Blessing Jars

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A few years ago I made a blessings jar. About once a week I would write down something I was thankful for. Sometimes they were quite big things, like unexpected financial blessings, other times it was just something along the lines of a phone call with a friend.

This year I’ve got a bigger jar, because I believe that God’s got big blessings in store. And I know for certain that he does. No matter what happens this year, it will be full of blessings. Because really, you don’t need fancy holidays or nice cars to be blessed. (After all, Jesus said blessed are the poor in spirit and blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness)

When you start looking for blessings you realise they are everywhere. A favourite meal, a walk through trees covered in frost, a chance to chill on the sofa with a good book and a glass of gin. The opportunity to bless someone else, or show them Jesus, a coincidence that couldn’t just be a coincidence. It turns out that the old song count your blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done really is true.

It might sound easy for me to say, after all 2020 was a great year for me. It turns out that getting married, even in the middle of a pandemic, even if you have to massively change plans at five days notice, really is great. But even if that hadn’t happened, I could have said that 2020 was a good year. Because God was there.

God is there just as much in the hard times, if you are going into 2021, not expecting much from it, and in a position of negativity, I suggest that you do something to count your blessings, you may be surprised. After all, my first blessings jar was started just a couple of months after moving home with my parents, to a town I didn’t know, and after the most difficult year of my life to date. And that blessing jar was filled to the brim.

Maybe taking that step of faith puts us in a position where we are open to receiving blessings. Maybe actively looking for what God has done, and praising him for it, gives us more faith, to take more risks, where we see God move in even more amazing ways.

If you want to read more about what it means to be blessed check out this post

If you are going into the new year feeling a bit down, why not read this

Three Years On

Posted in Real Life Stories by

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Although I haven’t written on this blog for well over a year, I have had his date in my mind for several months as the date I should begin to share again. Because this was the date I made the most important, difficult, journey of my life. (Not just because I had a phone call from the police, as I was going in and out of coverage across the Yorkshire countryside side on a busy train carriage, asking for details of a crime I had witnessed earlier that year, and even if I wanted to pick the suspect from a line-up.) It was the day I finally left an abusive marriage

It wasn’t the first time that I had left. And when I was leaving, I didn’t realise it would be for good.

I remember my dad picking me up from Sheffield train station, and telling me I didn’t look good: in the most loving way possible. I remember truths slipping out through tears, as I realised I could never go back. I remember switching off my phone to break all contact. I remember the confusion of making decisions of my own for the first time in years. The freedom of knowing it didn’t matter that if I got it wrong.

But the thing I remember the most was just how close God was then. I would close my eyes and he would be there right in front of me. He was big, and he loved me so much. I have never known this is such a tangible way as I did back then.

And that was the most important thing. If that is where the story ended, if God didn’t do anything else apart from love me, that would be okay. But he did so much more.

He healed me. And he provided for me. In those months and over these last three years he has done so in such detail.

Jobs, finances, friendships and even a new relationship.

Within a couple of weeks of leaving, I was provided with a job in a card shop. That would have been enough, but God had more. I had registered with an agency, to work as a teaching assistant. On the very day I bought my car, I got a phone call from them, offering work a cars journey away.

These were the big things, but God even had the smaller details sorted out as. One day I got the bus over to Doncaster to do my Christmas shopping. I knew I wanted to get something more than I usually would for my parents. As I was walking along the high street I felt drawn to go in to one of the shops. I ignored it. I was on a mission, and it was the kind of shop that looked like even more of a jumble sale than TK Maxx. But the same thing happened as I walked back up the high street. After all, that feeling was one of them God kind of ones, although I wouldn’t normally get them to go into shops. I took a deep breath and went in. Right in the entrance there was a pile of board game. Including the one that my parents had been asking for, which normally retailed at around £40 they were selling is for £7. I had to chuckle on Christmas day when my mum commented on how generous I had been.

God has kept on working out the details for me. I could go on and on. I am now blessed to be working in a church doing a job I was made for as a children and families minister, just up the road from where I grew up. Even moving here I have been provided with an amazing flat, with a balcony (something I had always dreamed of) and two bedrooms, so I have space for friends and family to stay. (hint hint)

I guess what I really want to say is this: Whatever life throws at you, whether it is your fault or not, God can redeem it, and he can use it for good and for his glory. As October is domestic abuse awareness month, I want to make it clear that leaving an abusive relationship will be one of the hardest things you ever do, but it will also be the best. There is so much life after, it does not disqualify you from serving, or new relationships.

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Missing the Point

Posted in Motivational, Uncategorized by

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I am worried that I have completely missed the point.

Being more worried about how many people are following me… than the one I am called to follow.

Being more concerned with looking good… than doing good, than actually being good.

Putting more effort into the contents of my bank account… than the contents of my heart.

More interested in making people like me… than making disciples.

And, frankly, I am sick of it. I am sick of being so selfish. And what’s even more disturbing that I don’t seem to be alone. This idea of success has seeped into the whole culture of the church.

And no where is this more obvious than in the bizarre world of blogging.

A world of perfect hair and perfect teeth and selling your soul for an extra like; spending our days sat in comfortable homes writing words of “encouragement” instead of getting out there and helping the poor and needy.

