Category Archives: Be prepared; hold on.

As we approach the last days, sound doctrine will be diluted in many churches to appease the spirits of liberalism as large in the world, and persecution of those believers who hold on to the fullness of the gospel message will intensify. We need to “build ourselves up in our most holy faith” so that we can be prepared for whatever the enemy might throw at us, and be ready at the last, a spotless bride, to receive our Lord into the Kingdom of our God and His Christ.

Be prepared; hold on., Discipleship and witness, Pursuing Love

The Parable of the Dragnet

1 Comment

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet that was cast into the sea and gathered some of every kind, which, when it was full, they drew to shore; and they sat down and gathered the good into vessels, but threw the bad away. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come forth, separate the wicked from among the just, and cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 13:47-50)

When Jesus compared the Kingdom to a dragnet he was talking to people for whom they were central to their daily life: if they weren’t fishermen themselves, they were dependent on what the  nets brought in for their daily sustenance. In a very real sense, the dragnet was part of the very fabric of their lives. And  since the King said that His Kingdom is like one, we can expect the image to speak into our lives as Kingdom people today.

The strength of a net is in its connections. Peter wrote: “If anyone ministers, let him do it as with the ability which God supplies, that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belong the glory and the dominion forever and ever.” (1 Peter 4:11) We are part of the dragnet when we are reaching out and making connections with others. Since we can only operate fruitfully “with the ability which God supplies,” in His strength and not our own, the connections themselves – the knots in the net – have to be made by the Spirit of God and not by our own selfish desires. Put simply, we either reach out to others to give them something that we have got (Kingdom, Spirit), or to take something that they can give us (self, flesh).

“What I have I give you,” said Peter to the cripple at the Gate Beautiful. (Acts 3:6) What I have may be a Holy Spirit gift of healing or prophesy, it may be my time, my skills or (what Peter and John didn’t have) my money; but if it’s a connection made in love it will glorify God and it will add to the net. If I am just reaching out to take – your knowledge, your resources, your reflected status, your companionship, your approval – I am not making a Kingdom connection; I am actually doing nothing more than the beggar at the Gate who was reaching out his hand for whatever he could get. Spiritually I am as crippled as he was.

The Law Jesus gave us is to love one another, and when we obey His law we build His net. He said to his disciples: “Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ “And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’ (Matt 7:22-23), and He clearly defines what He meant by lawlessness in Matthew 25:41-43, where, put simply, it’s another word for lovelessness:

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.  For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,  I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

So we can even be moving in the power of the Holy Spirit and yet not be making Kingdom connections. God is sovereign and can use the results of what we do for His purposes, whatever our motivation; but if our hearts are not in the right place and we are seeking our glory and not His, looking after our own needs and not those of others, we are not adding to the dragnet. The context of this parable is the principle of fruitfulness: a good tree bears good fruit, He tells us in verse 17. If our “mighty works” are not grounded in Love, they will be a flash in the pan and will not bear fruit that endures. A local revival may be birthed in power, but starved of love the flames die out, and the net finishes no bigger than when it started.

“As the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. (1 Cor 12:12)

There are many squares in the dragnet, many connections. All the squares are the same size, there are no greater or lesser  squares, and they all do the same job, which is to catch fish. A strong thread in many messages coming from the Holy spirit to the church through prophetic ministers today is that God is, and will be, pouring out His anointing on unknown members of the Body of Christ who have no status in their churches, no public platform ministry and no website or You Tube channel, but who are full of the compassion of God and are wholly submitted to His will. As they believe the Word of God and trust the power of the Holy Spirit, these, the unknown brothers and sisters who lay down their lives for love, will be the ones who make the connections and cause the net to spread out across the oceans of the world.

The dragnet is a parable for the end times. The devil clearly tried to use the Covid pandemic to pull apart our connections right across the globe in an attempt to weaken our love, but God “turns a curse into a blessing” (Neh 13:2) and now not only do we seem to value our relationships more than we did pre-Covid; but church networks are growing in an unprecedented way through the use of virtual meetings. The time of the dragnet is approaching. How are our relationships? Will they break when the dragnet is drawn to shore, or are we giving what we have “with the ability which God supplies, that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belong the glory and the dominion forever and ever?”

Be prepared; hold on., Christian Life, Discipleship and witness, Living by Faith, Walking in the Spirit

Extracts from Two Seconds to Midnight

1 Comment

How to be ready for God’s next move

“Two Seconds to Midnight” combines personal testimony, teaching, Bible commentary and prophetic themes in an exploration of Matthew 11:29-30: “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”  The premise of the book is based on a prophetic revelation that there is very little time left before we reach the time marked on God’s calendar for something momentous to  occur, and we need to stay yoked to Jesus in order to be ready for it. Who knows (only the Father!) – it may even be the return of Christ. The following short extracts, starting with the introduction, are intended to give something of the flavour and the diversity of the book.


Introduction: Midnight

“On the eve of my birthday, my watch stopped at three seconds to midnight. The next morning I was writing this interesting fact in my diary, thinking about what it meant. Could it be a sign that there were just a few seconds left on God’s clock before Jesus returns? Or could it have been the Lord saying that there are just a few seconds left before the beginning of the new season we have been hearing so much about?

“I glanced up from my diary to the watch that was on the table before me, and suddenly, as I looked on, the second hand began to move again. It moved exactly three seconds and stopped with the hour, minute, and second hands all in line at midnight. Suffice it to say that the hairs on the back of my neck and on my arms literally stood on end!”

(Andrew Baker, Heavenly Visions: A Portfolio of Prophetic Revelations series 2 book 5, Ark Resources)

As Andrew Baker wrote, what happens at “midnight” was not made clear. What is abundantly clear, however, is that there is not long left until it happens and, whatever it is going to be, it is very, very important on God’s agenda. When a child is out with a parent with a deadline to meet – a train to catch, for example – we can expect to see the same parenting strategy employed again and again: “Hold my hand!” And as the child holds the parent’s hand, she knows that she isn’t going to get lost or left behind. She knows she’s safe; she knows she’s loved. And the parent who loves that child and who has a plan for them both also knows two things: she is safe, and the plan is on track.

We have a deadline, a train to catch. Jesus is calling out to us to focus; to stay close to Him. He doesn’t just ask us in Scripture to hold His hand: He asks us to do something that is more solid and safer still. He says to us “Take My yoke upon you . . .” If we remain yoked to Jesus we will not lose our way: we will be where He wants us to be, when He wants us to be there.

