Tag Archives: Holy Spirit power

Poured out at Pentecost and poured out today: the essential fuel for the victorious Christian life.

Prayer and Spiritual Warfare, Walking in the Spirit

Honey from the Rock

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“And the men of Israel were distressed that day, for Saul had placed the people under oath, saying, “Cursed is the man who eats any food until evening, before I have taken vengeance on my enemies.” So none of the people tasted food. Now all the people of the land came to a forest; and there was honey on the ground. And when the people had come into the woods, there was the honey, dripping; but no one put his hand to his mouth, for the people feared the oath. But Jonathan had not heard his father charge the people with the oath; therefore he stretched out the end of the rod that was in his hand and dipped it in a honeycomb, and put his hand to his mouth; and his countenance brightened.” (1 Sam 14: 24-27)

When our TV is switched on but the satellite box is off and there is no signal, a message displays on the screen saying:  “Check external input, or select another input using the INPUT button.” The other evening I was confronting one of the areas in my life where I am still failing to walk in the victory that Jesus gained for me at the cross, and that “no signal” message was displaying on tbe screen: we had switched off the box, but the TV receiver was still on. It caught my attention in a new way. In my reactions to the “battle” situation that I was facing and where I was still losing, was I checking my input? Was I looking with any discernment at where my thoughts were coming from, to determine whether they were flesh or spirit?

There is a very clear litmus test we can apply. Here it is: “The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45) If I am thinking about me – my reasons, my needs, my feelings, my motivation, my struggle, my interests, anything that is about me – I am focussed on self. The litmus says “flesh.” If however my thoughts are just focussed on the interests, feelings, needs etc of the other person, the litmus says “Spirit,” because I am dead to self and am operating in love. Sometimes I really think it can be that simple. Not easy, but simple.

The story of Jonathan and the honeycomb plays out this scenario before our eyes. Saul declared that none would eat or drink until he had taken vengeance on his enemies. The forest was dripping with honey, but none could touch it. Consequently the Israelites were weakened, their victory diminished, and they were so hungry that they fell on the spoils and devoured them with the blood, sinning under the law.

The flesh always drives, and always drives towards sin. God gave the Law to His people as a tool that would enable then to manage their flesh and remain holy. Inevitably they failed, as we continue to fail today whenever we bind ourselves under legalism. Yet the flesh continues to yearn for the Law: my spirit is justified in Christ, but if there is one thing that my flesh wants to do, it is to justify itself. Unfortunately the only law that self can access is the law of sin and death, and not the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus (See Romans 8:2). Saul sought to pursue his enemy, but his pursuit was fleshly and his pride and his emotions put the people under the bondage of the law, which they ultimately and inevitably broke. However Jonathan knew nothing of Saul’s oath and ate the honey, and “his countenance brightened” – or as the New Living Translation put is, he was “refreshed.”

The story had started with Jonathan and his armourbearer routing the Philistine garrison, and it ends with Saul discovering that his son had broken the oath; but I just want to focus on this one section rather than look at all the other conclusions that we can draw from the rest of the account. (Maybe another time…)  Whether we see it at times or not, we are always in a battle. However, as we know from Psalm 23, God has prepared a table for us in the face of our enemies. The forests where we face our enemy are dripping with the honey of the Holy Spirit. So do we eat at His table, or do we go hungry? Do we rest in His Spirit, or do we run with our flesh?  God calls us to dip our sticks into the honey; to taste and see that the Lord is good, and to be equipped for the battle by going in His strength and not our own. He is always there; the honey is always available, but we cannot taste and run at the same time. We have to stop and make the choice if we are to dip into what He has provided.

The Lord says in His Word: “With honey from the rock I would have satisfied you.” (Psalm 81:16) To return to the image of the “no signal” message on our TV screen: do our thoughts and motivation come from the Holy Spirit and lead to life, or do they come from our own flesh and the law of sin and death? The “litmus test” will tell us. Because we always need to check our input if we don’t want to be exhausted by the battle.

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

Not by might nor by power

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

The headlines in the spiritual realm

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

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

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

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

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

Swept up, or swept away

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Cave of Adullam

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“The angel of the LORD encamps all around those who fear Him,
And delivers them.
Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good;
Blessed is the man who trusts in Him!
Oh, fear the LORD, you His saints!
There is no want to those who fear Him.
The young lions lack and suffer hunger;
But those who seek the LORD shall not lack any good thing.
Come, you children, listen to me;
I will teach you the fear of the LORD.
Who is the man who desires life,
And loves many days, that he may see good?
Keep your tongue from evil,
And your lips from speaking deceit.
Depart from evil and do good;
Seek peace and pursue it.
The eyes of the LORD are on the righteous,
And His ears are open to their cry.
The face of the LORD is against those who do evil,
To cut off the remembrance of them from the earth”

(Ps 34: 7-16)

I heard a particular advert recently on the classical radio station that I listen to in the car, and I found myself crying out to God for mercy on our nation: it seemed that the judgement that He poured out onto Sodom and Gomorrah had to be coming our way. I felt the Lord say “I am bringing judgement, but it will not fall upon my people.”

