Moments in the life of a Pastor

Walking with God

Author Archives: Giles


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Walking among the giants.

James 1:2-4

2 Dear brothers and sisters,[a] when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. 3 For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. 4 So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.

Gaining perspective can often be the key to the situations we find ourselves in in life.  So many times we find ourselves dwelling on the insignificant things in this life giving over our attention and focus to the unimportant. All of this giving of our attention to the mundane is not so much a giving away but a taking away from what really matters.

In Sequoya National Park there are literally millions of trees, the hills are covered in blue oak and pine but that’s not what draws the thousands of visitors every year. It’s the giant Sequoias that people come to see, trees that tower over everything in the forest, the biggest trees in the world. Walking in the land of these giants you are surrounded by ordinary trees, they’re everywhere, but scattered throughout are the giant sequoias that captivate your attention. There in the silence of the forest you marvel at the majestic greatness of these trees, you reflect not only on their size, but their beauty, they are truly special. These amazing trees grow in groves scattered throughout the park but at a higher elevation than one might think, they like to grow between 5000 to 7000 feet. In order to see these giants you have to wind your way up into the Sierra Nevada mountain range through a narrow and steep road. Higher and higher you go, snaking your way up the mountain pass around corner after corner until suddenly, almost abruptly, there they are. It’s almost an unreal moment, like time is frozen and you step back into the past. There is a prehistoric feel to that moment as you reach out and touch these ancient trees that live to be 3200 years old.

As I walked by these silent trees, guardians of the ancient forest, I stood dwarfed in the shadow of their grandeur and the sheer size of these immense giants put everything into perspective. Staring at the largest sequoia tree in the park, (estimated to be 2200 years old, standing 275 feet tall, weighing over 1400 tons, and with a circumference of 103 feet) it caused me to reflect on what is really important and where I placing my focus. What if I had come to the park and spent my time on the lower slopes focusing on the abundant blue oaks or common pines covering the hill side, filling up my vision with the ordinary and the everyday common things? What if I had been content to leave my visit to the park at that, and then go home, you would have told me I was a fool for wasting my time on the insignificant. You would have told me to make the time and effort to go up the mountain to focus on the truly spectacular. So many times we are consumed with the insignificant things in this life, willingly trapped on the lower slopes of life unable or unwilling to journey up the mountain and experience the extraordinary, the really significant things in this life.

Because these trees live so long it is inevitable that they will not only see natural disasters but lots of them in their life span. Throughout the park you will see many of these giant trees that bear the scars of fire around their trunks. Their bases are blackened by the intense heat that has killed many of the ordinary trees around them and even though the sequoias are scarred, they are very much alive and well because of their incredibly thick protective bark which can be 30 inches thick.

If you live long enough, disasters will strike, trials will come and unlike the trees who don’t try to prevent the fire but to resist it, we often spend much of our lives trying to avoid the trials. We are not ok with being uncomfortable, too much heat and we run, but these trees can’t move and they don’t need to, they are growing where God planted them, in the right soil, at the right elevation, on the right slopes. We will have times of trial, Ephesians 6:13 (“Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand”) tells us that we are to resist the devil, who comes with fiery darts, not avoid. Like the giant trees, our goal is simply to stand, to resist going down in the fire, they do this using their protective outer bark, what do we have? Our protective outer covering is the shield of faith and as I touched the outer covering of these amazing trees and pondered their incredibly thick bark I had to ask myself how thick is my faith? Is it thick enough to resist the heat?

Most of us have a negative view of fire and trials but for the giant sequoias it is the heat of the fire that causes the seeds to be released. Green cones can hang on the trees closed for 20 years but as the fire comes it dries out the cones causing them to open and release their seeds. After a fire is the prime time for seeds to sprout and new trees to grown. The fire has burned the timber of other trees to ash which acts as fertilizer for the soil and it has also created a hole in the forest providing both space and needed sunlight for the new seedlings to grow.

What does the fire of trials do for us? James says it matures us. Sometimes it burns away things around us which lets in the light and gives us a chance to grow. Other times it’s out of the rich ash that we find what we need to grow.

