When I was just a boy growing up the Welsh Valleys, me and my mates always loved going out onto the Graig behind our houses. For those of you who have no idea what ‘the graig’ means, it was a piece of common land that went from my village of Aberbargoed across to the next village called New Tredegar. Every summer we would literally leave our homes after breakfast and not get back till the early evening was drawing in. It’s weird but the summers just felt so much better in those 80’s years (Ed – try the 70s).

One of the essential tools that we kept in our pockets was a magnifying glass, it meant that we could burn stuff whenever we wanted. It’s funny but not much has changed over the years, insomuch as every year I smile when I hear the chants of ‘burn him’ at The Gathering. As you can imagine, me and my mates started so many fires I would not be able to number them. Most of these fires we just about managed to contain, but just occasionally we would temporarily lose control and, man, how quickly those fires would gain strength and momentum.

Now, before I go any further please do not view me as a pyromaniac, but as followers of Jesus I believe we need to get much better at starting some fires.

So, in this series of blogs, where I am sharing the ten principles by which I am endeavouring to live, I now come to the fifth principle:

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Since I first committed my life to following Jesus Christ, the one thing I have found most difficult to do is PRAY! Particularly in the early days it just felt like I was doing nothing when I should have been doing something. I can remember the frustration of asking people, much more mature in their faith, for advice and hearing them say “…let’s pray about this!”

“Just give me some advice that I can act on, will you!”

I now know that much of that reaction came from a deep inner belief that I needed to come through on stuff, make life work, sort things out myself. I really believed that this was all part and parcel of what it meant to be a real man.

But solving every issue in life, and constantly being the answer for everyone around me is just an impossibility and I’m sure God wants to keep it that way.

Why?

Because the life that God promises us depends on us walking closely with Him. It flourishes when we depend on Him.
So, the fourth rule by which I am endeavouring to live life by is “I will pray as though my life depends on; because in truth it does!”

In this series of blogs that I am writing, I am sharing with you the 10 Rules for Living that I am endeavouring to forge into my lifestyle. I am convinced that what the world needs most is men who not only decide to follow Jesus in the sense of making a decision for Him, but who are also willing to do whatever it takes to live like Christ. The result being an epic change in the world where they live. So, a quick reminder of the first two rules:

1. I will relentlessly pursue God; and when I lose sight of Him, I will hunt Him down.
2. I will study His Word and let it shape my life!

The third rule or principle by which I am trying to live is all about the decisions that I make regarding my behaviour (when I am seen by others, but also when no-one is watching). ‘I will not let sin have mastery over me.’
Now, let me be clear before I go any further, following Christ is never a matter of ‘behaviour-management’, in the sense of if I just try harder, and do better God will think more of me’. When we accept Jesus as our Lord and Saviour, we are grafted into the family of God, and our God is a good, good father who loves us to bits (and crucially loves us for who we are). So, the whole idea of not letting sin have mastery over me is not about seeking approval. It is literally the way my life will go from average to world-changing, from typical to hugely significant. And, I know that deep down, all of us want to live properly significant lives.

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In my last blog, I shared the first of ten values that I am endeavouring to live by. That was to relentlessly pursue God, and in those moments when we lose sight of Him purposefully choose to hunt Him down. In my experience, and in so much of my reading, I have learned that God wants to be pursued and the harder we pursue Him the more of himself he wants to reveal to us.
So here is the second of my ten values which, incidently, is the primary way of pursuing God. This is ‘I will study His Word and let it shape my life’.
There is a guy who I meet up with fairly regularly, who is a great friend, and a profoundly ordinary bloke! But what stands out to me is that he always has his pocket-sized Bible with him. No matter what we have arranged to do together, whenever we sit down he pulls this small Bible out of his bag and sets it down in front of him. Invariably then, as we talk, he opens it to a page that he has highlighted and shares some wisdom that is so often relevant to our conversation.
This guy epitomises a lifestyle of reading the Word and letting it shape his life.
At one point, I kid you not, I went onto Amazon and bought a pocket-sized Bible in an effort to live in the same way. I am not sure that I managed to carry the Bible with me for more than a week. That said, as I have developed a stronger faith in God, I too have also developed a greater dependence on His Word.

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Over the summer there have been a number of changes in the life of my family. I have started to realise that I never do anything simply. So we have moved across to North Wales, joined a new church, my son has started a new school and obviously we are building a new network of local friends.
When I say I never do things simply, these changes were all motivated by one thing: our boy needed to start a new school.
However, I have also revisited my own faith over the summer. I decided to ask myself some very important questions:

1. How is my relationship with Jesus working?
2. What and how am I investing in this relationship?
3. What changes do I need to make in my life in order to grow closer to Jesus in the future?

