We have parked at the Ellis Street car park many times before, because it is very scruffy but cheap (50p per hour).  It almost looks abandoned and once the ticket machine did not work.  We’ve always been a bit wary of the warning signs scattered around the walls of the abandoned factory and so have parked in the correct spaces but this morning someone was in a daze and made a mistake.  We know that sins of omission are still sins and justice must be done.  We don’t mind paying for our mistakes, as long as the penalty is proportionate to the crime.  £390 seems completely disproportionate.

Midway Parking is operating within the letter of the law.  The sign on the parking bay said “Reserved.  Do not park in this space even if you have a Pay and Display ticket.  You will still be clamped.”  Then a nearby sign, with poor grammar, said “Unauthorised or incorrectly parked cars will be clamped, blocked in and or towed away.  Release fee additional £200 plus a storage charge of £40 per day.”  The fees we have been charged are within the legal limits, even though the compound charge is extortionate.  The daily parking charges are low but be warned, the cost of breaking the rules more than makes up for them.  We probably saved £5-6 parking costs each time we used the car park, but after being towed it would take 60 visits to make it worthwhile.  Judging by the uproar shown in  reports from other disgruntled parkers, (see also the Birmingham Mail forum) we’d be likely to be towed again in that time, so we’ll go somewhere else and advise you to do the same.

I assume that the law as it stands was drafted to allow car parks to be well-managed and to prevent their abuse by selfish or uncaring parkers.  In this case it seems that the low parking charges, the randomly placed “reserved” bays and poorly marked “official” bays are a honey trap set to entice the naive and that natural justice is not being done.

To rub salt in the wound, one of the new wheeltrims I fitted a month ago, and attached with plastic straps, was missing when I got home.  When I phoned to ask if they had removed it, I was told “You should have checked the vehicle before you left the yard.”

Personal ministry is not just about gathering the necessary information, but about making biblical sense of it…people do not live life based on the facts of their experiences, but on their interpretation of those facts. [p185]

Why would God put the world’s most significant, demanding, and difficult human relationship (marriage) smack dab in the middle of the world’s most important process (sanctification)? [p185]

Biblical personal ministry thrives when good biblical exegesis of Scripture leads to an accurate exegesis of the person’s life…We cannot properly understand people without accurately exegeting Scripture, and we cannot properly apply Scripture without accurately exegeting people. [p186]

Knowing a person biblically [p188]
Situation – list was is/was going on.
Responses – list what the person do in response to what is going on.
Thoughts – list what the persons thinks about what is going on.
Motives – list was the person wants out of what is going on.

What about emotions? They are a significant aspect of all four categories of enquiry. The bible paints our emotions in all their varieties with a healthy degree of realism.

What to learn and put into practice.
I’m reading this chapter at the same time as preparing to speak at church on the life of Jonah and Tripp’s perspective on the unhurriedness of God in teaching us about ourselves is helpful. Jonah had a long ministry as a prophet of God. His running from the command of God, his first period of discipline on the boat, the 600 mile journey to Nineveh and his second period of discipline in the desert must have taken a while. As Christian marriages strain and creak, or Christian ministries rise and fall, or whatever the situation might be, God takes his time to expose the heart’s motives, thoughts and emotions of believers. As ministers of God’s word we must not be in a hurry to see instant solutions to people’s problems, even our own. The heart is also very complex and has many motives. Jonah was motivated by fear, the desire for comfort, his lack of love for the Ninevites, his lack of obedience to God’s will, his shame and so on. Tripp lists several motives in the heart of Sharon, the wife with marriage problems, and each needs to be addressed with the truths of the gospel. Life and individuals are complicated. The mixture of motives and thoughts in the lives of individuals does not get sorted in one go but over weeks, months even years of ministry.

The great commission

The Lord Jesus Christ said
“Go and make disciples of all nations baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

Call to confession

The Spirit of the Lord fills the world
and knows our every word and deed.
Let us open ourselves to the Lord
And confess our sins
in penitence and faith.

A confession from Jonah

In my distress I called to the LORD,
and he answered me.
From deep in the realm of the dead
I called for help,
and you listened to my cry.

