An unwanted gift?

You will probably have heard this testimony many times, you may even have told it - apologies if you have. It goes, "I used to struggle with singleness a lot but I came to a point where I was really content and trusting God with it and that was when so and so came along and now I'm happily married with 10 children".

I have exaggerated it slightly but I can't count the number of times I heard a version of that story when I was in my 20s. I have two major problems with this story. The first is that it seems to hold out marriage as some sort of prize for sorting yourself out with God when it comes to singleness. Just get yourself in a place where you are content and God will give you what you really want. It's a recipe for self-deception or despair. And it doesn't seem to me to be accurate to life. I know loads of people who idolise marriage and/or struggled with singleness deeply up until the very moment they met their husband-to-be. I also know many who seem entirely at peace with their singleness who remain resolutely unwed. The second reason I dislike it is that it frankly seems smug, however it is intended. I am all sorted and have earned my married bliss, your singleness is really all your fault - be more holy and you'll get what you want.

I know it is meant as an encouragement to people to focus on contentment in the Lord but I honestly don't think its a useful way of doing it. It seems cruel in some ways, which God never is - here is a challenge, stop wanting what you want and maybe I will give it to you. There is a truth behind it, God in his kindness often withholds things we want that are bad for us because we want them in idolatrous ways but God's desire in withholding an idol is that we learn to want God more, not to squash our desires down in the hope God will think we have them under control enough to give us a husband.

I actually rarely hear this these days, as I grow older. Mostly I think because a couple of years into marriage most people start to realise they are not as sorted as they would like to think. The old idolatries are often still there below the surface once reality hits and marriage is tough and tiring, it no longer seems like something to brag about so much. These people are more likely to tell you how hard marriage is in response to your singleness angst - sorry guys, equally unhelpful to the struggling single.

So what is the answer to helping singles in their hurt. First you can recognise that there is a pain in feeling unchosen and unwanted. The best thing you can do for your single friends is to love them and welcome them into your home. I have been so incredibly blessed by married friends who have included me as part of their family. Where life doesn't stop when I come round, we play together with the children, join in bath and bedtime routines, muck in and help around the house. An hour at the house of a friend like this is worth a million words of encouragement. The second thing is to point them relentlessly to the God who has chosen them and wanted them. Who chose them before the creation of the world, who chose them to be his dearly loved children, who chose them as his bride, who chose them for blessing.

And the God who numbers their days and the hairs on their heads, who has good plans, whatever they may be. For me this was the final hurdle of contentment with singleness. I realised that the fact that I was single wasn't due to any personal lack in me, an inadequacy or unattractiveness, but because God had chosen it for my good. That took away the last sting of bitterness in singleness and set me free to enjoy all that it gives me.

Which brings me to the reason for my post. I love my singleness. I love the freedom it gives me to serve God, to love my friends, to have time for people, to do the job I love. I love the fact I don't have to negotiate the details of daily life with someone else in time-consuming compromises. I love the fact that if God was to say tomorrow, get up and leave Oxford and go here, I could just do it. No worries about jobs or schools or houses. Which gives God the possibility of doing just that. How exciting. So having reached a point where I not only don't fear singleness, but enjoy it how should I approach the possibility of being asked to surrender it?

At the moment this is still a hypothetical question but one which circumstances have pushed me to ask. And the answer is surprising. I am beginning to wonder if the purpose for which God has been preparing me by dealing with my difficulties with singleness is not marriage - but here's a controversial thought - singleness itself. Do I move from a place where I answer the relationship question with 'of course I would love a family if it is God's will for me,' to 'I feel I am right where God wants me to be in my life right now and I'm really not looking to change that.' In some senses it doesn't matter of course except that it affects how I treat men who seem to be interested in me. Many, many people have and would urge me to make the most of every opportunity to show a man I like I am interested in him, to accept someone who offers as long as I like him and he loves Jesus, to not close the door on opportunities, as if my aim was to find 'the man'. But I am in a place where I am not sure I want 'the man' at all. I certainly don't need a man to tell me who I am or my value, and I am not sure a husband would make me more fruitful in the ministry I feel called to, in fact I'm pretty sure it would make me less.

