The Wind Blows Wherever it Pleases: An Invitation to the Adventurous Life in the Spirit

it.

INTRODUCTION

Countless people go through life knowing about God and knowing him personally in their lives, and yet they remain firmly rooted in the normality of this world with all its pressures and strains. They occasionally stop to ask, ‘Is there more than this?’ but then hurriedly move on, fearful that the answer might be ‘no’. Perhaps you are like that. Yet the true answer, I’m confident, is ‘yes’. God invites us on a rollercoaster journey of faith; an amazing adventure in his Spirit.

Won’t you join me in exploring this journey?

An Extraordinary Break-In

One Christmas we had invited our entire family over for Boxing Day. It was one of those long, happy days when people sit around over a lengthy meal enjoying each other’s company, while time slows down. As the house was full of people and it was a mild day, I threw open the windows to let in some fresh air. Eventually our guests melted away to their homes and Jane and I flopped into bed, exhausted but satisfied.

I have always been a sound sleeper, and find waking in the morning the most challenging event of the day. But the following morning was different. At 6 a.m. I sat bolt upright in bed, awake and totally alert. All I could think was, ‘I’ve left the window open downstairs.’

Pulling on a dressing-gown I trudged down to our front room and switched on the light. At the very instant the light went on there was a sharp intake of breath at the other end of the room by the window. There followed some banging and scuffling and rapid footsteps running away down the road. I sat on the floor, my heart pounding, trying to take in what had just happened.

My chance encounter with the intruder had been an impossibly unlikely coincidence. I had been spookily but unconsciously prescient of what was about to take place when I had woken up so early and so suddenly. The would-be burglar had been caught entering our house with literally one leg through the window and the other yet to follow. What are the chances of that being the very instant I flicked the lights on? A few seconds earlier he would not yet have started his entrance and I would never have known of anything untoward; a few seconds later I would have met him in the middle of the room, and who knows what would have ensued. A friend suggested to me afterwards that some great angel must have shaken me out of my slumber that morning.

The life of the Spirit is an invisible thing that is easy to miss. I hardly qualify to be held up as an example of scintillating spirituality, but my story has been one of adventure with God. It has involved learning to live by a different sight, focusing not on what is seen but on what is unseen. Not many of my experiences involve burglars and extraordinary timing, but I have found God at work in and around me, often in the most unexpected ways.

However, many of the people I speak to know little of this alternative life. For them, Christian faith is little more than an insurance policy for the afterlife. They assume they’ll need a certain amount of keeping things current and up to date to make sure their policy remains valid, but what they miss is the dynamic of God breaking into our lives daily.

Engaging in the Dance of Faith

In more than 20 years as a pastor I have met every flavour of Christian imaginable. The churches I’ve led have been full of a rich mixture of people from every social background, ethnicity, and philosophical outlook. In observing and engaging with this rich potpourri of life, I am grateful to have learnt, grown and developed through my interactions with numerous marvellous people. Many of these individuals have inspired me in my own walk with God. But many of my fellow travellers seem to never quite grasp the fullness of the Christian life, either in experience or belief. I see unrealised potential everywhere I look.

Perhaps some of you picking up this book will be looking in on the community of faith occasionally from outside – intrigued, charmed and perhaps even captivated by what you see. You like something about it but don’t really understand it or feel comfortable pursuing it further. For you, faith has a luminous quality that both attracts and repels in equal measure. You remain an outsider, knowing something good is going on and yet not at all sure that you want it for yourself.

Others skirt the fringes of the church, longing to be fully part of what God is doing, like a little child wiping the mist off the toyshop window. Over the years some of these good people have attached themselves to me, hoping that this personal connection with the vicar can somehow connect them to God. It is as if, apprehensive of taking the plunge personally, they opt for a ‘vicarious’ faith, using me as a buffer to either connect them to – or protect them from – God. I have come to love many of these people, and yet my heart yearns for them to engage with God fully themselves, not just via me. Far from connecting them to God, I fear that I may become the obstacle that obscures God.

