If I was to think about one of the recurring themes of the last 5 years of my life and the lives of the people around me it would be the realisation that life does not work out the way we planned it, dreamed or hoped it would be. We are not in the place we thought we would be at the age that we are right now. We thought we would be married/in a better job/ thinner/ more confident / have more friends …  we thought, we hoped, we presumed. There’s a fall out that comes with that, a grief that the plan did not work out, a sense of failure and disappointment because we are behind schedule. Sometimes there’s a sense of anti climax – we are ahead of schedule so what do we do now – we got married at 22, we have the house, the car and the job – what next?

We need to bring our sadness before God and to deal with our disappointment with Him. We need Him to shed light on the darkness in our hearts and to restore our vision, renew us and transform us.  We need Him to give us new dreams. We need Him to help us be faithful with what we currently have.

Increasingly I find with that conversations with my friends are beginning to change as we accept that although things are not running to schedule, that God does work all things together for the good of those who love Him. For some of us we are beginning to see the beauty that he is giving us for our ashes, we are beginning to see the fulfilment of dreams. For others there’s still waiting and hoping but there’s also the gift of new dreams and adventures we had not anticipated.

We have a choice as to the way we respond when our lives do not go to plan.  We can become bitter and we can become anxious or we can trust that God has our times in his hands and he is working for our good, to bless us because He is good. Regardless of our circumstance we can trust Him.

Our response to the season of life we are in is crucial. We can either sit here and long for something else and MISS the moment we are in or we can embrace what we have right now and appreciate it for what it is whilst we are here. We do not need to strive ourselves into the places we think we should be, God has a purpose and a plan for us.

Psalm 31

¹⁹ Oh, how great is Your goodness,
Which You have laid up for those who fear You,
Which You have prepared for those who trust in You
In the presence of the sons of men!
²⁰ You shall hide them in the secret place of Your presence
From the plots of man;
You shall keep them secretly in a pavilion
From the strife of tongues.

²¹ Blessed be the LORD,
For He has shown me His marvelous kindness in a strong city!
²² For I said in my haste,
“I am cut off from before Your eyes”;
Nevertheless You heard the voice of my supplications
When I cried out to You.

²³ Oh, love the LORD, all you His saints!
For the LORD preserves the faithful,
And fully repays the proud person.
²⁴ Be of good courage,
And He shall strengthen your heart,
All you who hope in the LORD. ]]> http://www.josaxton.com/2009/11/29/great-expectations/feed/ 0 http://www.josaxton.com/2009/10/24/forgiveness/ http://www.josaxton.com/2009/10/24/forgiveness/#comments Sat, 24 Oct 2009 06:15:28 +0000 Vanessa Phoo Par http://www.everywomanministries.com/?p=1096 “And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”

Mark 11:24-26

Someone said to me 4 months ago that it was all about forgiveness – and I think it is. Not just in the big things but in the small moments, in the moments where I would make decisions to withdraw or harden my heart or extract revenge!

I was a bridesmaid to a friend 2 years ago and then we didn’t see each other for 2 years.  We would exchange the odd email or text or facebook wall message but we lost contact. I was really gutted and angry and felt so rejected by this friend as I loved her and she didn’t have time for me. Now this also pushed another one of my buttons – married people dump their friends! Now this is NOT true and I would have to say this was a symptom of my own brokenness!  As she seemed uninterested and busy after a year or so I stopped suggesting we meet up and although I continued to send the odd facebook message every now and then I chose not to pursue our friendship in the same way and I hardened my heart towards my friend. Over the course of the following year God convicted me and every time I thought of her I had to forgive her in my heart. I had to choose to pray blessing over my friend and her husband and slowly the disappointment receded and so did the anger.

A few months ago she got in touch with me and suggested I come over for dinner at their new place. My gut response was no thanks, I can think of other things I would rather do – and wouldn’t dinner be a bit intense as we had not seen each other in 2 years? But I knew that if I had truly forgiven her and no longer held anything against her I would go to dinner and not just go to dinner but I would go without the intention of proving to her that my life was so great and peachy and that I hadn’t missed our friendship at all but I would go and be real.

So that’s what I did.  To be honest I probably could have been a bit more vulnerable and real as opposed to being super Vanessa but I could feel God’s pleasure and blessing. It felt like a significant step in our friendship – no we are not that close and we never may be but it’s ok.

Forgiving people is not always easy but it was my heart that was caged. Engaging practically with forgiveness uncaged my heart. God wants to heal our hearts, He wants us to let go of people and situations that have hurt us, not carry it around with us and wait for the moment when we can give them a taste of their own medicine! God is a healer and He is also a provider – He provides friendships but more than that…(cheesy Christian line coming up) He IS the ultimate friendship.

