All posts by Bob Hext

I am an author and bible teacher, and lead the prophetic ministry at Wildwood Church (A New Frontiers church) in Stafford, UK. I founded Crossbow Education Ltd, an educational supplies company for supporting people with dyslexia, in 1993, and retired as CEO on March 28th 2025. I married Anne in 1980: we have three children and 7 grandchildren. As a disciple of Jesus, my motivation is to see the Kingdom of God advance in every walk of life: workplace and business as well as marriage, family and church, and I write to fulfil Ephesians 4:12 - "for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ." Because the work of ministry is for all of us, all of the time. I don't spend all my time doing "spiritual" stuff though: I like to spend time with friends, to travel, and - my main hobby - to watch and photograph birds.
Knowing God, Living by Faith, Pursuing Love, The word of God

Ask, Seek, and Knock: Living the Sermon on the Mount.

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Jesus introduces the sermon on the mount with the statement: “”Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” It’s easy to miss the full meaning of “poor” in this context. The Greek word used here is ptochos – which Strong’s defines as “ reduced to beggary; asking for alms, destitute of wealth, influence, position , honour.” The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who know, deep in their spirits, that they have absolutely nothing of their own that could deserve it. As evangelicals we know that of course – or at least, we certainly should – which is why we have to come to the Cross for forgiveness and be born again. But what struck me is the connection between this opening statement of the Lord’s ministry and these verses in the middle and towards the end of the sermon:

 “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” (Matt 6:33)

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” (Matt 7: 7-11)

Maybe it’s my own carnality at work here, but when I’ve thought about the “good things” that my Heavenly Father has in store for me I have tended to think more in terms of earthly “things” than heavenly ones. I think that this is mainly because it comes after verse 33 of the previous chapter, quoted above, where Jesus makes it very clear that we should trust our heavenly Father for our material needs, and keep our focus on the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. But in the context of this verse, what we surely “ask, seek and knock” for is the Kingdom and the righteousness of God, not our material provision. In fact Jesus tells us specifically not to worry about the other stuff that the Gentiles – the people who don’t know God – seek. He doesn’t say don’t ask for it at all, because He teaches us practically in the same breath to ask for our daily bread, but what He wants us to do is to trust our Father, Jehovah Jireh, as the faithful source of our provision and not to worry about it and “seek” it because we don’t know where it is coming from. We do know.

Manna from Heaven
The tense of “Ask, seek and knock” is the present continuous: “ask and keep on asking…”  If God gives us good things from the storehouses of Heaven when we ask for them, Jesus is telling us not only to seek, and keep seeking, the Kingdom of God; but also that He will give us what we ask for: “Ask, and it will be given to you, seek and you will find…” as indeed Luke adds in his rendering of this passage: “Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” (Luke 12:32)

This is where we return to our opening verse: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Those who receive the blessing are the spiritual beggars, continually crying out to God for His Kingdom and His righteousness, but also knowing that it is His good pleasure to keep answering their prayers. God wants relationship: He want us to keep coming and receiving from His hand, not helping ourselves, like hopper-fed chickens, to the provision that he has downloaded and left for us. Manna from Heaven only lasts one day.

Therefore…
Bible Teacher Andrew Wommack famously says, “Whenever you see a therefore, you must ask what it is there for.”

Verses 11-14 of Matthew 7 go like this:

“If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him! Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

So what is this therefore there for? Jesus seems to jump completely from one topic to another. But if we work backwards through this statement  I think we can see where He is going. To obey the Law – to do God’s will – we have to enter the narrow gate, and not travel the broad way. We can only enter by the narrow gate if we are poor in spirit and ask Father to give us what we need to live a Kingdom life. Only when we ask for His Kingdom provision can we truly achieve the love for others that the Royal Law demands. It is difficult; we have to keep asking for the Kingdom of God to be a reality in our lives (“Your Kingdom come..) to stay on this path. Like the hero of Pilgrim’s Progress, it is easy to wander off track. A comparison with Luke’s rendering is again useful here: instead of saying our Father will give “good things” when we ask, Luke says: “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!” (Luke 11:13)

Good Things
The “good things” we need from the hand of God to love others as we love ourselves only come by the Holy Spirit, and we have to keep asking for them. Another well-know present continuous tense in the New Testament is Eph 5:18: “Be filled (keep being filled” with the Holy Spirit.”  To keep being filled with the Holy Spirit isn’t just so that we can walk in supernatural gifting: we need to keep being filled because if we don’t we are spiritually destitute and lacking in the righteousness of the Kingdom of God. “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.”