Andrew Baker recorded that experience in 2016; since then I believe the clock has ticked again, and with the advent of COVID the world has changed and midnight has been brought closer. Of course none of us knows how long the next two seconds will last, as “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8); but this book is an exploration of what it means to be yoked to Jesus so we can serve Him best in what little time remains on His heavenly clock before midnight chimes.


Which yoke?

Evening came. I had my file ready for taking notes. I had produced a school play earlier that year, which I had written around a published series of songs that told the story of Noah’s Ark. (My heart, even then, was always drawn to the divine.) One of the characters was God, and the ring binder we had used in the play for His book was the file I was using for my notes. She went into a trance. If I hadn’t so totally bought into what was happening I would have run a mile: her face became Chinese. Muscles that she didn’t possess changed her features and slanted her eyes as the thing that was controlling her moulded her face like putty. And then we saw Akhenaten: he was a hunchback, and she grew a hump before our eyes. He also had a deformity that twisted his mouth: her mouth twisted, her face elongated, and I was sitting in front of the pharaoh that had been dead for nearly 4,000 years. I asked him questions for my book, and wrote down what he said. But what remains with me, and the reason I am telling this tale, is the first thing that was said by “Lao Tzu”. In a thin, reedy voice, it said, “We are very pleased. We see that you have found the golden book!” The cover of the file, God’s book from my play, was sprayed all over with gold paint.

The spirit realm isn’t “up there”, it is all around us. A testimony for all of us who seek to walk with Jesus is the experience of how God can control situations, lining up our personal universes so that we step into situations, or read a relevant Bible passage, in His perfect timing so that we know that our lives are aligned with His will. But what my experience in Glastonbury shows is that it isn’t just the Lord who can move us around to fulfil His plan for our lives. The devils aren’t just randomly prowling around looking for opportunities to do us harm: they too have plans – nasty, evil plans – and will proactively seek to draw us along the path that they have laid out for us. For Anne and me it was to be drawn deeper into the occult. Decisions that we thought we were making of our own free will were actually the result of demonic manipulation designed to bring us into greater bondage. The only real difference between us and the spiritist couple was that they were probably told to go to Glastonbury by their “spirit guides”, whereas we thought we were choosing our path.


Not a Tame Lion…

In Numbers 3 – 4 we read of the specific tasks allotted to the Levites. Unless our Bible study resources take us to the books of the Law, we (or is it just me?) tend to pass over these sections of Scripture in favour of the sweeping narratives of Samuel and Kings, the beauty and the raw emotion of the Psalms, the wonders of the prophets and of course the grace-filled New Testament. But if we want to encounter the holiness of our God we will find Him above the place of atonement in the tabernacle of Moses. We too easily humanise our heavenly Father. Yes, He is Abba. Yes, He welcomes us into His arms. Yes, He sings a song of love over us. But His accessibility by the blood of Jesus and His presence among us does not dilute the awesomeness of His majesty. As C.S. Lewis famously said in the Chronicles of Narnia, He is not a tame lion. While we inhabit our tents of flesh we cannot see Him as He is (1 John 3:2), but this does not diminish who He is among us. Because grace had not been given (one could say that Moses was the exception) the Levites only had a detailed set of regulations to keep them safe from destruction as they carried out their duties. The power that emanates from His being and permeated through all the sacred objects is like the electricity coursing through overhead power cables: touch it and you die. Such was – such is – the power that if any of the Kohathites, whose job was to transport the ark on their shoulders, even looked at a part of the load that was not their designated area, they would be destroyed. When God was allocating the tasks He gave specific instruction to Moses regarding the Kohathites “that they may live and not die when they approach the most holy things” (Numbers 4:19).

The pure perfection of creative love that made and powers the universe is not cuddly daddy. This is the power that raised Jesus from the dead. This is the cable that is coiled inside our spirits. Because we have the insulation of the blood of Jesus we can grasp the power line, but because we can grasp it without being destroyed does not diminish it at all; it just gives us an understanding of the power of the blood of Christ.


The lesson of gentleness

Gentleness brings peace. At the beginning of this section we looked at James 3:17, which tells us that “the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.” Verse 18 goes on to say that “the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace”. If we want to see the kingdom of God established in and through our lives we need to sow “the fruit of righteousness”. Whatever emotional turmoil may be in your heart as a consequence of words spoken or deeds done by someone close to you, it is possible to make a decision to be gentle in response. You lose nothing by doing so: it is only the powers of darkness that lose their hold. As I said with reference to Jesus, this does not diminish your authority but, on the contrary, it creates emotional space for peace to reign, the wisdom from above to descend, and ultimately for a harvest of righteousness to be reaped.

At the time of writing, Anne and I have been married for 39 years, and we have been Christians for most of that time. But if I were able to go back in time and make just one change to my character, I think it would be that I exchange my orge for gentleness. I was cooking something on the hob last night. Anne came into the kitchen and said, “Turn the ring down! You always have it too high, and it just burns! You need to have it on a gentle heat.” I think I have always liked to say things emphatically and to be dominant and, as I delude myself, in control. My flame tends to be high, but instead of transforming what it touches, it too easily burns. We need to trust God to do the work of transformation, and keep our own flame on a gentle heat. When we see red, we need to see a red light. So if you are someone whose relationships are marred by emotional tidal waves, don’t wait until you are over 60 to learn the lesson of gentleness. And wherever we are in our journey, Jesus asks us to learn it from Him. He specified it because it is important, and we need to learn it now (if we haven’t already, of course) because there are only two seconds to midnight.


Daily Bread

George Muller lived with his arms wrapped tightly around God’s pipeline. He was a man yoked to Jesus. God’s abundant provision is there for us, as it was for Muller, but I believe that we are to give in faith ourselves if we are to fully appreciate what it is to ask, and receive in faith.

There are only two seconds left. Jesus warns us (Matthew 24:38-39): “For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.” Before that time comes, He tells us that we would see various signs that many would say are strongly evident now. We are on ice that is getting thinner by the day – not just in the Arctic, but in a financial system based on debt and greed, and flashpoints increasing in the geopolitical sphere. If – or rather when – the ice breaks and society falls through into the dark water’s chaos, we will need increasingly to rely on the Lord for our daily bread. The hole in the wall will be empty. There will need to be Josephs who will feed their brothers, and who will also demonstrate the goodness of Jehovah Jireh when world systems fail. Jesus said, “Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8). Let us make sure that He does.

