Well, I’m back from the USA and thrown right into my cell group’s “November Advent”. Basically, we thought it would be good to do something like Lent in preparation for Christmas (and because it would just be plain old good for us), but wanted to avoid Advent and Christmas because that’s when all the fun stuff happens. Thus November Advent was born, a month when we’d collectively try to give things up, pray and fast a little bit more and encourage each other a lot.
One of the things we’re doing is posting some brief spiritual thoughts each day on our group Facebook page, so hopefully we don’t just use the Internet to check football team message boards or worse. It’s my turn every Tuesday, and this week’s theme is Encouragement, followed by Praise, Doubt and Love. So look out for those updates in future weeks, and hopefully you’ll enjoy my musings on encouragement below.

"It's because we didn't bring any bread."
I have to admit, I’m not very good at encouraging people. I’m pretty good at making it sound critical. “Wow, you were amazing. Most of the time I think you’re awful, but tonight, wow, you really outdid yourself.” People don’t really take kindly to that sort of encouragement, but sadly I’m going to begin along those lines. But please, keep reading, it will get better! It will be encouraging, I promise!
All I ask is can we just admit that we all screw up? In fact, we all screw up on a regular basis. You might even say that we screw up professionally (except that we very rarely get paid for it). Or let’s take it further, that we are screw ups. But the thing I find encouraging about that fact is that God uses screw ups. I don’t have to be anyone special or possess some superhuman abilities, but I can just be me, a poor and broken human being, and God can still love me and use me.
Let’s take David, a man described as “after God’s own heart” (Acts 13:22) who let’s just say would probably be very much enjoying the era of internet pornography. Or the rag tag band of fishermen, tax collectors and other misfits who Jesus chose as his disciples, who managed to get even simple answers to Jesus’ questions very, very wrong. You can imagine the huddle they formed after Jesus warned, “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees.” (Matthew 16:6)
“What’s he on about now?”
“Something to do with yeast, I didn’t really get it.”
“He must have bread on his mind. Can’t have had his breakfast this morning.”
“Really? Doesn’t he know that breakfast is the most important meal of the day?”
“Sorry, I’m afraid it’s my fault. I didn’t make him a packed lunch.”
“You didn’t? And you didn’t offer him yours instead?”
“Well, I did offer, but he doesn’t like marmite sandwiches.”
“Ah, so maybe that’s why he’s telling us to beware of the yeast…”
Then there’s the fringe characters like Zacchaeus, a fraudulent tax collector (maybe the first word is redundant) who Jesus saw something in and managed to change his life. Or Rahab, who was not only a prostitute but even worse a Canaanite, who God called and chose to serve him in helping to hand Jericho over to the Israelites.
What I love most though, is how many of these characters, good or bad, useful or useless, all make up the genealogy of Jesus. The flawed King David, the wise but led astray Solomon, the evil Rehoboam, the good Jehoshaphat, the utterly unknown Matthan and the prostitute who became an adopted outsider Rahab… they are all in there. So Jesus came from a family of broken people, just like you and me. And God can use broken people, just like you and me.
That’s what I find amazingly encouraging about Christianity.
P.S. I’d also highly recommend reading some Adrian Plass if you haven’t already. Those are books that describe a pathetic man somehow managing to be used by God in some small way. I always found them helpful as they made me realise that I didn’t need to be the superhero so many others around me seemed to be, at least on the outside.














