I like things to be quite casual in style when it comes to a Sunday Morning Service. That is just taste. It is neither better nor worse than those who prefer things to be formal. I like to dress informally because I am coming into the presence of my Father with my brothers and sisters. It is family time. At the same time I respect deeply those who still feel they should put on their Sunday best for  coming before the King of kings and the Lord of lords. In fact casualness  in the pulpit  these days is giving casualness a bad name. It is becoming a deliberate, consciously worked at casualness, so much so that I would rather now a minister looked like a minister, robes and all,  if  the alternative is body buffed studied and deliberate coolness or worked at mirror perfected untidiness of dress or hair style. I would rather ministers looked like ministers than models posing. The times are narcissistic enough without having to have narcissists in the pulpit!  I am thinking mostly about male ministers when I say this.  You female ministers have a difficult enough time in certain sectors of the church.  God bless you and good on you! My fellow male ministers: I actually think that carefully styled stubble in the pulpit from macho or not so macho males shows something much more spiritually worrying than an academic hood!  It seems “Cool is King” in the pulpit!

Well, that is what I strongly think and I am sticking to it…but maybe not for good. You see,  I have not always thought that and may change my mind again another ten years down the line. It is what I currently think and I believe I have good reason and evidence as to why it is true, but I would not add  “In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” to such  pronouncements, as though God by necessity backs up every one of my thoughts and utterances! That is a phrase I have never prayed before or after a sermon in several decades of preaching. There are several reasons I refuse to say that. Sometimes I have preached drivel and God does not speak drivel! At other times I have heard others preach drivel and attach the name of God to it. Also, I  have heard myself  being quoted in someone else’s sermon… “As Kenny says…” At times I sit there thinking, “Did I say that? I don’t think I said that. In fact I know I didn’t say that because I don’t even believe that! Will others think I did say that and do believe that?” It is actually quite an uncomfortable experience to have your name attached to something you never said and would never dream of saying in time or eternity! If you are preaching this Sunday, I say to you  with deepest reverence toward God and respect toward your calling, “I hope that as you preach God’s Word this Sunday there is not a voice in  heaven saying: “Did I say that? I am sure I didn’t say that. I know I didn’t! I don’t even believe that about myself, about my people, about my purposes. That is not my heart at all…”

In fact let me notch up the being serious a bit more: if you preach this Sunday and dare to attach the name of God, Father Son and Holy Spirit as a blanket covering to all you say, you may well be guilty of breaking the commandment  not  to take the name of the Lord our God in vain. For those who preach and lead in congregations, to take the name of the Lord in vain at least in part means attaching the name of God to something He is not doing and not saying. It is to speak forth my own thoughts and ideas  and schemes and manipulatively to give them extra weight by attaching the name of God to them. It is to use the Name of God in my own power playing game to steer things in my direction. Please ask God to help you not to break the third commandment. Don’t treat the name of Jesus the way it is often treated in the church and the world these days. He is such a  convenient coat stand on which so many people seem to  hang their own ideas, campagains and agendas.  He has been hijacked by the politically correct in the world and in a poodle church that merely follows the world in the manner of some Prime ministers I could mention following Presidents I could mention,  rather than offering another way and pointing to another kingdom.  And while I am talking about breaking commandments, make sure too as you preach that you are not breaking another commandment by bearing false witness against your neighbour – for in Christ God moved into the neighbourhood of our humanity and made his home among us. He became our nighbour. It is not nice to lie about or misrepresent your neighbour. It never has a good result nor does it lead to harmonious, happy relationships.

I like humour in preaching so long as it is not overdone or merely self indulgent. At the same time, perhaps in this blog those who know me have learned something that  you didn’t know about me before:  I always took and still take preaching and teaching God’s word as the most joyful and yet the most fearful calling on earth.  I dont think I take myself that seriously, I may be worng, but I do take my calling serioulsy whether that calling is being worked out in a church pulpit or the pulpit of a blog! James tells us a whole forrest can be set on fire by a single spark or  flame. In the same way, the tongue of a preacher can do immense damage. It can be like the rudder of a ship that wrecks the ship because it sends it in a wrong direction.  That is why James also tells us that not many should desire to be teachers of God’s flock. We will be judged more strictly. Rightly so, for the tongue of a preacher  can bless or ruin, build up or destroy  lives and congregations, denominations and even, as history proves, the course of  nations.

A simple plea: If you do decide to say “In the Name of…” before or after you preach this weekend, at least expand upon it lest those who listen or you yourself get the wrong idea and feed that idea to the extent that you believe the lie yourself or hope they do:  If you say it, may you mean this; “In the Name of Our Father who knows I get it so wrong sometimes but forgives, in the Name of the Son who is the true Shepherd of wandering sheep and wandering shepherds, in the Name of the Holy Spirit who can only add His blessing to truth not lie, I stand before you today and dare to speak…God have mercy… God help me…”

This Sunday if you are preaching may it be your prayer for yourself , as it is mine for you, that you do not cause confusion on  a hopefully listening earth or in a most definitely  listening heaven.

God bless you in your holy calling

Your brother in the Lord,

Kenny

PS – You are very welcome to enjoy these blogs and share them with anyone “without money or price!” However, if you ever feel grateful for these blogs and are able to do so, then please make a donation to Open Doors, Scotland. Their website is

http://www.opendoorsuk.org/scotland

In case you have not heard of them, Open Doors works to help our persecuted brothers and sisters throughout the world.

I was reading yet another  poem today  by Kenneth Steven. It is  about a Farmer’s wife he once set out to visit. When he arrives at her home, a “gust of dogs “comes out the door as she opens it,  followed by herself.  She comes out with a shining smiling face and clear blue eyes. She then mentions her husband, dead for 30 years and as she does so, she is hit by a tsunami of emotion that make her eyes “melt against the sun” and her voice buckle. His description of her  reminded me of many people I have met in my life and ministry thus far. Some of them have indeed been farmers’  wives, but not all of them.