Another sign of the last days is given to us in Revelation 13:18: “The number of the beast.” Whatever the deeper meaning and identity of 666 may be, we don’t need an online Bible teacher to help us understand the simple facts laid out for us in Revelation 13: that anyone who doesn’t have that number on their right hand or their forehead will not be able to buy or sell, and risks death. At the time of writing, thousands of people in Sweden are inserting a tiny microchip, the size of a grain of rice, into their hands so their biometric details can be scanned by various digital readers. It is being used to pay for train travel, to gain access to clubs and car parks, and it is said to be ready for use to take payments in shops and restaurants. Sweden is on the cusp of becoming the first cashless society in the world. The technology, known as RFID, is the same as that used in other contactless payment systems, so all of us who use contactless payments are only a skin-deep layer away from it ourselves.

The COVID crisis has brought cashless transactions closer still, and I don’t think it takes a great leap of the imagination to connect these developments in with the arrival of a completely state-controlled system of buying and selling under the beast. It will be hailed as a great boon to society, eliminating financial fraud as well as the contagion risks of handling cash. If that scenario is only two seconds away, we need to learn, urgently, how to stay yoked to Jesus in order to receive, and give, provision, because we do not know when we really will have to depend on God for our daily bread.


Blue tassels in our garments

Just like my game with Shelley is now an intrinsic and permanent part of how we behave with each other, and a source of fun that never diminishes, God wants the fabric of His word to so run through our lives that its living, active power is continually expressed through who we are and what we do. The Lord said to Moses:

“Speak to the children of Israel: Tell them to make tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and to put a blue thread in the tassels of the corners. And you shall have the tassel, that you may look upon it and remember all the commandments of the Lord and do them, and that you may not follow the harlotry to which your own heart and your own eyes are inclined, and that you may remember and do all My commandments, and be holy for your God. ‘I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: I am the Lord your God.’” (Numbers 15:38-41

The quality, the commitment, the fruitfulness of our discipleship depends on the centrality of the word of God in our lives. Our faithful response to God’s word is a measure of the extent to which we have taken His yoke upon us.

 A lot of the wisdom in the book of Proverbs is sound advice that anyone will benefit from following, and expresses ideas that are not unique to the Judeo-Christian tradition. Many of the moral teachings of Jesus resonate with adherents to other major faiths. But what God wants for us is not just for His words to give us a pattern to follow and principles to abide by; He wants us to be channels for the creative power of His word to be released in the world, releasing light into the darkness and building the kingdom of heaven. This means that we live in faith that the power of God’s word to bring His rule and reign into our lives is greater than the power of the circumstances around us. To apply the wise teachings of the Bible to our lives is the best way of navigating our circumstances, but to believe in and release the power of God’s word is the way to overcome them. This is why John 15:7 is so important, where Jesus says, “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.” To move in power, contrary to the prevailing currents of the world, contrary to “the harlotry to which [our] own heart and [our] own eyes are inclined” (Numbers 15:39) we need to know Scripture, not just have a passing acquaintance with it.

In The Silver Chair, the sixth of C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, Aslan (Jesus) sends Jill Pole and Eustace Scrubb on a mission to liberate the prince of Narnia from an evil spell. He gives them four signs, which they are to repeat daily and never forget, and to follow whatever the circumstances. However, as the children come under the spell of the evil witch themselves, lured by a lying temptation of rest and comfort among some giants who would actually have killed and eaten them, the signs fade from significance. They neglected the discipline of keeping them uppermost in their minds, at a level where they actually would “direct their paths”; consequently their quest was more difficult and dangerous than it needed to have been. All the Narnia stories are rich in spiritual significance. We too are on a mission to bring freedom to the captives, and we too have to hold onto the “signs” that God has given us, irrespective of appearances and in the face of temptation. We cannot accomplish God’s mission without God’s word. We need to have those blue threads in the tassels of our garments.

Possessing our Souls

Jesus tells us, “By your patience possess your souls” (Luke 21:19) when we face end-time betrayal and hatred. Patience is translated elsewhere as “longsuffering” and “perseverance”. The writer to the Hebrews says, “And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope until the end, that you do not become sluggish, but imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises” (Hebrews 6:11-12). To be patient we need to be still, because we know that when we are still we know that He is God (Psalm 46:10). We need to know how to wait on the Lord, because that is how we renew our strength. Patience is a crucial attribute of the Spirit-filled life, because patience says to us, “Stop! Don’t rush to react. What is God saying here?” We believe God’s promises in our hearts, but without patience we do not stop to reach out for them.

Peter writes (2 Peter 1:4) that we partake of the divine nature through His “great and precious promises”. When we are in a time of trial and the wolves come howling round our houses, we can run to protect our flesh, which is when they will come running after us and pounce; or we can stop, and “in our patience possessing our souls”, we can reach in faith with renewed minds into the truth of the divine nature which is our promised inheritance.


Pressing on…

“Trying to be good” is a burden, because no matter how hard we try, we are going to fail. And when we fail at being good, where do we go to escape the guilt? If we know Jesus personally, then the chances are we will run to the cross, we will receive forgiveness, and then we’ll start trying to be good again until the next time we fail. But how do we “press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14)? If we keep having to go back to the beginning? Paul has already given us the answer in the previous two verses:

”Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead.” (Philippians 3:12-13)

We don’t slide down the snake and go back to the start: it’s not snakes and ladders. There aren’t any snakes on this board, because the snake has been defeated! Yes we fall, yes we need forgiveness again, but we continue to reach forward “to those things which are ahead”. In the Spirit we already partake of the “divine nature”, so if we sin there is only ever one reason: we have walked in the flesh and not in the Spirit. Jesus said of the scribes and Pharisees that they “bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders” (Matthew 23:4). Religion today writes the report that says, “Could do better. Must try harder.” What does Jesus say to us? “Take My yoke upon you. My burden isn’t the heavy burden of religion: My burden is light.” The difference is this: modern religion, whether you are a tongue-speaking Pentecostal or an incense-burning Catholic, is trying to be like Jesus and to do what He would do. Walking in the Spirit, yoked to Jesus, is asking Him what He would do then doing what He says. His yoke is relationship. By simply doing what He says we are reaching ahead into the divine nature which is our inheritance.