You hurled me into the depths,
into the very heart of the seas,
and the currents swirled about me;
all your waves and breakers
swept over me.

Lord, like Jonah, I have run from your command
to go and make disciples of all nations.
I have chosen instead the more comfortable road.
I am truly sorry.

I now turn from worthless idols
towards your wonderful love for your children.
With shouts of grateful praise,
I will be a living sacrifice for you.
And I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the LORD.’ Amen.

Suffering is part of life but not all suffering is for the same reason. All people suffer, the question is why and what for? There are 4 Js in the bible which help us see the variety of reasons for the suffering of God’s people: Joseph, Job, Jonah and Jesus. What follows is a very brief summary of their suffering and how a Christian believer must reckon with suffering.

The 4Js

Joseph suffers innocently, by being sold as a slave and sent to prison, not for his own good but for the good of his family’s salvation.

Job suffers innocently at the hands of Satan & though it learns that God is very big, very powerful and is his redeemer.

Jonah suffers because he rebels against God’s will and is disciplined by God for his good. Jonah’s suffering shows us that God is more concerned with our godliness and obedience to his will than with our comfort and happiness.

Understanding Jesus’ suffering.

The eternal Son of God becomes human and suffers with us (john 11:35).

Jesus suffered innocently for the good of his family’s salvation (Matthew 20:28)

Jesus suffered innocently at the hands of Satan and through this God showed us that he is very big, very powerful & is the redeemer (Acts 2:23-24)

Jesus learned obedience to God the Father through his suffering (Hebrews 5:8)

With the four Js in mind and the reasons for their suffering the Christian believer must think to herself what God’s reasons might be for her suffering.  The answer will always be provisional but the exercise is also always benefitial.  Can I see any good for others resulting from my suffering, most importantly their salvation in Christ?  Have I been humbled by the size and power of God and am I clinging to Christ as my redeemer?  Is God teaching me anything about his will for my life, am I being transformed in my heart, soul, mind or will to live for God’s glory?  As we ask these questions, we might get a glimpse of one or two reasons for our suffering.  one day we shall see in full, even as we are fully known (1 Cor 13:12).

To be true pastors, your whole life must be spent in knowing the truth of God’s Word, not only verbally, propositionally, theologically, but religiously, that is, devotionally, morally, in worshipping Him who it reveals, and in personal obedience to Him whose commands it contains, in all the promised grace and threat of those commands. To be pastors you must be “fed men”, not only in knowledge, but in wisdom, grace, humility, courage, fear of God, and fearlessness of men. [The Word of the Pastor by William Still p10]

Knowing someone.

How many times have you thought you knew someone only to find they have issues in life or hidden problems which you could never have guessed existed? How much do you know about your friend’s family of origin? Do you know where he struggles in his relationship with God or his understanding of Scripture?
What do you know about the quality of her marriage or the struggles she experiences with her husband? [p163]

We all deal with the disconnect between our public reputation and our private struggles. We wonder what people would think if they really knew us [p164]

Another reason we keep things casual is that we buy the lie that we are unique and struggle in ways that no one else does. We get tricked by people’s public personas and forget that behind closed doors they live real lives just like us. [p164]

We do not see our need of help. We are blind. We tend to believe our own arguments and buy into our own excuses. [p165]

Christ was tempted as we are and yet was sinless (Hebrews 4), so we can go to him, in his grace, at our time of need. We can data gather as he did…[I'm not sure that Tripp applies the Christology of Hebrews 4 well to the need for our data gathering. Perhaps this point would have been better with the woman at the well or Zachius, as Christ gathered data about them before he spoke to them.]

Assumptions get in the way of asking better questions. Why did you do that? What were you thinking and feeling at that time? What was the purpose of what you were doing? [p168]

If you read the bible you will know and understand people. [p168]

Ask people to define their terms. (What?)
Ask people to clarify what they mean with concrete, real life examples of the terms they have used. (How?)
Ask people to explain why they responded as they did in the examples they have given. (Why?) Reasons, purposes, values and desires.

Asking good questions is doing the work of change. [p173]

Ask survey questions, focused on job, marriage, parenting, family, spiritual life, relationship to the body of Christ, relationship to neighbours, finances, sex, communication, problem solving, goals, motives, desires etc.

