“…so that he tore the lion apart with his bare hands. But he told neither his father or his mother what he had done.” (Judges 14:6)

Carl Beech went Dutch in April and the men at Redeemer Church in The Hague were the beneficiaries of his challenging message on Money, Power and Sex (or if you prefer: Gold, Glory and Girls!). Carl used the words above in his preaching and they have stayed with me as I face my own lions in both my public and private life.

In the passage above Samson is in breach of his Nazarite vow and from this point on its downhill to Judges 16:20 and one of the most chilling verses in the Bible (?) “…But he did not know the Lord had left him.”

Small deviations in our walk on the narrow path can quickly have us using a shovel to widen the path.

When we hold back our time, treasure and talents; when we listen to the lies of the secular and materialistic world; when we hunt for power and status; or when we succumb to our sexual desires online or outside of marriage. Whenever God is not first in our lives we risk giving the devil a bridgehead or foothold.

We are the spiritual custodians of our families and corporately in our congregations, with the power to bring spiritual life or death. Our anointing is precious and the devil is hungry to pounce and knock us down.

Don’t flirt with lions!

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My company needs to make some “efficiency savings”. This is management speak for asking volunteers to sign up for a redundancy package. Those who are left behind will be expected to pick up the work of those who have left. 100% of the work carried out by the remaining 80% looks like an efficiency saving if you are a counter of beans.

I believe there is a training event planned where you play with Lego bricks and use post it notes to come up with ways to work harder.

The problem is that this is not the first round of efficiency savings, so in practice projects will take longer to complete and there will be more problems because of the corners that have been cut.

So with just a couple of years left before I would expect to retire, motivated by the prospect of more work, Lego bricks and post it notes, I have been seriously considering whether I should also volunteer to leave. This leads to the question – what would I do if I was made redundant?

I have seen a number of people who have been made redundant or retired early, who have chosen to throw themselves into church work.

At long last they have the time to be able to really serve the Lord, to learn Greek and Hebrew and write some deep and well-structured sermons. Many churches will be really grateful for any and all help that they can get, but it may be they do not really need a senior executive or telesales person but someone who can stack the chairs and play with the toddlers.

40+ years of work should mean you leave with useful skills and experience, it would be a shame to waste them, but are they ones that the church needs?

Many years ago I learned some key things:

• There is no difference between secular and Christian work – all work should be done as for the lord.
• Prayer works in business as well as on Sundays.
• For Christians to make a difference we should get out of our churches and alongside those who are not yet Christians.
• Our value to God is not based on what we do.
• Sometimes God may ask us to do nothing.
• Sometimes God may ask us to do something outside our comfort zone.

Perhaps when we stop paid work we should look a bit wider than the church, as there are many good charities (Christian and non-Christian) that could really use some help. I have come to the realisation that I should stay at work a little longer, perhaps to encourage and support my colleagues who are finding it 20% harder.

Who knows, when I do leave work, being able to play with Lego bricks could be a skill church could actually need.

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What do you say when someone asks you what you do?

We might say that we are retired, in paid employment of some kind or looking for work, unable to work because of health or disability, volunteering, a full-time carer or some combination of the above. We might not have a ready answer but, whatever we do, we all pass the time somehow.

But what if we are asked “How, or in what way, do you do what you do?” That question might give us more pause for thought. What would you say?

In 1749 Charles Wesley wrote the words:

Forth in Thy name, O Lord, I go, my daily labour to pursue;

Although Wesley speaks of “daily labour”, the Apostle Paul makes it clear that this attitude is not just for those who go out to work:

“And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.” Colossians 3:17

The second verse of Wesley’s hymn begins:

The task Thy wisdom hath assigned, O let me cheerfully fulfil;

So, in May 2013, what is the task that God in His wisdom has assigned for you? What does it mean for you to do it in the name of the Lord Jesus? Can we trust that our Sovereign God may have assigned to us a role that we did not expect and might not have chosen for ourselves? Or perhaps we are settled and comfortable, yet sense His calling us to a different task in his name.

Just as an ambassador acts, not in his or her own name but in the name of the state he or she represents, so let us faithfully and thankfully serve the Lord Jesus, whatever we do.

