A Gardener’s Gospel – week 22

The Hound from Hell has struck again – the flippin’ dog has just decapitated my tiger lilies! I’m furious! There was a crop of about a dozen of them, in full bud and ready to bloom. Then this morning I checked on them and saw that all but one has had their heads chopped off. Chomped off, is more like it. I didn’t actually see the mutt do it, but I know it’s her. Last year I caught her in the act with petal entrails stuck to her muzzle. Last year I forgave her as she was only four months old, but this year I really didn’t expect it; I thought she’d grown out of it.

On the prowl

She’s finally stopped digging up the lawn, and by erecting two low fences I’ve kept her out of her ‘favourite’ flower beds (well, most of the time) so doggy damage has been on the decline – until now. I really don’t know what to do about it. Ho hum.

It reminds me of that verse in the Bible that says:

Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him and stand firm in the faith.
1 Peter 5:8 – 9a

No longer alert

We always say that the devil strikes when we least expect it. However, looking back, we can often see that it was the perfect time for the devil to strike. We had allowed our self-control to slip and had stepped into complacency, no longer alert – just as I had been with the dog. There is a fine balance between being alert to the wiles of the enemy and being in a constant state of paranoia that he’s about to attack any minute. In my early Christian life I spent so much time in ‘spiritual warfare’ that I barely had time for anything else. Now, I focus more on getting my life right with God so that the devil will not have a foot-hold (Eph 4:27).

Defence through holiness

As we mature in our Christian walk we need to move from a position of waiting for the devil to attack to living a life where he would find it difficult to attack in the first place. This is where the ‘self-control’ element of Peter’s admonition comes in. Self-control is a conscious level of co-operation that allows God’s holiness to grow in our lives.

In a recent quiet time, God told me that he wanted me to shine and to beware of the things that would dull me. He then went on to list specific sins and struggles – all of them within my control. We’ve spoken a lot about the fruit of the Spirit in this series, and one of them is self-control. We need to get away from our victim mentality that says that the devil can ‘steal’ our joy, peace, patience etc. The devil can only tempt us into these things; it is still our responsibility whether or not we give into that temptation – this is how we resist in faith.

When we are weak

Oh, but sometimes it’s really hard. When our weakness is rooted in years of pain, hurt and insecurity, we barely feel we have a chance to make a conscious choice not to succumb. But that’s where God comes in. When we are weak He is strong and when we feel we can resist no longer, we can call Him and He will strengthen us. The problem is, we don’t even take the time to do that, feeling that our slip into sin is inevitable.

I know a woman with an explosive temper. When under stress she flares up and lashes out. Afterwards, she feels bad and usually apologises, but never fully takes responsibility. She just says: ‘I’m sorry, but that’s just the way I am. I’ve always been like that. I have a nervous disposition and can’t help it.’

Taking responsibility

Now I’m not immune to flares up of temper myself – particularly under stress. However, unlike this woman, I’m well aware that it is my fault. Yes, I seem to have a ‘natural’ disposition towards it, but natural does not mean that it can’t be changed. There are many metaphors for the ‘natural’ in the Bible: the ‘old man’, ‘mortal body’, ‘sinful nature’ etc. This does not mean we believe in a Gnostic dualism (the created world is wholly bad, and the spiritual wholly good) but that the natural, created, mortal self without an infusion of God’s Spirit, is naturally inclined to evil. The former is frequently referred to as being ‘under law’, the latter ‘under grace’.

Free from sin

Through Jesus Christ the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son … (so that) we do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.
Romans 8:2-3a & 4.

Now where does that leave me and my tiger lilies? Well, I need to continue helping the hound choose to exercise self-control and myself not to sin in my anger. Easier said than done!

A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control.
Proverbs 29:11

A Gardener’s Gospel – Week 21

One of the most depressing experiences I ever had was going to a Bonsai exhibition. There were rows upon rows of ‘adult’ trees – maples, oaks, juniper, cypress, beech – no bigger than table-top Christmas decorations. I was horrified to discover that some of these trees were hundreds of years old, but unlike their free cousins in the wild, towering proudly over the earth with their branches stretched heavenwards, these stunted trees would never be allowed to reach their full potential.

Image courtesy of Nicola Whitaker

Pathological micro-management

In the name of art and philosophy, trees are snipped and pruned, tied, wired and uprooted, to make a living sculpture, bent to the will of its maker. This is aesthetic gardening taken to the extreme. I suppose it could be said that anyone who cultivates a patch of land for beauty rather than bounty is guilty to some degree of the same thing, where shrubs are pruned, grass trimmed and flower beds laid out at the gardener’s will. But while domestic gardeners exert a degree of control, it’s nowhere near the pathological micro-management of Bonsai cultivators.