Now, as you will know if you have been following CVM for any length of time, we do love a Top 10 list. These lists are often fun, playful and not a little bit controversial. We also love living differently, living by a different code and you can see what this looks like in our fantastic resource called ‘The Code’. Well, over the summer I came up with a ‘Top Ten Values to Live By…’ These ten values are personal to me, yet universally important to all of us. I would like to share each of these values with you over the course of time and future blogs. Hopefully, you find them inspiring and maybe you might choose to think through some of the values by which you live too.
The first value in this list is: ‘I will relentlessly pursue God, and when I lose sight of Him I will hunt Him down!’
I don’t know about you, but I have never lived a life where I have constantly felt the presence of God in me. There have been times when I have felt His presence massively, and I suppose at those moments I have felt like I am on top of the mountain. Then there have also been times when I have felt like God is so elusive, I am desperate for His guidance but He seems nowhere to be found and that is a little like being in a very dark valley. I guess this is why so often my go to book in the Bible is the Psalms. The writers in this book, particularly David, seem to have so much in common with me. As Robbie Williams once sang ‘life is a rollercoaster…’ and this is something that I am really well acquainted with.
But here is the thing, in the past I have had the tendency to just accept that this is part of life. But now I think differently. Most of the time when I have lost the ‘felt’ sense of God’s presence, I have also noticed that I became much more committed to that old way of doing life that I have previously called ‘self-determination.’ For any number of reasons I began to work out my life on my own again, without waiting for God to help me make the better choices.
I am not saying that this is the only reason for losing the sense of God’s presence, but there has been a bit of a correlation between the two in my own life.
It was once said of David that he ‘strengthened himself in the Lord’ (1 Samuel 30). The context of this statement was that all of David’s trusted wingmen and band of brothers had suffered a great loss, for which they wanted to blame David. So they turned on him and wanted to kill him. If ever there was a time that David felt utterly alone, this was it. But instead of just accepting the feeling of total abandonment, he hunted God down and found his strength in Him. And then, he went on to achieve a massive victory with the help of the men who wanted to kill him.
So let me encourage you today, espescially if you are not feeling God’s presence right now, to keep on pursuing Him. Be relentless, hunt Him down – He wants to be found and He will strengthen you in this moment of despair.
But, even if you are feeling God’s presence in your life, if you feel really close to Him – stay alert, keep your focus on Him. We all live with ebbs and flows, we all feel encouraged and discouraged but the Lord is steadfast and His love for us never changes.

“I will relentlessly pursue God, and when I lose sight of Him I will hunt Him down”.

 
Image Credit: Conner Bowe

I have two passions in life (that is apart from my family)—following Jesus and Welsh Rugby. One of these passions brings me unbridled joy and a purpose to life, the other brings me ecstatic joy in the moment and a fair bit of disappointment along the way. I do believe that being a Welsh Rugby fan has taught me to really embrace and enjoy those fleeting victorious moments because we never know how long they will last.
At the time of writing this blog, we have recently enjoyed a Summer test series win over South Africa and Argentina—it is the first Summer test series win for Wales in over a decade. However, I am bracing myself for the Autumn test matches later in the year. Could we be successful twice in one calendar year?
Let’s just wait and see!
A couple of days ago I was meeting up with a guy in Cardiff, and we started to talk about building a movement of men across Wales, men who are fully focussed on living well, giving it everything they’ve got, never cheating, never treating others badly. Men who are strong, have integrity and honesty, great husbands, boyfriends, fathers, sons, brothers and really great mates that you can rely on too. We talked about having the energy to do all this consistently, to never giving up when it gets tough, and how we both believed that following Jesus gives us that energy that we will always need to do this.
Man, I am so convinced that our world needs all of us to be different from the culture we inhabit. We so need to be men that live with an opposite spirit that constantly puts others first. But this is an incredibly high calling, if you are anything like me you might manage it for a day, a week if you are super disciplined but to be like it ALL the time—that is tough!
The Bible says something like this:

“but you, man of God, run for your life from all of this. Pursue a righteous life—a life of wonder, faith, love, steadiness, courtesy. Run hard and fast in the faith. Seize the eternal life, the life you were called to, the life you so fervently embraced in the presence of so many witnesses.”
(1 Timothy 6:11-12, The Message)