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As a member of CVM 50 Plus Group, comfortably advanced within the age range, I find it increasingly difficult in remembering where I have left my glasses. My memory must have been pretty good in the past as I managed to pass a few exams. But now I’m more reminded of the Ken Dodd joke, when he found himself half way up the stairs and called out to his brother, ‘’Harry, Harry, am I climbing up the stairs or coming back down them?’’

Well so what? Time passes and we advance through the generations. Yes, but we have been taught to memorise scripture. Can we hang on to it, despite failing memory? We know that God’s Word can transform our lives and also help us to minister to others, knowing what we say has God-given authority.

Cue ‘Chairman Carl’. I recall him advising us that there is help out there. I cannot remember where or when he said it but it must have stuck somewhere in the recesses of my mind that ‘Navigators’ produce helpful aids and materials to assist in remembering bible verses. I asked around as to what was Navigators? Of course my wife, as wives do, knew all about Navigators and advised me that surely everyone else knows about them too!

Several months (maybe years) went by until noticing an increasing difficulty even to remember one bible verse caused me to seek out the name Navigators on the Internet. Sure enough they do produce a resource. So diving in, I ordered up the kit and eagerly awaited the postal delivery.

I have not been disappointed. I’ll just quote a little from the introduction:-

‘’You have discovered some good reasons for memorising scripture. But note that is not an end in itself. It must be followed by prayerful meditation and obedience.”

• Scripture memory puts God into your mind
• Prayerful meditation puts God into your heart
• Obedience puts God’s Word into action

Wow! The programme of learning verses commences with 2 per week. The first verse focuses on ‘Christ at the Centre’:

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come.” 2 Corinthians 5:17

Only another 6 weeks to go and then I see an introduction to ‘The Wheel’. It reads, ‘’Every Christian should get his power and motivation for his life from Christ!’’ And by then I’ll have memorised 12 verses of scripture. I’m feeling my memory is getting stronger already. Oh, now where have I left my glasses……………….?

p.s. for those who may not know about Navigators, try www.navigators.co.uk

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It is often easy to stand alongside our brothers at a football match, or at the bar, or on a healthy hike. These are good “blokey” things to do. They feed our sense of worth, appeal to our desire to be seen to be “manly” – and they are good fun!

However, I wonder how we manage when standing alongside a guy means being with them when they go through tough times. It’s not so “manly” when men are asked to show compassion to one another.

Many of our guys here in the Mid-Northumberland Group are on the older side. At our breakfast yesterday we realised how some of them are frail and unwell. Just before the breakfast, I received a number of calls from guys unable to come. One was about to begin six months of chemotherapy; another had suffered a stroke and had become very frail; for another it was the anniversary of his wife’s death; and a few others were simply “under the weather”.

It’s easy to stand by a brother in celebration, in fun activities and when the sun is shining. How easy do we find it when sadness, illness or problems arise?

In The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers writes “The most fatal thing a man can do is try to stand alone.” Turning this on its head you could say “The most life-giving thing a man can do is to stand by the lonely.”

Jesus was not slow to show his feelings or his support for those in need. Do we sometimes let being “a real guy” get in the way of our doing the same?

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I have had 2 recent business trips, one to Amsterdam and one to Frankfurt. On the flights they have just enough time to give you a snack and a drink.

Flying economy means that the snack is somewhat minimalist. On one flight it was a sausage salad, another it was half a sandwich, however one snack made a lasting impression on me. It was a packet of little savoury cheese biscuits with the words “Delicious Snack” boldly declared on the front.

When I read the ingredients (there was nothing else to do), I discovered it contained a long list of “E” numbers and definitely no cheese included. (Is there an E number for cheese)? The simple thought struck me that

labelling something as “delicious” does not make the contents delicious.

During the Amsterdam trip we stayed in a hotel that was handy for the station, it was also handy for a variety of restaurants. However, it was less helpful with it being closer to a lot of establishments offering services your pastor / minister / wife would not approve of.

It was a strange mix of a beautiful old city with canals and tourism mixed up with brightly presented sleaze.

It reminded me of the snack – it said it was delicious; however the packet contained something fake and artificial. I suppose it’s a principle that applies to all of us!

“what is on the outside should also be on the inside or putting it another way, what is inside us should be seen on the outside.”

Let you light shine.

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I had a knee replacement 8 weeks ago, so in between lots of exercise I have had time to catch up with some reading!