Many Christians are like Bonsai trees, stunted in growth and never reaching their full potential. For some, it’s a matter of choice, as they are happy to remain immature in their Christian walk; for others it is forced on them by abusive leaders and ‘discipleship’ programmes.

Insecure leaders

I’ve been in and around churches for 25 years and have seen my fair share of leaders who try to impose their view of what a Christian should look like on their followers. Beware the insecure leader with a vision! People are forced to follow the latest church growth strategy or discipleship method at the expense of their individuality, then shamed into submission by labelling their honest questioning as rebellion. That is not how God gardens. He has made us all individuals and he deals with us as such. Some people’s personalities and gifting will thrive in one set-up but not in another, and they need to be free to develop as God, rather than man, determines. A good leader will recognise this.

Immature followers

But no matter how good our spiritual leaders are, they will always be frustrated by the voluntary Bonsais in their midst. These are people who have perhaps been brought up in a church or made a commitment many years ago yet have shown little or no growth in their spiritual lives. How is growth measured? In previous sessions we’ve looked at the fruit of the Spirit as listed in Galatians 5: love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness and self-control. Fruit on a tree is the physical manifestation of inner growth and development. These qualities are first developed in our inner selves as we co-operate with the healing and sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. Once this inner work is done, these Godly characteristics will eventually become visible to others through our actions. This is a mark of spiritual maturity.

Working on it

In Philippians Paul tells the recipients of his letter to:

work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.
Phil 2:13

To ‘will’ is an internal decision and to ‘act’ is a physical outworking of that decision. We have to work out our own salvation; effort is needed on our part. This must not be misunderstood as ‘salvation by works’ but rather an ‘outworking’ in and through our lives of the salvation that we have received from God by grace.

The problem is some people do not make the effort. Ten, twenty years after becoming Christians they are still struggling with the same old sins and the same old hurts, not giving nor receiving forgiveness and refusing to let go. As the writer of Hebrews comments:

By this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again – you need milk, not solid food.
Heb 5:12

Like babies, people like this are more concerned about what they can get from the church rather than what they can give. And like children, they will throw a strop if they don’t get it!

Fear and pride

So how do people become Bonsai Christians? I would suggest that it’s a combination of pride and fear. They fear what will happen if they let the Holy Spirit deal with issues in their lives and they are too proud to admit to others that they even have problems. Or perhaps they don’t really believe that God can heal, forgive or restore them so they won’t allow Him to get too near in case they are disappointed. Now while not all of us are Bonsai Christians all of us must recognise times in our lives when our growth has slowed or we’ve become stunted. Are fear and pride at work in our lives? Are we selfishly hanging on to our life as it is because of what we fear might be asked or demanded of us? I know that I fear ‘getting too deep’ at the moment in case God asks me to sacrifice my time and energy on some new ministry. With that sort of risk-averse attitude I’m in danger of becoming a bit of a Bonsai myself.

The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade.
Mark 4:31-32

A Gardener’s Gospel – Week 20

I learnt gardening from my dad. When I was three we moved into a newly built house, or, as they say in these days of poor grammar, a ‘new-build’. Like most new-builds, the patch of ground attached to the house was more a builder’s dump than a garden, with broken bricks, cement powder and general rubble thinly covered by a layer of poor quality top-soil. Undeterred, or at least that’s how it appeared to my three-year-old mind, my dad set about turning the wasteland into a place where flowers could grow.

Laying the lawn

He started with the lawn because that would provide the ‘architecture’ that the rest of the garden would be built around. In the early 70’s one did not simply hire a JCB or mechanised tiller as they do now; it was shovel and spade and good, old-fashioned elbow-grease. Listen to me! I sound like my parents. Well, I suppose that’s not always a bad thing …

But back to the lawn. So while my older brother and I set out with dogged determination to dig down to Australia, my dad dug out the rubble and waste and prepared the soil for lawn-seed. I don’t remember how he managed to convince us to give up our expedition, but he did. He filled in the hole and got ready for the next step of his vision – a circular lawn. I was thrilled. No one else in the neighbourhood had a circle in their square of land, but my dad did. He stuck a stake into ‘Australia’ and tied some string around it. He then took another set of stakes and proceeded to mark out a circle.

Assigning dominion

By the next year, the 360˚ lawn was well established. (Note to self: ask Dad how he managed to keep two dogs and two kids off the lawn – I struggle with one of each!). The next step was to plant out the flower beds. Again my brother and I were involved in the process and we were each given ‘dominion’ over one corner bed. My brother never did much with his – and my dad finally took it over – but in mine he helped me plant daffodils and crocuses and tulips (yes, it was a very 70’s garden!).

Growing out of it

Once our garden was established, my dad then took on an allotment and I started to learn about growing vegetables. But a few years later, a couple of weeks after my tenth birthday, we moved to South Africa and both gardens were left behind. In South Africa my dad frequently worked away from home and for long hours so he abandoned his gardening hobby. Instead, when he could afford to, he paid for a ‘garden service’ to come in once a month to give the yard a good tidy. So my teenage years were spent without gardening.