When I first met my husband he had been diagnosed with clinical depression about a year previously. He was unable to work, barely able to get up in the morning, on extremely strong anti-depressants and seeing various psychiatrists. With no obvious trigger point, life had been sucked out of him and he felt angry and abandoned by his Father in Heaven. He describes it as being completely numb to every feeling and emotion; no passion, no joy, no real sadness, just complete apathy. I believe that mental illness, particularly depression, is one of Satan’s biggest weapons of warfare today. It hangs like a thick fog over society as people are overcome by feelings of stress, despair, helplessness, and hopelessness. Depression flattens people, squashing the life out of them and Christians are by no means immune to this disease.

I really struggled with God as to why He was bringing me into this hugely significant relationship at a time that seemed completely wrong. But He showed me that His timing and plans are perfect. Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12). Sometimes, I think God uses us to be light bearers, to carry the light of Jesus into dark places where people are broken and lifeless. That’s how God has used our marriage. There hasn’t been a bolt of lightning healing; it’s been a long and gradual, often painful process, of prayer, healing and hope restored. We are in an ongoing battle against depression, with defeats and victories, but we choose to fight because we vowed to love each other in sickness and in health. We choose to say “Blessed be your Name” even in the desert places. If we don’t, then our hope is lost. And light does break through the darkness – my husband cried for the first time in years on our wedding day, he’s held down a job for the past four years, and now has an incredible passion to go and be a missionary. Our children’s names mean life-bringer and hope and they are a testimony to the life, light and hope that Jesus brings.

The time that has passed since that day has been full of indescribable pain, total and overwhelming love, loneliness, hope, despair, confusion, unbelievable anger and questioning things to distraction!

Not only did I lose my best friend, my lover, my companion and my favourite person but I also lost the father of my child, my hopes and dreams for the future, I lost my home, I lost the belief and hope that life is fundamentally good and safe, the very grounds of all that I had believed and based my life upon had been shaken to the core.

But two years and nearly four months on I can sit here and say that I am a truly blessed woman – I knew the love of an amazing man who gave me so much. Although the time we spent together was so short in terms of my potential life span the impact he had on my life will always be immense. I have been given the most beautiful daughter. I have known the love of friends, family and strangers to a point were I am often reduced to tears. I have been blessed with deepened friendships, healed friendships, new friendships, which even in my anger towards God reminded me deep down that God does provide and does restore. I have known material provision. I have known protection emotionally. The prayers, the words, the gifts, the experiences and the people that have blessed me could in themselves fill a book .

What I have known above all else, even in the midst of my biggest tantrums towards God, is that his everlasting arms are holding me. It has been a difficult journey back to trusting God again and at times I feared I would never get back there. There are still moments when I scream “why have you let this happen to my lovely family?”,” what did I do to deserve this?”, “are you trustworthy for my future?”

I may never know this side of heaven why John was taken from me but I have to chose to believe that through God life can be good again, I can love again, I can have more children, I can know deep joy again, that God can heal the hurt and pain and bring good from it all but it is not easy to do that. It is a choice I have to make every day but I need to choose it because I know that I want a better life for me and my little girl and not a life of bitterness. I know as been proved time and time again in my life over the last few years I cannot do that without him.

Maybe it is because spending time with Him would mean engaging with reality and right now reality bites. Most of the time I struggle with reality anyway and would much prefer to live in the land of hope and possibility – the future.

Right now I am feeling a level of failure about leaving the city I have lived in since I was 18 because I haven’t done what I most wanted to do here – get married. If I speak to Jesus then I have to face the truth – my friends will grow, develop and change without me. I won’t be a part of their lives in the same way as I have been. I will hear about the things that happen to them, as opposed to being a part of the things that happen to them. I haven’t achieved the things in ministry that I hoped to do. I will not be a part of the new season that our church is stepping into. I would have to acknowledge the level of failure and grief I feel as I leave for pastures new.

But right now I am seeing a side to God that I really haven’t seen that much of recently.  It’s the God who sits next to me in my pain. I do not know if that is theologically correct but I feel like He’s just there…. sitting next to me, not offering me clichéd condolences  or advice, most of the time He’s silent but every so often He says to me, “I love you”. Sometimes He speaks through my thoughts, sometimes He speaks through the Bible, and sometimes He speaks through a sunny day or by blessing me with things that bring me joy and through people who love me.

Even when there are no words to communicate how I feel, I know He knows how I feel and I don’t need to express myself. He just knows. When I don’t want to speak to anyone, when I don’t want to journal, when all I want to do is be on my own, disengaged from people – He is there.  He knows me more intimately than any one.

And I know I am loved.

I got married last July to Jon, who has been a huge support in dealing with my Mum’s death (mainly by not saying very much!).  Jon lost his Dad when he was only 2 and I see a great amount of God’s redemption in our relationship, in our support of one another, and through our heart to be family to others. 

