interlude - the quiet fire

Cool story for you. Three political prisoners. One dictator. The three prisoners refuse to worship the statue of the dictator, because they believe in God, the Creator of the Universe, and they worship Him, and this statue is not Him. It is a statue.

DICTATOR: If you don’t bow down and worship my statue, I’ll throw you into this furnace. What god will save you then?         

PRISONERS: To be honest, ‘Your Majesty’, we don’t need to defend ourselves to you in this matter. If we are thrown into that furnace, the God we serve is able to save us. He will rescue us from your ‘power’. But you know what? Even if He doesn’t, you should know, that we will never serve your ‘gods’ or worship your statues.

***

I love that story because I love their sass. Is that a word? I will use it nevertheless. Sass. They know that God can do crazy things to save them, they think he will, but there they are, staring a king in the face, standing on the brink of a furnace, feeling their skin crack in the heat, and they say “You know what? Even if we burn for it, we believe in God, and we will worship him and nothing else. We will be faithful.”

That probably doesn’t feel as epic to you as it does to me, I don’t really know why I like it so much – but there’s something there. This fire in the belly, this sure-ness, this rock-solid, unshakeable confidence.

And here’s the thing that I’ve not really grasped before: that’s more than just faith. That’s faithfulness.

Faith, in this sense, is knowing that God can do amazing things. That God can save you from the fiery furnace. It’s knowing that he is alive, and ridiculously powerful, and he’s your Dad, and he will take care of you. So yes, they have that faith, but then there’s something else.

“Even if He doesn’t…”

This is faithfulness. This is us being faithful to him, it’s saying, ‘You know what? Even if He doesn’t…’ I’ll still love him. I’ll still trust him.

Does this make sense? It’s one thing to believe that God will do incredible things, but it’s something else to be certain at the same time – utterly, unshakeably certain – that even if he doesn’t this time, he is still God, and we’re still his kids. Because the fact is that sometimes he just doesn’t seem to do what we want him to do, sometimes we cannot see what he is doing or feel like he’s there at all, and nothing makes sense. But faithfulness means that we don’t let go. That we know he is always with us, however it feels. To be faithful is to know two things for sure: that he will never walk out on us, and that we will never walk out on him.

I was thinking about this, and then I was praying for my mate the other night, and I thought of this verse, which is really famous amongst Christians:

“ ‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’ ”

And it occurred to me that I have never noticed what this actually says. God’s talking to these people who are in exile, they’re lost, and they are hopeless. And he says that he plans to give them “hope and a future”. I’ve always read that as “good stuff in the future”. But that’s not what it says – God has a much better plan for them than what I used to think. His plan isn’t just to give them a good future. He’s going to give them hope first. He’s going to give them hope. You see he doesn’t just want them to be people who are OK because things are OK. He wants more than that for them. He wants them to be people who have hope, who trust, who have something golden and burning inside of them which can never be diminished, or broken, or lost. He wants to forge in them something utterly beautiful. To plant in them a peace “which the world cannot give, and the world cannot take away”. And then he wants to give them the future that they’ve been waiting for.

And how does he forge this hope in us? There’s a really powerful bit in another letter that talks about it – so I’ll abridge it for you:

“…we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not just that, but we also rejoice in our suffering, because we know that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character, hope.

And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Why? How? Because when we were still weak and helpless, when we needed him, Christ died for the ungodly. For us. Hardly anyone would actually die for someone else, would they? - even for a good person. But God loves us like this: when we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

And if he’s done that for us, then he will certainly save us; if he’s brought us home, he will bring us to life. So we rejoice in God, through our King, Jesus Christ, who brought us home.”

Now, the funny thing with that bit is that you can’t stop quoting it too early because it’s all connected. We’ve got something incredible to hope for. The glory of God himself, now, and forever. But it doesn’t stop there, because even when we don’t see that glory, even when all we see is dark, we grit our teeth and we throw a party in the darkness because we know that pain is a furnace. Disappointment is a forge. And we choose to let God craft in us something better, something deeper. Endurance. Character. Finally, hope. In the darkness he lights a fire inside us that cannot be put out. But it doesn’t stop there either, because that hope is not wishful thinking. It is not optimism. It will not put us to shame. Because it is a fact greater than life itself, and much more permanent: that God loves us. Even when we hated him, he loved us. Loved us so much it hurt, loved us so strong it killed him. So our hope is not just optimism. It is knowing a love greater than life itself, a love so certain that if we take hold of it nothing can ever take it from us, not even death itself. It is knowing that we have life – sweet and satisfying and rich – and we can begin to taste it now, but there will be feasting hereafter. But it doesn’t even stop there. Because our hope; the song of our hearts; the taste of glory on our lips, is the taste of God himself. The Glorious One. Bigger and better than we could ever imagine. He is the home our hearts are hoping for.