You’ll be pleased to know that when my dad took an early retirement at 55 he returned to England and took up gardening again. He’s recently acquired an allotment too, but has had to stop digging because he’s just found a section of Hadrian’s Wall! Well, that’s what he thinks it is, and he’s waiting for English Heritage to come along and confirm it.

Growing back into it

When I got married at 25 I yearned to start my own garden. Something had been planted in me many years before, and though it had been lying dormant, it finally started to grow. But for the next seven years we lived in rented accommodation. Eventually we could afford to buy our own place and six years ago I started my own floral kingdom. It wasn’t a ‘new-build’ so I didn’t have to start from scratch, but let’s just say it wasn’t quite to my taste – the garden gnomes for a start! I joke now that I’m a secret Agnostic – a member of the Anti Garden gNome Society.

Now the three-year-old following the gardener is my daughter Megan. She loves digging and weeding and planting. Usually, I have to ‘undo’ her efforts when she’s finished her work, but she’s learning. Even if she goes her own way when she’s a teenager, I hope that the seeds of gardening have been planted in her as she watches and learns.

Setting an example

Of course, I hope that the spiritual seeds I plant in her will bear fruit too. I’m not always the best example of a gardener or a Christian and when I see Megan copying some of my negative behaviour I fall to my knees and repent – not just for her sake, but my own. But then, at times, I overhear her saying things to her teddies that tell me I’m doing something right. Like the other night when she told them: ‘we must share our money with the poor people’. And when she prays alone in her room, not realising I’m listening at the door, and thanks God for ‘everything in the whole world’. To some of us, God has entrusted children. We should be mindful of what we pass on to them.

Train a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not turn from it.
Proverbs 22:6

A Gardener’s Gospel – Week 19

Last weekend two of the neighbourhood kids – Jessica and Rosa – knocked on the door and asked if they could pick some of my flowers. They were making perfume. They didn’t care about the overgrown grass and the spreading weeds (I’ve been busy the last two weekends and haven’t had a chance to mow); all they saw and smelt from the road were roses and lavender.

Parfum de Fifi

I remember when I was eight-years-old and made my own blend of Parfum de Fifi, so I was delighted to let Rosa and Jessica use some of my flowers. When they’d finished in the front garden (I was glad to see they had plucked judiciously) I suggested they go into the back garden and pick some pansies too. After that they played with my three-year-old daughter on her slide, ran around with the Hound from Hell, and then went home.

I was reminded that gardens are to be used and enjoyed, not just displayed. Yes, I get frustrated when my lawn is perpetually rutted by the dog and sand poured over my seedlings by my daughter, but at least they are enjoying it. In my writing classes I’ve recently been using fairy tales as templates for modern stories (see Children’s Literature and the Quest for the Divine) and have re-read Beauty and the Beast and Rapunzel. In both of these stories, unsuspecting fathers are punished for wanting to enjoy someone’s garden.

Fairy tale gardens

In Beauty and the Beast (not the Disney version), Beauty’s father picks a rose for his daughter. The rose was on a bush hanging over a wall which belonged to the Beast. The Beast threatens to kill the man for stealing his rose unless he brings his daughter to him.
In Rapunzel, a pregnant woman has a craving for some lettuce in her neighbour’s garden. Her husband goes to get it and is caught by the witch who owns it. As punishment, the father is forced to give up the baby when it is born. I can’t help pointing out that if he’d just asked instead of taking, he might have got off more lightly – but that’s another story.

My point is that both of these gardens were for display only and their gardeners refused to share them. Thank God that He’s not like that. The Garden of Eden was planted for Adam and Eve’s enjoyment and they could use whatever was in it – apart from the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. If we’re looking for parallels with fairy tales, then both Rapunzel and Beauty’s fathers gave in to that temptation and suffered for it.

Gardens to be shared

But again, that’s not what I want to talk about. The rest of the garden, the 99.9% of it, was to be enjoyed. Gardens should be used. Some people treat God like He’s an ornamental garden, visiting Him now and then, appreciating his aesthetic beauty but never playing on the grass, picking the flowers or making perfume that can be shared with others. God wants us to enjoy Him and He wants us to share Him with other people too.

I was watching the Chelsea Flower Show the other week on TV. There was an insert presented by Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen on the British ‘front garden’. Lawrence bemoaned the fact that front gardens were being dug up to create room for parked cars. He looked back nostalgically to a time when front gardens were show pieces like British front rooms – always tidy, always ornamental and always un-used. Now while I agree with him that we shouldn’t dig up our gardens for parking space, I disagree that front gardens shouldn’t be used. In fact I’m thinking about extending my front garden fence so that it can be more part of the whole property. I want my family to enjoy it more freely, and the Jessicas and Rosas of the world to continue to feel welcome.

