Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:05 Good morning everyone. Well my name good morning is <laugh>. Good morning everyone. My name, uh, is Hannah. I'm a teacher in the local secondary school. Um, and I'm one of those students that came 15 years ago and never left. You need to stop making a city so lovely. Please, if you'd like us to actually go, so <laugh>, what does your daily routine look like? You probably all have a particular pattern or rhythm, something that you have to start the day with. It's really interesting what can impact it, whether maybe it's traveling for work. So your rhythm will look different if you're home or away, whether it's school holidays or term time or you might just have the same particular pattern every single day. And it's fascinating when you talk to people what they say the morning should hold. I have two older brothers and both of them are very into running and being active.
Speaker 1 00:00:57 My middle brother fairly recently became a voluntary army padre and as part of his training, uh, which was about a month long, they had to have nights where they didn't go sleep at go sleep at all to get used to sleep deprivation. And then the other nights when they were allowed to sleep, they had to get up around four or 4:30 AM Now I am a night owl. So for me that is the idea of absolute torture. So earn his passing out parade. My oldest brother and I were talking to him, we were like, oh gosh, how did you cope? So on and so on. He was like, no, I love it. I've been transformed. I get up, I go for a run. I've got the whole day ahead of me and we were just going, you are nuts. That is awful. I like to go for a run At the end of the day, if I'm gonna go going in the morning will ruin me.
Speaker 1 00:01:42 Then you'll have your coffee crew. For you guys, the day won't start until you've had your coffee and obviously there's the whole debate around breakfast and what that should or shouldn't hold. And after the morning routine is done and you're onto the busyness of the day, there was a slogan released a while ago. Work, eat, sleep, repeat. And probably often our every days can feel a little bit like it. Emails and situations are coming at you from the minute you engage with them until it's the end of the day and you're sitting down for dinner or walking across the carpark in this, where is God in the every day? A number of years ago we had a week of prayer as we often do and at the end of it I said to Mark, nothing in my life has changed, but how I see my life has how we view God in our every day has a huge impact on our whole outlook.
Speaker 1 00:02:35 Are you trying to fit God into it or is God your lens for how you see your day? You see, when God is our lens for our day, it changes our outlook, it changes how we think, what we focus on, how we act and how we deal with various situations. So if you have your Bibles, if you can turn to Colossians three verses one to 17 and gonna take this fairly slowly and pause as we go. So Colossians three verses one to 17. If then you have been raised with Christ and it says if, if anyone here hasn't received Christ, there's gonna be an opportunity at the end to do so. So please bear that in mind. If then you have been raised with Christ seat for things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God, set your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.
Speaker 1 00:03:34 How often do you think about God in the day? How often do we think about heaven? I have to be honest. When I have a 14 year old screaming at me that the teacher has done X, Y, z, ABC and 1, 2, 3, the idea of heaven doesn't generally pop into my mind at that moment, but equally when we have a holiday coming up or maybe it's Friday, often those thoughts will be the things that spur us on. How often do we let the thought of eternity be that spur? Because we have eternity in paradise. We have a destiny that holds no pain, suffering, aging, illness, nothing bad. And for me it's always going to be sunny and warm. How much does that spur us on in the day? First three for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
Speaker 1 00:04:29 The first few lines of scripture are very clear. We need to keep our minds focused on Christ. How do you think you'd handle things differently when that person cut you up in the traffic lights or the work colleague sent the grumpy email, the TV broke or the supermarket didn't have the item that you were trying to buy? It's not that these things wouldn't bother us, but it's how much they would bother us that would shift and how we would react to them. When we see things with a heavenly perspective, a God lens, almost like God glasses on your every day, it changes our outlook in every area of life. Put on therefore what is earthly in you? Sexual, sorry, put to death. Therefore <laugh> that would be awkward, uh, put to death. Therefore, what is earthly in you? Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire and coveted ness which is idol on account of these, the rough of God is coming in.