As Jesus comes to the end of His message He makes it clear that it is not the gifting that we receive by the Spirit but our love –the love of God –  “that has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us” (Romans 5:5) – that qualifies us for Kingdom entry. When He tells us that it is “by their fruits” that we can tell the difference between true sheep and “ravenous wolves”, He says: “Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name? And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!” (Matt 7:23)

Building on the rock
Those who ‘do many wonders’ but whom Jesus says He never knew are the ones who don’t obey “ the Law and the prophets,” which is to love others by our actions, doing to them as we would have done to ourselves.  This is how we enter by the narrow gate. It is not our gifting that brings us into the kingdom of heaven, but our obedience to the Royal law, which produces our fruitfulness. (Matt 7:17) The great themes of this introduction to the Kingdom of God cascade right through the New Testament – abiding in the vine (John 15), bearing the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5), the deception of spiritual pride (The Church in Sardis, Rev 3) and much, much more.

The Sermon on the Mount ends with the picture of the house built on the rock. We build on the rock when we are obedient to God’s word, seeking Him continually for the “good things” of the Kingdom that are the foundations our house, being filled with the Holy Spirit to satisfy our hunger and thirst for righteousness. “Let your waist be girded and your lamps burning; and you yourselves be like men who wait for their master, when he will return from the wedding, that when he comes and knocks they may open to him immediately,” He says. (Luke 12: 35-36) By living in obedience to His Kingdom message today, we prepare ourselves for when He comes back tomorrow.  It is possible to build a house with gifting alone, but it will be built on sand; and when trials and temptations come it will fall. We don’t have to look far across the landscape of the church to see the houses of gifted leaders in ruins on the sandy ground of their unsubmitted lives.

More houses will fall as God continues to shake heaven and earth and purifies His bride to prepare her for His return. How do we make sure we are building on the rock? Recognise that without Him we are destitute of the good things of the Kingdom that will enable us to love others as we are commanded, and have the faith to keep asking God to fill  us with those things by His Spirit, trusting Him for our daily provision, which we keep second in line to our great spiritual need.

Christian Life, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare, Walking in the Spirit

Through a glass darkly

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“And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them, as upon us at the beginning. Then I remembered the word of the Lord, how He said, ‘John indeed baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If therefore God gave them the same gift as He gave us when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could withstand God? When they heard these things they became silent; and they glorified God, saying, “Then God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance to life.” (Act 11: 15-18)

In this passage, Peter is describing to the church at Jerusalem the events of Cornelius’s house that Luke had narrated in the previous chapter, when the gospel was preached to the Gentiles and they received the Spirit and spoke in tongues (Acts 10 : 44-46). This morning, I happened (happened?) to have been reading a little bit about a very well-known author and preacher who calls himself a “moderate cessationist;” wondering, as I often do, how somebody who talks and writes about prayer (and other aspects of Christian living) can leave out what to me is fundamental to my communication with God. Because I often “don’t know how to pay as I ought,” I am really grateful that ‘the Holy Spirit is helping me in my weakness,’ (Romans 8:26) so in my own opinion leaving Tongues out of one’s prayer life is like not putting the yeast in the bread machine when you are baking a loaf. Something comes out alright, and it is no doubt just as nutritious; but it’s heavy and flat, and just not something you want to go to for sustenance.

The cessationist position in the article I read taught that the whole counsel of Scripture provides a more solid and secure foundation for our Christian life that subjective experiences of the supernatural, be it “prophesies” that are products of the imagination, “healings” that are psychosomatic in origin and not at all miraculous, or “tongues” that are the product of the language centres of the human brain and not utterances of the Holy Spirit, so aware of that I found myself reading the passage that I am studying at the moment with this issue very much in my mind.

This episode in the Book of Acts is of course a frequently used justification for the Pentecostal/charismatic position on speaking in tongues: they got saved, the Holy Spirit fell as at Pentecost, and they spoke in tongues; therefore it follows that the gift of Tongues is there for everyone who gets saved. I fully believe this myself, but what struck me when I read the passage this morning was Peter’s comment that he “remembered the word of the Lord, how He said, ‘John indeed baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit,” and that he related this experience of the Holy Spirit among the Gentiles to “the word of the Lord” spoken by Jesus. Pentecostals and Charismatics make this connection frequently enough, and I remember Reinhart Bonneke preaching on this text many years ago; but this was the apostle Peter. Jesus Himself was the Word, the Logos; and the “word of the Lord” referred to by Peter was the “rhema” word, the “now” word spoken by Him into a specific context. So the baptism of the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands with the evidence of speaking in tongues is as grounded in the scriptural foundations of our faith as it is possible to be: referenced by the apostle  Peter to a rhema word spoken by the Logos Himself.

It is essential that our experience always lines up with the Word of God, and that we always worship in Spirit and in Truth; and because of this our assemblies must be churches of the Word and of the Spirit – whether or not Smith Wigglesworth’s famous prophesy of the great revival based on the Word and the Spirit ever comes to pass. But even if some of our “spiritual” experiences are not supernatural at all, I would embrace them every time for the sake of not missing the ones that are, as long as it is always our trust in the truth of the Word of God, and not our (or other peoples’) personal experience, that is the basis of our faith.

