Friendships Forged in Compassion

I was thinking the other day, about the things in my heart that cause me to connect with others in deep and special ways.

This came about because there is somebody I am not particularly close to... in fact I barely know them (a rueful neglect I am keen to amend), who I have suddenly felt highly compassionate towards. The change in my attitude came through a simple kind gesture of comfort (a hug) between us last week, although to be perfectly honest I'm not totally sure who was comforting who.

Reflecting back on that moment, it has suddenly hit me. My deepest friendships and relationships have always been cemented in compassion... through a shared experience when either myself, or the other person has been suffering and the other gave comfort. In truth, I think some people would be very surprised to know how closely I regard them... and there are other friends who think they are close... but really have barely scratched the surface and are not in the same league as "the few".

It all reminds me of something the apostle Paul once said:

"I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead."

Philippians 3:10-11

It sounds a little masochistic doesn't it? However I believe what Paul is talking about... is striving to know God in a deeper way. Sometimes the price of that is very high... and Paul knew all about that. Jailed, beaten, flogged, rejected and eventually beheaded for the Gospel... he truly did put his relationship with God, above his own personal welfare.

I think you'd find it very hard to argue that Paul had a deep friendship with God.

Furthermore it says in scripture:

"The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit."

Psalm 34:18

He draws near to people who are in pain and takes compassion on them. People forget that when Lazarus died, Jesus didn't just casually walk up to the tomb and raise him from the dead... he was "deeply moved" and "troubled in spirit first". In fact the shortest verse in the Bible comes from that passage... and although in modern society it has been abused and relegated to a cuss phrase when something goes wrong... still it remains one of the most moving revelations of Jesus as a person:

"Jesus wept."

Luke 11:35

So God shares in our pain and comes close to us when we are hurting, if only we let him.

So you might be thinking... "oh great! If I want God to love me... I have to get the crud beaten out of me"; however, that is not what I am saying.

Remember I said earlier that my strongest friendships were based on times when either myself or the other person suffered and the other had compassion.

God desired our love and compassion so much, he became the suffering party... through his son Jesus. For me personally, Christ's sacrifice binds me to him above all others. No one has suffered as much for me and nobody loves me as much as him. nobody is as deserving of my love as him.

If you wish to experience that love, it is all there for you to take. All you need to do is recognise that you aren't right with God, repent of the way you have lived. Then, believe in Jesus and take him at his word. If he settles your account it is finished.

I realise that makes it sound like a recipe for making a cake but it really is that simple... as long as you are earnest in doing it.

Blessings

N

Arriving

Sometimes other Christians who know me find it extremely hard to understand where I am coming from.

It's not their fault.

If Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus... then Nick Payne is definitely not a local boy - heck I'm probably from Krypton.

Now as Christians we were all lost, but none of us were found by Jesus in quite the same place... for this reason what is appropriate for one Believer isn't always appropriate for another (the reverse is sometimes also true). Yet despite this, isn't it so easy to judge other believers actions on the basis of what we know is right and wrong for us personally? Why do we expect other Christians to conform to the pattern that is specific to our own calling?

I know the place from where I was called:

I was like Gideon in his winepress. You remember Gideon don't you? Called by God to defeat the Midianites - addressed as "mighty warrior by" the angel of the Lord... yet a man flawed by reluctance and fear. Where do we find this mighty warrior at the start of his journey? In a winepress threshing wheat! So scared was he of reprisals, that he farmed his crops in hiding... where no-one could see him to steal from him. You can read it in Judges 6.

I'm not any more special than any other Christian I am no "mighty warrior", but I am different from practically all the Christians around me, if only because of the distant place I come from in my walk.

