Tag: YWAM

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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
positioning Trust God

Happy To Be Second

No matter what this looks like it is definitely my cat saying she comes first.

I was reading 24-7’s Lectio this morning. Josh Luke Smith is looking at John the Baptist especially John 1:6-8

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.

Sometimes with known Bible passages we can switch off or tune into a familiar sermon about them but it was reading Josh’s comment ….

I’m a musician and I’ve been on many tours as ‘the support act’. People haven’t primarily bought tickets to see me, but to see the artist or band that’s headlining the show. My role on stage is to warm up the crowd and set up the headline act for success.

What struck me is how often many of us have wanted to be the headline act but that is not our job. But we get caught up in the shove and grind of pushing to the top. So we trample over others. We elbow our way through. Some do make it to the top whether they are meant to be there or not but because they can push harder, shove better, are louder.

As Josh goes on to to say

God wants me to be fully, creatively myself, without shame or passivity. There is no higher calling, or expression of who I am, than to point towards Christ

But I also think an equally high calling to to encourage others to get to where they are meant to be – whether that is leading a church, leading a group, being a great musician, writer, etc. And it is to say “look at them. Haven’t they done great” instead of feeling that quiet stab of jealousy and wanting to say “you should have known them when ….”

Am I willing to come second? I know I can be ok about point towards Jesus but am I happy about seeing someone in a similar field to myself doing well. Or what is often a biggie – seeing someone’s children “making it” [whatever that really means] when your own are bumbling along just being!

When I first had this amazing encounter with God and realised that, even though I was a mess in the world’s eyes, God thought I was awesome and loved me as I was, I was given a bookmark with “Be Still and KNOW I am God” Ps 46:10. Then when I was with YWAM Scotland one of those on my team drew me a picture of me lying with a cuppa watching the sun rise or set. But still I kept busy, kept elbowing, kept wanting to be more than God intended.

That picture from Mrs Kim on my study wall

After a turbulent year that I made more stressful by getting a part time job to fill a gap God has shown me that I am at my fullest for them when I am calm, resting, there for others.

Yes much as I would love to be a leader, run a ministry, work hard, my calling, my ‘fully creative self’ is being able to have time for others, to drink coffee with them, to listen to them, to be a safe space for them, to encourage them, as well as my writing. So 30+ years from that encounter with God in all their gentle acceptance I think I am finally coming to accept and realise that verse of being still and just knowing God. It follows on then with “and I will be exalted in the nations.”

God is going to be more exalted if I stop putting to be first, stopping pushing for the noticeable ‘ministry position’, that ‘accepted place in a church setting’. So hopefully I am going to enter 2024 being more still, more able to point towards Jesus, more able to be fully, creatively who I am, and just letting God rise into my nation, into those they have placed around me without me having to go looking.

So are you willing to come second?

Categories
Halloween judging

What Does Halloween Mean to You?

Sunrise on a pumpkin patch
Photo by James Wheeler on Pexels.com

Post first published on Saturday 30th October 2021 on GodspaceLight.com

When I was a child Guy Fawkes night on 5th November was the big fireworks thing.  Halloween was not really on the radar at all in the UK. When I started going to church I got introduced to the “Festival of Lights” children’s parties on 31st October, but it was still not a big deal really. Then when I moved to Belfast in 1996 I met Halloween in a big way. The road outside my house exploded with fireworks as soon as it got dark on 31st October and kept going for hours. We had only arrived three weeks earlier and wondered what we had let ourselves in for! There the Baptist church saw it as just a thing, though it was very much just an overload of fireworks. 

On returning to England three years later Halloween had grown and “trick or treating” was becoming a thing. The charismatic, evangelical churches were saying Halloween was wrong, evil, satanic, demonic, etc. Then I joined YWAM and lived in a community house filled with mainly American evangelical Christian families and was introduced to a different take of Halloween, where children were encouraged to dress up as scary creatures, garner sweets from strangers and see it all as a big thing. Without this introduction twenty years earlier my reaction to Lily Lewin’s post FreerangeFriday: Halloween Candy Prayers would have been that she was not a “proper” Christian. Knowing Lilly as I do, I know she definitely is a Proper Christian with capital P and C.  🙂

This got me thinking of how we box and judge other things and other people without taking time out to know the heart behind them;  “signed and sealed” as either good or bad. This led me to Matthew 7:1&2 where Jesus says “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged ...”, which I thought I would look at in context. In the preceding verses, Jesus says that God cares for us so much that we are not to worry about anything. ANYTHING!! Then he goes on to say not to judge. Coincidence?   

My suspicion is that God knows we judge because we worry about things, about how we’ll be perceived, whether we’ll “get into heaven”, be “good” witnesses, etc, etc. We think we’re looking at others to “help” them but actually, we’re also looking and judging ourselves. Jesus says “in the same way you judge others you will be judged”. Many sermons talk about it being God who judges us by the standards we judge others, but I think Jesus might just be saying that in the way we box and judge others so we are boxing and judging ourselves. And living in fear because of that. 

As Christianity swept through Europe and into Britain many early Celtic Christians saw the pagan practices of the people of the lands they were engaging in. They were not afraid of what was going on or how they would be judged. They also did not judge the people but showed that they were “missing the mark” [which is what the word sin really means] then showed how to adapt what they were doing to show Jesus in all fullness.  

So for me this Halloween I am going to use it as a time to see where I am judgemental, where I miss the mark, and work out how I can change myself rather than looking outwards judging and trying to change my fellow human beings–whether professing Christians or not.

 A Festival of Light for myself that will sparkle out to those around me rather than the darkness of judgment.