Weakness pt2 – Some questions for you.

Posted on June 23, 2012 by Kath

As promised here’s part 2 of the weakness contemplations. This is the one where I ask many questions.  Or possibly the same question over and over again: are we really ready to admit to being weak in our churches and in our lives?

As I said in my last post I am weak. I find it hard to admit that in case everyone runs away from me. I’m not weak in a socially acceptable way. I am weak. I am afraid. I cry a lot in pain. I let things overwhelm me and I am proud. I don’t want you to know the dark weaknesses I have. I want to hide them from the world.

The brilliant freeing truth is the wonder that God knows about them and doesn’t hold them against me. He says my grace is sufficient. My power is made perfect in weakness.

In the light of that my question for today is:

What would our lives and churches look like if we really believed that?

Do we really believe that? Do we dare to employ the weak because they trust in a bigger God – one who is sufficient for our weakness?

Once upon a time I worked for a church where my boss had asked the question at his interview – is this a place I will be free to fail? He still wasn’t sure he had the answer 3 years later. It was a church full of middle class professionals for whom failure was a horror and weakness was to be hidden away. What can we do in the face of attitudes like that?

Do we help people develop trust and dependance on God in the midst of their weakness rather than immediately focusing on whether they have gifts and abilities?

Is it admittance of our weakness and need of Jesus that qualifies us for ministry or is it our abilities?

Do we want someone who knows they are weak and is honest about their need for God and so see his grace at work in their lives or do we value competence above dependance?

I’m not against employing people who have some competence in their jobs. But what are the character traits we look for under the surface? Have they become content and self sufficient in their competence or are they depending on God and seeking to grow in that?

Dependance may in the end produce competence but seeking competence on my own will always be based on my abilities rather than my attitude and deep conviction of my need for my Saviour Lord and provider of all I have in this world

Do we seek this kind of character or do we want people who are confident in their own abilities?

I’m sure abilities and gifts are vitally important to develop but I wonder if we value them over the character of someone who is brave and honest about their weaknesses and knows it’s by the grace of God that they stand at all.

I wonder what our churches and relationships would look like if we all stopped trying to get it right all the time, brought our weaknesses out into the light and delighted in the reality that God uses the weak and foolish and asked for his grace to keep on going.

I wonder what our churches would look like if we put people who are deeply convinced of this truth into leadership roles

I wonder.

What about you?

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On Weakness pt1

Posted on June 14, 2012 by Kath

This is the first in a few posts pondering the nature of weakness. I’ve come face to face with more than I’d like to admit of the darkness and weakness of my heart in the last 6 months. It’s not going away. So here’s a start in trying to live with it.

I spend a good proportion of my week feeling, well, weak. Feeling like a failure, feeling like a lazy distracted person and generally feeling stuck. Stuck in a place I’m not sure how to get out of.  All of which has led me to ponder the reality of weakness, shame and failure.

I don’t just feel like a failure. This is not some beating myself up trip (well not for the most part anyway, it does spin into that obviously) but its a recognition that I am lazy and distracted. I do not work with the diligence I think we might be called to. I am fickle. I am fearful. I am ashamed of what makes me cry. I am overwhelmed and undone by things that I think are small simple tasks. I am weak. I don’t enter situations with a positive what can I learn from this attitude. I enter the day and sigh.  I walk home in tears at my seeming inability to do what I know I should. I am weak. Some of this is blatant sin, some of these needs to be confessed time and time again to the one who never runs dry of mercy. Some of this, however, is just weakness.

These are not glamorous Pauline weaknesses, these are not socially acceptable weaknesses. I’m not being battered for my faith, I’m not facing hardship for the gospel, I’m not overcoming major sin. I’m living in that place I’m starting to think more of us are living in than we’d like to admit. The same old everyday boring weaknesses. The apathy, the world of good intentions, the lurking cowardliness, the ongoing selfish heart, the laziness and the defeatism that saps our strength away. The weakness of character that we hate in others, despise in ourselves and run from ever admitting out loud.

A strange thing is happening as I look deep at my darkness. It’s when I reach these dark corners of the soul, which I hate admitting to (except in places of control where I don’t have to look at someone else’s shocked face as they offer nice solutions to my weaknesses) that I find another truth under the slime and muck of my dark heart.

It’s a whispered truth so lean in.

God delights in using the weak.

God is not ashamed of using the weak.

God didn’t call me because I was a great encourager or a deep thinker or someone who cares.  He called me in all my weakness and emptiness. Not because I was going to do amazing things for him. But so he could do something amazing in me. So he could work in me through the slime and the dirt and so beauty could appear. So it would be obvious to all and sundry that he is the glorious all loving one. If I am not honest about my weakness then how will everyone see the brighter better hope of a God who loves and delights in using someone like me who gets it wrong so much of the time?

I sense my old UCCF team leader Gareth would now want to point out that I’m not all rubbish and useless but a loved new created child of God full of the spirit. I am. I really am. I am beautiful because of that. I have worth and value because of that. But I’m still faced with the presence of dark dark weaknesses within and the more they are brought to the light and exposed the more brilliant it is that I am still known as a child of God. His grace really is big enough for me and for you.

