Category Archives: Discipleship and witness

The world will know that we are Jesus’s disciples by our love; but Jesus didn’t tell us that this is how we make disciples. The New Testament model for making disciples is to glorify the Father by doing His works in the name of the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit. We are called to show the world the Triune God in action.

Discipleship and witness, Walking in the Spirit

Lazarus: the grave and the glory.

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“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is- his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:2)

The following material is from a message I preached in Liberia, so it’s more a collection of bible verses arranged under headings, mostly from John 11: 1-44, than a lot of my own thoughts. Which has to be good, really…

The purpose of Jesus’s ministry was to see  the Kingdom of Heaven established on earth through the church, and the account of the raising of Lazarus from the dead is a picture of exactly that: the Kingdom coming on earth; life overcoming death. In it we see two ways of thinking : the earthly way, represented by Martha and Mary, the disciples, and the Jews; and the Kingdom way of Jesus. We’re going to consider these two, remembering that the Word tells us that if we want to see the “good, pleasing and perfect will” of God, we need to be renewed in the spirit of our minds…

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is- his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:2)

Some aspects of earthly, or carnal thinking.

1) Earthly thinking wants to hold on to circumstances as they are

Verse 21: “ Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.” (Martha)
Verse 32: “ Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.” (Mary)
Verse 37 “And some of them said, “Could not this Man, who opened the eyes of the blind, also have kept this man from dying?” (Some of the jews)

2) Earthly thinking sees the problem

Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of him who was dead, said to Him, “Lord, by this time there is a stench, for he has been dead four days.“ (Vs 39)

“Rabbi, lately, lately the Jews have sought to stone you, and are you going there again? (Vs 8)

3) Earthly thinking cannot believe the word of God

“I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, that you may believe. Nevertheless let us go to him.” Then Thomas, who is called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with Him.” (vs 15-16)

4) Earthly thinking knows the doctrine, but it’s all head-knowledge

Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to Him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” (v 24)

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?” She said to Him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.” (v 25-27)

Martha knows about Him, but hasn’t grasped that the resurrection itself and eternal life itself are standing in front of her.

5) Earthly thinking depends on someone else

“If only you had been there…”
If only xxx was still here…
If only the leaders would sort this out…
If only an evangelist would come to our town…

Some aspects of Kingdom thinking

  1. When earthly thinking sees the problem, Kingdom thinking sees the glory of God:

“Therefore the sisters sent to Him, saying, “Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick.” When Jesus heard that, He said, “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” (vs 3-4)

2) Kingdom Thinking walks in a different dimension; the dimension of the Spirit:

 “Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. (v9)

“But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Cor 2:14)

3) Kingdom Thinking knows Gods protection
Again, “Are there not 12 hours in the day …” (v. 9 – in response to the threat of being stoned)

4) Kingdom Thinking knows that Father has heard our prayer:
 “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. And I know that You always hear Me…” (vs 41-42)

5) Kingdom Thinking operates out of faith
“Did I not say to you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?” (v 40)

How do we change our thinking and renew our minds?

1) Know “The resurrection and the Life” personally.
“that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection” (Phil 3:10)

This is the most important point of all. It’s one thing to know about Jesus; it’s something else entirely to know Him personally and have a relationship with Him as one of His disciples. So the first question is this: Do you know Jesus yourself? Have you been born again of the Spirit of God? As Jesus put it Himself: “Truly, truly, I say to you, except anyone be born from above, he is not able to see the kingdom of God.”” (John 3:3)

2) Know who He is in you
“But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.” (Rom 8:11)

“Christ in you, the hope of glory” (col 1:27)

Bible hope is the expectation that something will happen; certainty, not wishful thinking. One of the most telling examples of New Testament “hope” is in Romans 8 20-21: “For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that  the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.” God didn’t have His fingers crossed when He brought death into the world: He knew for certain that His plan for redemption would be fulfilled.

Jesus was certain that God’s glory would be manifested at the tomb of Lazarus. ““This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God.” Through Christ in us we have this certainty of coming glory, and through faith we can make this a reality in our present lives.

3) Hear what He says in the Spirit

Know that “my sheep hear my voice.” Not just my leaders, not just my prophets, not just the man who is preaching, but my sheep. All of them. Learn how to recognise His voice and believe what He says, because faith comes from hearing. Jesus knew what was coming because His Father had told Him.

4) Instead of wanting to hold on to what you’ve had, look forward to what God is going to bring.

“Didn’t I tell you that you see the glory of God?”

This is not meant to be an exhaustive list of what we need to do in order to renew our minds and move towards resurrection life, but it illustrates an important principal of discipleship: we can either stare at life’s tombstones, or we can be like Jesus and look for the glory. The decision is ours.





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

Prepare Ye the way the Lord! Make His paths straight.

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“And whatever you do in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.“ (Colossians 3:17).

I’ve just come back from a mission trip to Liberia in West Africa, a nation destroyed by civil war in the 1990s and more recently ravaged again by Ebola. Our team spent a week preaching the gospel, doing leadership training, working with women,  children and teenagers, and holding medical clinics. There were eight of us in the team, each with different skills and specialisms, which we all used to one purpose, which was to share the love of Jesus wherever we went, in word and deed. We had a full schedule, and our trip was focused and fruitful. We used different ministries effectively. I think we could say, with some confidence that it was a fulfilment of the injunction of Colossians 3:17: “And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.”

I have mentioned this, not to draw attention to our ministry, but to use it as a model of what we are called to be doing all the time. We are not our own, but were bought with a price (1 Cor 6:20), commissioned to be on mission all the time wherever we are. We have different gifts and ministries, but they are all devoted to one goal, which is for the body of Christ to become “a perfect man“ (Ephesians 4:13) and for the Kingdom Of God to come on Earth as we live through Him and do everything in His name according to Colossians 3:17.