But there is still so much brokenness and weakness for God to work in.  As me and Jon have become a new family, we’ve also joined one another’s families.  The truth is grief never affects only one person – the cataclysmic shift that death brings to a family is sometimes the hardest impact that it can have.  Where I’ve known healing and breakthrough in my own personal loss, it is the brokenness of my family that exposes my anger, judgement and desperation.  As I look at the consequences that death has had on our families I feel grief and sadness for what has been robbed from us.  And in that place most often what is exposed is my own brokenness – my frustration with people’s insecurities, my judgement on how family ought to be, my anger towards others’ inability to love me how I want to be loved.  Most frustrating of all is that I’m incapable of reaching out to them.  In my own struggle, there is nothing left. 

The thing is, loss exposes our weakness and our sinfulness.  It doesn’t matter what the loss is, we all experience loss in something.  Life throws things at us that surprise us, and are not always the way we expected or wanted them to be. 

The one thing I’ve learnt is that God is the only one who can hold me up and through grief, I have known Him more than ever before.  His faithfulness is true and, when those around me don’t understand or are dealing with their own grief, He whispers quietly, ‘I know, I know, I know.’  In those times His hope has resonated within my heart.  In my weakness His grace is sufficient for me, His power will be made perfect (2 Cor.12:9) - and it’s never been so true, or so necessary, before.

Is life really like a box of chocolates? Or more like a box of Elastoplasts?

Why is it we go through life, experiencing hurt, pain, sorrow, and grief and never really deal with it? We patch it up with a plaster (US: Band Aid). The wound is gaping, messy, bleeding so instead of confront the problem expose the situation which may hurt far more initially, we reach for the doubled doored mirrors, catching a glimpse of ourselves on the way but not stopping to look quickly opening the doors and grasping the box. Lucky for us they come in all different sizes, because every hurt takes a slightly different shape, square, circular those ones with the funny shaped sticking out bit which no one ever really knows which particular wound they bind. We select one that will cover the wound sufficiently so we can convince our selves that it will do, I no longer have to worry about it.

But eventually we do because as far as I am aware not even extra durable, waterproof Elastoplasts last forever. Soon enough they begin to peal away around the edges. The memory of why the plaster is there comes flooding back and we have two choices, face up to it or replace it.

Ripping it off hurts, sharp quick pull and its gone. Exposed the wound is painful, vulnerable but is open to the air the healing oxygen it needs to fully heal to be restored. In time it may bear a scar. A constant reminder of a lesson learned. From time to time the skin may break a painful reminder of hurt once felt but none the less is dealt with. Or we take the plaster off and replace it with a new one convincing ourselves now is not the time to see if the wound could heal to test the waters, so on goes another.

But should we even reach for the plaster? Would we be more real, more honest if the plaster were never applied and yeah we bleed openly, publicly but the wound would get air life giving oxygen that heals, and we all do it together, a community of walking wounded, instead of the walking I have a plaster on my pain so can smile back at you. 

By Ally Proudfoot

As marriage was not happening, as I’d gone as far as I wanted to in my church – I’d had free run to set up my own ministry, I’d had freedom to lead small mission teams to international destinations – I was bored and needed something new.  As the doors opened for me to do the mission school in Mozambique, this was it.  I handed over ministry, I rented out my house, I sold my car, got rid of so much stuff and off I went for 3 months to come back to what I thought would be weeks. These weeks became a year and a half – in that time was another 3 months in Mozambique, 3 weeks in India and multiple trips to the States.  So much of the Lord’s blessing was in the places I went, the miracles I got to be part of, the things I saw and the amazing people I met along the way.

However what also came along was pain – pain in the lack of directions of my life, pain in being laid aside, shame in being no one. I’d always tried to help people find a plan, find direction, after all that had been part of my ‘job’ I thought – and here I am floating…even worse than floating, so angry with God… although God is clearly saying to me He’s so jealous for me, that’s why He’s not releasing me yet, that is why He’s not just letting me loose. Deep down I know if He did send me off, release me to go I would just become task and crisis orientated and burn out and be cross with God.

So how do we deal with transition when we don’t know where we are going? How do we be real and not just feel so frustrated, laid aside and ashamed?  It’s made me see how much of me relating to God was all about who I should be, what I should do, what was validating me.  Although I talked about relationship with God, I needed a ‘direction’ to validate me.

What I’m beginning to wonder is how much of staying in this desert is down to me – down to me dealing with my pain, down to me admitting my failure, down to me avoiding me really going to God.  For nearly six months now I’ve been stuck on Psalm 27…different parts on different days and weeks…however it’s verse 4 that gets me….to seek Him in his temple all the days of my life, to gaze upon his beauty….these words can now roll off my tongue…..however what is being to sink in is that this is the whole point of everything…this is it!!!!