The Biggest Wave

“Take heed, watch and pray; for you do not know when the time is. It is like a man going to a far country, who left his house and gave authority to his servants, AND TO EACH HIS WORK, and commanded the doorkeeper to watch. Watch therefore, for you do not know when the master of the house is coming – in the evening, at midnight, at the crowing of the rooster, or in the morning – lest, coming suddenly, he find you sleeping. And what I say to you, I say to all: Watch!” (Mark 13:33-37, my capitals)

Scripture encourages us to discern the times when Jesus castigates the Pharisees for not doing so (Luke 12:56). We need to understand the season we are in, and this book is a response to the impression that the times we are in are basically the End Times. I think the “midnight” of Andrew Baker’s vision and the title of this book might be the return of the Lord, but since this is not a detail that the Father will reveal we cannot make that assumption. I see us as surfboarders out in the sea, where the waves seem to get bigger and more frequent with every passing year. I imagine God saying something like, “You are not going to have an easy ride. There is no longer going to be a calm sea; a swell is building up that is not going to die away, and the waves are only going to increase and get bigger. But the biggest wave of all shall be the wave of My Spirit as it sweeps across the face of the earth . . .”

The biggest wave will be the wave of God’s Spirit as it sweeps across the face of the earth. Whatever the waves are that crash into the foundations of society, I believe God’s wave will be bigger. I believe this wave will be unlike anything we have known in two thousand years: it will come crashing into the church and will completely uproot some of those big “leafy trees” so that they will be completely washed away, while the fruitful ones will multiply exponentially to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. We ride the wave, or we are engulfed by it. To ride this wave we need to be focused on our purpose, or our quest for it – “to each his work” – and not be found sleeping. Our debt-based economic system cannot withstand shocks forever. But whether they come in the form of virus outbreaks, oil-price collapse, water shortage, plastic pollution, war in the Middle East or elsewhere, global warming, cyberterrorism, or something else as unexpected as coronavirus was in 2019, God knows all of it, and He has given us authority and responsibilities in His house. “Joseph” ministries, responsible for providing for the household when the world system crumbles, how full are your granaries? Are they even built yet? You’ve only got two seconds left . . .


The Blind Beggar

“So Jesus stood still and commanded him to be brought to Him. And when he had come near, He asked him, saying, ‘What do you want Me to do for you?’ He said, ‘Lord, that I may receive my sight.’ Then Jesus said to him, ‘Receive your sight; your faith has made you well.’ And immediately he received his sight, and followed Him, glorifying God. And all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God.” (Luke 18:40-43)

Of all the healings that we read of in the gospels, the blind beggar is the only one who is specifically referred to as following Jesus after his healing. What this tells me is that we cannot be yoked to Jesus unless we ask the Holy Spirit to open our eyes. And when He does, not only will we be glorifying God, but those around us will be giving Him praise as well.

Our promised land – the “exceedingly great and precious promises that have been given to us” – is this: to be “partakers of the divine nature”. If we allow ourselves to be invaded by the Spirit of God, we not only find ourselves starting to really know Him – to know His heart, His character, His desires for us, and above all His voice – we start becoming like Him. We will do what He did, and we will do the “greater things” promised in John 14:12. We will start to feel His compassion, so it won’t even occur to us to want to feed ourselves before feeding the 5,000. We will speak out of His love instead of our self-interest. Our promised land isn’t our city, the mega-church we want to build, a worldwide ministry, or 10,000 views on our YouTube channel; it’s to be partakers of the divine nature. The prerequisite to entry is that we have “escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust”. All that leaven has to go. Only Jesus can make this happen, because “if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed” (John 8:36) and He will do it by the power of the Holy Spirit, because “the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty (2 Cor 3:17). Peter needed Pentecost to be yoked to Jesus. And if it was necessary for Peter, it is necessary for us.

If we are going to face the coming Jerichos we need the presence of the Holy Spirit to be so real in our meetings that bystanders see fire coming out of our buildings and call the emergency services. It happened at Azusa Street; it happened much more recently (21st-century recently) at a glory conference in Washington DC; and I am sure that there are other occasions that I haven’t heard of. It needs to keep happening. The church needs to be baptised with the Holy Spirit and fire, just as John the Baptist prophesied. And if we take His yoke, really take His yoke having had our eyes opened to all that He is and all that we are in Him, we will start to see that happen. The walls of Jericho falling down? Easy.

Holiness: You shall be perfect, Pursuing Love

If the body were an eye, where would the hearing be? (1 Cor 12)

1 Comment

Paul’s teaching on the gifts of the Spirit in the church and the diversity that He has placed within the body of Christ is a well-known passage. In the first part Paul shows how the Holy Spirit distributes supernatural gifts among His people when they meet together to reveal Jesus, the second part shows how each born again believer is a unique gift to the body of Christ that helps enable the kingdom of his Love to  be established on the Earth.

The world and worldly culture celebrate diversity. However the politically correct emphasis on diversity that we see in today’s society is not an expression of the rich variety that God has put into His creation, but is a worship of diversity for its own sake. Diversity in the world has become an idol: worshippers gather round it In abandonment to their lusts just as the children of Israel gathered round the golden calf and “rose up to play.” (1 Cor 10:7)

The devils’ idols are always a substitute for God’s truth. If the Lord is doing something in Heaven, the enemy will try to set up his copy on Earth, so where the Kingdom of God is advancing there is often an idol to be pulled down in order for God’s will to be done. If we look at the counter culture that the enemy is seeking to establish on Earth, we can often see the emphasis of the heavenly culture that the Holy Spirit is bringing to the church. Diversity is an example of this. The devil is seeking to establish his doctrine of diversity in the flesh, according to which every divergence from God’s created order is to be not only accepted, but celebrated. There are many bodies, but no membership.  In fact membership of any one group is often regarded as sectarian.

In God’s kingdom there is one body, and we are all members of it. Like the snowflakes, each one of us is different and each one of us is beautiful, and each one of us is a unique expression of God’s perfect order. But we are all made of water. “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and have all been made to drink into one Spirit.” (1 Cor 12:13)  The devil, on the other hand, would have us celebrate snowflakes made of plastic, rubber, bronze…

How does this translate into Gods kingdom purposes today? I believe that the enemy is parading his version of diversity in front of our eyes because he wants to blind the world to the beauty of God’s Kingdom truth. Jesus is calling His body to unity, but in that unity is the essential principle that we recognise the diversity and beauty that He has put into each individual. A prophetic theme currently being expressed is that God will be removing many leaders from the platforms and podiums where they have become exalted, and raising up the unknown and lowly to minister in the power of his Spirit when he sends the next great wave of Revival. We will no longer gather around denominational flags and banners; we will just gather around Jesus under his Banner of Love, honouring and serving Him as we honour and serve one another. The Unity won’t command the blessing because we all sing the same songs, have all read the same books, or all agree with the same teachers; and not even because we all pray in tongues and prophesy (or not!): the unity will command the blessing when we love, serve, and prefer one another.