If someone wants to do something in my name, I would want it to be done as if I were doing it; if not, I would not want my name on it. To do something “in Jesus name,“ not does not mean just to use the phrase like a rubber stamp on all our prayers and proclamations, but to live and speak in such a way that Jesus is happy to have His name on what we say and do.  In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul writes: “For us there is one God, the father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live.“ (1 Cor 8:6).  If we live through Him, that means He’s touching everything we do, and everything we do can be a path from heaven to earth.  If  He isn’t touching everything we do, we aren’t living through Him.

One of the biggest problems in Liberia is the lack of roads. One of the greatest empires in the history of mankind was the roman empire. The Romans built a civilisation by building the roads first: once the roads were down, people and supplies could travel to build and strengthen communities. Without the roads, communities in Liberia remain weak and isolated.

Jesus is coming back soon: how well are we building His roads?  The gospel is being preached to all nations: the Queens’s evangelistic funeral service was attended by the heads (or their representatives) of all but two of the world’s nations, and now the TV series “The Chosen” is being watched by millions. End time prophecy is being fulfilled, the world is going up in smoke , global warming has already gone past tipping point, and no policy or man can fix it. Our call is to prepare the Way of the Lord and make His paths straight: this is the work of the Holy Spirit through us. Our lives are His paths: every day, every moment, is an opportunity for Him to travel from heaven through us. What are His paths in our lives like: straight, like Roman roads, ready for him to bring his supplies at a moment’s notice; or are they potholed unsurfaced tracks that leave His kingdom unfinished and His people impoverished and incomplete?

As the apostle Francis of Assisi (1181-1226 AD) is often quoted as saying: “Preach the gospel at all times, and use words if necessary.” So many of us are full of knowledge, and consequently full of words; but knowledge puffs up and does nothing to build the roads. Only love edifies. Whatever we do in love will have His name on it, and nothing else will make His paths straight.

Discipleship and witness

“Oh lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall declare your praise” (Psalm 51, verse 15)

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A couple of weeks ago I watched tens of thousands of starlings flocking together,  and saw how they can represent the unity of the Body of Christ. The other evening I walked down the road and watched one starling singing from a chimney pot. It was captivating. I was actually in Spain, and I noticed how different this bird’s song was from the ones at home. Although they do have a lot of sounds in common, each starling has its unique song:  they vary according to the area they live in and what local sounds they pick up and mimic. And this one was definitely singing in Spanish!

So why starlings again? Because God is calling forth the voice of his people. Each one of us in the Body of Christ has a unique voice. A voice might be for a region or for a nation or for the church, for a workplace or the family, but it will be different from any other voice in the body; and when we open our lips and express anything that God has given us with the voice that is our own, it is to the praise of His glory.

However many of Gods starlings are not opening their lips. They may have been saved for years, yet they still don’t know what their voice is – they literally don’t know the sound of it. And yet the Lord wants an expressive people, a church who will declare His word, minister His truth, share His love, and praise His name. Jesus sent us all to preach the gospel. Most of the gifts of the Spirit needs to be put into words. God is a verbal God, and he wants a verbal people. A verbal people is a powerful people.

This is where the five-fold ministries come in. Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers are people who have found their voice. God has given these gifts to the church to “equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:12)  1 Corinthians 14:26 says “each one has a hymn, a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church is built up.”  Paul writes to the Romans: “Therefore let us pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify another.” One of the main goals of the church that we find in the New Testament is the edification (building up) of disciples so that they can come to maturity.

But over the centuries, the enemy has silenced the voices of God’s people and the church has not been built up the way that God intends. Whether we operate in a five-fold ministry or not, we need to help His starlings to find their voices, however we can, whenever and wherever we can. We need to equip the saints for works of ministry so that the whole flock is opening its lips and declaring the praises of God, and we need to share this vision with everyone we can. There are many church leaders that need to hear this message: it won’t always be received, particularly if religious or other controlling spirits are over the church, but it must be spoken.

Finally,  we must never stop listening to the starlings, because we are only starlings ourselves. And when everyone has found their voice, the whole church is built up. What is the result? Ephesians 4:13 tells us clearly: “We all come to the unity of faith and to the knowledge of the son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.“

Once that has been achieved, the bride is ready for the groom.

Christian Life, Discipleship and witness

Is everything just chance – or is there a plan?

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This is the story of how I met the Living God.

My (second) marriage was already falling apart. I’d gone to a church because it had beautiful grounds and I thought I’d find some sort of peace there. Christianity didn’t interest me; Jesus was a pretty two-dimensional Sunday school figure who lived in children’s illustrations. The priest was talking about “The God of Love and the Love of God”. I was looking out of the window into the gardens, and thinking more about the love of women, something along the lines of “If we split up there are plenty more fish in the sea, and I could see our daughter at weekends – it won’t be the end of the world…”

Suddenly I saw something I’d never seen before: all my string of relationships (including the present one) lined up like dominoes, and all falling over. Each of them had something in common: me. I realised that the next relationship would go the same way as all the rest, and I would be without love. There may be plenty more fish in the sea, but for me the sea would always be empty. Being without love was the one thing in life that I could not face. Meanwhile this guy in a black dress was standing in front of me, talking about Jesus loving me so much he went to the cross and died for my sins.

I didn’t really understand about Jesus “dying for my sins”, but I understood about being loved. I shut my eyes and said something like this: “Jesus, if you really are there and you love my like this bloke says you do, I’ll have to have your love, because I can’t live without any at all!”

