The days preceding a new year are a time to dream.

Every year, well all year actually, I set up new rules for myself and new demands for my time and character. Setting goals is good. Setting rules is not. Somehow rules kill you whereas goals bring life.

For a rule-setter, goal-getter type like myself, New Years Resolutions used to provide an excellent opportunity to set even more self-imposed laws, which I endeavoured to keep, but more often missed.

Years ago I regularly watched the kids for the pastors of a rural church in England. They had a rule for their kids: ‘No New Years Resolutions’. A rule that banned rules; Interesting.

Perturbed at the prospect of a missed rule-setting-opportunity, I enquired about why such a decision. The answer surprised me. ‘Laws set people up to fail’ the pastor’s wife explained. They don’t come with the grace to carry them out, just pressure and disappointment. So the kids were banned from setting new years rules. What was also true of this family was that they were highly disciplined, highly creative and highly relational. Lack of laws didn’t equate lack of achievement; rather it gave space for it. Relationship and encouragement accomplished what rules couldn’t.

Grace like this is a funny substance. It is freedom. Freedom to not be controlled by rules. It is rest. The rest to never strive. It is passion. Passion that drives you further. It is power. The power to achieve all things. It is both a letting go and a reaching higher.

I have been learning the joys of living in graceland. It’s a somewhat magical place, where love not law is the law of the land. Easy you may think? But when you have found the ability to reach for the stars you have a new-found responsibility to pluck them out of the sky. The sky is no limit in graceland. To who much is given, much is required. But these requirements are not like the demands of law set before, these requirements are to dream bigger and go further. Because, as the laws fade, so do the natural laws. Nothing is impossible in graceland. Therefore, dream bigger, love deeper, forgive greater and go further than you ever thought possible.

Vision gives pain a purpose. If your New Years Resolution is to loose weight because you had one to many minced pies this Christmas, your focus is on your failure to keep in shape. When the pain of working out happens, all you can see is your out-of-shape (and now sweaty, out-of-breath) body staring back at you in the mirror. If instead you dream of being fit, in-shape and healthy enough to run into old age. Then you have a vision that is unperturbed by pain. The pain is just a sign of a step in the right direction, rather than proof that you really are out-of-shape. Lack of vision is subtle, but a proven deal breaker in the New Years Resolution stakes. Instead you can dream into being the person you want to be.

So tired of laws that lead to failure? Start to dream and dream bigger. If you can achieve your dream, then it is too small. The glory of the young is that they are too inexperienced to know that their dreams are impossible, so they do them anyway. Realise that nothing is impossible. Write down your dreams and don’t put them off until tomorrow. I have dreams and visions for my life that I’ve written down in a list. It is pinned to my bathroom wall and everyday I remind my day about my dreams. Speak to your day and speak to your self. It’s not a sign of madness, but of greatness to declare your destiny.

Dream big. This is not the season to devise new laws or resolutions. It’s the season to dream new dreams. What does 2009 look like in your dreams? What is your life dream and how will 2009 be a part of that? If you want to stop human trafficking how will your dreams for yourself in 2009 support your life dream? What were the dreams that you traded in as a child for laws and impossibility? Bring them out of the closet again. Fulfilled all your dreams? Then you need to dream again and dream bigger, further and always with a level of impossibility.

There always has to be some impossible situation in your hand. Otherwise how will there ever be miracles?

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Relational Generosity: Love & Life

I just gave my father a book of short real-life stories form the War. When we hang out, or work on my boat, or have a meal, my dad will tell me another story from the book. It is full of heroes and miracles, because heroism is miraculous. A hero is someone who loves. Who gives themselves in life or death for other people. They give life, courageously.

No one has greater love than this, than to give their life for their friends.

I want to suggest that to override your survival instinct to die for other people is a miracle. Yet, something equally miraculous is to live for them and give life to them. Which is greater: to ‘give your life’ for another, or to ‘give your whole life’ for another? Either way, to give your life to give life, is love. And in doing so, we make friends of strangers, we become heroes and we are a miracle.

A generous life gives life to everything around it. It nourishes people. It builds them up and doesn’t tear them down. Words, actions, time spent, emotions invested, atmospheres created. Love keeps people alive. It saves them, it grows them, it fuels them, it strengthens them, it rests them, it energises them and empowers them.
Love = Life

The wise tell the wide-eyed that love is not love if it costs you nothing. Generous, love-giving life is costly. Life-coach Danny Silk teaches that ‘people that hold back, who are afraid to give, end up wanting, lacking, dissipating…Comfortable makes cowards of us all’.