Even as I write this there is that nagging question at the back of my mind - are you a lunatic? Are you really saying that the world - including the Christian world - is wrong when they pity the single and strive after marriage? Are you really saying that you can choose singleness and childlessness with all its consequences later in life? Are you sure that the conviction today that you are where God wants you will feel quite such a good basis for making this decision in 30 years time? Those doubts are there but so is the fierce love of where God has me and what I am doing for his kingdom now. Things I wouldn't be able to do if I take the path of marriage. And the conviction that I don't need to be afraid. God has loved and chosen me and in heaven I will experience that so fully that missing out on the marriage experience here on earth with seem absolutely weightless compared with the satisfaction of having lived obediently and in dependence on him.

I don't know for sure which way this will go. God may bring someone along and make it absolutely clear that I should change my mind and marry them, and that I can be fruitful in that marriage in a way that I can't now as a single and that he wants me to be. But for the moment I am looking straight down the barrel of the possibility that the story I started this post with can have another ending, and that maybe for the sake of the church, a few of us should choose that ending, "I used to struggle with singleness a lot but I came to a point where I was really content and trusting God with it and now I am perfectly and peacefully content with my singleness and thank God for it and the opportunities it gives me and wouldn't want it to change."

Now you see me

Hagar was a woman and a slave. She was no saint in the ordinary, everyday sense, not above a bit of unattractive gloating, but in many ways she was a victim of her situation. She was trapped in circumstances of life far from her choosing, enslaved, forced to sleep with the husband of her mistress and then driven out into the desert by her mistress's jealousy, pregnant and alone.

Hagar was powerless to change her situation, she had no control, even over her own body. She was at the mercy of the whims of others, treated as a possession and as if she herself possessed no dignity or worth. People didn't look at Hagar, they looked through her, to the people who mattered. She was unloved, unvalued, an object to be used to fulfill the wishes of others and then to be discarded when she was no longer wanted or needed. And to a certain extent she was her own worst enemy provoking her mistress to rage by despising her infertility in spite knowing all the pain and shame and humiliation that entailed.

Hagar's story is extreme but in it I do see faint echoes of my own. I may not know what it is to be a slave, but I do know something of what it feels like to be trapped by circumstances and powerless to change them. I know something of what it feels like to be at the mercy of others and treated without compassion or dignity. I know something of what it feels like to be discarded and rejected. I certainly know what it is like to suspect my own unpleasant, ugly sin means I probably deserved most of what I got. I guess most of us do, some a little more than others. 

But as it is so common to find in the stories of God's people, Hagar's story comes with a twist in the tail. She did not die in the desert, instead she discovered there that she was not alone. There was one there who did not see her as a possession, who looked at her, not through her. There was one there who saw her dignity and her value as a person made in the image of God, to whom she was not a worthless object to be used and discarded. There was one there to whom she mattered and by whom although she may have been powerless, she was not unheard. 

The Lord came to Hagar and said to her, however others have treated you, however little you have been valued, I, the Lord, hear you and I, the Lord, see you. And Hagar, the woman, the slave, the sinner, the oppressed, the alone, was the first person in the Bible to give God a name. 

She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.” (Genesis 16:13)

Names for God describe a part of his character, Hagar had indeed seen God as she was privileged to give him a name to reveal part of his character to the world. That name was 'the God who sees me.' God sees me. That is his name, a fundamental part of who he is, so it can't and won't change. Whoever else has failed to see who I am, God has not. Whoever else has tried to tell me I have nothing of worth to offer, God does not. Others will get me wrong, will underestimate me, overestimate me, misunderstand me, look through me to the people who matter, but not God. He sees me. 

And like Hagar this seeing means blessing too. God did not merely restore to Hagar the worth and dignity she had as a human made in his image. He never does stop there, his heart is too full of love, his hand too generously full of gifts. He gave to Hagar the gift of the honour of being the mother of a great nation, a nation that would not be crushed or despised as she had been. To us of course he gives a much more precious gift the gift of the honour of being his child, found in Christ, the honour of being his beloved, clothed in Christ's beautiful righteousness, the honour of being his ambassadors to declare his name upon the earth. 

There is a cry of pain from my heart that says, "Why does nobody ever see me?" It's less a reality than it used to be but the wound is still there barely scabbed over and vulnerable to break open once again when knocked about by circumstance. The damage of the past is too deep to placate that cry with reassurances that things are different now, that there are people who do hear and do see. But there is an inexpressible comfort in this, which was true in the past, is true now and will always be true: "You are the God who sees me".

I've seen him weep

It's been a rough week. Not the worst, but rough. The kind of week where you need to hang on to God's goodness. When I have weeks like this there is one place I always turn to. It's a passage in the Bible that blows me away again and again. That grabs me by the guts, that shouts in my frazzled exhausted brain above the various other voices and noises that have lodged themselves in there.