The next moment it was as if Jesus himself was standing next to me with His arm round my shoulder.  It was so real that I felt like I would have seen Him if I had opened my eyes. It was as if I was being filled from head to toe with golden, liquid light. A voice came into my head, saying, “I have always loved you, and I will never leave you nor forsake you”.

I came out of that church feeling that I had hope and a future. I didn’t say anything to my wife though, in case she said “That’s fine, then – you’ve got Jesus now, so you don’t need me…” Two weeks later, though, she had a deep personal experience herself of the reality of Jesus, and, after considerable prevarication, we joined a church and started on a new life as Christians.

That was nearly forty years ago. Life has not been easy, but it has been fruitful: we have three lovely children and six  grandchildren, and run a successful business that has won several awards. One of our children works in the business with us. Over the years, in our lives and in the lives of many other people that we know, we have seen this living God at work supernaturally to bring peace, healing, resources, and victory over impossible circumstances. Not always, to be sure, and sometimes not when you feel like you need the intervention the most; and we will all have a lot of questions for Him when we get to heaven. But knowing God is like listening to an Orchestra where you only might only get to hear a few of the notes, but those chords are so real and so amazing that you know they all belong to one piece of music, led by one master conductor. You want to hear more, and most of all you want to get to know the conductor.

The Kingdom of God
If you’ve already met the Conductor this next bit will be familiar territory for you: you can stop here, and I hope you enjoyed my story! But if you haven’t – please read on, because it could change your life.

I didn’t understand it at the time, other than that I knew I had met God for myself, but that first experience was the Holy Spirit flooding me with the love of Jesus.  One of the fundamentals of biblical Christianity is that, while Jesus died on the cross, rose from the dead and ascended to Heaven until such time as He returns (and the way the world is going it looks like that could be soon!), He sent the Holy Spirit to the Church – His body on the earth today – to carry on what He started with His original disciples. When we meet to worship on a Sunday, we expect the Holy Spirit to speak and work through different people, just like in the early church, touching people’s lives and bringing change – bringing more of the Kingdom of God on earth.

Eternal Life
This is God’s plan: sin (that “domino effect”) came into the world, bringing death to everyone; Jesus defeated it by accepting the cosmic punishment for the sin of all humanity, bringing forgiveness and eternal life to all who accept Him. What is eternal life? When Jesus prayed to God,  His Father, just before He was crucified, He said this: “This is everlasting life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Him whom You sent, Jesus Christ. “ (John 17:3) Eternal life is knowing God, and we find it, and Him, in Jesus. Jesus said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No-one comes to the Father but by Me.” (John 14:6). At this point what you are reading becomes more than just information to store away, because you can become part of that plan right now. You can meet the Master Conductor yourself, whoever you are and whatever you’ve done. You can start a new life in relationship with God. You decide to live differently (that’s what repentance is), and He guides you and helps you. Here is a simple prayer you can pray before you do anything else. It’s called “The sinner’s prayer:”

Lord Jesus, I need You. Thank You for dying on the cross for my sins. I open the door of my life and receive You as my Saviour and Lord. Thank You for forgiving my sins and giving me eternal life.

The Real Giant Leap
Wow. If you prayed that from your heart, lights went on in Heaven for you. It was the first step of your new life, and the most important step you’ll ever make, because you’ve just stepped from darkness to light; from death to life. You have stepped into a relationship with God. Jesus came to mend the relationship between us and our Father who created all things, including you and me. You may well have prayed The Lord’s Prayer in the past, but now you’ve met the person you were talking to; because when we meet Jesus we meet the Father too. Never mind the moon landing; that was the real Giant Leap. And you’ve just joined millions of other people who have prayed those words, because that was the prayer that Billy Graham used at his crusades. Now of course you’ve got to keep walking! Where you stand is a great start, because you are now in the light of eternal life instead of the darkness of death and sin, but you don’t want to stand still for the rest of your life, do you?

Now What?
There’s loads to understand of course – that won’t ever stop. But start by reading the Bible –  begin with the New Testament for now, which is the story and teachings of Jesus and His first disciples (you’ve just become one). Start talking to your new-found, long lost Father about the important things in your life (that is prayer), and ask Jesus to lead you to other Christians and to show you a church to join. You can’t really be a Christian on your own: we need each other. God is a God of relationships. If you see an “Alpha Course” (an international non-denominational introduction to the Christian faith) advertised anywhere, join it. They are really good, lots of churches run them, and they are the real deal.

The Connection
One last thing. God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father is and has always been in Heaven. The Son, Jesus, came to Earth and went back to Heaven, and the Holy Spirit came from Heaven and is now on Earth. They are all part of each other, and it’s the Holy Spirit who connects Heaven to Earth in His people, the church. Ask Jesus to fill you with the Holy Spirit. There is no textbook description of what you will experience when you do, because we are all different, and it may be nothing straight away; but one thing is sure: He will start to change your life. It’s through the Holy Spirit that you will start to make sense of the Bible; your desires and appetites may well change; you will find the ability to do things you couldn’t do before, (including maybe using a heavenly language called speaking in tongues, and possibly other spiritual gifts – you can read about them in the Bible, in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14); and above all you will start to find that you can love others where you couldn’t before. Because now that you have the love of God inside your own heart, the most important thing for you to do is to share it. Sharing the love of God is what it is all about.

That’s it. I do hope you’ve prayed that prayer. If you have, I’ll see you in Heaven, if not before. Meanwhile, there’s nothing more exciting in Life than when the conductor points His baton at you and says: “It’s your turn!”