I just thought it would be good to talk about this because all these stories of God answering prayers in amazing ways are incredible, and I love them, but I also know people – sometimes the same people – who have big, big prayers which have not got incredible answers yet, some for whom its all over and it never came. And the faithfulness of some of these people, is something beautiful to behold. So as much as I want to see more and more miracles in my life, maybe even more, I want to grow old into someone who has this strange thing singing at the bottom of my soul, who has this quiet fire in my eyes – I want to be someone who has hope.

N.B. If you want to look them up, the story at the start is from Daniel chapter 3, the hope/future thing is Jeremiah 29:11 and the big paragraph is from Romans chapter 5.

A German Gets Happy (Weird Story #2)

So this is the second instalment of the series of strange stories from people I love, and now we move into the crazy world of hearing from a person who actually experienced a miracle. This is Tim, my friend from church (who is also, if you’re interested, or even if you’re not interested, an incredible accapella artist and general musical genius). Enjoy!

***

Hello world. My name is Tim, I attend the same church as Mike and he has asked me to have a go at blogging. This shall in fact be my first blog post ever. Please excuse my weird grammar, I only came to this beautiful country in October 2012. I am also an economist. These two things excuse a LOT of weird grammar, but let’s get back to business:

My back has been hurting all my life. That’s the way things are. I’ve been to several specialists and the only thing I found out is that it is some kind of scoliosis. This runs in my family and I have learned to live with it. I’m not in constant agony, it doesn’t even bother me that much on a daily basis, since you can get used to everything. But every two months or so I have a massive pain attack. Most of the times it happens when I get out of bed. I pretty much fall right back into my bed and try to stay there for two or three days until getting up feels normal again. The pain then subsides to its normal base level after about a week. I live with that base level of pain at any given time.

That former statement was true until that one night at church.

The day before, a group of us musicians had made an hour-long trip to our church centre in Peterborough, where we rehearsed for a whole day. However, this day ended up being one of those days that I would normally spend in bed. I participated, sometimes standing up, sometimes sitting, sometimes lying on the floor. We prayed for my back and - if I am completely honest - I didn’t believe that would change anything. Now this might sound harsh, so let me elaborate: I didn’t doubt God’s existence, I didn’t doubt my faith, but I had never experienced God as a God who heals physically. I had always intellectually believed in a God who heals, but I had also always lived with pain. Somehow my life reality and God’s promises didn’t line up that well.

A day later we actually put our newly rehearsed material to the test, it was amazing, God’s presence was strong, but my back was still unchanged. So after the service I was happy to get some relief by lying in the back of the Cambridge Revolution Bar where we have our student services. What a weird sight.

Three of my friends came up to me, asked about my back and prayed for me. Amongst them was a guy who is known to his church buddies for his deep appreciation for God’s healing touch and of course his impeccable fashion sense. When they were done praying he asked me if I was doing better. This was one of the more awkward moments of my life, because I really wasn’t. Not even slightly. Instead of evading the question, I was brave enough to say ‘not really’. The response came completely natural: ‘Then let’s pray again.’

These people genuinely believed, that God would heal me. These people had so much confidence in God and his good plans for us, that they didn’t even consider that it might just not work.

And it worked.

It really did.

It was the weirdest feeling of my life but I got healed. It was incredibly awkward during the first days, when it really felt as if there was something missing in my back. For the three months since then, my back has been better than I can remember it ever being. Most of the days I don’t feel my back at all and even when it is at it’s worst now, it is still better than it used to be every single day of my life before.

This is what God has done!

In John 4:13-14, it says: And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.

That night in the Cambridge Revolution Bar, God has done something amazing to help me get that little bit closer to a place where I can live completely immersed in his awesome promises. That’s what God’s promises are: Nothing short of awesome. Let’s see what he has in store for us, let’s see what he has in store for you.