Here it is:

"Jesus wept" (John 8:35).

And here is why I love this passage so much:

1) Jesus knows Lazarus is going to die. He loves him. And he lets it happen.

We are told Jesus loves Lazarus and his sisters, that he knows he is sick. Yet he waits two days, until he is able to tell his disciples for certain that Lazarus is dead before going to them at Bethany.

2) Jesus knows that Lazarus' death is for God's glory

When discussing Lazarus' sickness with his disciples Jesus says,  “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” And when Martha objects to opening the tomb of her dead brother Jesus says, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”. He is about to raise Lazarus and he knows that it will glorify God as it will lead many to believe in him and his resurrection.

3) Jesus knows Lazarus' death will result for his disciples' good

Although he clearly loves Lazarus, Martha and Mary very, very much he waits until Lazarus is dead before going to them. He waits two days until he knows he is dead and he tells his disciples,  “Lazarus is dead, ¹⁵ and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe." Jesus allows Lazarus to die for his disciples sake, so that they might believe in him as the resurrection and the life.

4) Jesus knows he is about to reverse the death of Lazarus

He knows that in a very short time he is going to raise Lazarus from the dead, that is clear from the very beginning of the story to the very end. The pain and suffering around him is about to turn to joy and celebration.

And yet...

"When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled, ³⁴ “Where have you laid him?” he asked.“Come and see, Lord,” they replied.
³⁵ Jesus wept."

He sees their pain, their grief, their ache of loss, the confusion of death which seems so empty and senseless and as if it should never have been. And in spite of all he knows he weeps.

God, my God, weeps for me. For the pain I feel in the fallen world I live in, for my ache and loss and confusion. Even though he allows it. Even though it will be to his glory. Even though it will result eventually for my good as I see in it more of who he is. Even though one day he will reverse it and restore all that was lost and damaged, because he is the resurrection and the life. All that knowledge, all that truth doesn't make him rationalise away my pain. He doesn't excuse it, or justify it, or try to make it better with words or logic. He just hurts and weeps with me.

Of course in time all the other things are true and will help, which is why they are here in this passage too. Suffering is for God's glory, for Christians he will redeem it for good, he will reverse it and restore what is lost. But the precious truth for me here is that there is nothing cold in God towards my suffering. So when he says in the moment of swirling anguish and darkness, trust me, I'm here, I haven't forgotten you, I see and I hear and it matters to me that you hurt, I know I can trust him. I've seen him weep.

What do you expect?

First a disclaimer - this post is about the expectations we have of one another within church of real, deep and meaningful relationships, not our expectations (which are idolatrous) of a specific person being available to meet a specific need at a specific time, or having a knowledge and understanding of us they can't possibly have.

Expectations is a dirty word. A word we use to beat each other up when we feel inadequate before another’s needs. A word we use to express our frustration and disappointment at the people that let us down. You need to expect less of people, you can’t have expectations, it’s not fair to expect…

Relationships in a fallen world are painful, difficult things. We’ve all been hurt. We’ve all felt rejection and loss and betrayal. But I have never found anyone who has been helped by being rebuked for their unrealistic expectations, or who having said they have lowered or changed their expectations has ceased to really long after real, deep committed relationship.

Because that is what we are made for. Real, deep, committed relationship. Garden of Eden relationship where we can be naked, known and accepted and feel no shame. But however much we long for these relationships, we feel how inadequate we are at giving them. We think with shame of the friendships, at one time so close, that distance, circumstances and sin have allowed to fall into neglect. And we hide ourselves and our selfishness behind the rhetoric of expectations. You can’t expect that of me, surely?

Furthermore we do it to ourselves. We start to feel that friendships like that are for other people, there’s something about me that means people just can’t love me that way, and if I don’t expect it, I can’t get hurt. It doesn’t work though, our soul cries out, even through the bitterness and pain that pushes others to arm’s length, for intimacy and security.

What is it exactly that we shouldn’t expect of each other? Should we not expect each other to keep promises? Should we not expect each other to care? Should we not expect our family to give us relationship in real and meaningful ways? That is what Christ tells us we are in church, family.

