Tag: healing

Where are you God?: Themes from The Stranger

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I am delighted to welcome Joy Margetts to my blog today, with a guest piece that looks at the themes of her latest book: The Stranger. Joy is a fantastic writer: do check out all of her books. She wrote about the themes in her first book, The Healing, and her journey to getting it published on my website back in 2021 so it is wonderful to welcome her here again.

I wonder if you have ever asked: Where are you God? If we are honest, we have all been in that place of not sensing God’s presence. Perhaps that has been combined with the other big question, ‘Why God?’

Life is not always easy. Bad things happen – loss, grief, trauma, pain and sickness are all real. Sometimes when we are in the middle of the worst experiences of our lives, when we really need to feel God’s closeness, to hear his comforting voice, to know his peace, suddenly he seems incredibly far away.

A lonely journey

The Stranger tackles those themes. At the beginning of the story we meet Brother Silas, a man broken by life’s circumstances. The great service for God that he had poured everything into lies in ashes at his feet. Once a man full of faith, now he feels God’s absence and questions everything. He runs – from his home, his vocation, his faith and from God. The journey Silas takes is a lonely one, but there are glimmers of hope along the way, as he meets people that he finds connection with, as he experiences miraculous happenings, and as he reunites with an old acquaintance. As his physical journey comes to an end, as one of my reviewers put it, Silas rediscovers that the faith he thought he had lost, he had never really lost at all.

Drawing on personal experience for The Stranger

As in all of my fiction, in writing The Stranger, I was writing from my own experience. There was a season in my own life where everything suddenly changed. A sudden illness became a chronic condition and it robbed me of many things: a ministry role that I was flourishing in, a job that I loved, the joy of travel and discovering new things, being the wife and parent I wanted to be. I couldn’t understand why God had allowed it, especially as it came at a time in my life when I was contented and looking forward to the future with excitement. I begged him for healing, believing wholeheartedly that he would answer me. My loved ones prayed with faith, too, but nothing changed. I started to question everything, and soon hopelessness and despair took over. God seemed a million miles away – if he were there at all.

I had been a follower of Jesus all of my life. I had seen God do miraculous things, change people’s lives radically. I had experienced sweet times of feeling his tangible closeness, heard his voice speak clearly and yet in the time when I needed him most, I could not find him. The temptation to run, from everything I had ever believed in, was real.

Finding hope again

I was able to write The Stranger recently, some years later, because actually it is a story of hope. I think there are many reasons why we can struggle to hear God or feel his closeness. Fear, doubt, disappointment, anger, sin – these things can all create a barrier between us and our Father. Has he really left us when we needed him most? I don’t believe so. He promises in his Word, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you’ (Hebrews 13:5, NKJV). My testimony is that of course he had not abandoned me. I could not trust my feelings, or my understanding during that traumatic time. I had to choose to believe his promises.

Like Brother Silas, God brought people into my life to demonstrate that he was real, and that he cared about me. He spoke through his Word, and eventually I began to hear the sweet whisper of his voice again, as I repented for building a case against him. In hindsight, I can look back at so many times when God was obviously there. 

My healing still hasn’t come fully. I still have some of the same struggles, but my God is faithful. He loves me, and he will work all things together for my good (Romans 8:28). I don’t have to understand what that looks like, I just have to trust him, and enjoy being loved by him.

In The Stranger I portray human brokenness, but I also write with understanding about a God who never leaves his beloved children. Even when they try to run, he will pursue them, gently and persistently, until they finally find themselves fully back in his embrace.

Joy Margetts loves writing and loves the Word of God. A retired nurse, mother and grandmother, she also has a lifelong interest in history. Her works of Christian historical fiction are inspired by her own faith journey, and set among the beautiful Welsh landscapes of her adoptive homeland.

Her books are available on her website , The Stranger can also be bought direct from the publisher  and all are widely available elsewhere online and through good bookshops.

How to be a valuable Christian

I am delighted to welcome Liz Carter onto my website today, with a guest post as part of the blog tour for her fantastic new book Valuable. I was thrilled to read an advance copy of it, and delighted to endorse it too. The book shares such a vital message to us all – I thoroughly recommend it to you.

I was really sick again. I’d been prayed for so many times through my life of illness, and I had not been healed. I was still in pain. Somebody in the group prayed for me with these words: ‘Father, please heal Liz so she can be useful again. So you can use her again.’