Judgement and mercy. The next day I read Psalm 34, and I found the same theme again: “The eyes of the Lord are on the Righteous…” but “The face of the LORD is against those who do evil.” Again I felt the Lord speaking as I read the words, saying “I am separating the darkness from the light, the righteous from the ungodly; and the separation will be clear: the righteous will shine like stars in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation.”

David wrote psalm 34 when he was fleeing from Saul: the inscription is “A Psalm of David when he pretended madness before Abimelech, who drove him away, and he departed.”  There are prophetic levels to many of the psalms and to the character and the story of David, the man after God’s own heart and forerunner of Jesus, our Messiah King. And as well as finding Jesus the King represented prophetically in David the king, we can also see aspects of the establishment of the Kingdom of God on Earth – past, present and future – revealed prophetically in the rise of the Kingdom of David in Israel. David was anointed King as a young man, but spent the first part of his life serving Saul in his court. Saul broadly represents the world and the flesh; David represents the Life of the Spirit. So the Church, anointed by the Holy Spirit, has spent most of the first phase of its growth in many parts of the world living in the court of Saul, and since Constantine’s edict of Milan in 313 AD has lived side-by-side with the state.

This is changing. In communist and islamic states it has changed already, and the church is being persecuted as Saul persecuted David. But now Christians in the West are also starting to face psalm 34 decisions: those who stand up for biblical lifestyle choices are increasingly facing persecution from those who deny God, and a body of legislation that seeks to outlaw Christian choices is growing like a cancer in the USA, the UK, and mainland Europe.  If we look at the story of David after he has left Saul, I think we can see some of the path ahead for the Church as Jesus builds a Kingdom on Earth that is separate from the Kingdom of this world, but which it will ultimately be subject to when “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ.” (Rev. 11:15)

For a start here will be persecution, typified by the slaughter of the priests of Nob by Saul’s senior servant, Doeg the Edomite. Jesus promised it; David pointed to it; we must prepare for it. The church will be driven into the Cave of Adullam, and just as David welcomed the cast-offs of society into his company so we, too, bring the poor, the needy and the broken into the fellowship of the Kingdom. Judah crowned David King, and as the praises of His people surround the throne of Jesus, His power and His love become visible to all in revival power. And finally, just as all Israel received David as King, every tongue and tribe will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Where are we in this story now? I think right now the spear of Saul is aimed at David. For “the man who desires life and loves many days” it will soon be time to flee, because a time will come when there will be a stark choice before us: we either compromise our faith and stay in the comfort of the court of Saul where we will ultimately have to give assent to the murderous intentions of Doeg the Edomite; or we fear God and move out into the unknown, where our trust is in God and not in the systems and provision of the world, and where He has to be the one who delivers us from our enemies because it is no longer in our power to deliver ourselves. We either hide in the darkness for fear of persecution, or we reveal our light and be ready to flee. But Judgement will come on the house of Saul, so our only place of safety is to be outside of its courts. And, as David writes in Psalm 34 and the Holy Spirit repeats echoes in our hearts today, it is the fear of the Lord that will be the key to our deliverance and our provision.

“I will teach you the fear of the Lord,” writes David. It can be hard to reconcile the message of the Grace of God with the idea of the fear of the Lord. If we are saved by Grace and cleansed of all our sin by the blood of Christ, and our place in Heaven is secure, what is there to fear- especially as we know from scripture that perfect love casts out all fear of judgement, and that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus? (See 1 John 4:18, Romans 8:1) For me, the answer to this conundrum is that biblical fear of the Lord has nothing to do with fear of punishment or pain. I think the fear of the Lord is the emotion that accompanies a visceral awareness that each of the three persons of our Triune God has in the intensity of their gaze the power to create and destroy galaxies, that the depth of love that gave us Calvary is as deep as the recesses of the universe itself, and that the cradle that bore Jesus in Bethlehem and that cradles us when we are rocked by our anxieties is the cradle of all history, from beginning to end. When we contemplate this God, from whom the merest flicker of a thought could annihilate our very existence – even if we know He never would – I think we can begin to know what is meant by the fear of the Lord. This is someone we take seriously.

The verses from Psalm 34 above give us five ways to take God seriously, to “fear Him.” If we can take them on board they can help us to prepare for the years ahead and the choices that we will face.

Firstly, we “taste and see that He is good.” He is there; He is real; the power that made and sustains the Universe is within Him; and, most amazingly, we have access to His person through the cross of Christ. How can we not want to taste of His goodness; for it to be a reality in our experience, not just an idea in our minds? To take Him seriously we cannot ignore what the God of the Universe Holds out to us by His Spirit. When we “taste and see”, we can trust Him. We trust someone that we know. We trust Him because we know He is good; we have experienced His goodness.

Secondly, we seek Him. We understand that He has the details of our lives worked out, even if we haven’t worked them out ourselves. The “young lions” who jockey for success in the world, hunting down status and wealth, will go hungry because ultimately the world will fail them. If we will learn the lesson, COVID has already taught us that we cannot rely on what was always there, and that only God is the sure provider that we can trust. As I wrote about somewhere on this site (sorry – can’t remember which post!) – when the whole world was buying up toilet rolls at the beginning of the first lockdown, God sent a vanload of them to park at the adjacent pump in the gas station to the woman who said “Lord, I’m not going to panic buy; I’m going to seek you!” We don’t run after the provision; we seek the Provider.