We will all be one when we have recognised that we are all different. If you are an ear and I am an eye, we may look like we have nothing in common, but the same blood flows through us, we both serve the same body, and we both have the mind of Christ. I’m not inadequate because I can’t hear like you, and – even more important – I’m not superior because you can’t see like me. When we really celebrate each other’s uniqueness I believe those beautiful snowflakes will fall more and more thickly, until the glory of God covers the Earth as the waters cover the sea.

Be prepared; hold on., Living by Faith, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

…And his hand stuck to the sword.

Leave a comment

“And after him was Eleazar the son of Dodo, the Ahohite, one of the three mighty men with David when they defied the Philistines who were gathered there for battle, and the men of Israel had retreated. He arose and attacked the Philistines until his hand was weary, and his hand stuck to the sword. The LORD brought about a great victory that day; and the people returned after him only to plunder. “ (2 Sam 23: 9-10)

2 Samuel 23,  “The last words of David,” begins with a description – that looks forward to Jesus – of the man who rules “in the fear of God,” continues with the confession he doesn’t match up to this standard because his house “is not so with God,”  goes on with the declaration of faith that God has nevertheless made a covenant with him, “ordered in all things and secure,” that is “all his salvation and desire;” adds that that the “sons of rebellion shall all be as thorns thrust away, because they cannot be taken with hands,” and concludes with a tribute to David’s 37 “mighty men” whom God used to defeat those sons of rebellion.

If we look at this chapter as a whole, we see a wonderful expression of God’s plan: because we are mortals and Jesus is God, our “house” will never be perfect this side of Heaven. Nevertheless He has made a covenant with us that secures our salvation: He will give us the weapons to “thrust away” the enemy, and even though we are weak and imperfect we can be mighty men and women of God, using the weapons that we are given to see our enemy utterly defeated: “But the man who touches them Must be armed with iron and the shaft of a spear, And they shall be utterly burned with fire in their place.” Among the items of the Ephesians 6 armour of God, the sword is the only offensive weapon. If we read this passage on a symbolic level I think we can understand the “iron” in this scripture as the iron of a sword, and in particular the Sword of the Spirit. The spear that we throw can be seen as prayer. It is through prayer and faith in the word of God that the enemy is “thrust away.”

Eleazar fought; he grew weary – but it was the Lord “who brought about a great victory that day.” Sometimes God tells us to “stand still and see the salvation of our God,” and at other times He asks us to fight until we are weary. In the campaigns that were fought in, and over, the Promised Land, the Commander of the Lord’s Army (Joshua 5: 13-15) directs His troops with a variety of strategies, but it is always His victory, not our own. Whether we have to battle through a situation until we are weary, whether we praise our way to victory or whether we just look over the ramparts and see that our enemy has completely self-destructed, one truth remains constant: “through God we will do valiantly,
For it is He who shall tread down our enemies.” (Psalm 60:12)

A key point in this little story is not so much that Eleazar fought till he was weary, but that his hand stuck to his sword. Are our hands stuck to the Sword of the Spirit, the Word of God? However we fight, it must be with our hands glued to the Word of God, because it’s the Word that is living and active; not our dead flesh. “The help of man is useless,” (psalm 60:11) but through God we will do valiantly. Our faith is the victory that has overcome the world (1 John 5:4), and faith comes by hearing (Rom 10:17). Like the Israelites, we have to fight for our promised land; and the first part of each battle is to know how God wants us to fight. Before we fight with our sword, we have to pick it up. What has God said to us about this battle? If we have heard nothing there can be no faith, and without faith there can be no victory.

The account of the Mighty Men continues:

“And after him was Shammah the son of Agee the Hararite. The Philistines had gathered together into a troop where there was a piece of ground full of lentils. So the people fled from the Philistines. But he stationed himself in the middle of the field, defended it, and killed the Philistines. So the LORD brought about a great victory.” (2 Sam 23: 11-12)”

I remember performing in a school play when I was 11 years old, called “The six who pass while the lentils boil.” The pot of lentils was the poor man’s sustenance; uninteresting, unspectacular fare; the stuff of routine; “the daily round, the common task,” from the words of the old hymn that I remember singing – and disliking – at about the same age. Why should I spend time praying about my lentils? But if we have had any experience of brambles we will know that they spread. Every year, long shoots reach out to put down new roots and establish themselves on a fresh area of land. The enemy is constantly prowling round to see whom he may devour. (1 Peter 5:8) He doesn’t care if it’s our lentils he is ruining or our prized possessions: what he is after is us. If he can’t take our souls because they are given to Jesus, he will try devour our time, our energy and our resources in any way he can, so that at least he can stop us giving them to further the Kingdom of God. He will spread his thorns wherever he can, and if our lentil patch is unprotected that is where he will go.

Our calling is to “take the Kingdom of God by force” (Matt 11:12) – to wrestle it back from the enemy who stole from man the dominion that God had planned for him over His creation. If we are enlisted in the army of Jesus Christ, we are sold out to establishing His Kingdom on Earth, and so all our battles are His battles. Every situation either spreads the light or pushes it back. The way human resources are managed in a business is as much a matter of the Kingdom of God as the battle over the rights of unborn babies. Luxury holiday or lentil patch, God is “through all and in all.” Whether the battle is raging between opposing armies, political factions, or husband and wife, He is either glorifies or ignored; and He is glorified when our hands are stuck to the sword.

What has God said? How do I fight this battle? What are His promises? What does He want? If we keep these thoughts in mind as we face the “sons of rebellion” we will succeed in pushing back the thorns even if it means we have to rise early to pray and then work at the problem till midnight. When God brings about a victory not only is His kingdom extended but we, his soldiers, get to benefit as well: “the people returned after him only to plunder.” We may be feeble and imperfect, but if we hold onto the iron of that sword  and the spear of prayer we stand in the security of God’s faithfulness, the truth of our salvation and the extension of God’s Kingdom. Without them we will be grasping the invading thorns with our bare hands – and that can only lead to a painful defeat.

