Tag Archives: Hope

Heaven!

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During the autumn months of 2012 Abbey was still bed bound with pregnancy sickness and I was still trying to recover from my chronic fatigue. These days (and the many days that would follow into 2013 onwards) were long and very monotonous. Each day was just about making it through.

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Slowly making it out of bed. Getting the kids fed. Shipping Noah off to friends to help look after him for a few hours so I could rest while George was at school. Arguing with Abbey during the day about where things were headed and what we were going to do when the money runs out. Losing my patience and stressing out with the kids when they weren’t being perfect or wanting some of my time. Trying to find the motivation to get on with house chores. Getting the kids bathed and fed again and then the saga of bed time! Wanting to be a good husband, father and church planter. Each day felt like climbing up a steep long hill but with no petrol in the tank.

Thank God for McDonalds!
However, on a good day we would treat ourselves as a family with a trip to (wait for it) … McDonalds in Wood Green where if we were lucky we would hear the usual police sirens running up and down the high street outside! And then we would get excited to get the kids to bed early so that we could maybe watch a little Modern Family before bed too! Oh yes, they were good days!!

All joking aside, many of these things are just normal day to day stuff, but when you are feeling depressed and struggling with chronic fatigue its a different story coupled with your wife being bed bound with pregnancy sickness and no job. Perhaps the biggest factor in all this though was that prior to these days just described I had in my opinion the most exciting and purposeful job that existed. I was living the dream! But now… well… life was just boring and hard.

Is this it?
After a while of living everyday like I have described and with no real purpose to it all except for survival you start to ask the big questions! Is this it? What am I living for? How do I live with any sense of meaning and purpose? I would complain to God with my questions, “I just don’t get it God, why is life so hard? Why do you allow this? What’s the point of it? And where is your promised salvation? God I am sick of this life and so fed up with it all!”

A growing desire for heaven!
On one occasion I was out for my usual walk at Alexandra Palace. The sun was beginning to set, there was a beautiful blue sky mixed with all kinds of colors, the breeze was gentle, the air was warm, the flowers and trees full of life and color. And there was this unique peace, calm and quietness. All was well here!

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In that moment I found a strange longing in my heart for heaven! I am not talking about a spiritual heaven floating in the clouds with angels. I am not talking about a heaven where we are in a strange and foreign place. Neither am I talking about some enlightenment or some strange reincarnation. No, I am talking about heaven as described in the bible, the hope of every believer in Jesus Christ.

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared…. I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, “Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.” And the one sitting on the throne said, “Look, I am making everything new!” (Revelation 21:1, 3-5 NLT)

You were made for so much more than this!
Deep down the longing for heaven is written in every human heart and we will never be satisfied until we have it. Though we have new in life in Jesus now through his death and resurrection, the fullness of that will never truly be understood except by looking at what life will be like when He returns again and brings heaven to earth.

Peace, wholeness, life, joy, love, bliss,
The reason the beautiful scenery in my walk in the park resonated with me was this – the beauty, the peace, the restfulness, the purity, and the life that I was looking at was a pale reflection of what our human lives will be like when Jesus returns and brings heaven to earth!

Please don’t mistake me – I am all for healings, miracles, deliverance, signs and wonders here on the earth now! After all the bible says God’s Kingdom is here now… but listen, until that day – there will still be crying, pain, tears, death, sorrow and more! The above verse in Revelation 21 makes that very clear. As someone once said,

“It would be a strange thing for Him (Jesus) who will wipe away every tear, to have no tears to wipe away!”

And lets remember that the apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15:32 that if we are not going to be raised from the dead through Jesus then ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’ In other words – if our hope is not in our future resurrection after death then all we have got it this life right now and everything in the grand scheme of things is meaningless.

Our future hope shapes the way we live now
“… he (God) has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, … ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials.” (1 Peter 1:3-6 ESV)

When you start to realize that our purpose, meaning and all those other big words are ultimately fulfilled in our future salvation it frees you from getting angry when life doesn’t work. It stops me from putting all my hopes and dreams in this life and then becoming empty and aimless as I did. It helps me respond to suffering with hope. Suffering in many ways just intensifies our longing for Jesus and his return. It forces me and drives me to put my hope in Jesus’ coming salvation rather than in the things of this world.

Horatio G Spafford
I will leave you with a few verses of the famous hymn – ‘It is well with my soul’. It was written by a Christian man called Horatio G Spafford in 1883 after he suffered the awful loss of his four daughters in a terrible sea accident!

But, Lord, ’tis for Thee, for Thy coming we wait,
The sky, not the grave, is our goal;
Oh, trump of the angel! Oh, voice of the Lord!
Blessed hope, blessed rest of my soul!

And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
Even so, it is well with my soul.

