C’mon, is being saved from sin and getting glorious eternal life so bad?

C’mon, is being saved from sin and getting glorious eternal life so bad?

Phil Lowe

A few short months after my Liptoning, a UHT Christian (someone who has been a Christian for a long, longer life than I) warned me that the honeymoon period would wear off.

If you’ve read my earlier blogs, you’ll know how taken aback I was by all the joy that kept bubbling up as I cautiously got to know God and Jesus. The feeling of anticipation I would awake with daily in my stomach. It was like a split personality disorder. My before Christ (BC) secular self would lie there wondering, “ooh, what’s planned today that I’m so excited about?” Then my AC side would go, “Yay, I get to spend more time getting to know G&J.” images At which point my BC split personality would roll her eyes at such happy clappiness and attempt to batten all this joyful oddness down. Which was like shoving Disney’s Genie back in the lamp. No way G&J were getting crammed back into a small lamp. Let your light shine and all that…

So I was surprised to be warned that this feeling of delight would fade. Was that the reason why I wasn’t meeting more Christians with the same joy bubbling over? Did it wear off? Would this astounding ‘zing’ feeling disappear overnight and leave me acting like Marvin from The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy?

Just lately I have been noticing a dourness on the edge of my faith. The technicolour was greying. Was this the macular degeneration of joy I’d been warned about? I tried to pinpoint why and realised I had spent an unusual amount of time with some seriously serious Christians. On missions. Saving souls. Which is indeed serious stuff. But each ‘Thank God’, each faithful gratitude expressed for a miracle, didn’t rumble with the joy. It rumbled with important seriousness. And so I, almost unconsciously, packed away my joy in order to be more grave and ‘Godly’.

I ended the honeymoon. Not God. He was still waiting for me to come back to the beach, drink Pina Coladas and walk in the rain. Return to the crazy teenage ‘somersaulting stomach’ love that marked the start of all this, no matter how embarrassing I found it at the time.  I missed it. Missed Him.

A few months back I read Francis Chan’s Crazy Love.  As Chan puts it: ‘The God of the universe — the Creator of nitrogen and pine needles, galaxies and e-minor — loves us with a radical, unconditional, self-sacrificing love. And what is our typical response? We go to church, sing songs, and try not to cuss.’

Chan writes the answer to religious complacency isn’t working harder at a list of do’s and don’ts — it’s falling in love with God. ‘Because when you’re wildly in love with someone, it changes everything.’

It’s true. I fell head over heels, I wanted to hang out with the object of my affection all the time. I was Madonna ‘True Blue’ giggly and ‘Crazy For You’ all at the same time. And while plenty of people talk about the honeymoon part of a marriage ending as you grow as a couple, I really don’t think God and Jesus want us to grow with them into joyless matrimony.

Look at what He did. Everlasting, eternal love. Radical, unconditional, self-sacrificing love.

And there it is. I think the joy gets lost because too often Christians get caught up in the self-sacrificial nature of what God did for us in Jesus. I mean, that’s a serious gift, right? So, mistakenly, we confuse sacrifice that is the willing, loving, giving of our hearts to God with the sacrifice that is serious, enduring loss. But Jesus died so we may have life. It’s not loss, it’s gain.

It’s a gift to be taken seriously, yes, but no need to be all serious about it. I don’t think God measures the level of our love for Him by how seriously we behave in regards to what He gifted us. Whenever a Christian nods seriously and says, “You know, Jesus died for you,” I think the response ought to be a grinning “I know! How amazing and astounding is that? AND he resurrected. Fantastic!” Stop getting stuck and serious around the death bit, and focus on the three days after.

God’s crazy love can make us all amazing and astounding too, remember, because He gifted a bit of Him into us when He did it. You simply have to accept the amount of love poured out on you, the gift of heaven promised you, and, oh my God, please enjoy it. Smile with it, shine with it, dance in the rain with it and drink Pina Coladas.

It’s a great thing, falling in love every day.

Footnote: a big thank you to Tim MacBride over at Coffee With The King who has just started a great series about Luke 7 34-50 on precisely this. There are no Godincidences that his blog appeared in my feed just as I was pondering faith, joy and honeymoons.

One year old & 10,000 readers. Dear God, how did that happen?

Phil Lowe

oneweekinaugust.com is celebrating over 10,000 readers. Had you asked me 18 months ago if I could imagine myself writing this sort of blog, with a Bible app on my phone, an aural affection for the Pandora ‘Songs of Worship’ channel, that I would have been Lipton’d and be working with a global charity broadcasting the gospel to a few billion people in the hardest-to-reach parts of the world? I’d have checked if the person you knew was the same one whose mind and body I inhabit.tumblr_l2ez3gGb1O1qzoozmo1_500

Scarily reminiscent of Matthew 16:25: For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.…

As my recent run in with the horned mother trucker tested, this blog is not an ego-feeder of readership numbers, shares and likes. It isn’t. Honestly. And yet..

