’ve said before we must not pretend we haven’t suffered because suffering is what produces the hope inside.

So if I was asked I could, hopefully say, that the hope I have inside comes from knowing that I can hand everything over to a higher power, to the Creator of the Universe, who will help and guide me, heal me and help me become all I was meant to be, and loves me unconditionally even if I get lost along the way. And that I don’t need to go back to those old ways of survival but am, is it says in the Bible, “born again“, which as I’ve said before I don’t think is a one off experience.

My hope is that even if I mess up I’ve not severed communication with the Creator of the Universe, I don’t have to go back to my old ways, but can grab on and hand things over again and again and again, and move to that place of acceptance of myself as who I truly am.

Categories
faithful fruitful

Be Faithful

Faithful little dog. No apology if I’ve shared this photo before. He is so cute and he is so faithful

Well done good and faithful servant

Matthew 25:23

There is a lot of stuff in organised church about doing things, being busy, making a difference. But you know sometimes life is just hard work and you have to just sit it out, stay faithful to God, stay in the place God’s put you and wait it out.

I did a piece ages and ages ago about a how cormorants have to wait with their wings stretched out drying before they can go back and get more food. Even if they have a nest full of babies they have to be faithful to how they are made and wait until their wings are dry before they dive for more fish.

If God/our hearts tell us to rest then we must be faithful to that and not go rushing off trying to do things – trying to be noticeably fruitful.

Note the word “noticeably” there. By being faithful we are being fruitful because our hearts are healing, refreshing, waiting, faithfully trusting that we are hearing correctly. That is much more fruitful than being unfaithful to the safety instructions we are being given and diving in to the fray again.

At the moment I feel like I am being called to a time of being faithful to writing my story and might just share some bits on here over time. Maybe if my heart tells me. It could be so easy to share because I want to look good, to look like I’m doing something, but would that be being faithful?

If I’m not faithful am I really being fruitful?

Photo by Jay Lockyer on Pexels.com
Categories
altruistic Love

The Power of God!

Stones thrown from the beach to the coastal path after a storm in April 2024. Photographed by myself

The picture above shows a small part of the power of the sea. There were bigger stones thrown around too but I was obviously in awe of it and didn’t take any photos.

The power of nature, whether wind, waves, earthquakes, volcanoes, etc are easy to see but what does the power of God look like?

 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth

Acts 1:8

One of the last things Jesus says to his disciples is about receiving power from the Holy Spirit. [Read all that story in Acts 2]. But Jesus never actually says what this power actually is.

Now having come into following God through very charismatic churches I was always told that you could see if someone was “filled with the Spirit” if they spoke in tongues [this was seen as a definite sign in some circles and if you couldn’t “speak in tongues” then you were asked to check if you were a “real” spirit filled Christian!!!!], healings were another sign, raising people from the dead, deliverance of demonic spirits, discerning of spirits, and noticeable signs like that.

So last night was youth group night. It is Anglican not charismatic and is a small group of church raised young people with the vicar co-leading with me. We have been using the Bible Society’s Six Beats by Dai Woolridge which is great for opening questions. Sunday we were at Beat five which was about the starting of the Church and the coming of the Holy Spirit. There was no mention in the rap about all the above things that I’d been taught about in my early Christian life.

But then the vicar unpack the above verse and said that showing the LOVE of Jesus to people is the greatest power we can offer. Not just doing good deeds for whatever reason – and often we are all guilty of doing things to get noticed or to get the rewards, the pats on the back, the “thank yous” – But actually asking what people want, not just presuming we know, and then being willing to do what that person wants.

I remember as a single mum getting fed up of being given furniture I didn’t want or need, or food that my kids didn’t like, and then having to either give or throw it away. It was very rare for anyone to say to me “what do you need?”

Too often we presume what people want and even if they say we don’t hear.

Jesus says to the blind man “what do you want?” [Luke 18:35-43]. For the rest of us it was a bit of a no brainer question. The guy was blind. Surely all he wanted was to be able to see. But Jesus doesn’t presume he asks. And this is what true love is.