Balanced lives

This doesn’t mean that a desire for privacy is wrong – followers of the Gardener’s Gospel will know that I crave time alone – but we need to balance our lives between being open to others and taking time out; between sharing what God has given us and having that special time in solitude. Jesus modelled both. He had a band of followers with whom he shared his time, his gifts and his material goods; but there were times when he slipped away to be alone. His garden gave off a sweet perfume and people were drawn to him. He didn’t tell them to go away or pick someone else’s flowers. Jesus was not an ornamental garden.

My lover has gone down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to browse in the gardens and to gather lilies. I am my lover’s and my lover is mine; he browses among the lilies.
Song of Songs 6:9

A Gardener’s Gospel Week 18

In the first post in this Gardener’s Gospel series I mentioned that when I first took over my garden I enthusiastically pulled up a whole lot of ground foliage thinking they were weeds – among them St John’s Wort and, what I’ve only recently discovered, were Spanish bluebells. Well fortunately for me (and them!) the Spanish bluebells grew from bulbs and despite me decimating them above ground, they’ve now made a comeback. Once these pretty blue flowers started flowering again, I realised my mistake and after searching my book of ‘Flowers by Colour’ by Jan Wilson, I finally identified this holocaust survivor. But it was only when they began to flower that I was able to recognise them.

Imposters

Last week I told you about the chilli that ended up as a cantelope pepper. Again, it was only when the fruit (I didn’t notice the difference with just the flowers) began to emerge, that I realised I had an imposter on my hands.

In the Bible there is a famous line attributed to Jesus: ‘By their fruit you will know them.’ (Matt 7:20) It takes time to get to know people and time for them to reveal their real selves. Many times I’ve been disappointed by people who appeared, at first, to be good candidates for friendship only to discover, as time went by, that their inner selves didn’t match their outer selves. And many times I’ve been hurt when people seemed to want to get to know me but then withdrew their friendship when they saw something they didn’t like in me.

A matter of personality

Is this the fruit we’re talking about? Perhaps, but it’s more likely that it’s a clash of personalities. People love me or hate me. The very things that attract some people to me: my vivacious social persona, my wit, my deep thinking and forthrightness are the very things that turn other people off – particularly after spending an evening with me! So surely ‘fruit’ is deeper than that. Is it possible that despite being irritating or awkward there are attributes that can endear us to people and, more importantly, to God?

Yes, and they are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control – the fruit of the Spirit as listed in Galatians 5:22. The difference between these and our natural personality traits is that they are ‘grown’ by allowing the Holy Spirit to work in us and through us. But sometimes they are hard to see because we are looking at the wrong thing.

As someone who is naturally talkative, socially confident, apparently extrovert (I say apparently because I enjoy people’s company when I’m with them but prefer to spend the majority of my time on my own) and obviously gifted in creative and spiritual things, I tend to believe that the opposite of me is what being a Christian should be. Surely quiet, ‘background’ people are naturally more kind, gentle, faithful, patient and self-controlled than me! For many years I suffered with the belief that my overt giftedness was a curse that kept me from being a better Christian. Wasn’t ‘performance’ showing off? Didn’t it lead to pride? And to think about it just made me miserable.

Self-denial

But after some misguided attempts to deny that part of me, to refuse to exercise my gifts (creative and spiritual) in a public setting, I accepted that to do so was to deny who God had created me to be. As long as my heart was right with God and my intention was not to bring glory to myself, I realised that if anyone else thought I was showing off, it was their issue that they had to deal with, not mine. Some of the most pride-filled people I’ve ever met have been introverts; it just takes a bit longer to see it.

So back to the fruit: I’m not saying I have all of them in abundance – I particularly struggle with patience and self-control – but after nearly 30 years of believing that they were something quieter people have more naturally, I’m finally free to see that they are not personality dependent. Because that wouldn’t be fair; God created some of us with bright colours and others with pastels and he loves us both.

Growing fruit

The fruit of the Spirit are God-grown and they take a lifetime to mature. These are the things that reveal our true selves as God moulds us into the people he wants us to be. Am I loving? Joyful? Peaceful and kind? Am I gentle (not quiet!)? Or patient and faithful and self-controlled? Are these the things that emerge in a stressful situation; when people and circumstances put me under pressure? If not, and often it’s not, then God’s got a bit more work to do with me. This garden is still a work in progress.

Every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear good fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognise them.
Matt 7:17-20

A Gardener’s Gospel – Week 17

About six years ago I planted a handful of chili seeds, and within six months I had two beautiful indoor pot plants that continued producing fruit for over four years. But then, for reasons I still have not been able to fathom, they died. Undeterred I planted another crop last year and was very excited to see some young plants sprouting up.