When Jesus told them the Great Commission, his first century disciples didn’t have the benefit of digital media, social sharing and blogging immediacy. When the resurrected Jesus called his followers to baptise all nations in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, there was no internet. No bible colleges and theology degrees. Simply Jesus’ disciples, blessed with the holy spirit, getting out there on foot and letting as many as possible know.

Today it’s all shifted. Ministering and disciple-making is seen as the domain of those who have studied up – with the correct certificate hanging on the wall, and the right stole and cassock hanging in the wardrobe. Which I wasn’t aware of when I started this blog. Too new, too fresh and too oblivious to ‘right’ procedure. Back then, surprised by G, J and the SAP (smart alec pastor), I simply wrote what I observed during my slightly madcap Christian journey. It kicked-off partly as a way to process, partly as a means to ‘come out’ to my atheist friends. But it has grown…into I’m not sure what.

A kind reader sent me am encouraging note after my mother trucker blog: I think anyone who sticks their head up in the trenches like you do, will get shot at by the Evil One.. no surprises. The surprise is the WAY he does it..the bullets he uses, tailored to impact just you. It’s happened to any of us who use our gifts to further the Kingdom.

Me, upon reading that comment, in no particular order:

  • I’m not sticking my head up, I’m hiding behind a keyboard here aren’t I?
  • Further the Kingdom? Dear Lord, I hope you’ve got some seriously good roadsigns up for people. I do head off-piste…sorry..

Yet, I can’t ignore the numbers. It must make enough pithy sense for people to be engaged. So, completely accidentally, this has become a ‘baptism by blogging’. Digitally dunking as many readers as possible into a river of words, thoughts and my take on modern-day discipleship.

Discipleship – Then and Now

Refer to disciples, and thoughts turn to those early followers of Christ. Praying, worshipping, loving, giving, and evangelising men and women who refused to keep the truth of the gospel to themselves. Yet, God still desires disciples today—ordinary people to give up themselves so God can use them to do extraordinary things. …whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.…

Trouble is, that’s all a bit radical to many in the modern day church. But for the early believers, that was normal. It was what you did once you had hung around with a grace-filled, other-focused man who taught a radical new way to live, performed miracles, was persecuted,  crucified and CAME BACK TO LIFE.

Read those four words in capitals again. Imagine it in the modern day. Wouldn’t that sort of encounter shake you up? Rock your world? Make you want to get out there and yell, “OMG, you should meet this bloke!”

To those early believers, it was normal Christianity. And these men and women—empowered and motivated by the Holy Spirit—turned their world upside down for the sake of Christ. In short, they were true disciples. They followed. They believed.

I’m a fairly dodgy disciple. I fail daily at being Christ-like and other focused. I imagine him peeking out at me from behind his fingers, shaking his head, looking to his left and saying, “Dad, she really didn’t just say that, did she..? Oh..yes, yes she did… Hang on, I’ve got it.” And he leans forward and whispers grace in my ear.

It is those odd whispers that form these blogs. I have to write to pick over the raw gems that God shoves at me. Mostly, it’s an almost physical compulsion to have another go at explaining what too much church and too much religion has lost in translation. My way of gently unpacking the joy that I never expected, the awe that keeps me thankful, and the fun and humour I have in a relationship with G&J.

I don’t think I’ll ever be the “OMG, you should meet this bloke!” yelling type. Instead, I prefer to think of these blog posts as a modern take on 18th century calling cards. A basis of forging an introduction.

Bless you for reading and sharing.

Sorry doesn’t have to be the hardest word

Phil Lowe

I had the the biggest shock of my married life some years back when my beautiful husband Big T shared the ‘noise’ in his head: what he had to do next, what had happened before, what may happen in the next minute, what may not. It was like he lived a constant risk-assessment dialogue, a hamster scurrying round and round on its wheel.imgres-1

So then I started asking friends and colleagues about their inner noise. It became apparent there were a lot of mental hamsters on an exhausting road to nowhere. I reported back, dismayed, to Big T. Intrigued, he looked at me and asked, “Don’t you?”

“Well, no, not really,” I pondered, surprised. “My head’s a fairly placid place. Sure, I know I’ve things to do, but I don’t fret too much over what happened yesterday and what could happen tomorrow.”

This has been my inner-world for as long as I can remember. Which strikes many who know me as odd, because my brain tends to zip through life at warp speed. However, just because my brain processes fast, it doesn’t mean my mind goes along for the ride. I figure I can fly with the wind, rather than be buffeted by it.

