Reflections on God52

I must admit I've fallen behind on the God52 weekly posts and exercises. This has partly to do with recent events in my personal life and partly with my own procrastination and has lead me to think about the God52 process and it's impact on me, personally.

I think the idea is great! Each week a new discipline being challenged. A new focus for spiritual development. Behind the idea is the feeling that we are falling short in certain spiritual disciplines and so we need to challenge ourselves to improve them.

This, however, is where God52 starts failing for me. I find myself approaching the exercises as a sort of check list; Give extravagantly? check; Focused prayer? check; 1 hour meditation? check. Been there, done that. What it isn't doing is helping me to develop these into disciplines that I practice every day. Once I've achieved a task I move on to the next week's challenge and forget about what I learned in the week before. I certainly have not practiced any previous week's challenge consistently this year!

So I've decided to not follow every challenge every week. I will rather choose specific challenges to work towards developing into disciplines. This week's challenge is a great example for me to start on - meditation. Sitting still for 1 hour just focussing on God. Not praying. Not singing. Not listening to worship music or podcast sermons. Just sitting quietly. It's a massive challenge for me; someone who is always multitasking at least 10 things in my head while working on 5 things at work, but I can see the value of meditation and I can see how it's missing in my daily life.

So God52 is great. I'll keep checking up on what each challenge is for each week because you never know how it might challenge you, but personally I'm going to be picking just a few challenges to work on, so as to develop them into disciplines.

Reaching out...

Ultimately the goal of our Christian walk is to go and make disciples - after worshipping and loving God of course. I suspect I am not alone in feeling inadequate in this area. The first evangelical challenge of God52 was therefore a big challenge, not just for me.

I take some consolation in reading about the efforts of other bloggers in the challenge of praying for a non-believer. Many of the bloggers are full time ministry workers who you might expect to excel at this sort of thing. It was with some measure of relief therefore that I saw how others were struggling to fulfill this task. Everything from offering to pray for people via a Twitter hash code, to stealth praying for people - they won't know what hit them!

Don't get me wrong. My missionary life has led me to many opportunities to pray for, and with, non-believers. Yet I am still afraid to declare my beliefs aloud. Not to mention the fact that these days I hardly even come into contact with non-believers. All my friends are believers, I work with believers, I serve in worship in my church... with believers. So it's already a bit of a challenge.

Put it to God though and He will make an opening. I went on a very important trip to buy something. On this trip I was praying, asking God for favour to get a good price. I threw in a prayer at the end for an opportunity to be a witness. I thought I could use the interaction with the sales clerk to initiate a conversation that might allow me to pray for him/her. Plan in place I entered the shop... and was approached by a woman with head covering....Muslim!... In an instant all my resolve fled. Any plan I had to use my missionary status to negotiate a better price was crushed! How could I share with this woman? How could I dare pray for her?

In hindsight I realise I had been given an awesome opportunity and I blew it! I should have entered with boldness and courage and shared what God had placed on my heart, but I fled into the security of a stealth prayer. I'm not knocking quietly praying for people without their knowledge, but in this case it was just an excuse to avoid standing up for my faith.

This God52 stuff is a hard! Sadly I seem to be failing more than I'm succeeding. Hopefully as the year progresses I'll improve and learn.

Desire vs Will

It is interesting to me how often things coincide in my life. Different aspects, from difference sources, come together at the same time. So it was when God52 called on us to fast 1 day in the week, OM also called on us the fast in the same week. Thus a 1 day fast became combined with a 3 day pray & fast.

Food has never had much of a hold on me. I eat when I'm hungry, but have never had a problem eating too much. It's surprising then that fasting is so difficult. The craving for food is incredible during a fast. I've gone through days, when I am really, really busy, where I completely forget to eat. Start a day of fasting though and suddenly all I want to do is eat! It doesn't help that odd temptations arise as well.

For example, the only time that my house mate has ever offered to share his breakfast with me was on the same day I was fasting! The second day of my 3 day prayer & fast (I was just fasting lunches), one of our workers came in and offered me Kudu droewors! He's never done that before!!

I suspect that God throws these things at us to test just how serious we are about the commitment we made. I see this not only during fasting, but also with other commitments. We might be tempted to blame the enemy for these tests - and perhaps sometimes it is him - but I suspect more often the testing of our commitment comes from God. He wants to see us thrive in the challenge. He wants to see our will triumph over our desire.

I wasn't so good at it this time. The Kudu wors was too much... I took a bite even before I realised what I was doing! Next time I'll do better!

Humility?

This should be an easy task for me... Do something for someone else without telling them or anyone else... Easy!

See most of my job is exactly this. It's what I thrive on; Serving others. It has been a hallmark of my ministry for years. So I don't see how this can be a problem task.

The thing is, it WAS a problem task. Many of the God52 bloggers encountered the same type of problem. See, while I love doing the background tasks, I also love getting recognition for it. Who doesn't? I tell myself that I don't need recognition or applause, but deep down it is what I crave. I want people to say: "Look at Paul. Look how selflessly he works to help others even without recognition. Paul is great!"