Thirdly, we guard our tongues. “Life and death are in the power of the tongue.” (Prov 18:21) This doesn’t just apply to the people that we speak to: it applies to us as well. As we give so we will receive. If we tongue-lash others, we will get a lashing. If we bless, we will be blessed. If we build up, we will be built up, and if we pull down, we will be pulled down. Words create or destroy, and Jesus tells us that we will be held responsible for every “idle” (fruitless, barren) word that we speak (Matt 12:36). If we “desire Life” and want to “see good,” we must speak life and speak what is good. “Whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.” (Phil 4:8)

Fourth, we “Depart from evil and do good.” The gospel is about how we live; not the songs we sing, the books we read, or the words that we prophesy. It’s about how and who we love. It’s about “whatever we have done to the least of these…” (Matt 25: 35-40) It’s about faith that works with love. It’s about 1 Corinthians 13 being the anchor for chapters 12 and 14. What will hold us together in the Cave of Adullam is our love for one another; and it is that unity that Jesus prophesied in John 17 that the world will see when Judah arises in power.

Finally, we are to “seek peace and pursue it.” Not just because Jesus is the Prince of Peace do we make pursuing peace a serious objective in our lives, and not just because the peacemakers are blessed and “shall be called the children of God” (Matt 5:9) – although these in themselves are both very real reasons to seek peace. But the peace we are to pursue is not just peace with other people; it’s the peace that settles in our hearts which the Lord promises to give us (John 14:27) to keep our hearts from being troubled and fearful. After the massacre at Nob David says to Abiathar, the one surviving priest, “”Stay with me; do not fear. For he who seeks my life seeks your life, but with me you shall be safe.” (1 Sam 22:23) To be safe, we need to be close to Jesus. When we are close to Him – yoked to Him – we know His presence and His peace directs our steps. “Stay safe” has become a mantra of the COVID world. The only real way to stay safe is to seek the peace of Jesus, and pursue it.

We are at a critical moment in the life of the church. God is separating the light from the darkness: as He did right at the beginning of creation, so He is doing in the days of the new creation. I fell that this is what He is saying to us:

“You are the light of the world: come out of the darkness and gather to Me! Taste of my presence, trust My provision, speak My words, walk in My ways, pursue My peace! The Cave of Adullam is ahead, but in that place you will know a warmth of love that you have not hitherto experienced, and out of that love you will see the light of my Glory arise and you will know, and the world will know, that I the Lord am establishing my Kingdom on Earth. The wheels are moving quickly now. Do not delay. The enemy of your souls would say that you can sit back, that you are fine as you are, but I say Consecrate yourselves because I am taking you to a place where the ground where you will be standing is holy. So prepare yourselves. For in the cave of Adullam all that you had in the court of Saul will have been taken from you, but everything that is yours in the courts of Heaven will be available. The enemy will say that you will be dying, but I say Die to yourselves, and Live! Live!”

Holiness: You shall be perfect, Walking in the Spirit

Being Filled with the Holy Spirit

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The roar of rushing waters at Lauterbrunnen falls.

There is a waterfall in Switzerland called Lauterbrunnen, where the glacier melt from high mountains pours down through the rock into the valley below. The water pours at a rate of 30,000 L per second: the roar of those rushing waters and the power of them is breathtaking. Yet when you look at the stream in the valley that runs away from the foot of the waterfall there is nothing impressive to see. It is just a little river running over some stones.

We often sing in church of the greatness and all surpassing majesty of God; the God of the heavens, the creator of the universe. When I look at Lauterbrunnen I am reminded that the same power and majesty dwells within us in the person of the Holy Spirit. All the power and resources of the kingdom of heaven are within us, yet most of the time our experience of the God who lives within us is more akin to that trickle over the stones than the roar in the rock. In our awareness of this reality, we cry out to the Holy Spirit to come – even asking him at times to “come down“ – and fill us some more; to pour in the waterfall to cover our barren stones.

Yet he has already come down: we don’t need to ask Him to come again – He hasn’t left part of Himself behind. When God pours out his Holy Spirit He doesn’t pour it from a cloud that somehow floats our head; He pours it from His own presence that is already here on Earth, living in every believer that makes up the church. When God pours out his Holy Spirit he pours from us, not into us. Rivers of living water flow out; they don’t flow in. We are exhorted to be filled with the Holy Spirit – that is, to be filled on a continual basis, not just once – so we tend to carry some sort of picture of a jug full of Holy Spirit pouring down into our rapidly emptying bowls a we hold them up to him. But I don’t think it’s like this. I think the space He fills is the space that we give Him. If we aren’t full of the Holy Spirit it is because we are full of ourselves. We must decrease, as John the Baptist said, so that He increases within us. God prepared the church for the Pentecostal revival at the beginning of the last century with the holiness movement: His people sought to make room in their lives for the presence of a holy God, and the result was that the Holy Spirit filled the space they gave Him, resulting in an outpouring of His love and power that has gone round the world ever since and brought millions of lost souls into the Kingdom of the living God.

