Tag Archives: Be filled with the Spirit

Unless we are filled with the Spirit we can’t even hear what God is saying properly, let alone do it.

Knowing God, Living by Faith, Pursuing Love, The word of God

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Verses 11-14 of Matthew 7 go like this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Through a glass darkly

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Holiness: You shall be perfect, Knowing God, Walking in the Spirit

Power Stations

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Christmas is always a very busy time in the church calendar, and January is usually when church leaders look back over those Christmas activities and evaluate them. Or at least, one would hope that is the case. But what do we evaluate our activities (Christmas and otherwise) against? In the business world, we look for a return on investment, and in our Father’s business it is no different. Jesus talks about it in the parable of the talents: the master expected a return on His investment. Jesus invested everything in us when He went to the cross, and the Father who sent him is looking for fruit that endures (John 15:16) as His return. Jesus fell to the ground and died to seed a vine that would bear fruit. It follows that whatever activities we do in the name of Jesus (and Colossians 3:17 exhorts us to do everything in His name) should be directed toward His purpose, which is to bear fruit; to give our Master a return on His investment; to see the Kingdom of God extended on Earth.

As far as I can see, the Bible only defines Christ’s purpose in three ways. Jesus himself talked consistently of two of them, which was to reveal the Father and His Kingdom, and John adds a third strand, which was to destroy the works of the evil one (1 John 3:8). These are most famously and succinctly summed up in the best known of all quotes from the New Testament, John 3:16: God sent His only begotten son into the world, that (i.e. with the purpose of) we should not perish (the work of the evil one) but have everlasting life (in the Kingdom Of God). Jesus also defines everlasting life as knowing the Father (John 17:3). John 3:16 really is the church’s mission statement.

So we have a clear lens through which to view the activities in which we invest time, manpower and money. To what extent are they in keeping with Jesus’s mission statement for His church? Are they, directly or indirectly, manifesting the Father? Are they preaching the Kingdom, taking it by force (Matthew 11:12) and destroying the works of the evil one in doing so? Are they equipping others for this work (Eph 4:12)? If they are, then we’re on mission; if not, we need to focus on what is, “redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” (Ephesians 5:16)

As we well know, the only way we can do the work of the Kingdom is in the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus came to give life and that in abundance (John 10 :10) – everlasting Life. Being vessels for abundant life is always the goal of our mission. We are called to be power stations, individually, and as churches, generating that abundant life, bringing the everlasting energia of the Kingdom of God into this world; bringing Heaven to Earth. Our Father, the vine dresser, is looking for fruit that endures on His vine; He prunes the dead wood, and throws it in the fire. Jesus baptises with the Holy Spirit, and with fire (Matt 3:11). Jesus said “I’ve come to set the Earth on fire; how I wish it were already kindled!“ (Luke 12:49). We can only guess at what Jesus was thinking here, but I believe He was looking beyond the cross to the day of Pentecost, when the tongues of fire came and set the kindling wood of His first church alight. Fire burns the fruitless branches of the vine, and it also brings holiness. In a power station, it is the source of the energy. We can’t have the power without the fire. We can achieve nothing for the Kingdom of God, unless it is by the power of the Holy Spirit, and along with the power of the Holy Spirit comes the fire that sooner or later burns up whatever is not of Him.

So let us always that check that the branches in our part of the vine are bearing the fruit of abundant life, and allow the pruning and the fire if they are barren.

Living by Faith, Pursuing Love, Walking in the Spirit

You’ll Never Walk Alone

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If you know me you will know that Anne and I are supporters of Liverpool Football Club. On 4th September we drove up to Anfield Stadium to watch a match. As you can imagine, parking is an issue. There is quite a lot of match day parking – official and unofficial (people open up an area of private land for the night and charge about £10) – about a mile ( 1.5 kms, ish) from the stadium, and after that the parking thins out considerably. I wanted to head for one particular car park just under a mile away, which I had entered into google maps and was quite prepared to accept the walk; Anne didn’t want to walk more than half a mile. That’s the background: this is where the story begins.