Be prepared; hold on., Holiness: You shall be perfect, Prophesy and the prophetic

Not by might nor by power

2 Comments

We know that “nothing is impossible with God,”  and that “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. We also know that it’s “not by might nor by power” that the Kingdom of God is established on Earth, and we know that we walk by faith and not by sight. The stories and the imagery of Scripture is full of the opposition between flesh and Spirit, or the kingdoms of the world and the Kingdom of our God and His Christ; Saul and David; Babylon and Jerusalem; Egypt and the promised land. We only have to spend a few minutes reading the news headlines to have an idea of what is happening and, sometimes, what to expect in the world of the flesh. But there are headlines being published in the spiritual realm as well, and if we pay attention to them we can also have an idea of what is going on in that dimension, which is important as It will directly affect what we see on the news. As Amos 3:7 says “Surely the Lord GOD does nothing without revealing His plan to His servants the prophets.”

The headlines in the spiritual realm

Just as we don’t believe every newspaper headline we read, there are some “prophetic messages” that have more credibility than others. Nevertheless there is a clear narrative from recognised individual prophets and groups that has two main threads. One is that we are moving into an unprecedented time of darkness and chaos, most probably that which Jesus prophesied in the “wars and rumours of wars” passage recorded in Matt 24: 4-25. Woven in with this thread is a second one, announcing that a great revival is coming onto the Earth as prophesied by Smith Wigglesworth in 1947, and that it this outpouring will be unlike anything hitherto experienced. Both these headlines can be found in Isaiah 61:1-3:

“Arise, shine;
For your light has come!
And the glory of the LORD is risen upon you.

For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth,
And deep darkness the people;
But the LORD will arise over you,
And His glory will be seen upon you

The Gentiles shall come to your light,
And kings to the brightness of your rising…”

The point is not that these words have been around for thousands of years, but that, as Peter declared in Acts 2 when he preached at Pentecost, “This is that which was spoken of.” The headlines of prophesy today are essentially this: now is the time that was spoken of by Isaiah in verse two. It’s now. And in this context, it’s imperative for the church to separate itself from the darkness. Just as God separated the light from the darkness at the dawn of creation; just as Jeremiah – and the voice from Heaven heard by John (Rev 18:4) – called God’s people to “come out of the midst of Babylon” (Jer 51:45), so it is time for the church to separate itself from the world and be serious about consecration to a holy God.

Swept up, or swept away

As we allow God to reveal more of His holiness to us, so He reveals more of His majesty, and as He reveals more of His majesty so He reveals more of His love. The attributes of God are bound up in His identity, and we find them all in Jesus, “the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15), and equally in the Holy Spirit, whom the Father “sends in the name (the identity) of Jesus” (John 14:26). The Kingdom of God is established “Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit” (Zech 4:6), and His Spirit is holy. Holy comes before Spirit: as the Holiness movement preceded the Pentecostal revival at the beginning of the last century, so the “story” behind those prophetic headlines today is that God is calling the Church today to wake up to His holiness: those who do will be swept up by the power of His Spirit, but those who do not will be swept away.

Under the Old Covenant, the only route to holiness was through obedience to the many external requirements of the Law.  In Christ, holiness dwells within us by His Spirit and we are given just two commands to obey: to love God, and to love one another. When we obey these two, we “obey the whole of the law,” (Romans 13:10) and the holiness that dwells in the immortal part of ourselves, our spirits, can reach out through our mortality to bring light and life to a dying world. In calling the church to holiness, God is calling us to love: to worship Him and to love one another. It is where “lawlessness abounds” that “the love of many will grow cold,” (Matt 24:12) and it is because of that lawlessness that “darkness shall cover the earth and deep darkness the people;” and it is when we separate ourselves from that darkness by submitting to the Royal Law of love that “The Gentiles shall come to your light, And kings to the brightness of your rising.”

There is no other way. It is not by might, nor by power, but by the Holy Spirit that this prophesied revival will come. To bring these thoughts to land in Scripture, 2 Cor 3:18 spells out exactly how it will come about:

“But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.”

We will see the Holy Spirt at work through us and the light of Christ reflected in our faces when we remove the veil that separates us from His holiness.

Christian Life, Holiness: You shall be perfect

“It was before the Lord…”

Leave a comment

Now as the ark of the LORD came into the City of David, Michal, Saul’s daughter, looked through a window and saw King David leaping and whirling before the LORD; and she despised him in her heart….  Then David returned to bless his household. And Michal the daughter of Saul came out to meet David, and said, “How glorious was the king of Israel today, uncovering himself today in the eyes of the maids of his servants, as one of the base fellows shamelessly uncovers himself!” So David said to Michal, “It was before the LORD, who chose me instead of your father and all his house, to appoint me ruler over the people of the LORD, over Israel. Therefore I will play music before the LORD. And I will be even more undignified than this, and will be humble in my own sight. But as for the maidservants of whom you have spoken, by them I will be held in honor.” Therefore Michal the daughter of Saul had no children to the day of her death. (2 Sam 6: 16, 20-23)



I stayed recently at a hotel where I was speaking and exhibiting at a dyslexia conference. The hotel was built, I think, around the end of the 19th century: in its heyday it must have been a jewel in the crown of Victorian opulence in that city. It had a splendid ballroom, tall ornate mirrors, spacious bedrooms with recessed seats in the walls, crystal chandeliers, and wide steps where you could imagine the daughters of the local shipping magnates sweeping through in their flowing robes as men in top hats held an outstretched hand and gave a slight bow as they descended. Today it is a different story: the opulence hasn’t just faded, it has disappeared. The carpets are dirty, paint is peeling off the walls, The pictures in my room weren’t even hanging on the wall but they were on the floor, leaning against it; the lift door got stuck and the goods lift didn’t work at all.

I was thinking of all the shortcomings of this place when I opened my Bible at the place I had reached in my current reading: it was the verse I’ve quoted in the title of this piece, from psalm 138 vs 8: “The Lord will perfect that which concerns me…“ When I read this I looked at myself and realised how Man was like this hotel that I was staying in: created in beauty and perfection, but now worn down and broken by sin. Yet, because of the blood of Jesus, our Father can see us in our original beauty, Immanuel still chooses to come and dwell in us, and the Holy Spirit promises to perfect us…

When David was bringing the Ark into Jerusalem and famously dancing and whirling in celebration, Michal looked out of the window and “despised him in her heart.“ She disapproved of his actions which she considered to be unseemly, and she spoke in a critical and negative way. She just saw what she considered to be peeling paint and dirty carpets.  David‘s response, detailed above, was that “it was before the Lord…” The consequence of Michal’s criticism was that she had no children.