Speaker 1 00:05:23 These you two once walked and when you were, when you were living in them, but now you must put them all away. Anger, rough, malice, slander, and obscene. Talk from your mouth. It's so easy to let these things creep back in from earth. 23 7 says, you are what you think. And all too soon when we are thinking those thoughts, it then only becomes a matter of time until those become our words and then our actions. But when our mind is focused on Christ and we are thinking on those things that are above, it just physically gives less space for those things to try and creep in. Verse nine, do not lie to one another. Seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.
Speaker 1 00:06:13 Here there is not Greek and Jew circumcised and uncircumcised, but Christ is all. And in all this is for all of us. No matter of our history or background, context, status or situation, each one of us has freely received the grace of God and salvation and therefore each one of us puts on the new self. Yes, verse 11, uh, verse 12, put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness and patience. This isn't by our own strength. When we focus our minds on God, when we look to that which is above these aspects will naturally start to come off office. You know, when you spend a particular amount of time with one person, you'll start to copy or mimic things that they're doing. When we are focusing on Christ and allowing our minds to be filled with him, we'll start to naturally do these things all by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1 00:07:11 Verse 13, bearing with one another. And if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you. So you also must forgive. This message is an unforgiveness and it's a topic that you could have a whole series on. But as I was writing this, I really did feel prompted to just give a friendly reminder as it were to check yourself for unforgiveness. It is so easy for it to creep in and it can be so destructive when it does. And often areas that were never problematic then become problematic if we don't constantly check ourselves. I had a situation in the autumn that I've never had before at work where I was accused of something that I hadn't done and I was reported to the police before it. I've never been reported to the police for anything in my life, <laugh>. And it was pretty scary because it could have not just ruined my job but ruined my entire career.
Speaker 1 00:08:04 And it was turned out to be absolutely fine. But in the day after the situation happened, I walked into work for the first time. I was really scared to be in work because of what had happened the previous day. And about a week later as I was walking down the stairs, I felt God say, Hannah, you have to forgive them. And I was like, yeah God, now I know. And it was like, no, you have to forgive them. And as I started a journey with God, I realized he loves us too much to allow us to live in unforgiveness because it will only destroy us and we are his beloved. So check yourself. I'm still on a journey. I can't talk about that situation without there being some emotion. I'm still working on it with God. It's not a quick fix thing, but please constantly sift yourself.
Speaker 1 00:08:47 Is there unforgiveness? Verse 14 and above all these put on love which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you. Richly teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom. Singing Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your heart to God. And whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. When we view our every day with thankfulness, it is a sure way to set your mind on that which is above so sure way to look at the every day with that God lens. And it's gonna impact your heart and your mind, your actions and your stress levels as well. There was a piece of research that said thankfulness isn't just a good idea.
Speaker 1 00:09:46 This isn't God going, come on everyone be nice to each other. But actually it has a really significant impact on your health and your wellbeing according to the research. When you're thankful it improves your self-esteem, your levels of energy, uh, your ability to be more resilient. It makes you more generous and forgiving. It keeps us in the present moment and therefore it's gonna lower stress, anxiety, and negative thoughts. So God, in the every day far from being another task we need to fit in When we have him as our focus for every day, it changes how we see that every day. It's gonna give us a more positive outlook and ensure we are keeping our minds focused on him. But what about when the every day is really hard to deal with, sadly that scripture doesn't read and you'll only receive in life things which are focused on that which is above things which are loving and kind and humble.
Speaker 1 00:10:38 And as we walk through the years, our every day will likely be filled and impacted by things that can be really difficult. It could be family arguing or jealousy, an unfair boss, a scheme to treat you out of your due worth or a false accusation. And at some point we've probably received some or all of them, whether it's been to ourselves or to a loved one. For one person in the Old Testament, they had all of those aspects dominate their lives and far from a film script or a TV drama. This passage is about Jacob's life story. First he was misled and despite working seven years for LE's daughter, youngest daughter Rachel, he was given the elder daughter Leo on his wedding night. Now having two wives, he's faced with their jealousy because Leah is only able to have children. But Jacob loves Rachel. Jacob is working for Leban and makes him a very wealthy man due to his care and shepherding of his flocks.
