Tackling 2013 Ahead of Time: Ten Questions

Over the holidays we’ve caught up with some friends and family – a great joy. Our old mate Grinagain, who we visited last week, has a useful phrase:

Fail to prepare…

Prepare to fail.

This is a helpful reminder in many areas, but today I’m applying it to the whole of next year. I have a few big projects on the horizon, and I want to approach them well. Today I’ve been reading through old blogposts, and came across one from January 2011 with some very helpful questions from Don Whitney. This year I’ve put pen to paper with my answers. It’s scary to hold myself accountable but also necessary – I struggle with self discipline every minute of every day. Here are those questions again for anyone else who wants to tackle 2013 before it’s upon us:

Ten Questions to Ask at the Start of a New Year or On Your Birthday

Once, when the people of God had become careless in their relationship with Him, the Lord rebuked them through the prophet Haggai. “Consider your ways!” (Haggai 1:5) he declared, urging them to reflect on some of the things happening to them, and to evaluate their slipshod spirituality in light of what God had told them.

Even those most faithful to God occasionally need to pause and think about the direction of their lives. It’s so easy to bump along from one busy week to another without ever stopping to ponder where we’re going and where we should be going.

The beginning of a new year is an ideal time to stop, look up, and get our bearings. To that end, here are some questions to ask prayerfully in the presence of God.

1. What’s one thing you could do this year to increase your enjoyment of God?

2. What’s the most humanly impossible thing you will ask God to do this year?

3. What’s the single most important thing you could do to improve the quality of your family life this year?

4. In which spiritual discipline do you most want to make progress this year, and what will you do about it?

5. What is the single biggest time-waster in your life, and what will you do about it this year?

6. What is the most helpful new way you could strengthen your church?

7. For whose salvation will you pray most fervently this year?

8. What’s the most important way you will, by God’s grace, try to make this year different from last year?

9. What one thing could you do to improve your prayer life this year?

10. What single thing that you plan to do this year will matter most in ten years? In eternity?

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Actually Advent: Waiting Messily

Things are gearing up for Advent activity in the parish. Tonight is our Messy Christingle service – the first that’s been held since we’ve been here. Early in Advent seems like a good time for this service and gives us an opportunity to advertise other Christmas services to our Messy Church folk, some of whom don’t attend on Sundays. We’re excited about the service and the opportunity we have to tell people the Christmas story and spend time together. I made 1.5kg of pastry this morning which this afternoon will be turned into mince pies to share afterwards.

So we’ve been in church just now, moving chairs and getting the ancient decorations out. The tree lights work, thankfully, but there is rather a lot of tinsel debris around where we’ve unravelled the silver from the gold from the red and sparkly shreds have floated to the floor. The church is not looking as ethereal as one might hope for Christmas because at the same time as we were tinselling, the builders were in knocking great lumps of plaster off the walls. They tell us the plasterers are coming on Thursday so hopefully the walls will be reinstated for the school Christmas service next week and the Infants’ Nativity the following week.

So it looks like we might have a bit of a Messy Advent here. Thankfully our God didn’t expect tidiness when he came to earth all those years ago. In fact he came *because* of the mess. That means we can wait in the mess as we look forward to his arrival.

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Being a Christian Pumpkin

Searching for pumpkin carving ideas I came across this sweet poster talking about how Christians are like pumpkins – ‘God… scoops out all the yucky stuff… and puts his light inside of you…’

And Emma has blogged a lovely prayer that we used when making our pumpkin with a face (pics to follow).

Dear God,

As I open this pumpkin I pray that you help us all open up more to you.
As I clean out this pumpkin I pray that you clean us of our sins and forgive us.
As I cut eyes into this pumpkin I pray that you show us our work for you in the world.
As I cut a nose for this pumpkin I pray that you remove our stubbornness.
As I cut ears into this pumpkin I pray that you help us hear your message into our heart.
As I cut a mouth into this pumpkin I pray that you help us share your love with others.
As I put a candle into this pumpkin I pray that more of your light comes into the world.
Amen.