As we continued to talk about becoming this kind of movement, my mate told me something about Richie McCaw, the greatest All Blacks captain of all time. Richie McCaw is one of the most decorated players in the history of the game, there was literally nothing more for him to achieve when it came time to hang up his boots. He was consistently the best, so fully-focussed, so driven, so energetic—the man was a human rugby machine.
But here is what my mate told me: whenever Richie McCaw left the field, whilst all the other players were celebrating their victories, their achievements, their conquests, Richie would take himself to a quiet corner of the changing room. In that quiet space, he would take his journal, turn it to a completely new page and he would write down two words:
START AGAIN!
No matter whether it was in victory or defeat. No matter if he was on top of the world, or in rugby’s equivalent of the pit. Richie McCaw’s attitude was to leave the past where it belonged, enjoy the moment whenever he could and then start all over again.
I am convinced that this is how Richie McCaw became the best leader that rugby has ever had. He never lived his playing career in his past achievements or failures, he always pushed on to the goals that lay ahead and he did this consistently, throughout his career.
There are so many life lessons in this. So many of us are struggling to find that new, clean page in the story of our lives. We look over our shoulder, either to constantly relive better moments from our past, or to regret so many of the twists and turns our lives have taken over the years.
But here is the incredible deal, the great news of Jesus is that we do get to turn to a new, clean page and Jesus writes ‘Start Again’. He writes it in his own blood and says to each of us— ‘the past has gone; your future is in my hands now, let’s go live it together!’
This is literally the only way to live our lives well, and this is the way, together, we will build a movement of mighty men in this nation. Men committed to following Jesus, knowing that he is their energy to live so differently, to live so much better, to make a massive difference to everyone around us and to do it consistently.
In Wales we have a saying when we see a rugby player like Richie McCaw. Whether you are a Welsh speaker or not, you know this phrase: Chwarae Teg—fair play. Over years, I have said Chwarae Teg to Richie McCaw many, many times.
And to you, if you can start that brand-new page with Jesus, letting him write ‘Start Again’ and you can keep doing this every day for the rest of your life—I say to you too, Chwarae Teg—fair play.

“If I fail I will not give up. He never gives up on me!”
The Code XII
codelife.org

Image Credit: World Rugby

This is part two of a blog series on finding the narrow path in every situation of life. This week, Jon explores what it looks like to ‘trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.’
I am not the kind of guy who dreams a lot. I remember being at a CVM Regional Day a few years ago when Carl Beech said that there were two things necessary for a good night’s sleep: a soft pillow and a clear conscience. I am convinced that I have had more really great nights of sleep for taking that advice than I would have otherwise. That said, for a number of months I had been having a recurring dream, I might even call it a recurring nightmare. Every night it was exactly the same!
The dream went like this…
I would be driving along the M6 motorway and as I passed one of the services I would look down to my dashboard and see that I only had enough fuel for the next twenty miles – every time the next services would be twenty-one miles away. As the dream progressed, clearly my fuel gauge would get lower and lower. Then, I would literally be a couple of miles away from the next services when my engine would begin to splutter, lose power and then cut out.
The engine always cut out with the services fuel station in sight. It always felt so near and yet so far. In this dream, I did not once make it to the fuel station. I always ended up stranded on the side of the motorway.
Over the course of the few months that I was having this recurring nightmare, I began to realise how strong my resolution was to make it to the fuel station on my own. I literally felt utterly determined to come through on this, there was no way I needed help. Whatever else happened I was the one who was going to make it right!
Yet, as I said earlier, I did not once make it to the fuel station!
At the time I told a mate of mine about this recurring dream. He asked me the very question that some of you are already asking as you read this blog – why did you not pull over into the hard shoulder and call the AA to bring you enough fuel to get to the next services safely? Why did you not reach out to the emergency service that would get you out of the mess in you were in? After all, I am and always have been a fully paid up member of the AA.
Ironically, during the same period, my car broke down twice on the M6 and I did end up on the hard shoulder waiting for help. I hasten to add, the reasons for my car breaking down were never due to a lack of fuel. However, the situations remained uncannily similar.
As I stood on the side of the motorway, waiting to be rescued, I could not help but think through many of my personal life choices both good and bad.
A few years ago, I heard a Christian speaker say that he was not only incredibly grateful to Jesus Christ for rescuing him in a very dramatic moment of enlightenment, but he was also grateful to Jesus for saving him every day since that first ‘Damascus Road’ moment. This speaker was very aware of the Gospel story of Jesus going to the cross, paying the penalty for all our sins, and bringing us back into a healthy relationship with God. However, he was also equally aware of his need to be rescued every day, the need to choose Christ every day, the need to realign all of our lifestyle with God and walk in the direction of the narrow path.
Throughout my adult life, I have battled with my determination to ‘come through’ in life. I have often leant on my own understanding rather than trusting God with all my heart, I have sometimes struggled to align my ways with His ways and therefore remain straight and true on the narrow path. But here’s the thing, I also know many more blokes who have battled with that same determination, than other blokes who have found it easy to live out Proverbs 3:5-6 consistently.
I do take heart from the fact that there are many of us living with this same strong self-determination. We are not in the minority and we are certainly not on our own.
I do not have the recurring nightmare anymore, and that is simply because I am becoming more and more committed to embracing my own responsibilities but, crucially, doing it with the determination to live the life that God has chosen for me – it is seriously better than choosing my own path in life. In a way, it means that I fill the car with fuel, and I do everything to ensure that it is fit for purpose. But in those moments when the car takes me by surprise and I am tempted to work it out on my own—I don’t. I get the help I need before I get stranded.
To me, that is what it looks like to find the narrow path that leads to Life. Yes, we all accept our own responsibilities, but given that we can all have access to the Sovereign God of all the Universe who wants to help us along the way—why would we not ask for help?