What amazed me the most about these trees was not their incredible size but the size of their pine cones and specifically the size of their seeds. The pine cones are small, the size of a chickens egg, while many other pines that are significantly smaller in stature have much bigger pine cones. The seeds are no bigger than an oat flake, yet from these small seeds comes something great. It’s not so important how we start out but what direction we grow, these giants reach out for the light growing ever higher. What direction am I growing in? What am I reaching for? This truly is a magical place where the giants around me have helped me to regain perspective on what ultimately is important in my life.


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14 Serving leading with the left foot.

John 13:1-5; 12-17

1 It was just before the Passover Feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love. 2 The evening meal was being served, and the devil had already prompted Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, to betray Jesus. 3 Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; 4 so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. 5 After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

11 For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not every one was clean.12 When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. 13 “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. 14 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. 15 I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. 16 I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. 17 Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.

I love how John describes Jesus’ behavior at the end of verse 1, “Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed the full extent of his love.”  This wasn’t just an interaction with the disciples, this was Jesus expressing His love for them. Do we see service as an opportunity to express Christ’s love to others? There are times when it is easy to serve, when the situation or circumstances are a fit, something we want to do, or the timing is good. For Jesus not only was the job unfit, washing dirt stained feet, but the timing was bad. As John wrote down his account of Jesus washing his feet he could have told us this story and left out his comments. Yet John shares with us details which become the most touching truths of the story. He gives us a revelation of Jesus and the heart of the Father, he tells us about the timing and what Jesus knew as he served the disciples.

  • “Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father” Verse 1

He knew he was rapidly approaching the end of His life. He knew that the pain and agony of the cross was upon Him. The Question for us is if you knew that you would die a terrible death tomorrow, what would you be focused on today? Where would your focus be? Would it be the dirty feet of others?  I think I would be thinking about myself and what I was about to go through. Here we see Jesus facing something we cannot even imagine. He is not saying to the disciples, “Don’t you care about what I’m facing?” He is not focused on himself, instead He is kneeling before them in service, to wash away the dirt of this world that stains their feet, knowing that shortly He will be serving them on the cross to wash away the dirt of this world that stains their hearts.

  • “He knew who was going to betray him…” verse 11

As hard as it is to serve others when we know we have to go through our own trials it becomes exceedingly difficult to serve those who will betray us. There is Judas, full of deceit and hypocrisy, about to stab Jesus in the back, and Jesus knows it. What does He do with that information? What would I do with that information? Jesus does not distance himself from Judas but kneels down and loves him to the end. He does everything possible to bring Judas to repentance. Can you wash the feet of your enemies? Will you serve the person you know will not return the kindness?

Here is where serving gets hard, it’s not always what we want to do, and the timing is not always convenient. The ones we serve are not always appreciative, sometimes they are even back stabbing.  Yet in order to understand what Jesus was teaching we have to answer the question He asks “Do you understand what I have done for you?” Has the significance of all this soaked in? You see what Jesus did for the disciples went beyond just getting their feet washed, beyond getting their needs meet. Yes Jesus comes into our lives, to love us and meets our needs, to deal with our dirty feet. But that is not where it ends, sometimes we act like that’s all this is about, getting our needs met, getting my feet washed. No, it’s about personal transformation where our very character is changed as Jesus changes our thinking. It’s not about getting something but about becoming something, a servant like Jesus. verse 15 “I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.” In verse 14 Jesus specifically tells the disciples what the point of his actions are, “Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet.”

The Lesson he wants us to learn is simple “…wash one another’s feet.” What does it mean to wash the feet of others? It means you humble yourself, you get down where the need is and you do something about it. It’s a whole lot easier to talk about service, to think about service, to fanaticize about service, and even hear about service, than to actually do service for others. As we grow in our relationship with God there are depths to this relationship that can only be found in the serving others. It really is more blessed to give than to receive. So will we choose selfishness or servanthood? Is there a need you can meet? Is there someone near you who needs their feet washed? Are you willing to open your eyes to the dirty feet around you and as you see them, are you willing to open up your heart to wash them?