Footnote: If you want to use this material to help others to find God’s plan for their lives, it’s available as a pdf file in the “Free Downloads” section.

Second footnote: I go into more detail about my conversion, as well as other significant moments in my life as a disciple of Jesus, in my book “Wheat in the Winepress.”

Discipleship and witness, Walking in the Spirit

The Man who Saw the Light

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He was born blind so that the works of God might be revealed in him.

Whenever I have read the story of the man born blind (John 9: 1-39) I have focussed on the unusual details of the miracle itself, its aftermath, its significance as a sign, the blindness of the Pharisees, and the declaration of Jesus that He is the light of the world:  the stuff of countless sermons. But I have never really thought much about the man’s blindness. When the disciples asked Jesus who had sinned to cause it, the Lord’s answer was, as we probably know:  “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.“

How long, O LORD ?
The thought that struck me when I read the story this time round was simply this: how long has he been waiting in the darkness for the works of God to be revealed in him?  As we know from the account of water being turned into wine, John sees the miracles of Jesus as signs, and his gospel is structured through a progression of signs that bring an unfolding revelation of the deity of Jesus. The work of God that is revealed in this man is centred on Jesus as being the light of the world. The man born blind stands for all mankind, living in darkness until we see the light. Was he aware of God’s plan and God’s timing as he sat begging for scraps by the roadside? I think not. If he prayed, it probably would have been “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” (Psalm 13:1)

Transformed to follow
Once God’s purpose was fulfilled his life was totally transformed, and not only was he now able to physically see, but from being a type of Man born in darkness, he becomes a type of Man born again into the Light: he values his testimony above his acceptance by the religious authorities, he is excluded from their system, and he worships Jesus. And from being a nobody by the roadside he becomes probably the best-known man in all of history who ever saw the Light.

Sitting in darkness
God’s ways are so much higher than ours. In His plan, the nations are a drop in the bucket, Isaiah 40:15) and “the glory of a man as the flowers of the grass.“ (1 Pe 1: 24-25) However in the dimension of the Spirit God has plans for us that are of eternal consequence; even though, like the man born blind, we may have absolutely no idea what they could be, and are living off scraps in darkness and uncertainty, unable to see God’s purpose and feeling void of purpose ourselves.

The moment of revelation
Yet the blindness and the scraps were also part of this man’s  calling, as they are of ours: the purpose we were born to was that the works of God should be revealed in us. That roadside is where He has put us, the scraps we receive are from His hand, and that transforming moment of revelation is heading in our direction, walking down the road in Christ.

Caked in mud
With an understanding that God hasn’t just left us in the dark to beg for the rest of our lives but that He has put us where we are for a purpose, it becomes possible to find peace by the roadside. But then the question for all of us is this: when our moment arrives, what will be our response? For the man born blind, an encounter with Jesus began the process of transformation, but it didn’t complete it. After the initial meeting, Jesus put mud on his eyes. Not only were his eyes useless, but now they were caked in dirt as well, and they probably stung. Everything in his flesh would have urged him to wipe it off immediately. Things got worse before they got better. But with the mud came an instruction: “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam.” Jesus said of His words, “Blessed are you if you do them,” (John 13:17). So the man didn’t try and wipe the stinging mud off his eyes, but he did as he was told.

Sent from the pool
First the encounter, then the mud, then the walk to the pool. The transformation only happened after he had walked and washed. What do we do when God finally turns up after have been praying “How long, Lord?” but then we just get mud on our eyes? 1 Thess 5 16-18 says “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.“  Do we get up and walk in  joy and thanksgiving and recognition of God’s will, or do we stay by the roadside and wait for another encounter?

Walk and Wash
 The man’s life changed when he walked to the pool and washed, not when Jesus first met with him. Siloam means “sent.” The pool of the One who was sent is the pool of forgiveness (His blood) and the pool of the Spirit (the Water). For God’s works to be revealed in us we need to get up and walk, and to be washed in them both.

The roadside, the encounter, and the mud are steps in the preparation of God’s purpose for us; but it’s by walking that we get to Siloam, and it’s from there that we are sent to bring the light.

Discipleship and witness, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

The prayer of the unprofitable servant. 

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“So the Lord said, “If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. And which of you, having a servant plowing or tending sheep, will say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and sit down to eat’? 8 But will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare something for my supper, and gird yourself and serve me till I have eaten and drunk, and afterward you will eat and drink’? 9 Does he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded [a]him? I think not. 10 So likewise you, when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.’ “ (Luke 17: 6-10)

The parable of the unprofitable servant was the Lord’s answer to His disciples’ request to increase their faith. We can read it as saying that increased faith comes from increased obedience, but the context that we are given is far less straightforward than such a simple equation: real faith, even as tiny as a grain of mustard seed, will accomplish impossible acts. Even a tree that has no ears will obey a command that is given out of faith, when that faith is itself an obedient response to a command from Above.

Every believer wants to increase their faith, and we all long to command those mulberry trees to be planted in the sea. Whether we spiritualise the image or take it literally, we want to see God’s hand transforming our landscape. And all the while that this desire motivates us, we can be wrestling with another question: what is it that God has asked me to do, so that I can obey Him?

If we know our Bibles at all, we can quote any number of Bible verses that give us the answer, and many of them will be found in the writings of John: if we want to obey Jesus, we love one another. Simple. The trouble is that obedience to the New Commandment isn’t of itself a guarantee of progress along the pathway of faith: the imperative to love can be a guiding principle in the Christian life without being a requirement for mustard-seed faith, and while this guiding principle is fundamental – there is no Christian life without it –  it is not enough alone to equip us to “be strong and do exploits” as promised in Daniel 11:32. Love is the only good ground where the seeds of faith will be fruitful, but the seeds have to come from the Sower as well. The question is, how do we get those seeds?

