It’s the start of a brand new year so Merry Christmas and a Happy 2010 to you!
My year kicked off to a fairly unusual start with a day spent in my bathroom. Thankfully it was not due to any need to deposit the contents of my stomach due to some new years swine bird bug. It was more happily due to the need to renovate my bathroom after putting up with a room that had last seen some care and attention before time began.
It felt quite therapeutic to be honest. Ripping out the old taps and ceramic furniture that had persistently screamed of some previous pre-Ikea life. (Check out the Twitpics down the sidebar). Although the fun soon ended as I found myself faced with 30 years of collective grime hidden under taps and down pipes. But soon that was all gone and in went the brand spanking new bathroom ware that brought an air of hygenic cleanliness that was almost next to godliness.
And so we start the new year with an almost-finished bathroom. Well… there’s still a few things I didn’t quite get done before the holidays ended and the usual work load reappeared. But… I’m determined to get things done by the end of the month.
The whole thing just sums up my year to be honest! I’m not too interested in Resolutions and more interested in a New Years Renovation! Time to rip out the old stuff and the old ways and build something fresh and new! It’s time to make some radical changes and really lift the lid on all that’s gone before. Time to live the best life yet!
One of those annoying ‘facts of life’ is simply that at times things get really tough! One minute you’re having a whale of a time and then next it feels like the whale just landed on you! One minute you were driving along quite happily, enjoying the fresh breeze of the ministry and good friendships and then all of sudden you’re stuck in a traffic jam with no possible exit for miles.
The point is that at some point or other you’re going to hit a wall called ‘hard’ or ‘impossible’ and you’ll be faced with two decisions: 1) stop and camp at it’s base deciding to spend the rest of your life at that level or 2) work out how to grow a few feet taller so you can climb over it!
It might seem a bit of a no-brainer to some but the truth is we often hit these walls and it doesn’t matter what we do or how much stretching we undergo the wall remains impassable!
I’ve found myself looking up at all kinds of walls. We had it as a family when my son was born and we discovered he would need a series of operations. I had it as a Pastor when suddenly I was faced with two families at war thanks to an adulterous affair. I’ve had it as a business owner when faced with the need for new clients and a stable income and I’ve had it as the head of a household when faced with balancing the budget and working out how on earth we are going to get through the next few months without resorting to eating cardboard.
What I’ve discovered through it all is that there are some walls which are only really called ‘difficult’ and ‘need-to-try-a-bit-harder’ and can easily be climbed over if you just get off your lazy backside and put in a little effort. But there are some walls which are just simply too big to deal with and it’s our mistake to try and tackle these on our own.
Too many people try to be Spiderman but they always end up being swatted back down by the scale of the task. Instead if you want to deal with the really hard things of life then the only way to become big enough to climb the wall is to let God get bigger instead!
Whatever we face in life we don’t face it alone and too often we limit God by bringing him down to our level. You’re doing life with the Creator of the Universe and yet when we hit a hard wall of ‘provision’ or ‘insecurity’ we get so fixated on dealing with the tough that we forget that his middle name is ‘tough’.
So next time you hit a wall that’s too high to scale – instead of trying to work out how YOU can climb it why not try looking to the one who’s already perched on the top waiting for you to reach up and ask for some help. We need to keep allowing God to become bigger in our world. After all He’s able to do ‘immeasureably more’ than all we can ask or imagine… so let’s give Him some place to grow!
(If you’ve got a Tall Wall Story then let me know and share how God grew in your understanding to enable you to get over it!)
Just been skyped by a friend with a theological conundrum to be answered – I liked my response so much I thought it’s worth posting on my blog. Feel free to add any further comments or questions on this issue in the comments below!
Friend:
I have a theological question thats hurtin my head chris would you care to give an insight?
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Chris:
indeed
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what’s your question?
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Friend:
christ gives us more than we abundantly ask for…….. so should we accept more because surely that contradicts the situation
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and how do we live by faith knowing that God is going to give us all we ask for
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Chris:
good question
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a key passage is that God is “ABLE TO DO more than all we can ask or imagine according to the power at work WITHIN US”… (Ephesians 3:20)
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the thing here is to understand the relationship WE have with God
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God has an abundance that he wishes to pour out
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but we also have a responsibility to engage with the power at work WITHIN US
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so God doesn’t just give us what we ask for… there is a transaction between faith and blessing
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Friend:
How does that work then?
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see Malachi 3:10
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God was ready to open up the STOREHOUSES of heaven and pour out more blessing than you could imagine on the people…
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but the people had to bring the WHOLE tithe into the house
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God’s blessing – meets the people’s faith…
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Friend:
So is it just a case of tithing properly then?
