Streams of Living Water

Have finally picked up 'Streams of Living Water' by Richard Foster today - a steal from church for 50p. Am delighted to have the chance to read it.

Already I've been challenged.

To what extent, day by day, do I allow my reading and meditation of Jesus' life in the gospels to affect my day-to-day walk:

"We are, to be sure, reconciled to God by Jesus' death, but even more [!], we are 'saved' by his life (Rom. 5:10) - saved in the sense of entering into his eternal kind of life, not just in some distant heaven but right now in the midst of our broken and sorrowful world." [italics original] (Foster 1998, p.3)

One of the formation questions Foster suggests we use is about our encountering Jesus in scripture. I have often thought on the simple song "all of the Bible has Jesus in it" as the framework for this question, but perhaps I am too naive and slow-to-learn to commence answering this question - or seeking to find an answer - without first learning to place a premium on time spent reading the gospels to see what Jesus was like and how I can imitate his life to find freedom in my own. I love this idea that in imitation I can be 'saved' in this life - reminds me of Psalm 103.

As I continue to read this book, I will devote more time to the Lectionary readings that place me in the gospels. And I will ask - how should I shape my life to better imitate Jesus.

REFERENCES
Foster, R. (1998) Streams of Living Water. London: Harper Collins

Advice for life?

I am so grateful that God has given us plain, home-spun, common-sense. Today I finally started to chat to a colleague on my teaching course about their relationship situation.

She's happily seeing three separate guys, enjoying their company and time, but nothing serious. However, she was clearly in a quandry worrying about the fact several of them were being 'needy'. As we chatted it became quite obvious, to me, that my friend was uncertain about whether to pursue these relationships.

I appreciate that for Christian girls the first criterion used when evaluating the potential of a possible suitor has to be, first and foremost, their love for Jesus. Do they submit to Him as Lord? If this is a negative then, sorry, it's a non-starter.

My friend is a Sikh though, so my advice was simple - use two questions to check a guy:
- How does he treat his family, specifically his mum? and
- What are his friends like?

These two questions when answered honestly, remembering that men engaged in the chase are prone to chamelion-esque changes to personality in order to impress a girl, will provide a pretty fair assessment of a man's character, which is, ultimately, more important than his bank balance, looks, ambition, car, or anything else.

As I asked these two questions I felt tremendously relieved. Firstly, I was not offering specific advice; no cliched pros or cons for one or another friend she was seeing, nor was I given a tale from my experience. Put simply I provided two questions that my friend could ask and come to her own conclusion. Secondly, God gives Christians the capacity to understand the human condition better than some. It is a responsibility of ours to dispense Godly wisdom that will ensure friends and family enter into peaceful lives.

I was greatly encouraged by God to have been used in this simple way. I welcomed the opportunity to serve.

Stewarding our time

This evening at cell (the healthy church type, not the bombing type) we have continued our churches theme of Stewardship, focusing on the use of our time, talents, and treasure/tithe. Our welcome question tonight asked us to roughly calculate the proportion of our time we spend on various activities: Sleep, Work, Leisure, God-stuff (praying, reading Bible, worshiping), Chores, and other.

The findings were NOT surprising. Here's a summary of our conclusions:

1. We do not get enough sleep - none of us.
There are, of course, several schools of thought about the merits/demerits of having long lay-ins at the weekend, versus the regular settled habit of sleeping the same amount/getting up at the same time every day. While we agreed lay-ins are nice, there was the clear sense that we should be trying to be more habitual. Whatever our position on the pattern of sleep - we all accepted that we would operate much better on more sleep.

2. We seem to be habit-averse.
There is the odd belief in the group that Habit = Boring. While we happily accept the need to take regular exercise, have regular habitual sleep, we are less inclined to think this way spiritually.

3. We spend little time on our own

4. What do I have to show for my spare time?

5. We spend a small fraction of our time with God, or in God-stuff.
I wonder if we should seek to tithe our time? 10% of our day would be 144 minutes - 2 hours and 24 minutes - imagine our days looking like that?

6. Not enough exercise

7. We don't actually watch that much TV.

8. Our lives are far more full of leisure than we let ourselves recognise.
We moan lots about work, but in truth our group of friends spend lots of its time relaxing, often together.

9. Time with family?
Not many of us could refer confidently to time spent at the dinner table

10. We find it hard to remember how we spend our time!

Some thoughts following on from this:
- We enjoy time spent in God's presence, but we don't do it as we're frail and broken
- Do I, by my choices, send a message to people that they're not loved?
- To some extent there is a place for the vow of service/simplicity when thinking about stewardship. We would use our time and talents more effectively if we undertook to serve people each and every day. A vow of simplicity would best enable us to approach money in a Godly manner.

CHALLENGE:
1. How is my use of time?
What changes are needed? Am I aware of where my time goes?
2. How could we corporately better use our time to sacrificially serve others?
In the community: are their clubs, needs, projects we could undertake? In church: needs to be met (balanced against our talents)
3. How could we corporately serve God more?
Speaking to others about the Good News.