Again, many answers come readily to mind, because the Holy Spirit has been given to us, Jesus is the Good Shepherd, and His sheep hear His voice in many ways. But about a week ago I said something to the Lord that I have never said before. It was this: “Lord, are there any jobs you want me to do today?” I suppose you could say it was the prayer of the unprofitable servant. And there was. It wasn’t a miracle on the streets, and no-one fell to their knees and said ‘What must I do to be saved?’ It was just (just?) a simple manifestation of our Heavenly Father’s lovingkindness. This is what happened.

I was on a birding mini-break, driving out of a pub where I had had lunch, and was flagged down by an elderly lady walking up the road who asked me if I knew how far we were from a certain village. I checked on Google maps and told her, “Two miles.” She was devastated: she actually lived there and had gone for a walk, but had taken a wrong turning and got lost. When I offered to drive her home her gratitude was palpable. I was able to tell her that I had asked the Lord that very morning if He had any jobs for me, and this was clearly one – so He was the one to thank for sending me to rescue her! She said “I will!” She was a Christian herself, and told me that she had been at church the previous day to celebrate Ascencion Day. We chatted a little more on the short journey, and she arrived home thoroughly blessed, and with a story to tell about how much the Good Shepherd cared for her by sending a “good Samaritan” (this is what she called me) to rescue her when she was lost.

I was so encouraged by this unexpected answer to my  prayer that I asked the Lord the same question the following morning. “Is there anything you want me to do today, Lord?” I said. I was spending the day at RSPB Minsmere, which is a lovely nature reserve in Suffolk (Google it if you’re interested). I arrived early and saw no-one else around (birder’s bonus!) until I was walking along a path and saw a chap behind me looking with binoculars into a field that a rare protected species is known to frequent. I waited for him to catch up. “Did you see the stone-curlews?” I asked. “Nah,” he replied, and we fell into step and started chatting birders’ talk. We were heading for the same hide, and went in together. As we both watched the birds through our optics – me with my camera and zoom lens, he with his binoculars – we soon started chatting about ourselves. He was about 15 years younger than me, but looked fairly grizzled by life’s mill. We warmed to each other, beyond the pages of our field guides, and defences came down. His name was Bert.

Bert told me he used to be a new age traveller, living off-grid for years in the 1980’s. He was steeped in new age spirituality, actually calling himself a “born-again pagan.” Before I met Jesus in 1983 I too was a “new ager,” so we had many touching points in our pasts; and before long I was not only sharing the gospel in the context of my testimony in a depth of detail that he could identify with, but was suggesting that he should read the gospel of John and revisit the account of Jesus with fresh eyes. And all of this was happening as we looked out from the bird hide and shared what we were seeing. The conversation went something like this: “Look! Little ringed plover there on the mudflat! Actually my background is Catholic”– “Yes, got it! Look at him running along the water’s edge. I love those little birds. But if you read John you get the spiritual truth behind the packaging of religion. You need to know Jesus for yourself. There’s a black-tailed godwit by the reeds – have you got it?” “Yes, I can see it. Beautiful male. It’s Matthew Mark, Luke and John, isn’t it?”

And so it went on. It was one of the warmest and most authentic evangelistic conversations I have ever had, and by Bert’s question about the location of John’s gospel I know he was listening – please pray for him with me. You can read the story that I shared with him here, (scroll down the the section entitled “Which Yoke?”) and you’ll see how significant it was in the context of that meeting; but the main point is that I had asked the Lord if He had any jobs for me that day, and that’s what He gave me to do.  

I pray that prayer every morning now, and each day so far has been marked in some way by a fresh and unexpected unveiling of God’s purposes for my life in the path that I am walking. And what is more is that I am more aware of the reality of His Love and of that guiding principle of the New Commandment as I walk it, because I am looking out for the next job He has got lined up.

Try it for yourself. We are unprofitable servants. All you are doing is showing up for work, doing what it is your duty to do. The Sower will send the seeds.

Discipleship and witness, Holiness: You shall be perfect, Pursuing Love

I Will Build My Church

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Jesus said “I will build my church, and the gates of hell so not prevail against it.“ We are in the world, but we are not of it.  Jesus was from above; we too are born from above. All good and perfect gifts come down from the Father of lights.  All that Jesus builds of his Church is from above. When the kingdom of God comes on Earth as it is in Heaven, it comes from above, and what is built is from above. What is built is not of the world, even though it is in it. What is of the world is passing away; what Christ brings into the world is eternal. As the apostle John wrote:  “The world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.” (1 John 2:17) Even in the rubble and devastation of war, the eternal Kingdom of God is being built in the hearts of men and women who love him. (Other references from this paragraph: Matt: 16:18, John 17:16, John 8:23, James 1:17.)

That is all solid scriptural truth, and it’s easy for me to sit in my armchair and dictate it into my iPhone, in the comfort and convenience of the Western world and its technology. But if a bomb landed on my house now as they are landing in Ukraine, and took away in seconds all that I have built over 40 years, where would my heart be?

David wrote “I will walk within my house with a perfect heart.” (Psa 101:2) If my house collapsed around me, I wonder if  my heart still be perfect? I think not. I don’t have to look back very far over the last 24 hours without seeing glaring imperfections in my heart. In fact there is only Jesus, whom David prophesied in that psalm, who can say in truth that He walks within His house with a perfect heart. And we are all His house; (Heb 3:6) By His Spirit He does walk among us, building His Kingdom as we give Him the building materials of our lives. As Christina Rosetti wrote in the words of the Christmas Carol, all that we can give Him is our hearts, and when we give Him our hearts, He builds with them. His house is the place where righteousness dwells, and where love, truth, peace, and joy are found.


