Two Great Gifts of God – 1. Time to Heal 2. Space to Grow

Two great imperatives of faith are the two golden interests and gifts of God to us. 

Far from being a cruel taskmaster, God is most a creator, and this creator Lord wishes to design and engineer only that which would flourish within us.

Nothing like being a tyrant of onerous proportions, nothing at least like some human leaders would make God out to be, our God is an expansive Lord, ever abundant in divine desire for what we could gain for life, for the purposes of goodness, so long as we want the right thing the right way.

Of all things that God offers in this life, it is time to heal and space to grow; the first is made for recovery, and the second is made for reconciliation. We must have recovery before we can have the reconciliation. We must find our basis before we can establish our bearing. We must acknowledge the truth before we can acquire all that God wills for us. And none of this acquisition is anything about the material. So far as the east is to the west is the idea that in the spiritual is the true wealth of the Kingdom, whereas in the material are the fanciful riches of the world. Only in the spiritual is the true commonwealth—the only real wealth is a wealth shared and enjoyed communally.

Take Your Time to Heal – Be Diligent But Do Not Rush It

Healing is tantamount to a reconciliation that is just absolutely fundamental to life.

We were born to be healed, just as we can know that without this healing we are forever held back. God ordains this process, and there is always copious time within which to do the healing in. In the healing time, there is no other objective. So loving is God that in his economy it’s all that matters for such a time as it is.

Of course, we always feel it takes too long. We are verily impatient, and we want this healing work done pronto. But God doesn’t work the miracle of healing in a way that we wouldn’t benefit. No, the benefit is in having been faithful to God, having bided our time and having obeyed his will, having shown much humility, and having learned our lessons over and over and over again, so they stay learned. The benefit gleaned is in the depths our healing has been taken to.

We should never be in a rush to be healed, just as we should never accept the lie that we are completely healed. There is always more healing to be done, but once we reach base level, we’re being readied to grow.

Enjoy the Opening Expanses of Space to Grow

Once we have healed or have embarked so sufficiently on that process as to know that it works, being confident that he who is faithful does finish the work in us, we embark on a purposeful pursuit we can never backslide from.

This is exactly why healing is so crucial as a platform to growth.

Having made significant ground in terms of healing we have borne full witness to the power of God in our own lives to resurrect us from spiritual death.

Having been healed, there is then no impediment to growth. And God does desire to grow us, particularly in pursuits that are worthy of the calling of our hearts to something magnanimous that only God can do through us. This love that God puts in our hearts is an irrepressible force for good, and having been healed, nothing can disturb or besmirch this newfound commitment to love God back.

At this, God opens space for us to grow, and as we grow more space is opened, such is the nature of blessedness within the multiplicity of God. Indeed, as we grow, we find the world expands, and our minds and hearts literally swell with love. We fall in love with this space that God gives and continues to open up.

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Now, this is where the rubber of healing and growth hits the road.

Life is long and hard, and before long we’re tempted to rescind; to give up loving those we’ve loved where our love is unrequited. At this moment, our growth stops if we go back to our old ways.

But the moment we ponder stagnating is the moment we see that the blessings we’ve sown until now have been wisdom and it is only wise, despite receiving no reward from those with no love to offer, to continue to love those who revile us in some way.

There is always some point at which we must choose God over the ambivalence and indifference of others. The key test of our healing and growth, therefore, is how committedly and purposefully we continue to love others who bear no gifts of love in return.

The ultimate sign of healing and growth is being a blessing for the glory of God with no thought spared for what we’re not getting. Nothing more, and certainly nothing less.

What can I do for you, God?

It simply has to be the question on every Christian’s lips, but how far has the apple been flung from the tree? And having been re-introduced to the Black Eyed Peas classic, “Where is the Love,” recently, surely upon reflection we must ask ourselves what can I do for you, God?

We might hear God answer us saying, “There isn’t anything you can do for me that I haven’t already done for you,” but I know that God knows what we mean when we say we truly want to help and serve our Lord while we live and breathe on this planet. This recognises God’s call on our lives; that we no longer wish to pillage the planet but wish to use all that we are and everything we have to honour God by making the most of the life we personally inhabit.

Could it just be that once we have accepted there is nothing we can do for God that God hasn’t already done for us in Christ, there is just one more opportunity: Love one another. “as I have loved you,” Jesus famously said, “so you must love one another.” So, where is the love?

It’s so easy in our age of outrage to stomp our feet, find our cause and protest about it, and to become an advocate for one thing or another, demanding what we want, how we want it; but if there is no love, our efforts are futile. We may well build ‘a kingdom’ (i.e. not God’s true Kingdom) in vain.

The only way we can establish whether our advocacy is building upon a firm foundation is if we’re humble enough to reflect on what we, ourselves, can do to improve.