Our words can be either fruitful or barren. The unfruitfulness of Michal‘s life is a dramatic illustration of the consequence of barren words. How easy it is to judge a brother or sister with our negative comments because we consider that what they are doing is inappropriate by our standards. Yet because of the blood of Jesus that brother or sister is standing “before the Lord.” God does not peer down disapprovingly from behind a twitching curtain: He opens His arms wide in welcome. If the blood of Jesus is sufficient for the Father to look upon us in love and approval, how can we ever do otherwise when looking upon each other? The only consequence of our negativity will be unfruitfulness in our own lives.

Michal’s contempt of David was more than a passing thought in her head; it came from a deeper place. It came from her heart. If we criticise a brother or sister we are no better than Michal: we have lifted up our own hearts in contempt, and we are forgetting that we too are like that run-down hotel I stayed in. We need to pray, as David did: “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” (Ps 139 23-24) Our negativity will never lead anybody else “in the way everlasting;” it will only, ultimately, have a negative impact on ourselves.

However, God says “I will perfect the things which concern you.” David’s prayer suggests that anxious thoughts lead to offensive ways. What anxieties lie deep in our hearts that can cause us to be offensive to others as Michal was? If we invite Him in to that run-down, broken area of our heart that feels the need to despise another person, He will come in, mend the lift, lay a new carpet, repaint the walls and hang the pictures in their place. The lift will take us up into heavenly places, the carpet will be a red carpet of welcome for His presence, the walls will be as white as snow, and the pictures will show the face of Jesus. And instead of criticizing David we will be joining him in the dance.

“Thus my heart was grieved,
And I was vexed in my mind.

I was so foolish and ignorant;
I was like a beast before You.

Nevertheless I am continually with You;
You hold me by my right hand.

You will guide me with Your counsel,
And afterward receive me to glory. (Ps 73: 21-24)

Be prepared; hold on., Living by Faith, Walking in the Spirit

The lighthouse on the Rock

Leave a comment
Your feet will not slip, and My light is shining in you

“Blessed is the man You choose,
And cause to approach You,
That he may dwell in Your courts.
We shall be satisfied with the goodness of Your house,
Of Your holy temple.

By awesome deeds in righteousness You will answer us,
O God of our salvation,
You who are the confidence of all the ends of the earth,
And of the far-off seas;

Who established the mountains by His strength,
Being clothed with power;

You who still the noise of the seas,
The noise of their waves,
And the tumult of the peoples”  Psalm 65: 4-7

If you felt God called you to be a lighthouse, yet everything seems dark; if all you seem to know is the waves crashing against the rock, and it seems like your light has gone out, and sometimes you even doubt that it was ever shining; if you are saying: “Lord, this isn’t how I thought it was going to turn out!” He says to you:

“You are standing on the rock, and your feet will not slip. However hard the waves beat against it, they are passing ephemera; they have no power against me. Even though one wave after another beats against the place where you stand, the storm itself will pass and the sea will be calm and bathed in beautiful Sonshine. I have chosen you to dwell in my courts, and you are mine. Your light has not gone out, for I am the light that shines in you, and there are many in the storm that you cannot see who are being drawn to me through your light. When the storm has passed you will see them, you will see their sails filled with the wind of my Spirit, and you will know that they have been kept safe  because I have put you where you are. Trust me and dwell in my courts while the storm rages around you. I am the one who stills the noise of the seas and the tumult of the peoples, and my light is powerful in you.”

Be prepared; hold on., Pursuing Love

Strengthen the things that remain

Leave a comment
From a model of the molecular structure of DNA

“And to the angel of the church in Sardis write, ‘These things says He who has the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars: “I know your works, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead. “Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die, for I have not found your works perfect before God. Remember therefore how you have received and heard; hold fast and repent. Therefore if you will not watch, I will come upon you as a thief, and you will not know what hour I will come upon you. You have a few names even in Sardis who have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy. He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life; but I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” ’ (Rev 3: 1-6)

I include the whole message to the church in Sardis here to put the heading in context. I do believe that the Spirit is saying to the churches today to “strengthen the things that remain;” I don’t believe He is saying that every church today is as dead as Sardis was. (Having said that, I believe that we all need to be humble enough to say, “Lord, is that me?” For if David could say: “I will be more lightly esteemed than this and will be humble in my own eyes,” (2 Sam 6:22) and if Jesus described Himself as “meek and humble of heart,” (Matt 11:29) then the precedents are there, and it can only bring us blessing if we are open to the possibility that the whole of the message to Sardis is for us. However I want to focus here on just the one line.) So what does it mean to strengthen the things that remain?

I used to think, particularly when I Iistened to Bob Dylan’s rendering of these words in his song “When you gonna wake up?” that the things that remain were the things that were still left when everything else had died. In a sense of course they are, but I believe that the focus of these words is the context given to them in 1 Cor 13:13:  “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. … But the greatest of these is love.” The church at Sardis was “dead” because it was weak in these three things. The foundations of church life – the molecular structure of its DNA – are our faith in Jesus, our hope of eternal life, and our love for one another. As we know, the greatest of these is the final one. And since we know from 1 Corinthians 13:2  that if we “have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and … have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love”  we are nothing, I think we can reasonably guess that it was the third  and greatest of the “things that remain” that was most lacking at Sardis. Are our churches alive because of the worship, because of the prayers, the preaching and the prophesies, and even the manifested power of the Holy Spirit in signs and wonders – or are they alive because we are loving one another?

It’s only God’s love that connects Heaven to Earth, and it’s His love that connects us to one another. I think that Jesus is saying to His church today – certainly His church in the West – that we are fragile in the “things that remain,” and that we need to be stronger in them to face the challenges ahead. The picture above is of a model of the molecular structure of DNA, the carrier of life. If each molecule is an individual within the Body of Christ, it is the “things that remain” that are the connectors which hold us together. Without them there is no life – it is “without form and void,” (Gen 1:2) in fact. Jesus promised, more than once, that persecutions would come upon the church. When they do, it will be the connectors that are going to be important. When it seems that our provisions are threatened, we will need to encourage one another in faith in the God who keeps His promises of provision. If we find ourselves in a situation where our life itself is threatened, we will need to tie ourselves to the anchor of our souls, the promise of eternal life in Christ, to face that threat. And to hold each other up in that faith and that hope we need to love one another. Without the connector of Love, the promise “For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.” (Matt 18:20) loses meaning, because His name is Love. If we are not gathered in Love, we are not gathered in His name, as I have written in the article “The testimony of Jesus (2): when two or three are gathered in my name.”