***

My Dad Gets a Pleasant Surprise (Weird Story #1)

As promised (in the previous blog), this is a weird story. This one is from my Dad, and I think it happened last summer. To be honest this is a great place to start because if there is one person in the whole world who I can vouch for their honesty, my Dad is genuinely number one on that list. I also love that he wrote it like a cool slightly arty short story so you don’t get bored! Enjoy…

***

"I just want to thank you.  They are so much better."
"Wow. Thanks. That's great. But it really wasn't me."

When she found me it was the second surprise of the morning.  The first was being grabbed by my vicar as I settled into a pew just as the service was about to start.  "We're going to offer prayer for healing today.  Are you okay to help with that?  You can go with Gemma."  I was a bit thrown.  I'd never been part of a healing service, but why not pray for people?  And I could just copy whatever my partner in prayer had been told to do.  So I said "Okay."

And when the time came, we placed our hands on the first person who came to us and Gemma prayed, and by the end of her prayer, I could think of no different words of my own, and queues had formed in front of all four pairs of pray-ers round the church, so I suggested we split and prayed one-on-one.  And after several others, the woman was there.  She had been waiting in line, and described the pain in both wrists that made it hurt just to move them, so I asked the God who cares about us that he might make it easier for her to move and do stuff without pain.  She thanked me and went back to her seat.

Ten minutes after the service ended, as the building buzzed with coffee and chat, I was surprised she'd searched me out.
"I just want to thank you.  They are so much better" she smiled, as she rotated her wrists in front of me.
"Wow. Thanks. That's great. But it really wasn't me."

***

So there you go. If you’re curious about anything and want to ask him a question, he's so cool that he's got facebook, so you can message him - https://www.facebook.com/steve.hood.39904?fref=ts - or his email is steve@accel.org.uk - genuinely feel free!  If you’re not curious then, well… why not?

I Have Doubts About God (but Buzzfeed helps)

Firstly, have a look at these.

http://distractify.com/culture/32-surreal-places-that-actually-exist-on-earth-i-cant-believe-this-isnt-photoshopped/

Secondly, blog.

This morning I went for a walk, and I admitted to God that in the last couple of months I’ve found myself wondering whether he’s just a figment of our collective imagination much more than I’ve ever done before. More than any time since I got baptised and got serious about Jesus, I have doubted his existence. So, that’s me admitting that.

Now, just to be clear, I really do believe in God. And the first thing I do when I realise that I’m doubting, is remember all the things that convinced me in the first place. There’s three big things:

1) Logic. Rationally I reckon there has to be something (not necessarily God like I know him) beyond the physical universe. Because the scientifically observable physical universe operates according to cause and effect. Everything that happens is caused by something that happens before it – like a chain. And we can trace that chain back to the big bang (just to clarify, I think that’s true), or maybe further to an idea of a multiverse, or an expand-and-collapse universe, but fundamentally wherever we get to, it still needs something to cause it. People say that God doesn’t help because he needs a cause too – but the thing is that if he isn’t part of the system of cause-and-effect, then he doesn’t. And if he’s beyond, apart from, the creator of, the physical cause-and-effect universe, then he could well be outside the system. Hope that made sense. Summary: the physical world is incapable of starting itself, but God is capable of just being, because he’s more than just stuff.

2) Evidence. There’s tonnes of evidence for the existence, and crucially the resurrection, of Jesus of Nazareth. I won’t go into all the details, if you’re interested in it please just drop me a message and I’d love to explain some more – but fundamentally it’s a historically established fact (it was even in an Andrew Marr programme a bit ago…) that there was a whole bunch of people who claimed that they’d seen Jesus back from the dead, who were getting no benefit out of that, gave accounts of themselves and what happened that would have been really stupid ones to make up, and got killed for it rather than say that it wasn’t true. If there might be something beyond the physical world out there, then these guys (and, controversially, women) make a pretty strong case that Jesus is something to do with it.

3) Experience. Let me tell quickly you the story of how I became a Christian.

I’ve always had trouble with believing in a God that does miracles – by which I mean, intervenes in the world and does something exceptional to the normal laws of nature. This scepticism was the big thing that held me back from getting baptised for 3 and a bit years (I started thinking about it when I was 12): the thing was, I’d heard people say that they’d had ‘experiences’ of God when they got baptised, and to be honest, I didn’t really believe them. I didn’t believe that God did that. But at the same time, I thought that if I got baptised and God didn’t do that to me, then I might become less convinced that he was real at all. So I didn’t get baptised.