In my youth, my contact with secular culture was minimal. I was also a solitary Christian. Let no one in, let no one out... in these matters I was pretty insular... I don't want to dwell on this now, but if you want to read up on it, I've blogged about it in the following entry:

Scar Tissue

I mentioned before that I have a new found belief that God is allowing me to rediscover the extrovert so long trapped within me by circumstance. I believe he has waited till now, for me to reach a point where I am grounded enough in both faith and past experience to be able to navigate through the pitfalls I will inevitably encounter... for in order for me to be effective as an olive branch to the lost... I need to establish a rapport - I can't talk about Jesus to them if I can't talk to them full stop.

So God calls me out of my winepress... he taps me on the shoulder and tells me to stop burying my talent in the ground. He begins to teach me that you have to speculate in order to accumulate. Go to the people, learn a natural affection for them... not just one of duty and a righteous desire for their repentance and salvation... but true compassion for them as people. They are not lepers. They need us to embrace them, not stand off them and watch them fall.

Yes they are sinners , yes there are wounded people out there, who if we are not careful will bring us down... but when did that stop Jesus? He criticised the pharisees for sticking to their church communities and preaching from a distance.

Jesus Christ had a righteousness that surpassed that of the pharisees - who were controlled by fear. You see their righteousness was founded on their need to be seen as outwardly clean... and they loathed to touch anything that made them unclean. Jesus however, knew his personal righteousness was not in question... and he just got stuck right in. He was criticised for eating and drinking with sinners and yet it wasn't their sin that touched Him and made Him dirty - it was His unassailable goodness that touched their lives and set their hearts on fire. It gave them hope and challenged them to connect with God on a deeper level.

Perfect love drives out fear.

THAT is where we need to be as Christians. We have to be confident in our God... not arrogant or self righteous... but confident that His grace is sufficient for us... that His saving power cleans, shields and protects us from and against anything the world can chuck at us.

I was afraid they could hurt me, I believed I could be deceived and dragged into the mire... but that is fear speaking and not love. As a Christian my righteousness does not come from my own strength - it comes from that of Christ. He sends you and I out into the world to give people the opportunity to know the Father.

God is a God of risks when it comes to reaching the lost.

In His mercy He sent Jonah to preach conviction to the sworn enemies of His people.

In His mercy He sent Peter to preach the Gospel in the house of Cornelius, who as a Gentile, under the Law would have made him "unclean".

In His mercy He struck down Saul of Tarsus - scourge of the Early Church and convicted him of his persecution of Christians... in the process bringing him to salvation and turning him into the "Apostle to the Gentiles".

God has a way of reaching out to His enemies in very special and unexpected ways (ultimately through the death and resurrection of His Son).

God is teaching me to take risks and while many of my contemporaries think me foolish, they misjudge me because they fail to understand or take into account where I came from in the first place. Issues like this are not new... they came up when the Gentiles first started to come to Christ. Peter, John, James and Paul all banged heads together in prayer and had to discern between them what God was saying with regard to this new breed of believer and they set the Gentile believers free from conforming to the more strict regulations that applied to Jewish believers.... regulations that were largely foreign to them as outsiders.

With regard to myself, I know that my confidence does not come from within... it comes from the God who changes me and sustains me through life. I already know that many things in society don't have a hold on me and yet I have rarely used this strength which God has given me to further his work.

Were I to rely on my own power I would wither and perish... but God, my God has brought me this far and my God will lead me home..

When confronted by the pharisees over his apparent closeness to sinners Jesus himself responded by quoting the prophet Hosea:

"While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?"
On hearing this, Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."

Look up the word mercy in your dictionary... go on. Do you notice that in the Oxford English Dictionary, one way of looking at the word mercy is to describe it as quality of compassion.

The Lord desires the quality of your compassion, not your mere sacrifices of praise.

We need to grow into a place where we are confident in our own salvation... where we know that darkness cannot overcome that which is within. "A person who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet; his whole body is clean." We need to grow into Christians who radiate Christ... so that the sick can see their Doctor again.

Can anything separate us from the love of Christ? Are we that petrified of being snatched away that we would rather seek the comfort of our stone halls then risk touching those in need?

