Tag Archives: Devotional

Addiction to sadness?

Was greatly helped by God through a simple word from His Word this morning. Yesterday was a glorious day, weather wise, as warm and bright as mid summer . I was thanking God for all His blessings as I walked on a beach, when a familiar shadow began to settle on me. I am not sure if it comes from being a pastor for many years and hearing so many stories of people’s struggles and pains or if it is just an awareness of the injustices that so many face throughout the world, but from time to time the thought of human pains seem to settle upon me in a way that makes it difficult to continue rejoicing: it would feel selfish, unfeeling, to continue with happiness, enjoying the beauty of the moment.

To cut a long story short, I asked God to help me. Today I picked up David Strutt’s book, “Sanctuary” and turned to the back pages to find the Scripture reading for the day. It was Acts Chapter 9. I read this word: “Meanwhile…” My prayer on the beach was answered. I was helped. Acts Chapter 8 tells us the story of a wonderful move of God in Samaria and a conversion on a desert road that opened up the possibility of the gospel spreading to another nation, namely Ethiopia. Glorious spiritual sunshine! Then the word, “Meanwhile…” At the same time as the glorious events in Samaria and a desert road, there were still murderous threats being breathed against the church.

“Meanwhile’ reminded me of the “Already here but not yet” of the Kingdom. Blessing and struggle, deliverance and waiting, well, they are like parallel tracks on the bigger scale and in the bigger scene of the worlds’s happenings: they seem to go hand in hand. There is always the “meanwhile” of conflicting experience to my own happening somewhere. Indeed, even in our own life, there can be an experience of “meanwhile” happening; great blessing in one aspect of life but great struggle in another area at one and the same moment. There is almost always a “meanwhile” going on. It is the way it is…

I resolved this morning, to live the moment with God and receive God’s good gifts with joy and enjoy them fully. Sunny days, both in the ordinary sense and in the spiritual sense, are good  and should be enjoyed fully and without guilt. If for some reason you are someone who feels for the struggles of others in an acute way, remind yourself you are still allowed to know joy and laughter. Don’t get addicted to sorrow and sadness. When happiness from God knocks at the door, don’t push it down. Allow it in. Let it run riot in every room and rush after it and play with it in the sun.

At times our “meanwhile” will be “Out of the depths I call to Thee…” at other times it will be, “The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.” It is the same for others. Live your “meanwhile” well, and help others to live theirs too as you have the opportunity. Remember though, you are not their Saviour and they are not yours.

God bless

Kenny

Have heard some sad news…

What is on my mind? Feeling a bit sad to find people writing to me after a recent blog to say they have been told by their pastors that their depression is a sin. If you have been told that, please know it is rubbish. Not only that, it is cruel rubbish. If that is the persistent teaching on the matter, you should probably not try and dignify such madness with a conversation. You would probably be better off in a church where the leadership understands human fragility. Pastors don’t always like it when people move church. Sometimes it is the right thing to move even if the pastor throws a fit and puts pressure on you to stay…though if you are in perpetual motion that is a different matter! Settle somewhere, where the fellowship is supportive and you find good spiritual bread on offer that strengthens you, even strenghtens you to offer yourself to bless others in your brokenness.
Jesus still remembers a time when he was so sorrowful he felt he could die on the spot. I hope you hear the tone of his voice and heart speaking to you somehow this day. Remember too that same heart and voice is praying for you in the same tone. He ever lives to make intercession for you and for me… and even for the folk who have distressed you with their condemning words….
Actually I have come to see that those who have entered into depression are often the bravest of souls. Pstorally I have so often found it is the road from a past to which one cannot return or had to move away to a new place, a new state not yet arrived at emotionally, mentally, spiritually or even physically. However you found yoursef on that road, be it for reasons of chemical imbalance, or chldhood trauma, for reasons of circumstance or for one of many other reasons, may you know the empathy of Jesus. He is now annointed with the oil of joy. He got there! He has faith for you. If your faith has dried up, somehow may the faith of the Son of God ,who loved you and gave himself for you, be yours this day.
God bless
Kenny

The Smell of Fresh Bread….

Well, I feel a bit like those folk who criticised the Edinburgh Trams… but now look quite happy when they are using them. I have never liked “blogging” and was judgemental towards those who blogged. “Do they really think that people are interested in their opinions, especially when their opinions are so obviously wrong…?”

Funny how circumstances alter your values. A preacher for 34 years, I now suffer from a lung condition which at least for the time being sets certain limitations around that activity. Many are praying for me, and I am so thankful for that. I look forward in believing faith to see further answers to these prayers… BUT I CANNOT WAIT FOR THESE ANSWERS TO UNFOLD. In this time of being laid aside from what I most love doing I have seen so much more beauty in Jesus than ever before. In what could have been dark time, I find myself saying again and again with wonder, “Jesus, I am amazed by your light.”

The bible tells us that we do not well if we keep good news to ourselves. I want to write to you with the goodwill of a beggar sharing with another beggar where they have found bread. Sometimes in these days of hatred of absolutes the search is exalted above the finding and the hungering above the bread. I need some way to share  with you bread that I have found ,so I can go to bed in peace.

What finally pushed me into the until now hated realm of blogs and bloggers was seeing someone greatly admired by the Christian world as a bible teacher of international renown giving ludicrous and harmful advice about how a wife should cope biblically with an abusive husband. How is it possible to sound so sound and yet for the fragrance of Jesus to be so missing? Biblical orthodoxy, to which I am committed, without the Spirit of Christ pleases no one but the religious and advances no cause other than enslavement of human beings. When the truth of Christ is prepared to ignore real people with real needs, it simply becomes a Phariseeism or a new teaching of the law which loads burdens on the backs of men and women that are not only hard to carry but crush.

I want to offer you bread fresh from the oven. Sometimes it may be half a slice, sometimes it may be a loaf. My hope is whoever you are you will be able to taste that the Lord is good, and that He is nearer than you think…. and you are dearer to Him than perhaps you have ever realised.

Let me share bread with you….