Monthly Archives: August 2025

Getting out of the valley…

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Who of us can dwell with the consuming fire?… Those who walk righteously and speak what is right… they are the ones who will dwell on the heights, whose refuge will be the mountain fortress. Their bread will be supplied, and water will not fail them. 

Your eyes will see the king in his beauty and view a land that stretches afar… your eyes will see Jerusalem, a peaceful abode, a tent that will not be moved, its stakes will never be pulled up, nor any of its ropes broken. There the Lord will be our Mighty One. It will be like a place of broad rivers and streams.. For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king; it is he who will save us.

(Isa 33.14-17,20-22)

Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither – whatever they do prospers.

(Ps 1.1-3)

“It is written; ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'”

(Matt 5.4)

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

(Jn 4.14)

In these days I am testifying with a full and grateful heart to God’s keeping and directing of me over these months; for his sustaining grace through struggle and weariness; guarding me from folly and from dishonouring him as I seemed to be walking in a maze of dead ends down in the valleys, hungry for the wide open spaces which I believed to be out there! Thanks be to God, who has led and fed, and kept company with me, through his people and through his word – provided for the feeding of his people, who have the privilege of continually being nourished and learning afresh from it. I have received a revelation of grace, experienced the unravelling of knots and been led up over the foothills to the great ‘high ways’ of God’s people.

I am rejoicing in God’s goodness – with renewed appetite for his word and confidence in its power as I see it bear fruit in my life. I am delighting in prospect of a study group with whom to share in learning, sisters in Christ with whom to grow in faith, to share the sheer joy of learning to know God better, to see Jesus more clearly and to worship him with them. A rich banquet is laid out before us on which to feast, where we will meet God and honour him. Truly, our good shepherd provides good food and clear waters for us!

There is a sense of having left behind the narrow and baffling lanes in the valley with their restricted views and lack of perspective. Now I am walking on the ridges, my vision is far-ranging; I can see where I am and where I am going within the context of God’s great plan of redemption and re-creation. The air is clean and invigorating, the prospect glorious, I have food and drink in abundance for my spirit, and lack nothing.

And by whose agency am I brought to this place? By the One whose righteousness is now my inheritance and secure possession, by Jesus Christ the one who has paid for all my sins and through whom I am adopted as God’s beloved daughter. It is all by his loving sacrifice, and thus to him belongs all my praise and thanks. I see the king in his beauty, and the glorious sight brings me such peace and hope. I see the spacious land to which I now belong, and where I will dwell with God and all the saints, and I am near to bursting point with gladness and praise!

Heavenly Father, I thank you for the lessons which you have been teaching me in the valley; and for your preservation of me in those devious and trying paths. I praise you that your grace is now more fully revealed to me, and I am reinvigorated for my journey. Let me not forget the lessons of the valley – above all let me not forget that I can trust you to be working even when I am baffled, grieved and weak. In the name and for the sake of my precious Lord and Saviour, Jesus, I pray, Amen.

Daring to believe….

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Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet was without sin. 

Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

(Heb 4.14-16)

..he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him…

(Ps 103.10-13)

IF we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

(1 Jn 1.8&9)

Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him…The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body.. For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace!

(Rom 6.8,10-12&14)

I wrote last week of how a long-standing confusion and trouble in my thinking was being gently removed as God revealed what I have long misunderstood.. perhaps you wondered what that was?! Well, I have long been bewildered by what I – as a mature, well-taught christian woman should think about the fact that I still sin. What should my attitude be? Do I beat myself up for my shortcomings? It has been all-too-often the case that the devil has used awareness of sin as a means to entrap and bind me in self-pity and despair – which then made me feel even worse as that was not godly!!

Anyway, what I want to write about today, and perhaps more in coming weeks, is what God in his mercy and gentle compassion has shown me to be true, and to share something of the transformation which that is bringing. I want to glorify and praise the God who touches his children just where they need healing, and to encourage any reader who might be similarly struggling, not to lose heart..

