extremes

In the computer world experience counts. One would almost believe you can’t have enough of it. A habitual reader of adverts I thought I’d seen everything. I was wrong. There’s an ad in today’s Career pages that tops ‘em all:

“Use your 405 years SQL server 2005 skills and experience..”

Wow, I know Micro$oft predate their releases but . .

jobs and trees

In all that is happening to you, the job, the inability to find an alternative I must be honest and say it fits perfectly with the theory I have developed through my experience this year – that the time for just talking “faith” has come to an end – that it’s time to submit to God’s circumstance and face the world confident and not dismayed.

It has been easy to say this to myself, and to watch it all work out – that one’s provision is entirely from God and not in the numbers we earn, that we are called to wait for Him to arrange the next position for us, that we are to show that it is possible to willingly submit to whatever the world throws at us (even if they call themself Christian) and that this is what glorifies God.

Waiting for Him.
Trusting Him.
Knowing that He will provide all that we need, over and beyond the numbers.
Being able to be at peace in the knowledge He is doing this to ultimately train us to handle the future.
The theory says that if you can’t handle trusting Him on £3000/month you’re certainly not going to cope on the world order’s zero income allowed for enemies of the state.

The theory states that the key factor this training is meant to polish is “trust in Him”. Absolute trust. The kind of trust that says yes I see everything that is happening and yet I know that what I see is not what will happen, because I don’t see the full picture.

I have learnt this in my life. I have started writing books about it that have been easier to write on paper than to say to you, my friend, that we’re not supposed to be panicking, looking for jobs where jobs don’t exist, getting hung up on the waves that toss those who have no trust about. We are children of a LIVING God. He really lives, He really takes care, and He knows everything there needs to be known. The choices are His to make as to what job we get and who we are assigned to work with.

The choice we have to make is to submit willingly. The choice we have power in Him to make is to embrace wherever He puts us with enthusiasm. We’re not to get caught up in the looking around and falling over in the shock of not finding anything.

We’re to know that glory only goes completely to God when there is absolutely no possibility that it could have happened otherwise.

Remember the trust theory I had in Arniston? That it is only pure trust when it is beyond the outer fringes of what could happen, what might happen, what I might be able to do alone, what I could do with the contacts I know, what could be done in the community I’m in, what the government could do, what the world could do.

Our trust can only be said to be validly in Him when He is given complete outer darkness to work in and we allow Him to work in it, showing to the world that it is possible to trust.

Well, you,re in that situation now. Everything that is happening to YOU, is completely in accordance with the experiences I have gone thru, with the theories, and with the belief I have that it’s all a training and testing session to prove the faith you say you have.

It isn’t supposed to be easy in the world’s sense, it’s supposed to be miraculous. That you can trust while all things are boiling, bubbling and seething around you is the brightest light we can shine. We are to get our faith from Him, we are to trustingly and lovingly ask the Father for those missing attributes of trust and love to be seen in our lives. He is really the source of all things including the things He says we must have, like faith and trust.

It is humbling to have to ask for them yet ask we must. That it is His choice to give is wonderful yet it is our choice to show them when He provides them.

Sure. Look around at the job market. There will genuinely be an amazing event that will spring out of all hopelessness when it is time to move. If you’re not aware that the market is dead you’ll not be aware that it is a miracle.

The difference is that we are to know there is no hope of getting out of what seems to be the deepest pit but believe that it will happen. Until then we can choose to trust Him.

We can show a watching world that there is something in this faith. We can listen only to the voices of hope from other people who believe and we can choose to not ask or hear the dead ways of the unbeliever.

I believe you are where you are to learn to exhibit faith. You are particularly placed to be able to show skeptics that there is hope in Him. If you listen to those who don’t share the same hope, you have death telling you how to live. For all my words I too have succumbed to their way of thinking, but the fact is that is not how we think. How can we proclaim we have a faith and yet show fear to the world?