Paul wrote: “He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.“ (2 Cor 5:15) If I’m living for myself I’m not building His house, but I’m building my own. If my heart is attached to the house that I build, to my own satisfaction, my own peace and joy, and it falls down around me, I will be devastated. But If my heart is truly devoted to building His house, and I live  for Him through loving others, I will not care if mine collapses,  but I will pick my way through the rubble looking for people who have been hurt by falling stones. And as I do that His kingdom will be built in that place on Earth, even though not a stone of my house remains standing.

I am a long way from this, as I expect most of us are. But we can choose on a daily basis to build His house rather than stay huddled in our own, simply by preferring one another…

Christian Life, Discipleship and witness, Living by Faith, Walking in the Spirit

The Key of David

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I was recently at the UK National exhibition Centre (the NEC) where our company was exhibiting and I was a speaker at an event. It’s a while since I have set up our exhibitions stand at a show, but the people I usually delegate weren’t able to do this one, so the lot fell to me, and because I have had other priorities over the last couple of weeks – and because I tend to leave things till the last minute anyway – my preparations were minimal, and I arrived at the exhibitor traffic control entrance for the exhibition hall expecting the procedure to be the same as last time we were there. It wasn’t.

“Have you got a QR code for me, mate?”

“QR code? Sorry, what QR code?” Apparently I should have registered on the (new) traffic control website to be given allocated a timeslot for setting up. I would have been given two hours. There had been road works and a diversion just before the NEC where it had seemed like every access to the centre was closed, and I had gone badly astray,  and with other (more self-imposed) delays I was already over an hour behind my hope-for schedule. I was on my own, and I had a van full of stuff to unload to build my stand and set up my display. This was not what I needed.

 However the gate attendant was very friendly and helpful, and said, “Don’t worry mate. You can do it now.“

So I logged onto the site on my mobile phone, filled in my details, (hassle, hassle!) and pressed register. Nothing. I pressed register again. Still nothing. I could not register on the site. No matter how many times I pressed the “register“ button, the site failed to respond. I called the attendant over. “I can’t log on!“ I shouted through the van window. I had asked the Lord for help with setting up – angels, I was thinking – as it’s a good few years since I have set up a big exhibition on my own, and at this moment I did not see the help that had just come my way.

The attendant grinned. “Ah! Site crash!“ he said. “Don’t worry mate – hold on a minute.“ He went back to his little hut, and came back with a printed form, which he started scribbling on. “ Here you are!” he said. “You’re Dave today! Put this on your dashboard. That will keep security happy.”


He gave me the form he had filled in, and “Dave” was written in the space where my name should have been. Why he didn’t ask my name to fill in I wlll never know, but what I did know straight away was that I am a brother of Jesus, and Jesus was the Son of David. I was very happy for Dave – David – to be my name. Revelation 3: 7 says “And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write, ‘These things says He who is holy, He who is true,”He who has the key of David, He who opens and no one shuts, and shuts and no one opens,” and right now this was my key of David, and indeed it opened the way into the exhibition hall for me.

But that isn’t the whole story, and of itself would hardly be a tale worth telling. What is worth telling though is that because the traffic control website crashed, I wasn’t allocated a time slot on the system. It took me four hours to set up my stand. A heavenly hand had frozen the system for me because God knew how long I would need, and what the key of David opened for me no-one could shut…

But it doesn’t end there. I left the hall at 7.30 – the last man standing, in fact – and headed for where I thought the hotel was. I found a multi-story car park and a brightly-lit complex called Resort World, but nothing that said The Genting Hotel. I drove round some cones in the road to ask another gate attendant if he could help me (The NEC is full of cones and gate attendants), but all he did was shout at me for driving round the cones and point me to the multi-story car park, where the entrance to the one-way system yawned like the gates of hell I had two suitcases – mine and Anne’s, my laptop, and another large shoulder bag, and I had visions of having to park the car and still go looking for the hotel, carrying all that luggage.

Actually the Genting Hotel is inside Resort World, but I didn’t know this until I had gone to the very top of the multi-story, parked the car, and saw the sign by the entrance to the lift.

When I came out of the lift at the bottom I was in a world of loud music and bright lights: the shopping arcade and the bars and restaurants of Resort World, but I saw the entrance to the hotel off through an archway. So by his time I had got lost in the diversion, been unable to find the hotel – oh yes: I hadn’t been able to find the exhibition hall loading bay  either – had an unwelcoming encounter with a gate attendant, and now found myself in a world of noise and bright lights and shiny people heading for their night out, when all I wanted was rest,  dinner, and my bed. I was supposed to have been at a speaker’s welcome dinner at six o’clock, so that ship had truly sailed. I felt like an alien in Babylon.

However when I finally got to my hotel room it was delightful, and I did manage to find a restaurant where there was no loud music and I could eat a nice meal in pleasant surroundings, and when I went back to the comfort of my room and reflected on the evening I saw a glimpse of the story that the Holy Spirit was writing…

Hebrews 12:23 says that we have “come to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven.” Because I am registered in heaven there was no need for me to register for my limited timeslot, because my Father was going to supply all my need (4 hours) according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus, not just half of it. (Phil 4:19) By Christ Jesus He gave  me the Key of David which opened a door that none could shut. I felt like an alien in Resort World because I am one: I am not of the world, even though I am in it.  And in that world there is going to be opposition – traffic diversions, confusing road signs or lack of them, unfriendly officials, all seeming to conspire against me fulfilling the purpose I was there to accomplish.  But Jesus has overcome the world, and in the midst of that alien environment He didn’t just give me a few scraps that would keep me going, but He looked after me as a child that He loves, and whom he had sent into that place for a purpose.