James writes: “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. (James 1: 2-4) And Peter writes: “Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you; but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy.” (1 Peter 4: 12-13) Unless we are strong in faith, hope and love we will miss that joy through times of trial which comes from perseverance. I think our faith, our hope and our love are tested in different ways, but one thing is sure throughout: we will need to be connected to one another if we are going to persevere.

Sometimes it can seem as though we are on an express train that rushes through a mixed landscape of pressures and of pleasures: there are demands and deadlines to meet, places to go, people to see, texts to write, things to buy, stuff to do, fun to have – and the train doesn’t stop to allow us off. But Paul writes: “the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. For he who serves Christ in these things is acceptable to God and approved by men. Therefore let us pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify another.” (Rom 14: 17-19). Paul is exhorting the Romans not to prioritize that which feeds the flesh, but to pursue the things that feed the Spirit. The Kingdom of God – “Righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” – is built in the places where we connect with one another and strengthen the faith, hope and love that we share.

Jesus teaches us that if we “seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, … all these things shall be added to you.” (Matt 6:33) If we are fragile in the “things that remain” we need to pursue the Kingdom of God in order to strengthen them. I think that means above all that we have to strengthen the love that connects us to one another: not because God will judge us if we don’t, but because we will break if we don’t. Seeking first the Kingdom of God means putting our relationships above our needs, our deadlines,  and our ambitions – even, and for some, especially – our ministry ambitions; it means that we “pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify another,” as opposed to chasing after those things on the express train by which we feed ourselves. Sometimes we have to jump off the train, as dangerous as it may seem, in order to seek His Kingdom. But when we do, we find everything that we were looking for, and most of all we find Jesus waiting for us when we land.

“When you gonna wake up?” from Slow Train Coming, by Bob Dylan

Be prepared; hold on., Prophesy and the prophetic

God’s Budget

Leave a comment
A line has been crossed.

Just as this was the week when government in the UK set out its budget, I believe that this may also be the time when the Lord is setting out the budget for the government that is on His shoulders. There will be be a release and a directing of physical resources alongside the spiritual, as God moves in the business and financial realms. Even now, God is establishing Kingdom outposts in the unlikeliest of places, and is starting to build an ark that will bring resources to His people and salvation to the lost, even as a flood of chaos and darkness seems to sweep the Earth. He is calling people to bring their wood – operating their businesses and finances under Kingdom principals of love, faith and generosity – so that it can be added to the Ark. He is raising up apostles and prophets around the world to play a part in proclaiming, spearheading and directing this move of His Spirit.

I was talking about this with a friend over a coffee recently, and felt the Holy Spirit on me as I made an illustration on the coffee table (pictured), using a jug and a teaspoon. I felt that  we have “crossed a line” in the spiritual realm: the spoon handle represents the demarcation between what Man has done up till now, and what God is going to do from now on. Also the jug represents what God pours out, and the teaspoon represents what man portions out. I believe that the Lord is saying something like this:

“Up to this time, Man has put his teaspoon into my provision and portioned it out – ‘ one for you, one for me; or one-hundredth for you, one hundred for me’ –  but now the time has come for me to start pouring. Do not say “The jug looks so small!” for as it was in the days of the indebted widow in the time of Elisha, so it will be in these times: every jug that is brought to me I will pour from. There is no limit to what I can and will pour. And as it was I who determined how many vessels were available to meet that widow’s needs, so it is I who will determine how many vessels are needed to resource my work and to prepare my bride in these days; and I will call and appoint all the jugs that I require for what I am about to pour out.”

“Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.” (Luke 6:38)

“I shovel out the money, and God shovels it back. but God has a bigger shovel!” R. G. Letourneau. (Businessman and designer of earthmoving vehicles, 1988-1969)

Holiness: You shall be perfect, Prophesy and the prophetic, Pursuing Love

Our eyes will see the King

1 Comment


The river of God’s mercy flows from Cross, and because we stand in that river we are able to come before a holy God. But as we stand there God is doing a new thing in us: He is bringing us to a higher level of sanctification. He is bringing us to a place where He will say “Take off your shoes, for the place where you stand is holy.” Our shoes have walked in the dirt of the world, but His presence in us will become so strong that we will be able to separate ourselves from the sin that has stalked our lives and so often overpowers us.

When that time comes we will be able to say with David: “I was also blameless before him, And I kept myself from my iniquity,“ but it will not be because of our own righteousness, but of the righteousness of the God that dwells within us.  Our eyes will see the King, and conviction of sin will be strong in all who are submitted to Him, as it was in the days of Azuza Street; but the Lord says that Azuza Street was just a forerunner of what is to come: as we stand in that place of sanctification He will lift our eyes to new heights of love that only a very few prophets and apostles have known until now. What a few have just glimpsed, many will grasp, and those who do will know His power going before them and into the fallen world to establish His Kingdom.

We are standing before the walls of Jericho, and He says to us now “I am drawing you into the Holy Place, where I will give you your instructions and prepare you for moving into the land ahead.” For when we obey the commander of the Lord’s army we will see the walls come down.

“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;
The whole earth is full of His glory!” And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke. So I said:

“Woe is me, for I am undone!
Because I am a man of unclean lips,
And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;
For my eyes have seen the King,
The LORD of hosts.” (Isaiah 6: 1-4)

“And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted his eyes and looked, and behold, a Man stood opposite him with His sword drawn in His hand. And Joshua went to Him and said to Him, “Are You for us or for our adversaries?”
So He said, “No, but as Commander of the army of the LORD I have now come.” And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped, and said to Him, “What does my Lord say to His servant?” Then the Commander of the LORD’s army said to Joshua, “Take your sandal off your foot, for the place where you stand is holy.” And Joshua did so” (Joshua 5: 13-15)

“For I have kept the ways of the Lord,
And have not wickedly departed from my God.
All his judgements were before me,
And I did not put away his statutes from me.
I was also blameless before him,
And I kept myself from my iniquity.“ (Psalm 18:21-23)