To close, prayer is not often something I find difficult. I often come across articles or book extracts that suggest all sorts of props to one’s prayer life, whether they are Bible study programmes, or pathways through the Psalms, or daily notes whatever else, and I think to myself, “Why?” Isn’t it enough to have the Holy Spirit helping me to pray?” Maybe some of these people are “moderate cessationists” as well, avoiding the gifts of the Spirit for the sake of keeping their faith in the Word unsullied by untrustworthy experiences. Maybe they find prayer difficult at times because they have left the yeast out of the bread mix and find the loaf heavy and indigestible as a result. I don’t know, and it’s not for me to judge. Maybe my own prayer life is full of yeast bubbles and has little substance…

But I know this: when I was a baby Christian in a charismatic church in the 1980s I used to doubt that people who didn’t pray in tongues were even saved, never mind just missing out on one of the God’s many blessings for His children, and by the grace of God I am wiser and less arrogant than that now; but I still think It is better see through a glass darkly than never to look in the mirror at all.

NOTE: Material on the power of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer is (loosely) grouped under “Spirit without Limit.” A useful starting point is “The Name of the Father,” which looks at the baptism in the Holy Spirit in the context of the beginnings of the Ephesian church.

Christian Life, Discipleship and witness, Holiness: You shall be perfect, Knowing God

The Mind of Christ: Approving What is Excellent.

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“But we have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2:16)

“Therefore if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus…” (Phil 2: 1-5)

It’s easy to allow these verses to be eclipsed by the famous passage that comes next, in which Paul lifts Christ as our pattern of “lowliness of mind,” of doing nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, of looking out for the interests of others. Love and Unity, writes Paul, will result If we have “this mind” in us; that to be like-minded is to have the mind of Christ, the mindset that took Jesus to the cross and brought Him glory. When we read this, our own witness to His light in our lives can seem like a flickering candle against the blazing sun of Calvary. But is this what Paul means?

The Starting Point
Let’s look at verses 1-2 again:

“Therefore if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, fulfil my joy by being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind.”

Paul wrote in Greek, not English. These are the words he used:

 “consolation“ is paraklēsis. It has the same root as the word paraklētos, which is the name that Jesus gives to the Holy Spirit in John 15:26 and is variously translated as the Helper, the Comforter, the Advocate, depending on which emphasis the translators of the different versions have given to the word. Basically “consolation” is everything that the Paraclete brings.

“Comfort” is paramythion. Whether this is translated as “comfort” or as “consolation” (not to be confused with the paraklēsis brought to us by the Holy Spirit), this has one meaning in Greek: it means “persuasive address.” This is about the impact on our lives by God’s love. Are we touched by it, or not?

“Fellowship”, as we may know, is koinonia. It means intimacy, communion, close fellowship, joint participation. It marked the lives of the early church communities, and we seek for it to be the same for our churches today.

Affection (splagchnon ) and mercy (oiktirmos)  are related: affection means “bowels” and is translated as such in the King James version. The “bowels“ were considered the seat of the tenderer emotions such as mercy, kindness and compassion that also characterise much of the fruit of the Spirit, and is the same word that Jesus uses for the place within us from which the living waters of the Spirit flow. Oiktirmos describes the emotions that flow from the splagchnon.

Basically verse one is saying “If there is actually is  any expression of the Holy Spirit in Christ… if love has any impact on you at all, if there is any mercy in your heart , then the very least you can do is be one mind, care about each other, set aside your own ambitions and pride, and have the same mindset as Jesus when He went to the Cross.” When we look at what Paul has actually said rather than what our translations have made of it, one thing is clear: true unity, the unity of the Spirit, is the starting point of our Christian walk, not the destination. Wow.

The way forward
Fortunately Paul gives the Philippians, and ourselves, a way forward as his letter unfolds, that enable us to ”press on toward the goal of the upward call of God in Christ.” (Phil 3:14) It is not a series of ministry sessions or intense or prolonged Bible study; and it is not an expectation to spend an hour and a half from 5:30 every morning seeking the presence of God before going to work- although all of these may well have their place at times.  They start in Phil 1: 9-11:

“And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment, that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.“

The “things that are excellent” that our love will abound in when we let the mind of Christ fill our thinking are defined towards the end of the letter, in chapter 4:

Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things. The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you. (Phil 4:8-9)

Pressing out
In Pentecostal/charismatic circles we often talk about “pressing in” to the presence of God, and seeking His peace. The challenge to us in these verses is different, though. 1 John 1:5 tells us this: “This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all,”  and Jesus tells his disciples: “the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me.” (John 14:30) There is nothing in the mind of Christ that is not excellent. The challenge to us is also a promise: if we fill our minds with the sort of things that Christ has in His, and if we live our lives out of them as he (Paul) did, God’s presence, and His peace, will manifestly be with us.