Where is faith in that? Is faith only for those times we’re sitting alone with our Bible?

You’re in the refiners fire. Choose to show that you really are pure gold. We do not take any advice from a world that sees no purpose in Jesus. We believe the words of the Bible, and we show those who do not believe that we do believe ESPECIALLY when it looks gloomiest.

This is the only food you need. Don’t talk faith and then not do it. That is the quickest way to say that it’s just a fairy tale.

So what do you believe? Are you prepared to go back in there saying you have seen the light and your hope is a real flame or are you choosing to be luke warm? Is this a real thing? If so, shake off the hopelessness that you have chosen to put on.

Embrace the fact that there aren’t jobs hanging on trees for the very purpose that you can show hope and faith with a spring in your step and an enthusiasm for life that only you can choose to wear. The more you accept that you are hard done by, that there is no hope, the more hopeless you will feel. It’s not about feeling, it’s about fact. It’s a decision.

It’s a decision to live the faith. Faith is only faith when it appears there is no hope and you show hope. So make this decision too – hope in God and show that faith lives.

It’ll radically change your life.

spring

For those who consider themselves normal, I can only apologise. For those who understand, by either personal experience or that of someone they know, what it is to be bipolar, I can explain my complete absence from adding to this blog only by saying I fell over.

In a normal world long hours bring on great fatigue that can take some time to recover from. In my world, the long hours of this year created a vacuum in which I still think and speak but from which it is so hard to communicate. This is a place devoid of feeling, as to even enquire of one’s own state of mind threatens to launch yet another boat rocking session spanning months.

The fact is that what takes a normal person weeks to recover from throws me into a boiling pot of emotions that takes months to even settle the voices of unreason that each urge one to make yet another rash move.

We are our own worst enemy.

In a normal world to completely abandon a blog is tantamount to signing it’s death warrant. Trambellings is not dead, it has just been hibernating, lying dormant waiting for spring.

They tell me that the first of September is the first day of spring.

what a swine

It happens in winter I’m told.

Warm offices. Unhealthy air. No ventilation.

For the last three weeks there has been a “flu” wandering around the office. Probably more like a cold, really. Whatever!

The inside of the office is overly hot, and each day one sees another version of sad face wandering by. Today it’s mine. I’ve been coughing most of the night, and to say I feel like a dog’s breakfast is being generous!To add insult to injury, we’ve hosted a delegation from Mozambique for three weeks; folk come to test some software we sell. Add the five of them to the five of us (in our office) and the permutations of “funny bug” can get interesting. We finally got rid of those five over the weekend, only to find a new set of three arrive yesterday. The mutations continue!

Speaking of that, I heard yesterday that the reason swine flu is so bad is that it triggers the body’s own immune system to attack itself, and thus, the more healthy a person the more dangerous it is. I don’t know how true that is.

Just imagine, all that will be left on planet earth is geeks! Move over, Orwell, 1984 ain’t gotten nothin’ on this!

Mene – a follow up

Lo! and behold, in my mail this morning there’s another reply from Indonesia, this time thanking me for the description, but, more urgently, a query as to why his grandmother would have used specifically that spelling of his name, “Menail”.

Once more I returned to the trusty google (verb, not adjective ) and discovered that in the Indonesian Bible those words that appear in the English Bible as MENE and TEKEL, are in fact translated into MENAI and TEKAIL.

I duly replied, and received this in return:

Thanks Dennis,
Thank you so much, I Believe that God Bless you for explaining me. Send my best regards to your family and all people that you meet with full hopes.

God Bless you.

My best regards

Menail Tekail Uparsin N
Indonesia

Thanks. I am blessed!

Mene Tekel Upharsin revisited

I received a comment on a blog piece I wrote on the wisdom (or rather lack of it) in making deals with God.