First, I agreed to look for somewhere nearer. We drove past one car park, then another. The satnav said we were ¾ mile from the stadium. Any time now, I thought, and watched carefully for handwritten “Match Day Parking” notices. Anne was asleep – she was very tired, hence the lack of desire for anything more than the minimal walk. Not a car park in sight. Half a mile; still nothing. Fans were streaming towards the stadium along the paths and pavements, but we must have been on a different road from our usual approach because all the match Day Parking that I was familiar with around Anfield seemed to have vaporized, and needless to say every roadside parking spot was occupied. Soon the stadium itself was in sight at the end of the road. I kept driving, Anne kept sleeping, we came to the “Road closed” signs that are all around the stadium on match nights, and Anfield reached up over the rooftops in front of me. “LORD!”  I said as I turned away from the road block, “Where’s our parking??”

Then there it was. On a side street just in front of me ending less 100 yards from the stadium concourse was one parking spot – probably the only one within a mile radius of Anfield. (I’m not exaggerating – you just don’t see them on match nights). I swung right and parked the car, and Anne woke up with the stadium not a mile away, but just a couple of hundred yards.

I’m not just writing this to demonstrate that God really does sometimes give parking spots to His children, but to show how much it illustrates some well-known scriptures. The first is 1 Cor 16:14 – “Let everything you do be done in love.” I like the security of knowing where I am going to park, I don’t like uncertainties mixed with deadlines (in this case, getting into the stadium before the beginning of the match and enjoying the pre-match atmosphere which is part of the fun of the trip.), and I was quite happy to pay the price of a one mile walk to gain that security. However Anne was very  tired and didn’t feel like walking, so I laid down my own preference for her sake, and trusted God  (point 2) to ‘supply my every need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus’ (Phil 4:19)

Point 3 is this: not only did God supply that need, but it was according to Eph 3:20 – more than I could ask or think: “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” I was thinking that I might find a parking space somewhere in the vicinity of the stadium if I just kept driving around, and I was hoping that it would be near enough to walk to before it closed after the match, as well as near enough not to miss too much of the pre-match build-up; but 2 minutes walk from the iconic entrance gate was not in my wildest dreams. And free as well: no £10.00 parking charge. Which is point 4: “you who have no money come, buy grain and eat.” (Isaiah 55:1)

I could go on and talk about faith in the context of thanking God for His provision before we can see it – “Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.” (Mark 11:24), and of our loving Father’s willingness to bless His children out of the bounty of His goodness: “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” (Matt 7:11), but I’d like to land on John 14: 2-3 “In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.”

Jesus has gone and prepared a place for us in Heaven: we have this and other precious promises that it is so. But I think we can see another truth in these verses as well. The word “mansions” here is the Greek monē, meaning “dwelling place;” the same word that Jesus uses later in the same conversation with his disciples when He says “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home (monē) with him.” (John 14: 23). God in Christ went to the cross so that He could prepare a place for us to be with Him where He is in Heaven, and He came to the church at Pentecost and comes again whenever we ask Him (Luke 11:13, Eph 5:18) so that we can also be where He is on Earth.

A friend of mine in the prophetic ministry tells a story of a meeting where he had been invited to speak, when he became aware that the anointing of the Holy Spirit was on the woman with a flag and not on himself at the podium. Instead of delivering his message he called people forward to stand under the flag. Visions, healings and deliverance followed. Scores of people had powerful encounters with God that evening.    Jesus only ever did what He saw the Father doing (John 5:10), and since He sends us just as He was sent (John 20:21: “As the Father has sent Me, I also send you“) we can only do what He is doing if we want our ministries to be fruitful. We need Him to receive us where He is if we want to do what He is doing.

The free parking place that He had prepared for us was just a couple of minutes’ walk from the Anfield gate, where the words (from the Broadway musical “carousel” and sung by millions of Liverpool fans all over the world) of the Liverpool anthem are written: “You’ll never walk alone.” When we obey His words, walking in love and trusting in His provision, He will always give us a parking spot in the place where He is working, however unlikely it seems and however removed it is from what we had planned, because we never walk alone.

(We won the match, incidentally!)

Living by Faith, Walking in the Spirit

God’s supply: “Come to the Waters!”

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“Ho! Everyone who thirsts,
Come to the waters;
And you who have no money,
Come, buy and eat.
Yes, come, buy wine and milk
Without money and without price.
Why do you spend money for what is not bread,
And your wages for what does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good,
And let your soul delight itself in abundance.” (Isaiah 55:1-2)

With every passing day the world’s news seems to bring more insecurity and less stability, whether in the political, the economic or the moral realm. So in these days more than ever we need to remember God’s promise to Abraham, and so, through faith, to us: “I am your shield and your very great reward.” (Gen 15:1) We find our protection, and our provision, in the presence of God and the experience of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Unless we do “come to the waters” I don’t believe we can fully appreciate what it means to “buy and eat” without money.