At a midnight Christmas Eve youth service, after a poignant poetry/drama about an incredibly busy career woman who finally found ‘quiet space’ in the understanding of Jesus and grace, the SAP asked me if it resonated. He, quite clearly, thought that was me. Yet all the way through the drama segment I had been baffled by the inability of the character to accept stillness and silence, of how her mind was always scurrying ahead to the next meeting, the next ‘place to be’.

God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit (G,J & HS) didn’t need to swoop in and fix my busy mind. That wasn’t required. Rather, they improved the landscape. The natural stillness of my mind has now been filled with an awe, joy and wonder that is far easier and more fulfilling than the non-attached striving I mistakenly thought was the path to its ongoing quietness. When I ran from the hound of heaven, it wasn’t because my mind was too busy on its hamster wheel. I ran because I didn’t know any better. If I knew of all the love, care and gifts I would receive, would I have stopped sprinting sooner? Hmm, not sure. Allowing love in is often far harder than shutting it out…

Yet, I also understand how grace can calm a racing heart and apply balm to a busy mind. That by Jesus’ gift of the cross, we may all understand a grace that tells the hamster to quieten down, get off the wheel, and stop running hard on the spot.

After my recent horned Mother Trucker struggles, it would have been easy to stay in a ‘how could I almost do that?’ woe is me, breast-beating state of mind. But, thankfully, I’m not wired that way and, really, what’s the point? I apologised to the SAP (who dismissed it with such ‘all good, no dramas’ aplomb it makes me wonder if he’s been devil-ditched a few times, poor bastard) and it’d only continue to make a mockery of grace if I rolled around in sackcloth and ashes. Plus, you know, I’m in PR. Sackcloth and ashes are soooo not me, daaalink. It’s all Prada and Louboutin over here.

You know Elton John’s lyric, “Sorry seems to to be the hardest word”?  My Mum was a little bit tethered to that. She took pride in never apologising. I know others who are the same. Instead of apologies, they close down all dialogue by saying, “I’m not going to argue with you about this,” and therefore protect their position. It was me too, once. I’d grown up with a role-model who taught me apology meant weakness. I had to learn forgiveness because it wasn’t anything I’d ever been taught.

Imagine instead if sorry was the easiest word to say, and forgiveness was the easiest gift to bestow. What would that look like?

It looks like God and Jesus, that’s what.

Newsflash: Mother Truckin’ Devil steals Smart-Alec Pastor

Newsflash: Mother Truckin’ Devil steals Smart-Alec Pastor

Phil Lowe

imagesSatan, Lucifer, Mephistopheles, Diabolus, Prince of Darkness. Or, as I now call him after the weekend: Horned Mother Trucker.

According to a 2009 survey by the Barna Group, the majority of Christians do not believe that Satan or the devil actually exists.2 However, according to an AP-AOL news poll, up to 97% of evangelical Christians believe that angels exist.3

Now this is an irony, given that – contrary to the beliefs of many – Satan is not the opposite of God (an anti-god) but rather an angel who rebelled against God. So he’s an angel too. Without the harp and cream cheese.

Much as I’d like to dismiss him as some safe, Prada-wearing character, I have to own the Horned Mother Trucker is far bigger and scarier than that. How do I know? Well, scripture tells me on the one hand. Biblical descriptions of him include everything from an angel of light to a ravenous beast.

Both Christ and Paul were so aware of his influence that their teaching is filled with warnings and dangers (Matthew 24:24; II Corinthians 11:13-15; II Thessalonians 2:7-11; Galatians 1:8). Yet some theologians are persuaded he is non-existent – and therein lies the danger. If you don’t realise you have an enemy to fight, how can you be prepared for the war?

‘Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil,’ (Eph. 6:11). Wiles have to do with cunning or skill. The Bible teaches the devil – as he works his craft against us – personifies wiles. He lies to us, wants to trap us, discourage us and snare us. He goes to work daily to produce discouragement, confusion, indifference and imbalance. He will steal our joy if we allow him.

This weekend past I allowed him. How do I know he exists? Because, outside what I have read in the scripture, this weekend my finger hovered over the delete button in my phone’s contacts list. I was set to erase The SAP. 

No, this isn’t some crazy cliff-hanging blog post where I randomly make up SAP storylines for creative adventures. In the here and now I was ready to make a deleting sweep through one of my most significant Christian touchstones. Whatever possessed me? Don’t answer that.

It started with the Suffer The Little Children blog. Readers told me it left them in tears. That it was ‘power-full’. Amongst the best I had ever written. And every compliment left me flayed raw. To know your writing evokes an emotional response is most probably the greatest gift for a writer. Yet on this topic? The compliments were bitter. Yes, I wanted readers to think. I wanted to examine Love Thy Neighbour. But by choosing to imagine how a mother would be with her child in those final, drowning moments was possibly an imagination too far and by the end it left me empty. With defences down.