This is how we “approve what is excellent.”  This is the filter for our lives. This is the place where we take our thoughts captive; where, along with pressing into God, we press out what isn’t of Him. It is how we “renew our minds,” and is central to seeing the fruit of the Spirit (“The fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ”) abound in our lives. When Paul wrote this letter to the Philippians, he is returning to a theme he had already expressed to the Romans three or four years earlier, when he wrote: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:2)

If we want to know the transformation that will result in us shining as lights to the world in this crooked and perverse generation, we start by filling our thinking with the light of Christ.

Discipleship and witness, Knowing God, Walking in the Spirit

Children of Light: the attributes of jasper.

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“For once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as Children of light.” (Ephesians 5:8)

The New Self
Ephesians 4: 17-24 give us some clear principles of how to walk in the spirit as new creations:

“This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.”

Paul sums this up in a single verse in the next chapter of this letter:

“For once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as Children of light.“ (Ephesians 5:8)

Human thinking and the philosophy of the world tells us that what is natural grows and develops; it may become more complex and it may grow bigger, but in essence it remains the same: the genes of the baby are the genes of the adult. We might seek to improve the self, but we still keep the core.

The Bible gives us a different model: we “put off” the old self because everything that it grows in is based on desire and deception – “deceitful lusts” –  and we “put on” a new self entirely. The first principle of the Christian life is that this old self dies at the cross and is replaced by a God-given new spiritual self that is born from heaven, “created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.” While our human brains cannot adequately conceptualize the spiritual realm that we belong to, God has given us some revelation of heavenly realities through the Apostle John, including a glimpse of the details of something in particular that that comes down from heaven: the construction of the new Jerusalem.

“The construction of its wall was of jasper; and the city was pure gold, like clear glass. The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with all kinds of precious stones: the first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third chalcedony, the fourth emerald, the fifth sardonyx, the sixth sardius, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst.” (Revelation 21: 18-20)

These are not just building bricks, they are stones of a different order, whose purpose is not just construction, but the reflection of light. And we are told unambiguously what is the nature of the light that shines there:

“The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light. And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honour into it.” (Rev 21:23-24)

Since we ourselves are “light in the Lord“, and our call is to “walk as Children of light,“ born from above and walking in the spirit that comes from above, and since “the nations of those who are saved” will also be walking in this light, then it makes sense to consider in a little depth the nature of the heavenly light that shines in the dimension of the spirit and which God has chosen us to reflect into the world.

Pure Light
It strikes me every time I read that description of the stones of the new Jerusalem that there are some notable gems missing: specifically diamonds and rubies – those that are probably the most highly prized on earth. In an attempt to understand more of the nature of those 12 foundation stones in the walls of the new Jerusalem, scientists took very thin slices of each of them, along with other precious stones not listed there, including diamonds and rubies, and shone pure light through them. To achieve “pure”  light they polarised it twice, the second time at a 90° angle to the first. The result was astonishing. When this pure light was shown through the 12 “heavenly” stones it refracted into brilliant colours all around, irrespective of the angle that it shone through. In scientific language, the heavenly stones have isotropic properties. Diamonds and rubies however are anisotropic: when the pure light was shone through them there was no refraction at all. It was black – which is why they have to be specially cut so that a prism is created.

Paramount among the heavenly stones is Jasper. It was the first foundation Stone of the wall of the city, the wall itself was constructed of Jasper, and in Revelation 4:3 we read that the One who sat on the throne – God Himself – was “like a jasper and a sardius stone and appearance.“ In the world, “diamonds are a girl’s best friend.” But Jaspers?? When I was a boy, Jaspers were what were used to call wasps (don’t ask me why. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise…)   The Lamb was the light that filled the new Jerusalem with glory and indescribable colour refracting from the wall made of a material that compared in beauty with the appearance of God Himself, and from the twelve isotropic gemstone settings of its foundations. The heavenly light that surrounds us where we are seated in spiritual realms turns the Kohinoor Diamond into a lump of coal.

Jesus said, “If … the light that is in you is darkness, then how great is that darkness!” (Matt 6:23)

The world’s values of success and prominence tempt us, whether in the church or out of it, to walk in the light of diamonds, but  to walk as children of heavenly light we must be renewed in the spirit of our minds. Not the diamonds of success but the Jaspers of heaven, revealing the light of God whose children we are.

The Light of the World
Jesus makes it clear that not only is He the light of the world, but so are we. (Matt 5:14) If our minds are filled with heavenly light, it will be revealed in our words and our deeds. David knew this when he prayed “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight,” and in Philippians 4: 8 – 9 we read:

“Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things. The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you.”

When we make it our focus to “meditate on these things,“ we are setting the foundations of our wall with God’s chosen gemstones. Furthermore, we are assured that if we do this, “The God of Peace will be with us.” If we are hungry for the presence of God, it seems that we begin with the renewal of our minds.  Paul writes to the Corinthians “Imitate me, as I imitate Christ,“ (1 Cor 11:1)  and in the above verses he tells us explicitly how to go about it. “The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do.” The more heavenly stones that we set into the walls of our thinking, the more easily their light can reveal the ones that don’t belong. Not diamonds, but jaspers.