To truly love the someone we need to be willing to sit with them, to feel their joy or pain, and to ask “what do you want me to do for you?”

A totally different way of thinking! All this healing, deliverance, talking in tongues, etc are just outworkings of that power but the real power is to be willing to show the Love of God to others. And that, I believe is so much harder than just laying hands on someone and praying for them!

Categories
endurance hope

Suffering is good for us

Beauty of a dead tree. Isle of Wight. August 2024. Photographed by myself

… suffering produces endurance,  and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, …

Romans 5:3-4

Yet in the world we live in we take pills, whether prescribed or self-medicated, whether alcohol or drugs, whether taken in moderation or to excess, or buying stuff, watching TV, to elevate our suffering rather than acknowledging that we suffer.

I wrote a piece a while back about acknowledging grief rather than just trying to make it go away and really grief is a form of suffering, but there are loads of other things that cause us to suffer which lead to anxiety and depression, to various illnesses [Read The Body Keeps The Score and other books by Gabor Mate and others like him]

Who of us does not want to be able to endure, to be of a character people admire, to have hope that we can pass on? Yet too often we don’t want to go through the suffering to get there so we fill our lives with stuff, etc.

The Bible also says “Blessed are those who mourn” [Matthew 5:4] which means those who mourn are comforted by God, if they are willing to acknowledge their need. Suffering and pain teach us things, help us in getting closer to ourselves and to God/something beyond ourselves; help us acknowledge our true selves.

A wise person said “there is no hope without the acknowledgment of suffering” and “a denial of suffering is a denial of hope” and yet too often we try to deny our suffering behind so many things.

I was writing a short piece about an older couple I knew many years ago. They had been through a lot – she had lost a lung through TB and told she couldn’t have children, and also they were very involved in CND [the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament] and had been on the original CND marches Aldermaston back in 1958 when fear about the world being destroyed by nuclear war was high. Yet they chose to have children – one of which was my boyfriend for a couple of years – and chose to have hope and to be involved in the lives of others. They very much acknowledged their own suffering and the suffering and pain of the world yet were so full of hope people were drawn to them.

A leprosy doctor [can’t remember the article but do remember what was said] said that from what he see we treat pain as an illness rather than the symptom of the illness. So we treat the pain, the outwards signs, but we do not name and treat the actual problem.

If the above bible verse is true then won’t it happen that the more we treat suffering rather than acknowledge it, surely slowly but surely we will lose endurance, will not gain a depth of character others want to emulate, and so will lose sight of hope?

If we need suffering to have hope then let us be willing to be open about our suffering, name it for what it is, and so grow in endurance and character so we can be a hope to the world!

Categories
hard outer shell made good

And God said it was Very Good [Gen 1:31]

This dog totally believe he is good, where he is is good and life is just good, especially if I am with him. Photographed by myself at Newborough beach, Anglesey October 2024

Renly believes that wherever I am is good and that he is good and that life is good. Did you know God is omnipresent which means God is with us all the time? So surely we could then at least believe that we are good – very good.

So Genesis 1:31 says God made humankind and said humankind is good; very satisfactory, our best, pleasant, interesting, better than anything else we’ve made. [paraphrase]

Meaning of “Good” thank to https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/good

very satisfactory, pleasant, interesting, better, best

But do we believe it? Do we even get taught it in many of the churches we’ve been to? Too often we get taught that we are sinful, that unless we accept Jesus [whatever that might really means] we are condemned to eternal damnation, and need to repent.

I will go back to the whole idea that sin is just missing God’s mark, which we all do, but isn’t about not being made good.

Sometimes, I think, good can appear a bit of a weak word. A bit like nice. A word that is used more when things are not bad but not great, which is why I’ve added in the Cambridge Dictionary definition.

I think God looks at us and when they say good they mean more on the amazing side of ok than the “just got through” side. How about if we looked at that verse and realised that when God says good it means that we are pleasant, interesting, very satisfactory, the best for the Creator of The Universe to want to hang out with. And not just when God first made Adam and Eve but when God made each and every one of us!