Suffering is very close to God’s heart

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Having had the whole summer of 2012 off and continuing into the autumn term still unable to work you might be wondering what on earth was I doing during that time! Good question… I don’t know either! Well, actually most days to be honest were simply about getting through. Most days were rarely productive, meaningful or purposeful for me. If I could I would try and get out on my own where I could walk in a park or go to the coffee shop. My regular get away was my very own local park at Alexandra Palace, just 10 minutes away from our home in London.
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I loved going there and taking in the silence, the beautiful scenery around me and the London landscape in the distance… I miss that place very much! I have a lot of memories there from going on my weekly prayer walks seeking God’s vision for the church to taking Noah to feed the geese at the lake, (he would hide behind my legs so he didn’t get bitten, lol!). I especially enjoyed sitting at the coffee shop there which was right by the lake. This is where I would write my weekly sermons gearing up for the big Sunday. These were such exciting times for me where God spoke to me and led me (including making a decision to move into the Cineworld movie theatre for our Sunday meeting place, that was pretty exciting!).

An empty chair
And so it was a strange thing for me to continue going to Alexandra Palace park sitting in the same chair in the coffee shop but with no sermon to write… and no sense of excitement and adventure anymore. I remember sitting in my usual chair drinking my coffee, looking out the window at the lake and feeling this deep sadness over me. Oh, how I deeply missed what I used to do and yet had no ability or health to continue anymore. I’ll be honest with you now and say I have a number of tears rolling down my cheeks as I am writing this! These are still very precious memories to me.

I cried so hard!
By the time it got to December 2012 (just before we were on our way out to leave for America) there was one occasion where it all hit me – the loss of everything! I cried so hard! I am not talking about a few tears, but real crying from the depths of my heart, like a baby when they lose their breath!  It wasn’t simply some ‘job’ that I was losing. It was history and memories. It was dear friends. Team mates who had sacrificed so much to come with us on the adventure. It was a growing congregation of people whom I loved. It was saying goodbye to a dream and a vision that felt such a part of my heart. It was saying goodbye to our next door neighbors who I loved dearly! Most of all it was saying goodbye to our whole world and home.

Suffering is very close to the heart of God
I was at Costa coffee one time meeting up with a close friend who had been a real support to me during the church planting years and who was part of our church. He said something very profound to me, “Mark, you know suffering is very close to the heart of God.”

Jesus experienced deep loss and grief. He wept at the death of Lazarus his friend. And can you imagine the pain and the grief he experienced as he watched his dear mother crying in front of him as he hung the cross dying? And what about the perspective from God the Father? Can you imagine watching your own son being tortured, humiliated and put to death? In the film the Passion of the Christ (by Mel Gibson) there is a fictional bit added to the scene where Jesus finally dies on the cross. A big tear drop from the sky falls to the ground. Though this is an added touch I think its appropriate as God the Father cries for his dear Son. And yes both Jesus and the Father knew there would be a resurrection in three days time but the suffering, the loss and the grief experienced was nonetheless real!

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrews 4:15, 16 ESV)

Jesus deeply connects with our pain
Perhaps the translators should have swapped the word sympathize for empathize. The point is that Jesus’ ability to emotionally connect with our sufferings and temptations comes from his very own experience! He is not trying to understand or imagine how we might be feeling… he knows and identifies with our weaknesses, sufferings, griefs and temptations. He’s been there.

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Sometimes the only help one can offer someone suffering from grief is to listen, connect, understand, and cry with that person. Jesus is able to do that with us when we experience loss and grief whatever the depths.

A note to pastors and others…
Sometimes in life that ‘resurrection’ or restoration doesn’t come till much later and in the case of those who have lost a loved one – their ultimate hope will be heaven. As pastors and as friends of those who are grieving we need to learn how to sympathize. Yes quote the hope that we have in Christ. But first learn to sympathize with the suffering person. Jesus doesn’t always raise ‘Lazarus’ from the dead, but instead he points us to our future hope of glory and in the meantime sympathizes and cries with us in our grief and sorrows. So lets learn to do that if we are to be good friends and pastors for those who are grieving.

If you are grieving today…
If you are grieving today let me comfort you. Jesus is inviting you to come near to him. He will not condemn or judge you but rather he will embrace you with his scarred hands. He will cry with you. He will connect and understand you more than anyone else in this world is able to. When you are tempted to give up on God because of the terrible things that have happened (and that you can’t reconcile with a God of love!) – Jesus understands this full well. He too was tempted to give up on God through the week of his suffering passion. He was tempted to throw in the towel. He was tempted to curse God for his apparent abandonment. Of course he overcame and never gave in or sinned.