At this point I want to point to my limitations, I do my best, I’m just so busy, there are too many people, too much going on. To that I say to myself, yes, I am limited and I am busy but mostly that is my choice. Like the time I waste, not resting, not refreshing myself, just waste. And the times I let my guilt at failing you get in the way of loving you. And the times I run after my own needs instead of thinking about yours. And the times I am angry with you but don’t want to admit it. And all the times I make choices based on what looks good or makes me feel good instead of actually being faithful. Not to mention the times and times I waste my physical and mental energy not trusting God with things in my life so I have few resources left over to love. I feel guilty, and rightly so, because however limited I am, I hurt you infinitely more because I am sinful. Which is uncomfortable as it’s much easier to blame your expectations of me.

The answer is, as always, not more guilt but more grace. Guilt puts up more barriers, makes it harder to step over and begin to love you again. Grace says what I really should be saying is “I am sorry”. I am sinful, frail and selfish. I know what you need from relationship because it is exactly what I need: consistency, patience, grace, perseverance and love, but I just can’t give you that. Because I am inadequate, because I am weak, because I am, deep down, wicked and I don’t want to. The problem is not yours, it is mine, and I cover it over by blaming your expectations of me.

Real relationships start with grace. They start with the fact that I will let you down, I won’t love you the way that I ought. And when that happens I need to ask God’s forgiveness and yours, not blame you for expecting me to love you. Real relationships start when I know you won’t always be there for me, that you will choose your happiness over mine, that I have to let you make promises of commitment and love, and trust you to keep them, and forgive you when you don’t because that is where real relationship happens and if I cut myself off from that, I cut myself off from part of my humanity. A really good part too.

And of course this is all missing the obvious. These real relationships can only happen in Christ. Only when I am freed from my guilt in Christ can I be free to see my sin, say sorry and start over. Only when I am clinging to Christ for ultimate security and intimacy can I dare to expose myself to your frailty and sin in intimate relationship.

So think of that person in your life of whom you are tempted to say, “they expect too much from me!” Recognise you have probably sinned against them. Recognise that what they need from you is real relationship, which can say sorry and start over, which isn’t enslaved to guilt and fear. Recognise that Christ has set you free to love them and continues to do so every day as you continue to sin. And through the mess and the pain and the struggle just keep loving.

And think of that person in your life of whom you are tempted to say, “I can’t trust them again, they have let me down too many times,” or even for some people “I can’t trust anyone, they will always let me down, I will just never have that kind of deep friendship.” Recognise that in Christ you are utterly loved and safe and secure. Recognise that people are sinful and weak. Be brave. And through the mess and the pain and the struggle just keep loving.

We all long for relationships that are deep and real. We all live in a world where relationships are broken and messy. But the miracle of the church is that by grace broken and messy relationships can become deep and real whilst never stopping being broken and messy. God is just that good. So don’t give up.

If I give you a baseball bat you could beat yourself up better...

I got a phone call from a friend today. From one of my best Christian friends in fact, the one who astonishes me with her willingness to go the extra mile, who's generosity verges on the extraordinary, who's prayer-life I most envy of all my friends. But every now and then she calls me up in a pickle. When she is tired and low she has a remarkable tendency to succumb to the same lies over and over again. We talk them through, I point her towards the truth, we pray and often she ends the conversation in a much more positive frame of mind. I thought I might write this post for a couple of reasons, partly so she has somewhere to go back to and read the truth when I can't be there one day to give a her shove in the right direction and partly because it's a joy to share how Christ set me free from the same trap she finds herself caught in from time to time.

Because you see whenever she calls in her pickle, I feel like I am listening to myself on the other end of the line. 20 years of myself. 20 years of a very miserable self. And the way it changed for me took dozens of people, words in season, great Bible teaching and a lot of mess in my life.

I'm talking about grace. The most offensive or most beautiful word in history depending on your point of view. The easiest thing to understand and the most difficult thing to live.

You see I was an expert at explaining the offense of grace to people who weren't Christians and absolutely hopeless at living it out in my life when the rubber hit the road. I spent hours and days and months and years of my life in angst and doubt over my salvation, in despairing of my weakness against sin, of hating my sin and by extension myself for my failure to conquer it, given everything I knew. I knew Christ had died for me, I knew that I had been given a new heart to worship God, I knew I had received the Spirit within with resurrection power, the old was gone, the new was come and yet, and yet... There it was. Again. Ugly, inconvenient, ever-present. I couldn't escape it. I would repent and pray in tears, "I'm so sorry Lord, I won't do it again, Lord please help me, please don't cast me off," but time and again the same bad habits, the same bad choices the same self-centred and selfish motives corrupting even my best attempts at loving others and loving God with all my heart. Every sermon felt like a blow of condemnation, every book on holiness I desperately read for help, a tattoo beating out the words hopeless, dirty sinner.