But too often we get caught with the things we’ve done wrong, the hurts we’ve endured, the traumas we’ve picked up, the intergenerational stuff that hasn’t been cleared, and we look at ourselves through all this hard outer shell stuff and we forget that we were made good.

I also think it is this hard outer shell that can make us do horrid hurtful things to ourselves and to others.

I think the amazing thing about healing and learning to trust and hang out with God – whether this is through QEC, Sozo, Freedom in Christ, other trauma healing stuff from wherever, hanging out with friends who see through our hard shell and enjoy being with us, or even a phrase or sentence that slides into our hearts and chips away at that shell – is that we do see that shell for what it is; something that kept us safe from stuff that was going on around us but it is not us. And we will be safer without it.

So as we see the shell for what it is and even get to chip away at it we learn to see ourselves as was originally intended; without the “good/bad” judgements we and others place on us; without those epigenetic tags our ancestors and ourselves picked up; without the mistakes we have made. We start to see ourselves as good, very satisfactory, interesting, pleasant to be with, the best.

And I for one think that if the Creator of the Universe thinks I am good then who am I to argue????

Categories
content safe place

Contented Little Hermit Crab

From openverse – hermit crab

My QEC practitioner did a podcast for our group about being a contented little hermit, exploring how for most of us the more we QEC the more we enjoy being on our own. Yes we still like people. We still like to connect but it doesn’t rule our lives.

Anyway this got me thinking about shells.

How often as a quiet, maybe shy, maybe introverted, maybe a deep thinker, were you told how pleased everyone was when you “came out of your shell” as though being in your shell was a bad thing?

Why is it a bad thing? No one would tell this hermit crab or any other shellfish to “come out of its shell”. That’s is home, its safe place.

We had visitors this week and at times there were things that I found hard work in the conversations. I found that I am now in the habit of ANSing myself [calming my autonomic nervous system and staying in regulation and balance] rather than reacting. But I also realised that I was no longer biting my tongue so I didn’t say anything. I was going into my shell, my safe place.

Inside my safe place I could be quiet, let the conversation flow around me, not have any desire to react to what was being said. I had space to breathe, to really listen to what was not being said too – the energy, so that when I did respond it was, on the whole, light, breezy and safe.

So for anyone who is getting a hard time about not “coming out of their shell” often enough ignore those people. They are jealous that you have a safe place to be to view the world when they aren’t brave enough to slide inside their shell.

Our shells are our safe places, are places to catch breath, are place to connect with ourselves and with God, which is where we should be on a regular basis.

Go on! Be bold and connect with your inner contented little hermit crab.

https://giphy.com/embed/xUA7bh63SnoXTl66Na

via GIPHY

Categories
pets St Francis

4th October – St Francis Day and Blessing of Pets

[A random selection of my dog, a goat and other dogs. ]

Today is Francis of Assisi day. The saint who was supposed to put animals in high regard. It is also around this time that many churches have services that bless pets – where people can bring their pets to church and thank God for them. [There was one with the church I co-run the youth group at but I was too lazy to go!]

Our pets are amazing. Where would we be without that unconditional love? that greeting when we get home? the hugs just when we need them? the adoringness? Or as I write this the loud snoring of my little dog under my chair and the loud scratching of the cat who doesn’t want to be missed out!

Because of dog walking I have made so many friends since moving up here. I potter round the park and say hello to some I have known just on the park for years, some who have become closer friends that I go to coffee and lunch with. My dog has open the door to friendships.

Did you know that when Mozart’s father died he hardly grieved him because they didn’t get on well [I understand that from my own father’s death] but when his pet starling died he had a funeral and a wake for it? Again I totally understand that. He had lost a being that he could interact with, that was there for him, that he had built a bond with.

Someone once asked me if there would be animals in heaven and I had to say I couldn’t not imagine it being heaven without them. Why? Because I cannot imagine God would have had mankind create such an amazing bond with animals for them to not be in heaven.