High achievers

But one plant outdid its siblings. The shoots were greener, the leaves bigger and the first flower was enormous. It was only when the fruit began to form and became round and bulbous that I realised this wasn’t a chilli but a cantelope pepper. I now have a scrawny chilli plant in the same pot as this high achiever but because their root balls are so entwined I can’t separate them. I’m still waiting for the chilli to bear fruit, but I’m sure it will; in its own way and its own time.

Last week I spoke about my experience of receiving charismatic gifts from God. Some of you might be confused or dismissive of my story, others envious or in awe. But let me get one thing straight: exercising spectacular gifts is no guarantee of spiritual maturity or even happiness as a Christian. In my job as an editor of a writing website I recently read a novel set in an evangelical Christian fellowship that was torn apart when what the author referred to as the ‘special blessing’ arrived. The members of the fellowship were divided into the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’, with those receiving the gifts passing judgement on those who did not. They were ‘better’ Christians, ‘real’ Christians, ‘obedient’ Christians, seeking all that God had for them, while the others floundered in the shallows. Some of the ‘have nots’ faked the blessing, while others just left the church in disappointment or anger.

Dishing out the blessing

I’ve been part of fellowships like that one and, I must admit, even shared some of the attitudes of the ‘haves’ in that story. My experience of God through the release of His Spirit in my life was so awesome that I couldn’t understand why every Christian didn’t have the same. Surely God would want all of His children to be as ‘blessed’ as I was; surely every Christian would desire to have the same thing. But I was wrong on both counts.

Dividing the gifts

Firstly, there are different kinds of Gifts that God apportions according to His knowledge of what ‘fits’ us best and matches our ‘natural’ being. In 1 Corinthians 12 we read about gifts of wisdom (being able to bring God’s perspective to a situation); messages of knowledge (when you know things you couldn’t ordinarily know about a person); faith (not the ‘ordinary’ faith that all Christians have to some degree, but a supernatural ability to believe God for the most incredible things); gifts of healing (the ability to be a channel for God’s healing power); miraculous powers (to be able to pray and see God affect the natural world in a miraculous way); prophecy (the ability to ‘see’ what God will do in the future or understand the spiritual dimension of what God is doing now); distinguishing between spirits (the ability to discern the spirit – good, evil or ‘wordly’ – behind supernatural manifestations); speaking in tongues (the ability to speak in another, usually ‘heavenly’ language as an aid to worship or vehicle for prophecy); and the interpretation of tongues (the ability to interpret – not translate – the essence of the message in tongues into the language of the community). In addition, in Romans 12, there are gifts of serving, teaching, encouraging, giving, leadership and mercy, and later in 1 Corinthians 12, administration is also mentioned.

The quieter gifts

You’ve probably noticed that the latter gifts are far less ‘supernatural’ or overt. People can have the gift of administration and quietly get on with it, contributing to the smooth running of the community without others knowing, or even recognising themselves that they have a spiritual gift. It’s the same with serving, teaching, giving, mercy and leadership. People like me can stand up and make a proclamation in another language or tell someone quietly a secret of their heart, and it is obvious there’s something other-worldly going on.

So is it possible for people who say they don’t believe in the charismata to have them? I believe so, yes. God is not just going to give His gifts to people who claim to be charismatic; He gives His gifts for ‘the common good’ (1 Cor 12:7). A balanced community of believers will exercise all of these gifts in different measure so that the love of Christ will be shown to operate within it.

Latent gifts

And can people have the more overtly supernatural gifts and not operate in them? I believe so too. One of my abilities – I think it’s related to the gift of knowledge – is to be able to discern a person’s latent gifts. I frequently know when someone has a gift of prophecy, for instance, but has not yet had it released in their life. Why is this? It’s to do with their personal relationship with God. And like my release into the gifts was a process, their’s will be too. Just like my ‘have not’ chilli plant, they will bear fruit – in God’s time, in God’s way. But I’m not talking about the ‘fruit of the Spirit’ here; I’ll get to that next week.

From Him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work.
Ephesians 4:16

A Gardener’s Gospel – Week 16

The garden is going through a growth spurt. Andre, the lawn, is showing signs that his bald patches may soon fill in, the St John’s Wort is growing like a triffid and the box wood is sprouting shoots faster than a postman clocking off for lunch. It’s time to get out the power tools.

I struggled with hand shears for years, snipping and snapping one shoot at a time. It was slow and cumbersome and the result was decidedly uneven. Then, after helping with a house-clearing, I inherited an electric hedge trimmer which I insisted on calling my ‘chain saw’. The first day on the job, all revved up with the immense power at my disposal, I sawed my way through a dog wood, a box wood, a laurel and a bank of rose bushes. With eyes flashing and blades whirring, I spun around to tackle a Virginia creeper when suddenly the saw went dead. To my horror I realised that I’d forgotten about Power Tool Rule #1 – Keep The Cord Away From The Blade. And to my greater horror I saw that my dad and husband were laughing at me through the French window with that ‘typical woman’ look on their faces.