Before the Holy Spirit was sent, the twelve had given up everything to follow Jesus and spent every day in His company, yet they certainly had not grasped that He was Jehovah Jireh and that they could trust Him entirely for their needs. We see this clearly in Mark 8:14-21:

“Now the disciples had forgotten to take bread, and they did not have more than one loaf with them in the boat. Then He charged them, saying, ‘Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.’ And they reasoned among themselves, saying, ‘It is because we have no bread.’ But Jesus, being aware of it, said to them, ‘Why do you reason because you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive nor understand? Is your heart still hardened? Having eyes, do you not see? And having ears, do you not hear? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments did you take up?’ They said to Him, ‘Twelve.’ ‘Also, when I broke the seven for the four thousand, how many large baskets full of fragments did you take up?’ And they said, ‘Seven.’ So He said to them, ‘How is it you do not understand?’”

We are not given any discussion of what they hadn’t understood, because the account moves straight onto the healing of a blind man. But we can read the context clearly enough. Jesus wanted to feed the spirits of His disciples, but they were too worried about their stomachs to receive what He was saying. Yet they had just witnessed Him miraculously providing a good couple of tons of bread (enough for 9,000 men, plus women and children), maybe more, for the needy crowds, with enough left over to feed the disciples for weeks. “Don’t you get it?” He was saying. “You’re sitting in the boat with Jehovah Jireh and you’re worried about food? Why do you think I told you back on the Mount of Olives not to worry about what to eat, or what to wear? You should know by now that I’ve got all that under control, so you can pay attention to the important stuff! ‘Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and let your soul delight itself in abundance.’”

The Baskets Full

There is yet another layer to this story that concerns God’s supply for us. Take either of these two miracles: the sequence is exactly the same. Someone gives a tiny amount to the Lord; He multiplies it and involves His disciples in the miraculous distribution of the food, then there is an abundance left over for the disciples to enjoy. The first priority for the disciples was to give out what God had provided, and after the distribution they received their baskets full. In the world’s economy we receive first – income, wages, salary, etc. – then we give out of whatever spare is left in the baskets at the end. If we’re feeling generous there might be as much as half a loaf left out of our original five. In the economy of heaven there is a different dynamic: first we give what God tells us to give (if He is telling us, of course), then what is left in the basket afterwards is ours. But there is an additional element in the heavenly model: the loaves and fishes have passed through the hands of the Saviour, so what had been earth’s ration becomes heaven’s abundance. God wants us to give out of heaven’s abundance so He can multiply our portion accordingly: “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).

The important lesson for us is that God’s provision is in His very presence. What He wants from us is our hearts: a willingness to trust Him with what is ours, and to place it in His hands. We catch a glimpse, literally, of God’s perspective on our economy when we see Jesus sitting outside the Temple watching people putting their gifts into the treasury. We know the story: the poor widow, whose two mites represented all she had, had put in far more than the wealthy who gave leftovers from their abundance. We don’t see that widow again, but we can be sure that God gave back to her in the same measure that she had given to the Temple. Wealth and poverty have traded places. Our God is a creator, and loves to create, and we can so easily forget that when we look at our bank statements. But if our hearts are rich towards Him, we will see Him create in our material circumstances and fill our baskets, whereas if our hearts are bound by our bank accounts we remain in poverty, and will only ever see the loaves and fishes that we can provide for ourselves.

Holiness: You shall be perfect, Walking in the Spirit

Spirit of Truth

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I took some photographs recently of a bird flying over a lake. It was a long way off, but I could see that it was a tern, as occasionally it hovered over the water then dived in to catch a fish. When I got home and looked at the pictures on my computer, I got very excited, because I saw that it had mostly black plumage. A black tern! We don’t see many of these in the UK, and they are a species to get excited about if you are a birder over here. But when I looked at it more closely, I realised that the colouring wasn’t quite right: there was too much white underneath even though the rest of it looked right. So I boosted up the brightness and reduced the shadows on my computer, and this is what I found: it wasn’t a black tern at all that I had seen fishing by the lake, but one of the more widespread species, a common tern. My “black tern” just been created by the shadows on its plumage  cast by the morning sun.