The comment:
Thanks God. 20 years up to now, i am still looking for the meaning of “Menail Tekail Uparsin”. Why? Because it is my name. My grand mother gave it, i do not know the meaning. She had died before i ask her. Please, give me the full meaning.

My reply:

Hello

You left a comment on my blog looking for the meaning of the words your grandmother used to name you.

Thank you

The words come from a chapter of a book in the Bible called Daniel. Daniel grew up as a prince in a land called Judea, then the king of Babylon, Nebudchadnezzar, captured the city and took all the nobility of the captured land back to Babylon to work for him as slaves. It was his way of completely humiliating whoever he conquered in battle.

He tested all the young men he captured and only kept the brightest to work in the palace. The book of Daniel tells of the adventures of four of these men, one of whom was named Daniel. Daniel and his three friends were very devout, taking the laws and commands of God very seriously, so much so that when the Babylonian king said they had to bow and worship a statue he had made, they refused and said that the king should rather throw them into a fire.

Anyway, the first four chapters of the book talk about how Daniel was tested, and selected, and then how King Nebudchadnezzar had a dream that he wouldn’t tell anyone, but that he wanted the wise men to interpret. Everyone said that was impossible since they did not know what the dream was, so how could they interpret it?The king got very angry about this and ordered all the wise men to be executed. It goes on about how Daniel was able to save everyone from being executed, but let’s leave that for another day.

In chapter 5 we hear of the kings son who became king. He was having a party one night and wanted to show off, so he ordered that the holy things that his father had brought back from Judea get taken out of the storehouse, so that the king could drink and eat out of those things.

As he was eating, a hand appeared and wrote something on the wall. Just a hand. When the king saw this he became very afraid.. well let’s see how it’s actually written..

Daniel 5

Belshazzar’s Feast
1 King Belshazzar (A) held a great feast for 1,000 of his nobles and drank wine in their presence. 2 Under the influence of [a] the wine, Belshazzar gave orders to bring in the gold and silver vessels (B) that his predecessor [b] Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the temple in Jerusalem, so that the king and his nobles, wives, and concubines could drink from them. 3 So they brought in the gold [c] vessels that had been taken from the temple, the house of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his nobles, wives, and concubines drank from them. 4 They drank the wine and praised their gods made of gold and silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone. (C)

The Handwriting on the Wall
5 At that moment the fingers of a man’s hand appeared and began writing on the plaster of the king’s palace wall next to the lampstand. As the king watched the hand [d] that was writing, 6 his face turned pale, [e] and his thoughts so terrified him that his hip joints shook and his knees knocked together.

7 The king called out to bring in the mediums, Chaldeans, and astrologers. He said to these wise men of Babylon, “Whoever reads this inscription and gives me its interpretation will be clothed in purple, have a gold chain around his neck, (D) and have the third highest position in the kingdom.” 8 So all the king’s wise men came in, but none could read the inscription or make known its interpretation to him.

9 Then King Belshazzar became even more terrified, his face turned pale, [f] and his nobles were bewildered. (E)
10 Because of the outcry of the king and his nobles, the queen [g] came to the banquet hall. “May the king live forever,” she said. “Don’t let your thoughts terrify you or your face be pale. [h] 11 There is a man in your kingdom who has the spirit of the holy gods in him. (F) In the days of your predecessor he was found to have insight, intelligence, and wisdom like the wisdom of the gods. Your predecessor, King Nebuchadnezzar, appointed him chief of the diviners, mediums, Chaldeans, and astrologers. Your own predecessor, the king, 12 [did this] because Daniel, the one the king named Belteshazzar, was found to have an extraordinary spirit, knowledge and perception, and the ability to interpret dreams, explain riddles, and solve problems. (G) Therefore, summon Daniel, and he will give the interpretation.”