Speaker 1 00:11:34 And as time passes and Jacob fathers more and more children between Leah, Rachel, and their two maid servants, he eventually asked the band to be able to go home. And it's at this point that we pick up the scripture. So it's in Genesis chapter 30 verses 25 to 43. And I'm reading from the ESV version. As soon as Rachel had born Joseph, Jacob said to Labban, send me away that I may go to my own home and country. Give me my wives and my children for whom I have served you that I may go for you know the service that I have given you. And Laban said to him, if I have found favor in your sight, I have learned by divi divination that the Lord has blessed me because of you. Name your wage and I will give it. Jacob said to him, you yourself know how I have served you and you have and how your livestock has fared with me for you had little before I came and it has increased abundantly and the Lord has blessed you wherever I turned.
Speaker 1 00:12:39 But now when shall I provide for my own household? Also he said, what shall I give you? Jacob said, you shall not give me anything. If you will do this for me, I will again pass to your flock and keep it. Let me pass you all of your flock today removing from it every speckled and spotted sheep and every black lamb and the spotted and speckled among the goats, and they shall be my wages. So my honesty will answer for me later when you come to look into my wages with you, everyone that is not speckled and spotted among the goats and black among the lambs, if found with me shall be counted stolen Labban said good, let it be as you have said. But that day Laban removed all the male goats that were striped and spotted and all the female goats that were speckled and spotted everyone that had white on it and every lamb that was black and put them in charge of his sons and then set a distance of three days journey between himself and Jacob and Jacob pastured the rest of laban's flock.
Speaker 1 00:13:49 Then Jacob took fresh sticks of poplar and almond and plain trees and peeled white streets in them exposing the white of the sticks. He set the sticks that he had peeled in front of the flocks in the TRSs. That is the watering places where the flocks came to drink. And since they bred, when they came to drink, the flocks bred in front, in front of the sticks. And so the flocks brought forth striped, speckled and spotted young. And Jacob separated the lands and set the faces of the flocks towards all the striped and all the black in the flock of labban. He put his own droves apart and did not put them with laban's flock. Whenever the stronger of the flock were breeding, Jacob would lay the sticks in the troughs before the eyes of the flock that they might breed among the sticks. But for the F of the flock he would not lay them there.
Speaker 1 00:14:42 So the feebler would be laban's and the stronger Jacobs. Thus the man Jacob increased greatly and had large flocks, male servants and female servants, camels and donkeys, although this might seem very far away from our everyday lives. Jacob was no one famous, he wasn't a leader, he was a shepherd, a worker like many of us. He had a boss, he had family drama and he faced injustice. However, what I find so powerful and so beautiful about this story is how Jacob dealt with laban's unfairness. Jacob didn't ask God to remove the problem from him. He didn't pray for the problem to go away, although in many situations that's a brilliant solution. He went through the problem and not just that. In doing so, he turned the problem into his own blessing. Problems never feel nice, nice. And how we look at them has a massive impact on us as you'll probably be able to hear, I have a slight speech impediment called a lateral S, which apparently is because my tongue is flatter than it should be.
Speaker 1 00:15:44 It doesn't over me bother me, but I do feel self-conscious when it's pointed out or if I hear words I don't pronounce correctly. Now, being a teacher in a secondary school means I am wide open to comments and for anyone that knows, teachers know they have this hidden talent to uh, sniff out all of the weaknesses within a human and then exploit them to their absolute maxim. In my first year of teaching, it was quite tricky when I was trying to get a class to be quiet and I just got mimics of my voice thrown back at me or being referred to on their social media as the teacher with the first lisp. But in each of those situations, God guided me and directed me. So that now having taught that school nearly 10 years, I can honestly say the students never mention it. It's not something that ever comes up.