I love the beauty of such writing. More than that, it helps explain what I felt I had to write about today. In yesterdays blog I talked about the real Jesus. I guess today is about the real Christian. What does real Christian life look like? To me it looks like that farmer’s wife in that poem. We have been knocked down, perhaps many times, in the course of life: perhaps to quote Spurgeon, we have stood at a graveside where we have buried half our heart or more… and yet somehow by the grace of God we carry on, to greet people and to greet the day.

This is the mark of the true apostles of the faith, those sent out into the world by Jesus with the good news of the already here but not yet Kingdom. This is the mark too of every  follower of Jesus to varying extent. You are the real thing if you have eyes that can shine and also melt. You are the real thing if your voice sings the praises of God, speaks to people with friendliness  and yet at times that same voice can buckle. In fact if your eyes cannot both shine and melt, and your voice cannot sing and buckle, I wonder if we can say we really follow a crucified and risen Christ… indeed I wonder if we are living in reality at all….

I saw a strange sight on T.V a few years ago. A preacher was being hailed by his T.V. host as being someone who God had raised up to show what the blessed life looks like. Apparently it looks like owning a mansion, having a jet and sitting on a gold throne in a T.V. studio. It means wearing a Rolex instead of a Timex. Not long after that in our prayer meeting I heard a dear man with mental difficulties praying like this: “Lord, I thank you for the crocuses especially the yellow ones. When I see them they make me happy, they sort of make me feel I have come through another year. Thank you too that when I needed to know the time I saw a big clock in the street.” He went on to thank God for warm water for his bath each day, expressing that this was “such a blessing, a wonderful blessing.” I think despite all his suffering, he knows more about the real thing, more about the blessed life than a man sitting on a gold throne being envied by the world and a gone-astray church “audience.” I think Paul would say of him that he truly is a follower of Jesus. In fact let the last word be with Paul today:

2 Corinthians Chapter 4.6 – 11

“6 For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 7 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. 8 We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; 9 Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; 10 Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. 11 For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.”

God Bless

Kenny

PS – You are very welcome to enjoy these blogs and share them with anyone “without money or price!” However, if you ever feel grateful for these blogs and are able to do so, then please make a donation to Open Doors, Scotland. Their website is

http://www.opendoorsuk.org/scotland

In case you have not heard of them, Open Doors works to help our persecuted brothers and sisters throughout the world.

Today is probably confusing nature. It is no doubt used to being confused by now, but snow in Edinburgh when it is almost May? There must be animals either thinking they came out of hibernation too soon or being tempted to go back into it too early.

At times in my Christian life I have felt that the seasons are not right for what God has been saying in my deepest heart to come out into the open and walk around in full view. It seems that what God is saying in my heart is not necessarily what the dominant message of the moment seems to be in Christian circles. I sort of feel that might be the case with this blog today. Perhaps it should have stayed hidden in hibernation for another while, but I feel prompted to let it out to walk about, and I am yielding to that temptation. I am, in a way, coming out in this blog…

I think I have been sensing the sadness of God the Father. I don’t mean sadness at what is happening in the world, but sadness about what is happening in the church, and most especially in churches that have a reputation of being alive. Years ago I remember reading a book called “My Father is the Gardener” by Colin Urquhart. Due to my lung condition I have had to get rid of all books that have been in my possession for a while because of an allergy to mould spores, which means I have departed company with hundreds of books. “My Father is the Gardener” is no longer on my book shelves. As far as I remember towards the end of that “story” about renewal in the Holy Spirit, there is a prophecy in which someone expresses the sadness of the Father in the midst of a Christian conference  in these simple terms: “I am looking for my Son. Where is my Son, Jesus.? I am looking for my Son. Can you tell me where I will find my Son? Will I find him here?” I guess that is what has been sleeping and breathing deeply with a slow but steady heart beat in me for a few years now; The Father is looking in the Church for His Son Jesus.

My version of that is if it does not look like Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, if it does not look, feel, smell like the Jesus I read of there, I don’t want anything to do with it. For a long time as a charismatic I have gone with the mantra that God offends the mind to reveal the heart. I still believe it, but it is not a blanket principle to excuse anything and everything that is done supposedly in the Name of Jesus Christ. I used to encourage people to be open  minded when the Spirit of God is moving, because sometimes things can look bizarre. I still believe that but again it is not a blanket principle. Now I am older and have less energy due to illness, I am really not going to commend anything that I have to surround with Kingdom of God health warnings  which shows that ultimately that event or that ministry is  perhaps as healthy or good for me or you as  a packet of cigarettes. Life is simpler  for me now. If it does not look like the Jesus I read of in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, then I don’t want anything to do with it, no matter how popular it may be,  and I will not encourage others to take anything to do with it either…though of course if they feel different and want to be involved they are free so to do.  To those who try and wriggle out of what I am saying theologically by saying that we do not know Christ after the days of his flesh now but as he is in risen glory, as though that were an excuse for ignoring the Jesus of Matthew, Mark Luke and John, I say simply, you are wrong! It is the same Jesus who is now glorified. He still has the same heart and the same priorities.