My daughter once helped out with the Cats Protection League and the way those older women cared for those cats was amazing. If we could all care for our fellow humans in that same way then there would be no more wars, etc. Although I was listening to a podcast today about how the opposite of Love isn’t hate but fear. Fear then leads to Shame which leads to Control which cycles round to Fear again and so the circle tightens. So humankind is fearful of others humans and so seeks to control them by wars, etc. So maybe there is something else involved here that I might explore in another post!

Anyway I digress!

Today let’s celebrate the animals in our lives whether they are our pets, someone else’s pets or the wonderful birds, squirrels and others creatures in the wild. Thank you God for all creatures great and small.

Just as I wrote that last bit two Magpies just settled in the tree opposite and the man who was picking weeds from his lawn just stopped and lazed up at them. And as we all know from the rhyme “One for sorrow, Two for joy”. So I pass onwards to you the joy of those two magpies.

Categories
epigenetics sin

Sins Of The Fathers

‘The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation.’

Numbers 14:18

Until Friday I’ve struggled with this verse. How could God be forgiving and abounding in steadfast love yet still visit the sins of the fathers on their children? Friday, whilst doing some QEC with a small group around inter-generational trauma beliefs it dawned on me what it all meant.

Sins is always a word we get hung up on. Too often it is seen as “wrong things” we have done and then someone decides what is wrong and what isn’t. Like gossiping and even covering over misdemeanors is alright but fancying someone of the same sex or sleeping with someone you aren’t married to are “sins”.

Years ago I heard a sermon saying sin was just missing God’s mark and God’s mark is to put God in the centre of all things all the time. That’s how the apostle Paul can say “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” [Romans 3:23]. Since hearing that this has always been my way of looking at “sin” and I will read it that way, even pray the “Lords Prayer” that way –

Forgive me when I don’t make God’s mark and do as God would for myself, others and the world, as I forgive those who hurt me by not hitting God’s mark for me

[forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us]

So what are the sins of the fathers? I think it should read “sins of our ancestors”. These are those traumas that stay in families and become norms. But they are inherent traumas that effect our mind, body and also our DNA. This can be anything from the belief that “all my family die in their early 70s”, “all my family have arthritis/diabetes/are anxious/don’t do birthdays/add your own” to saying “this is what we’re like as a family”, “it is in my DNA/my make up” as if that is it.

Did you know that there have been studies around genetics and when mice [whose DNA is really similar to humans] experience traumas epigentics tags are added to their DNA which then get passed on to their babies and grandbabies. Do use this Wiki link to read more and use the references to go further Epigentics Ir is totally amazing and for someone like myself who’s been exploring and noticing this sort of thing for a while it makes so much sense.

So back to Numbers 14:18 whether we actually know our ancestors or not, just looking at our recent history shows the traumas that have been faced; The Great Depression, two World Wars, the Cold War, fear of nuclear attack, plus racial abuse or fear of being “over-run” by “others”, fear of lack, of not having “enough”, the education system of having to get good grades, hospital waiting lists, etc and we’ve all experienced untimely deaths and fears of untimely death. So take all those in the last 100+ years and that is a lot of shit that’s happened which, of course, has led to lots of trauma, real and imagined, which has led to one’s DNA adding these epigentic tags to keep us safe.

These, I believe, are the “sins of the fathers”. But, from doing QEC and other inner healing things I know I can get rid of these tags, can be free to be who I am intended to be.

And also forgive those in my past, whether I knew them or not, for accepting those traumas and not being healed from them, and forgive myself for passing those traumas on the my children.

Then I can truly live out the New Creation [2 Corinthians 5:17] God promised I’d be, but I do have to do a bit of work to get there!

Categories
Believe ego

Ego in the way

Rhos-on-sea beach gathering lugworms photographed by myself Sept 2024

How often were you told as a child not to get “too big for your boots”? And you knew what that meant. It meant you were being proud, boastful, stepping up a gear, and that was not approved of by the adult who was telling you to be “more humble”, when actually here humble meant to not say you were good at anything.

Someone I know is doing a very brave and loving thing [long story so won’t give details but just know she is being so amazing, so trusting in God and so humble] for her son. I was praying and saw her as this amazing Warrior Woman and told her so. Her response was that she needed to get her ego out of the way so she could believe that.