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3-2-1: The Gospel from the Trinity

I spotted this new gospel outline video from Glen Scrivener recently. I was reminded to post it on here after last night’s Messy Church, where we began a three part (obvs) series on the Trinity. I’m not sure many of us would choose to begin sharing our faith with something we see as complicated, but Glen shows us that it’s actually a great place to start.

Check out the 3-2-1 website for more details.

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On Forgetting How to Blog

From free-extras.com

Ah. Blog. It’s been a while. What with parish life and a bonkers end to the school year and everything I feel I’ve neglected you. So much to say, but such a feeling of inarticulacy. Too many real life things to get on with. A perfectionist streak which insists that there’s not quite enough time to communicate anything worthwhile in the time available. And then there were the Olympics and the holidays and that.

Anyway, sorry Blog. I’m here again. I’m going to try again this term. I love that new term new start thing. My head is full of stuff so I am just going to get on and blog. Even if it’s not brilliant. Even if it’s pretty rubbish. Better something than nothing. Better a few words than none.

Thank you Blog that you’re forgiving and merciful, full of grace and always ready to hear from me, no matter how long it’s been. Or am I getting you mixed up with someone more important?

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Housework vs The Grand Vision

Just read this in an interview in the Guardian with Jeremy Vine. I’m rather surprised that I agree with Tony Blair! But being faithful to the Lord is hardest in the small, everyday things, not in the grand visions. So I should get off the internet and put the shopping away…

You worked as a Westminster correspondent for a long time. And you were on the Blair battle-bus in 1997, weren’t you?

I interviewed Tony Blair five or six times, but it’s off-air conversations that matter. Once, on the bus, he said: “I like tea” and I said: “I like tea, too” and then he said something like: “I hear you’re a Christian, Jeremy” and I said: “I’m just struggling, you know” and he said: “It’s the most important thing in my life.” And then I said: “Don’t you feel that actually the big stuff like what you’re going to do when you get into power is much less important than the small stuff, which is how you treat your next-door neighbour?” I realised that was a bad analogy because his neighbour was Gordon Brown. But he said: “I completely agree.”

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Words on the Wall

Recently came across this great site which has some beautifully designed graphics of bible verses. All you need is a colour printer and you’ve got some gorgeous wall art ready and waiting.

 Here’s one that caught my eye today:

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Rapping a Catechism

One of the MTs who will be joining us in September, Radiohead, is, rather surprisingly for someone in their early 20s, a big fan of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. He recently blogged about Cranmer’s Catechism that is contained in the BCP, and sketched out a version in modern English.

The same evening another friend linked me to this excellent rap from Shai Linne, who captures the basics of a catechism in truly modern English and includes a few ‘Big Words that end in -SHUN‘. I’m thinking our kids might enjoy the Shai Linne best at this stage. But who knows, maybe they’ll be Cranmer fans too once  Radiohead moves in…

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Lecrae – I Am Second

Just caught this great testimony on I am Second from the Christian rapper Lecrae – he’s a little easier to follow on this than on Chase That.

He reminds me of a good few of the young men we see around here in the parish. Our prayer is that some of them experience God’s transforming love in the way Lecrae has.

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Who is the LORD?

So I’m back from the PT Ministers Wives Conference. I arrived home on Thursday afternoon last week full of beans. This year the conference was rather less densely packed with sessions than previously, so I felt I’d had lots of time to digest the excellent bible teaching (of which more in another post later).

A key phrase came home with me – from a seminar I attended on ‘Bridging the Gospel Gap – Applying the Gospel to ourselves and others’. That phrase was ‘Who is the LORD (in this situation)?’ In the seminar we thought through a fairly trivial example – how we would react when stuck in traffic on the way to get test results from the doctor’s, considering how our reactions under stress indicate who or what is most important in our lives.

I’m so pleased I’d learnt that, as I came home to a couple of tough situations,  both personally and in the parish. I am so grateful to have been prepared by God to remember that He is sovereign in everything. My small challenges are nothing, of course, to those faced by many, and this week the situation in Japan following the earthquake and tsunami puts my life’s gentle meander into perspective. But the truth that God is the LORD in everything helps me to trust him in my minor situations and not be ruled by them. And that truth helps me to pray for Japan and the people there as they mourn and as they search for meaning in the chaos.

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