Today, prophetic voices all around the world are declaring by the Holy Spirit that a new and even greater outpouring is on the horizon. But before Pentecost comes holiness. To be full of the Holy Spirit we need to be empty of everything else; otherwise we are not full, we are only partly full. But the Bible tells us to be filled, and keep on being filled. Jesus wants to operate through the Holy Spirit to be Lord of all of our lives, not just bits of them. He wants to be Lord of our thoughts, our emotions, our plans, our motivation, our will, our bodies; worshipping with all our hearts, all our minds, all our souls, all our strength. The extent to which we are filled with the Holy Spirit is the extent to which He is Lord.

He is calling the church today into a renewed commitment to His lordship, and when we respond to the call He will reveal Himself in a way that is unprecedented In the history of the church. Filled with the Holy Spirit, we will know the roar of the waterfall instead of just the trickle of the stream. And when we do, we will no longer be satisfied with anything else.

Prayer and Spiritual Warfare, Prophesy and the prophetic, Walking in the Spirit

The Charge of the Light Brigade

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A prophesy given to me on 8th-9th Sept 2021

“Many of you are like phones that are running out of charge. While some are topped up, others among you are running at 40%, 30% or 20% charge. Some of you are on low power mode. You need to be fully charged. You need to be connected to me all the time, so that you never run out of charge. For I am doing a new thing in the Earth and the ground is being prepared. You are the Light Brigade, bringing light into the darkness in my name and in my power. Unlike the first one, which was done in the strength of man, this charge will not fail; but you will need to be fully charged to complete the mission. It will be as in the day and Gideon, when my people revealed their lights as one and the massed powers of darkness fled before them. Stay connected to me, so that when I blow the trumpet and say “Charge!” you will both hear the call and have the power for your light to shine. Those who are connected will hear the call, and all around the world my Light Brigade will shine as one. Do not be like the phone that cannot receive a call because it is out of battery, but make sure you are fully charged, connected to me. This is my charge to you.”

(Historical note – for those not familiar with UK history, the “Charge of the Light Brigade” was a famous military disaster that took place in the Crimean War in 1854. It has been the subject of much literature and art , especially the poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson, as an iconic example of pointless heroism.)

Discipleship and witness, Walking in the Spirit

Abiding in Him

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“In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.” (Prov 3:6)

Sometimes I go birdwatching if I wake early  in the morning. I like to leave early, but usually spend a bit of time with the Lord before I go. (The prayer time also involves coffee…) If we abide in Him and He abides in us this will involve our leisure pursuits (assuming they don’t involve ungodly activities!) as well as everything else we do, and He will use them to His purposes – sometimes just to bless us, because He loves to do that – and sometimes because He has something else in mind. Here are three examples of why it matters.

An important aspect of my hobby is taking photographs of interesting birds that I see. Taking the pictures and looking at them afterwards is a big part of the enjoyment for me. A few weeks ago I woke at about 6.30 and decided to go up onto Cannock Chase, our local beauty spot, and see what might be around before the dog-walkers and joggers started to turn up. Because my “window” of hopefully uninterrupted time was relatively short, I decided on that occasion not to even bother with the coffee or the prayer time – I’ll do that when I come back, I thought – and headed straight up to Cannock Chase. I parked the car, and my head was full of what I might see at this time of day. I switched off the engine and reached for my camera. It wasn’t there. I had gone out to photograph birds but I had left my camera behind.

It doesn’t take a word of knowledge to work out what the Lord said to me through this. Proverbs 3:6 tells us “In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.” As I have written more than once before, the word “acknowledge” here means to know, not just refer to. The sense is closer to “abide in” than what we understand by “acknowledge,” which is just to accept or admit the existence of something or someone. I didn’t acknowledge the Lord in the sense of Proverbs 3:6 before I went birding, and He quite categorically did not direct my path.

There have been a couple of times since ten when, equally categorically, He has. One was on my birthday, which was nine days ago at the time of writing. I woke at about 6.00 am and decided to go birding. There are various hotspots within half an hour’s drive of our house, and I decided I would go to one of those rather than just go up onto the Chase. This time though, I had my coffee with the Lord. When I left, I felt strongly that I should go to a particular reservoir that is actually managed as a nature reserve by West Midlands Bird Club, of which I am a member. My favourite birds are warblers – little two ounce balls of fluff that migrate thousands of miles to breed in the UK and bless us with their various tweets and twitters from our woods, heaths and hedgerows. There are about ten warbler spieces in the UK, including some rarer types, that an informed birder has a reasonable chance of seeing in the UK, depending on where they are. One of the rarer warblers is the grasshopper warbler, and a few breed on a patch of heathland about the same distance from me as the reserve I was heading for.

As I drove down the motorway, I thought: “Perhaps I’ll go to Norton Bog in the hope of seeing a grasshopper warbler, and not the reservoir?” “No!” came the thought back. “Go to the reservoir. Stick to your original decision.” So I stuck to the plan. When I arrived I found that a small team from the bird club were ringing birds. They put up nets in strategic places, a bit like volleyball nets, catch the birds, inspect them for their general health, their age etc, ring them and of course release them. The activity plays an important part in the scientific study of bird populations. When I saw them I said “Have you got anything interesting?” “Yes, said one of the ringers. We have got something special.” I could spin this out, but I won’t. It was a grasshopper warbler. That morning I saw six different spieces of warbler, including another one that I hadn’t seen since I was a boy of about 11 (that’s sixty years ago!) and took some lovely photos. What a birthday present from the Lord! Why did He give it to me? Because He loves me, and wanted to bless me on my birthday! He is “able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,” (Eph 3:20) and we can so easily forget this. I could, probably would, have traipsed around Norton Bog and seen nothing of interest. Instead of that, His power at work in me directed my paths and blessed me with a birdwatching birthday present that I am going to remember for ever, and which I would like to think I will thank Him for personally when I get to Heaven. Not only will His immeasurable power do such wonders for us, but He will do them for others, through us, if we will only seek His presence and believe His word.