So in the horned Mother Trucker crept. ‘What difference can you make?’ he whispered. ‘Where’s Jesus in all this? How does meek and mild and tuning the other cheek help that drowned boy? And what about your own sins? What if you get there and, despite grace, Jesus says he does not know you.  Because, what, you write a blog about Christianity referencing a smart-alec pastor? Ha, you reckon it’s about God, Jesus and Christianity. What about the SAP? Hasn’t the SAP been turned into some news hook, some story-writing character idolatry? How often do you check the readership numbers? The likes and shares and comments. Are you still sure it’s about God and Jesus?”

I was raw, tired, and despairing enough over small drowned boys in red t-shirts to listen. And wonder. I pressed play on ‘Clear The Stage’ and these lyrics tumbled at me like barbs:

Anything I put before my God is an idol. Anything I want with all my heart is an idol. Anything I can’t stop thinking of is an idol. Anything that I give all my love is an idol. 

So I did what all good introverts do when they are feeling flayed and bitter and despairing. I took cover. Dived deeper. Removed myself from Facebook. And tried to pray. Please let me warn you, if you ever hit this sort of low, Jimmy Needham’s ‘Clear The Stage’ is not the soundtrack with which to do it. It’s beautiful at any other time. But not when you’re already wrestling in the deep:

Take a break from all the plans that you have made
And sit at home alone and wait for god to whisper
Beg him please to open up his mouth and speak
And pray for real upon your knees until they blister
Shine the light on every corner of your life
Until the pride and lust and lies are in the open
Then read the word and put to test the things you’ve heard
Until your heart and soul are stirred and rocked and broken

Trouble was, after writing that blog, my heart and soul were already stirred and rocked and broken. Shining light on those devilish whispers of ‘pride and lust and lies’ just added to my sense of anguish. There were tears. And stomping. Lots of, ‘well, why the hell would You deliver me a SAP, then, because You are omnipotent, so You knew already what would happen, so what am I meant to understand from this and I am TIRED. There are toddlers DROWNING. And I’m meant to get saved by MEEK and MILD Jesus?!’

So I arrived at the conclusion that I should cease all blogs because it HURT. And if there was some weird idolatry shit going down over readership spikes and SAP story lines, then I’d have to rip out my eye, suck it up and go it alone. No temptation here, no siree. Open contacts. Search The SAP. Finger hovers to press delete.

Trouble is, I couldn’t do it. Which made me wonder if I was being a bad and unfaithful servant, which led me straight back to the whole “I won’t know you” scenario. But another voice was whispering this didn’t make sense. God doesn’t pull the rug from under us.

The Horned Mother Trucker had cleverly made it all about me. Me, my self and I. Am I really proud about my writing? Is it all about the shares and comments? Honestly, no. But then – then, in the dark and feeling miserable about humanity – it was a wily reverse psychology.

James 4:7: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” Until then, I’d not been resisting. I’d allowed myself to be sucked down the rabbit hole where the echoes of doubts became louder and louder. I didn’t have it in me to resist, to take any action. But I could submit.

So I knelt down on the floor next to the bed, put my forehead on the mattress, and said, “Ok. I’m not strong enough to delete this number. The SAP’s a good guy. I value him. So if I need to sort out pride and readership in connection to this and the SAP, You are going to have to fry my phone or something. You take over. I can’t.”

No lightning strikes. But I was well into self-flagellation by that point. So bruised, battered and bewildered – at the very lowest point in all my Christian journey to date when the SAP would have been yelling, “Pick up the phone and call me!” – I said: “OK, God, I’m admitting I’m not strong enough to delete it. So I’ll stop writing. And I won’t call and get his opinion. That’ll sort out the bad and unfaithful bit, right?”

Again, God was strangely quiet. I grieved for the next two days for a toddler in a red t-shirt and a SAP.

Until 2am today. Shoved awake. With a ridiculous urge to download the last in the SAP’s recent sermon series on Daniel. I tossed and turned and ignored it. And it kept shoving. Was this Mother Trucker temptation or God trying to tell me something?

I grabbed my phone and plugged in my headphones. “Screw idolatry, God. You’d better not be messing with me,” I muttered.

Not messing at all. God did one better. Daniel 7. With cross reference to Revelation 19: 11-16. That so grabbed me at 2am I had to replay it over a few times, before opening the Bible and digging into Revelation some more.

No meek and mild Jesus there. No turning the other cheek. Instead there was the warrior Lord ‘dressed in a robe dipped in blood’ with ‘king of kings and lord of lords’ tattooed on his thigh. That was who I sought. Treading the ‘winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty’ was the warrior I wanted to sweep up and defend that drowned, refugee child.