Which leads me to this; what is His priority? To save us form our sins of course. But what is sin? I know all the technical biblical definitions such as missing the mark or crossing a line etc etc. But though these are the dictionary definitions and are indeed accurate, in themselves they do  not quite get to the heart  of things concerning what sin means to God and to man. I am not sure I have ever got closer to the heart breaking reality of what sin is than when I read these words in Jean Vanier’s , “Jesus, gift of love.” He says this;

“Throughout his life and ministry Jesus reveals a new and deeper meaning of sin. It is not just disobedience to a written law, the refusal or incapacity to obey because of the power of passion and pride. Sin is the breakage of a relationship of love, it is the breakage of covenant, the breakage of trust. It is to say “no” to God and to the vision of love; it is to turn one’s back on Jesus; “I do not want you and your saving  power, your promises or your love. I want to do things on my own, my way.” Sin is to work against love and communion. … that is why Jesus rejoices when he meets people who have discovered the emptiness of power, of things and of flickering distractions, and who seek communion with him; and he rejoices when he meets little children who want to be held and when he meets the  poor, the weak, crying out for recognition and relationship. In some mysterious way Jesus is consoled by the cry of the poor and the broken. They awaken the cry to give love hidden in his own heart, The disciples do not understand Jesus and his desire to give love; they are too taken up with their own projects, power and the need for messianic and spiritual success… Jesus is a lover…crying out to give himself…” (Jesus, Gift of Love, Page 59.)

I had to shut the book and sit and think and after a  few tears coming to my eyes because of the beauty of the writing and the fact that the writing was so so true, I turned to pray.

There is one test for whether Jesus is really present somewhere or in someone. Is there  sharing in His joy when the weak and the poor come into  relationship with him? Is that at the centre of why I live or at the centre of what I am involved in as a Christian? Am I organising my thinking, my life, my priorities, my service around this Jesus of Matthew Mark Luke and John.

I have been thinking about what church I might go to when I retire officially. I think it would be a church in which I can look and find  Jesus the Son of God being honoured for Who He has always been and always will be and wants to be in the life of His Church.  For me that is now more important than the style of worship or whether that church is famous for being evangelical or charismatic. If I can ask this without being judgmental: Will I find it easy to find such a church wherever we end up living?

Mm… not  very sure….

God Bless

Kenny

Today I am remembering childhood friends Michael and Morris Maguire.  They were Roman Catholic and introduced me to the practice of genuflecting as well as introducing me to the idea of holy water when I was 7 years old! Apart from that I had  no close contact with the world of Catholicism until a few years ago when I spoke at a meeting for Catholic Charismatics. It was  a humbling experience. I am not sure I have ever been in a meeting that seemed more open to the Spirit. It was a genuine joy and inspiration to be with them.

The remembered feeling though was I had stepped inside the Tardis. There was more to this Catholic thing than Michael and Morris’s local chapel in Bishopbriggs. There was a whole church world there that I knew so little about.

In a sense this time of illness has awakened a similar awareness. The world of people struggling with ill health, whose life seems governed by hospital appointments and physical or mental limitations is  huge. I remember reading a remark by the Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon that Sorrow has a large family, well so does illness and weakness.

I don’t think I have ever mentioned Spurgeon and Henri Nouwen in the same blog. Today though as I remembered Spurgeon’s comment I am remembering a phrase from Henri Nouwen; “It is not easy to be unwell.” I find that is a sentence that seems like holy ground to me. In a few words it seems to capture the awareness, the knowing the compassion of God for those who are not well.

I live most of the time in a wider church world that believes in healing that believes in cure. In such a world it is even more difficult to be unwell. It is not I don’t believe in God healing but somehow it is possible to feel like a failure to be ill in a church that believes in healing. If you are in such a church, I hope that you find the balance that I have found in my congregation that makes that difficulty easier: cure and care need to both be present .

I cant remember which of my present favourite writers said this -I think it was Jean Vanier. Whoever it was, they said in one of their books that cure without care can become aggressive and almost violent. I see this in some charismatic congregations. There is no thought about the effects of  making an ill person stand for a long time, because that is the way the Spirit must work; folk have to stand to receive ministry.  Can the Spirit not work if an ill person sits? I have seen on God TV ministers punching even kicking ill people. Somewhere they have heard of Smith Wigglesworth methodology and presume again that method is power.

Often odd behaviour is explained on the basis of one passage, namely that there was an  occasion Jesus made some paste with earth and spittle and rubbed it on the eyes of a blind man. I have heard charismatic preachers defend the most bizarre ways of treating people based on that story. Listen; spittle was felt to have medicinal properties in Jesus day. What Jesus was doing was not odd in the slightest. On the contrary it was a sign that Jesus was offering healing. It was a sign that the blind man himself would have understood and taken great comfort not confusion from.

To those who care about cure, I want to ask a question; do you care about care? Many in this Tardis world of illness and weakness would be greatly blessed and helped if you remembered both when you pray for us and speak to us.

On behalf of those inside the Tardis

Kenny

PS – You are very welcome to enjoy these blogs and share them with anyone “without money or price!” However, if you ever feel grateful for these blogs and are able to do so, then please make a donation to Open Doors, Scotland. Their website is

http://www.opendoorsuk.org/scotland

In case you have not heard of them, Open Doors works to help our persecuted brothers and sisters throughout the world.

I intensely dislike being made to do icebreakers! However I do recall one that had a profound effect upon me. What I am sharing happened years ago, but it had an impact that still endures. I was  attending some sort of committee meeting for Urban Priority Area Parishes of the  Church of Scotland. Details such as  who led the opening devotions are hazy in my memory. Whoever it was, they  asked the rest of us to think of  this question and then to share our answers with our neighbour: “When you don’t feel like getting out of bed in the morning, what helps you get out of bed and move into the day?” Well, there were some predictable schoolboy humour jokes about toilets and so on! Unexpectedly, I found my dislike of icebreakers disappearing – well actually my dislike still remains but the truth is I forgot this was an icebreaker! I felt I had been faced with one of the most profound questions I had ever been asked to think about. Beyond having to work for a living, attending to family, pursuing a call, seeing to other responsibilities etc, what gets us up and ready to greet the day when we don’t feel like doing that at all? The answer that came into my mind surprised me. From deep within, in that place where God’s children simply know things in their knower, came  a sentence that I have never forgotten. “What gets me up when I don’t feel like getting up is that there is Someone who thinks more highly and warmly of me than I think of myself.” That is really what I want to say today: God thinks more highly of you and more warmly  than you have perhaps realised. To Jesus, you are the pearl of great price he came searching for. He found a treasure when he found you.