A grasshopper warbler being ringed. More than I could ever ask or imagine…

The final example of how He directed my paths on a morning birding excursion has got more of an immediate “Kingdom” aspect to it, and happened just three days ago. Again, I had my coffee with the Lord, and felt that I would go a bit further afield, to a place called Barr Beacon. I left at about 6.30, but when I was nearly there I was slowed down by the first wave of commuter traffic so by the time I arrived the first dog-walkers were already out. However, I was blessed almost as soon as I got out of the car by a little family of yellowhammers, and once again I tried to allow the Holy Spirit to “direct my paths.” After about 20 minutes I was on a particular path, trying to get a picture of a willow warbler in a tree, when a man came in my direction with his dog. “Oh, well; bye bye willow warbler,” I thought, and made a fuss of the friendly little dog which came up to me with its tail wagging. The man and I exchanged pleasantries, then he called his dog and went on.

I was going to move on myself, but I felt a prompting to stay around there. Maybe the willow warbler will be back, I thought. Actually it was the man and his dog that came back after a few minutes. In fact the warbler hadn’t gone far, because I could hear it calling from the hedgerow. Max (the dog) stopped to say hello, and the man stopped and we chatted some more. He told me he had heard something in the hedge, and we started chatting about  warblers and the wonders of migration. I started thinking, “Lord, is this where You come into the conversation?” Soon He did, and I was talking about the God of Creation. He was agreeing with me, and before long we were referring to the Bible and I was thinking the Lord may have led me to a brother in Christ. I asked him if he was a Christian, and he said with a little smile, “No. Actually I’m probably the devil to you, because I am one of Jehovah’s witnesses!”

I had been directed to that place at that moment to testify to a Jehovah’s witness of how I had been led to our conversation by the Holy Spirit that he didn’t believe in.

We had a couple of the inevitable conversations and he fished a tract out of his pocket and gave it to me (I was convicted: why didn’t I have one in mine?), but I felt strongly that God hadn’t sent me there to argue with him. Just like Paul with the Corinthians, I don’t believe that we convince JWs “with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.” (1 Cor 2:4). Like a lens on a camera, they have their own lens that they put on the Bible, and they view everything through it. The Holy Spirit has to get them to change lenses. I felt that my mission was to make two declarations of truth concerning the Trinity, and to leave them with him. I said, “Born-again Christians and Jehovah’s witnesses always argue, and I don’t want to do that. I just want to make two declarations to you: there is a personal Holy Spirit (they believe that He is a force), and Jesus isn’t a created being (They translate John 1:1 as “In the beginning was the Word … and the Word was a God.) At that, we parted company amicably. His name is Kevin. Please pray for him!

One last little story. The next time I went out after the episode where I had left my camera behind, I opened my Bible to the psalm I had been reading the previous day. It was Psalm 84. Straight away I noticed verse 3, which says: “Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may have her young— a place near your altar, LORD Almighty, my King and my God”

We will even find an anointing on the subjects of our leisure interests if we stay near the altar of our King and our God.

Christian Life, Pursuing Love, Walking in the Spirit

Love Never Fails (Mirror, mirror, on the wall)

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In the last five minutes, I have been frustrated with my internet connection because it has failed yet again, and I have been annoyed by a text arriving on my phone and requiring my attention just as I sat down to write this piece. Of course there is no-one in my study with me to witness these little mini- explosions…

Although that isn’t true, is it? Actually the One through whom the Universe was made is here too. He knows every thought in my head, and every ripple of emotion that ruffles the surface of my heart. He gave his life up in agony so that I might live through him, delivered of the negatives embedded in my flesh and bearing fruit that glorifies Him, and that demonstrates to the principalities and powers of darkness the consummate victory of the cross and the eternal wisdom of God’s Great Plan. Yet in the space of five minutes, instead of spiritually “possessing my soul” by bearing the fruit of patience (“In your patience possess your souls” – Luke 21:19) I have yet again delivered it to to sin and death by yielding to my flesh.

As if to reinforce the point, Anne has just come upstairs with the landline phone in her hands: a friend from church wants a chat to arrange a cup of tea together. This time I smile. I smile because I am writing about love: the love that never fails. How far I am from that love! But as Paul famously writes, I can thank God for Jesus, who delivers me from “this body of death” (Romans 7:25). I may not have offended anybody mortal, but I offended Him.

The Light of Love

Love never fails. One day the sun will dim and the light of the stars will fade, but God’s love endures forever. As part of creation, even the sun and the stars are “subject to decay,” as Paul writes in Romans 8:20. But when The Perfect is come, the New Jerusalem will be coming with it, with “no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory  of God illuminates it. The Lamb is its light.” (Rev 21:23). The love of God is not like the light of the sun: it cannot decay. It cannot be dimmed. It’s not the created light that God separated from darkness (Gen 1:4); it’s the light that created the darkness and shines in it, which the darkness cannot put it out. “This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all,” writes John (1 John 1:5). Uncreated eternal light is the light of love; it’s God Himself.