Right Here, Right Now by Alan Hirsch and Lance Ford is a ‘must read’. This book got me very excited, so I make no apology in doing a review for this blog.

When I read Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch in 2006 it blew my mind but I felt frustrated as I couldn’t communicate Alan’s ideas to many of my church leaders, even though my own understanding of mission had been liberated and energised. David Bosch said, ‘It is not so much that God has a mission for his church in the world, but that God has a church for his mission in the world’. That simple idea was hard for me to explain!

‘Right here right now’ challenges us to start today…. yes, you and me….and start in the place where God has put us today. I have been waiting since 2006 for my church to have mission at the centre of everything, but many are still muddled and think of mission as just a great extra activity. I can’t wait any longer…since reading ‘Right here right now’ I am no longer frustrated, I am released like an arrow out of a long bow. As Prof Leonard Sweet said in his review of the book, ‘It’s now time for doing’. God wants us all to be involved in ‘every member ministry’

Mission is risky, it means going out of our comfort zones. Jesus intended us to pair up, so don’t go it alone (Luke 10). We know from several studies that within three to five years of a person becoming a Christian, they will have few meaningful relationships with anyone outside the church. Hence our own mission activities should be focussed outside the walls of the traditional church, and we need to keep strong connections with the secular community.

Anyone reading this who wants to talk or pray further can email me at eddie.james@cvm.org.uk or post a comment. You may find shapevine.com useful.

A final quote from Albert Einstein ‘There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.‘

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Without the focus of work and the need to provide for the family the autumn of our lives can bring fresh challenges! For me, one of these was about making sure I was living and experiencing the abundant life Jesus was offering! I felt this new period in my life carried a responsibility not to fritter away something unspeakably precious. I found I was being encouraged to fill my extra free time with enjoyable pastimes, which was great, but I worried I might be missing something?

I thought about the world around me and realised I took so many things for granted and knew so little other than perhaps what I had touched on in school many years ago or had added to rather randomly over the years. I thought I needed to bring myself up-to date with the huge advances made by science in recent years.

This was possibly a mammoth task but it was made easy for me! I was having a patio laid at the time and from this unlikely source the landscape gardener, Richard, recommended Bill Bryson’s ‘A Short History Of Nearly Everything’! It was just what I needed as the author was on a similar quest to my own! I found it quite a revelation on reading this book as to how quickly we i.e. man, had reached the limit of his understanding in just about every field of science and that we were such a long way off from understanding how everything in the universe (and beyond) worked together in any meaningful way! The reality which I enjoyed day by day was, I deduced, still mostly a mystery – to which my only response could be one of awe, wonder and thanks!

My quest then took me to understand better the historical context of my surroundings. I was pretty ignorant of what had shaped this and I decided to study this from the Roman occupation onwards – the Dark Ages, the Saxons, Vikings, Normans etc. and then the reigns of the British kings and queens; the shift of power to the people and the influence that passionately held Christian beliefs and values had had on the world as I knew it and which I had accepted as a ‘given’ for the way of life I was currently enjoying!

So far everything seemed to have been ‘handed to me on a plate’! Not much else to do perhaps, other than to enjoy all this new free time! Having said this I was still quite busy! I had been adopted as a child and this had instilled in me a compassion for children who did not have an adult to love and care for them. I had used such skills as I had in finance to work for children’s charities and in my retirement have continued to do this particularly to help street children.

I also have a wonderful family and great friends but was all this giving me the abundant life that I wanted to fully savour? I had a deep concern that something was still missing?

And then one day I stumbled on the treasure I had been seeking! A virtually unknown writer to whom a room had been dedicated in Hereford Cathedral which I was visiting with friends who had moved to the area! The person I discovered was somebody about who C S Lewis had said ‘ I could quote from (him) forever’ !! He was it seems a local parish priest who, among other things, had been asked for some material for a kind of home group a friend was setting up! He wrote a set of one hundred ‘meditations’ followed by 3 more (centuries!) and an unfinished 5th (of only ten) before he died.

He wrote extensively of truths and treasures and how to enjoy them fully and the consequences of not doing so! He was at times controversial but he gave me the stimulation and challenge to see things in a different and fuller perspective, almost as if he was answering my questions, yet 350 years ago!