Daniel before the King
13 Then Daniel was brought before the king. The king said to him, “Are you Daniel, one of the Judean exiles that my predecessor the king brought from Judah? (H) 14 I’ve heard that you have the spirit of the gods in you, and that you have insight, intelligence, and extraordinary wisdom. 15 Now the wise men and mediums were brought before me to read this inscription and make its interpretation known to me, but they could not give its interpretation. 16 However, I have heard about you that you can give interpretations and solve problems. Therefore, if you can read this inscription and give me its interpretation, you will be clothed in purple, have a gold chain around your neck, and have the third highest position in the kingdom.” (I)

17 Then Daniel answered the king, “You may keep your gifts, and give your rewards to someone else; (J) however, I will read the inscription for the king and make the interpretation known to him. 18 Your Majesty, the Most High God gave sovereignty, (K) greatness, glory, and majesty to your predecessor Nebuchadnezzar. (L) 19 Because of the greatness He gave him, all peoples, nations, and languages (M) were terrified and fearful of him. He killed anyone he wanted and kept alive anyone he wanted; he exalted anyone he wanted and humbled anyone he wanted. 20 But when his heart was exalted and his spirit became arrogant, (N) he was deposed from his royal throne and his glory was taken from him. (O) 21 He was driven away from people, (P) his mind was like an animal’s, he lived with the wild donkeys, (Q) he was fed grass like cattle, and his body was drenched with dew from the sky until he acknowledged that the Most High God is ruler over the kingdom of men and sets anyone He wants over it. (R)

22 “But you his successor, Belshazzar, have not humbled your heart, (S) even though you knew all this. 23 Instead, you have exalted yourself against the Lord of heaven. The vessels from His house [i] were brought to you, and as you and your nobles, wives, and concubines drank wine from them, (T) you praised the gods made of silver and gold, bronze, iron, wood, and stone, which do not see or hear or understand. (U) But you have not glorified the God who holds your life-breath in His hand and who controls the whole course of your life. [j] 24 Therefore, He sent the hand, and this writing was inscribed.

The Inscription’s Interpretation
25 “This is the writing that was inscribed:
MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN
26 This is the interpretation of the message:

MENE [k] [means that] God has numbered [the days of] your kingdom and brought it to an end.
27 TEKEL [l] [means that] you have been weighed in the balance and found deficient.
28 PERES [m] [means that] your kingdom has been divided and given to the Medes and Persians.”

29 Then Belshazzar gave an order, and they clothed Daniel in purple, [placed] a gold chain around his neck, (V) and issued a proclamation concerning him that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom.
30 That very night Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans was killed, 31 (W) and Darius the Mede (X) received the kingdom at the age of 62.

I wonder if your grandmother was aiming a message to someone else (not you) when she named you? Whatever the cause, the mere fact that she chose words from God’s book means that she thought your birth was a very special, a really momentous, occurrence. One of those events that turns the direction of your life.

I have seen God’s book change my own life radically. I hope that these few words of a story that happened around 3000 years ago will reach your life and make a life changing difference to you, and those around you.

Thanks again for the comment! I really appreciate it.

—–
Comment:
I did a google on the email address and find that the sender is a university student in Indonesia. Just imagine the awesome honour of God choosing that I would be the one to reply, and to be asked to send words of God to a place known to be almost completely Moslem.

I am truly humbled!

reap sow: interpreting omens

If indeed it is true that we reap what we sow, then we should be able to track back what we have reaped to some combination of what has been sowed.

The ramifications of such a thought are immense. One would literally pop trying to cover every permutation and for this reason the subject remains a whim of the philosophy department, so complex that for most it is said to defy credibility.

From a spiritual perspective this also holds true. Those words of the Book of Acts that speak of power to heal and raise the dead seem to be light years different to what is possible now.

Why?

The answer I believe lies in the reaping of the adoption of the customs of the land. What makes this all the more difficult to grasp is that most converts have their pre-convert roots in the normality of these traditions.

The Old Testament chronicles the horrific destiny of a people set aside as God’s people. People chosen to be different appear to be singled out for greater destruction when they choose to be just the same as everyone else.

