A Heart Untroubled

So have you noticed that everything has an expiry date on it now.   It tells you when it becomes unusable,  or is no longer any good; at what point, it should be thrown away.  Many times I have seen Christians, once they get to a certain age, or a certain point in their ministry life, they feel like that have reached their expiry date.   A minister we had the privilege to know, Pastor Bob Yandian always used to say he would preach in his church until he died, and that he would probably even be in the pulpit when that happened.   He was a seasoned minister, and fully expected to be the pastor of the church his whole life.  But one day the Lord told him he was to hand the church over to a successor and that there was a new season ahead of him.    Despite his immense faith, years of experience, and lifetime of walking with the Lord, it challenged him a bit - thankfully he acted on the Lord's word and is ministering now in a totally dif...

At church last Sunday, the preacher said the following statement:  " The gifts and talents we have; what we can do - these are the currency of the world.   The currency of the church is the love of God . " It got me thinking.  Really how often to we look to our own performance in things relating to Spiritual matters?  Sometimes that looks like doing all the right things. Sometimes, it means not doing all the wrong things.  Sometimes it means making sure everyone knows what you're doing!  Whatever it looks like, when it doesn't turn out like you expect, it ends up in the attitude of " Why not me Lord ".  What I mean by that is, when someone else get's promoted over us in church, we say " Well!  I've d one XY & Z for 20 years!  That person walked in here and was given that job! It should have been mine! "  Maybe it's about healing... " Why wasn't I healed - I fasted, I prayed, I did it all.. .." The truth is, if we...

This week I was listening to a pastor in a church we visited while on holiday and he was urging his congregation to attend the upcoming prayer meeting, and he suggested that it had not been previously well attended. Just a few weeks ago I heard the same exhortation from our church, and as I began to ponder it, I realised, prayer meetings in general are not the most well attended meetings in church across the board.  It doesn't matter which denomination, or how charismatic the church is, there just isn't the attendance.   I began to ask myself why that might be.  One of my questions was 'why do we have prayer meetings?' or 'What is their purpose?'. I am not going to answer those questions now, but what it did make me think is that, as Christians we do a lot of things without thinking, whether at church, or in our personal walk with the Lord, but do we understand why we do them. When we repeat the same actions or words over and over (and no, this is not just true ...

Today, as is my habit on a Saturday, I did Park Run.  If you don't know what that is, it's an organisation that hosts 5k walk/runs every Saturday at 9am at multiple locations all over the world.  My usual rule of thumb is that if it's not raining when it starts, I will run, even if it starts later in the run.  I don't like running in the rain. Today however, it was drizzling lightly when I arrived.  I was sitting in the car wondering whether to just turn around and go home again.  I was hoping for divine intervention in the weather department, but as some good friends had come to the same venue and they were going to run, I dragged myself out to the start.  Just minutes before it got underway, the heavens opened and I got totally drenched.  It was horrible.  It was windy and wet, but I did it.  At the end of a very wet run, I felt good for doing it and in fact, the rain didn't mess up my time. As I was thinking about today's blog, I began to ...

We have a host of wildlife that frequents are patio: foxes, robins, the occasional deer, blackbirds that come in to the living room for sultanas, and a plethora of squirrels that will bang on the glass if we're not quick enough in sending out breakfast, lunch or supper for them.    After a hearty munch on some peanuts one day this week (the squirrels not me),  I managed to catch this little one, lounging on our wall, and basking in the sun to warm himself and take a little rest after the frenzy of feeding.  He stayed there for ages not doing anything at all. It got me thinking about 'basking in the sun' or more importantly, the 'Son'. You know the sun is amazing.  It's is precisely positioned so we don't freeze or burn up.  It's huge and it's absolutely necessary for us; without it's heat and light we would die.   It is not always visible to us, but it is always there, constant and stable.  This is like the Son of God, Jesus.  Witho...

Isn't it funny how easy it is to get busy and how hard it is to rest?  We plan a quiet day when we expect to be able to ready the bible, maybe take a little walk and pray and rest, and then suddenly we remember we need to go shopping, we have to mow the lawn, are neighbour drops off some wrongly delivered mail and then stays for a cuppa and a chat for an hour and before you know it, your day is done and it's time to climb in to bed.  But did you know you were meant to live with rest as a regular part of life.  In the beginning God took a day at the end of all that creating and rested.  Man was given the Sabbath as a day of resting, a blessing for us, and yet we frequently move our boundaries, reorganise our schedules and find things to fill that space instead of enjoying that precious gift. Jesus told us that in him we find the perfect rest: Matthew 11:28-29 (TPT) “ Are you weary, carrying a heavy burden? Then come to me. I will refresh your life, for I am your oasis...

Today I was chatting to a friend and we were talking about avoiding the trap of asking the questions 'D o I have ENOUGH faith? ' or ' Did I pray ENOUGH ?' or " Did I do ENOUGH? ".  When we start asking these sort of questions, we are really looking to see if we are self-sufficient.  We are wondering if our own actions, our own efforts, our own works are ENOUGH , but the truth we are not ever going to be enough!  No matter how much we do, or how many hours we pray or how much effort we put in, we are not going to be ENOUGH to achieve results!  Only Jesus gets results and only our faith in him takes hold of those results.  We cannot measure faith in terms of ENOUGH; we either believe or we don't.  The reality is when our focus comes off Jesus and on to ourselves we will struggle! Even the apostle Paul said that he was not enough but that his 'enoughness' (I know that's not a real word - but it just sounds right here - what I mean is sufficiency) ...