Throughout November, we will be praying for boldness in our everyday living. Pray God will:

• make us bold and courageous as we live out our lives in the world, so that we honour Him in every aspect of our lives
• cause us to speak to people we come into contact with and meet every day about our faith in God.
• help us to speak with people at our outreaches about God and how He can help them.
• give us His heart of love for people and for each other.
• lead us into ‘God-instances’ so that we have the opportunity to share our faith.
• give us wisdom and gifts of knowledge to say and pray the right things.
• cause people to be saved and come to church as a result of encountering God through us.

When we think of the early church in the Book of Acts, the one thing that stands out for me is the boldness with which all people spoke out. They were filled with the Holy Spirit and had a compelling desire to tell everyone they met about all that Jesus had done. Someone has said they ‘gossipped the Gospel’, meaning that their everyday conversation was about God. Sometimes we feel we can only talk about God in certain contexts or circumstances or that we must wait to be asked about God before we mention Him. There is no doubt that we need sensitivity and wisdom in talking about God, but we need also to pray for boldness so that we are not afraid and held back in any way. Our witness is not only through words (remember Francis of Assisi who said ‘Love God and if necessary, use words’), but we need to pray that God will help us to speak as well as to serve.

Another quote I have recently discovered from Francis of Assisi is this: ‘It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.’ As we live out our lives before the world, let’s remember that “God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We’re Christ’s representatives.” (2 Corinthians 5:19-20, The Message) To be a representative or an ambassador is a responsible job which carries enormous privileges. That’s the job you are really called to do! You may be called to do that in a school kitchen, a busy office, a variety of different outdoor locations or just in your own home or on the street where you live, but that is your actual job description, above and beyond any description issued by your earthly employer! No wonder, then, that with such a responsible job, we pray, as Paul did: “Pray also for me, that whenever I speak, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel.” (Ephesians 6:19)

Do you always have to have the last word in an argument? Are you the kind of person who can’t leave a topic alone and have to keep coming back to it? Do you feel that there’s a point to be scored in speaking last? Are you like a dog with a bone when it comes to a row?

When I told my husband I was going to be blogging thirty ‘gold nuggets of truth’ throughout October to celebrate my thirtieth birthday, he very practically pointed out that there were thirty-one days in October. Well, I’m now in my thirty-first year of being a Christian, so I reckoned I could get away with one last thought for the month. That thought has to be that God has the final word.

I love words. All my life I’ve loved the sound of them; I’ve loved discovering new words; I’ve loved communicating through this miraculous medium. Apparently I didn’t even bother with the usual baby words but when I finally started to talk, came out with the full sentence ‘It’s there’, in response to a question from my parents. I simply cannot imagine a world without words.

Imagine my joy when I first read John’s Gospel and discovered that Jesus is described as ‘the Word’ (John 1:1 TNIV) Imagine what it was like to realise that God Himself wanted to communicate with me, through words. For years I’ve taught languages because I can’t think of a better way of unveiling God. God is the Word and He wants to talk to us!

In 1987 (a very significant year for me as it was the year I graduated and got married), Michael Card released the third album in his ‘The Life’ trilogy called ‘The Final Word’. He had, ironically, perhaps, started by looking at the death and resurrection of Christ (‘Known by The Scars’) and then looked at the life of Jesus (‘Scandalon’). The final album looked at the birth of Christ, but being the Bible scholar he is, that also meant at looking not just at the actual birth but at all that lay behind the birth, looking at the whole topic of the Incarnation. This album remains my all-time favourite album on the topic and is played in our house every single Christmas without fail. One person has reviewed the album with the words ‘pensive, acoustic and spiritually correct.’ Whilst this may be an accurate review, I don’t think it goes anywhere near to conveying the passion and truths contained in the songs!

The title track on the album, rooted in John 1 and Hebrews 1, looks at the subject of Jesus being ‘God’s final word’. I have meditated on this theme repeatedly since I first heard the song and have come to understand that Jesus is indeed God’s final word and that God will always have the last word:

“You and me, we use so very many clumsy words.
The noise of what we often say is not worth being heard.
When the Father’s wisdom wanted to communicate His love,
He spoke it in one final perfect word.