Almost 40 years ago I heard a recording of a wonderful  if at times  controversial bible teacher called David Pawson. In the particular talk I am thinking about as I write this blog, he shared a memory of being at a big conference. He looked out and saw thousands of people worshipping the Lord Jesus Christ with great joy. He felt that Jesus said to him at that moment, “It was worth it all!” He asked, “What do you mean Lord?” This is what he believed the Lord replied: “It was worth the spitting on my face, the ripping of my back, the pulling out of my beard, the nails in my hands and feet, the crown of thorns upon my head. It was worth the blackness and forsakenness of the cross. I am looking at the fruit of my travail and I am well pleased.”

Something that is  a strength can easily become a weakness in its unguarded or counterfeit form. There is something in the Scottish spiritual D.N.A  that I recognise when I come across it in people, namely a proper sense of humility before God.  Charismatic preachers from other cultures have at times come here and have ridden roughshod over this,  mocked  it and  have  tried to convince us that  it can be wrong to attach “If it be your will Father” to the end of our prayers. They would justify this by saying that we know from the bible and the ministry of Jesus what the will of God is and so we are not to say, “If it be your will,”  as that means a lack of faith. It may be the defiant and fighting  Scot within me, but  every time I hear teaching as to why I cannot add “if it be your will” to my prayers, it actually  makes me rejoice in saying it all the more! In truth however, beyond the part a defiant spirit may indeed play in such a reaction, I actually believe “If it be your will”  is not a cop out, nor does it indicate lack of faith but  is rather a genuine heart posture of genuine humility before Almighty God which much of the charismatic world has forgotten and needs to relearn. Perhaps once we return with confidence to our unique identity as Scottish believers rather than give up our birthright and blessing to please  frustrated visiting conference speakers who want us to be like them, this could be Scotland’s contribution to the charismatic world –  to share the need to humble ourselves beneath God’s mighty hand. When will visiting speakers stop mocking our Scottishness?  When will we stop accepting that mockery? At best it is rude, at worst it is stopping us finding or re-finding our unique identity as Scottish Christians. It is wrong to make David fight in Saul’s armour. It is wrong to make sport of Scottish spirituality  the way that the Philistine lords made sport of Samson. One day Scotland’s spiritual hair will grow again, the lion will find its roar and idols that have been set up in the House of the Lord in Scotland will fall. Even as I was praying briefly earlier on today I found such a large place in God as I allowed myself to say at the end of my prayers, “If it be thy will.” That did not limit my faith but rather increased it.That phrase for me opens up vistas  in God that are awesomely large, almost frighteningly so. I remember when God met with me on one occasion, that all I could say was “Big God…Big God…”

However, having said all that, there is a counterfeit humility that can lead us into dark waters. It can lead me into the lie that I am worthless to God… and a lie that most certainly is.  We may indeed be unworthy but we are not worthless and there is all the difference in the world between the two concepts. I hope you know that however low a value you may pin to yourself, Jesus Christ looks at each one of his flock every day and watches over us as we sleep and says, “They were worth it. When I look at him, when I look at her, I see fruit for my travail and I am well pleased.”

Here is how I know each morning whether it is Christ I am listening to or someone or something else;  when I look at my face in the morning in the mirror, do I smile at what I see because I am looking at someone deeply loved,  or do I avert my eyes in disgust because looking at my own face brings on feelings of shame or failure or inadequacy or of being a disappointment to people and to God? I will make a disclosure to you all; most mornings I smile at myself in the mirror but now and then I shake my head and look away. I hope the next time you and I look in a mirror at the start of the day we will catch ourselves smiling at ourselves with the warmth and kindness of the steadfast love of the Lord which is new every morning. Perhaps that should be our daily icebreaker! Indeed that  is not just my hope for you, it is my heartfelt prayer as I write this blog. “May it please you Lord, to let it be so, Amen.”

PS – You are very welcome to enjoy these blogs and share them with anyone “without money or price!” However, if you ever feel grateful for these blogs and are able to do so, then please make a donation to Open Doors, Scotland. Their website is

http://www.opendoorsuk.org/scotland

In case you have not heard of them, Open Doors works to help our persecuted brothers and sisters throughout the world.

 I could not resist putting the photograph below in a blog… because I think it is true! I LOVE dogs, and I love cats is probably my honest confession, and honest confession is what this blog is about. I am remembering a dog I had called Snoopy. I am sure someone will tell me I am mistaken but he at least seemed to have a sense of guilt! If he did something wrong there really was an atmosphere about the house. It only lifted when you gave him the  opportunity to come into the joy of forgiveness. If you asked if he was sorry, he would come tearing out of wherever he was hiding and show demonstrably how happy he was to be reinstated.

This is a very short blog today. A dog can feel the difference when the air and atmosphere is clear. Could it be that you need to come into the joy of forgiveness today? Is there something concerning which you need to simply say,“Sorry,” to the Lord and if need be to others as well?  David speaks of the heaviness that can be upon us when the  spiritual air is  not clear between ourselves and the Lord and about the joy of being forgiven. Let’s be humble enough to learn from a dog  and  a king.

Read these words and think about them

Psalm 32King James Version (KJV)

32 Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

2 Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.

3 When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long.

4 For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer.

5 I acknowledge my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.

You might want to click on  the address below as well!

God bless,

Kenny

PS – You are very welcome to enjoy these blogs and share them with anyone “without money or price!” However, if you ever feel grateful for these blogs and are able to do so, then please make a donation to Open Doors, Scotland. Their website is

http://www.opendoorsuk.org/scotland

In case you have not heard of them, Open Doors works to help our persecuted brothers and sisters throughout the world.