I’m not writing this because I think you don’t know it, because I’m sure you do: what I’m trying to put into words is the sense that the love that God pours into our hearts by the Holy Spirit is totally outside and beyond anything in the Universe that could diminish even a single spark of its light and power within us. Not just the abstract idea, but something of the experiential knowledge that it is the power of Life itself, it is the power that raised Jesus from the dead, it is the power that created the universe, and it is the power by which we were born again to eternal life and by which our spirits were resurrected with Christ to be seated with Him in heavenly places. Can anything separate us from this love? (Romans 8: 31-39)

“No!” we say, because we know that this is the truth of the Word. Yet how much of our lives are actually spent in the experience of this truth? When I lost my patience with the internet, then again with the person who dared to send me a text while I was writing, was I living in its glory? The new creation walks by faith and not by sight; after the Spirit and not after the flesh, bathed in the light of this love. It wasn’t the new creation Bob that lost his patience; it was the old one that is supposed to be passing away. Although nothing can separate us from the love of God that is ours in Christ Jesus, we can lose contact with it oh, so easily. And the more we live outside of this contact, the less we see it working through us and wonderfully touching other people. ”You are restricted by your own affections,” as Paul writes (2 Cor 6:12).

Treasure in Earthen Vessels

Yet  “It is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” What is shining in our hearts is brighter than the sun, and it is not subject to decay. We have this amazing treasure in the earthen vessels of our lives (2 Cor 4:7). But what do we see when we look in the mirror: the treasure, or the earthen vessel? Paul says “We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.” (2 Cor 3:18) Can we really see the glory of the Lord’s blazing love in our own eyes when we study our reflection?

Paul had already written about reflections in the earlier letter to his church at Corinth: “Now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known,” (1 Cor 13:12) Perfection hasn’t come yet, but it’s on its way. And as we allow the Holy Spirit freedom to work in our hearts, we keep moving closer to its glory. We can catch a glimpse of it even now, burning undimmable in the depths of our unveiled hearts – for “when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away” (2 Cor 3:16) – and He changes us from glory to glory as we become more like Him.

Before I formed you in the womb

The wonder of all this is, that the light of Christ within us is already part of who we are as the spiritual beings who have been raised and seated with Him in heavenly places. In that place that is outside the realms of time, we are already glorified: “For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.” (Rom 8: 29-30) Our heavenly body already exists: “we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Cor 5:1) Paul doesn’t say that “we will have” an eternal heavenly body (“building”); he says we have already got it. Since it’s eternal, it actually existed before time. God said to Jeremiah: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; Before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations.” (Jer 1:4) When “this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality,” (1 Cor 15:4) we will finally be stepping into the eternal self that has been waiting all our lives to receive us.

Is this what we see when we look in the mirror? Because it’s what the love of God planned for us before He created time itself. Before He called creation into being and subjected it to decay, our glorified selves were already raised with Christ, and the works that we would do on Earth as we move in contact with the fire of that love were already prepared. (Eph 2:10) To walk by faith is to step through eternity, in the blazing light of perfect love by which we are being transformed from glory to glory.

If you want patience – and love, and joy, and the rest of the fruit of the Spirit – take a step of faith now and look at yourself as you really are. I am an amateur photographer, and I long for images that are ‘pin-sharp.’ What you will see will not be pin-sharp yet, but the more you long for it, the clearer it will become. Meanwhile it is no less real, and the light that you see it by is “the light of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord in the face of Christ.” (2 Cor 4:6) Look, there He is, burning with unfailing love: Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Prophesy and the prophetic, Walking in the Spirit

Pursuing Love (Teaching)

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“Pursue love, and desire spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy.” (1 Cor 14:1)


We all know the above scripture: it’s wheeled out often enough as a proof text for the prophetic and for the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And we all know the context: it follows Paul’s famous treatise on Love, and is sandwiched in the middle of the New Testament training manual on exercising the gifts of the Spirit. Both the “command” words are emphatic in their meaning. To pursue is to chase after someone until you have caught up with them, not just jog behind then a t a distance; and to desire has a connotation of a zealous, earnest longing and reaching for something, not just a wishy-washy want, an “it would be nice if…”

Chase after love, reach for spiritual gifts, especially prophesy. How do we respond to this verse in the context of church? And is one of these two injunctions more important in God’s sight than the other? I think the following story can give us some insights:

“And behold, there came a man named Jairus, and he was a ruler of the synagogue. And he fell down at Jesus’ feet and begged Him to come to his house, for he had an only daughter about twelve years of age, and she was dying. But as He went, the multitudes thronged Him. Now a woman, having a flow of blood for twelve years, who had spent all her livelihood on physicians and could not be healed by any, came from behind and touched the border of His garment. And immediately her flow of blood stopped. And Jesus said, “Who touched Me?” When all denied it, Peter and those with him said, “Master, the multitudes throng and press You, and You say, ‘Who touched Me?’ ” But Jesus said, “Somebody touched Me, for I perceived power going out from Me.” Now when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling; and falling down before Him, she declared to Him in the presence of all the people the reason she had touched Him and how she was healed immediately. And He said to her, “Daughter, be of good cheer; your faith has made you well. Go in peace.” (Luke 8: 41-48)

There are many points in this story that we can ponder on, but one thing that stands out for me is this: Jesus stopped for the woman who touched him. I can imagine myself in that situation. It would probably go something like this: ‘I’ve just got a call to pray for the daughter one of the city’s leaders; and not only that, but she is dying! So not only am I being called on by a VIP, but this is serious stuff, and it’s urgent. Out of my way everyone! I can’t stop! I’m on an important mission…” And so on. How many snares for the flesh there are in that scenario. And even if had “perceived power going out of me,” I would probably just have thought “Great! Someone ese has got healed too. That’s cool. Now how much further to Jairus’s house?”