I masked it, often well, I tried harder, or I just got so busy I didn't have time to think about it, but it always came back at those low, tired moments, just like my friend. Why does Jesus love me? How could Jesus use me? Was I even really a Christian if I could turn my back on Jesus over and over again to choose what made me feel good, when my sin was so deeply ingrained that it corrupted everything in my life, when I knew that I was barely scratching the surface with the sin I was aware of. Wasn't the gospel supposed to set me free from sin?

I was trapped in a lie of the devil. A lie, like all good lies that closely resembled the truth. But there was an important omission. Grace.

I knew all about grace in theory but my practical application, you will gather, was highly sketchy. Grace was for other people. People who had it sorted. People who didn't know as much as I did, so weren't as guilty as I was. Ultimately people who deserved it, not awful people like me. Of course, being theologically correct I never would have put it into those words, but that was my practical application for all intents and purposes of the doctrine of grace. I was a Romans 7 Christian, trapped in an endless cycle of law, despair and more law and more despair. I knew Jesus had died for my sin, but I also knew that did not excuse ongoing sin, in fact it made it worse. I longed at times for death to set me free from the body of death I lived in.

Escaping the trap was a journey of years for me which I am going to attempt to summarise in briefly below.

1) "You know God doesn't love you any less, right?"

This was probably the first major incursion into my dark cycle of misery. It came like a bolt from the blue from an unexpected source. A casual conversation from someone I knew very slightly after church one day and to whom I had been pouring out the woes of a sinful week. "I feel so bad, I let God down again, I'm so rubbish." Then the unexpected reply, "You know God loves you just the same when you feel sinful as when you feel like you're doing it all right, don't you?" It stopped me in my tracks, because no, I had somehow never realised that. Casual words, spoken in a casual way and probably long forgotten by the speaker, but not by me. God loves you just the same. That can't be right, can it? When I just did that? Just the same? But think about it just for a minute, God's love doesn't change, his promises don't change, so yes, it must be true. God's love for me depends on Christ, not me, that's the gospel, so however I feel about my sin and myself God loves me just the same. Not an excuse for sin, just a fact. Mind. Blown. But that was just the start...

2) Breaking into Romans 8

"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, ² because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death." (Rom 8:1-2)

I had the privilege of hearing a wonderful couple of seminars on Romans 8 some time later which was the moment that I finally realised that the answer to sin was not more law but life by the Spirit. I realised fully for the first time that in the guise of taking sin seriously I had become trapped in a cycle of law when Jesus had come to give me life to the full. As we went on I saw that the answer to my sin was not trying harder or knowing more it was sonship. The Spirit that cries Abba Father called me not to work harder to please God and defeat sin but to enjoy the life he had given me as a child. That would mean saying no to sin, for sure, but not with the burden of the law heaped up upon my back to crush me in judgement, but through knowing myself to be a beloved child, free to choose God's ways from the heart and knowing in those lovely words of Thomas Brookes, "that which it pleases God not to mortify in the flesh, he will be pleased to forgive". In other words, sanctification is not my job, it is God's, which I do my absolute best to join in with. It was the realisation that the power given by the Spirit to put to death sin is not a magical, impersonal power that was mine to wield like a comic book hero's superpower, it was Christ's power that came through relationship with him by his Spirit. So the place to go when I saw my sin was not more law, more effort, more judgement and condemnation but more Christ.

3) Separating the old from the new - and then replacing it

"Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. ² Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. ³ For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. ⁴ When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory." (Col 3:1-4)

This is one I continue to grapple with and which I still need to think more about. Given to me by a friend to think about, this is putting Colossians 3 into practice. When I look at my life I see nothing but mixed motives. The good, the bad and the ugly all mixed together in one big fuel tank powering my actions. In reality the Bible tells me there are two people inside me battling for ascendancy, the old sinful person and the new righteous one in Christ. Putting to death the former always gives and opportunity for the latter. Battling sin is no longer just an exercise in seeing and condemning the negative but asking what is the positive freedom that I obtain from putting that sin to death. What am I chasing, not simply what am I running from. Idolatries that have had me firmly in their grip are shaken when God gives me a glimpse of what it would be like if I was truly free to love those people, to enjoy those gifts of God. I see sin for what it truly is then, a cage, a dark room, and although it's what I know and it's scary to leave, the view from outside is breath-taking, so maybe it's worth the risk.