It's hard to come to realize that even unrecognized service is not motivated by a humble heart. True humility is thus something I cannot claim to have achieved. Not here in this blog anyway. Maybe I have managed to be truly humble at times, but in being truly humble I probably did not acknowledge it. That's the difficulty with humility, isn't it? You can't claim to have achieved it.

This was definitely a useful exercise though. It is good to review your perceptions and mindsets and hold them up to the light of God's standard. It serves well to remind us just how much grace we need! Time to reconsider my motives and refocus on God alone, I think!

Prayer #Fail

Prayer has never been a strong point for me. This challenge really highlighted that. The task was to focus prayer on just one thing for the whole week. Jesus taught that we should be persistent in our requests to God, even when we did not seem to be hearing an answer.

I started the challenge strong, as always, but quickly faded as the week went on. The discipline to set aside large chunks of time to devote exclusively to pray is hard enough as it is. To then use that time to pray only for one request, over and over and over. It exposed my weak discipline!

The request I prayed for remains unanswered, so I'll be continuing to pray for it throughout the next few months. I guess you could say that, while I failed the specifics of this task, I did learn something after all. I learned that God enjoys hearing from us, even if we may feel like we're being repetitive.

God52 - Extravagant Giving

The first challenge for the year was extravagant giving. Push yourself to give until it hurts.This caught my attention immediately and sparked my interest. All through December I was being challenged about where my priorities lie. What do I spend most of my time and money doing? The answer was pretty clear: My computer & computer games.

Now there is nothing basically wrong with entertainment. There's nothing wrong with having an outlet for relaxation. But anything and everything can become an idol that keeps us from God

Teach me, Lord, the way of your decrees,
    that I may follow it to the end.
Give me understanding, so that I may keep your law
    and obey it with all my heart.
Direct me in the path of your commands,
    for there I find delight.
Turn my heart toward your statutes
    and not toward selfish gain.
Turn my eyes away from worthless things;
    preserve my life according to your word.
Fulfill your promise to your servant,
    so that you may be feared.
Take away the disgrace I dread,
    for your laws are good.
How I long for your precepts!
    In your righteousness preserve my life.  Psalm 119:33-40

Oh how I wish that this was my attitude and desire! To long to obey God in all things."Turn my eyes away from worthless things" - that's the verse that hit me. How much time have I wasted on worthless computer games? Time that could be better spent! I had many plans for my December holiday break. Many things I wanted to get done around the house. Come 7 January and none were done. I wasted so much time!

Well, this tied in nicely with the challenge for week 1. Here I had a solution to the idolatry problem my computer had become. Give it away... What a painful process! I've spent an awful lot of money keeping my computer up to date to be able to play the latest games. I've spent an insane amount of money on computer games over the years; quite a lot in December (thanks Holiday sales....thank a lot...). It seems like such a waste to just give it away, doesn't it?

My first attempts to find support in this endeavour were pretty disappointing. Most people I spoke to asked the same question: "Why not sell it? At least then you get some money to help support you?" This actually became a serious temptation to me. It sounds like good, wise counsel, doesn't it? But God had spoken clearly. Give it away! When someone wants to be extravagantly generous we should not question it, we should encourage it. After all, isn't that part of what we're called to do?

Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents. Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.” Mark 12:41-44

Do we know how to give like this poor widow?

  Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” Matt 19:21

If your possessions are getting in the way of you reaching God, are you willing to give them away? 

It wasn't just my friends that caused temptation. I provided enough temptation to myself. I was shocked at how hard it was to remove the games in preparation. Every game I selected to uninstall called out to me. Every game tempted me to play it; How nice it would be; How much fun; How I should really finish the story to find out how it ends; How I'm just getting to the good part. Over and over I had to force myself to go on. The further I went, the more I realised just how much I was bound by these games. They truly had become an idol!

I know the challenge wasn't specifically to break down an idol (unless you consider the idol of materialism), but this is what it became for me. My computer is clean now, ready to be given away. The last hurdle is to find the right person to give it to. Until then I will disconnect it and pack it away.

Hopefully computers and computer games will never have this hold on me again.

So that is week 1. What an incredible challenge. I haven't actually given away anything yet physically, but just the process has help me give away something that was spiritually binding. I look forward to the physical giving away now!

God 52

What is it?

The original idea comes from a Blogger who is setting himself 52 spiritual challenges, one for each week of the year. The idea is to challenge your faith, discipline, and preconceived ideas about Christianity. I got interested in this at the first week of 2013 and have decided that this will be a good exercise for my soul. Check out the original idea here, God 52 - The irresistible resolution, and follow the latest at God 52.

What am I doing about it?

Well I've decided to record my efforts and anything I'm learning. Mostly for my own reference, but perhaps others may find it interesting to - thus Interesting Times Blog has been revived after a 2 year silence.

I'm a little behind the curve with the feedback Blog posts, since we're already into week 3....so Week 1 & 2 feedback will follow shortly...