Some of you have known God much of your life. But this knowing has sometimes been at a level that fails to energise faith. You search earnestly, but lack the missing ingredient to turn your mourning into dancing. I long for God to animate those who believe all the right truth and often do all the right things, and yet whose Christian walk has the appearance of drudgery. Among you are folk who would traditionally be regarded as mature Christians: you know your Bible, pray regularly, and are soaked in sermons from church and Christian TV. Yet knowing the stuff of faith is quite different to living the life of faith.

I believe that God wants to engage all of us in a dance of faith that will set us whirling through this life and the next. But in order to do that, he first has to attract our attention. That’s not always easy, so distracted are we by the cares of this world and background noise of our own agendas, or even the stuff of life, such as creaky chairs …

The Curious Incident of the Old Chairs

A few years ago we were purging some old and, frankly, dangerous chairs at St Barnabas’. These chairs, with their slightly bent chromium-plated frames, had wooden arms that threatened splinters and legs that were in danger of puncturing human legs, so we decided to ditch them. Our facilities co-ordinator rounded them up and we got rid of them.

The following week I was down in Somerset meeting some people. They dropped me off at Temple Coombe Station which, although it sits in an especially pretty part of the countryside, felt rather windswept and desolate.

When I arrived no one was there and I made my way to the waiting room. On the waiting room wall there was a plaque with the wording ‘Temple Coombe, Best Station 1988’. This evidently had been a well-tended and cared-for station back then, but on the bleak day of my visit its appearance suggested that no one had done much to it since. There was a time when it was the best, but that time was long past.

I went to take a seat in the waiting room and there, to my astonishment and horror, were our chairs. What were they doing in Temple Coombe Station in the middle of rural Somerset, 120 miles from St Barnabas’ in North London? How did they get there? Had South West Railways been rifling through our skip?

Back at St Barnabas’, by chance I went into an office I rarely ventured into. There, to my utter amazement, were two more of the chairs that had somehow missed the cull. As I took immediate action to get rid of them, I sensed God speaking to me through these ridiculous chairs about chucking out the old, leaving the past behind and not going back again. It was a profound prophetic insight which changed my perspective on church – and it came through furniture.

Sometimes the way God gets our attention can be quite peculiar! ‘The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going’ (John 3:8).

In this book we will explore the life of faith that so often eludes us, a life that requires us to see things differently, with some surprising results. In Part 1 we will start by looking at how the Christian life is intended to be lived out in our daily lives – it can be far more than an afterlife insurance policy. In Part 2 we will take our lead from Jesus himself and see how the life he lived that we read about in the gospels applies directly to how we can live our lives. In Part 3 we will see how the Holy Spirit can empower us in a way that we might have thought was beyond our reach. And then in Part 4 we will discover that this is the transformational real life that God desires us to live every day.

It has been forty years since the day I first gave my heart to the Lord Jesus Christ and started out on a rollercoaster adventure of faith. Undoubtedly, the intervening passage of time has dulled the sharp before and after contrast of new life. Today I have to try and remind myself what life without Christ was like, and the memory is distant now. Jesus became my new normality and the old life of veiled confusion is long gone. That’s not to say that my life is always a bed of roses and that I have everything easy – far from it. Neither has my walk with Christ been one unremitting ascent towards glory, but far more the ups and downs, struggles and triumphs of a frail pilgrim.

But I do find it increasingly hard to imagine living without Jesus. In John 10:10 Jesus said, ‘I have come that [you] may have life, and have it to the full.’ In my own feeble and flawed way I have discovered something of what that means. And that is the subject of this book.

Part 1

THE GOOD NEWS OF GOD’S KINGDOM ON EARTH

1

PIE IN THE SKY WHEN YOU DIE OR CAKE ON YOUR PLATE WHILE YOU WAIT?

Some years ago, before we came to St Barnabas’, the church where I am currently vicar, Jane and I knew that God was calling us away from our previous church. This was a pretty big deal for us because we had been involved in planting that church, I had led it for nearly a decade, and we’d had our children there. We had a lot of very close friendships, especially with other couples who were raising their children alongside us. I had seen many people come to faith in Jesus Christ there and it had been a wonderful time. So for God to call us away was really quite a wrench. But we knew God was calling, so I was starting to apply for jobs and praying about the type of church that I would go to.