It had been a particularly tough first few months of the year. My wife and I had become increasingly aware that our son was not going to make it into mainstream school. We sat in a number of education healthcare planning meetings, listening to one missed target after another. As parents, we had been saying for quite some time that he should be referred to specialist school but getting that referral was proving a challenging mountain to scale. On top of this, a pretty routine operation for our son had turned into a procedure with further complications and we were told that he would now need a further three operations over the coming fourteen months.
What else could go wrong?
Well!
The phone rang. It was our local mechanic. Our car had only gone in for the handbrake to be fixed, now I was being told that there was £600+ worth of repairs to be done. I felt my heart sink and I felt despair beginning to set in.
A few days earlier I had been talking to a very wise mate of mine. I just wanted to explain to him all my woes and difficulties. I wanted him to give me the ‘quick’ solution, the ultimate words of wisdom.
Instead he read the following verses:

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
James 1:2-4

I have to be honest, there has not been a whole lot of counting our trials as pure joy. It has been more like pushing through and just waiting for things to get that little bit easier. I have read these verses many times over the years, but I think all I have ever done is give them intellectual assent at best.
But then my mate went one step further. He went on to say that in every situation in life, there is a narrow path that leads to life and that is where we find the pure joy of becoming everything God ever intended us to be.
I have since been meditating on these verses from Matthew 7:13-14. I have always interpreted them as narrow is the path that leads to salvation and that is absolutely true. The truth is that if we are to find peace with God, then we have to embrace the narrow path that leads to Christ through his death on the cross and ultimately through his resurrection. However, when we dedicate our lives to following Christ, we are also called to live our entire lives only on the narrow path that leads to life. It is as we learn to do this that we can begin to experience pure joy even as we go through the various trials of life.
For so many of us, as followers of Christ, we can sometimes live as ‘practical agnostics’. By this I mean, we go through the stuff of life, the tough stuff, the painful stuff and even the great stuff without ever asking where God is in our unique set of circumstances? Where is the pure joy? What does God have for me in this moment? In what ways will I become mature and complete, not lacking in anything through this?
I was talking to one of my colleagues about this finding the narrow path in every situation in life just after I had the news of my £600+ car bill. We both agreed that it just feels so hard to live with a different attitude towards our struggles. So, it will be little surprise to you that the question we both had was this: how on earth do we find the narrow path in every life situation, that pure joy and just how do we avoid the drama and the panic that so often, naturally, sets in?
So, my quest is to find some insights into this. On a personal level, to stop living like a practical agnostic. To learn to trust God, more and more, in every situation, both in the good and in the bad. I feel convinced that this is something that doesn’t necessarily come naturally but is something we all need to learn! I am also totally convinced that this is simply another part of our discipleship and our growth! More than this, I am convinced that this is massively important if we are to genuinely reach all our mates for Jesus, because ultimately the world turns to Christ based on our testimony, the testimony of a life that used to be lived without God but is now lived intentionally in relationship with him!
In my next blog, I want to explore some of the disciplines that we can use to help us find the narrow path in every life situation and how that can massively impact the way we are able to witness to our mates.