Speaker 1 00:16:31 God always gives us the very best solutions and we see that with Jacob. If you read on in that passage in Genesis 31, 7 to 13, God had already spoken to Jacob in a dream. Before Jacob spoke to Labban, he told him to take the speckled and swatted animals at his payment For the countless year's hard work. Now we are thinking, but Laban's taken all of the goats and the sheep that should be the right colors and so on. So how is Jacob ever gonna cause the flock to be able to make, to create his own wages? But in the dream, God had already spoken to Jacob and given a solution, a solution that has theologians still debating to this day, whether it was a miracle or whether it was medicinal, God said to put the bark of certain trees into the animal's water to cause them to have young a certain color and pattern coats.
Speaker 1 00:17:21 I have no idea about the debate, but I do know from the scriptures that it meant that Jacob left with a healthy, strong and big flock far from being left with nothing. By following God's wisdom and guidance, he ended up having the very best of the flock. Laban thought he could cheat him out of his Jew once again. But God had ideas far above any scheming master. When we take the difficult every day to him, he gives us solutions and guidance. No man can ever think of. The Bible says if you lack wisdom, ask for it. God will give you ideas, plans, and turnarounds that don't just get rid of the problem, but turn that problem totally into your favor because we have a wonder working God, a God that will take us through every difficult moment, every valley, every climb and every mountain top.
Speaker 1 00:18:13 He's with you in the every day when it's difficult and sometimes the solution isn't needed. Sometimes you just need to hold his hand, Jesus' hand is without for you. He won't ever forsake you. And whatever the context, he'll give you the solution to walk you through those difficult everyday moments. But in seeing our everyday with God lenses and in taking difficult solution, uh, difficult everyday moments to God for him to give a solution, he also calls us to another part in our everyday. And that is to take a break from it, to find silence and to find solitude. I did a little bit of Googling because we all know life in our society has never been so busy and never been so full. But on an average person, sorry, on an average day, the average person sees between 250 and 5,000 adverts, listens or hears around 52 songs, encounters around 270 people, whether that's passing them on the street in the bus friend in the shop, et cetera.
Speaker 1 00:19:17 We spend around 4.8 hours on our mobile phones and of them about two point, sorry, two hours and 31 minutes is on social media. And if you have social media, then on average you have between 5,000 and 20,000 followers on TikTok, 1000 and 10,000 followers on Instagram, 599 uh, followers. Lemme say that again. Five hundred and nine nine hundred ninety nine followers on LinkedIn. On average, 707 followers on Twitter and on average 338 followers on Facebook. So if you take the rough average person, if they were to have all of those platforms and do a mean average, very roughly, you are connected to around 20,000 people online. Now of course, some of them will be the same person on multiple different platforms. Some will be people you've never really met and you never engage with, and some will be people that you know really well and whil. Not everyone will be posting and commenting.
Speaker 1 00:20:17 You have the potential to hear thousands and thousands of voices, whether indirectly or directly every day. And that's before you have TV and radio and all of the other aspects. We are a society that is so connected and yet equally never been so lonely and switching off, coming away from the noise can often feel like someone is cutting your right arm off. If you go back 2000 years before we had the phones and the emails and the socials and the messages, when the main form of communication was simply word of mouth, even then Jesus gave us countless examples of taking a break from the every day and finding silence and solitude. You only need to go briefly through the gospels and you can see countless scriptures in Mark and Luke and all of the others where he goes off to the mountain or into a garden away to pray.