However, when we count the cost and plant a little seed of goodness in someone, it grows into a tree that produces fruit, nourishment, shelter, it attracts rain and protects the soil it is planted in.
The seeds of good deeds become a tree of life
The ancient proverb says that if you plant a little bit of goodness in a person it grows and not only nourishes them, but also the world around them and it produces more seed to be planted. Relational generosity grows life exponentially.

Loving people, laying our lives down for them, serving them and their destiny involves many forms of ‘seed planting’. Living with goodness towards the world involves an outwards flow that is so often counter cultural:

Pulling Out the Gold

It’s easy to see the faults and weaknesses in people. I used to think I had an extra special gift of dirt spotting, but found out (eventually) that it was neither a gift nor a benefit to those around me. So I’m swapping trades and going for gold. If you recognise hidden goodness and gifts in someone and call it out, it actually empowers that thing to grow in them.

I used to live in gold-rush country where you can still pan the rivers for gold. When the tourists start sifting through the rivers they’re not scouring the pan looking for dirt, but instead, for the tiniest specs of gold. It’s those bits we pull out and hold up for everyone to see and it’s in those bits that there is wealth worth stewarding. Praising people, recognising the goodness and talents in them, building them up and encouraging them is like looking for gold that is always there somewhere. It is also one of the most powerful things we could ever do, because life (or death) is in what we say. Each word of encouragement is a seed.

Creating Clouds

American author Bill Johnson says that ‘your internal reality becomes your external reality’. If you are peaceful you release peace, if you are a secure leader, you release security. Creating an atmosphere of safety around yourself brings peace, freedom and rest for the people sharing your life space. Being angry and volatile creates insecurity, defensiveness and stress. Consciously fostering a positive atmosphere of security and peace around you, allows people to grow and flourish in freedom.

Raising and Releasing

Good fathers and mothers are the most generous people around. They pour life inter their children, encourage them and then let them fly free. Parents aren’t scared of their kids doing better than them – instead they are proud of them. We need to be like that with people. Committed to running the race with them from diapers to flight, not needing to keep them down or mould them into something they’re not. We all need to have adopted fathers and mothers in our lives too. People we listen to, honour and serve. This kind of relationship creates inheritance and life-cycles of relational generosity. Allowing you’re ceiling to be a floor for the people who follow you, will make you as generous as any parent.

Being a hero in life is all about sowing your own life into others. Planting the seed, protecting it, and then cultivating the tree into a great life-giving tree.

Living a Life Worth Giving

A Christian View of Generosity By Chuck Scott

⁶ And when Jesus was in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, ⁷ a woman came to Him having an alabaster flask of very costly fragrant oil, and she poured it on His head as He sat at the table. ⁸ But when His disciples saw it, they were indignant, saying, "Why this waste? ⁹ For this fragrant oil might have been sold for much and given to the poor." ¹⁰ But when Jesus was aware of it, He said to them, "Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a good work for Me. ¹¹ For you have the poor with you always, but Me you do not have always. ¹² For in pouring this fragrant oil on My body, she did it for My burial. ¹³ Assuredly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to her." Matt 26:6-13 (NKJV)

One has to wonder what was going through the mind of this woman. It is pretty safe to say that she first saw Jesus and then, after gazing from afar, runs home to get the most precious thing she had to give, perfume. Imagine the range of emotions she must have felt from first glance to running back home, to picking up the perfume, “ Oh, this will show Him” she thinks to herself. As she slides into Simon’s crowded house, she pulls out the jar of perfume and starts to pour it all out on Jesus. The mental picture I get is one of tears flowing down her face as she pours the most costly thing she owns on a Savior who is giving all for her. At that moment she realized that she had worth. It didn’t matter what the others said. All that mattered was that she was living her life in the moment for Him. She was living a life worth giving.

Like that woman, we all have something to give, something of great worth. Great worth costs much. Through out the ages many people have gone before us willing to pour out their lives as an offering to other people. Most of these people are nameless. Sure, it doesn’t look like the woman pouring expensive perfume on Jesus. However, it looks the same in that it is selfless giving of one’s life for the sake of others.

Friends, we are all called to help one another. Our lives are the most costly thing we have. Our life is our greatest worth. There is so much more to this life than the things we accumulate. Our Savior paid the greatest price to save us. Our lives are extremely valuable. Great worth costs much. How much are you willing to spend? I believe Jesus made this very point when He told the rich young ruler how he could get into heaven.

¹⁸ Now a certain ruler asked Him, saying, "Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" ¹⁹ So Jesus said to him, "Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. ²⁰ You know the commandments: 'Do not commit adultery,' 'Do not murder,' 'Do not steal,' 'Do not bear false witness,' 'Honor your father and your mother.' " ²¹ And he said, "All these things I have kept from my youth." ²² So when Jesus heard these things, He said to him, "You still lack one thing. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me." ²³ But when he heard this, he became very sorrowful, for he was very rich. Luke 18:18-23 (NKJV)

The world, right now, has more needs unmet than met. One third of the world population controls a majority of the world’s wealth. Funny thing about wealth is that we tend to have this separation anxiety in regards to it. 