As a believer, I am new-made and as dead to the power of sin and death as Jesus is in his glory at God’s right hand. The authority of sin over me is broken, and it no longer masters my heart or mind, nor defines my being. I share the life of God, since the Holy Spirit dwells within me; I am learning to recognise sin and to name and view it as God does (this is what confession means) – a blight upon his good creation. As God’s beloved child, my problems are his problems – and everything that troubles me is his business, as every loving parent knows!

The sin which remains active in the life of the believer is not part of their born-again self. It is tied up with the mortal body, which one day will be put off and transformed into a perfect and sinless one. It is removed from the core of our being, detached from our essential new self as Christ-followers. We are now on God’s side against it, and the glorious news is that in Jesus, sin IS already conquered – both past and also future sins which his children may commit before they die. So I am simply being invited to access all the rich resources of Christ in dealing with a problem which is NO LONGER an issue for God. This has been a critical point for me to grasp, and how gloriously, joyously liberating it is to realise that my Father delights to show forgiveness to me for as long as I live.

 Beloved Heavenly Father, how glorious it is to know that I am the object of your love and compassion even as I depend upon your abundant provision over and over again. Thank you that you have shown me that you are not reluctant to pour out all and more than I can ever need, since this is exactly what Jesus died and rose again to make possible! I am now and forever united with you, and the sin that remains is your business to deal with – the more often I come to you for aid, the better pleased you are! Thank you, and all my praise is yours for such grace in Jesus my Lord, Amen.

Not make-believe… truth

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Could it be any clearer? Our old way of life was nailed to the cross with Christ, a decisive end to that sin-miserable life – no longer at sin’s every beck and call! What we believe is this: if we get included in Christ’s sin-conquering death, we also get included in his life-saving resurrection.

We know that when Jesus was raised from the dead it was a signal of the end of death-as-the-end. Never again will death have the last word. When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us. From now on, think of it this way: sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word. You are dead to sin and alive to God. That’s what Jesus did.

That means you must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives. Don’t give it the time of day. Don’t even run little errands that are connected with that old way of life. Throw yourselves wholeheartedly and full-time – remember you’ve been raised from the dead! – into God’s way of doing things. Sin can’t tell you how to live. After all, you’re not living under that old tyranny any longer. You’re living in the freedom of God.

(Rom 6.6-14, the Message)

God brought you alive – right along with Christ! Think of it! All sins forgiven, the slate wiped clean, that old arrest warrant cancelled and nailed to Christ’s cross. So if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it….. Your old life is dead. Your new life, which is your real life – even though invisible to spectators – is with Christ in God. He is your life.

(Col 2.13&14; 3.1,3&4)

Isn’t it weird, how the same words which have been spoken to or read by you for years can suddenly become illuminated with new meaning?! These past months have found me experiencing the personal equivalent of shifting tectonic plates, as my understanding of a particular and key aspect of faith has changed.

It has taken years for me to get to this place, a place where I really know just what it is that I have not understood, and can see clearly the problems that stem directly from that failure. I have prayed and talked, and God in his mercy has directed me through so many different  things – books, recorded sermons, public worship and confession, and above all through the study of his word, particularly in Colossians. I didn’t know it at the time, but this book has been absolutely the right one for me just now!

I am rejoicing in a new sense of who I am as a believer – of the difference that it makes to accept Jesus as Lord of my life. I now more fully grasp what it is to be ‘in Christ’, to be a partaker through him in the divine life and a channel for divine power and love to reach this broken and needy world.

It is not merely make-believe to think of myself as a beloved daughter of the Almighty, it is the truth. It is not a case of pretending something until it becomes real, but a case of stepping confidently into a new reality and then living it out to my fullest capacity. When my heavenly Father looks at me, he doesn’t have to pretend that I am acceptable, doesn’t have to pretend that I am beautiful and pure. It.. is.. the truth, the fact, the reality. How marvellous is that!!