4) Free grace is not cheap grace

I had always been afraid that to seek grace for a sin I was struggling with over and again meant that I was holding grace cheap. Grace is not cheap. It cost Jesus his life, on the cross it cost the Father his Son. It's right to feel abhorrence at the idea of using grace as a free pass for sin. In the words of Bonhoeffer, "when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die." Following Christ means death to self daily, which means death to sin. My mistake was to think that the most effective way to put sin to death was to try harder, mourn deeper. I missed the first part of the quote, "he bids him come", sin dies when it is exposed to the light of the gospel, the truth of sonship, the love of God, the person of Christ.

It's when we embrace the cross that we put sin to death, as it is the cross that restores that relationship which it is the essence of sin to reject. When we fly to the cross with our sin we see that better life of freedom which is on offer which robs the sin of it's savour. When we cry out to God for salvation at the foot of the cross we finally put to death the pride of self-righteousness and the wicked delusion that we can obtain righteousness for ourselves. We submit to God's ways and renounce our own.

5) It's all about the glory

When I fight sin and defeat it for a time, I get the glory. When I run to the cross with my sin, throwing myself on the mercy of Christ, obeying his word, trusting in his sacrifice, the glory goes to him. When I study the cross, meditate on its power and beauty and God uses that to change my desires so sin loses its attraction, the glory goes to him. When I cry out to the Spirit to change my heart and help me want to desire Christ so sin can no longer rule over me, the glory goes to him. And unlike my feeble self-discipline and attempted law-keeping in my own strength, it actually works. Often slowly, often painfully, often inconsistently, real change starts to happen. Life starts to happen, freedom starts to happen. And I am no longer afraid. God is my Father, Christ is my brother, they will sanctify me and bring me home and they will have all the glory, as they should.

"'Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,' says the Lord, who has compassion on you." (Isa 54:10)

So to my friend who called today, who is truly one of the most special people I have ever known, please don't let it take 20 years. He loves you, you're his child, that will never change, and the sanctification that you so long for, that happens when you cling to the cross. I know you know this, but sometimes you don't know. This is for then.

The 4 Fs of Friendship

In case you haven't already picked up from my blog so far, I am an idolater. I worship things other than the creator God of the universe. If you are a Christian, you knew that already. The most stubborn idolatry in my heart, the thing I find myself looking to again and again to tell me who I am, what I'm worth and to give me what I need is friendship. 

I was reminded of this yesterday when a very good friend gently reminded me for about the millionth time that basing my identity and security on what she thought of me and how she responded was not very wise. This is not a new concept for me. The emotional energy I expend on anger and hurt when someone I care about responds or fails to respond in a way that I can interpret as uncaring could power a small city.

And as it is an idolatry it can never be satisfied. As another good friend points out occasionally, rather hurt, it doesn't seem to count that she loves me and is there for me when I am focused on the one person in my life who I feel isn't. I have actually been blessed with incredible friends, who love me patiently and persistently and support me brilliantly and with whom I have great fun. However, often any one person with whom I am having a difficult time, dominates my emotional agenda and dictates how I feel about myself to the exclusion of the dozen other healthy, happy, close friendships in my life. This is utterly illogical until seen through the eyes of idolatry, if my friendships tell me my identity and worth they all have to be perfect, all the time, or I am a worthless nothing. This puts a pretty awful strain on the relationships themselves as the nagging insecurity can spill over into demanding and affirmation-seeking behaviour. This makes it harder to be my friend, leading often to less positive relating and intensifying insecurity. 

The only way to escape this vicious circle is for the gospel to break in. I have to be able to take a step back and see my relationships in their proper places, below and in the shadow of my primary relationship - with Christ. Failure to invest in this relationship for me inevitably leads to a distortion of my friendships as I begin to put them into the place that belongs to Jesus. This has created a train of thought in my head that have led to the 4 Fs of friendship - which is actually 4 reasons that friends can't meet your deepest needs and are a useless place to put your self worth and identity and why Christ is better. I plan on meditating on these to try and train myself to turn to him when the warning signs start showing that my friendships are getting out of perspective. 

1) Friends are Fickle

People have emotions that change. They change depending on the weather, how tired they are, how busy they are, what stresses they have going on. It's part of being human, we have emotional weather, I ought to know, mine goes from sunshine to hurricane several times a day sometimes. However much friends care about you they cannot be completely consistent in the way they relate to you and feel about your friendship. 