What was my purpose at the event, as a speaker and an exhibitor? My talk was well-received, and the exhibition of our products was a success commercially. But none of that was really the purpose of my mission: they were just aspects of the marketplace where the Son of David was walking with His key on His shoulder, ministering His truth and love. Because in the course of the social events of the following evening He opened opportunities for me to speak of Him to four different people: a lapsed Baptist, a liberal vicar, and two agnostic academics.

Whatever we are doing, our purpose in the world is to reveal Him through it. Whatever opposition we receive, all things will work together for good because we love the Lord and are called according to this,  His purpose. Because we are his beloved children, registered in Heaven, He will meet our need according to His riches in Christ Jesus and not our poverty; because we are His masterpiece walking in the works prepared beforehand for us in this crumbling world, and because we are His light shining like stars in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, He will make a way where there is no way. (Rom 8:28, Heb 12:23, Phil 4:19, Eph 2:10,  Phil 2:15,  Isaiah 43,  2 Cor 3:3)

We are the epistle of Christ: what is the Holy Spirit writing through you today?

Discipleship and witness, Walking in the Spirit

“Lord, teach us to pray…”

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“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: 1-13)

When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, he gave them – and us – the Lord’s prayer. We tend to think – or at least I always have – that the Lord’s prayer is His answer to their request. But the teaching doesn’t end there. In Luke 11, the first four verses are the prayer itself, the next four are the illustration of the value of persistence in prayer, and the next five are the illustration of the Father’s generosity towards all who “ask seek and knock.” We have 13 verses of teaching, not just four: what to pray, how to pray, and how we can expect the Father to answer.


It’s been said before, but what strikes me about the illustration of the persistent friend is that he isn’t asking for bread for himself, but for the traveller who has come to his house. Jesus isn’t teaching us about how to pray for ourselves, but how to pray for others. Actually what He does teach us about praying for ourselves is quite short: basically He says our Father has got what we need before we even ask Him! (Matt 6:8)  If we walk in daily relationship with our Father Jesus says that He will feed and clothe us without the need for our shopping list. It’s  when we have nothing in our larder for those who come to out “house” that prayer is a requirement.


The model that the apostle Peter gives us for evangelism is to always be ready with an answer for those who ask us about our faith (1 Peter 3:15.  I wrote about it last week). I think we can read the reference to our “house” as being more than the bricks and mortar that we live in (if we are fortunate enough), but our whole area of influence and the network of our relationships. In a sense, whoever we are with is in our “house,” and the Lord wants us to feed them with His bread. We don’t feed them with our bread; we feed them with His bread. We have nothing in our personal larders they can feed anybody else’s spirit: we have to go to the Lord for His provision. And it seems that sometimes we have to pester Him before He provides. Why? I wouldn’t like to say that I know, but it might be that He wants us to show a bit more love for and commitment to the needy person then one quick request. It may be our persistence is a hallmark of our love and also, maybe, a measure of our faith. But whatever the reason, Jesus teaches us to ask until we have received what we are asking for.

And this leads on to the final section of the teaching. Having shown that we need to be persistent when we “ask, seek, and knock” (the Greek tense means “ask and keep on asking), the Lord’s teaching goes on to tell us how faithful the Father is to answer. The persistent friend kept on asking for bread to give to his visitor. Jesus said that if we, as “evil” mortals, know how to give “good gifts” to our children, our good Father can surely be counted on to give “good gifts” to us, His children. In the next verse, the idea of the Father giving the Holy Spirit to those who ask (v 13) seems to come out slightly of left field in the context of the passage, but if we think of asking the Father to give us “bread” for others it follows on very clearly.

“Bread” is an accepted image for Words of Life. Our “daily bread” is the spiritual sustenance we receive through God’s word as well as the sustenance we need for our bodies. When we need Words of Life to give to someone, there is only one person we can turn to, because only Jesus has them (John 6:68). The only way we can receive those words of life are by the Spirit.  It is not unintentional that the writer of the Book of Acts quotes Jesus as making a connection between the Father giving the Holy Spirit and earthly fathers giving “good gifts” to their children. If an “evil” earthly father can give “good gifts” to his children, how much more will our Heavenly Father give “good gifts” when He gives the Spirit to those who ask (persistently)? And those good gifts, I would say, are precisely what the context suggests they are: they are the gifts of the Holy Spirit. We get “bread” for our friends by asking our Father for gifts of the Holy Spirit.

If Jesus’ passion is to build His church, and our commission is to get the job done in His name, especially by having an answer for everyone who asks us about our faith, we have in Luke 11 1-13 a classic three-point sermon on how to go about it:

1: We walk in God’s ways. If we live out of the Lord’s prayer from our hearts we will be doing that, and our light will be seen by others. (vs. 1-4)

2: They will come to our “house” out of the darkness because they will see that light and they will need to be fed. (vs. 5-8)

3: We can’t feed them ourselves, but we know someone who can give us the best bread of all – the gifts of the Holy Spirit. (vs. 9-13) To adapt Zechariah 4:6, it’s not by might, nor by power, nor by any human “bread” that we can share the gospel, but by my Spirit, says the Lord. All we have to do, whenever someone sees our light and comes to our “house,” is to ask. Persistently.

