Mandy Baker Johnson

Our house is upside down at the moment.  The lounge is echoey with bare walls and a minimum of furniture (we’ve taken the minimalist look to a new level!), the bedroom furniture is all bunched together in the middle of the room, requiring Adrian and me to go through all manner of gymnastics just to get into bed at night, and there is stuff all over the study that doesn’t belong there.  As for the spare room, it’s become a storage box for all the stuff that is usually in the lounge, bedroom and study….  The kitchen hasn’t escaped unscathed with its constant smell of white spirits and array of paint tins, brushes and rollers.  Even the shower in the bathroom is joining in by working haphazardly.  All our spare time is spent on painting or preparing to paint, looking at colours, carpets and curtains, and endless trips to B&Q, Homebase and Ikea.

Consequently, life is exhausting and somewhat stressful in the Johnson household.  At times, I look around at all the work that still needs to be done and am in danger of being completely overwhelmed.  Deep breaths are needed.

It will be good when all these rooms are finished and home is back to being home.  But we have to go through the mess and upheaval before we can sit back and enjoy the results.

It’s the same when God comes in and turns your life upside down.  At first you think, ‘I can do this, yes I trust You Lord,’ while merrily trundling along in your own strength.  And then He adds in something else to the mix, and then that thing goes wrong.  Before you know it, life feels overwhelming and you begin to wonder just how it could all go so wrong.  It’s not pleasant, it’s not easy and it’s downright hard when it happens.

At various times, God has – without notice or my prior consent – stepped in and caused apparent chaos in my life.  The first major upheaval came along in my late teens when my dad was ill with heart problems, in and out of hospital.  Eventually he was told he needed a heart transplant, for which the likely wait would be two and a half years.  But the doctors only gave him two years to live.  At that point, I decided I’d had enough of God messing things up in my life.  If that was how He was going to manage things, fine, I was going to take over.  I could do a much better job.  While my mum and dad quietly accepted the diagnosis and committed themselves and the situation to God, I rebelled in my heart.  They had inner peace that kept them sane in the months waiting for a heart to become available, and during the long nights when my dad struggled to breathe and my mum secretly wondered if she would wake up in the morning a widow.  I, on the other hand, had nothing but stress and fear.  I was terrified of losing my dad and I was stressed because I was completely helpless.  This was not one of those situations of knowing the right people to get things done.  There was nothing I could do – apart from pray, and there was no way I was going to do that!  Subsequently, my parents’ prayers were answered and my dad got his new heart (albeit it on the third time after two false alarms).  They both pulled through.  I collapsed a few months later, having learned the hard way that God loves me way too much to allow me to just cut Him out of my life without a second thought.  He brought me to a complete standstill so that I could say, ‘sorry’ and get right with Him again.  Through that I’ve learned that no matter how tough life is, keep the communication lines open between you and God.  Cutting Him off is the very worst thing you can do.

Why does God allow these hard times to happen?  I believe there are two main answers.  If you don’t know God personally, then He may be using difficult circumstances to get your attention.  He loves you and wants you to enjoy a relationship with Him.  That’s why Jesus died on the cross, to make it possible.  So if you don’t know God right now but you are going through a hard time, why not consider finding out more about Him?  He might be trying to get your attention.

If you are a Christian, then you could well be going through hardship so that He can refine you.  The best way I’ve learned to deal with difficulties and heartache is to ask God to take you right through the bottom of it and help you to learn all that He wants you to know.  I’m not sure it makes it any easier to go through the problem, but you will become a richer Christian for it – rich in an intimacy and knowledge of God that you would otherwise not have the opportunity to know.  I’ve practiced this through a painful broken relationship and through ill health that cost me my job and my independence.  But through both of these difficulties, I’ve absolutely gained.  Knowing Jesus intimately is the best thing that can ever happen.

My house is upside down while we redecorate.  We’re not enjoying all the upheaval and mess but it will be worth it when it’s finished.

Maybe life is upside down for you.  Is God trying to get your attention?  Respond to Him and make this momentary affliction worth while.