The same cannot be said of God. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. One of my favourite verses in the whole Bible is found in Malachi 4:6, "I the Lord do not change, so you, O children of Jacob are not destroyed." God loves us and cannot ever stop loving us because he does not change. Once God's favour and love is settled on you, however blameworthy your behaviour may be, he will not turn his back on you, or his promises to you. This is unpacked for us even more as we understand the cross. "He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?" (Romans 8:32). God's unchanging love towards us is sealed by the blood of his Son who he gave up for us in our need. Having paid such a cost, can he then turn away from those he has purchased so dearly? The consistency of the love of God is told to us over and over again in his word. Friendships may change, day to day, moment by moment sometimes, but, "I have loved you with an everlasting love," says the Lord. He is the one on whom you can rely.

2) Friends are Fallible

However well you get to know your closest friends, however well they listen, however much life you share they will never get it right 100% of the time. They cannot see your heart, they are bound by limitations of language and time, however thoughtful and well-intentioned and caring they are they will inevitably get it wrong sometimes. They will misjudge how you are feeling, they will misunderstand you, they will say the wrong thing. What seems obviously the right response to a situation to you, is far from obvious to them because they simply don't have the full picture. 

But what is true about friends is far from true about God. To him we are "fully known," (1 Corinth 13). Psalm 139 is an exploration of the extent to which we are known by God. It is a great piece of scripture on which to meditate when you are feeling misunderstood.

"O Lord, you have searched me and known me!

                 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;

you discern my thoughts from afar.

                You search out my path and my lying down

and are acquainted with all my ways.

                Even before a word is on my tongue,

behold, O Lord, you know it altogether."

The Lord Jesus who "saw what was in their hearts," and still sees what is in your heart will never make a mistake. He will never misunderstand or misjudge you, never crush you when you are a bruised reed or placate you when you are rebelliously proud. He is the one in whom you can have confidence.

3) Friends are Fallen

However lovely your friends are, however kind and generous and fun and patient, they are fallen. They have sin in their lives and sometimes that sin will spill out in ways that hurt you. They will be selfish at times, proud at times, unfairly angry or impatient or ungentle at times. They will choose their own comfort and happiness over yours, they will speak unguarded words, they will break promises. They are sinners just like you. It isn't OK, it isn't right, but it is reality. You can't have perfect relationships because there are no perfect people. Starting with you. You don't have to condone or excuse the sin of others (or yourself) but you can expect it, accept it and forgive it. 

And the reason you can is because it is not so with God. In him was and is found no sin. The Lord says, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” God is love (1 John 4:6), God is light (1 John 1:5). Jesus' closest friends could say of him that he was a man in whom there was no sin. He will never speak destructive words to you in selfishness or anger, he will never break his promises to you, he will never cease to act in your best interest and out of love for you. He will never exclude you or mock you or reject you when you are difficult. You cannot wear out his patience or forgiveness, you cannot exhaust his kindness and compassion. He is the one in whom you can place complete trust.

4) Friends are Finite

Ultimately friends are finite. They need to eat. They need to sleep. They can only listen to one person at a time. They need to go on holiday, they have responsibilities and commitments. They cannot always be there to respond to you when you want them to or in the way you want them to. Friends get tired and busy. However much they want to, they can't always be there to pick you up when you fall down. Nobody has the capacity to meet all your needs all the time. No group of people even. God doesn't allow it apart from anything else because our faithless hearts would quickly elevate them to his place in our lives. 

For him though this is not a problem. He is the Lord who never slumbers or sleeps (Psalm 121), his eye is always on you ready to bless, he is the Father who tirelessly waits and watches for you to return to him, the Shepherd who goes out searching for each lost sheep. He is the all-powerful one to whom the nations are dust on the scales and the universe is a hands-breadth, who stills storms and walks on water and raises the dead and stops the sun in the sky or blots it out completely. He is the one who says, "Surely I am with you always," (Matt 28). There is no need you have that he cannot meet, no moment that you are not under his tender, loving eyes, no second in which you are not receiving his care and compassion. He is the one on whom you can depend. 

The Lord, Our Lord is perfect in faithfulness, perfect in understanding, perfect in holiness and perfectly able to meet our every need. The absolute truth, the ultimate truth is he is the friend we need. The only one who will never let us down, who's friendship is entirely unconditional and inexhaustible. I love my friends, but if I try to make them tell me who I am and what I am worth our friendship will become a tiresome burden to both of us. There is only one friend who can do that and his name is Jesus.  