Thinking about that, it made me realise how easily shadows can occur in what we look at, so that what we see is not the truth, but just a creation of our own self. In the afternoon Anne and I went to a local nature reserve with a friend. There are three ways of getting there that are roughly equidistant: it’s about 25 minutes away. In the car we took the route I usually take, down a country lane, and I said to Anne that I found this way slightly quicker. Michael agreed, adding that it could depend on the traffic as well. On the way back we found ourselves behind a tractor, so at the roundabout I chose the motorway route instead because I didn’t want to be behind a tractor – even though I would have quickly overtaken it on the dual carriageway. I said: “actually this way is probably just as quick.” Anne said: “That’s interesting, because on the way here, you said the lane was the quickest, and now this way is just as quick. They can’t both be true!“ She was right. They couldn’t both be true. My words were not about the truth, but about what I was trying to prove. This wasn’t even an emotionally charged situation: they were both just throwaway comments about driving choices. But that’s the point: I was justifying my choices, not expressing truth. My focus wasn’t the driving distance at all, but my decisions. In other words, my shadows were colouring what I was looking at. I was seeing a black tern.

As even many atheists know, Jesus said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Truth is found in Jesus. When He first introduced the notion of the coming Holy Spirit to His disciples,  Jesus said this: “And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever— the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.” (John 14: 16-17) The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth. We call Him Holy Spirit; Jesus calls Him, emphatically, “Spirit of Truth.” (John 14:17, John 15:26, John 16:23.) Without the Holy Spirit, whom the world doesn’t know, reality will always be obscured. Just like I had to boost the brightness on my computer to see the real bird, it is only when the brightness of the Light of the world is turned up that we see the reality of life.  “Whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.” (John 3:19)

James said: “All good and perfect gifts come down from above from the Father of lights, in whom there is no shadow of turning.” (James 1:17) God doesn’t change. He is the Father of lights: He created the lights in the universe, and by His word – “Let there be light” – He created material light itself. In His light, we can see the truth; without His light, we only see our own shadows. The Light of the world never changes: He is totally faithful to His word, He is always love, He is always truth. Every turn in our emotions and our agendas casts a shadow: only in Jesus, by the light of the Holy Spirit, are there no black terns, no shadow of terning.

Christian Life, Living by Faith, Walking in the Spirit

Rainbows and chickens

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“For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us—by me, Silvanus, and Timothy—was not Yes and No, but in Him was Yes. For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us. Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us is God, who also has sealed us and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.” (2 Cor 1: 19-22)

We have two chickens, called Jessica and Roadrunner. They they live in a Summer house that has been converted to a chicken run: it has a door, which normally stays shut except when we go in to collect the eggs or clean them out etc, and it has a little chicken door the size of a catflap, which opens and shuts automatically on a timer. One morning I looked up the garden and noticed that the door had been left open all night, yet Jessica and Roadrunner hadn’t come down to the house for their morning treat. (They have a little bit of crumbled cheese every morning, mixed with a soaked slice of bread. Don’t ask.) I feared the worst, and began to gear myself up to go into the chicken house and find a pile of feathers left by the visit of Mr Fox. Then as I looked up the garden I saw Roadrunner, then Jessica, emerge from the Summer house through their little door that had just opened on its timer. They had ignored the wide open door, and waited until the timer lifted their flap before coming out. Photos and laughing emojis soon circulated on the family WhatsApp group.

Moving on to rainbows, that glorious symbol of God’s covenant promises, I saw one yesterday and was blessed by a new (well, new for me, anyway) awareness of how  the rainbow is created: the sunlight combining with water can represent the light of the Sun of Righteousness combining with the water of the Holy Spirit affirming the faithfulness of God the Father to keep His promises. And now I’m coming to my point, because it’s with healing in His wings that the Sun of Righteousness arises (Malachi 4:2). Yet how often do we pray for healing for people and see them go away disappointed? Yes, we encourage them, and ourselves, with the promise of Mark 16:18 – “You shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover-” yet we know that as often as not they don’t, and won’t. Instead of faith arising, disappointment niggles. Our prayers feel like they are hitting that little chicken flap before the timer lifts it: it is firmly shut.

And yet as full gospel Christians we know that the promise of healing is there in the Word of God. “You shall lay hands… and they will…” Why don’t we see it as part of our normal Christian experience?