But how hard is it to stay in the place of doing that, how much easier is it to have ‘a plan’ and therefore feel angry and have a ‘stand off; with God for not giving me a plan, because deep down this is easier than sitting at his feet. That’s the part that involves dealing with pain, being real, being laid aside, going unnoticed, feeling ‘useless’, feeling insecure, being hidden, allowing Him to truly search my heart – and what is coming out is not pretty and part of me would rather it be hidden by ‘ministry’ if I’m being really truthful.

There is a verse in proverbs that says the heart is deceitful above all. How much of this time do I truly convince myself that in seeking a plan, I am seeking Him.

I don’t want to wait in this desert a minute longer than necessary, I don’t want to be like the Israelites and wait 40 years for what can be done in days.  I want to live up to the prayers I prayed, the prayers of search my heart, use me however you like, don’t let me walk outside your will, it’s all about you Lord, wherever, whatever, whenever Lord.

The question I’m coming to in seeking direction of what to do, where to go is what am I really seeking? And am I truly willing to pay the price of just seeking Him in His temple to gaze upon his beauty!

How much easier is it to yet again check facebook and skype and continue on in ‘pain’ than sit at his feet…talking to him about the pain? How much easier is it to talk to people about it, to try and get my friends alongside with me, to help me regulate and justify the pain than go straight to one who can make it better?  How much am I prolonging my anxiety and dissatisfaction and disillusion by my own choices!!!

My life has been transformed by knowing we are not just following a King but a servant King who ho forego his rights, his entitlements to worship and honour and reverence and embraced the path of pain; sacrifice even death for the sake of you and me. He endured the cross so that we could gain eternal life, endured death to experience a resurrection. Suffering enables us to identify with Christ who bore the greatest sufferings. He is able to understand us and to know what we endure because he endured so much more himself.

However having said all of this I’ve often wondered why it is that when this is my example, this is the person I am following why so many of my prayers and general frustrations with God have come back to – I asked you for something, you didn’t give it to me, I am now severely annoyed and hurt – God I am not speaking to you for the rest of the week maybe even year. Why does everyone else have what I want?  So often I throw a tantrum. So often despite protestations to the contrary all I do is choose an easy life. When I was out in India in February I met people who were persecuted for their faith, I held a woman in my arms as she literally howled, it turned out since converting from Hinduism to Christianity she has been completely abused and rejected by her family.  I changed my facebook status the other day to “I received healing after prayer” and had palpitations wondering what on earth my non Christian friends were thinking of me.

As I’ve grown up and lost much of the child like faith I used to have I struggle to love God when things are hard in my life, sometimes I feel really patronised when I hear people say that “a time of pain is a time of drawing closer to God” because a lot of the time in my pain I am just trying to work if God has forgotten about me again or if he is really bothered about me (which is of course complete lies from the pit, God NEVER forgets about us and is always bothered about us). I’ve thought a lot about suffering and pain, how can we be real, without using clichés and without patronising people?

I guess my reflections all boil down to the basics – no matter what we endure and what happens to us nothing can separate us from the love of God. Suffering does not mean that God has abandoned us. Intimacy with God CAN be found in a place of suffering. He promises to be close to the broken hearted and to comfort those who mourn. He will be with us when life hurts.  I think as long as this is tempered with the reality that suffering is painful as in a place of suffering things feel awful sometimes so awful words cannot express the pain of what we are enduring – it is not a cliché. It is only when what we say about suffering become well worn platitudes without an acknowledgment of the depth of pain that is being endured that it becomes patronising. It is ok to say things are rubbish when they are – we don’t need to paste fake Christian smiles on our faces and pretend everything is ok when it isn’t.

I am challenged, I am convicted – it’s not just about me, it’s not just about what I want. I am following someone who laid down his life and his rights. When life bites as it so often does it not an opportunity to question God’s love for me instead it is the time to press in deeper, to sit under the shelter of his wings.

 I was reading Daniel the other day and was reflecting on how when the King decreed no one could pray to God anymore, Daniel continued with the things that he always did – which was to pray three times a day. Then he was caught and thrown in with the lions. Seriously if that happened to me right now I would definitely have a crisis of confidence. Daniel was doing the right thing, he was honouring God regardless of circumstance, choosing worship over everything and yet that very thing landed him in a lion’s den.  I wonder what was going through Daniel’s mind when he was thrown in the Lion’s den, what was his response? He had no guarantee that he would survive – he didn’t know the end of the story as we do. My bible hero is Esther – I love the way she says if I perish, I perish – that’s the sort of woman I want to be. All out, laid down, passionate to the end, regardless of what I lose or gain.