I like the Letter of James in the New Testament. Well, I say “like,” but that is maybe not the most honest word for me to use, for I find it uncomfortably straightforward in the way that it addresses what it means to pursue a commitment to Christ in real daily living. (Take time to read it over the next couple of days and you will see what I mean.) It leaves no room for my sin to manoeuvre! One of the things we are told by James is that we should be slow to take offence. Paul tells us that one of the characteristics of love is that it is not quick to take offence. Taking offence seems to be so much part of the way humanity is,  that we can make a reason for taking offence out of almost anything and indeed out of nothing at all. I have been reading 2 Corinthians lately. It seems that at least some in Corinth took offence because Paul would not take money from them for preaching the gospel. He could have and it would have been permissible, indeed Paul calls it  his “right”  which he chose to set aside. There is nothing wrong with those who preach or teach being paid. On the contrary, the Bible tells us if someone does that task well, they are to  be paid double. I have never had the courage to tell that to any of my congregations in a serious and convincing way!  Perhaps if pastors did so  they would  they would make some discoveries they would rather not make.  Firstly, they might discover whether the congregation felt their pastor  was preaching and teaching well…or not.  Secondly, they might soon find out whether their congregation really wanted to be a biblical church after all! According to my bible,  amongst many other things, there  are two matters that a biblical church should be attending to: paying hard working pastors double and learning to move in the gifts of Spirit in a church service, especially learning  to prophesy… but I will not go off on that tangent … at least not today… and yes, I am being deliberately provocative and enjoying being so!

Paul himself had made his own personal decision before God not to make his living  from his ministry. It was a decision he strenuously guarded, and it caused offence in Corinth. I find that amazing; taking offence because someone wants to offer you something freely and forego their right to payment.  Mind you, as I wrote that last sentence it sort of reminded me of a bad tempered Board Meeting in one church where someone suggested that the gift of a piano should not be accepted, nor should we record thanks for it in the minutes as it was given anonymously and the person had not asked for permission to give it! Anyway,  back now to Paul and his strained relationship with the Corinthian church.  It seems that some influential voices, either native or visiting Corinth, had suggested Paul’s unwillingness to profit from the gospel showed he was not a true Apostle. It was, quite frankly,  a ridiculous reason for the Corinthians to take offence.  Perhaps it also shows us how  the seeds of Prosperity Gospel  thinking adulterated the stream of church life even at the start.

I simply invite you as I invite myself right now to look at where  we may be  holding on to a real or imagined offence. Do you or I  perhaps need to acknowledge that we are being ridiculous? Even if the offence is real, it still remains true that love is not quick to take offence.

So a challenge: this week, let’s see if we can let go of the strong urge to take offence when it rears its head.  If you feel “found out” as you read this bog, then learn once more the simple fact that the Bible as so often happens, has your number and has read your emails. That should not surprise us, for all Scripture is breathed by the God who made us, who knows what is in us, who loves us and wants us to find the narrow path that leads to life in all its fullness.

God Bless

Kenny

I was so greatly blessed one day not long ago when reading in Henri Nouwen’s “A Spirituality for Living” I came across the story of “The Little River.”

This little river thought to itself, “ I could become  a big river.” It worked hard, but it came against a big rock. The little river said, “I’m going to get round this rock.” The little river pushed with all its might and it got itself around the rock!

Soon the river came against a big wall, but it kept pushing forward! Eventually the river  tunnelled its way through. Then the river came to a huge  forest. The river said, “I’ll go ahead anyway and just force these trees down.”  On it  flowed.

But now the river found itself at the edge of an enormous desert with the hot sun shining relentlessly upon it. The river said, “I’m going to manage to get through this desert! I can do it!” But the hot sand soon began to soak up the whole river until the river became a small muddy pool. At that point the river heard a voice say, “Just surrender. I will  lift you up.”  The sun lifted up the river, and made the river into a cloud. It carried the river over the  vast expanse of the desert and rain poured forth to make distant fields fertile, rich and fruitful.

I will leave you to do your own thinking and be blessed as you do.

Kenny

PS – You are very welcome to enjoy these blogs and share them with anyone “without money or price!” However, if you ever feel grateful for these blogs and are able to do so, then please make a donation to Open Doors, Scotland. Their website is

http://www.opendoorsuk.org/scotland

In case you have not heard of them, Open Doors works to help our persecuted brothers and sisters throughout the world.

To those privileged with the responsibility of preaching and teaching; two things to think about:

Firstly, a principle the Bible mentions:

“If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?”

Secondly, something I heard a minister say that I have always sought to remember:

“Your task is to feed the sheep not to amuse the goats.”

I think that is all I have to say …

God Bless you as you bless others this Sunday

Kenny

Not long ago I caught a glimpse of an incredible sight; a preacher of the gospel stepping off a private jet plane surrounded by body guards. It was as though his stature was shown not simply by  his obvious wealth but by inaccessibility and unapproachability. You had to go through other people in order to get to him. I know the horse has bolted long ago, and it is probably too late to do anything about it, but there seem to be false ideas of Christian leadership gaining ground these days which though they may not have the same trappings of wealth etc. as in the scene I described, are nonetheless based on a model of an inaccessibility which proves stature and importance and authority. The model thought about in diagram form is a triangle:  you have the leader and then underneath the leader there are his or her trusted people, who have trusted people under them and so on. However I was reading in Corinthians today about the leadership heart of Paul. For him as an Apostle, the triangle was the other way round. It is not that he did not care about good ordering in the church or failed to realise the importance of establishing sensible  local church leadership, but it is his own relationship to all of that as a leader of leaders which got hold of me today. For  Paul the model was an upside down triangle. He bore the weight of it all. He  was not separated from it. He was deeply involved. Listen to what he says in 2 Corinthians chapter 11:

Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, 26 I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers. 27 I have laboured and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. 28 Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches. 29 Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?  (N.I.V.)