Clarifying questions. Why, how, why, how often, when?

List of great questions to ask married couples in counselling on p175. [stick a copy in your filofax]

What to think about and apply
Getting to know people takes time and lots of questions. I am often pushed for time, with a diary which is packed and a to-do list which is never done. I need to create space to be able to get to know the people who are closest and most important to me; not just my family but key church members, as well as those in need.

I had been a Palm Tungsten user for 13 years, which worked well for my diary, using the desktop software, but the To-Do list was never ending.  Using a plain list, with dates, I never felt like I completed anything, even when I ticked off lots of tasks, and this was very demoralising.

The Palm is now obsolete, the desktop software won’t work with Windows 7.  So I’ve ditched it and gone for Google Calander and an app called Astrid Tasks on my tablet.  It has completely changed the way I organise myself.

Astrid Tasks allows me to set up projects, which I check on a weekly basis.  The tasks under each project are given a date and then I can forget about that task until it appears on my Google Calendar.  There is also a repeating task function, which I had on the Palm, but this is better by far.

The great thing about the calendar view of my To-Do list is that I can limit myself to 10 admin tasks a day, as well as my diary slots for meetings, visits and services.  This is something I learned from “On Being a Pastor” by Derek Prime and Alistair Begg, I think.  Best of all, when I tick off all the tasks I had to do for a day I feel a great sense of completion as well as knowing that things are not piling up.

This might all be obvious to many people who read my blog, but it wasn’t to me and so it might not be to others.  Happy organising!

Tommy Rettig was the cute child actor who played the part of Jeff Miller in the first three seasons of the TV show “Lassie”.  In an interview before his death, Tommy reflected on the time of his life between ending acting and carving out a new role and identity in life. He says “It was the worst period of my life. I had all this gigantic acceptance as a kid, and all of a sudden there was this monumental rejection.” Not all of us suffer this sort of extreme swing yet we all yearn for acceptance. As Christians, acceptance is at the heart of what we believe.

People strive at three levels to find acceptance: first, acceptance from God; second, acceptance of self and third, the acceptance of other people.

1. In religion, including atheism, people strive for acceptance from God. Most do this by going to a place of worship, doing good deeds, giving generously and so on. Atheists solve the problem of acceptance by dis-believing. If there is no God, they argue, then there’s no point in striving for acceptance.

2. Then there’s self-esteem, the term given for what is better called self-acceptance. The gurus of self-esteem will tell you to get a better education, a better job, a healthier body, a more fashionable appearance, a proper work-life balance and a good relationship. Yet all of these things are like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. They never satisfy our sense of self-acceptance.

3. And when it comes to relationships, people seek and find acceptance by being like one another. The same interests, personality, background, culture, religious practice, morality or amount of wealth. Like attracts like and acceptance is conditional.

In his letter to the Romans the Apostle Paul addresses the matter of acceptance in a church where Jewish Christian believers, with all their high morals, had to mix with Roman Christian believers who were fresh from a culture of naked saunas, orgies, drinking, eating to excess, simply living for pleasure. It was like a church with members of the guild of flower arrangers in twin-sets and pearls meeting clubbers just back from a month on Ibiza, but converted to Christ by beach missionaries. How can these two groups accept one another?

 The letter to the Romans is set out in four sections:

1. Acceptance from God (Chapters 1-4)
2. Acceptance of self (Chapters 5-8)
3. What about the Jews who won’t accept Christ (Chapters 9-11)
4. Acceptance of one another (Chapters 12-16)

The letter has two great bookends, two verses which sum up the theme of the letter:

To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints…I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world. Romans 1:7-8

Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God. Romans 15:7

In the next three issues of “From the Vicarage” I will write on this issue of acceptance in Romans. May 2012 be the year of a greater and greater sense of acceptance, from God, of self and of each other, in Christ.

With love, Neil

When Mary was told by the angel Gabriel to name her son Jesus, the name carries with it the purpose for which he was born.

Jesus comes from the Latin name Yay-su.
Yay-su comes from the Greek name ee-ay-SUS
and ee-ay-SUS comes from the Hebrew name Ye-shu-a

And Yeshua is a Hebrew name which means Saviour.