I felt like I was falling apart as those words churned in my mind. Useful again. Useful. Useful. It seemed to me that in order to be useful to God I must get better, and because I wasn’t getting better, I was useless. I was not valuable to God. I went out of that meeting with my head hung low and my heart heavy. Would I ever be of use to God? Even when people told me God could use me I couldn’t make those words mean good things for me. I couldn’t be used, because I wasn’t well enough. And did I want to be used, anyway? Was being used by someone a good thing?

Let’s look at the words we use

Language is so important, and as Christians we sometimes forget this and we use words and phrases that some might call ‘Christianese’; incomprehensible to the world around us. When we talk in terms of being useful to God, or of God using, people on the outside of faith may look on and raise their eyebrows at the idea that ‘God using’ is positive language. After all, when we talk about a guy using a woman, we don’t mean it in a positive way, do we? We mean he has used her for his own ends. So why do we talk about God like this?

It’s one of those things that we think must be in the Bible, but when we look into it it actually isn’t (a bit like unhelpful phrases like ‘God helps those who help themselves’). The verb ‘to use’ with us as objects and God as the user just doesn’t appear anywhere at all. There are some great pictures about us as honoured vessels, created by God for good purposes, but not to ‘be used’ by God. What if there is a different way of thinking about how God works in us and through us – a way that more accurately describes the love-relationship God longs for with us and has created us for?

What God values v what society does

God’s kingdom is an upside-down kingdom. While the world values productivity and usefulness, God values us for who we are: his beloved children. We do not have to earn God’s love, and we are not God’s tools, picked up and then discarded when the job is over with. Instead, God partners with us and joins with us (John 15) and is delighted in us (Zephaniah 3:17). In God’s economy, we are all loved and all equal (Galatians 3:28). The picture Paul shared of us all being equal parts of the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:27) was astoundingly radical and counter-cultural in a time where power was valued and the weak were thought of as lesser. It still speaks to us today in a society where ‘doing’ often seems to count more than ‘being’.

Even in church we can find this narrative has taken hold: we see how the useful, the strong, are valued above the weak, and so people who are weak can feel lesser. It plays into the way we talk about healing, too, as I said at the start: somehow we have come to believe that healing and ‘wholeness’ will make us more useful to (and used by) God. Somewhere along the line we have forgotten that God is not interested in how much we do, but in how much we love him and how much we respond to his transformative grace and power. For a disabled, chronically ill person like me, this is so liberating: I am found in Christ and freed in Christ, not for how much I do but for who I am created to be.

So when those kinds of prayers are prayed over me, I am free to say no, I do not need to be healed to be useful to God. I find God working in me and through me within my pain, and I do not have to always be trying harder, or getting better, or striving away to earn my place in God’s kingdom. I’m so grateful.

Knowing your value

My new book, Valuable: Why your worth is not defined by how useful you feel digs into these ideas and reflects on our stories in God, stories of his infinite love over us rather than stories of how useful we are to him and to those around us. It is my prayer that as you read it, you will find yourself set free from the narrative that you are not enough, and be assured that you are of more worth than precious gems.

That you are valuable.

Liz Carter is a writer and poet from Shropshire, UK. She is the author of Catching Contentment, Treasure in Dark Places and Valuable. You can find her on Twitter @LizCarterWriter, on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok @greatadventureliz, or at her website.

Embracing the broken

I am delighted to welcome Liz Carter to my blog, as she continues the ‘Unmasked: stories of authenticity’ series. This will be the last post before I take a little break for the holidays – but will be continuing with this series in the New Year. Liz is incredibly honest here and I resonated with a  lot of what she shared, including the pressure felt as a pastor’s wife and also feeling the need to learn to lament well…

‘How do you feel now?’

I stand there, my head bowed, my body stiff as I contain the pain raging inside. What do I say?

‘Are you feeling better?’

I bite down on my lip. ‘A little, yes, thank you.’

But inside I am berating myself. That’s not true, is it? I don’t feel a little better at all. If anything, I feel worse, the pain made somehow more obvious by the prayer. I feel just that bit smaller, that bit more invisible, the real me hiding behind the reality that once again, I am not healed. Once again, I have let somebody down, someone who wanted to pray with me, to see me set free from the pain which holds me in fierce bonds.

You see, this is my mask. This is the face I put on. It’s the face I have put on all my life, growing up with a degenerative lung disease. And it’s the face I sometimes put on with God, too.