Speaker 1 00:21:10 Jesus set the example to leave the noise and to get away from the every day, to have time and space and silence. Just you and God with no phones. <laugh> your silence might look very different from others. For me, I like to get out into nature, be really isolated, go for a walk, fresh air, me and garden, just journal attending. My wonderful husband will sit in the room where all of his guitars are and just play for hours and hours. For others, it could be baking, could be having a bath, it could be going to the garden, going for a run, going for a drive, painting. It doesn't matter what it is, how you find your solitude and silence is a beautiful thing between you and God. The important part is that you find that time and space to do it. Maybe it's once a month, maybe it's once a week, but he's calling us to take a pause from the every day and to come away from him.
Speaker 1 00:22:07 And that's not just your normal prayer time, whenever that might be. This is a disconnection from the every day to deeper connect with our creator. Silence. Anology is something that's been keenly on my mind at the moment because series of reasons. A number of weeks ago I had a bit of a crash and burn moment, felt like I was drowning and my every day was just pushing me deeper underwater. And so I pressed pause, I interrupted my every day and I took some time out. I went for a walk on the coastal path and I found a crevice in a cliff. And I have no idea how long I was there because I didn't have my phone and I didn't have my watch. And it was lovely. Yeah. And I realized it wasn't just a short while that I hadn't done it, but it was months, a months and months.
Speaker 1 00:22:49 And actually my spirit had been crying out for just that moment to disconnect and to stop. You might have had a moment with your phone where it started to glitch. Maybe the screen didn't load properly or the uh, keyboard didn't type correctly. And if you take it to any tech shop or phone shop, they'll say, have you turned it off and turned it on again? Have you turned it off? Have you given it a break from the everyday running? That little rectangle of metal and plastic needs a break from the everyday. How much more do we as living human beings need a break from the everyday? So, so as I draw to a close, and if the worship team could come back up, Jesus set such a clear example. As a son of God, he was flesh, but he was God. He was God on earth.
Speaker 1 00:23:45 He himself set the example to take a break from the every day. Why don't we prioritize this more? Why do we allow the noise to almost mesmerize us into this constant flow? Downtime is really important and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. But as I was writing this, I thought we have noise all through the day to then come home and typically, typically put on the TV and scroll through our phones, which creates more noise. Jesus, in his three years on earth, took repeated moments to stop the noise. So what is your silence and solitude? How can you take a break from the every day, disconnect from it and be still before God? Give him space to speak to you. Sometimes to create this, you have to interrupt the everyday. And that can feel impossibly hard at moments. But I assure you, you won't only have a better coming weeks, but you'll probably be more efficient as well because you'll have had that disconnect. So just take a moment now and have a think. What is your silence and solitude? We're at the beginning of a, a new month, the month of March. I encourage you at some point over this coming month to take some time to disconnect.
Speaker 1 00:25:09 So God, in the every day when we see our every day with a God focus, with God lenses, it will impact how we are able to cope and how we view it. When we take the difficult every day to him and allowed him to guide us through, he will walk us through even the hardest of situations. And then we must allow ourselves that space to take a break from the every day. And as we draw to a close, at the beginning I mentioned that there will be a point at the end where if you didn't know Jesus or you'd walked away from him and you wanted to come back, that there will be that opportunity. So we are gonna pray a prayer, and if you have never said this before, I really encourage you to say it. The whole room is gonna say this prayer out loud and everyone will be saying it. So join in with it. So if everyone could close their eyes, Jesus, I thank you that you love me, you love me so much that you died,
Speaker 2 00:26:18 You love me so much that you
Speaker 1 00:26:20 Died, that I can come into relationship with you,
Speaker 2 00:26:23 That I can come into a relationship.
Speaker 1 00:26:26 I'm sorry for my mistakes.
Speaker 2 00:26:28 I'm sorry for my mistakes.
Speaker 1 00:26:30 And I asked to come in into relationship with you now,
Speaker 2 00:26:35 Relationship with you.
Speaker 1 00:26:37 I thank you that I am forgiven.
Speaker 2 00:26:39 Thank you, forgiven
Speaker 1 00:26:41 And filled with your love. Amen.
Speaker 2 00:26:46 Amen. Amen.