How different is the way of the Spirit. “Who touched me?” The disciples just wanted to get to Jairus’s house and thought Jesus was being ridiculous, but they hadn’t understood the meaning of “touched.” They saw just the clamouring of the flesh, but the touch that Jesus felt went beyond the flesh and reached His Spirit. So He put the “important” mission on pause while He stopped to give the woman her life back. Not only did she receive her physical healing, but He affirmed her identity (“Daughter”), He encouraged her heart (be of good cheer), He built her faith, He ministered wholeness beyond her symptoms, and He gave her peace. He did not just impart a gift of healing; He loved her.

Again, when the 5,000 were fed, it was because Jesus allowed their need into His agenda. He had just heard of the death of john the Baptist and was in a “remote place” with His disciples, where the context suggests He had planned to spend some time processing and no doubt praying over what had just happened. But the crowds followed Him, and he had compassion on them (Matt 14: 13-21). On this occasion the gift of the Holy Spirit was the working of miracles, and He empowered the disciples to minister it. But again the vehicle, as it was throughout His ministry, was love.

I see gifting like an Arabian coffee pot with a long curved spout, full of coffee. This is our gifting. We stay full of the Spirit, and we keep the coffee on the heat – close to Jesus. It’s full of everything in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14. But the “most excellent way” that Paul shows is in chapter 13 is how we pour the coffee: we pour it carefully, in love, into the cups that come our way. We do not pour unless God tells us to, and He shows us which cups to pour into. Sometimes, as with the 5,000, there may be more cups than we have coffee in the pot, but if God has told us to pour, we pour. And He will keep filling the pot as we do. However it happens. we direct our gifting in Love. Because if we don’t, it goes all over people’s laps…This “most excellent way” is actually the ONLY way: without it, as 1 Cor 13 emphasises, we are nothing.

Jesus Himself makes it clear that it is possible to have gifting without love:

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. 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: 21-23)

To do the will of the Father and to keep the law of Christ is to love. To minister without it is to practice lawlessness: it’s that simple. So to come back to the original question: can we say that love is more important than gifting? The answer, I think, is that we can’t. Not because of the relative values of each, but simply because we can’t weigh them against each other. I think the assumption for first century Christians was that everyone could expect to move in supernatural giftings. I don’t think anyone at Ephesus, or Sardis, or even lukewarm Laodicea would have thought of saying “I don’t operate in any gifts of the Holy Spirit, but I’m full of love!” In His letters to the seven churches in Revelation, Jesus didn’t tell any of them to work on their prophesy and healing ministries: He told them to return to their first love; not to tolerate compromise, and to persevere to the end, even unto death.

I think most churches today are probably a long way from the level of faith of first century believers.  In the last century – since Azuza Street – the Lord has been leading His people to contend for that faith again. And now, since Covid, the world has changed:  one of the consequences of lockdown has been a proliferation of digital meetings, and along with that trend an increase in both the awareness and the availability of training courses for ministry, especially in the realm of the prophetic, to help believers satisfy their biblical desire for spiritual gifts. Even though we can’t meet as churches, the Holy Spirit is making sure that the resources are available for the five-fold ministries to “equip the saints for the work of ministry.” But in this digitised, Covidised world, where we can no longer say “Who touched me?” it is even more essential that we “pursue love.”


Proverbs 25:16 says:
“Have you found honey?
Eat only as much as you need,
Lest you be filled with it and vomit.”

If we pour, God will fill. But if we make the filling, rather than the pouring our priority – the pot rather than the cups, the spiritual gifts rather than the way of love – we run the risk of swelling in self-importance rather than growing in faith, and we will “vomit” instead of pouring. We don’t pursue the gifts; we pursue love, desiring the gifts. And as we concentrate on the cups and let them interrupt our agendas, God will give us what He wants to pour into them.

Discipleship and witness, Walking in the Spirit

Ministry Gifts

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“He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children… but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love. “(Eph 4: 11-16)

Paul distinguishes three giftings in his letter to the Corinthians:

The Gifts of the Holy Spirit: “There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. “(1 Cor 12:4)
The Gifts of the Son: “There are differences of ministries, but the same Lord.” (1 Cor 12:5)
The Gifts of the Father: “And there are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works all in all.” (1 Cor 12:6)

Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, often known as the fivefold ministries, are the gifts that Jesus gave to men. They are distinct from the gifts of the Holy Spirt enumerated in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14, and distinct from the gifts of the Father, sometimes called the “motivational gifts,” listed in Romans 12 vs 6-8.