But then when I was 15 I thought about it some more, and talked it through, and I decided that I was convinced by the logic and the evidence, and I should really say publically that I believed in God, because that was what it was about, not any weird supernatural occurrences or emotional hype. And I talked to my Dad about it, and I remember really clearly the car journey when we talked me through this big list of bits he’d found in the bible when people were baptised, or received the Holy Spirit, and nothing crazy or supernatural seemed to have happened. And it was such a relief for me. Such a relief. I thought, ‘Brilliant. God doesn’t necessarily do this weird stuff. I never really believed it would happen to me and now I know that it won’t and it doesn’t have to. Ideal.’

The funny thing about God, though, is that he likes to surprise us. I went to get baptised, safe in the knowledge that I wouldn’t have one of these weird ‘experiences’, and sure enough, I was overwhelmed by an inexplicably beautiful (and a little bit terrifying) experience of power and love. I just started weeping in this strange, joyful way. I remember it calming down as the song everyone was singing came to an end, and me thinking,
 
‘Ah, OK. It’s probably not God, it’s just that I’m nervous and the music is emotional. If it was God, why would it have stopped?’

And then it came back.

And  I ended up weeping with this strange joy through about half an hour of the service – I have this memory of getting changed into some dry clothes in the disabled toilets (I got dunked in a paddling pool) and still feeling this crazy overwhelming thing, and weeping, and just thinking, ‘God? This is crazy. You’re much more real than I thought you were.’

Now, when its someone else, its very easy to dismiss these things as delusions, as over-emotional things being misread as God. But when you’ve actually experienced it yourself, and you know how normal you were feeling before, how unimpressive the music actually was (no offence to the St. Marks Church band!), and what the experience was actually like – it gets a lot harder to explain away.

Funnily enough though, even after this, I was still sceptical about God doing stuff. It’s just pretty hard to believe, isn’t it? I still wrinkled my suspicious nose at anyone who claimed to have experienced God in church services or Christian conferences. I still thought that people who said that God healed people were probably just doing Derren Brown stuff and trying to make money. (I still think there are plenty of people out there doing that, by the way.) It just seemed unlikely. It felt a bit silly. Believing in God theoretically was acceptable, it made sense, it was rational. But believing in a God who does stuff was messy, it felt undignified, it got you associated with lunatics and conmen, or at least it did in my mind. It would surely be more sensible just not to credit any of that stuff and explain it all away as delusion or trickery. It would certainly be easier. The whole thing just felt silly.

But recently, and I’m finally getting to the point here, things have started to get even more incredible. In both senses of the word. Let me explain briefly.

That distractify.com thing at the top with the crazy places – that was in fact relevant to the blog. There are some amazing pictures – but the thing I find interesting is, that the really incredible ones are literally incredible – they are hard to believe! The one with the sand dune in the background really does look like a surrealist bit of photoshopping until you see the explanation and you think, ‘Sheesh, that’s a real place. I want to go there.’ The more incredible something is, the harder it is to believe.

And this is the thing that’s happened to me this term – the more mind-blowing stuff I see God doing, the harder it is to believe what I’m seeing. And that’s ridiculous in a way, because this is stuff happening that is pretty serious evidence that God is real. Stuff that is really hard to explain without him. But it makes it harder for me to believe in God at all, because the more incredible it gets, the harder my sceptical instinct squirms, and tries to close my eyes and shove its fingers in my ears. Tries to tell me that the whole thing is a mistake, that none of it can be what I think it is. Because it’s really, really weird.

But I’m trying to take my fingers out of my ears, stop squirming so much, and have a look at these things honestly, and see if they are really just coincidences, or the placebo effect, or the product of over-active imaginations, or whether when you combine them with all those other things I was talking about earlier, God might actually be the best explanation. I was going to try and tell you all these different stories of crazy/cool things myself, but then I realised it would be much more fun if I asked the people who they’re about to tell them for themselves! So the next few blogs will be stories from people many of you will know, about being healed, about hearing God speak to them, about their hands buzzing like a mobile phone on vibrate… (OK, actually that last one is mine, but I might tell that story too.)  

The weirdness will probably put you off a bit – it puts me off as I’ve just said – but I hope you’ll find them interesting anyway. I will leave you with a link to another one of these marvellous procrastination tools, and another one that has incredible bits in it. Enjoy!

http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/77-facts-that-sound-like-huge-lies-but-are-completely-true