Mind, Body, Spirit
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Session 1: 10 minutes
Title: Who Am I?
Bible Text: Psalm 139:1-16, Mark 8:27-29
Here’s a few facts about me, your speaker for this weekend. Before I start though I want to say this … This weekend is not about me. This is about YOU. This is your weekend and our hope is that when you leave here in a few days time it will be you who will have changed in some way.
So let me change the title of this talk to “Who do we want to be?”
As I look back on my life I can see a littered array of past achievements and failures. They all lead me to ask the question “Who do I want to be?” Am I happy with what I’ve achieved? Can I recover from my failures? Am I defined by either of those things or can I still be someone new? Is there hope for my life to become more than it is at the moment or am I out of time?
Who do I want to be?
It is customary to begin a weekend like this with a whistlestop tour of the speaker’s lifetime achievements so that you can settle in to being impressed and inspired by the inspirational speaker you have before you. Well unfortunately for you there was a sale on in the middle aisle of Lidl and so here I am!!
I know you’ve been told a little about me. Let’s go through some of that quickly …
Do I have a degree in Astrophysics? Yes I do. Sussex University, Bachelor of Science honours degree. Did I do well at it? No, not really, but I got it. From there I majored in Science and Theology issues when I was doing my Masters in Theology and I have many times been the guest speaker on science/faith topics. I’ve also served for quite a number of years as a planetarium presenter. So it wasn’t all for nothing. Do I still wish to be an Astrophysicist? Well, I love that I achieved that. But I never worked professionally as one and I know I wouldn’t have the calibre for it. So no, it’s behind me now and perhaps not really who I am. It’s just there in my past.
Masters in Theology? Yep, did much better at this than Astrophysics. Got a disctinction and was pushed to go on to do a Ph.D and become a theological lecturer training the next wave of clergy. Had to jump through hoops and what not to be selected for that auspicious role. By then I had just about had enough of academia and I argued that I would rather be out on the streets in a parish preaching the gospel than in the halls of a theological college marking essays. So they let me embark on an M.Phil instead of a Ph.D. And then my first curacy was a nightmare and the M.Phil never happened.
Success and failure. Got a Masters with distinction, got selected to be a theological educator … then bailed out.
Do I want to be any of those things any more? I think of myself as a communicator rather than an educator. I can’t be doing with the academic way of arguing. I prefer to massage people’s hearts than tickle their brains. So no, I’m not that person.
I am ordained. I worked full time in parish ministry for 16 years. With college before that I guess you could say I was working full time in church ministry for over 20 years as I was on the mission field in Israel before that. So … a long term stint at church ministry ordained a deacon and a priest. But I left that 9 years ago now because of things which happened to me that I’ll talk more about in the next session.
I am no longer working as a parish priest. But I did, and I am told I was good. Saw churches grow and prosper. Planted church in tough communities. Led, spoke, married, buried, baptised, visited, prayed, counselled, etc etc etc. I loved that life to be honest and if there is something I miss from the past it is probably that. But the bit I don’t miss is the institution of the big church. The top down affairs which clergy are immersed in was something I loathed. And still do. And I am happier living freely in my own way now and doing things like this when I’m invited to do so.
I am a husband and a dad and a step-dad. More on that tomorrow.
This is where the chief importance of my life now lays. I am also a divorcee. I am a survivor of domestic abuse. I am a walking wounded soul with diagnosed PTSD. I sleep appallingly and suffer from debilitating anxiety and mental health issues much of the time. Is this who I want to be? Well funnily enough I have embraced that because in being honest about it openly with the tiny platform I have it has opened up the opportunity to support so many others. I take huge delight in that. It’s a little niche area with a huge importance. So yes, I do want to be this person. Able to speak with compassion and understanding to others who are suffering, especially men going through hellish abuse situations and acrimonious divorces. Would I have ever chosen this - absolutely not. Is it given to me? I guess so and I will do my best with it.
Session 2: 25minutes
Mind
Session 2: 25minutes
Mind
Text: Romans 12:1–8 “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosi…”
Today we are thinking about MIND - or more specifically our mental health and the mental health of those around you. Is this very biblical? No - I’m not sure mental health crops up in many verses to be honest. Is this very Biblical though? YES! The Bible speaks a lot about SHALOM - the total peace of God. If we do not have peace then we are missing out on something God intended for us to have. The Peace which passes all understanding. That peace, I would argue is both a gift from God and a duty for us to create for ourselves and for one another. Church should be a place above all else of SHALOM. I want to speak about this today and encourage us to understand and actively participate in that SHALOM, that PEACE for ourselves and for our church family.