The gifts of the Son are unique in that they refer to people rather than the gifts of the Holy Spirit which can be “given to each one for the profit of all;” or to the “level of faith” imparted by the Father to every individual to serve in a particular way. Everyone in the church is given a “level of faith” for a specific area (or areas) of service; everyone in the church can be a channel for the Holy Spirit to manifest Himself through a particular supernatural gift or ”manifestation of the Spirit” (1 Cor 12:7), and certain individuals in the church are ministry gifts given  by Jesus to the church to bring it to maturity.

Jesus will be returning for a grown-up; not a child bride. The yardstick we are given for maturity is the “fullness of Christ” Himself. When He returns “we will be like Him.” (1 John 3:2) We will be “a perfect man,” we will know Jesus intimately, and our Unity will be complete. The cry of the Saviour’s heart narrated in John 17 will be answered, because we will be one as He and the Father are one. The fivefold ministries are given to the Body so that we can attain to this perfect goal.

How? When the church is functioning and the Body growing according to the Ephesians 4 blueprint, the saints are equipped as for “works of ministry.” The word for ministry – diakonia –means ‘obedient service.’ In other words, the body learns to do what the head tells it to do. And if we untangle the convoluted language of verse 16, the picture that we find at the core is that everyone grows when Love and Truth flow from the head (Christ) through all the connected members. The purpose of the fivefold ministries is to enable that flow of love and truth into and through “every part.”

What comes next is key. This equipping that brings the bride of Christ to maturity is enabled by what Paul calls the “effective working by which every part does its share.” The language  means more in the original Greek than the English translation suggests. The word “Energeia” – ‘effective working’ – is only used in the New Testament  for superhuman power. The body of Christ grows to maturity when, enabled by the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, each member relates to the others through the operation of supernatural connections. Placing this in the context of the gifts of the Father and of the Holy Spirit, this means that we have to apply “a measure of faith” – going beyond our natural abilities or inclinations, and reaching into the Father’s inexhaustible supply – to whatever works of service we are motivated to carry out; and it means that we expect and rely on the gifts of the Holy Spirit to touch the spirits of our brothers and sisters in ways that are impossible in the flesh. The gifts of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all work together as the church grows into the “perfect man.”

In his book “Into Action,” Reinhard Bonnke says “Christianity was never intended to be anything else but an outpouring of the spirit. It is a reviving, quickening, renewing energy. Revival is not an extraordinary work beyond normal Christianity. Christianity is revival.” Reinhart Bonnke has raised the dead, seen thousands of people healed, and led millions to Christ, so he has some credibility. The church cannot grow to maturity without the power of the Holy Spirit impacting every member and enabling each one to respond to the Head by reaching out supernaturally to others. Jesus has put five ministries in place in order to bring this about, so unless leadership is in the hands of all five the growth will be unbalanced and incomplete.

Revival isn’t just about a lot of people getting saved and healed; it’s about the Church growing up.

Walking in the Spirit

The Yeast of the Kingdom

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Today I made some bread rolls with fresh yeast. I made the dough in the bread maker before they went into the oven. It was a busy morning: my mother-in-law died recently and we had a van full of furniture and other items from her house to be distributed round various households. One of these was an electric “riser recliner” chair for our friend and School of Prophesy member Linda, who had been asking the Lord for one of these for John, her father. Another item she needed for him and hadn’t been able to get hold of was a commode. We had one of these as well. The timer on the dough had 45 minutes left when we set off for Linda’s house. Also in the van were a coffee table and a bedside cabinet for the charity shop. Linda and David live 10 minutes away.

The chair was perfect. We wheeled it in.

“Linda, you don’t happen to want this table and bedside cabinet as well, do you?”

“Oh yes, he’d love them in his  room! And you don’t happen to have anywhere you could store this carpet for us, by any chance, do you?” (Conversations are summarised.)

We did. We took her furniture out of the van and put in the rolled up carpet. When we got home there was one minute left for the dough in the bread machine. The timing was perfect.

God’s perfect timing

What’s this got to do with yeast?

Linda had asked God for one thing – the chair; she actually got five: the table, the cabinet, the commode, and storage for her carpet as well. And on top of that, it saved us a trip to the charity shop. God is “able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us.” The power of the Holy Spirit at work in us is the power of the Kingdom of Heaven. Without the yeast doing its work of multiplication we would not have had bread rolls for lunch. God want to feed us from Heaven, but for that to be possible we need to have His yeast at work in our lives. It looked impossible for Linda’s Dad to come and live with them, but she and David both felt the Lord had told them that He would make a way where there was no way, and they believed Him; and today we were part of that way being made.

I felt that God allowed that perfect timing of the bread rolls to show us something that we would have missed if it hadn’t been so exact: the yeast in the dough represented the multiplication of His blessing in John’s life. John isn’t a Christian yet, but the Lord is on his case. I believe salvation will come to him while he is with Linda and David. And it will be because of three things that are all core to the Spirit-led life:
1) A hunger to hear the word of God;

2) A willingness to trust and obey His word, even when it looks impossible; and

3) An everyday familiarity with the presence of the Holy Spirit, who is “the power that works in us.”

These three are essential if the leaven of the Kingdom of God is going to transform the dough of our daily life into the bread of Heaven.

Fresh bread, anyone?