That got me thinking of how often we see ego as being “egoist” or too big for our boots, boastful, prideful, etc whereas I heard from her that her ego was herself thinking she wasn’t up to the job, that she wasn’t a warrior woman, even though The God who Created the Whole Universe had just told her so.

Too many of us have had too many times when we’ve been put down rather than lifted up and have passed that onwards to our children and others we know too.

I loved working with Americans when I was in YWAM because they were not afraid to say what they were good at or had done well at and would tell others when they thought they had done well. Very unlike us Brits can be. Brits can be very quick to put down ourselves and others, to root for the underdog unless they start to win.

So I say … let us kick into touch those sayings of not getting too big for our boots. As my friend says “get our egos out the way”. And pull on those great big kick-arse boots that are waiting for us to go out and change the world with.

And changing the world might not be solving world peace or climate change but it might just be a kind, encouraging word, or as my friend is doing just supporting her son in a big things, or as another friend did and just obeyed what she felt she’d heard in prayer, or any of those many things that come naturally to us.

Categories
prayer technique

Doing It Properly?

I’m sharing a photograph of my dog at the writing groups I run because one of the big things I keep saying to the group is “there is no right or wrong, just write” when they ask me how to do things “properly”. It is all about finding your own voice and getting your words out there.

At the Upper Room Friday we got on to chatting about prayer. And on thing was how do we do it properly, as in what is the “right” way to pray.

Here’s a quote from Richard Rohr which even though it is about contemplation I think it applies to prayer just as well

When we emphasize specific practices too much, contemplation can become a matter of technique and performance. We fall back into self-analysis: Am I doing the practice correctly? The revelation of God, who always wants to enter the material world as our image, cannot possibly depend upon people sitting silently on a prayer cushion twice a day. That would mean that 99.9% of people who have ever lived on this earth have not known God.

It is possible to get too caught up in the “how to” of prayer and miss the whole point of “why”.

Why do I pray? Well for me it is to chat to God, to build relationships – so as much listening as talking, as much sitting with as doing with. It is to ask God to help me through things, to change situations for friends, to ask God to get involved with the lives of those I know and love so they can feel that deep inner contentment even when life is shit. It is also the same reason I write – because it is what I have to do to know what I’m thinking.

Often my prayers are more like letters in my journal than talking. Often God then speaks through my pen and gives me answers or directions or reminders. Often the outcomes of these times of chatting or writing with God can lead to unexpected answers.

One of our Upper Room friends had an amazing unexpected answer. She had to get her car to be MOTed and needed a lift there so she phone her son because she knew he went that way first thing in the morning. He was a bit short with her and even though he agreed to it said he wouldn’t have time to hang out. In other circumstances she would have found someone else but she felt God say that this was the answer to her prayer about getting back from the garage, so her son picked her and her husband up from the garage early. Instead of speeding off down the dual carriageway the son had to get off at their junction. As he slowed on the slip road of the junction his tyre blew out, the car shuddered and he fought the wheel but was only going at 25mph so all was fine. If my friend hadn’t heeded God’s response to her prayer her son could have been going at 70mph when it happened and who knows what the circumstances would have been.

Now I don’t think my friend did any special prayer technique or if she did I don’t think she’ll always expected that the answer to her prayers; an disaster averted. So it was not the technique she was thinking of or even her son at that time. All she did when she prayed that time was to ask God how to sort a lift back from the garage and her son popped into her mind. Next time, even next time to the garage, it might be a totally different response.

So I don’t think there is a “right way” to pray. I think it helps if we say we’re sorry for trying to do things our own way and not God’s way and that we do so want our hearts to be open to hear God not ourselves. But I don’t think we have to. I think there are times God answers prayer just because God loves us – whether we admit to loving and trusting them totally or not. I think it helps if we do love and trust God but then I think that helps with peace in our hearts thing rather than whether God will answer or not.

So let’s stop worrying about technique whether in prayer, contemplation, meditation, writing, our friendships, our jobs and more and just get on and do!