Beating the Holiday Burden

It's been a chilled, but challenging past two weeks. You see, every time I'm on holiday, God seems to turn the screws on me a little tighter when it comes to reminding me of the people out there who I could be sharing his love with. Or maybe it's just that when I'm on holiday, I'm not spending my time working to the same extent and so have one less excuse not to spend my time loving others. Either way, it all adds up to a syndrome I'd like to label the Holiday Burden: I get the feeling I should be using my time for God's Kingdom, then out of fear I make a few excuses, try to put it on hold for a while, with the result that nothing gets done and I just feel more guilty and out of touch with God, disqualifying me from reaching out. Anyone else ever feel like that?

This holiday, I've managed to get myself into the first stages of this dangerous slide, but I might just have found the way to pull out of it too. Here's what God's been teaching me lately:

Step 1: Get rid of the guilt
If this sounds like a strange place to start, I thought so too. God's got a good reason to be angry with me, so why should I stop feeling guilty? Because, of course, God isn't angry with me. It's one of the most basic truths of Christianity, but I still needed to be reminded of it the other day.

On Saturday, my Mom held a Quiet Garden at her house, a time when people from various churches get together just to spend some alone-time with God in the peace and quiet of a garden. I was keen to listen to God and realised I needed the discipline of just sitting and being quiet for a morning to do that, so I joined in. In the garden, I read one of the set passages in my daily quiet time notes, Hebrews 9:11-28. Here the Holy Spirit stresses again and again the once-and-for-all-ness of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. This means that the dreadful act of rebellion I've just committed has already been forgiven and paid for! The only right response is to turn around, repent, get rid of the guilt and begin living like I'm supposed to.

Step 2: Follow your heart
This one sounds completely counter-intuitive as well. Some of the most heinous sins have been committed by people 'following their hearts', and the world tries to brainwash us into doing this all the time: if you want to do something, do it now, because nothing can be wrong if it feels right to you. And now I'm repeating these fiendish lies? Well, not exactly. You see, I'm talking about a different heart. The one God planted in us when we accepted Jesus as our Saviour.

A few weeks ago I led a Bible study on God's promise in Jeremiah 31:31-34. Here God says that he will make a new covenant with Israel, with this as one of God's obligations under it: "I will put my laws in their minds, and I will write them on their hearts." (Jeremiah 31:33). God would put his laws, the commands he wanted the people to obey, in their hearts so that they would want to do what he wanted them to do. Hebrews 8 quotes this passage and explains that it is part of the better covenant that Jesus has now extended to us. So we have been given God's commands on our hearts! This makes sense of what Paul is saying in Philippians 2:13: "For God is working in you, giving you the desire to obey him and the power to do what pleases him." It's all there for us!

Why then do I still chafe against what God is asking me to do so many times? In theory I want to do good, but in practice I shy away from it. It's like the inner war that Paul describes in Romans 7 between our sinful nature and the new nature God has given us. Even though we've got this new nature, we've got to decide to follow it.

On Sunday my Dad preached on Romans 13:8-14. The last verse says, "But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires." In other words, we've got to put away our 'flesh', our sinful nature, like an old set of clothes, and put on our new nature so that we can be Jesus to others. And when we are Jesus to others, we glorify him! And what's more, we have the greatest joy in the world, that of turning people to the love of Jesus. I was struck the other day reading Luke 24:44-53, at how after Jesus had given the disciples the huge task of the Great Commission and ascended to heaven, leaving them to finish the job with the Holy Spirit, they weren't long-faced, contemplating the enormity of what they'd just been told to do (as I am often!) but "filled with great joy" (Luke 24:51).

So I'm still praying that God will help me put on Christ and beat the Holiday Burden. Let's revel in the huge joy of taking God's love to people we know. Let's do it!