It’s the ‘I’m fine’ face. It’s the words I say when folk ask me if I am better yet, the smile I smile when people tell me I look so well. It’s the false mask of pretence; a way to escape being too real, because sometimes it’s just too hard. Too exhausting to reveal my inner self with all its pain and loneliness, enclosed in a body which keeps me caged from the world for so much of the time. So instead of sharing my unmasked self, I nod. I smile. I’m fine, thank you.

Somewhere along the way, I learned to hide my feelings. Growing up with this disease meant that I had to put a mask on every day, to face the world, to be a person who deserved a place in the world. If I took my mask off, I thought I was showing that I wasn’t good enough, after all. That I was too weak and helpless. Too pathetic to be of use, because my body always let me down. The easiest way was to hide the fact that I was in pain. To pretend that all was well.

I started doing this in church, as well. I thought that people didn’t want to hear that I had another infection or felt too exhausted to go out of my house or that pleurisy was racking me yet again. I thought that I wasn’t displaying God’s power at work in my life if I was sick. I thought people wanted to hear bright and positive stuff.

But I was wrong.

People long to see authenticity

They yearn to see people being more honest, more open about their struggles. And when I share what I am really feeling, how I am struggling, then that brings me to a better place, as well. A place where I don’t have to pretend, anymore, a place where I don’t have to be lonely in my pain, because others have taken some of it and held it along with me.

Unmasking is scary. It’s risky. It doesn’t always go down so well, either. There have been the times I’ve tried to be more real with folk and they haven’t wanted to know. The shutters have come down, the glances over my shoulder more marked, the barriers erected. The platitudes start: ‘I’m sure you’ll be better soon.’ ‘You just need a bit of fresh air/exercise/aloe vera.’ Some people don’t want to be faced with the reality of my pain.

But there are actually far fewer of these people than I once told myself. Once upon a time, I felt I could only be open with my closest friends and family. Now, I’ve found that saying how I really feel can open conversations in the most wonderful way. I was talking to a lovely lady the other day – I don’t know her very well, so was all ready to say ‘fine, thanks,’ when the question came. But I caught myself, and told her that I was feeling fairly broken, actually, and that this year had been really bad for me, with multiple infections and a hospital admission. Instead of the conversation continuing on the superficial level it had started with, it got deep quickly, because this lady was released to speak about stuff going on for her, too. My decision to be real meant a much more profound connection. A healing conversation.

The perfect parson’s wife

I’m especially aware of this as a vicar’s wife. Perhaps there’s a script running somewhere in my mind telling me what a vicar’s wife should look like and act like, something which says that a vicar’s wife is always impeccably presented, and coolly calm and confident. I couldn’t possibly show folk who I really am, because that wouldn’t be appropriate.

I know that script is really a load of rubbish. It’s an archaic leftover of old novels I’ve read featuring distant and collected parson’s wives (we’re talking Austen and Bronte here.) It’s nothing like the reality of living life with honesty and integrity – which leads to messiness.

But messy is good. Messy is important, and real. Standing in coffee time after church with tears running down my cheeks means an unmasking which gives others permission to give of themselves, too. It means a sharing of lives marred with brokenness, an honesty about suffering which still crushes us, an authenticity about those times we just don’t get it.

Because a life lived with God does not mean a life lived without pain. And if we can learn to be honest about the pain then we can reach out to each other so much more. We can listen to one another and make the world a less lonely place, even if for only a moment or two. We can reach out and catch hold of the work of the Spirit among us as God brings healing through our willingness to open ourselves up. Even when it hurts.

We’re allowed to shout at God

I’ve had to go through a journey of being real with God, as well as with others. I got too good at pretending that everything was fine. That I didn’t mind when others were healed and I wasn’t, that I was good with it, that it was okay because I wanted those people to be happy. I told God that I was fine with my sick body if that was who I was supposed to be. I plastered a grin on my face and carried on.

Some of this was authentic. I found joy in worship, and felt that I had come to a place of acceptance of where I was. I’d lived with it forever, after all, so had known no other way, so perhaps it was easier for me than for others who suddenly get sick or become disabled. God was so much more than my feelings, and I found that I could take hold of contentment in God’s presence rather than in my circumstances.

But in all of this, I forgot to actually acknowledge my feelings.

I forgot that it is important to tell God how we feel.

I forgot about lament.

The Bible is an incredible model of how to be authentic. Right through all the books, we see broken people responding to God from out of their brokenness. We see people shouting at God, moaning, weeping, screaming. We see people battering their fists into God’s chest.