Baptism of the Spirit

In 1992 (when I was 22) I experienced what some people call the ‘baptism of the Holy Spirit’, the ‘anointing’ or the ‘second blessing’ – a release of the charismatic gifts of God into my life. It was a year or so before the so-called Toronto Blessing made headlines around the world and I was all alone in my flat. Although I happily attended a non-charismatic Baptist church I was a frequent visitor to interdenominational ‘revival’ meetings, Pentecostal churches and Holy Spirit ‘seeker’ services in and around the small university town of Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape of South Africa.

I had been up for prayer to receive ‘the blessing’ a number of times but just got irritated when I felt the over-enthusiastic pressure of hands on my forehead as if they were trying to force me down. That just cheesed me off – if I was going to be ‘slain in the Spirit’, I wanted to be damn sure (if you’ll pardon the expression) that it was God doing the slaying. I was diagnosed as having a resistant spirit and sent home with a prescription for a regular dose of 1 Corinthians 12.

Damming it up

For weeks, whenever I prayed, I saw a picture of a dam wall with water trickling out of little cracks. At first I wasn’t sure what it meant, but after a while I realised that the dam represented my life and that the water was the Holy Spirit, building up in all His power, waiting to be released. But nothing happened. Until one evening while I was sitting at home reading the Bible and praying quietly I suddenly felt a bubbling inside my throat. It was a physical sensation, like that feeling you get when you need to burp, and I opened my mouth to let it out. But instead of a belch a torrent of words burst forth – I didn’t know what they meant, but I knew, without a doubt, that they were words of worship to God. So I let them come. And then I began to sing, in this beautiful language, feeling each word as it formed in my mouth and releasing it melodically into the air. As I did so I felt an incredible warmth spread through my whole body. Then I saw the dam again and this time the sluice gates opened and a torrent of hydro power exploded out. Then I began to shake – my hands first, then my arms, shoulders and feet. It was like having an electric current surge through me – but it didn’t hurt at all.

I don’t have space to go into all that happened that incredible night, but suffice to say it was the most amazing experience of worship I had ever had. And the emotion that was paramount was love: an all-consuming love for God.

Getting to know the gifts

That was the start of my life as a charismatic Christian. Soon after that I began to have words of knowledge and wisdom for people; things that I could not have known unless God told me. These words usually revealed hidden secrets, fears and hurts that were stopping people from having a closer relationship with God – usually Christians, but sometimes non-Christians too. That’s how I knew that what I was experiencing was a true gift – it brought healing and restoration and has continued to do so until this day. But I’m aware that not everyone’s experience with the charismata (the gifts of the Spirit) is a positive one. Like power tools, these gifts can work wonders in our gardens, but if mishandled, can also cause damage.

Over the next couple of weeks I will share with you some of the good and bad experiences I’ve had as a charismatic Christian including the hurt that has been caused to others, and provide a bit of insight into what these gifts are. Power tools can be a blessing but they need to be handled with care.

You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
Acts 1:8

A Gardener’s Gospel – week 15

I opened my curtains this morning to the beautiful sight of a Norwegian Whitebeam bursting out in full leaf. The silvery green clusters are like fingers on a flexed hand that seemingly, overnight, have been flicked from a clenched fist. But you know what? I knew this was going to happen. While the rest of my garden doesn’t always seem to live up to its promises, the Whitebeam, that towers over everything, can be trusted to come through year after year.

God’s not a head master

Last week I wrote about what we can’t expect from God – answered prayers in exactly the way we expect. I hope I haven’t dampened anyone’s faith. Because I know too that God does deliver on his promises. What I was talking about was presuming upon God with prayers based not on knowledge of Him but on a formula. This does not mean that God is not consistent – He is; He’s consistent in His character.

The Bible tells us that God is always good, always kind and always on the lookout for doing what’s best for us. But, as many of us know, sometimes that goodness and kindness are masked behind ‘tough love’. Yet if all God showed us was tough love, He would be no more than a head master, shaping our character through education. God is a loving Father. Sometimes we need a hug more than we need a life lesson, and we can trust God to know when to deliver and when to withhold.

A divine cuddle

Dorothy, a friend of mine, tells me of a time when she was feeling so low that she cried out to God: ‘I don’t need anything from you other than a cuddle. And not a spiritual cuddle, a physical cuddle. I need to feel you’. But Dorothy knew that was not likely to happen. That evening she went to a prayer meeting and there was a man there who was just visiting the group. Dorothy knew him in passing, but nothing more. Suddenly he got up, walked up to her and gave her the biggest bear hug she’d ever had. ‘There,’ he said, ‘that’s from the Father’.