Discipleship and witness, Holiness: You shall be perfect

Ready to give a defense…

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When we are talking about sharing our faith, we often quote the apostle Peter, who wrote “Always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you.” (From 1 Peter 3:15). Many people who don’t know the peace and blessings of knowing the love of Jesus Christ have been turned off Him by well-meaning Christians who have been so focussed on the first part of this scripture that they have ignored the second: they have been given the reasons why it’s so good to know Jesus without ever having asked for them. Peter is basically saying that we should always be ready to answer questions about our faith to everyone who asks them. The challenge here, as I see it, is not so much having reasons that answer the questions that people ask, but to give people a reason to ask the questions. If they don’t ask the questions, they aren’t ready for the answers. If the hope that is in us isn’t evident to the people we are with, why should they be asking about it?

The fact is, that we tend to only quote half of the scripture. The full verse is this: “But sanctify the Lord God  in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defence to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear” (1 Peter 3:15) Being ready with answers to questions about our faith goes alongside a mindset of holiness (having the Lord God “sanctified” in our hearts) and an attitude of meekness towards others and reverent fear towards the God who has commissioned us with this task.

I am not the greatest living example of these attitudes, but I do have a story of one occasion (there aren’t many…)  where I definitely had “sanctified the Lord God in my heart,” and as a result was asked a question about my faith which led to an opportunity to minister to some strangers. I have written about it in “Two Seconds to Midnight,” so if you have read the book you will recognise it. Here’s the extract:

“I sat down to start this chapter on January 4th; my eldest daughter Shelley, her husband and their three children had gone home two days earlier after spending ten days with us. Lisa, our middle daughter, her husband and their two-year-old were also with us for three days over Christmas. So the holiday was noisy and messy, with lots of clearing and washing up, governed very much by the routines of the children and punctuated by the sound of their unwillingness (the older ones anyway) to comply with them. Now I love my family, and Anne loves to be surrounded by them; but I also like to spend time in quiet solitude, reading, writing, birdwatching, doing photography or listening to music. As you can imagine, there is a clash of interests here, and I have to confess that at times in the past I have let my irritation at the level of mayhem in the house when my grandchildren are roaring around get the better of me. So I had really been asking the Lord to help me, and particularly to give me wisdom throughout the day if any tensions or difficulties arose, so that I didn’t get bad-tempered and spoil the atmosphere for everyone else.

In my morning quiet time I had been reading through the gospel of Matthew. About a week earlier I had been struck by Jesus’s words to a would-be follower: “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest His head” (Matthew 8:20). The Holy Spirit showed me that as soon as things got noisy I was looking for somewhere to “rest my head”, but that this wasn’t an option for me any more than it was an option for Jesus. Instead I was to seek His peace, which as we know is “not as the world gives” (John 14:27). This verse became a great support for me in the ensuing days, and when the family had gone Anne remarked how well I had coped with everything, and (although she didn’t specifically use the word) how much more pleasant I had been on this visit than on some previous occasions. God had sent me His word as I spent time with Him reading through Matthew, and it had been living and active through my circumstances, bringing His peace into my spirit when my flesh could find no rest:  “Her ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace.” (Prov 3:17)

But the story doesn’t end there. Anne had seen some furniture on eBay that was perfect for her plans to do some redecorating in our living room. The complication was that it was in London, and I would need to drive our company van (not my favourite driving experience) down to pick it up – three hours each way. In addition, it became clear that I needed to go immediately. It was the weekend, and I had planned to spend it recovering from the busy week before going back to work on Monday. But after Anne and I had discussed it, I was able to give the whole thing to the Lord, and I had an assurance that it was right to go. I felt a real peace about the trip which dispelled all my anxieties (I drive an automatic and the van is manual; I was worried about driving the big van through London streets; I was worried about getting too tired to drive safely, etc.), and I even started to look forward to it. A total turnaround.

Bear in mind here that I had been reading, thinking and praying about God’s peace for this chapter of the book. The furniture (it was a three-piece suite) was being sold by a Greek family. I spent six months in Greece in my backpacking days before I met Anne and had learnt to speak it fairly competently, so it was a touching point that I was able to say a few words to them in their language. Soon we were sitting down and drinking tea in the kitchen. One of the first things that the man I had been dealing with (I’ll call him John) said was how much more peaceful I seemed than other people. (Interesting, I thought. “My peace I leave you . . .”) We chatted a little more, and soon they were telling me how John’s sister had died suddenly, aged 21, less than two years ago. The mother – I don’t know her name, so I’ll call her Mama – was fighting to hold back tears as she talked. I told them about our baby Miranda who died at ten weeks. I began to feel that this visit was not just about a three-piece suite. Then Mama said something really unexpected. She said, “As soon as you came in, I saw that there was something about you, and I got goose-bumps all down my arm!” John then repeated to Mama what he had said to me earlier about the peace that he saw on me. I explained that what they felt was the presence of the Holy Spirit, and soon I was praying with them, asking the Lord to comfort them in their grief, and that they would know His presence. Then I was on my way home.” (Adapted from Two Seconds to Midnight by Bob Hext, Malcolm Down Publishing)

The chapter goes on to develop other points, but I think this is a helpful real-life example of 1 Peter 3:15 in action. Because I had sought God to put my heart right in an area where I knew my behaviour could easily become ungodly, the light of sanctification that shone in me as I submitted to the word of God also shone out of me onto other people.  I’m not aware of any other occasions when the presence of the Holy Spirit on me has given anyone goose-bumps, but one is a start… The point is this: we are called to be light in the darkness, but unless we have our light switched on nobody is going to ask us why we are shining. Being a witness is drawing others into our light; witnessing is shining a torch in their faces.