The imperative of love compels us to want what God wants, but we must know that doing God’s bidding in the name of love is never about putting people offside through a spirit of condemnation. Sure, we can call them to reflect, but if we know that they won’t change, why do we keep knocking at their door? We kick the dust off our feet, and we depart respectfully. And yet we can win a friend in disagreement if only we get beyond the issue and down into the intent of the heart; seek to understand anyone and they may soon be our friend, because they recognise our actions as the communicable universal language of love.

When we ask God, “What can I do to you, Lord?” we ask it in any and every conscious situation we find ourselves in.

What can we do in this minute, this second, at the shopping centre, in my workplace, with these cars all around me on the roads, with these customers I serve, with people who are like me and with people who are not like me? And most of all in our homes. How can I be a bridge of unity in propagating the language of kindness, patience, gentleness, and self-control? 

How can I do my little bit and be satisfied that I’m in the lap of God’s will?

How can I break my faith down and simply live is a peacemaker, when all doctrinal arguments fade away into insignificance?

The key task of life is to love others. When we begin to get that right, as we sow in peace, through being a joyful presence, we find benefit all around us, and discover that God is intimately in it. Always was. Always will be.

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A Prayer of Intercession for Comfort for the Anguished

Gracious heavenly Father,

Parent of glories beyond all human conception, and gracious host of all conceivable comfort, all thanks is due your holy name for the comfort you gave to those who may comfort those with a comfort that can only, and does only, come from you.

I pray, indeed we join our hearts together, right now, in the presence of the holy courts, with invisible angels attending, for comfort, right now, Lord; for the one who reads these words who may find a gentle healing stream instead of hard, oppressing walls. Be with that one by a Presence they can hardly determine as real, but that which is felt as an interminable reality—that you show up, drawing alongside them, coming alongside, even by a person who wears your Divine Presence—God in skin.

That one who is beside themselves in grief, in an anguish incomprehensible, in the numb, in the anxious one, in the one who is affronted by a spiritual depression beyond all reconciliation—that one strewn on a raft on the sea of disappointment and betrayal. God, may your glory rest on that one. God, may they sense you holding their hand, your holy hug, your warmth inside them as their heart is met by the world with coldness.

To the one who is just barely holding on, with fingernails determined to hold on through gritted teeth. To the one overwhelmed by familial conflict. To the one driven downward and silenced. To the one who has been conditioned to be oppressed. Freedom for some, relief for others, and a breakthrough for others again, but mostly for a sustaining belief that you are there by your comfort; by a Presence that is the Holy Spirit.

To the one who has been maligned, who has experienced a maddening betrayal, who has borne the burden and cost for months or years—and heaven help them now if it is decades—who wears the identify of impairment for the grief struck into their heart; grant them, Lord, their hope for healing; for more of what they had never even hoped to receive. Make something meaningful out of the purpose of their testimony.

To the one who has by life a condition that resembles war, met them in the depths of their experience, Lord, and remind them by some pleasant human beings that in their stepping out their journey—in trepidation and toil—they are nothing short of inspiring for what and how they endure.

You, Holy Spirit, are by definition, The Comforter, the one who comes alongside; the paraclete. By holy deference, make the pain we feel the very resonating gateway that would take us all the way into the Holy of Holies—Jesus himself. Make our pain the very vehicle of our salvation. Bring us to your saving grace through the oddest grief; to show us it was at the end of our power, the end of ourselves, that you entered to scoop us up from these dregs of experience. That indeed there was the brightest hope in darkest despair.

Great and glorious are you, God, who comes to save us in our travailing; when all else we trusted in failed, that you came through by a comfort we received when we held out our hand to you.

Great and glorious are you, God.

AMEN.

Photo by Evie S. on Unsplash

Attack within the Arena of Advocacy

Rewards: we all come to expect to receive them in this life, but so often we are rewarded for our good efforts with heartache and pain. We do our best, and the more we try, it can seem the worse our results are. It defies our rationale, and despondency is our temptation. We think, “What’s the use?! The harder I try the worse it gets.”

Advocates at heart see conflict and they want to help. Very often, however, it works out that the advocate, acting as a peacemaker, trying to reconcile the injustice in conflict, is the one who is burned in the process of trying to broker peace between warring individuals. This does not mean that their efforts are null and void. God sees all, and of course God commends the efforts of the advocate, for the advocate sees the injustice in conflict and endeavours to bring truth to bear.

But there are few if no rewards this side of death.

If we have ever tried to help anyone embattled in conflict, especially the weaker party, we have risked loss on a number of fronts, including reputational, physical, mental, emotional, even to our livelihood. It is amazing the level of spiritual attack that comes against the advocate as they do divine bidding; as they speak and act for the purposes of God.