I hear a lot these days about leadership and new forms of church and much of that thinking is good and necessary and has to happen. I don’t believe I am saying this because I am an old dog who cannot learn new tricks, though it may sound like that.  I have just one thing to say into all the talk about leadership.  Be like Christ and Paul. Don’t absolve yourself of the task of caring. Here is a strange thing I have observed: there are churches that are growing that have not bought into the new ways of thinking, nor do they run on a theology that I think is biblical or correct. Somewhere behind that growth you will find a senior pastor or  a leadership team who genuinely care about the sheep, and the sheep lost and found know it. If you are a leader I ask you, “Have you become separated?”  If you aspire to leadership I ask you the question, “Check the motive. Is  it so that you have a lot of folk under you?” One of my elders  from a former church were I was senior pastor was in a gathering of people which seemed to be permeated by pride as each person boasted about all the people they had under them. Eventually he spoke up and said, “The whole town is under me, or will be soon.” Well, the room was impressed by such confidence and vision. After a pause they asked my elder what line of business he was in and he replied, “I am the grave digger!”

Bearing the weight of care seems to be the defining mark of  Christian leadership. I remember a bishop I esteem greatly looking across the table where we were eating together and saying, “Who would be a leader Kenny?” Elijah when he called Elisha more or less said the same; “Oh, what have I done to you Elisha in placing this call upon you.” If you cannot identify with this then you need to question your leadership or your sense of call into it. It is not reaching a height but going lower and lower under the needs of the church and indeed the world. It means kneeling on the earth, where people’s feet have become dirty, cut and sore and washing them.

Leaders:  Are you truly connected, or the more you have advanced in your leadership is there less and less connection with people as you eat fine food, drink fine wine, play more golf and talk more ideas with other leaders? I have been on the edges of that temptation in Conference Speaking days, and it is a temptation. Please, please, don’t yield to it.

Aspiring leaders:  Who would be a leader after the model of Paul or Christ? Do you really want to go lower than  where others can be bothered going with people?

People: Pray for leaders and aspiring leaders who care.

God bless

Kenny

PS – You are very welcome to enjoy these blogs and share them with anyone “without money or price!” However, if you ever feel grateful for these blogs and are able to do so, then please make a donation to Open Doors, Scotland. Their website is

http://www.opendoorsuk.org/scotland

In case you have not heard of them, Open Doors works to help our persecuted brothers and sisters throughout the world.

Today, as I woke up, I simply asked God to lay something on my heart to share with you. I believe He simply said, “Remember there was a serpent in Eden.” I guess today I am issuing a sort of warning. I prefer not to speak in a warning  tone, but if you walked past someone sitting in a house that was on fire, it would be the  loving thing to do to shout as loud as you could to them in no uncertain terms, “Get out of there, right now! You are in danger!” I don’t think that after escaping they would say to the messenger of their danger, “Could you not have spoken to me a bit more gently and kindly. You frightened me!”

It is always best to try and speak to people in tones of God’s kindness. At the same time it is interesting that in 1 Timothy Chapter 3 verse 16 Paul says, “All Scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting….” It is perhaps in a combination of these 3 words that I want to speak to you today through this word, “Remember there was a snake in Eden.” I am sure it was no coincidence that  when I opened my bible today for my daily reading, that within a few verses I came across these words: “I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the Serpent’s cunning your minds may somehow be led astray….” 1 Corinthians Chapter 11 verse 3.

It is a while since this has happened to me with regard to blogging, but I feel that perhaps there are some who read this blog who need a warning today. You may think you are standing well for the Lord, but that can be such a dangerous moment that Scripture tells us  when that is our estimation of our state, we need to take heed and to walk carefully at such times lest we fall.

I don’t want to turn this into a sermon but just to pass on the specific warning I  feel the Lord gave me: you will never have such a level of victory, or such an overwhelming spiritual experience that you can forget about the Serpent. He was in a perfect garden. He sought opportunities to come into the life of the  perfect Sinless One, Jesus Christ. The first thought that came to mind after that word from the Lord to me this morning, was of a man I knew who was in a backslidden state. He said that if only God met him in an overwhelming way, he knew he would never go astray again. I was there the night he was prayed for and he did receive a wonderful overwhelming experience of  the love  of His Heavenly Father. He repeated his conviction that now he would never ever go astray. Within a week he had fallen out with the Church, with the Lord, with me as minister and he was never seen in church again in all the years I remained in that place as minister. He kept his wife and family from attending too. His case has not been unique in my experience. I could name a short list of people who have indeed tasted of the power of the age to come but then fallen away.  I saw them receive and I saw them walk away. This is perhaps my only remaining sadness as a parish minister and preacher of the gospel.  For  every other type of sadness I can find hope. The bible tells me  however that it is impossible to restore to repentance those who have tasted of the powers of the age to come, but then fall away. I am so glad the Lord has not left it to us to know for sure when someone has crossed that line, but he does warn us that it is a real possibility. He does not give empty promises or warnings.

Whenever I hear someone say something like. “Well, the devil will never get me that way again…” I shudder with a shudder I have felt at  similar sounding  announcements . Let me repeat there was a Serpent in the very garden which God had made and pronounced good. There was nothing wrong with the garden, any more than there was something wrong or doubtful or questionable about the goodness of the experience of the Spirit  the man I have just told you about was blessed with. One of the gifts of the Spirit is the gift of discernment of spirits, which helps us know what is of God, what is of the devil and what is of the flesh. It is a gift that is one hundred percent accurate unlike prophecy. It has to be, because one can do incalculable  harm if one attributes something to the wrong source. If you don’t have that gift, if it is not something that you know operates in you as a gift that you have never earned or learned, then ask God for that gift. Sometimes we have not because we ask not. The experience that man had was a genuine experience of the Holy Spirit of God. The Spirit Himself bore witness to the genuineness of what was happening. The lesson is clear but let me repeat it: there is no spiritual experience no matter how wonderful and genuine that means we can forget about the Serpent. Again I remind you of what I have already said, that the  bible tells us that when we think we are standing tall and strong, we should take heed, lest we fall. I am not being kill joy, rather as Rev. Jim Graham so frequently says when he is teaching the Bible, “I did not write this stuff. I am only telling you what it says!”