Heavenly Father, I thank and praise you for you have rescued me from darkness into light and liberty in Christ Jesus. I praise and exalt my Saviour, who is the source, the foundation of faith and whose redeeming love for me has won my freedom and established your kingdom. I praise Jesus Christ as the object of faith – all that I hope for, all that I depend on is in him and therefore it is only by faith in him that I can live. He is the author and also the perfecter of faith; he is its beginning and its end. O let me continue to work out in my life what it means that for me to live is Christ, and to die is gain!

Let me learn to love my Saviour more, to enthrone him in my life, to worship him and truly to live in all the riches which he has won for me, and which are my inheritance in him. O Lord, teach me! In the name and for the sake of my Lord Jesus, Amen.

When love seems baffled…

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The first thing I want you to do is pray. Pray every way you know how, for everyone you know. 

Pray especially for rulers and their governments to rule well so we can be quietly about our business of living simply, in humble contemplation. This is the way our Saviour God want us to live.

(1Tim 2.1-3, the Message)

Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of the rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless. What will you do on the day of reckoning, when disaster comes from afar? 

(Isa 10.1-3)

Seek the Lord and live, or he will sweep through the house of Joseph like a fire; it will devour, and Bethel will have no-one to quench it…. You [who]turn justice into bitterness and cast righteousness to the ground.. you hate the one who reproves in court and despise him who tells the truth. You trample on the poor.. you oppress the righteous and take bribes and you deprive the poor of justice in the courts. Therefore the prudent man keeps quiet in such times, for the times are evil.

(Am 5.6,7,10,11-13)

As followers of Jesus, we are called to be peace-makers – most particularly exhorting others to find peace with God through Jesus, but also pursuing peace in personal relationships and between communities. To this end, Paul encourages his readers to pray for rulers and those in authority, that we might all live quietly and free from lawlessness and the appalling destruction of war. It is out of love for God and for others that we pray and pursue peace, and yet all of human history is stained deepest red with violence, conflict, oppression and the abuse of power – so deeply has human rebellion against the way of God broken us.

This rebellion has its roots in human pride, and in the failure to submit to and trust in God – at all levels of society. This is why so many of the prophets were absolutely vicious in their denunciation of the authorities and rulers in Israel and Judah – because the very people who ought to be creating conditions for peace were abusing their power to acquire wealth, extend their dominion, and caring nothing for the cost. The love of God was expressed through the prophets as righteous anger against those responsible. In our day and generation, nothing has changed and humankind continues to suffer at the hands of those whose authority was given to them to be exercised in love.

Ultimately, the bible assures us, these abusers of power will answer for what they have done – as we will too, on the day of Christ’s return. We ought therefore to be praying all the more urgently that they might recognise their position of stewardship and behave as trustworthy and loving under-shepherds over God’s creation.

But how can we respond individually as we see the outworking of human sin and brokenness, when our media is full of unspeakably distressing images of suffering and devastation? For myself, I feel baffled and powerless – ought I to join protests, to flood my social media with outraged and frantic posts about what is happening? Or ought I to be bombarding my elected representatives with messages demanding action? It seems that nothing is making any difference, and so I mourn in private, praying for those in need and for those with the power to make a difference. Is this a sin of omission? Are those who judge me for my silence right to do so? I don’t know.

Our Lord assured his disciples that for as long as God ordained the earth to remain, we would endure war and rumours of wars – and all the grievous consequences thereof. No nation has a divinely-ordained ‘right’ to exist, and all humankind are here purely by the gift and grace of God. He is not the particular possession of any political creed, or people group, but is Lord of the nations, and it is not wise to misrepresent or appropriate him for any human cause. He is working through all things for the exaltation of the Lord Jesus and the coming of the Kingdom. Human evil, in war and oppression is – and always has been – the context in which He perfectly expresses his love, justice and holiness.

It is simply unbiblical to assert that, in this world, we will be free from this evil, but I long to know how best to conduct myself as a believer in the face of injustice, gross abuse of trust, and the insidious complicity of my own nation and therefore of myself in the ongoing destruction. I can take courage from the prophets, knowing that it is right to confront our leaders with the injustice which their actions have caused or permitted; I can use my small resources to make a difference to perhaps one or two lives – each one eternally precious to the Creator. Above all, I pray and exhort others to pray, since only the Almighty, All-knowing, All-loving God can truly make the difference which we long to see. To bring all the troubles of his world to God in prayer is surely the priority, and we must not lose faith in His power and goodness.