So I boast about my weakness. I bring it into the light and I let the devil laugh, I bring my despair, laziness, depression and more and display them confidently because there is a bigger love and a bigger grace at work. The response to my weakness isn’t to disregard it or have well meaning people claim its not really there or have anyone offer nice practical solutions to it.

The response to my weakness is to display it and enjoy our God making a spectacle of it on the cross as he takes it all, forgives it all and offers new mercy each morning. Even if I act in the same way tomorrow as I did today.

I trust he’ll work on my sin and help me deal with it and I trust that maybe some of my weaknesses will never go because they demonstrate more of the grace which outstrips them and works through them.

I am weak. He is strong.

That’s how I can face myself each day, that’s how I can face the world each day and that’s how one day I’ll manage to face Him on that final day, rejoicing that he is not ashamed of me.

Coming next… Do we really believe this is true in our churches? How far have we gone from the freeing joy of God choosing the weak and foolish, the things that are not to shame the things that are? How prepared are we really to live with each others weakness and glory in the God who delights in weak, small, overlooked people?

Posted in From the basement | 7 Comments

Beauty from Chaos

Posted on June 10, 2012 by Kath

Our God is a God who really likes creating stuff, who delights in bringing beautiful order to chaos. If you have doubts just read the first chapter of Genesis again.  All the darkness, unformed space and swirling nothingness. From this he makes land, sky, sea, space, sun, moon and stars. He fills them with teaming creatures, birds, animals, fish and thousands of different types of grass, plants and trees. Then he doesn’t leave it to grow wild and untamed. He makes some gardeners. You and me. Us. These crazy glorious ruins of creatures, who will eventually turn their back on him, who for a couple of wonderful moments take care of the garden and carry on bringing beauty into the midst of mess.

I love that our God is still doing that same work today, bringing wonderful order into our lives as his people, not put off by the mess and brokenness but committed to making beauty appear in the strangest of places. This week we spend lots of time seeing how he’s done that with the small baby growing inside me, with our intertwining stories of life and also with our balcony. Which is less of a balcony and more of another room to the house without a window.  Before we started the beautifying project it looked like this: 

A couple of days and with some help from my lovely Mum and Dad it now looks a bit like this:

Given a few more days, and grunts from the husbandface, who currently sounds like he’s hurting himself out there, we will have a pretty table to eat on (once the sun has remembered to outshine the clouds) and sit around with friends musing on life together. This might just be the start of nesting but it feels good to mould and shape the things around us to create some beauty as a reminder that God is continuously working on us and in us in a similar manner. I’m not sure he grunts as much but it seems to require much more patience and endurance working on our stubborn hard hearts and I’m glad he’s a God who has unending stores of those.

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Feminist Friday :)

Posted on May 25, 2012 by Kath

So, the excellent Circus Queen, aka the lovely Adele JK asked me to write a guest post on faith and feminism a few weeks ago. Being the obliging sort with little else to do with my time I did and now it’s up. Go to it here, as it’s a way way prettier site than mine and where there are all sorts of lovely links to other feminist friday posts. 

This weekend we spent some lovely time with the wonderful JK’s, Adele, Laz and the delightful Talitha, both Adele and I were away in different places for the Saturday leaving the men to be a perfect Brighton couple with their obviously adopted mixed race baby. I would have enjoyed observing the admiring looks. Adele came back with many tales from the Cybher blogging conference and mentioned an off the cuff comment one of the other bloggers had made about faith being incompatible with feminism. Adele gladly put the record straight and then tasked me to write a guest post about how faith and feminism actually go hand in hand.

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The one where I have some vague thoughts about Facebook

Posted on May 24, 2012 by Kath

So recently the lovely Tim Chester wrote about Facebook lots on his blog. Some brilliant challenging remarks about how we use our time on that strange medium. On his last post though he wrote this:

“Think about what you have written and read on your Facebook wall this week. Think about the tweets you have followed this week. Imagine reading them in six months time. I am guessing, but I suspect that most of what is written will be drivel. Trivia. Empty. “Eating egg on toast. Yum.” “On my way to the station.” “Great party last night.” “Jack just fell over. LOL.” “Love the photos. You’re so gorgeous.” Poke.”

Which is an interesting perspective on the world of Facebook and Twitter but I suspect a rather stereotyped view. If you get to the base lowest level this is what you will find but there is more than meets the eye to the stuff we write online. The mundane details matter to God, he’s in the details of what we eat for breakfast, what we are doing moment by moment and it’s good to stop and take joy in some of those things. I love looking back on my Facebook timeline to see the ways my days have panned out and the delight of God’s delicious grace through those moments, the ups and downs matter to our King and it’s a good record to have.  There is a point to these details.

Also, there is much good to be done in the world of twitter, conversations spun, awareness of issues grown and life affirming joy to be found. It can enhance our day to day flesh and blood relationships. Of course we can hide here, run away from ourselves but there is also much good that we can do here, be honest, real and aware of the God who dwells in the details of our lives.

What do you reckon?

Posted in Life on the journey | 4 Comments