Most pastors speak to those who are struggling in order to help them up the way and on the way. Today in the Name of Christ I am speaking to those who may feel that you are in a good place spiritually, who may even feel that you are on the heights spiritually. Beware! Take a warning! The serpent can turn up in beautiful places, beautiful moments and beautiful people. Walk carefully and humbly with God in this particular season of blessing and always, lest like Eve in a perfect garden and many more men and women since, you too are deceived.

God bless

Kenny

PS – You are very welcome to enjoy these blogs and share them with anyone “without money or price!” However, if you ever feel grateful for these blogs and are able to do so, then please make a donation to Open Doors, Scotland. Their website is

http://www.opendoorsuk.org/scotland

In case you have not heard of them, Open Doors works to help our persecuted brothers and sisters throughout the world.

It is funny how we can find reasons to dislike something just because we are not good at that very thing.  A confession: I am hopeless at taking photographs. Despite the fact it has never been easier in a sense, with the advances in mobile phones and so on, I am still hopeless. All the technology in the world cannot hide my incompetence. I was looking at some photographs taken by one of my nieces of her wee girl. I can see that they are perfectly framed, but know that give me a month of Sundays and longer, and I would never be able to produce something of similar merit. It is one of my secret long living shames hiding there among many others, such as that at school I was never able to make an owl noise with my hands or whistle like a Shepherd! While I am at it, another long standing embarrassment comes to mind: I have never quite managed to make out the Sleeping Warrior on Arran!  There, it is out in the open: “Thank you Jesus!”   In fact now I am released from the shame of not seeing this wretched man let me give you the lurid details.  At times I have even tried to help others see it/him, not knowing what on earth I was pointing at! Once I thought I had seen it/him at last but when I pointed it out to the person manfully persisting in trying to show me he told me it was not where I was looking at all! He persisted and persisted  saying, “`But look, you must see it!”  Eventually I lied: “Oh you mean there? Oh yes, it is really clear. I see it now!” By  the same way I see the same thing with folk being prayed for in Charismatic meetings: “Are you feeling better?” “No, no difference!” “Let’s pray some more…” “Are you feeling better now?” “No!” “Let’s s pray some more then…”  In  front of 4000 people only people with quite weird personalities can take this without embarrassment and without eventually cracking. Most will be reduced within a few minutes to saying, “ Yes, yes, YES, the pain has gone!” and everyone claps as you limp back to your chair, not only not healed but now you realise that not quite all the crowd is clapping after all! Despite you trying to put on your most convincing “I have just been healed” face,  the more discerning among the 4,000 know you have just lied as well! What a relief it is to get these secrets out there! By the way, do not send me a photograph of the Sleeping Warrior in response even if you do mark him out in fluorescent paint to point him out for me… and don’t send me a “name it and claim it” healing book either! Been there, got the T Shirt!

Now that I have got the honest confession out of the way, I want you to believe that what I am writing today is not to hide my inadequacy as a photographer behind lofty sounding spiritual principles. As far as I can tell, God’s message to some of us this very day may well be, “Before you take the photograph…” That may sound a pretty vague message, but I have to try and be true to what I think God wants to say.

When you get some sort of revelation from God, you don’t aways get the interpretation, but in this case I think I know what God is wanting to say today through that half sentence. I was looking not long ago at a photograph of a time when my son and myself were staying on the shores of Loch Fyne, with some other fine fellows. Actually we nicknamed ourselves, “The Fyne Dukes!” It sounds like a brand name that could be an umbrella over all sorts of produce with the vaguest of links to Scotland. In fact maybe I will copyright it and sell it to you if you want to buy it! Anyway, we had a wonderful time, just wonderful. We were blessed in so many ways, including by the Northern Lights showing up on our last night. I found my heart bursting with gratitude to God for all sorts of reasons, and to this day am thankful for the memories, for the goodness of God and for the generosity of the couple who allowed us the  use of their beautiful house.

However, my photographs don’t really capture  what I found so heartbreakingly beautiful about the place and the whole experience. C. S. Lewis one talked about a beauty that was so extreme it could break and heal your heart. I think that is the sort of phrase I would use to describe actually being there with the Dukes of Fyne on Loch Fyne. In many ways I was at a very weak place in terms of my illness and coming to terms with the  inevitable retirement on health grounds. I encountered in these days the beauty of God in nature and in my fellow Dukes who looked after me so well. All of that  did have  both a breaking and a healing effect…

…. enough tangents! Back to the photographs! They were probably some of the best I have taken. In a sense they are accurate, but the most accurate remembering is in the banks of my emotional memory, in my heart. It is good to be like Mary and “ponder things” in our heart.The photographs took seconds to take, but I must have stared at the  actual scenes  fact for a cumulative total of many hours. Kenneth Steven sums up  so well what I am trying to say  in his book of poems, “Salt and Light.” In a beautiful poem called “Pictures of Assynt” he speaks about another type of picture taking than the  click  of anI iPhone or any other type of camera shutter.  He says, “Let the eyes filter these pictures instead, through the dark room of the mind, into the pages of the heart.”

It is sad that many people’s only access to some beauty that they have seen in the  past  will be iPhone photographs. A sudden click, and then moving on. The truth is that nothing but gazing and pondering and  storing things in the heart can then conjure up remembrance of truest beauty and make the blessing live once more.