The future seems to be holding lots of changes for me... Nick Payne - the Krypton Boy, has finally entered the Solar System. God has put me in these new places for a purpose... now all I need to be wary of is spiritual Kryptonite!

God bless


N

Attitudes Towards Christian Singletons

For the last couple of weeks I've been having it a little rough at church. There has been a great deal of focus on marriage... we have had a few couples coming in for the reading of their wedding bans. It's always the prayers that get me. On the first occasion the couplers were prayed for, the person doing the prayers pointed out the blessings that married couples experience and how they wished all those blessings to be passed to the couples in their futures together. All well and good in itself, except for the fact that everyone in the building was married or engaged except for a male student, a schoolgirl and... me. Last week was worse because the visiting preacher prayed for couples who are planning to get married, newlyweds and for those who are struggling in their marriage.

None of that I have a problem with... except for the notable exclusion of praying for people who AREN'T in a relationship at all. Apparently for some reason us it appears that single people are often not counted as entities when in fact our needs are just as valid as people who are in couples. I would argue that some (not all) people in troubled relationships need to count their blessings. So long as they are with the right person, what they have been given is an incredible gift. Those of us who have been denied such treasures know their worth.

I have been in a wrong relationship and I have learned the value of solitude; yet I have also seen people in right relationships and have learned by gazing from outside the window, the value of true companionship between two people who love one another. This is all the more obvious to me having had proper, balanced love withheld from me when I was dating the wrong person.

Instead of lecturing one another or bitterly complaining from the sanctity of our respective pedestals about how we think others should behave or what they should realistically expect from life, we should look to how we can positively help their situation through prayer or practicality. We would do well... all of us - wherever we are, to mark Paul's words to the Colossians:

"Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." Colossians 3:12-17

Because compassion is a rare commodity and we need it these days more than ever! We need hearts of flesh and blood, not hearts of stone... that are beaten down with "compassion fatigue".

We need to mutually recognise one another's blessings and struggles if we are to help one another move on.

Bear with one another.

Regards

N

God Remembers

That sounds a little odd doesn't it? Does God forget people? However, when the Bible talks about God remembering someone... it's not that he forgot they were there, it just means that he returns to someone with special compassion and concern... after leaving them in a particular situation.

I am hoping that this is what God is working in me at the moment. I've struggled long and hard at the bottom of a cistern, waiting to be rescued! I talked through the Proverbs scripture I've been wrestling with, with a leader at church... and got it prayed over.

We covered the ground where Rachel was frustrated by her barrenness... and God "remembers" her later and when the time is right she is blessed with Joseph. Similarly God "remembers" Noah, just before the flood (good job really).

I realised this morning that despite forgiving the person who hurt me a while back, I had not told them... instead I had completely ignored them. I feel that God was challenging that stance I had taken this morning. A scripture was on my heart, specifically the bit in bold:

""Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."
He also told them this parable: "Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit? A student is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.
"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,' when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."

I realised that just because I'm not comfortable around someone because of what they did to me, and don't wish to be close to them again; it gives me no excuse to blank them out of everything.

Lately I've been worried that somebody I have discovered feelings for, is not talking to me... and I don't know why. Yet how can I expect them to talk to me, if I myself am not prepared to talk? How dare I have the audacity to moan to God that someone is silent with regard to me.... if I myself am silent to another. Repentance comes before revival, both personally and nationally, so I knew i had to act.... whether I be blessed or not... righteousness requires me to settle my accounts peaceably.

I sent a text today, to acknowledge and thank the person who hurt me for sending back my borrowed belongings, to forgive them for the pain they caused... to apologise for my silence... and to say that I needed to remain distant, but not that I intended to be ignorant.

I don't know if God is going to help me out in my specific circumstance but I can only trust in him. It was weird that the Bible verse today was on Joseph... because that's largely where I feel I am. Having received promises and visions for the future... I find myself stuck in a cistern wondering how God will get me out of the pickle.

I'm waiting God... please answer.... remember me.

As David would say.... "Come Quickly Lord."