And so the light became alive
And manna became man
Eternity stepped into time
So we could understand.” (‘The Final Word’, Michael Card)
’The Final Word’, Michael Card

Towards the end of the book of Job, Job and all his ‘comforters’ are finally silent as God speaks. The awesomeness of God is revealed in Job 38-41. In the middle of that mighty revelation, Job says “I am unworthy—how can I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth.” (Job 40: 4 TNIV)

God will always have the final word. He will always have the last word. He is Sovereign over all. He is ruling and reigning. Job says eventually “I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted. You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.” (Job 42:2-3)

Sometimes God roars like a lion (Hosea 11:10 TNIV) and sometimes He whispers (1 Kings 19:12 TNIV), but always He will have the last word. We do well when we shut up and listen.

‘God Almighty’, Chris Tomlin

I hadn’t been a Christian very long when I discovered surely one of the most revolutionary verses in the Bible. ‘Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ (Eph 5:19-20 TNIV)

I’m not renowned for my logic and I’ve been made very aware of that throughout the years through my contact with logical people. I became a Christian through the testimony of a very logical mathematician, made friends with mathematicians and physicists at university and married an engineer. All of these people have taught me a lot about reasoning and logical responses and I believe there is a place for intelligence, understanding and reason in our faith; I think apologetics (‘reasoned arguments or writings in justification of something, typically a theory or religious doctrine’) are as desperately needed in this day and age as they have ever been. But funnily enough, I didn’t need anyone else to explain the logical conclusion of these verses to me. That little word ‘for’ in verse 20 meant that I could never legitimately respond to life with bitterness or resentment. The logical conclusion of my belief in God as all-sovereign and all-sufficient was that every single thing that happens to me has been filtered through His loving purposes and therefore my response can be one of thankfulness and praise. (I’m definitely not saying that God is the author of evil, but I did understand that thankfulness for everything was possible if we truly believe God is sovereign over all.)

I haven’t always managed to respond as I should, with thankfulness and praise. It’s a lot easier to give thanks in all circumstances (1 Thess 5:18 TNIV) than it is to give thanks for those circumstances, as my husband pointed out to me (I think this was the very first theological argument I ever won in our relationship, as a matter of fact, when for once he couldn’t fault my logic in saying that we needed to give thanks for everything, not just in everything!)

But I did learn at an early age, and have endeavoured to live by this principle, that God is worth praising all the time. Aaron Shust says of his new album ‘Morning Rises’, “What makes the story of Job so powerful is his decision to praise. Job’s response, in light of tragically horrific circumstances, was to praise… If we believe all we declare about God, what is next for us to do? We can begin by praising Him, despite our circumstances, because He is worthy of praise… Praising God is like pushing aside the clouds, allowing the Light of the Sun to pierce its way into my darkness.” (Aaron Shust) He says it more eloquently than I do, but I agree with that conclusion!

Praise and worship are life’s heartbeat. I’m not just talking about verbally giving thanks or singing, though these are powerful methods to express what’s in our hearts. Romans 12:1-2 TNIV talks about worship being the surrender of our whole lives; in the Message version it says ‘Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering.’ Worship involves all we have and all we are.

Perhaps because I learnt this principle from Ephesians 5:19-20 TNIV, perhaps because I have always loved music and believe it to be God’s gift to us (‘Music is God’s gift to man, the only art of Heaven given to earth, the only art of earth we take to Heaven’ said Walter Savage Landor), I have always thought that music and singing in particular are great ways to express truth and thankfulness. Initially, I learnt that this literally did me good:

‘Sing your praise to the Lord
I could never tell you just how much good that it’s going to do you!’ (‘Sing Your Praise To the Lord’, Rich Mullins)
‘Sing Your Praise To the Lord’, Rich Mullins (who can’t like a song that takes Bach and turns his music into a contemporary worship song?!)