Was I instantly revived and healed? I wish. But it gave me some fantastic lessons. And as the horned Mother Trucker whispered that I’d got away with it, no need to mention this to anyone, I smiled fiercely. Because I’m not the only one who struggles. Who gets sucked into wily, hurtful, joy-stealing temptation.

Which is why I write this blog. Which is why, taking a deep breath, I admitted to the SAP I’d almost deleted him from my phone. Because by mentioning it to everyone, rather than being ashamed about it, I shine a light on my darkest corners and shove that Mother Trucker out.

Mother Trucker almost made an absolute mockery of my testimony. And that just pisses me off. Did he think that my God and my freakin’ warrior Lord Jesus would be so evil as to deliver a miracle at the end of the phone in order that I be properly introduced to them and then tell me all that hilarious, honest, joyful adventure was false?

No siree. Get behind me you Mother Trucker. I am stealing back my joy, smiling fiercely and telling you to watch your back.  My warrior Lord is on the throne.

Suffer the little children

Suffer the little children

Phil Lowe

My almost 11 year old son lies in his bunk tonight. He is burrowed as only a sleeping boy can do, wombat-like beneath hillocks of doona and pillow. Lean and sturdy, I see little of the toddler he once was.

Until I see Aylan, face down in the surf, echoing the repose most parents recognise: bottom up, face-planted, soles of shoes patterning outwards. images

There I see the echo of my boy, now grown through the gateways of life and memory-making that Aylan will never gain. His soles will not make patterns running in the sand. His starfish fingers will never again grasp his Father’s, as my 11 year old will do this coming Fathers’s Day.

I pray Aylan grasps Our Father’s hand. That this suffering child will be suffered by the One who somehow sees redemption in a world that has so skewed its priorities.

I am ashamed. Over backyard bbqs we smile at escalating house prices, quietly smug at locked up equity while we lock up others for fear of sharing boundless plains that are not as spare as we like to sing.

I am ashamed. Our churches squabble over marriage acts and how to speak on same sex unions while Rome burns, Greek islands sink and small boys swallow sea water. It clogs their lungs: burning, gasping, splashing,  their tiny star fish hands seeking purchase and sneakered feet frantically kicking.

Did he cry for his mama, do you think? As the waves broke over his head, as he sobbed and cried with fear, did she hear him and, frantically, did she try to hold him up? Did she use all of her last mama’s strength to push him, float him, hold him? To tell him not to be afraid, that she loved him, that he wasn’t alone? Did she try to sing him one last lullaby as the waves pulled them down?

I am ashamed. That I will, one day soon, have to explain to my son why we let small children drown, why we fail to love our neighbours as ourselves.

And on that final day, when I stand before Him, what answer will I give? That it seemed too hard and far away for me to make a difference? And then, if by His grace I walk on in, what then? I picture a small boy in a red t-shirt, his siblings and mother coming over and offering their forgiveness – and it is just too large and bitter a lump to swallow in my tear-clogged throat.

“See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.”

Matthew 18:10 NIV

How an apostrophe saved my soul

How an apostrophe saved my soul

Phil Lowe

It must be a tough gig being a pastor. As someone reminded me, “terrible pay, but the retirement benefits are eternal.” Working weekends and a Godly number of public holidays. Possibly less time with your own family than you’d hope, given you’ve the whole family of Christ you’re ministering to and, like most families, we can probably be pushy, demanding buggers on occasion. images-1

You probably get less thanks than you’d like, and, when you do, you have to do the modest, Christian thing and allow that it is God’s Holy Spirit at work, and nothing remotely to do with you.

Politely, I would like to advise all pastors, in fact anyone at all involved in pastoral care, that that is bollocks.

Accept all compliments gracefully when you receive them, but, please, accept them. Don’t brush them off. God may be working through you, but, boy, you have to allow it and, I sincerely pray, you are good at it.

Most caring flock members will let you know when we love a sermon because we want you to be encouraged. We want you to know that what you are doing makes a difference. Deflecting the compliment diminishes the grace in which it is intended.

Please, look us in the eye, say thank-you, then, if it makes if easier for you to deal with, throw a few mental words up to Him along the lines of, “Thanks for Your help, I think they got it. Don’t let me get all puffed up about it, but, wow, how encouraging to be complimented.” You can blush, too, if it helps.

Plus, not to put too much pressure on you, it’s the smallest, tiniest things that make the difference. Like me. A writer. Who, quietly impressed by my first phone call with the psychic, confident smart-alec pastor (SAP), let loose with a flurry of questioning emails.

The SAP replied, punctuation perfect.

To a writer, the correct use of an apostrophe can make or break a relationship. Imagine if the SAP, horrors, had replied, ‘Gr8 2 here from u.’ I’d have pressed delete, rolling my eyes.