My own “finally brethren,” is this: being renewed in the spirit of our minds is not just about being right with God in our thinking, although of course this will be the case. But the takeaway has to be the sheer rainbow beauty and brilliance of the heavenly light that Jesus has given us to walk in. This is His glory, and is no less than He deserves. I think it is when we truly put on our new self and walk in the light of who we are in Christ that Isaiah 60:3  can start to become a reality in our lives:

“Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising.”

The material about the 12 foundations stones is from an In Depth Interview by David Aldous of GOD-TV (with David Pawson 2000) on The New Heaven and The New Earth. To watch the extract, click here: https://youtu.be/HFMrQUjp-Aw

Christian Life, Discipleship and witness, Knowing God

Heavenly Glory

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“Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.” (John 12:24)

When Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, the crown gathered in the belief that their King was arriving. As the Pharisees themselves put it: “the world has gone after him.“ The story gives us a stark contrast between how the world sees kingship, and the kingship of heaven; earthly glory against heavenly glory. When Philip told Jesus that some Greeks wanted to speak to Him, Jesus explains what  heavenly glory means:

“But Jesus answered them, saying, “The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified. Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” (John 12:23-25)

True glory is the multiplication of life. Jesus was glorified when He gave His life on the cross so that it could shine across the world. He calls us to do the same: to lay down our lives so that His light can be released for others.

Jesus says: “If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honour.” (John 12:26)

To serve Jesus we have to be where He is and not follow our own inclinations. This always seems like a tough call, but the blessing is that when we die to ourselves we step into resurrection life. It is only when we do this that His life in us can be released for others. The relevance of our status to the Kingdom of God is zero. A friend pointed out to me the other day (which other day depends on when you read this, of course) that Paul endured a beating and imprisonment before revealing that he was a Roman citizen – which would of course have spared him the suffering. But it was when he was in the prison that God was glorified.

We have all seen pictures and videos of crowds gathering at an evangelistic rally, and there is always a temptation for us to wave our palm fronds before the evangelist. And there is also a temptation for the evangelist to count the palm fronds as a measure of his success, and to glory in the brightness of the fire that the people flock to. But while the fire may be spectacular, the glory is not in the flames but in the life that they bring.

Talking of John the Baptist, Jesus said: “He was a burning and shining lamp, and for a while you were content to rejoice in his light.” (John 5:35) The fact that the Jews “were content to rejoice ” in the light of John the Baptist didn’t make them followers of Jesus, and today people can warm themselves in the flames of a powerful ministry without letting it impact their lives, particularly when it shines across the internet; and it is tempting to desire that others will warm themselves in our flames as well. But we are neither performers nor applauding spectators: we are unprofitable servants (Luke 17: 7-10), and our job is to be close to Jesus and serve Him in all that He is doing so that only He gets the glory. We neither seek nor give applause. But if we lay down our own lives to serve and follow Jesus, the Father himself will honour us. When you walk in resurrection life, you don’t need palm fronds.

Knowing God, Living by Faith, Walking in the Spirit

The Multitudes Are Coming

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“After these things Jesus went over the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. Then a great multitude followed Him, because they saw His signs which He performed on those who were diseased. And Jesus went up on the mountain, and there He sat with His disciples.” (John 6: 1-3)

When Jesus saw the multitude coming, what did He do? He went up the mountain and sat there with His disciples. If there is one theme that has common to what the Holy Spirit is saying to the churches through His prophets today, it is that the multitudes are coming. There will be a revival such as the world has never seen before. Smith Wigglesworth prophesied it in 1947; Rick Joyner had seen it when he published The Harvest in 1997; Jarrod Cooper saw it in 1996 and wrote about it in Days of Wonder. Many less well-known prophets all around the world have had visions and words about this coming revival.

The multitudes are coming. Are we ready? As Smith Wigglesworth wrote (his prophesy is published in many places online), the prophesied glory will be nothing like the world has known. The glory of God has flickered briefly throughout the ages, but the new wine has always burst the old wineskin. In the past there was still hope in the world systems. There have always been signs of decay, but the grass was green, the water flowed, economies grew, and families looked forward: the future held promise. But today is different. The environment that seemed strong enough to bear the weight of its increasing population is now as fragile as wet paper, the debt-ridden international economy has about the strength of a cobweb, the most powerful nation in the world is governed by a senile old man, and moral confusion is so rife not even the basic polarities of gender are no longer a certainty in a child’s world. The multitude are coming, because promise has gone from the world.

Where do we go? Do we shore up our Church systems to prepare ourselves (or maybe, in some cases, to hide…)? Do we run to meet them in missionary fervour? Do we build great platforms from which we can address the crowds? No. We go up the mountain and we sit down with Jesus. We wait in His presence, and while we are waiting, we renew our strength and learn what it is to rise up on Eagles wings, because when the multitudes arrive He will give us our instructions, and one thing that we can be certain of is this: whatever He tells us to do it will not be what we expect, and it will be nothing that can be bought from the world, any more than the disciples could have bought enough bread from the local villages. Nobody will minister to the crowds from a platform built by human hands.

