Last month I had the privilege of taking my elder daughters to the Big Church Festival on a beautiful country estate somewhere down south. We’d been as a family 7 years ago (when we were a family of 4) but this was the first time since then and also my first time going somewhere solo without Liz. There were a few things I realised. Firstly, my daughters are great company – we had lots of fun throughout the weekend including on the journeys down and they made traffic queues on the motorway far more bearable than they would have been otherwise. Secondly, life is most definitely easier with two. I have huge admiration for single parents who have no choice but to go on holiday with their children alone – especially camping – there is so much to do, even with teenage children who pretty much look after themselves. If it hadn’t been for some friends who helped put up the tent, look after my daughters while sorting out was being done and helped me get our vast amount of luggage the kilometre or so distance from the car to the tent and the nearly miraculous provision of a trolley well after the rental company had closed for business, I would have been far more stressed than I was and things would have certainly taken much much longer to sort out. There is also so much thinking and planning to do – where to go and when, who to watch, what and when to eat – that Liz and I do together almost without thinking. I had to do it all and it was hard!!! Thirdly, having realistic expectations is key – you can’t do it all, you can’t expect perfection – stress is inevitable at some stage, and something will go wrong. Being prepared helps with that. Fourthly, the biggest priority of the weekend was quality time with Alicia and Isabelle – the Big Church festival was a vehicle for that – which meant prioritising the things they wanted to do and see.
I take a while to relax into things and for stress to get out of my system, so it wasn’t until the Saturday evening that I felt able ti be fully present to the festival and to experience all that God had for us and for me. Kari Jobe and Cody Carnes (known for The Blessing that became such a significant song for the church worldwide when the Covid pandemic struck in 2020) were on the main stage. I enjoyed worshipping along with all the songs they sang, but it was when they sang the chorus “My heart burns for you” that something really connected deep with me; for in that moment I was transported back nearly thirty years, to school halls and churches, when as I teenager I went to Delirious? gigs (before they became big) and found myself meeting with God in the middle of a Stu G guitar solo! Something I always found important about Delirious? was that they were honest about the life of faith – things aren’t easy, God doesn’t always feel close, we don’t always live the lives we want to. So many of their songs speak into this. “Obsession” wrestles with the complexities of sometimes feeling close to God and others times, that God is so distant because we’re weighed down by our own sin; the reality of living sometimes without hope or vision yet experiencing God’s presence in these times and with the understanding that we’re not there yet. My heart echoes the cry of the chorus, “My heart burns for you”. For me, the guitar solo that’s integral to the song, and the “La”s that follow have always helped me meet with God. It’s like what St Paul expresses:
“Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.”
Romans 8:26-28 (MSG)
I don’t think all of this came to my mind as Kari Jobe led the crowd in singing, “My heart burns for you,” but I do know that it connected deeply with me. As I’ve written previously, the priority of this sabbatical has been to reconnect with God, to go back to my first love – and those few lines helped me to do that. Similarly, the next evening towards the end of the whole event, Chris Tomlin sang a medley of worship classics – I could sing of your love forever, Here I am to worship, the Heart of Worship – and again, there was that sense of being brought back to that place of walking with the Lord when I was a teenager. I’ve changed in many ways since then, but my passion for the Lord remains; the flame keeps burning.
It was apt that the final song of the whole festival was “God’s great dance floor” sung by Chris Tomlin and Martin Smith. It was so much fun to sing and dance along with my daughters to that song – and I have to say, watching them encountering God throughout that weekend was a truly beautiful thing. I believe something has shifted for them too, a new flame has been lit, and they will look back on this weekend as one in which their faith took a leap toward. Significantly, “God’s great dance floor” begins with the line, “I’m coming back to the start, where I found you.” That line encapsulates what God was doing in me in that weekend, and throughout this sabbatical. I’m being brought back to the start when I was first lost in awe and wonder at Jesus, the saviour of the world, the one who lived and died and rose again for me. I feel that sense of awe and wonder once more and my prayer continues to be, in the words of Matt Redman, “May I never lose the wonder, oh the wonder of your mercy, May I sing the hallelujah, Hallelujah, Amen.”
Halwill Publishing 