Blogging is a nice thing, but maybe, for some of us, it’s the easy option. The safest option, that avoids any real connection, or any real risk.

Blogging is a good thing. It helps me organise my thoughts, and I know it helps other people on some level. But lets not let this, or anything else get in the way of the real Christian work.

The Christian life involves actually getting out there and getting your hands dirty and helping people in the worst kind of need. It involves real community and a shed load of the hard kind of love. It means you will often get hurt. It is not the easy road. But it is the road that we need to take.

When we take this steep and stony road, which probably involves a few dark valleys or, even worse, rickety rope bridges across those dark valleys; a lot of mud and dirt and hurt, but the road that has the most beautiful views. This is the place where we meet Jesus. This is the place where we find adventure.

For many people reading this there might be other good things getting in the way of great things. Maybe the pursuit of education and knowledge; a good career; the idea of the perfect family or the perfect marriage, no matter what the cost.

While, like blogging, these can all be great things, they can become a hinderance if we do not keep them in check. If we do not look beyond our own lives and towards the rugged cross. After all, Jesus didn’t die so we could have a nice comfortable life, he died so that we could have a relationship with him. He calls us to a life of risk and discomfort, but the only kind of life that is really worth living.

Before I Go Home, I’m Going to Give Him Everything

Posted in Guest Post, Uncategorized by

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I am excited to share this guest post from my sister-in-law Cassie Stanford with you all today.

Before I go home, I’m going to give Him everything.

I find that when I’m going to talk about a topic, I try to give an analogy. For some people, this analogy may bore them senseless, but please bear with me.

I run for fun. I also run because it is challenging, it pushes me physically and mentally. It is suggested that you find some sort of phrase, or saying to get you through those tough, gruelling miles, where it seems like you just can’t go on. My phrase is: Before I go home, I’m going to give Him everything.

I realised during one of my runs, that my phrase could also be applied to every day life. Before I go home, I’m going to give Him everything. Home being heaven. Before I stand face to face with God, I want to give him everything.

Sounds easy in words. Difficult in practice. Let me reassure you that it can be done.

We have a God that is so loving and forgiving, A God that gives us a gift of a fresh new day. He knows our days before we wake, and he knows our hearts before we pray. He knows our struggles.

Within the book of Hebrews it says “And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith”. Just prior to this verse we have the cloud of witnesses, those who had hardships but still put their faith in God, they have run their own races.

Maybe you are in a position where you have started your day so badly. Everything is going wrong and you are down about things. God accepts the negative things, and the hard things too. You can start to give him anything from any point in the day and he will be grateful to you.

Maybe you are in so much pain and bed ridden, you won’t be doing much at all in your day, but you can still give what little you have to Him, and He will be grateful.

Maybe your day is going great and you are over flowing with blessings and happiness, He will be grateful for everything you give Him in your good days too.

I try to remind myself to give God everything every single day even when things are hard and I feel like tearing my hair out. I stop. Breathe. And say: Before I go home, I am going to give Him everything.

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Cassie Stanford lives in Worksop with her husband Ed and son Isaac. She likes to run, Mostly after Isaac.

What if Twenty Seventeen wasn’t Your Year?

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These last couple of days I have noticed a lot of my Facebook friends have been sharing all the good things that have happened for them over the last year. All the things they have achieved, all the hopes fulfilled and new adventures. The kind of posts that social media was made for. The kind of posts that make you ninety percent happy and ten percent jealous. (Or was it the other way round?)

Maybe you are of the generation that still sends and receives Christmas letters full of tales of A-grades and picture perfect children. How can their lives just keep on getting better and better every year, without even the smallest trouble?

What if your twenty seventeen was nothing like that? What if your twenty seventeen was was just average, or a whole lot worse? What if you’re leaving twenty seventeen just as confused as you entered it?

Maybe you are scared to hope that this year will even be just okay.

What I am not going to say right now is that this is a new year, and it will be better. Because it might not be.

I’m not going to tell you that if you have the right attitude, eat the right food and wake up two hours earlier you will achieve everything you wanted to. Because even if this was true, I know it won’t last beyond the first page of a new calendar.

What I am going to tell you is that I am slowly starting to realise that this life is less and less about what we do, what we believe and more and more about be still and Knowing God.

Not just knowing about God, but actually truly knowing him. Life is about running into his arms and bowing at his feet and just being in his presence. And everything else flows from that.

Being a Christian doesn’t safeguard us from trials, it actually guarantees them. But when you Know God, you can find a way through even the hardest times, without becoming hard. You can face hopeless situations with out losing hope. You can be crushed by the pressures of this world but never break. You can be persecuted and abused, but you never forsaken. You can be struck down but never destroyed.

I am sure to a lot of outsiders it looks like I am entering into 2018 in much the same way as I entered 2017. That maybe it is taking me too long to move on from a painful marriage and out of my parents home. I know that some people will be confused by the decisions that I have made, but I can honestly say, for the first time in my adult life, that I know I am right where God wants me to be. My life may not be what I imagined it would be, but that doesn’t matter.

This kind of knowledge doesn’t come from anything other than learning to slow down and dwell in God’s presence.