What are you going to sell?

Is this a call to a life of poverty for everyone? No. However, it is a call for everyone to take their most precious gift, life, and give it to others. Our life is not one of sitting quietly and doing nothing, but a life of focused abandonment for a God who did the same.

I believe that Jesus gave me life. It is of great worth. It was meant to be lived, not for myself, but for others. Like the rich young ruler, we are called to live a life worth giving.

The needs are there. How then shall we live? Better yet, how then shall we give?

I leave you with these lyrics from the song, Kiss Your Feet, by John Mark Mcmillan. I was listening to the song when I started to write this.

I dreamed I kissed your feet
Between the cigarette butts
On the side of fourteenth street
I got down on my hands and my knees
With an alabaster jar

Do you think me cheesey whan I tell you ‘love is all we need’? When the Beetles and the Bible say the same thing it’s time to listen. Best selling band and best selling book, 20th century to 1st century, love revolution to love revolution. Love is all we need. I believe.

If I speak in the languages of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing…And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

It was for love of my brother that I stood at his wedding and read these words, my knees visibly knocking and my hands sweating. But, knowing that I would be nervous, I had read though the words a million times so that I wouldn’t stutter and stumble. But what I did instead was fall in love with these love letters. And how could I stumble? They are like poetry running off the tongue, language of angels indeed. But, amongst theses lovely lines is some age-old truth that can shock my cold heart to the bone: Whatever we do in life, if we have not love, it is all for nothing, for it will not remain.

Years ago, in southern France an electrical storm drove us into the shelter of the great and ancient arches of the Pont du Gard, older than both the Beatles and the Bible. With lightning dropping around us I asked my ever-wise mother if we should move to somewhere less obvious for a strike. And with ever-increasing wisdom she replied ‘it’s been here for 2000 years and probably encountered a few lightning storms in its time’. It set me thinking, buildings feel immortal, while we like shadows come and go. But, the truth is the opposite. While the material things we see look more enduring, it is the insubstantial element of love that is powerful and lasts forever.

When you love, the effects are eternal, passed from one person to another, from generation to generation. Recently someone told me to write a list of all the people who had ever showed me love or kindness. As the list trailed off the page, I realised those deposits of love make me who I am and make my life possible and make me be able to love. Relational generosity is the soundest investment of them all.

Over the next few weeks I am going to explore a few ideas surrounding relational generosity. Otherwise spelt LOVE. Loving myself, finding love, love for them, and giving love.

Part One:love ME

Like charity, love starts at home, and I don’t mean your house. I mean you. The person who does not love themselves is a nightmare for everyone around them. After all, you can’t give away what you don’t have. If you can’t love yourself, you can’t honestly love the people around you. We can do our best, but we are operating out of lack. At some point we are going to love people the way we love ourselves, and if we don’t love ourselves, we can’t love them. My friend’s fiancé once told her that it was his ambition in life to love her as much as she did. She promptly replied that it was in his best interest that she loves herself, because we love others as we love ourselves. It’s true. We’ve all seen how a damaged person damages. An insecure person creates insecurity. A hurt person hurts. The greatest thing you can do for people around you, is to love you.

Identity is the best place to start. To have relationship we have to let people really know us. Intimacy is ‘into me you see’. If we don’t like who we are or don’t know who we are, we won’t let anyone else see who we are. Many many people (if not all of us) have taken some knocks in life that can rock their identity and their intrinsic value. When we don’t feel valuable we feel vulnerable and open to attack. We expect attack. Someone who is insecure is defensive; and therefore offensive. They create insecurity in their environment and trigger every other insecurity around them. Equalling relational (or unrelational) mess. We have to love ourselves enough to let them see the real us.

Another friend of mine was given £15 000 a few years ago by a man he didn’t even know very well. Instead of being friendly to this guy, my friend went to great lengths to avoid him. It got so ridiculous that he realized there was a problem, and he realised the problem was him. He felt unworthy of £15 000 and thought if the man got to know him he would realise this too and regret the gift. At some point we need to believe L’Oreal and know that we are worth it, not because L’Oreal says so, but because every human who walks this globe is worthy and wonderfully made. I love the Dove adverts that promote the message that every size and shape is beautiful. It’s the same with our inside – we are all good. ‘I am lovely’ is the biggest thing we can realise, so that we can become the greatest gift to give away.