There is a great deal of spiritual warfare involved in sticking our head above the parapet wall. The enemy sees our exposure, and he’s quick to fire poisonous darts. If anyone can be threatened for exposure, those darts of criticism and condemnation will come with an unexpected ferocity at the least anticipated moment.

If you have been in a role of trying to broker peace, of becoming the negotiator, particularly where there are great powers and positions and property involved, you may certainly have felt vulnerable to exposure. None of us is ever perfectly protected, just as none of us are perfectly pure. We all get some things wrong. And it is this, the least noticeable chink in our armour, that the enemy exploits.

If we have tried to do what is best, and something completely unexpected happened, then people turned against us, especially when we were trying to help, we know it’s the cauldron of advocacy that we’ve been in. The weaker party have been silenced, and it’s no longer they that are being attacked, it’s us! For standing up for them.

This is where our attitude needs to be that of a peacemaker in response. Peacemaking and advocacy are so closely aligned. Those who sow in peace, James says in 3:18, reap a harvest of righteousness, but they may not see it this side of eternity.

We must expect that we will be shafted. Even so we must prepare our minds for that eventuality, just as we must prepare our hearts for that pain if or when it should occur. But in all eventualities, we will never truly be prepared (none of us ever are) for the hellfire of the betrayal coming to us for doing the right thing, albeit at times in misguided, perhaps naïve, ways.

It never feels nice. It always feels brutally unjust. The advocate stands in the gap for others, but they should never expect others to stand in the gap for them; welcome to the world of a type of advocacy. It is what it is. Advocacy is a much costly calling.

Paying the price of advocacy is part of the territory. We do it for the glory of God, which makes absolutely no sense to people in the world, because there is no reward, but for the reward we look for in heaven, which is absolutely spiritual, and can never rightly be material.

Why on earth, then, would anyone sacrifice themselves for another to the ends of fighting the injustice that the other is overwhelmed by? It’s a good question! All I can say, is for some, it’s all they can do. Truth and justice compel them to act in a certain way in the world, and they sort of know beforehand that they will suffer much in bearing this mantle.

Paying the price of advocacy is doing the work of God and losing friends, even having family at times abandon us. In being scapegoated we can feel as if we have done the wrong thing. We know we haven’t. We have reflected long and hard. We’ve been through cycles of guilt and shame, as anybody with empathy does when they’ve been rejected by those they care for.

Advocacy as a craft is littered with conflict, but to whom such a calling belongs they cannot say no. God’s will is far too compelling.

Advocates, I believe, are the genuine peacemakers. “Blessed are the peacemakers,” Jesus said, “for they will be called children of God.” Why will they be called children of God? Simply for the fact that they love transcends selfishness, pride, greed and fear, and that truth matters most. It may be an extraordinary person who is willing to bear the cost of truth. That person is an advocate. It’s a tragic irony that it costs the advocate/peacemaker some if not many of their friendships.

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Prayer for the safety and the saving of the Broken-hearted

Father,

There comes a time in all our lives when we seek for others to have what we have tasted, and that time has come for me. I sure know that hurt people hurt people, so too do healed people heal people. I am so thankful for the healed persons that worked on me, so today I can be a healed person who works on others. And all this work is done through your Spirit, whether we give you credit and thanks or not. YOU are the Great Healer!

My prayer is for the safety of those who are hurting just now; the one who is reading this who is broken-hearted and overwhelmed by betrayal and grief. This person’s dilemma starts at confusion and has no obvious end. They exist and yet they don’t know why. Father, you know that I have been there, so my prayer is that that person will hold on and won’t give up even though there are dozens of times when they will be tempted to. I pray by your Holy Spirit that you impel such a person forward by a hope they cannot explain but just must believe in. So, my prayer is the safety, that this person will be kept alive and saved from physical death. Provide a powerful word into the forefront of their minds when they are tempted to end their life. Give them another alternative when they are tempted to self-harm. And I also pray that they won’t become prey to spiritual abuse at any time. Make it so that they would never be judged for behaving inappropriately when they are so vulnerable that inappropriate behaviour would be expected. Stop the words from the mouths of hurtful ministers. And give empathy into the mind and heart of would-be helpers.

For the one who is calling to you, answer them, Lord, by a powerful sign that they know can only be YOU. Make it that they cannot help knowing you are the true and living God. Give them a salvation experience whether they’re ‘saved’ already or not. Take them deeper into the journey of the grace and of the provision and of the knowledge of you. Indwell them with a hope beyond any semblance of despair, to know that if they cannot be conquered in this heart-break, they cannot be conquered, period. Make it so that this thing that is supposed to completely demoralise them actually becomes the impetus for their purpose now and forevermore. Give them a taste of the phoenix that always rises from the ashes; better still, the risen Lord Jesus having suffered on that nailed cross. Most of all, give them a human voice that speaks to them as God speaks. Give them such an indelible hope as if to say, “I will live to fight another day!”