One day I was driving somewhere, and as I drove I was saying, ‘Lord what kind of church are you leading us to go to next? What’s it going to be like? What should I be looking for?’ I found myself behind a removal van, and on the back of the van was the name of the removal company ‘Parish of Berkhamsted’. I found myself thinking, ‘I wonder what the parish of Berkhamsted is like? I wonder what the church in Berkhamsted is like? Maybe that’s the place I should be going to.’ On the van, underneath ‘Parish of Berkhamsted’ it said ‘Removals and Storage’.

In that instant I knew God was speaking to me about my calling and about the purpose for the church, through what was to me a cryptic message on the back of a van. I knew that I was not at all interested in ‘storage’: keeping Christians happy until they die and go to be with Christ. The idea of the church as a holding repository for Christians waiting around to die was not my kind of thing. I know I’ve painted a slightly negative picture of church. I know we have wonderful worship and fabulous relationships and, in many churches, lovely flower arrangements – but these things don’t really float my boat. I need something more than that to get me out of bed in the morning.

What’s the Point?

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself the question, ‘What’s the point of life?’ Is it just a process made up of one phase after another, each one apparently meaningful at the time but rather pointless seen from a cosmic or eternal perspective? Is there more to it than career, marriage, family and a nice house in the countryside? It is a question that keeps prodding our subconscious, and it’s one that many and various people have attempted to answer over the years.

Possibly the most famous conclusion comes from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy¹, in which the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is 42.

More serious people have also had their say on the meaning of life. I watched a debate between the famous atheist Christopher Hitchens and Christian speaker Frank Turek at Virginia Commonwealth University, in which Hitchens was asked what the meaning of life is. Interestingly, he answered with a joke. He didn’t have a serious answer for the most profound question we face, and felt the need to give a joking reply.

In a way this is not surprising, as for the atheist the meaning of life is not a question that can be answered. As Bertrand Russell concluded very honestly, ‘Unless you assume a God, the question of life’s purpose is meaningless.’ For many people without a faith the answer to life’s meaning is just too grim to vocalise. The truth is that for many, life has no meaning or purpose at all – the point of it all has eluded them.

And what about for us as believers – are we much better? Do we live most of our lives like those around us, without any kind of meaning, mindlessly pursuing money, career and pleasure? Or is there more to life than this? The point for Christians, some might argue, is that we get saved by Jesus and go to heaven when we die. If that’s the only point, all this waiting around on earth in the meantime is a bit tedious. Why can’t we go straight there? But is there something more? The famous Christian Aid strapline stated, ‘We believe in life before death’. And author and activist Shane Claiborne said, ‘I am convinced that Jesus came not just to prepare us to die, but to teach us how to live.’²

In Philippians 1 Paul is writing from prison facing imminent death. He is clearly wondering, ‘Am I going to live or die?’ He is torn: in one sense it’s better to die and go to be with Christ, but on the other hand it’s important to go on living and serving here on earth. He concludes that he needs to live. For Paul, to go on living is not boring, just sitting around waiting to die and go to heaven – it means something far more. ‘For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain’ (Phil. 1:21). So dying isn’t a sad or sorry thing – he will go to be with Christ. But to live is something really valuable – ‘to me, to live is Christ’. In other words, there is something more for us here on earth right now. There is purpose, there is meaning and there is value to our lives.

Begin With God

However wonderful the life of grace and favour might be, it doesn’t completely answer the question, ‘What is the meaning and purpose of life?’ Rick Warren begins his bestselling book The Purpose Driven Life by saying, ‘It is not about you … If you want to know why we are on this planet, you must begin with God.’³ Or as author Viv Thomas put it, ‘I am not the point of my own life.’⁴

We often start with the wrong perspective. When we say, ‘What is the meaning of life?’ we actually mean, ‘What is the meaning of life for me?’ And when we start from that perspective we are going to end