We always said we would only decorate one room at a time.  Which is obviously why we’ve chosen to decorate three all at once.  Yes, we are in the middle of redecorating and, yes, we are crazy.  The reason for three rooms in one go is because we’ve had sound proofing put up on all the walls adjoining our neighbour who enjoys listening to the television very loudly.  We don’t enjoy listening to her programmes through the wall quite so much….

Preparation, I think, is the worst part about decorating or having any kind of building work done.  Adrian and I spent a couple of weekends and several nights with a steamer and scrapers in an attempt to clear the walls of paper.  We thought the study would be the easiest room because we only needed to scrape paper from one wall.  But it was harder than you might imagine because once we’d stripped the top layer off we discovered we’d been lazy when we previously decorated and simply papered on top of the paper that was already there.  Uh oh.  Not good.  Oh well, we resignedly started stripping the next layer off too.  But as we progressed along the wall, we realised that someone had painted words over the top of the wallpaper.  And, the painted words were almost impossible to scrape off.

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

I recalled that I had painted that across the wall in a fit of evangelistic zeal several years ago when we previously decorated the study.  It seemed like a good idea at the time.  But as we laboured hard to remove the words so that the sound proofing could be installed, I couldn’t help regretting my action.

‘Remind me to do this never again,’ I groaned to Adrian, as I nursed my aching arms.  It was probably a good thing that we found the writing rather than anyone else because I doubt it would have had the desired affect of drawing attention to Jesus, I should think rather I would have been cursed for my stupidity!

As we struggled to remove the painted words, it strongly reminded me that my name is written on the palms of Jesus’ hands.  I am that precious to Jesus, He has actually engraved my name on the palms of His hands.  Wow, what love!  Engraved – that speaks of permanence.  It’s not like Jesus will ever think, ‘Oh boy did I make a mistake with her.  Where’s the soap so I can wash away her name?’  No, even though I have bad days when I let Him down (I guess every day is like that if we’re honest), He will never remove my name from His hands.  Because He bought me with His own life, the price He paid for me was way too high for Him to change His mind about me on a whim.  No, as Augustus Toplady’s beautiful hymn puts it:

My name from the palms of His hands eternity will not erase;
Impressed on His heart it remains, in marks of indelible grace.

Is it less than a fortnight ago since the Olympics finished?  Hard to believe.  I thoroughly enjoyed watching the rhythmic gymnasts dancing gracefully about the floor with ribbons, balls, clubs and hoops.  Amazing agility.

My favourite routine is with the ribbon.  There is something particularly mesmerising watching the intertwining patterns made by the gymnast and the ribbon.  Even when the gymnast tosses the ribbon high and leaps or twirls across the floor, her eyes never leave it for one second and she knows exactly when to extend hand or foot to catch it.  Thankfully, in these Olympics none of the ribbons developed knots and there was nothing to hinder the display of grace and beauty.  But in previous Games I’ve seen gymnasts stopping in the middle of their routine in order to speedily unknot the end of the ribbon.  Knots and beauty in this instance don’t go together, in fact a knot prevents the ribbon being whisked into its ever-changing patterns.

I caught myself wanting to be as beautiful in God’s hands as the ribbon is in the gymnast’s hands.  I don’t want knots – bad attitudes, wilful sin, addictions, selfishness – getting in the way.  But when they do, I know that Jesus is more than able to unpick those knots and set me free again so that I can worship Him and give Him joy.  Even during the tough, stressful times when it feels as though He has let go, His eyes never leave me, His precious one, for a millisecond.  He knows exactly what He is doing.

The gymnast knows her routine perfectly.  All the ribbon has to do, is to be a ribbon, and the beauty is evident to everyone.  God knows the pattern He has for our lives.  All we have to do is be obedient responders to Him, let Him be our Lord, and the beauty of Jesus will be evident to everyone.