When the SAP correctly used ’round for around, it was that perfect, tiny, correctly-used bit of typography that kept me reading.

Saved by an apostrophe. Good going God. And SAP.

Pokies, Porn and Positano: It’s a sin, part 2.

Pokies, Porn and Positano: It’s a sin, part 2.

Phil Lowe

It was a day for honesty. I was in a dark place. I was about to meet the SAP and, as I sat there waiting for him to arrive, I rehearsed what I was going to say.

“I need help. I’m having ongoing lustful thoughts about someone who is not my husband. I pledged money for the church offertory, I don’t even think we can afford it; actually, I know we can’t because I put it into the poker machine this morning in the hope of improving our cash-flow…” Oh boy. This was going to be a horrendous conversation.

Photo: Mick Tsikas: AAP
Photo: Mick Tsikas: AAP

In he walks. Chai is served. Small talk. Then: “So what did you want to talk to me about?” he asked.

Deep breathe. “SAP, I’m done.  I met this woman through work and I have tried for months to ignore it, but there’s something there that’s more than friendship. After a few too many wines I fancy the hell out of her. She wants to fly me to her villa in Positano next week and, I don’t care what you say, life is too short not to act on this sort of electricity. So I’m going.

“And, look, while I’m unburdening my soul, I may as well tell you she’s made her money making porn movies. I’m going to help market them, they really aren’t as bad as you think.”

Just kidding (I think the SAP may have reached for his defibrillator with those opening paragraphs. Or fish oil, given he doesn’t remember any such conversation). With the subtlety of a sledgehammer, I simply want to make a small point about sin. That it all has equal weight.

Yet I’m wondering if readers will admit to any paragraph in particular that caused stronger feelings?

Was it a) my mental adultery b) the poker machines c) my lesbian porn-star lover d) that I’d pledged to the church offertory with no intention of stumping up with the goods e) all of the above f) none of the above.

I hope you picked f). The SAP would have done if that conversation had ever taken place. Because sin isn’t something we do. It’s what we are. The ‘what we are’ bit is tricky, as people can get upset being called a sinner. But rather than thinking sin as a judgement call, just think of it as a descriptor. The description: our distance from God.

If I ever sit down in front of the SAP and blurt out something like the first four paragraphs of this blog, I’m sure he’d just ask: “But what about Jesus, Phil?”  With concern, kindness and compassion over my distance from God.

As I’ve written before, sin isn’t God (and, please Lord, Christians) wanting humans to feel bad about themselves. Sin is the gap between what we were created for and the reality of what we choose to do. It stems from the moment Adam failed to step in between Eve and that pesky serpent right up to when Jesus –  flawless, perfect and of God – closed the gap.

So what about Jesus? Does he want me to elope with a porn-star lesbian lover to play the pokies in Positano? No, he doesn’t. He’d prefer me to be other-focused, to offer compassion to the weak and the needy and the oppressed. To share his Good News that in relationship with him I close the gap with God. But Jesus understands me. He knows daily I fall short.

So even if my ‘self’ wants to run amok in Positano, Jesus’ grace guides me to something larger. You see, I don’t have a view on whether you want to elope with a porn-star lesbian lover to Positano. Or if you’re jamming the pokies full of your money. No judgement, because of all the times I f*&k it up myself.

But if I have decided that, yes, Jesus is the dude who laid down his life for me, closing the gap so I can have a grace-filled loving relationship with God, it has to count for something.

It has to count in my heart. So to be true to what Jesus did for me – rather than being true to my self, which often gets tugged off course – I have to honour his sacrifice of his self over mine and follow his lead of love and grace.

There’s a massive bit about Christianity that I think is missed when sin gets bandied around like a punish word. God didn’t have to sacrifice His son. He chose to. That’s the depth and breadth of His love for us.

I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.

Jeramiah 31:3 : I

I do not always choose love

I do not always choose love

Phil Lowe

If you don’t think God has a sense of humour, look at the platypus. Or me. Wired for million miles an hour brain processing. With a scant gift for patience. “Keep up,” I mutter under my breath to those I love the most. godslove

Seriously, husband Big T deserves a medal. In the ups and downs of life, quite often the ‘best’ of me is given out to clients, co-workers and colleagues. My scratchy, irritated self kicks the cat at home.

Big T has a handy trick. He takes the word ‘Love’ out of 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8 and replaces it with his name. Try it.

Phil is patient, Phil is kind. Phil does not envy, she does not boast, is not proud. Phil does not dishonour others, she is not self-seeking, Phil is not easily angered, she keeps no record of wrongs. Phil does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. Phil always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Frankly, some days I find this exercise so confronting I’m literally hanging onto Jesus like a life-raft and swigging down his grace like, well, like an irish alcoholic locked in the Guinness factory overnight.