I love that story. I wish it had happened to me. I’m one of those people who tends to expect tough love more than daddy love, but when I see the Whitebeam flashing its leaves I’m reminded that God never fails to deliver. Good things. Kind things. Nice things.

A cup of kindness

In Catholic tradition there’s a story of a woman called Veronica who gives a cup of water to Jesus on his way to the crucifixion. It’s a simple act of kindness to a dying man. Sometimes, I cry out for someone to give me some water. I have a prophetic gift and frequently receive words of knowledge or prophecy for other people. Even when I’m feeling low myself, I speak what I’m given. And it’s wonderful to see the pain lift from people’s faces as they realise that God does care about them enough to pass on a message through a stranger. Sometimes that word is a warning or correction (never fun to deliver, I can tell you!) but other times it’s a word of kindness and compassion as God reminds us that He is a good God who cares for us. Everyone can speak words of kindness of course, but a word of knowledge, that reveals something hidden that only God and the person involved knew, tells the recipient that God is the one delivering this hug.

Hot chocolate

Last year I had a prophetic word for someone who attended my church. I didn’t know her. A mutual friend brought her to me because she felt I might have something to share with her as she had been bereaved five times in twelve months. I prayed with her and saw a picture of her smashing up a bar of chocolate with a hammer in great anger. Once her anger was vented, she knelt down and gathered up the pieces of broken chocolate, put them in a pot and made hot chocolate. I then saw a line of people at her front door all waiting to get some hot chocolate.

The woman started to cry as I told her this. She said that she was diabetic and just the day before she felt a craving to buy a bar of chocolate and make hot chocolate from it. She said she felt it was the only thing that could bring her comfort. Blow me down, but I think that’s amazing! The interpretation of the word of course is that God will take the brokenness in her life – some of it caused by her own anger – and turn it into a source of comfort for others. I believe this woman will be used powerfully to help others who have been bereaved. That word was a source of immense comfort to her – like a cup of hot chocolate, I suppose, like God delivering on His promises.

The Lord is faithful to all his promises and loving towards all He has made.
Psalm 145:13b

A Gardener’s Gospel – Week 14

Well I’m back from holiday to a disappointingly patchy lawn. If you remember, the morning before I dashed off, I did a manic repair job: spreading compost and scattering seed. The instructions on the box said: guaranteed growth in seven days. Mmmm, should I ask for my money back? There’s definitely been growth, but in the wrong places. The existing tufts have sprouted up and now look a bit like Andre Agassi with a comb-over. I suspected this might happen; but I hoped it wouldn’t. I realised that I hadn’t prepared the soil as well as I should have, but with limited time, I prayed that what I did would be enough. It wasn’t.

Magical thinking

My prayer life is like that sometimes. I read verses in the Bible such as ‘If you have faith as small as a mustard seed you could tell this mountain to move and it would,’ and ‘whatever you ask in my name will be given to you.’ My faith stirs and I bring those impossible mountains to God – my mother to be healed, my brother to be saved, a missing child to be found. I close my eyes like a child myself then open them again in the hope of seeing a miracle. But more often than not, I’m disappointed.

The Christian psychologist, M. Scott Peck, calls this ‘magical thinking’ and, in his book The Road Less Travelled cites it as a sign of emotional and spiritual immaturity. When I first read that I thought Peck was denying the power of faith, but as I’ve grown older, I realise that he is right.

Abracadabra shazam!

When prayer is simply a reciting of a formula: ‘God said it, I believe it, He’ll do it,’ it is in danger of becoming nothing more than the recipe for a magic potion – abracadabra shazam! We wave our magic wand (or the wand we believe God has given us) and expect a miracle to take place before our eyes. And when it doesn’t happen, there are only two possible answers, either I didn’t cast the spell well enough, or God didn’t live up to His part of the bargain.

The Entitlement Culture

I once wrote an article for a Christian magazine called The Spirit of Entitlement. In it, I recounted the story of a young man who was in my Christian Union group at university. Like Luther on the Wittenberg door, he pinned his reasons for what he believed about God, but unlike Luther, his were reasons why he no longer believed in God. He said:

My prayers have not been answered. The promises I believed in have not come to pass. There are only two possible conclusions: either there’s something wrong with me or there’s something wrong with God. I know that I’ve done everything I can, so I’ve kept up my side of the bargain, but God has not come through on His. I can only conclude that God has lied, and seeing God can’t lie, this leads me to the inevitable conclusion that He cannot really exist.

This young man graduated soon after that, and I have no idea what happened to him. I can only pray that he realises there was a third conclusion he didn’t consider: that his understanding of God’s promises might have been wrong. He believed he was entitled to certain things that should have been delivered in a pre-determined way – new growth guaranteed in seven days.