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Chris:
tithing is one aspect of expressing your faith in God – trusting him with your finances and being obedient.. but God’s looking for faith in every area of our life
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so you ask God – I need a job…. he’s looking for the faith in you to go knocking on the doors of great jobs…
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you ask God – I need a car…. he’s looking for the faith in you to pray and believe God can provide a miracle… he may also be looking at the motive of your heart too!
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Friend:
ok thank you
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much better than the answer someone else gave – lol he confused me a lil
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I took my son Joel to see Pixar’s latest creation, the unconventionally named WALL-E – about a little robot who is the only surviving robot of a whole fleet designed to clean up the Earth after centuries of rubbish build up. As is expected from such a movie – this accidental hero happens to inadvertently save the human race from growing fat out in space. Quite the topical issue for an America growing fatter by the year.
But thought provoking and meaningful sentiments aside – the movie is quite fun and as usual Pixar stretch the bounaries of CGI having already conquered the insect world (Bugs Life), the human world (Incredibles), the Undersea world (Finding Neo) – they can now add the weightless environment of outer space to their list of clever tricks.
Pixar is to CGI animated movies (that stands for Computer Generated Imagery for all the nerd newbys) what Disney was to the old paint and draw animated movies – the best! (One reason why Disney eventually bought Pixar for their own). There’s an similar passion to break the boundaries, to do something that others haven’t done, to conquer new environments and challenges.
But my real love of Pixar came from watching one of those special features that I found on the Monsters Inc DVD which I’d bought for my son. (There are benefits to being nerdy enough to watch the special features). It was a behind the scenes look at Pixar’s home base in Emeryville, California.
The most amazing thing I saw was not a tightly run, high pressured working environment where everyone existed to meet the next deadline and then go home – but a place where people came to play and not just do all of the latter. The truth is that most of these guys probably do spend their entire lives in and out of the studio, living under the pressure of huge deadlines and big budgets – so instead of living two seperate lives, they brought their lives and their creativity with them! From scooting down the halls, to the pet monkey, to the annual Paper Plane flying competition in the entrance foyer – these studios are a creative bubble of energy and passion all working together for the joy of making new movies.
This is not just a job to these guys – its a way of life for them and they’ve decided to make it an enjoyable one as well as a productive one. I guess thirteen Academy Awards, three Golden Globes, and one Grammy goes to show that their philosophy is certainly paying off!
Right now – we’re embarking on building a Megacentre in the heart of Leeds, following on from the awesome one we have in Sheffield – and I’m determined to above all make it a place where people love to be! It’s granted that some people are going to spend an awful lot of time in the new Megacentre making everything that needs to happen – happen! So I’m given to taking a leaf out of Pixar’s book and choose to bring my life with it… and build a place where people want to be – and more importantly – a place I want to be!
Too many churches feel like dead, stuffy old people’s homes with toilets you don’t want to go near and offices that are cluttered with rubbish and administration. Even the halls are posted from floor to ceiling in random notices, posters, flyers and useless pieces of information that no-one is ever going to read. Since when did you last visit someones home and as you walked into the front lounge there was a huge pinboard up on the wall telling you about where to get a coffee, or how much had been raised in the ‘by a new double bed’ fund and you would rather hold until later than visit the festering room called a ‘bathroom’ that stands at the top of the stairs, but smells from the bottom!
We need to make churches a place where people want to come and hang out – inject something of the coffee house culture into them so that when it comes to closing, you’re having to hang around until people finish because no-one is wanting to leave!
Surely the church of all places should be the most welcoming, the most homely, the most exciting and fun filled place to be. After all – it is the Father’s house… and the Father I know ain’t no stuffy fuddy duddy! He’s the most creative, awe-inspiring, and enthusiastic God you could ever know.
So I love pixar cause it has captured something of the way we are all supposed to live. In a creative, relationship based environment that pulls together, every person doing there bit, to see something amazing done on planet earth! The only difference is that what they do is temporal – but what we do is eternal.
I found the video on You Tube (in 3 parts) so here it is! I hope it inspires you in the same way it did me!
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
about chris
Chris is the Congregation Pastor of Hope City Church, Leeds, a husband to his beautiful wife Gosia and a dad to two amazing kids, Joel & Ania. He is also passionate about seeing people get hold of the truth about Jesus and realise what that REALLY means for themselves - but be prepared for a few nerdy-thoughts along the way! Read more
Chris is the Congregation Pastor of 