Does anyone else have this cycle? When I am not patient, I find I am not kind. When impatient, I move quicker to anger. Quite often I struggle to rejoice in the truth because, boy, the truth of me on my impatient days is not pretty. There are days when I do not protect, but instead attack.

Impatient perhaps, but Jesus reminds me I am the patient. The work in progress. The blank canvas of surrender. He did it first. He trusted, hoped and persevered so I can have a relationship with God.

So, because of Jesus and the cross, I too can trust, hope and persevere. I can choose love, accept grace, start afresh each day. Replace ‘love’ with my name in 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8  and cautiously smile because, as Jeremiah 31:3 reminds me, I have been blessed with an everlasting love.

But if you ever bump into Big T? Buy him a Guinness.

When God gets His groove on

When God gets His groove on

Phil Lowe

For someone who likes nothing better than dancing for hours as a mental reset, I cannot hold a tune in a bucket. Yet, aurally and kinesthetically, music, lyrics and rhythm all combine in such a way to inspire, settle, open and soften my often too-barricaded heart.

Like most of us, music forms a soundtrack to my memories, actions and reactions. Dancing and singing for hours to Abba as a kid. Mooning over Mark O’Toole and Bono. Sobbing into my pillow as a confused prepubescent to John Waite Missing You, wounded by my favoured boy dancing with the taller, prettier girl at the school barn dance (barn dance, seriously?!) The heart-galloping slow dance at the school disco (finally, a disco) to Frankie’s ‘The Power of Love’. 73407_1705795166174_1276861220_1922123_6042004_n

Fifteen, and spreading my wings with edgier, older, and way-more unsuitable suitors. U2 edged out by Jethro Tull, Fleetwood Mac, Springsteen’s denim derriere and Thunder Road. Leaving school, and drag-racing motorbikes to a mix of Foreigner, Def Leppard, Queensrych and Rush. 80s big hair and shoulder pads replaced with black biker jackets and torn jeans. Moving to Ireland and coming full circle to U2 again, and adding in The Band and Van The Man.

Then it all went quiet

Somehow, in my new-age, yogic befuddled wanderings, I allowed music to escape my life. The only reason I can imagine was in my misguided striving for non-attachment I secluded myself from anything that made me feel too much. Overlay a brush with depression and I’d numbed just enough to forget how important music and lyrics are to my soul.

God hadn’t. Waking me with Jennifer Warnes’ at 3am, over and over. Tugging on my heart and head so I listened. As I journeyed to faith and church, it was the lyrics in the hymns that first snuck into my heart. As my head wrestled and resisted, it was the worship words and chords that buried in and kept whispering on a relentless loop.

Another soundtrack to life began unfolding. Every moment He calls me for growth, there seems to be a new song, a new lyric. I have learnt to listen.

“Darling, don’t be afraid…I have loved you for a thousand years, I will love you for a thousand more” shoved into my head relentlessly in the weeks after my Mum died. At the time, still new age and seeking, I put it down to a lovely sign of comfort from her and ‘the beyond’. Now, looking back, God was using grief and suffering as a megaphone. I just hadn’t quite accepted the frequency.

“Won’t you let me hold you, I just want to hold you, like Bernadette would do” waking me at 3am over and over during that life-altering Easter weekend.

During the Christianity Explored course, Good Charlotte’s Right Where I Belong suddenly resonated, even though I had listened to the Cardiology album for years without noticing the song.

Standing in church and the lyric ‘my Jesus’ in Man of Sorrows having such personal impact that I couldn’t sing for the tears that clogged my throat.

Even the timing of U2’s newest album made me smile. The band that had formed the soundtrack to much of my teenage rebellion appeared free in my iTunes and sang A Song For Someone to my cautious Christian heart.

Before Christmas, weakened at a cross-roads of marital pain and relationship growth, turning on the car radio to Josh Groban’s You Raise Me Up and understanding the strength that truly backed me.

More recently, as I stepped carefully to forge a new path that blended work, life and faith, praying His will not mine, I would hear and see the lyrics of Oceans (Where Feet My Fail) almost everywhere. Shoved into my head to wake me at 3am (oh, there You go again), on Facebook banners until, finally, I downloaded the song as a reminder.

The hymns and lyrics of worship, the drumbeats that ask my heart to respond and my body to move, all point me to the personalised relationship that God seeks.

We all have our divine ‘love language’, I believe. Our own brand of ‘you-ness’ that God fingerprints as He knits us together, singing over us. Our own unique way of ‘getting’ Him.

Fearfully and wonderfully made, perhaps it lies dormant until the right lyric, the right melody, the right moment stirs our hearts.