We even see Jesus in the deepest grief, sweating drops of blood as He asks God to take this great burden away from him. We see in Jesus’ desperation the most profound authenticity, an honesty not afraid to express His fears and His pain, while always saying Yet not my will. Yet not my will, but yours be done. Jesus had no need to put on a mask before His Father, no need to say that He was fine thank you, that He was really okay with what He knew He had to do.

Because He really wasn’t okay. He was sweating blood.

In the psalms, the writers so often share their brokenness in the most raw words, ragged and haunting poetry which expresses their pain. How long, O Lord, how long?… Why, my soul, are you so downcast?… Do not hide your face from me! The writers don’t hold back from God, because they know that God can take their grief and their shame, their agony and their hatred. They give us a model for how we can be genuine in our prayers. How we can share the depths of our hearts with God, even when those depths are so very dark, because there is no darkness that cannot be lit up with God’s dazzling light. Those psalmists always move on from laying out their brokenness to trusting in God, even when things look bleak. And it’s in their active decisions to remember God’s work in their life and to praise God anyway that they find their healing, that they find their mourning turned to dancing and their lives lifted from the pit.

Their unmasking leads to their healing.

This is my experience, too. Pretending does nothing, before God and before people, because pretending leads to superficiality, and there is little point to that. Honesty – even in all its raw brutality – does so much more. It lays bare truth and its vulnerability speaks to battered hearts and crushed lives.

‘Are you feeling better, now?’ the person praying asks of me.

I begin to speak, but stop myself for a second.

‘I’m still in pain. So much pain. Why can’t God take my pain away?’

And we weep together. We weep in the waiting and in the brokenness, but our weeping is seasoned with hope, the hope we both know, the reason we keep on asking.

The hope that will never let us go.

Liz lives in Shropshire with her Rev. other half and two teens. She loves writing more than most other things and blogs here. Her Bible study book about Beauty and the Beast is available here or you can get an e-copy for free on her blog. Liz’s first book is about contentment living in a broken world and will be published by IVP in 2018.

Truly ‘together on a mission’

This is the first time I’ve had a chance to sit down and reflect on what I learned at the Newfrontiers Together on a Mission conference last week (the reason for that will, in part, be the subject of another blog soon!) It truly was a privilege to be at the bulk of what was the last international conference of its kind. Right from the start there was a sense of expectancy, and God had specific things to say to us as a movement that came through time and time again, through various different speakers.

I always feel so blessed at these events because it reminds me of the wider Newfrontiers family we are part of. I am always struck by the humility of the leaders and speakers, particularly Terry. Indeed that was the main reason we were first attracted to Newfrontiers. And it is great to see how other guys have come through into maturity and authority and are now heading up works within the various continents, but there is still a sense of family across the board. I loved the mixture of both honouring our roots, and founders, but also pressing forward to take new ground.

I was both caught up with and slightly apprehensive of the way that we seemed to hit the ground running. Words came thick and fast about being courageous and having courage as a leader. The natural worrier in me started to wonder what is coming Lord?! But it is so true that as a movement the ‘boys have become men’ and I also felt that challenge me personally. Yes we have stepped up into leadership roles, and my husband has proved he is capable of pastoring the church. I am mentoring and meeting with various younger women… AND YET. Life is going at such a pace am I taking the time to feed myself spiritually? Am I looking after myself and allowing God to speak to me clearly and have that vital input in my life enough? He graciously seems to speak through me when I am ministering to people, but I wonder how much more effective I could be if I carved out a bit more just me and him time…

We were travelling up and down to Brighton each day so usually left at the end of the afternoon session – it meant we could see the kids before bedtime and not get overtired ourselves. But when we heard PJ was to speak on the wed eve we decided to say. And what a great decision that was! I have said in a previous entry that the whole issue of healing is one I can struggle with because of the way my mum suffers, but he gave one of the clearest messages I’ve ever heard on suffering, sickness and healing. Where does sickness come from and where does healing come from were two of the questions he pondered during his own battle in the last year. And God gave him great revelation. Hearing the simplicity with which he explained the relationship between the atonement and healing was refreshing. His talk gave me fresh vision and hope and went some way to lift off the frustration I can often feel when people look at my mum and make a judgement call as to why she hasn’t been healed yet. Definitely a recommendation I have already made to my mum to listen to!

There is so much more I could talk about here but I think there will be plenty more future posts as I manage to grab odd moments to dwell upon my notes.