I think it’s because we are waiting for the flap to open and we are missing the door. The context of Mark 16:18 is this: “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature… And these signs will follow those who believe: … they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.” The sign of healing follows the preaching of the gospel. It’s the gospel that is “the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes,” (Romans 1:16) and as we know, the Greek word translated as salvation means healing of the whole person; body and mind as well as spirit. I had the blessing a couple of weeks ago to spend some time with an evangelist who has seen countless miraculous healings, including six people being raised from the dead. Is he a “better Christian” than me or anyone else that I know? I don’t think so. He is certainly a man of faith and fervent prayer, but I don’t think that is the main point. I think the main point is this: he believes; he preaches the gospel, and signs and wonders follow to confirm the word he preaches.

I think there’s been a separation the Church between healing and preaching the gospel, to the extent even that many evangelical churches who don’t operate in the gifts of the Holy Spirit give a call to salvation at all their services, and many churches who do believe that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are at work in the Body of Christ today will pray for people to be healed but don’t make a habit of preaching the gospel at all their meetings. You need to turn on the switch (preach the gospel) for the light to come on (the power of God to heal). You can’t have the power without the switch, and the switch without the light achieves nothing.

I’ll bring this to land with the rainbow: the water of the Holy Spirit combined with the Sun of the Word of God affirm the promise of the Father to heal. If you know that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Saviour you  have the Sun, and if you are baptised in the Holy Spirit you have the water. Romans 10:8 tells us that ‘“The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”  (that is, the word of faith which we preach).’ The very experience of being baptised in the Holy Spirit, especially with the evidence of speaking in tongues, is itself the “guarantee” that God will honour His promise to heal, as Paul writes in 2 Cor 1:22 above. The mustard seed of faith is another subject of course, and only you know whether or not you really do believe yourself, or if you have only fed off the faith of other people when it comes to healing. But if you do believe, and if you know that you are baptised in the Holy Spirit, go out and do what Jesus has commissioned us to do: preach the gospel, lay hands on the sick, and they will recover. It’s a promise. The door is wide open; don’t be a chicken. Go out and turn on some lights.

(On the topic of faith – there are a lot of articles in the “Living By Faith” section – “Resurrection Life” isn’t a bad place to start.)

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

The Funnel

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I was asking the Lord about how we should be preparing for His planned outpouring and the concurrent time of shaking that is just going to get stronger, and I felt that He showed me a funnel, like one that is used to pour liquid into the neck of a bottle. I believe He is saying this:

“Many of you are like bottles, standing on the ground with a funnel in the neck of the bottle, desiring to funnel in all that I can give you: all the power, all the gifts, all the teaching and all the provision that is available for you. But you wonder why your bottle isn’t being filled. My precious ones, do you not see that the base of your bottle is much wider than the neck, and is actually open, not sealed? You actually are the funnel. But you need to let me tip you upside down, so that as you pour out what is in you through the neck, I pour in from the base. The base is wider than the neck. What I can pour in is so much more than what you can pour out, and yes, I am waiting to release it. Have I not said? Give, and it shall be given unto you: pressed down, running over shall men pour into your lap. I am letting the world run dry so that my children can pour in my living water. See! I am already pulling out the plugs. The faith I am looking for is the faith that will allow me to tip you up and pour you out, so that I can pour in: fresh water, fresh provision. Love one another as I have loved you and gave myself for you. Let me tip you up so I can pour into you, then as you continue to pour out so I will pour in more. This is the faith that I desire to see on Earth when I come. This is how revival will happen; this is how the world will know that you are My disciples.”

Walking in the Spirit

Of His fullness we have received…

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“Of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” (John 1: 16-17)

Any Christian who believes that the gifts and power of the Holy Spirit are available and operational in the Church today will know of, and quite possibly tell others of, the need to be filled with the Holy Spirit, as Scripture exhorts us in Ephesians 5:18. But as I’ve become more aware lately of what it is to be standing under the waterfall of God’s Grace, (see the last article, Mountains and Waterfalls) I’ve been considering what it actually means to be filled with the Spirit.

If all the fullness of God dwells in Jesus (Colossians 1:19), and Christ, the Hope of glory, is in us (Col 1:27), then how much of Christ dwells in us? Do we believe that it is a fragment? A cell? Maybe just a fragment of a cell? Or do we dare to believe that our loving Heavenly Father will answer Paul’s prayer for every Christian of every age, that we would be “filled with all the fulness of God?”