God strictly forbids his followers to adopt the customs of the people around, those we call society. When the ten tribes that made up the dynasty called Israel were finally destroyed Scripture records one reason as being the practice of divination and the interpreting of omens.

Simply put an omen is “seeing some event as being related in a good or bad way to something in the future.” The key word here is ‘future’.

Ever heard it said “it must mean..”.

A trip to the Concise Oxford dictionary begets this for omen:
“Occurrence or object portending good or evil.”

Good? Yes, even the prediction of good is prediction.

Roget’s thesaurus lists these words with omen: premonition, forewarning,
portent, sign.

I believe the root reason for not living a life of “feeling in one’s bones” is because that weakens one’s knees. Weakened knees make one become disheartened. Being discouraged is the opposite of being confident in God’s ability to handle any future event. It is tantamount to denying God.

It’s all about faith. With faith you can move mountains, whereas relying on ominous gut feelings, seeing the future as a gamble not controlled capably by God, dreading bad things coming is about as blatant a slap in God’s face as could be.

The word ominous has it’s roots in omen. Are there times in your life where you see a future not in God’s hands? No believer will ever answer ‘yes’ to that question. Yet how many fail to live out that truth because “our family always says that. It means nothing really.”? Are you one of the millions who see no harm in a glance through the daily horoscope? Or are you too pure for that, but you find yourself agreeing that a dream of black must mean …”? Do you find that your faith just never is what you think it could be?

Confidence when there appears to be no reason to be confident is faith. Faith is a decision to believe based on inner conviction and not on anything visible or predicted. A lack of faith both results from and is cause of being disheartened. It’s like a turbo charger, feeding on itself.

Following customs in whatever form reaps the condemnation of that custom, starting with a leak in your “faith tank”.

Wanting to know or predicting the future in any form is divination, and what you reap is the handing over of your soul to the terrors of your heart.

Believe God, live in the blessing of abundant faith. Believe omen, live in the curse of divination. It’s that simple. There is no greater affirmation of belief than to verbalise it. What you hear yourself say is what you will come to believe. The crux lies in identifying and weeding out the customs of the land. It is an ongoing turning away.

We’re called to be different. We have the potential to make a difference. Without the power of God all the church amounts to is people with good intentions achieving moderate results in human power. When will it be that we will show our faith in a God who does not change history in ways acceptable or understandable by society, but says “it’s not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit”?

Joshua 1.9
“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid nor be dismayed, for the LORD your G-d is with you wherever you go.”

missing the point

At a small group I attend we discussed being self righteous when we try to let ‘the world’ know the good news that life doesn’t have to be an uphill struggle.

Some agreed that a far better approach would be to live a life of such marked difference that people would be prompted to ask what it is that is different, at which time we are to be able to ‘account for the hope that is within us’.

During this period we are not to preach at ‘them’ about what to do or not to do. It must be our lives that speak and not our mouths.

The general consensus was that one should never ‘tell’ anyone how they ought to live.

I disagree.

You see, there are two groups of people here. One group has no reference to the apparent joy of a life walked in submission to God. This is a group referred to as unbelievers.

The other group consists of those who have pledged allegiance to follow and obey.

One of the odd things about the good news is that whilst we are free from ‘having to’ walk in obedience it is often not beneficial to do just as we please. Following and obeying must become a desire born of gratitude, an expression of love, of wanting to do what pleases Him.

God loves mercy. God loves the doing of unselfish acts of kindness. God enjoys seeing justice being done. Fairness and honesty in one’s dealings. God loves generosity.

One cannot tell a person who does not believe how to live their life. One can only show a better way.

It is a different story for those who profess to believe.

These people have an obligation to live a life that doesn’t exhibit the uphill struggle. One cannot account for hope if there is no hope. It is this group that must be urged to do what is right. Perhaps a better way would be to say that it is good to advise people to walk this way, not to tell them to do so.