Blessed be YOUR name, God, for all power and all glory and all blessing are YOURS.

In Jesus’ name, AMEN.

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The practicalities of love after divorce

It’s an enduring image to me: my wife sitting with my ex-wife, both of them wearing the same colour blue dress, both smiling and chatting, swapping notes about me. It was about ten years ago. If there are two people who know me well, it is these two people. (They weren’t swapping stories about how brilliant a husband I am, and that was fine with me.)

I have been married again now about the same amount of time as the first marriage lasted. I have been divorced from my first wife longer than we were married, and that was a significant 13-year period. So much water has passed under the bridge—a 30-year journey.

When my first marriage dissolved overnight, though it was not an overnight process for my ex-wife (because it had taken her much longer to decide), I was in unforeseen territory. I didn’t see it coming, and I never imagined myself divorced. It was just never happening to me, until it did!

The initial few months were terrible for us all, as I struggled to make the adjustments. It was the worst pit of grief I have ever experienced. But somehow, in renewing my faith in God, and through many AA meetings and the guidance of sponsors and my parents and others, I quickly came to terms with the fact I needed to forgive my ex-wife. That was easy, in fact, as I considered my contribution to the marriage failure. There was much that I had to change. And change I did.

The mediator helping us separate must’ve thought it was the easiest mediation she had ever done. We used just two sessions to decide everything, and the spirit within the mediation process was one of cooperation, and it kind of symbolises our working operation as we have sought to parent our three daughters as friends, trusting each other and giving grace to one another. Our daughters were 11, 8 and 5 at the time we separated.

It hasn’t always been easy. There have been times when we have disagreed. When we were at loggerheads, I would tend to just give some space and try not to say anything to make it worse—to get out of the way. (I definitely have the capacity to make things worse with what I say.) But there has been a constant thread of mutual respect between us. For our daughters. 

We are so different, but we still share a laugh, and can even poke fun at ourselves for features in our marriage together from 1990-2003 and beyond. When we were married, my ex-wife probably didn’t feel she had the voice she has with me now, and I’m both sorry for that (that she didn’t have it then) and happy for it too (that she has it now). Somehow, I always felt compelled by God to really want the very best for my ex-wife—even that she would receive a love that I was never able to give her.

I say with genuine gratitude, that at the hardest time of my life, when work was seriously hard to come by in 2016, my ex-wife reached out and gave me a job delivering chilled meals for the catering business run by her and her husband, a skilled chef. To be honest, it wasn’t my first-choice work; it was hard, and it stretched me in ways I truly disliked, and it was stressful. But never was there a time in 10 months working for them where we even came close to conflict. It always felt as if they were reaching toward me and I was reaching toward them. There were numerous times I made mistakes, yet my ex-wife and her husband always dealt with me compassionately. And God taught me a lot in that job!

We have had all of our daughters’ 18th and 21st birthdays, and other significant events, at their place and at other places, and always the whole family is invited and welcome, and being caterers we’re all so very well fed! These are big gatherings, with step parents and step grandparents and stepsiblings everywhere. Not everyone has gotten on all the time, but at these events there is always a genuine mood of appreciation and celebration, where we call to mind positive memories and funny anecdotes.

Along the way, my ex-wife and I found our niches in providing for our girls. We both were able to provide different things and were never threatened that the other was giving something we wanted to give. I think we were just grateful that we had different ways of giving, and that we gave different things; that we gave what we could when we could.

To My Wife

My wife helps me live as the husband I desire to be; the husband I need to be. She and I are both keenly aware of who I am, including my faults. We both know what we cannot allow me to get away with. Let’s just say that the spirit and skill of prompt and sincere apology is truly respected in our household. I would not be as capable a husband, and of course I’m still not perfect, without my wife. My wife deserves the full accompaniment of credit for her half and more in our marriage. She does not goad me nor will she be goaded. Besides, my wife was always prepared to not only be my wife, but to be a step-mother to my three daughters. And to succeed in that endeavour demands humility.

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This is an article I’ve wanted to write for years. Now, as we’ve all eventually become grandparents, all four of us truly appreciate each other in this bigger than normal functional family with its normal dysfunctions.

There are practicalities for love after divorce, not least for the children, but for all concerned. What we didn’t get right in marriage, we have a second opportunity at in divorce.

I am so grateful for the relationship I have with my ex-wife and her husband. The spirit of cooperation between us over the years is inspiring to me. Our relationship is proof that good outcomes are possible when people who have disagreed in the past start to work together.