Have you ever read Mary Norton’s stories about The Borrowers?  In the second book, The Borrowers Afield, young Arrietty is enamoured of a new life outdoors:

After bathing… sometimes she would dress up:  a skirt of violet leaves, stalks uppermost, secured about the waist with a twist of faded columbine, and, aping the fairies, a foxglove bell for a hat.  This, Arrietty though as she stared at her bright reflection in the stagnant water of a hoof crater,… might look all right on gnomes, elves, brownies, pixies, and what not, but she had to admit that it looked pretty silly on a common or garden borrower:  for one thing, if the lip fitted the circumference of her head, the whole thing stood up too high like some kind of pinkish sausage or a very drawn-out chef’s cap.  Yet if, on the other hand, the lip of the bell flowed out generously in a gentle, more hat-like curve, the whole contraption slid down past her face to rest on her shoulders in a Klu-Klux-Klan effect.

And to get hold of these bells at all was not easy:  foxglove plants were high.  Fairies, Arrietty supposed, just flew up to them with raised chins and neatly pointed toes, trailing a wisp of gauze. …Arrietty, poor girl, had to hook down the plant with a forked stick and sit on it as heavily as she could while she plucked any bells within reach.

In the book, Arrietty was the same size as a fairy but the clothes she imagined they would wear looked completely wrong on her.  It wasn’t what she expected.

I’ve been thinking recently about the fact that things aren’t always how they look.  It had always been a dream of mine to work in mission mobilisation.  I had a vague idea that speaking at different meetings around the country and travelling would be exciting and glamorous.  And so it was the first few times I did it.  But the ‘glamour’ soon wore thin and, while I still thoroughly enjoyed the work, it became routine.   The reality was rather different to how I imagined it would be.

In his sermon this morning, one of the elders told a story of how someone once prophecied over him that he would become a man of prayer.  He happily anticipated how this would look:  wow, to be known as a prayer warrier!  But next morning was a different story.  He couldn’t think of anything to pray about, felt tired from a late night, and found his thoughts wandering.  He estimated that he probably spent about sixty seconds praying that morning.  He related that some years later, he still has to motivate himself in prayer.  But by disciplining himself to meet with God whether he feels like it or not, he is fulfilling that prophecy and is becoming a man of prayer.

Maybe you began the Christian life with great excitement and anticipation, and now it has become fairly humdrum.  Perhaps even the idea of reading your Bible and praying sounds boring, and you wonder what is the point?  There is every point.  Just because it isn’t quite how you expected it to be is no reason to give up.  The Holy Spirit is a fantastic mentor and teacher, the best in fact, so tell Him how you feel and ask Him for help.  God is a person; remind yourself that He loves spending time with you.  So much so, that Jesus died and came back to life in order for you to enjoy friendship with Him.  Stir your soul by singing a psalm, tell God what He means to you, speak Bible truths aloud, welcome His presence, enjoy Him.  You become like the people you spend time with the most.  Spending time with Jesus is to become like Him, and as you get to know Him intimately, you will begin to find that what you expected the Christian life to be, is what it actually is.

My friend came round for a three hour marathon coffee and catch-up time yesterday.  We had a great time together.  One of the things she said struck a chord in me.  She mentioned that while praying through a difficult situation, God gave her a picture of an oyster.  The irritating bits of sand and dirt that get inside the oyster shell are what produce the beautiful pearl.

This reminded me of the way God taught me spiritual truth through a tea bag a few weeks ago.  I, too, was feeling miserable about an ongoing difficult situation.  Actually, forget miserable, I was indulging in feeling thoroughly sorry for myself, even asking God what I’d done to deserve this.  Especially as I could see no end to it.

I happened to be making a cup of tea at the time and the Holy Spirit drew my attention to the tea bag.  A tea bag on its own doesn’t do anything.  You can’t eat it, you can’t drink it, and it doesn’t smell particularly pleasant.  But a tea bag that has had boiling water poured on becomes a fragrant and refreshing drink.  It’s the boiling water that draws out the flavour.