Whatever choice of words, people that say they are followers really ought to live as followers. It is good to show that the Word offers a better way.

Isaiah has this to say:
“For the Lord spoke forcefully and instructed me that I should not walk in the way of this people saying ‘Do not say a conspiracy concerning all that this people say is a conspiracy nor be afraid of their threats nor be troubled”

Live a life of hope. Live the belief that God really does know what He’s doing.

The book of Deuteronomy says it this way: “If there is a poor person among you… you must not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your poor brother; instead you are to open your hand to him and freely loan him enough for whatever need he has. Give to him and don’t have a stingy heart when you give and because of this the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and everything you do.”

Our country is in a bad state. People are battling. Have we as the church led the way in being debt-free? Are people giving up because we, the generous, have run out of blessing to give away or is it perhaps because we haven’t started? Is this because there is a recession, or could it be that believers are missing the point?

It’s about giving. It’s about being willing to share. It’s about being generous.

It’s not about getting. That’s what the world does.

We do it on faith,
they do it on credit.

twisting definition

The joy of the Lord is facing whatever life throws at me knowing it will be ok. The joy of the Lord is knowing that He is handling it and that I needn’t get anxious. The joy of the Lord is being able to be confident at all times, confident that someone with a bigger, better perspective on things is taking care of my life. Facing all that life can throw and never needing to be dismayed.

The joy of the Lord is the cause of my worship, not the result of my worship.

I have heard there was an event at the church last night where people were encouraged to bow their heads in reverent prayer and repeat after the preacher man “ha ha hee hee ho ho”.

The result of this ‘prayer’ was the reduction of a large part of the congregation to uncontrolled laughter. The expectation was that the joy of the Lord was to be a short term pick-me-up that left God out of the focus and ‘me’ firmly in the limelight.

Worship as defined in the Concise Oxford dictionary is “worthiness, merit, recognition given or due to, honour and respect”. We meet together as a church to offer worship to One more wise than ourselves, awed by the intricasy with which He is able to interact with our lives.
Whether the meeting is specifically a praise service or has some other intent we only meet together because we share a bond only in Him.

Worship to some appears to be the outpouring of blessing toward oneself. A time of ecstatic joy when one is free to roll about on the floor laughing, this laughter ostensibly the right of the believer at a corporate ‘worship’ service.

It’s as if the definition of worship has been twisted to mean I deserve to get something for me instead of I give a sacrifice of awe and wonder to Him.

praise God

The deadline is today.

Ha!

Me again… it’s now 5:25AM!! and I’ve been dancing here in the office (I’m all alone in here – the others are down and around the passage)

I have to share… at around 8pm I discovered that none of the balances were correct. Oops! I then went into a hundred panic modes, and then eventually (as is my habit) I asked God to please help, as it would be a bad reflection on Him if I was the one to blame for the co being thrown out.

A little later, it occurred to me to start again (yes, like go back 5 weeks!!!) so I zapped up a program and set it to run. Whilst waiting I looked around the portable harddrive i have kept everything about this project on), and I found a file marked XX.original – now XX is the file I’ve been working with for 5 weeks, and also the file I have just started a run to get.

I copied it across to the server and ran a report on it (4 million transactions) and then set out to check the balance – almost 100%!!! Yay!!! Ok, so how to bridge the 5 week gap? Well, that’s easy, they are copies of the same file, ie that will have the same key. All I have to do is extract the 5 weeks worth of results from the buggy file, and use the key to populate the new file.

I took the idea to the boss, and he says it’s great, and simple! He likes it… from total dog box to being able to actaully give them what they need despite reports taking an hour to run!!!! Whoopee!

He is the One,
He is Jesus
and what does He call me to do now?
to be quiet now, and rest

He is our King,
He is our love,
He is our God who has come
to bring us back to Him…

the words of the song playing now…

Majesty!
Majesty!

well..