Lakeland visit

The top shot is ‘Tiger Town,’ the baseball park we went to the first night. The journey of about 20 hours in total from the UK flight to finally finding it! The other is the Lakeland Center, where night after night we saw the most amazing healing miracles. I have a video of the moment when Hannah gave her testimony about having had her back healed, just minutes before. It was on God TV too, but I captured it. It’s 77mb so over the amount I can upload (?) unfortunately! This healing happened independent of anyone, just in the worship – like we read about when Jesus healed a paralytic, ‘the power of the Lord was present to heal.’ She felt the power of God go through her and sensed that she was healed (if you wonder whether such ‘feelings’ are biblical please read what happened to the woman who touched the hem of Jesus’ garment). Now you could feel that, and do nothing to test it, but she wanted to make sure – and she’s brave – so she […]

GODISNOWHERE

Yesterday morning, as part of our “40 Days of Community,” our L1FEgroup (what we call our midweek groups) went out around the village, picking up litter. The parish council here provide the bags and the grabbers, and the faithful few from the village who usually do it were, I think, encouraged to have the extra hands. So much so they gave gloves to put on those hands. I ended up outside Cranmore, my designated patch being a lay-by just set off Epsom Rd to clear up. I’d passed a few places on the way that were fabulously litter free already, so I was looking forward to having little to do but feeling good about civic duty done. But when I arrived, this spot really was a mess. I was with Zoë and our friend Clare, they had their yellow jackets on and my ‘grabber’ didn’t work so I stood there watching for a bit – in supervisory capacity – until they realised passersby may have thought the ladies were on day release from nearby HMP Send, and sent me off […]

When God comes to church

When we were in Lakeland they kept talking about how you could ask for and receive a burning coal, to take back with you to where you’re from. Of course that’s coming from Isaiah 6. It was the year King Uzziah died. That king had a long and (mostly) distinguished rule of 52 years. He became king at the age of 16 following his father’s assassination. He started out really well and was faithful to the LORD for a long time – that is the measure of a governmental success in scripture – and during that time he and his nation prospered. Unfortunately one day he made a terrible mistake, when he entered the temple to burn incense, a duty reserved by the LORD for the priests only. Pride comes before a fall. It says, But when he was strong his heart was lifted up, to his destruction, for he transgressed against the Lord his God by entering the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense. (2 Chronicles 26:16) He was confronted about his sin, […]

THE WRONG QUESTION

Well there’s been interesting responses to yesterday’s post – to say the least. First off, the traffic to the blog has taken off exponentially, with hundreds of new readers and subscribers (if that’s you – welcome, if you’d like to, click over there on the right!). I suppose it’s not my skilful prose but the subject matter that’s drawing attention from all over the world, it’s the question I posed yesterday which still stands about Lakeland – is it revival? Some people say yes. They look at people being healed, recognise that were there’s a lot of Spirit there’s also going to be a lot of ‘flesh’ and can come to terms with that – no, rejoice in it. It’s been wonderful that there have been so many people who have known about Hannah’s back problems, and are rejoicing with those who rejoice over its healing, and thanking God (by the way the girls went to pray for people at the Leatherhead theatre last night and I’m told it was amazing time!). I’ve also had one or two e-mails via […]

The trouble with manyana

I was looking at Pharaoh with the ‘we get up early on Friday because we are mighty men of God’ group this morning. We followed a study in my mate Carl Beech’s fantastic book Spadework. Turns out none of us really want to walk like that particular Egyptian. The pride and arrogance he displayed in continually saying no to God is what got him in so much trouble. You think Gordon Brown has problems this morning with the awful drubbing his party is receiving in the local elections around the country? Read the list of plagues – it could be worse! Unlike Mugabe, at least there’ll be some contrition. No doubt we’ll be hearing from various Labour politicians today about how “…the people have sent us a clear signal that we’re going to listen to and make all the necessary changes… blah blah blah…” I imagine Pharaoh said something very similar as his nation lurched from bad to worse. He was surrounded by ‘wise men’ who told him he was great, and it would all soon turn a corner and […]

The Great Hyacinth Mystery

IN THE beginning God (prepared, formed, fashioned, and) created the heavens and the earth. (Amplified Bible). Thus starts the beginning of the book of the beginning, Genesis 1:1. All kinds of theories exist about how that happened, but the problem the theorists have is that however clever they are, they’re not eye witnesses – they were not there at the time when time started. Just next to my house is a field. In the field is a patch, 40ft square, where the most beautiful hyacinths are just starting to flower. Driving past, like many visitors to the village, you might wonder why this patch just happens to be there in a farmer’s field. How did that come about? Who planted them? What you won’t think is, “That ‘just happened.’ ” In the words of physicist/ cosmologist Paul Davies, ‘….the big bang represents the creation event; the creation not only of all the matter and energy in the universe, but also of spacetime itself.’ Not just matter and energy, but physical space and time came into existence at the Big Bang. […]

Focus on Jesus – and what he wants

We should focus on Jesus – and on what He wants us to do. I like how the Message put vs 17: God didn’t send me to collect a following for myself, but to preach the Message of what he has done, collecting a following for him. It’s possible for human leaders to end up attracting followers to themselves, it’s natural that it would happen. The problem is that any human leader has feet of clay and will let us down. We have a banner which is displayed in the entrance hall where we worship in East Horsley. Some well meaning person put my photo and name on it, as well as a big message; “Welcome to L1FE.’ I really don’t like that banner. I am a leader, it’s a gift God has given me. But I don’t want to attract my own following. I have been privileged to lead some people to the Lord, but it’s the Lord who draws people. Years ago a man I didn’t know prophesied over me, “You are a reaper. God has called you […]

Focus on Jesus, not human leaders

…the day you start church leadership is the day your ministry stops because according to and Ephesians 4 model one is meant to be an empowering enabler of others. My role therefore is not to DO ministry so much as to Discover, Develop and Deploy the Saints for their ministries!

FOCUS ON JESUS – the reason we’re here

In this 40 Days of Community we’re doing as a church we’re remembering that churches are made up of imperfect people. The apostle Paul would have agreed! Because he had to address a lot of problems when he wrote to a very gifted, but very immature and divided church in the city of Corinth. Paul heard from Apollos that there were problems there, then he got a letter from the church itself, and finally while he was living in Ephesus, some friends visited and told him some really disturbing report about the church. Yes they were gifted, Paul said, in fact they did not lack ANY spiritual gift… BUT there was little evidence of the fruit of the Spirit there! You know you can have gifts – without love? Paul heard about moral failures, sexually immorality, abuse of the Lord’s supper, false teaching and failure to follow through on promises to be generous with their money. This church had divisions, nastiness, gossip, lawsuits, jealousy and envy. They were about as mixed up as any church ever got! You know why […]