To choose one, is to reject all other….

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God said, “It’s not good for the man to be alone; I’ll make him a helper, a companion.”.. God.. presented her to the man. The man said, “Finally! Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh!..” Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and embraces his wife. They become one flesh.

(Gen 2.18,22&23; the Message)

Find a good spouse, you find a good life – and even more; the favour of God!

Lots of people claim to be loyal and loving, but where on earth can you find one? God-loyal people, living honest lives, make it much easier for their children.

A nagging spouse is like the drip, drip, drip of a leaky tap; you can’t turn it off, and you can’t get away from it. You use steel to sharpen steel, and one friend sharpens another… Just as water mirrors your face, so your face mirrors your heart.

A good woman is hard to find, and worth far more than diamonds. Her husband trusts her without reserve, and never has reason to regret it. Never spiteful, she treats him generously all her life long.

(Prov 18.22, 20.6&7, 27.15-17, 31.10&11; the Message)

Out of respect for Christ, be courteously reverent to one another. Wives, understand and support your husbands in ways that show your support for Christ… Husbands, go all out in your love for your wives, exactly as Christ did for the church – a love marked by giving, not getting… They’re really doing themselves a favour – since they’re already “one” in marriage,

(Eph 5.21&22, 25&27)

A number of things have combined recently to prompt me to think again about the gift and privilege which is marriage – that unique unit created by a man and a woman promising to share life and build family for as long as God grants them breath. A gift ordained from the beginning; a gift designed to maximise our thriving as God’s image bearers and stewards in his creation. A gift sadly abused, scarred, and rejected by so many as a result of what human sin has done in and with it.

The exclusivity of marriage – the fact that in choosing one, I reject all other possibilities – is for my protection, so that in giving myself freely for the good of my spouse, I can trust that I will not be exploited. He too has promised to be faithful to me, rejecting all other possibilities. With God’s help, we continue in loyal love, growing in that mutual dependence and trust which is one of the most beautiful characteristics of mature marriage. With God’s help, I am enabled to seek the good of my husband, I have the privilege of being closer to this human being than anyone else will ever be – and the responsibility of not abusing that privilege.

To love within marriage is to be utterly vulnerable, and I am constantly aware of how easily I could forfeit his trust by careless, thoughtless behaviour and cutting words. I depend on his forgiveness, daily, and thank God for the divine provision of love which helps both of us as rescued sinners to keep on loving one another, to forgive and to forget(as many times as necessary!). I am the custodian of his weaknesses and wounds – will I cherish them privately, pouring the balm of my love and gentleness into his life, or will I choose to expose them and to dishonour him? The enemy of our souls delights to undermine marriage, and tempts us to use all means within our reach to retaliate when we are hurting, but thanks be to God who provides strength and wisdom even in the moment, to resist such temptation. To love as a believer is not to seek vengeance, not to sulk, not to manipulate or plot. It is to speak truth gently, to offer love continually, and to never lose sight of the glorious privilege which I have to be married to this man, for this life.

In the new creation we are told there is no marrying and giving in marriage. I only have this life, this one marriage in which to serve my God by faithful, loving and loyal investing of my best efforts in the good of my husband. That is a sobering thought, as I cannot know how many more days or years remain to me.

Heavenly Father, author of our lives and sustainer of this marriage, I praise and thank you for the privilege of serving you here. I thank you for the honour of loving this one man, and no other. I thank you for the enabling which you provide to us, your children, as we share life, seeking to be obedient to your calling and serving the Kingdom. Lord, help me to continue in faithfulness to my vows; to love him better than anyone else – except you!; to appreciate and cherish all that he is, not boasting of his weakness, but of his strengths, of his character and all the ways that you have gifted and blessed him. Let me do him good, and not harm, all the days which you grant us together. In Jesus’ name, Amen.