Through both of these pictures, God showed my friend and me that it’s through the difficult times that we grow in character.  He allows difficult people – whether that be family, irritating work colleagues, or inconsiderate neighbours – and hard situations into our lives at times for our good and, ultimately, for His glory.  By trusting Him and allowing Him to take us right through situations that we would rather not be in, He will use them to ensure our rough edges are rubbed off until we reflect more-and-more the beauty of Jesus’ character.  And we will become richer Christians, richer in spiritual things.

So if this is you today, why not thank God for this trial and ask Him to teach you all that He wants you to learn from it?  A purity of faith and beauty of character will be the end result.

Let me close with the words of a man in the Bible called Job, who lost all of his children, his job, his possessions and his health all in one day:

…when He has tried me, I shall come out as gold.

I’ve just been catching up with Nick Hewer and Margaret Mountford’s (I just love Nick and Margaret, don’t you?!) ‘The Town That Never Retired’ on BBC iPlayer.  It saddened me and left me feeling that as a society we’re pretty hopeless.

For those of you who haven’t seen the programme, Nick and Margaret investigate whether people are realistically able to work into their seventies (as many are likely to have to do) and whether they are taking up jobs that should be given to younger people who need the opportunities.  A selection of retirees in their seventies were put to work for a week at an estate agency, a restaurant, a building site and a factory.  They mostly did pretty well and their employers chose to keep some of them on for a second week.  But in the second week the retirees faced competition from youngsters in their late teens and early twenties who were looking for work.  That was when things got interesting.

Two lads were set on in the factory.  One – after giving an enthusiastic interview to the camera about all he was going do with his wages – failed to return after lunch.  This was after he’d turned up forty minutes’ late in the first place.  He claimed he’d eated a dodgy burger…. and who are we to disbelieve him?  He was (quite rightly) sacked when he turned up on the second day.  The second lad worked hard for two days but complained that the work was ‘boring’.  He didn’t bother to complete his week.  Maybe for these two lads, living on benefits and dreams suited them better than the commitment of a job.

The retirees were harder working, demonstrating more common sense and a stronger level of commitment than the majority of their younger ‘competition’.

This saddened me.  Why do so many young people struggle with the idea of commitment?  If a job is boring, leave it.  Why do something you don’t enjoy?  If you conceive a baby, destroy it.  Why should you be bothered with raising it?  If a relationship is hard, walk away.  Never mind if there are children involved, they’ll cope.  It’s about your own happiness and looking after number one.

How did the very idea of commitment become so alien?  Is it because divorce became more acceptable and abortion-on-demand was made possible in my parents’ and my generation, leading to it becoming normal – even expected – practice in today’s society?  People marry today with the expectation of getting divorced at some stage.  I know they do because I’ve spoken to them.  The first question practice nurses in some areas of Nottingham ask of newly-pregnant women is whether they want an abortion.  Why?  Because it’s become the norm for parents to have no sense of commitment towards the new life they’ve unthinkingly conceived.  It’s not convenient, so they destroy it.

I’m sure there are other factors as to why commitment is becoming a dirty word in today’s society.  But I think the ones I’ve mentioned are certainly valid.

Is there a solution to the miserable, selfish mess we’re in?  Yes, I think there is:  Jesus.  He created the entire universe by simply speaking and has upheld it ever since by the power of His word, but He willingly died and came back to life for His creatures so that we could get to know Him and His Dad, and experince true commitment.  Someone has to pay a price for all the rebellion in society, and Jesus paid it in full.  The Bible says that God has put eternity in our hearts.  Don’t you sometimes find yourself longing for something more than this?  Wondering what life is really all about and why you’re here?  It’s because you’re made for a relationship with God and to enjoy His friendship for ever.  Deep down, all of us are longing for someone to be committed to us, to love us unconditionally.  Jesus has promised to do exactly that.  Find out more here.

Once we see Jesus’ faithfulness to us and gain confidence in the fact that He never, ever lets us down, we will be able to demonstrate that to others.  There is hope for our society, and that hope is Jesus.