Jesus was born as Saviour.
He came to save his people from their sins

Do you know how it feels when someone does something wrong against you?
You want things to be put right.
You want them to say sorry.
You want to make the relationship right again.
God feels the same way about you and me.
God wants things to be put right.
God wants us to say sorry.
God wants to make our relationship right again.
What about the cost of the damage?
Who will pay?
God pays for the damage, by sending a Saviour.

Jesus saves people from God by taking away our sin
and making us right with God again.
So, this Christmas, as you remember the birth of baby Jesus and all the preparations which had to be made,
remember his name and what it means. SAVIOUR.

Grown up talk.

Prgramme on Radio 4 last week about Nominative determinism – how your name determines or shapes what you do in life.

Nominative determinism
Mark Aviary – RSPB
Bob Flowerdue – Gardener’s questiontime
Mr Muddle – Head of strategic planning at British Airways
Wordsworth

Connection between names and jobs
Howard League of penal reform
Rev Michael Vicars

New Scientist Magazine
Splat and Weedon – article in urology magazine on incontinence
Book on the arctic by Daniel Snowman

People’s names do determine what people do in life.
Mrs Francis Crook works with prisoners
Francis means freedom – freedom for crooks

I would like to stick with the theme of naming Jesus.
Not only was Mary given the name “Jesus” by an angel.
But God gives Jesus many names throughout the bible.

This year, the Robbies have had an advent candle with 25 names of Jesus.
Each evening we think about what it means for Jesus to be these names.

Most of us will be familiar with some of the names given to Jesus.
In the whole of the bible there are about 150 names for Jesus.

And so, to expand our knowledge, understanding and love of him, I’ve chosen 5 names which help us put together the reason why Jesus came into the world. And these names are all linked to the greatest romance in the history of the world.

Bridegroom
God the Father, from all eternity, had a purpose of marriage between his own beloved Son, and a select company of he fallen race and posterity of Adam (Matt 22:2)

The heart of the Bridegroom was so set upon his bride, that he decided to remove all the obstacles that were in the way: the obstacles were so great and, that nothing but almighty power, inspired with infinite and amazing love, could remove them: and yet they are all rolled away by the wisdom and power of the Bridegroom.

Emmanuel
The first obstacle was the inequality of parties because of their nature…. Like the richest prince and the poorest homeless woman, how could God the creator and mankind, who he created, ever be brought unto a relationship of love? The distance between their nature is infinite, and so there can be no marriage. Yet the Son says…I will be born as a baby and take on human nature, I will be one of Abraham’s offspring, a descendent of David, Emmanuel, God with them and so that the obstacle of our nature will be removed.

Redeemer
Second, the bride is awaiting trial under the law of God. She disobeyed the law of God, and lived like a prostitute with other gods and so she is under the curse of the law and therefore there can be no marriage.

And so the Son says “I will remove this obstacle also, I will be made a curse for her under the law, and so redeem her from the curse of the law: I will cancel the written code against her.”

Ransom
Third, says Justice, complete satisfaction demands death, for without the shedding of blood there can be no remission for sin. “Well”, says the Bridegroom, “I will die for the bride, and in her room and stead: the sword of justice shall be soaked in my blood instead of hers: My life shall be a ransom for hers.

Beloved

Fourth, there is another obstacle that must be removed; the bride hates the bridegroom; she does not want to marry him. “Well”, says the bridegroom, “I will work to gain her affection. I will draw her with the cords of a man, and with the bands of love; and then her affections shall be gained and she shall call me beloved.”

Heir of all things

The bridegroom is the ultimate catch. The poor homeless bride, under the curse of the law and death is rescued by her Saviour groom. And she will inherit all things. Every grain of sand, every blade of grass, every leaf. Every drop of water in the ocean. Every ounce of gold. Every mountain, every planet and every moon. Every galaxy in every part of the universe. It will all be her’s because she will inherit it with the Son of the most High God, the heir of all things.

This is the world’s greatest romance. All we need to do is go weak at the knees and fall in love with Christ for who he is and what he has done for us.

Emmanuel
Redeemer
Ransom
Beloved
Heir of all things