But then I began to understand that worship is about more than just putting a smile on my face or cheering me up. I learnt that ‘the choice to worship daily is to glimpse eternity, colour, glory, beauty. It is a choice to see heaven open, to be re-envisioned and to be re-energised; to be involved in Jesus’ building of His church on earth.” (Charlie Cleverly, ‘Epiphanies of the Ordinary’ P 210)

I’ve worshipped God with tears streaming down my face, almost broken beyond the ability to sing, and I have glimpsed not only beauty beyond compare but have come away from every one of these encounters transformed, re-envisioned and re-energised. Worship is the serious business of heaven. I’ve already talked about the importance of persistence and how practice makes perfect. Since we’re going to spend eternity worshipping God, I think it’s imperative that we start doing that here on earth: gazing at God, savouring His worth, understanding His grace and love for us and applying those to our everyday actions (see here for what I think this can look like.)

“And Lord, we stand amazed in Your presence,
Astounded by Your mercy and love.
Our hands are lifted high in surrender,
Your grace for me is always enough.
And there is no one higher than our God.
There is no one higher than You” (‘No One Higher’, Aaron Shust)
’ No One Higher’, Aaron Shust

“Together we worship
Together we cry
‘You are worthy, worthy.
You are worthy, worthy.
Hallelujah, hallelujah,
For the Lord God Almighty reigns.” (‘Great Is the Chorus’, Aaron Shust)
‘Great Is the Chorus’, Aaron Shust

In my family, I am well known for hyperbole: deliberate exaggeration for effect. “I’ve told you that a thousand times!” I say regularly. As a literary device, hyperbole (all three syllables of it: it’s a lovely word!) and its opposite, litotes, are often effective in getting a point across. There’s a lot to be said for being not literal!

In songs, we often use the hyperbolic ‘ten thousand years’ to convey the sense of eternity. ‘Amazing Grace’ talks about ‘ten thousand years’, a lyric picked up in ‘10,000 Reasons’. We know that time is totally irrelevant when we are talking about eternity, but our finite, time-bound minds can’t quite conceive that, so we like to pick a big number and use that for effect!

Phil Wickham has gone several noughts further! In his song ‘Tears of Joy’, which talks of the joy we will feel when we finally see Christ face to face, he writes:
“In a million years
We’ll have just begun
To explore Your heart
And Your boundless love,
Singing endless songs of praise
For who You are and what You’ve done.
In a million years
We’ll have just begun.” (‘Tears of Joy’, Phil Wickham)

Even this number is just hyperbole. But it captures perfectly that sense of wonder and awe we feel as we contemplate eternity.

I love watching little children. They worship God so enthusiastically; they approach life so positively; they have a gleam and a sparkle in their eyes that shines more brilliantly than the finest diamond. It doesn’t matter how mundane the thing seems to us, they have an endless capacity for joy, even in repetition. My son would spend hours switching lights on and off when he was a toddler; it was one of his favourite games. Lifted high by an adult, he revelled in the magic of seeing the light come on and go off at his command. Another favourite game was throwing his cap off when he was on the swings so that we would go and fetch it: he would chortle with happiness at that simple game. Or the game where we built huge towers with ‘knock bricks’, but the real joy came when he knocked those towers down, to immediately build them up again and repeat the exhilaration of knocking them down! I spent the best bus journey of my life with a two year old boy whose face would light up every time the bus stopped and the doors opened to let passengers on and off because the lights would then go on. He was utterly fascinated by this, clearly seeing the connection between the doors and the light but failing to understand how this worked. Watching a little child blow bubbles or dance uninhibitedly reminds me of the joy there is in simple things; as an adult, I often forget this.

When we are younger, we dream big dreams. Nothing seems impossible, because we live in a world of everyday miracles. Sometimes we don’t always know what to do with our dreams; sometimes we can seem arrogant or unthinking as we bounce through life (think of Joseph in the early days!) But we are sure that we can make a difference and we are sure that life is full of great promise.

Sadly, that child-like faith and enthusiasm often don’t last into adulthood. We become scarred by life’s experiences, let down by people and disappointed by events. Dreams so often die. Life then becomes nothing more than dull routine. We go to work to pay the bills; we get up in the morning because we need to go to work to pay the bills; we come home and eat because we have to in order to survive; we go to bed because we need the sleep. Life is dull, wearisome, boring, monotonous and humdrum. We no longer believe in magic.