There maybe no apparent solutions to your loss. But Jesus is ready for you. You can cry… you should, its good for the soul and in it you may just find the God of all Glory crying with you!

A perfect storm

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Have you ever come across a ‘perfect storm’? Here is a definition from wikipedia,

“A ‘perfect storm’ is an expression that describes an event where a rare combination of circumstances will aggravate a situation drastically. The term is also used to describe an actual phenomenon that happens to occur in such a confluence, resulting in an event of unusual magnitude.”

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It was October 2012 and life had just got crazier! I was still working through my chronic fatigue and now all of a sudden Abbey being pregnant with Max found herself bed bound with severe sickness. We couldn’t believe the timing of these events. How could this all happen at the same time? I could barely look after the kids but always did my best, but with Abbey in bed for most of the day things were looking impossible for us as a family. On top of that neither of us could now work. Our finances were coming to a very quick end. With all these things kicking in together it was like a ‘perfect storm’ brewing!

“Storm ahead!”
How do you respond to such a terrifying set of circumstances? As far as we could see there was no human solution. Where will we live once our money runs out? Are we going to be homeless? How would we continue to function as a family with both Abbey and I sick?

There was no preparation for these events that were taking place. We did not receive any dreams or warnings from the Lord telling us what was soon to be coming. So what do you do? Well, we pretty much collapsed and crashed all over again! Yep. We found ourselves totally overwhelmed. We got angry. We got fearful. I remember on one occasion sitting in my car with my head against the stirring wheel saying to God, “I just can’t take it anymore!” We had lost hope and couldn’t see a way out…

The Israelites found themselves in a similar situation!

They said to Moses, “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? (Exodus 14:11)

Can you imagine being trapped in a desert with no where to go and an evil violent army on their way to slaughter you? Israel must have been terrified and sick to the stomach! They complained at God like most of us do when we are stressed and cannot make sense of why things are going so badly for us. They lost faith in God and could not see a way out … but God could!

“Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. And the people of Israel went into the midst of the sea on dry ground, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left.” (Exodus 14:21-22)

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Woah! No one saw that coming!
Just when it looked absolutely impossible for the Israelites to be saved, God turns up with an answer that no one was expecting! He opens the sea left and right so that His people can walk through to safety and escape!

God did something very similar in our lives a year ago in the midst of our circumstances. He opened a way for my family and I to move to Washington State. Our move abroad was the beginning of God’s ‘exodus’ for us! He opened up a way for my family and I to begin a process of healing and restoration. Many challenges would continue to face us, but this was the beginning of God taking us away from all that had happened to us in England.

Are you in a storm?
Are you in a ‘perfect storm’? Maybe you are worried about how you are going to pay the next months rent but have no job. Maybe there are difficult or abusive people in your life and you cannot see a way out for escape. Maybe you are addicted to drugs and cannot see how you will ever get free from them. Maybe you are sick but cannot afford health insurance and wondering what are you going do. Maybe you are struggling in your marriage and cannot see a way forward. Maybe you are a mum at your wits end caring for all your children. Maybe you are facing some or all of these examples in one go!

God does have a way out for you!
I couldn’t see a way out. God’s people certainly couldn’t see a way out, but God could! He does have a way out for you. It may not come as the perfect way that you would like (we didn’t want to leave our home in England) but God definitely has a way out for you. It may not have arrived yet, but it will. It may come with other challenges ahead, but God knows what he is doing and where he is leading you.

I hope this encourages you if you are walking through a storm at the moment. I pray that God’s peace would rest upon you as you read you this. May God bless you.

Help, we’ve lost everything!

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That’s pretty much a good summary of where my family and I were at this time last year (January 2013) as we stepped off the plane and arrived in Washington, USA!

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We had lost our home in London, England and all our possessions, except for the four suitcases we took with us filled with clothes and some of the kids toys :).

We had lost my family (my parents and my three brothers). We had lost some very dear friends.

I in particular had lost our beloved church that we had planted in north London with all the precious memories that went with it. I had lost an exciting dream. The very thing I was living for was gone!

Most of all I had lost my physical health. I was suffering with Chronic Fatigue (or ‘burn out’ as its often called) the very thing that caused all this!

Not only that but I was spiritually tired and depressed. I had no desire for God whatsoever.

That’s a lot of loss but I should say I at least had my wife and my precious children. We as a family were still together, although with much to work out!

My Journal over this last year!

This blog is about my thoughts, questions and answers during this ‘desert’ season of my life. Many of the topics are excerpts from my own personal journal. These were precious moments where I learned to sit down, listen and talk with God about life. I hope there are people out there who will find this helpful and identify with the real life struggles that I have gone through over the last two years. I hope some of my honesty will connect with others and help them through what they may be going through. Most of all I love writing and sharing about the things that I am passionate about!