James’s Blog: Small Lies and Big Truth.

James’s Blog: Small Lies and Big Truth.

Recently, I’ve found myself dwelling on mistakes that I’ve made in my relationships, and not in a healthy way. It’s like I’m being aggressively confronted with the 10% that I got wrong rather than the 90% that I got right. I’ve spent a lot of time out of my depth with people, but the truth is that I have very few drowned relationships to my name. These thoughts don’t seem to care. They just seem to want me to feel guilty about something, anything. It’s odd to find yourself thinking about somebody with whom you have a good relationship, somebody who you know you have helped and has expressed gratitude for the help that you have given them, and yet immediately be thinking of the little ways in which you feel like you failed them, or things you wish you had or hadn’t said or done.

These thought patterns often crop up when I’m praying for people, and have the fingerprints of accusation all over them, so these days I file them under ‘spiritual warfare’ and try to deal with them appropriately. How I go with that depends on how well tuned in I am to what is true.

We all make mistakes in
the way that we relate to others, we might damage relationships and
make less than perfect decisions at times, but that’s rarely the
whole story. I want to remind myself, and you dear (and not-so-dear)
readers, that our relationships are not usually as bad as we think
they are, our mistakes not necessarily as damaging as we fear they
might be, our failures not the giant blots on our record that we
suspect they are, and that we have done more good than we know just
by being a friend to someone. We can’t necessarily stop those
accusing thoughts from coming, those regrets and should-haves, but we
don’t have to give our failures too much credit, and we don’t have to
give the enemy an easy victory.

James’s Blog: Intercession.

James’s Blog:  Intercession.
(I’m having one of my ‘stretched’ times at the moment, and writing a fresh and engaging blog post seems like a bridge too far. The good news is that’s been a while since I inflicted one of my experiments in poetry on you, so here’s one that I’ve had sitting around for just a moment like this. I’m not going to apologise…) Read more

James’s Blog: And Lead us not into Temptation, but Deliver us from Evil.

James’s Blog:  And Lead us not into Temptation, but Deliver us from Evil.

Last week our church had a Week of Prayer and asked a few people to write a short, daily reflection on one line of The Lord’s Prayer.  I’m re-posting mine here.

For those of you who woke up this morning and said, “You know what I want – a random e-mail discussing the merits of various Biblical translations” can breathe a sigh of relief. Your prayers have been answered. Read more

James’s Blog: No Rest for the Righteous.

James’s Blog:  No Rest for the Righteous.

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt about spiritual warfare, it’s that Satan is no gentleman. He isn’t one to say, “Hey, James has had a really rough week. Let’s go easy on him for the moment.” Quite the opposite in fact. There may be times where the conflict is more overt, and I am more aware of it, but rarely do the guns actually stop.

As a preacher, I know that the build up to a sermon can be a time of conflict. The act of preparation, with the temptation to take shortcuts or play fast and loose with the truth, feels like a battle. When we’re working towards something specific, we can be conscious of the spiritual struggle, wrestling with motives and prayer, but it’s a mistake to think that after the event there’s a ceasefire. As soon as the seed has landed on the path is the best time for the birds to swoop. The moment the preacher sits down is as good a time as any to push him into pride or drag him into despair.

However, as relentless as the Enemy is, God is even more so. The truth doesn’t ever stop being true. There is not a moment where resisting the devil doesn’t cause him to flee from us. I don’t stop being a child of God because I’ve had a bad week. We are always vulnerable to attack but, equally, the Enemy is always vulnerable to the truth.

James’s Blog: In Gratitude for Dianne Tyson.

James’s Blog:  In Gratitude for Dianne Tyson.

I didn’t ever meet Dianne, but that didn’t matter.  She didn’t even reach sixty, but that didn’t matter either.  A lot of things about Dianne didn’t seem to matter.  The fact that she was plagued with crippling health problems and constant pain – that didn’t matter either.  She had a lot to bitter about, but she didn’t let those things matter. Read more

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