A few weeks ago, I completed my CVM Grand Challenge. It was a deeply moving weekend in my life, and in the lives of those who accompanied me. I was asked during the final climb, on Snowdon, what had been the most significant aspect of the weekend for me. Surprisingly it was this; over that weekend I had proven to myself that with a bit of discipline I can achieve anything.
I have to be honest with you, there were a number of times during those climbs that I could quite easily have given up. This was especially the case on Scafell Pike, the middle climb. There were many incentives to keep on going, not least the words of Steve Martin ringing in my ears.
This morning I read some verses from Galatians 5, the words that particularly jumped from the passage were: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery”. It got me thinking about the freedom I am entitled to have through life in Christ, but also how that freedom comes at a pretty high cost.
The obvious high cost is that Jesus had to go to the cross, on my behalf, to gain it. Without the selfless sacrifice of Christ, there would be no freedom to be had in the first place. However, there is a pretty high cost for me too:
I must follow Jesus!
I must daily take up my cross!
I must be surrendered to Him!
I must be His disciple!
I must be disciplined!
But in the same way that climbing the three peaks with a nine-foot cross proved to me that with a bit of discipline I can achieve anything, so taking up my cross every day even when I do not feel like doing it means that I can have all the freedom Christ promises me. When we have the kind of freedom that Galatians 5:1 speaks of, we become very powerful men, we become real world-changers, we become like Christ himself.
There is another verse in John (14:30) where Jesus tells his disciples that Satan is coming for him. The thing is that Satan was always doomed to fail. Why? Because of the way Jesus lived his life! His absolute discipline, his total focus meant that the enemy would have no way of getting control over Him. Satan will keep coming for us, but how we live our lives will determine how much control he can or cannot have over us.
Our lives, this side of the Kingdom, will always ebb and flow. There will be times when we will need to rely more heavily on discipline than at other times. However, the promise always remains—it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. So, if you are in that moment, when you just need to make the right decisions for the right decisions sake; if, right now, it feels like you are having to guts it out a bit, remember this, the result of such discipline is that you get to achieve what you first thought was beyond you. True freedom knows no limitations.
One last encouragement, for those of us who feel like we have lost time, even years, remember this: Jesus Christ is the only One who can give you back what you once thought was totally lost:
“I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten– the great locust and the young locust, the other locusts and the locust swarm…”  Joel 2:25

Every single day, when the alarm goes off at 6am I face a stark choice. Without fail, the choice I make in those first few moments will always ultimately shape the rest of my day. You see, at 6am I need to choose between my personal dragons and following Jesus with all my heart. This is the spiritual warfare that I face each and every morning.
Let me explain what both choices look like:
At 6am my alarm goes off, as some of you will know we have a toddler and sometimes the nights are not as peaceful as we would hope for. Actually, as I write this article we have had two particularly bad nights where my wife and I have been woken up 3-4 times. So my alarm goes off, I open up one eye and then the other and stretch over to, invariably, hit the snooze button – this is the moment when my dragons first appear and believe me, they are relentless.
The first dragon says “…well that was a bad night, you are so tired. You had better stay here for another hour, you need the rest, you are going to be tanked for the rest of the day!”
I, personally, find this dragon the hardest to slay. He sounds so reasonable, and quite frankly I do feel a sense of entitlement to have more rest after a sleepless night. However, I know deep down that unless I fight this dragon head on, the next battle will be much more damaging to my day.
So I jump out of bed, and make myself a strong coffee.
The second dragon says “…well done for getting up, look at how much time you have before the world really gets going. Why don’t you just crack on straightaway, take some of the pressure off yourself? By 9am you will really be ahead of the game, and besides you can read the Bible later!”
I feel more able to push this dragon away, maybe it is because I now have my wits about me. That said, which one of us doesn’t jump at the chance of being ahead of the game. But then again, which one of us is able to withstand the battles of the average day without the Word of God firmly rooted in our hearts.
So I remind myself, this is not just a quiet time, this is an essential routine to ensure that I am battle ready.
Finally, the third dragon comes. He doesn’t say anything. He just waits until I am about to pray and then he cranks up his fog machine. Suddenly, I am so distracted, I don’t have a clue what to pray for and my energy for all this is diminishing. Once again this particular dragon is a bit tenacious and so I must turn my gaze back to Jesus, maybe I read a psalm or two, listen to some worship, whatever it takes to get my focus back onto the Lord.
At 7am, I sit down to breakfast knowing that I have gained the victory for today. The victory will be shortlived, tomorrow I will need to slay those dragons again. Then again, following Jesus really does mean taking up the cross everyday and doing whatever it takes.
There are many days when it doesn’t go quite so well, and I know it. However, as we often say at CVM: “If I fail I will not give up. He never gives up on me.” (Code XII)
Your dragons will, undoubtedly, be very different from mine – but slaying them daily will be every bit as important. There really is a dailyness to following Christ.
Go well and be blessed…

Image Credit: Andrés Montoya