Jesus is bringing a revelation of His glory to the Church. He is God, through whom the worlds were made; whereas “all the glory of man is as the flowers of the grass,” (Ps 103:15) and even the nations are “like a drop in a bucket, and are reckoned as dust on the scales.” (Isaiah 40:15) God will provide for the multitudes out of His glory, in the presence of which our greatest achievements are less than dust. All we can bring to Jesus is our faith and our thankful love, and our desire for His presence above all things.  He told the disciples to make the people sit down, even though they had still had nothing in their hands to give them, and they obeyed in faith.  Then He gave thanks for the loaves and fishes, and handed them to His disciples to feed the crowd.

Up on the mountain, Jesus is fashioning a new wineskin that will not burst. The multitude will be fed by the insignificant in the hands of the glorious, distributed by the obedient.

Holiness: You shall be perfect, Living by Faith, Prophesy and the prophetic, The word of God

“Go your way, your son lives.”

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“So Jesus came again to Cana of Galilee where He had made the water wine. And there was a certain nobleman whose son was sick at Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had come out of Judea into Galilee, he went to Him and implored Him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. Then Jesus said to him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will by no means believe.” The nobleman said to Him, “Sir, come down before my child dies!” Jesus said to him, “Go your way; your son lives.” So the man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him, and he went his way.” (John 4: 46-50)

The man “believed the word that Jesus spoke,” and at that moment life entered his dying son. The Greek used here for “word” is logos, carrying a meaning of decree and declaration. Jesus, Lord of Lords, decreed that the boy would live, and it was so. Just as God spoke and there was light, He spoke now and there was the light of life. Locked as we are into the dimensions of time and space, it can be difficult for our human brains to fathom that a word spoken many hours’ journey from the situation it affects can have immediate, life-changing impact. We read the story and to a degree we probably gloss over the dynamics of it. But I think it’s important to understand (as much as we are capable of understanding) that words of power and authority decreed into the spirit realm can have immediate material effect anywhere in the world, just as they did here. Jesus saw what the Father was doing, and decreed it into existence. The word of authority – the King’s decree – that He spoke, and that the man believed, was a “logos”  declaration of God’s will, and effected an immediate change in the spiritual realm that transformed the situation on Earth. God’s will was done in Heaven, and so the boy lived.

Our responsibility
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1)  God is in and through all things, therefore so is the Word. The Word, Jesus, is at once personal (with God) and universal (He is God). In union with the Spirit He is both an infinite dimension and a living entity within that dimension, carrying spirit and life. He spoke the words “Go your way, your son lives,“ and that word of life was released in the spirit and transformed the dying child. It was not the boy’s father who carried it, but the Spirit; so the man had nothing to do except believe and go his way. When the life and the authority of God’s words are released in the spirit to transform a situation, it is not our responsibility to make it happen, other than to believe that it has already been done. From the moment that Jesus spoke, the son lived, because Jesus knew He was speaking into faith. The word and faith are like the two poles of an electric current: if one is missing the circuit is no longer live. But when they are both there, and you turn on a switch in one place, something happens somewhere else because they are connected by the electric current that runs between them. So it is when the word of God is declared in the Spirit and faith is present. As I have written elsewhere, our job is to find the switch.

The light of Life
Psalm 119 :130 says “The entrance of your word gives light.” Jesus tells us: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12) The true light has authority over darkness, as we know from John 1:5 “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it..” The very first “logos” decree recorded in the Bible was the beginning of Creation: “Let there be Light.” The creative words of the Son of God have authority over darkness and death.

Immediately after Jesus demonstrates this release of logos power, He smashes the religious framework of the Pharisees, and speaks His life into the paralysed man at the pool of Bethsaida. John follows this double whammy with Jesus’s first confrontation with the Pharisees, where He makes the following declarations (among others) about himself:

  1. The Son has life in himself, and “gives life to whom He will,” and
  2. His life is carried by His voice: “Most assuredly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the son of God, and those who hear will live. As the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son have life in Himself, and has given Him authority to execute judgement also, because He is the Son of man.  (John 5: 25 – 27.

Living and Active
The word of God is living and active. His voice carries His life. Faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the word of God. When we hear the words of Jesus, we hear His voice, and we receive His life; and when we speak the words of Jesus, we speak with His authority and release His life in the dimension of the Spirit, speaking life Into dead situations. A logos degree is transformative. It has the power over life and death. But it also carries with it His judgement: it is a weighty matter. Jesus Himself said: “I can of myself do nothing. As I hear I judge; and my judgement is righteous, because I do not seek my own will, but the word of the Father who sent Me.” (John 5:30) My point here is that I think we have to be careful not to prophetically “decree and declare” too lightly. I don’t think that we can decree matters which we judge to be righteous (I have seen this done in political contexts, for example) and in line with what we understand to be the will of God,  unless we have specifically heard the Holy Spirit speak those declarations. If we have not heard the logos in the spirit, we are surely not decreeing the Father’s will, but our own. We are not in righteousness but religion, and our words, however fine sounding, are barren and empty, and possibly worse.