We are called to love one another; to have grace in our dealings. Jesus made in clear in the Sermon on the Mount that Kingdom relationships are characterised by the fact that what we give does not depend on what we receive: “If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?” (Matt 5:46) On the contrary, if we “love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you,” we have the astounding promise that “You shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” (Verse 47) We won’t just be good, because we have obeyed the rules, but we’ll be like God – because actually, as far as the rules of the world are concerned, we have broken them.

So a basic principle in the Manifesto of the Kingdom is that what we give to men does not depend on what we receive from them. We don’t love according to the tit-for-tat rules of the world, any more than we are to depend for what we need on the get-what-you-pay-for provision of the world. When Jesus preached repentance unto God, it was more than an exhortation to stop behaving badly: it was a call to throw out man’s rulebook and embrace God’s – whose book consists basically of two sentences: love God, and love one another. If we seek this Kingdom, everything else will be given to us.

“Of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace.” Just as we have received out of the fullness of God in Christ, so it is only out of our fullness that others can receive grace from us – the grace that rises above the tit for tat of the world, that enables us to overcome negative reactions to damaging words and quench fiery arrows with living water. The Grace that enables us to be perfect, just like our Father in Heaven.” The purpose of being full of the Holy Spirit is not so much to have access to supernatural gifts, but to have access to supernatural love, supernatural gentleness and supernatural generosity. If our Saviour had not been filled with all the fullness of God, Satan would have shown Him a good carnal reason to disobey His Father; but He could say that Satan “has nothing in me” because He was completely full of God.

So two questions. The first is this: how full of the Holy Spirit are we?  Because if we are really full, like Stephen was, we don’t run away when the stones start to fall, but we “see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.” (Acts 7:55)  It’s often said that we leak, which is why Paul’s exhortation is the present continuous tense – “Be being filled.” But I don’t think it’s true that we leak, and every now and then have to go back to the fountain (often at Church) for a top-up. We can’t fill the flesh with the Spirit. I think we are more like completely broken bottles, and  the only way for Scripture’s present continuous tense to operate in our lives is to stay under that waterfall, standing permanently in the Grace of God, morning, noon and night; work, rest and play. And at church as well. What a blessing we could be at church by just staying soaked all week. And if we can do this, out of our fullness others will receive, grace for grace. At church, in the home, and in the workplace.

And here is the second question: what is our expectation of the “fullness of God” in our lives? I was in a zoom gathering last night, and the word that Father spoke to us by His Spirit was that He wants to bring a new level of creativity to His people: that the atmosphere of Heaven is the Beauty of Holiness, and that He wants us to release that beauty into the world in all that we do – our work, or pastimes, our creative projects, our relationships of course – and that He would bring us new gifts, new resources, new skills, new levels of faith, in fact all that we need out of the infinite unseen storehouses of Heaven to start bringing this about. It was a beautiful, encouraging Word, and I do not do it justice with my single-sentence paraphrase. And it would be so easy for it to remain on the shelf, along with the library of other beautiful encouraging words that I have heard over nearly 40 years in the faith. Except for one thing. If you know me or follow my site, you will know that I am a “birder”: I love watching and photographing birds. I was sitting in the sunshine in my garden this afternoon, enjoying a cup of tea, when I heard a birdsong in the tree that I did not immediately recognise. I managed to get a picture, and I identified it as a female linnet. The linnet is a little finch with a sweet song, which the Victorians used to keep in cages as songbirds.  Linnets are not particularly rare, but I do not recall ever seeing one in my garden before – and we have lived here since 1998. It was something unexpected, beautiful, and new.

This was the linnet: not just a little brown bird, but something beautiful, unexpected and new.

I believe that little bird was a sign from the Lord of all Creation to remind me, and you, that He has so much more for us than we could ever ask or imagine, and that even now, as the world seems to be rushing to pull down its tents, He wants us to stretch forth the cords of ours and enlarge our vision of who He is and what it means to be filled with all of His fullness. If we do this He will fill whatever we give Him with more of who He is so that when the needy come to us they can be filled in turn from our fullness, grace for grace. Whatever your garden is, and whatever those linnets might be for you, watch out for them, because the Holy Spirit is releasing them from their cage.

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

Extracts from Two Seconds to Midnight

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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.