Choking at Communion

Choking at Communion

Phil Lowe

Until relatively recently, I kept choking at communion. Not as in getting the bread wedged in my larynx, but more because I was petrified of participating. The lines would form and I’d start choking like the Australian Cricket team in Nottingham.

It started close to a year ago. I’d been easing my way slowly into church and, at a thanksgiving service, the Senior Pastor asked if anyone wanted to share a story of gratitude.

This was the 8am service (where I’d been sneaking as it was quieter and gave me a place to reflect, surrounded by an older demographic of Christians whom I could spend ages observing) and, my heart in my mouth, I offered to briefly share my thankfulness around my journey to date. imagesAfterwards a lovely older lady invited me to the front to take communion with her.

I declined. My first response internally (based on memories from school): “But I can’t, I didn’t go to the lessons!”

Swiftly followed by: “What if the Senior Pastor sends me back for, I dunno…. giving a wrong answer…. some invisible ink writing on my forehead that says, NO, she’s not done the classes?!”

Yet such a sense of being ‘called’ to do it. Overridden by a stronger feeling that I didn’t want to be ‘on show’ (so writes the extrovert with the introvert soul).

I subsequently discovered that, unlike my experience at school, Communion classes weren’t necessary. It had all changed a bit since I was a child. Which left me feeling relieved. But also teetering.

There were just too many feelings. None of them bad. Simply those feelings that make your eyes leak because they are miraculous and precious. Which was the crux, because each time I physically imagined myself taking communion, all those glorious tears would start up and, hell (oops), how’s a gal going to get through her first communion if she’s a blubbering heap?! With everyone watching! I knew they wouldn’t be watching me at all, really, it was me battling a strange and unusual self-consciousness.

There was such solemnity in my heart around it.  I was conscious of a ‘no going back if you do’ feeling too. But the real fear I had to work through was all mine. Communion became an intensely personal moment. So intensely personal I was frozen by it.

I thought I’d run these fears past the SAP, feverishly banging out one of my questing emails.

His reply?

There. Wasn’t. One.

Writing this post over a year later, I even went back and checked. Nothing. Nada. Zip.

The SAP can be tricky like this. Most times he delivers guidance if he perceives a real struggle. But others, when he suspects God is up to something in your heart, he goes silent to let you both figure it out.

Looks like it was just me and God then.

Communion is a reminder of The Last Supper. Jesus, on the Passover, shared bread and wine with his disciples. It is recorded in the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). Jesus gave the disciples bread, saying, “This is my body” (Matt. 26:26). Then he gave them a cup, saying, “This is my blood of the covenant” (Matt. 26:28). Luke tells us Jesus instructed his disciples to follow the pattern he gave them: “Do this in remembrance of me” (22:19). Just as Passover was intended to commemorate God’s deliverance over and over again, so was the Lord’s Supper. The meal reminds us that Christ has died, Christ has risen, and Christ will come again.

The SAP says he prays that God keeps him out the way to allow God to do the work. As I mentally shied away from walking to the front of a church to accept wine and wafer, and with the SAP leaving me with only prayer and reflection, God was working in other mysterious ways.

The next Communion, at a busier 10am service, the Connections pastor announced, “they were doing something new this week.” No-one was required to walk up to the front. Instead the bread and grape juice was served along the rows. Still solemn, still important. But, for me, without an individual spotlight, a gentler easing into a ritual that I had been too overwhelmed to contemplate prior.

So, have I managed to walk up the front and take Communion from another?

Yes.

The first, hours away from home, visiting a new church on Easter Sunday. On that day, of all days, how could I ignore the call to communion? I gave myself a stern talking to, put my heart in my eyes and my hands out to a stranger. And that’s when I truly understood it.

The Lord’s Supper is an invitation: to identify with Christ’s death and resurrection in the power of the Spirit. And we come to the table together, to have communion with Christ and with one another. I could not do this in isolation, as a private act. Communion signifies unity. It demanded more of me. To cease sitting apart and observing. To participate. To be vulnerable.

I bless whomever made that initial internal church decision to try ‘communion by rows’, I really do. Otherwise I may well be typing this having only ever observed communion distantly.

But stepping up, stepping out, stepping in? That has been the greatest part of communion for me. It reminds me that while I can still sit in a row and accept the communion bread and wine as it passes in front of me, there is something in the action of being upstanding. Looking another directly in the eye as they offer you bread and wine, you accept their service, their blessing, the Lord’s grace. There is intimacy there, a closeness that echoes the relationship God seeks with us:

“I found it at the eternal and material core of Christianity: body, blood, bread, wine poured out freely, shared by all. I discovered a religion rooted in the most ordinary yet subversive practice: a dinner table where everyone is welcome, where the poor, the despised and the outcasts are honoured.’ – Sara Miles, Take This Bread.