This writer I found filled a gap for me – at times he ‘blew my socks off!’ He expressed in many different ways the awesomeness of life and how to fully experience this! He is not for everyone but I feel the need to at least bring this man to your attention! Denise Inge has written a wonderful introduction to his life, ‘Poetry and Prose’. I never go anywhere without it! I leave you with a quote from 1:59 of the Centuries and referring to ‘the Cross’.

‘There we see the most distant things in Eternity united: all Mysteries at once couched together and explained’!

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What does society say and what does God say?

I believe this image encapsulates society’s picture of an older person, a rather troubled and passive older man. In my work as Director of Outlook Trust, I meet many older people both in Churches and in the Community who feel on a very deep level that society has a very negative image of them which they do not deserve.

Here are a few of the things that society says about older people coupled with I believe, some of the things it thinks but doesn’t necessarily speak out;

• They are a social problem-a nuisance-a burden.
• They will bankrupt pension, health and other welfare systems.
• They are non-productive and a drain.
• They are past-it’ and out of touch with modern life
• They are undesirable or ugly with little or no value
• They are invisible, irrelevant, not important, nuisances.
• They are rarely portrayed as being wise and understanding.
• Ageing is denied to keep away the reality of growing old and a person is a ‘failure’ if they have grey hair and wrinkles.

So, based on the above, I believe that society looks upon older people and older age as a GREAT BIG PROBLEM, but what is God’s view?

I believe this image encapsulates His view and understanding and I am happy to say, many of our Outlook Members live their lives based on these truths;

• Old age is a blessing from God (Deuteronomy 5 v 33 /Psalm 92 v 13 – 15 / Isaiah 46 v 4)
• Older age is the fulfilment of a life devoted to God - ‘He has made all things new, past sins forgiven, abundant and eternal life’ (2 Corinthians 4 v 16-18)
• Wisdom is an attribute of older people who depend on God (Proverbs 9 v 10 – 12/ Proverbs 3 v 13 & 15 – 16)
• Older age is a general part of God’s purposes for life - (Genesis 25 v 8 – 1 / Chronicles 29 v 26 – 28 / Job 42 v 16 & 17)
• Older people have continuing moral responsibilities and a mentoring role - (Titus 2 v 2 – 4)

Although older age has its problems, in God’s sight older people and older age are certainly not a problem, but rather A BLESSING.

The two views, society’s and God’s are as the above shows, diametrically opposed. It is this truth we encourage not just our Members to believe and live by, but to every older person we say live up to and in these truths and not live down to what society says of you.

As ever with Christian love

Norman Critchell
Director Outlook Trust

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I was on my way to my daughters for the Christmas holidays, heading north on the M42. As I approached the junction where you have to take the exit to stay on the M42, a black BMW cut me up at speed (I was doing 70).

I was so busy flashing headlights and sounding the horn that I missed the exit and ended up on the toll road – it cost me £4 in fees and 20 minutes on my journey.

Over the next two weeks I twice had to brake sharply because a BMW ignored the rules on priority and overtook a row of parked cars at speed. (We no longer have right of way, we have priority).

My wife and I then had a close shave when a car did not stop at a zebra crossing, you guessed it – another BMW. Based on these encounters I now consider BMWs something of a road hazard, as they clearly have no regard or consideration for other road users or pedestrians.

I am thinking of starting a petition to ban the import of these vehicles, raise a protest so that the council and government will have to do something about it.

It is evident that all BMW drivers are inconsiderate and should be punished.

Does this sounds a bit over the top?

What has happened here is that based on my experiences I have formed a stereotype.

After the first experience I then noticed the others and made the association. Some of you will read of my experience and agree with me because you too have had similar encounters with a BMW, some of you will now, because I have put the idea in your head.

There are people out there who have had experiences of church or watched TV soaps and news who will have developed a view of church and Christians that is a stereotype.

There are people inside churches who have developed stereotypes of other Christians or older Christians. (I watched a really funny episode of Top Gear where they modified a car to make it suitable for old people based on a lot of stereotypes).

The point of this article is twofold:

• Be careful about the stereotypes you form, because people and situations are far too complicated and varied.
• Don’t conform to the expected stereotypes – you are unique and whatever age you are, God still has a plan and purpose for you.

If only I could figure out why, whenever I am stuck in a queue of traffic, that the car in front is a Toyota?

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