Being angry

Anger and Fear. Two emotions that 18 months ago I would have told you I didn't have. I don't do anger, I was born without fear. I wasn't lying, I was just wrong.

When you spend a long time in a situation that is both hurting you and completely out of your control, anger and fear are your primary responses. Anger against the person hurting you and those you love, fear of being hurt again. But often in those situations they are not safe emotions to express towards the right person and fear and shame can stop you from expressing them to anyone else. So what happens to that fear and that anger? You can't afford to feel it, but it doesn't just disappear because you fail to express or acknowledge it.

For some people it starts coming out in other interactions, anger becomes mis-directed towards others in situations where you can be safely in control. Children 'act out' and demonstrate inappropriate aggression and sometimes violence. This is a more typical path for boys who tend to be less discouraged from outward expressions of anger than girls in our society. My path was the more typical one for girls. I mutilated my anger and my fear until they were unrecognisable to even me. I couldn't risk feeling them, I didn't want to feel them, so I twisted and distorted those emotions until I couldn't tell what they were any more. I don't do anger, I don't do fear. I just have a twisted mass of emotions that I can't categorise, can't identify and can't therefore deal with. Like many others in this situation, the mutilated mass of emotions I had was so confusing and painful that in order to deal with it I began to mutilate myself.

Thankfully for the most part the outward expression came under gospel control a decade ago. My body isn't mine, Jesus says he loves me and I shouldn't treat it that way and for the most part I don't. The scars remain and I am super-grateful for living in a culture that doesn't ask about them as I still find them difficult to talk about. Mainly because of shame at the evidence of my weakness and brokenness that's written unambiguously on my skin.

But the delusion that I don't have fear or anger persisted. In situations where I got hurt I continued to mutilate my emotions into an undefinable mess. Then one day 18 months ago someone showed me I was angry. "Are you angry?" she said. And I asked myself that question for the first time ever. "Yes," I said. "I'm angry." And I was. Suddenly it was there. The mess resolved, it untwisted and there was anger. Unbelievable anger. Disproportionate anger. Anger so intense I didn't quite know what to do with myself. But such a relief. I could see it, I could name it, it wasn't a hopeless, confused mess any more. "The truth will set you free." I was angry and I felt free.

That was a turning point, I still don't spot it sometimes, some of my closest friends have learned to ask the question, "Are you angry?" when they see me act in certain ways, but increasingly I see it for myself. Hard on the heels of angry came scared. Sometimes I get scared. Scared of being rejected, scared of being controlled, scared of myself. What a relief to know it, to say it, to be able to talk to my heavenly Father about it.

So it turns out I get angry and I get scared. In fact, I may be the angriest and scaredest person I know. I get outrageously angry at trivial inconsiderateness, terrified by minor rejections and feeling out of control. It turns out that knowing you are angry is only the first step. A lot of my anger is sinful, unjustified, out of proportion and I have had to try hard to learn not to let it loose on the people who caused it. Sometimes I joke with the person who helped me to recognise it that she has unleashed a monster. But it is better. So much better. Because mutilating anger doesn't take it away. It just re-directs its destructive power whilst leaving you powerless to change.

Knowing what the monster is gives you weapons to fight it. Gospel weapons. To my mutilated emotions I had nothing to say, to anger I can say look at Jesus who entrusted himself to God who judges justly in the hands of deep injustice and pain from sinful men. Be like him, they hurt you, but God can deal with it far better than you can. Let it go to him. He loves you and it matters to him. Look at the cross, see how much it matters to him. See how he deals with the damage you do to others. He pays for that too and he forgives you. See how he accepts you and won't ever reject you or let you down. Talk to him about your anger, he understands, he loves you and he cares deeply when people hurt you. You don't have to hold on to it anymore. You are free to love.

To fear I can say, “Let the beloved of the Lord rest secure in him, for he shields him all day long and the one the Lord loves rests between his shoulders.”

I still have loads to learn about how to deal with fear and anger. They can still get the better of me and I can unleash them accidentally on innocent bystanders. But at least I can see what I'm fighting now. And that is hope. Fear and anger can be appropriate responses to a broken and sinful world. Jesus had them and expressed them at times. One day in this life I have hope that with gospel grace and under gospel control they won't be enemies anymore, but appropriate and useful responses to help me to pray and love and long for heaven. And one day when the night of these dark times ends and the day of heaven breaks I know I will be able to put them down, I hope no longer as weapons against myself or others, but as useful tools that have done their service but are no longer needed in that place of rest and peace.