Holidays can be difficult times

to find God and spend time with Him.

It’s primarily down to the complete change in lifestyle and circumstances that first breaks the routine in which you made space for God, and secondly calls you away to other stuff that is either fun or necessary (or both) when you might find time.

The last time we were here I was in the middle of a time when I would get up about 5.30am for an hour with Him, sometimes praying aloud, sometimes in tongues, sometimes even just being quiet. Although the length of time was a little truncated (5.30am translates to 3.30am with the time difference!) and I was here for a recharge, I did still carry on. This time I’ve been reading the new testament we brought with us, going back through Timothy and Titus in a loop, meditating on the things God was speaking from those passages. There have been a few early mornings too, where I wandered out in the relative cool, walking round with a camera, open eyes and (hopefully) open heart.

The key things have really been a reminder to keep hold of the things we were originally taught, and to teach others those things too.

And it’s been really encouraging. There’s a temptation to give in to the fuzzy, permissive theology that characterizes the CofE (please understand me right – I’m not putting it down, so much as making a comparison) in order to fit in. I’ve even wondered if there’s some kind of calling there, but if there is then somehow it needs to fit with the firm foundation that I have received, rather than undermining that foundation or even setting it aside so that something can be built which allows the 2 things to co-exist.

A very good friend who I know to be a man of God, has a rare depth of understanding of the grace of God as applied to the lives of others. He once told me that the closer he got to God, the less tolerant he found himself able to be of sin and the blurring of theological lines. I think God hates the fudge, the deliberate ambiguity, the tolerance of certain things because they match contemporary thinking. In so many areas we write off what God did in the old testament because that was before Jesus, and He has brought freedom from law, so now all things are permissible, even if they aren’t beneficial. There is a failure to recognise that it is the same God both before and after Jesus. Yes, the manner in which we are able to come before Him is radically different, but the God that described certain things as detestable in the old testament does not suddenly find them now fully acceptable because of human social development.

I’ve slept on this post, so to speak, and the phrase that came to mind this morning is “sharper than any 2 edged cloud”. The gospel Jesus brought was not fuzzy, and the manner in which Paul spread it was not ambiguous. As a teenager I had a friend who went to bible college, aware of a call on his life. He came back after a couple of terms, head full of confusion about how the gospels weren’t written by who they were supposed to have been and that all the various letters meant quite different things to what they said at face value. We mocked him, and it confirmed to me what I already ‘knew’ from interacting with the Spurgeon’s college faculty, that there was a lot of bad theology being taught by the bibliologists. After more than 30 years I’m a little more sympathetic as to why they might be confused, but I’m convinced of this: that their understanding of both God and the bible were/are faulty because they build on poor foundations that were patently not the truth.

This post isn’t intended to be about that line of thinking, but it IS about a rejection of fudge and compromise. I don’t know where this goes from here (Peter and Carol – we may need to talk again – our conversation got me thinking) but fudging principles to fit is clearly not acceptable. hold apparently opposing things in tension, yes, but fudge, no.

I also wonder if my posting this is an aspect of people – myself included – that I’m coming to dislike strongly: the desire to grumble all the time.