Praying outside of the box

But what if God wants us to grow in a different direction than that for which we prayed. What if the method we think He will use is not the one ‘on the box’. What if the answers to our prayers clash with the answers to someone else’s. So many what ifs. But here’s another one:

What if prayer is not so much a wish list as a love letter to the giver of all good things? We can only say a prayer has not ‘worked’ if the only outcome we recognise is the one on the box. And yet, at times, God does answer prayers in ways we hope for. I asked for a house of my own: I now have one. I yearned for a husband and now he’s here. There were jobs I wanted that I was given – but many others that I did not get.

We so easily forget that God answers prayers according to His will, not ours. If what we ask is in line with what He has already determined is right for us (note, not necessarily nice for us), the prayer will be answered. But I’m in danger of slipping into formulaic thinking once again. Prayer is about so much more than getting what we want.

Getting to know the Gardener

Prayer is conversation. Prayer is relationship. Prayer is a means of growth and getting to know the Great Gardener. If we know Him or ourselves better after we have prayed then it’s really worked. If we spend more time getting to know Him through prayer then we may have a glimpse of what His will for us might be. Abracadabra shazam!

This is the confidence we have in approaching God; that if we ask anything according to His will, he hears us. And if we know that He hears us – whatever we ask – we know that we have what we asked of Him.
1 John 5:14-15

A Gardener’s Gospel – Week 13

At last, my long-awaited holiday has come. Seven days in a farm cottage will do wonders for my emotional, spiritual and physical health. It should do my lawn some good too. The Hound from Hell is also going on holiday – not with us. So yesterday morning, with the dog shipped off and the family about to ship out, I slipped outside, grabbed a bag of compost and strewed it over what was left of my lawn. A quick rake and scatter of grass seed and the lawn was prepped for recovery.

Emergency repairs

Yes, I should have done more. The ground should have been scarified and left to breathe, and I should have watered it all in, but I didn’t have time. I pray it will be enough. The box of the lawn repair kit promises ‘new growth within seven days’ – and that’s all it’s going to have. I’ll need to figure out how to keep the Hound from Hell off it when we return.

As I was scattering the seed I couldn’t help thinking of the Parable of the Sower:

A farmer went out to sow his seed. Some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on stony places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop – a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.
Matt 13:3-8

Over my 27 years as a Christian (I first responded to God’s call when I was 11) I’ve seen people who fit into all of these categories.

People of the Path

The seed that falls on the path struggles to find root in soil hardened by years of travelling. People of the path believe they know where they’ve come from and where they are going. Lucy (not her real name) was once my boss. I really looked up to her: she was beautiful, gifted and heading very quickly towards the top of her profession. When I scattered seeds before her, she simply brushed them out of her way. With her eyes focused on where her path was leading, she had little time, or, as she thought, even less need for God in her life.

People of the Stones

Cindy was a troubled soul. Married young and divorced soon after, this young woman tried to take her life despite having a four-year-old daughter who needed her more than life itself. One night, sitting in her car outside my parent’s house, she poured out her heart and asked me for help. I scattered some seed and told her about God. Immediately it began to take root and for the next few days I saw this young woman bloom with the promise of who she could be. Unfortunately, I was just visiting and a week later had to go back to university. I tried to arrange for Cindy to go to church while I was away, but it’s hard to disciple someone remotely. Six months later she had turned her back on God and her face towards her old life. There were just too many stones in her soil.

People of the Thorns

Carmen is a Christian. She gave her life to God as a young teenager but now, in her late 20s, is struggling to live a Christian life. The Bible says she shouldn’t have sex before marriage, but God has not yet provided her with a husband. What is she to do? Carmen considers herself a ‘professional’ person, but her church is more blue-collar than white. She’s shifted around a lot, trying to find ‘people like her’, but time and again, she’s disappointed. At work she’s ashamed to tell her colleagues she’s a Christian as the only ones she knows are embarrassingly un-intellectual. So like the seed in the thorns, Carmen struggles to bear fruit.

People of the Soil

I once led a youth group and spent a lot of time nurturing a few young women. One of them, Angela, had soil so well prepared by the Holy Spirit that when I scattered the seed it took root, grew and within a few years, she was leading the youth group. Fifteen years later, she is still hungry for God.

I would like to think that this is where I belong too. The word of God has taken root in my life, and, I know, I’ve borne fruit. I know too that at times I’ve allowed a path to run through me, thorns to choke and stones to clutter. Thorns and stones can be removed and paths bulldozed up, but it takes time, effort and co-operation with the Great Gardener. By God’s grace, he has prepared my soil well. Now I look forward to the harvest.

Blessed is the one whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and on His law meditates day and night. He is like a stream planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not whither. Whatever he does prospers.
Psalm 1:2-3