Our God is a Consuming Fire
Jesus is rewiring His Church. It is a holy and powerful operation. Our God is the same yesterday, today and forever: when Aaron’s sons Nabab and Abiihu “offered strange fire before the Lord” (Lev 10:1) they were destroyed. Although we are under grace today, and we have the covering of the blood of Jesus cleansing us from all our sin, we do well to remember the lesson of their tragedy and approach His wiring in awe and the fear of the Lord. But when we do, and the Holy Spirit gives us a logos to decree in faith, we can speak the life and light of God into the darkest places:

“The Gentiles shall come to your light,
And kings to the brightness of your rising.” (Isaiah 60:3)

In His grace, our God of “consuming fire” (Deut. 4:24; Heb 12:29) invites us into His  awesome presence through the cross of His Son. So let’s believe He will sometimes hand us His decrees as we stand before Him, and let us handle them with reverence.

Prayer and Spiritual Warfare, Walking in the Spirit

The Peach

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“ We do not know what we should pray for as we ought…” (Rom 8:26)

Sometimes our prayers can be like a peach: we look at a situation – whether we are praying for ourselves or for someone else – and we pray. We see the peach, we take a bite, and we wait for the Lord’s answer. Nothing changes. We pray again, taking another bite. Third bite: ask and keep on asking; knock and keep on knocking. But the door still doesn’t open to us. We keep praying, trusting God’s faithfulness, until we have devoured all the peach. God still hasn’t answered, and we are left holding a damp red peach stone. So we stop praying, believing that our prayers weren’t in God’s will, and we throw away the peach stone.

But what we’ve done is throw away the answer to our prayers. We have prayed for what we have seen – the flesh of the peach- but that doesn’t mean we have prayed for what God sees. In fact Isaiah tells us:

“He shall not judge by the sight of His eyes,
Nor decide by the hearing of His ears”. (Isaiah 11: 3)

The starting place for God’s creative acts is not in what is seen, but what is unseen:

“By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.” (Heb 11:3)

The life that the peach carries is not in the flesh, and not even in the stone: it is in the kernel that is hidden inside the stone. Paul writes:

“I shall pray with my spirit, and I shall pray also with my understanding.” (1 Cor 14:15)

The New Living Translation renders this as “I will pray in the spirit, and I will also pray in words I understand,” which I  think is how it is generally understood. The Greek word used for understanding is “nous” – the word for human intellect and reason. In fact we use it in English colloquially, in phrases like – “anyone with a bit of nous can see that…”  But I think we can see it another way as well. I think it could also mean that we look at a situation and pray about it with our “nous,” but we also pray in the Spirit about the same situation. The two are connected.  In other words, we understand that, for example, the marriage of a certain couple in leadership is in trouble, so we start to pray about it according to what we know and can see, which is praying about it with our understanding; but when we start to pray in the Spirit we receive revelation about how God wants us to pray, our understanding is then enlightened, and we are then praying according to the will of God:

“The Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.” (Rom 8: 26-27)

Let’s remember that when we have prayed through all that we can see, including all the scriptures that we understand to be relevant to the need, we may have devoured the flesh with our understanding, but that is just the beginning of the prayer: it is only by the Holy Spirit that we see the kernel hidden inside the stone, where God’s answer is waiting to bring forth Life.

Be prepared; hold on., Prophesy and the prophetic

The waters are rising

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Every year there is a wildlife spectacle on the Dee estuary (in NW England), when the high Spring tide floods the saltmarsh and sometimes comes right up to the sea wall. Hundreds of small animals are driven inshore; the roosting and feeding birds fly up and wheel around – and the gulls and birds of prey gather for the feast, Birdwatchers came from all around to watch the spectacle. I was there on the day of the highest tide of the year – over ten metres – standing on the rocks of all that remains of an old ruined quay, and as the waters ran in across the marsh and past where I was standing I sensed the Lord speaking through it:

“The waters are rising. The waters are rising and covering the low ground. Those who dwell in the marshes will rise up and panic, running from the racing tide or wheeling around and crying: “Where is my resting place? Where is my supply?” But I say I’m flooding the marshes. Even now you are seeing My waters rise, and have seen the floods begin, but I say that a time will come and is coming shortly when the flood will speed up. There will be times of suddenly, when the waters break through in different places one after the other, and men will run between them with their sandbags to try to plug the breeches, but the waters will continue to rise and the streams run together until they change the landscape completely. This will happen quickly. Nothing will stand before My Waters. So I say to you now, come onto higher ground, find your resting place on My rock. Come now, while you can. I will feed you and keep you safe, I will give you all that you need as you watch in amazement what I the Lord am doing. And when the floods recede you’ll see a different landscape, and you will walk with Me in the places where I will take you.”