Actually, I never did believe in magic. I think magic relies on illusion, which (in Brennan Manning’s words) is a denial of reality. But I do believe in dreams. I believe ‘imagination creates and calls forth new reality that has not yet come to birth.’ (Brennan Manning) I believe God wants us to live like little children (Matt 18:3 TNIV), full of awe and anticipation, not necessarily in our own abilities, but in His.

God is in the business of birthing dreams in the hearts of His children. Without these dreams, without aspiration, without hope, we live lives that are rather like robotic drones. The dreams will involve a lot of waiting, however: ‘But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.’ (Rom 8:25 TNIV) They will require us to engage with God and to live by faith and not by sight. We may have to lay down our dreams in order to take up His dreams. But I believe it’s important we understand that delay does not mean disappointment and that ‘though it linger, wait for it’ (Hab 2:2 TNIV). Joseph’s dream was fulfilled. Ours can be too.

A few years ago there was a lot of controversy again about politicians and their morality. John Major’s Back to Basics campaign backfired because of media focus on its moral aspects, where they exposed “sleaze” within the Conservative Party and, most damagingly, within the Cabinet itself. A number of ministers were then revealed to have committed sexual indiscretions, and Major was forced by media pressure to dismiss them. In September 2002 it was revealed that, prior to his promotion to the cabinet, Major had himself had a long-standing extramarital affair with a fellow MP, Edwina Currie. Some politicians defended their behaviour by saying that what they did in private had no bearing on their public office; in effect, there was no connection between their private morality and their competence to do their job.

So often we like to believe there is a nice divide between our characters and our behaviour, but the truth is that what we do is always the overflow of who we are and that character counts. Moreover, over the years I’ve come to see that God is really interested in who we are. It’s been said that our reputation is all we will take with us from this world. Our character really matters. God is interested in who we are. His goal (and it took me a long time to realise this, so if you are a young Christian, I hope you will realise this sooner rather than later!) is not to make us happy but to make us holy: His aim for every single one of us is that we become like Jesus: ‘those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.’ (Rom 8:28 TNIV) The Message version of that verse puts it like this: ‘He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son.’

The fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22-23 TNIV) is what Christian character really looks like. We need to spend time meditating on what Jesus is like, because He is our example and the litmus test for our faith.

These days, we’ve found countless ways to measure achievement. From National Curriculum levels and GCSE grades in schools through to performance reviews at work, from Kitemarks on products to regulatory bodies for anything and everything you can think of, we’ve become a nation of measurable outcomes. We can have all kinds of standards and achieve all kinds of goals, but it’s not quite so easy to measure character, is it?

For most of us as Christians, we aspire to hear the words ‘Well done, good and faithful servant’ when we meet with God, but sometimes we think that that is achieved through our hard work and achievements in God. How many prayer meetings have we attended? How many good works have we done? How much have we given to the poor? We measure our worth in exactly the same way that the world does.

God’s measuring weights are somewhat different, I think. To be sure, our actions will count (see Matt 25:31-46 TNIV, for example.) God has created us in Christ Jesus to do good works (Eph 2:10 TNIV). But He is as interested in motivation as outputs, as concerned about character as about achievements. And the chief thing He is interested in is (as I have mentioned before) how well we love. ‘We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other… this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.’ (1 John 3:14, 23 TNIV)

God is hugely interested in character, not just charisma, and one of the ways He works is by exalting the things that seem unimportant to us and bringing down things that seem all-important. He has a certain order for doing things and no matter how much we stamp our feet and go red in the face, He will not revoke His ways for our petty demands. Proverbs 18:12 TNIV says ‘Before a downfall the heart is haughty, but humility comes before honour.’ Humility matters to the One who didn’t count equality with God as something to be grasped or used to His own advantage, but who made Himself nothing, being willing to take on human flesh in order to secure our salvation. (Phil 2:5-11 TNIV) Our character has to reflect His.

Allow God to refine your character and what you do will then inevitably reflect Him.