Our minds are the heart of who we are. It is in our mind that we for all our thoughts for every moment of every day. It is in our minds that we process and filter every experience happening around us. It is in our minds that we pray. It is in our minds that we worship. It is in our minds that we explore the questions we have. It in our minds that we converse with others. Yes we can speak of spirit, soul, heart etc … but let’s be honest - our daily experience is really that we have a mind and it is our minds which govern who we are, how we behave and how we react to the world around us. Yet how often do we actually speak openly about our minds in church?
Understanding mental health isn’t an exercise in clinical psychology, although an awareness of that arena can be helpful. Rather I would say mental health is something we understand through love - love for the person God has created us to be, love for the person God has redeemed through his blood at great cost, and love for one another as we are called to do. I am as annoyed at what feels like a modern day trend to diagnose any and all issues with a brush of “Mental Health” with more labels and acronyms seemingly invented every week. It’s tiresome and people with Mental health issues CAN be tiresome people. I know, because I am one! I can’t tell you how tired of my own nonsense I get on a daily basis. Truly. It’s exhausting being inside my head at times. And the messes I’ve made and behaviours I’ve exhibited following my break down are both embarrassing and shameful to me still. Speaking on a personal level and from personal experience, people with mental health difficulties can and often do act like jerks. Guess what though … Jesus never said “Love those who have it all together!”. He simpy said “love your neighbour as yourself”. Have patience with the one sitting next to you. Have empathy for the one who is causing a stink. Embrace the jerks! Ok, he might not have said all that, but he could well have done.
Body
Body
Text: Genesis 1:1–2:4 “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day. And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were g…”
OK, this is my goto passage. If you want to see me excited then this is where you will find me. This passage of Scripture is for me my favourite part of all of scripture and the part I have preached on the most. We don’t have time for me to go through it all properly or in as much depth as I would like. We would quite literally be here all day if I tried to. But we are going to embark on a little journey into something which I hope will give you inspiration to explore more.
Science and Faith - that age old chestnut. It amazed me that still to this day there are people who say “Oh, you can’t have faith if you believe in science!”. Thankfully it is a myth which seems to be slowly going out of fashion, but it still lurks. And much of it is based on the misunderstanding of this very passage.
Now I’m going to be very clear because I’m sure there will be some here today whose toes I will tread on. I have not run this talk by Jim. This is my own thesis. You can make of it what you will. But it is a thesis which I have given a lot of thought and study to over the years and I will defend it most robustly. Does that mean I think you are an idiot if you disagree with me? Nope. Not at all.
In summary, I am a biblical creationist.
Immediately I know that a number of you will be feeling the hairs on your neck stand on end as you see lots of red flags waving around my head.
Immediately others of you are sighing with relief and thinking “Yes! This man is kosher!”
It is not what you think! And I am likely to disappoint you all!
I am my own brand of biblical creationist. And I suspect many of you will actually be the same brand without knowing it, it’s just no one has put it into words for you before.
I am biblical because I take the word of God at face value. I am a creationist because I believe that God created the universe just as he says he did right here in Scipture.
But I also happen to think most people have read it very badly for a very long time and what most people are doing is listening to a medieval interpretation of the latin text of Scripture and not applying their brain cells very hard to the ACTUAL story of creation written in the Hebrew text of Scripture.
So we are going to be learning Hebrew today. Don’t panic though. You actually only need to learn one single word and that word has three letters in the English version of it, and only two letters in the Hebrew. So I hope we can all manage that.
It’s also really easy to say. The word is … YOM! Not yum or yam, but yom! You will perhaps be familiar with this word already in one of the few Hebrew phrases you may be familiar with already “Yom Kippur”. Yom means simpy “DAY!”
Spirit
Spirit
Talk 3: 25minutes
Talk 3: 25minutes
Text: Exodus 38:21-23; Genesis 2:15-19; Psalm 19:1-4
The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words,
whose voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.
In them he has set a tent for the sun,