Hebrews 6: 16-18 says that we “have fled for refuge to lay hold of the Hope set before us. This Hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stead fast, and which enters the presence behind the veil.”

The only safe place where we can flee for refuge is in the Presence of God. While the world flees from the waters, we must flee to the One who holds them in His hand. He will “show us the path of life, and in His presence is fullness of Joy.” Psalm 16:11. The call to “come up higher” has been echoing round the Church increasingly in the last few years, whether this has been in prophetic words given at large and small assemblies, released in prophetic forums or written in books. It tends to be an exhortation that some run to, thirsty for more of the Holy Spirit, and which others leave for those that do the running. The “higher ground” is seen as that place of more intense spiritual experience; of deeper love and more profound worship in the presence of God, where we may well walk in greater spiritual authority and more effective ministry but which is not so relevant to our day to day lives. And indeed Jesus does want us there because He loves us and wants to surround us with His love. But this is only part of the story: He is calling us to higher ground because it is the place of safety, the place where we will receive His directions and practical provision, as well as the anointing for ministry to those who are struggling in the flood and are reaching out to be pulled onto the rock themselves. It is an urgent call as well as an exhortation, and those who ignore it risk being among those caught in the flood. Jer 12:5 (which I’ve referred to elsewhere on these pages) becomes increasingly relevant with each passing day:

“If in the land of peace, in which you trusted, they wearied you, then how will you do in the floodplain of the Jordan?”

So what’s stopping you? The waters ae rising. Come up higher!

Be prepared; hold on., Living by Faith, Prophesy and the prophetic

A Trumpet Call to Build the Ark and get on Board

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In these end-time days of financial shaking, God is building an Ark of resources to provide for His people. The poem below was given by Holy Spirit to Andrew Baker at a prophetic gathering four or five years ago, and he has just sent it out to his contacts again as it is a word for these days. Andrew is a prophet who ministers in the financial realm whom a small number of readers here will know, but who doesn’t have, or seek, a public profile. I was at the meeting when he brought this word: it was entirely impromptu and unprepared. If, like me, you believe it to be a trumpet call from Heaven to all of us, ask the Lord what He wants you to do with it.

The Call to Build the Ark and Get on Board

 In these end-time days of financial shaking, God is building an Ark of resources to provide for His people. The poem below was given by Holy Spirit to Andrew Baker at a prophetic gathering some years ago, and he has just sent it out to his contacts again as it is a word for these days.

This is the day of new things and new things it shall be
Whoever grasps these new things shall walk in victory
Put down your human thinking and listen well to Me
For these are things that are written in Bible prophecy

There is coming a confrontation, so you ought to be ready
A shaking of the nations from their financial stability
A rising of the evil one to take My things for his own
He’s calling in his harvest that evil men have sown

Finance and business he’ll take over while men just stand and stare
And soon he will just take control, and no one will seem to care
The same spirit which rules Babylon, Antichrist it will be
Is now standing in the arena very comfortably

Men of God just stand in fear as they see the scene is so
Fearful of losing what they have but what to do they just don’t know
A trumpet call from heaven says, “Line up, get in your place!”
For I have something to say to you if you will seek My face

Instead of fear there must come a change and faith must begin to rise
For I am God, and all false power can look to their demise
Who would dare to stand against Me, do you think to Me it never mattered?
For now, it’s time for Me to rise and let My enemies be scattered.

So now man’s kingdom I will shake and fall it surely will
First to the Antichrist himself and then comes the Great Until
You have waited for this day and soon you will see it with your eyes
When the saints will say in one accord “God has now answered our cries”

So, while the financial systems fall to the plans of the evil one
My people shall be provided for because I’m the All Sufficient One
The ark shall be built with those who look with faith for My secure plan
Seeing and obeying My purposes and not fearing devil or man

It shall be built from heaven, and it shall be a safe place
While the spirit that’s from Babylon rises to show his face
Then men will run to the ark and their finances will combine
And they will catch My holy plan for harvest at the end time

So, soon I’ll call you to your part and understanding I will give
Get on board the ark I’m making, and you will surely live
I’m God and no demon’s plan will take Me by surprise
So, listen to My instructions, that is, if you are wise

While many men are shaking, their lives just full of fear
Join with what I’m doing; Come on over here!
This financial plan that I’ve arranged will take back what is Mine
The only way this can be done is by a plan that is divine

The Ark I’ll build and just the same as in the days of old
Some will help Noah and get it done and others will mock and scold
Remember when the waters came it was too late to decide
So it is now, yes now’s the time to line up by My side

Finally, I tell you that your instructions will come soon
A trumpet call from heaven, playing a divine tune
You’ll know it’s Me, simply respond, “Yes, your call we will hear”
And I’ll show you your part in the ark with words loud and clear

So now rejoice for it is time for the divine plan to unfold
It will require a people of faith as in the days of old
A land to take, an ark to build, there is much work ahead
As you take your place I will arise, and we will build what I have said