By “Before you take the photograph…,” I think God is maybe wanting to challenge the pace at which we live our lives: immense beauty pondered, then becoming a trace in the memory banks  of a phone. There is merit in standing and staring, and allowing beauty to filter though into the heart. I am not sure there is much space for lingering, thinking, meditating in our culture these days of everything having to be instant. A pause of a few seconds waiting for something to appear on a computer screen can cause an off the scale reaction of frustration! Somewhere in my memory I remember someone saying, “Hurry is of the devil.” Another person present corrected them and said, ‘Today, hurry is the devil.”  It stops us being still, stops us gazing. We take from many experiences only a few drips of the blessing we could have known, because we just rush on.

Ian White once wrote a song containing the line, “A glance may save but the gaze transforms.” I think this is one of my very favourite lines out of any hymn or song, ancient or modern.

Have you got an iPhone camera approach to beauty and to times of blessing? Click!… and move on? Patterns in one sphere can become a more pervasive  habit covering bigger areas of our life than we might have intended. Have you, have I got an iPhone approach to God? Read the bible… click! Nothing carried in the heart through the day. God tells us something encouraging through another person…click!… it has become a past event rather than something that lives and breathes within us.

According to Paul, for sons and daughters of God to change more and more to be like our elder brother Jesus and our  Heavenly Father, we have to behold the beauty of the Lord. This sounds like more than a glance. It sounds to me like a gaze that transforms.

That strange sounding word that is the title of this blog and its explanation may be difficult for some of us to receive because our minds and bodies are so conditioned by a restlessness to move on. Well, at some point you have to ask God to break that bad habit. What good will it do you if you achieve much, gain much, but your soul suffers?  The bible tells us “ Be still.” I am doing a course on Christian Mindfulness at the moment. In the meditation exercises at first it was incredibly difficult for me not to take a look at my phone or emails half way through! Lingering and gazing are so unfashionable today it might seem a very uncomfortable place for some of us. Can we be still and alone in general? Can we be still before God, or is there something that seems very strong urging us to get on with things? Remember, in many though certainly not in all instances, “Hurry is the devil!”

So,”Before you take the photograph…,” is not just for those who have iPhones. Maybe you were going, “Whew, I haven’t got an  iPhone so this blog is not for me!” I hope after reading it you will understand what that half sentence laid on my heart by the God who loves everyone who reads this blog, is really about. After all we probably were made to ask the question by rote when we were at school, “What is this life if full of care we have no time to stand and stare?” Stop clicking and moving on. Learn to be still. Remember “a glance may save but the gaze transforms.”

God bless you, real good!

Kenny

PS – I would commend to you again the Concept of Christian Mindfulness which is relevant in the light of this blog.

Go to

http://www.christianmindfulness.co.uk/

I am finding this so helpful myself.

PPS – You are very welcome to enjoy these blogs and share them with anyone “without money or price!” However, if you ever feel grateful for these blogs and are able to do so, then please make a donation to Open Doors, Scotland. Their website is

http://www.opendoorsuk.org/scotland

In case you have not heard of them, Open Doors works to help our persecuted brothers and sisters throughout the world.

I had the most wonderfully upbuilding conversation today with someone who used to work as a Hospital Chaplain. She talked about a paradox that is so beautiful and yet so profound it just had to become today’s blog. At one point of the conversation she shared her memories of holding tiny premature babies, often no bigger than the palm of her hand. They were the symbol of weakness and yet at the same time had tremendous power. They drew forth gifts of care, of compassion, of love, of tenderness, drew forth many skills and abilities from others. In a sense they created community, despite seeming so powerless. Actually they were the powerful centre of a coming together of people around them.

Paul, as is well known, speaks of the church as being like the different parts of a human body. There are parts of the body that seem to not merit much noticing or attention, but they are in fact essential.  I spend more time shaving my face than thinking about my liver, though on a daily basis I am aware of my lungs these days! Normally the theme we concentrate on from this imagery is on honouring other people’s giftedness and accepting our own giftedness and limitations. But that is not the only emphasis of the Apostle Paul. He reminds us that there are parts of the body that get no obvious honouring or attention, and how vital they are, and then seems to say this represents people who in a worldly sense would not attract honour or attention who are now in the fellowship of the church. It is those passed over as weak  and valueless to the world that become the very core of a healthy church. They are actually vital for the breakthrough of the presence of the Kingdom of heaven here on the earth.

Honouring people is a concept rightly being brought to the attention of God’s people in these days which is good and Scriptural.  The Christian church should develop a culture of honour. But to be true to Scripture we need to see what that really means. It means honouring the passed over, not those who already receive visible honour in the church. Of course we are to honour those who already receive visible honour too, but the world can do that with its own, at least some of the time. What makes the church the Church  of Jesus Christ is not simply honouring those whose gifts are obvious and are valued, but it means giving prime place and honour,  a special deliberate heart felt honouring to the weak, to those who at first sight might be dismissed as not very important as not having much to offer. A visiting preacher from across the Pond once asked me who were the most important church leaders in Scotland at the moment so he could make contact with them – to advance his sphere of influence obviously. I told him there were none in the sense he was meaning.  To have said anything different would have furthered his lack of healthy understanding and to have been complicit in his lack of Christ like thinking. The foundation of the church is not its leadership face but how well the hidden parts are being cared for. But we seem to be in love these days with trying to get  contact between influential people in the church meeting influential people in the business world, meeting influential people in the political world. It sounds like wisdom, but it is the wisdom of the world and not God’s way. Jesus did not get His people, his disciples to set up a meeting between Himself and the Sanhedrin, or between Himself and Pilate. At a time when according to modern church thinking He should have been doing that, to spread His influence,  He simply washed the dirty feet of an insignificant bunch of folk. Poor Jesus, he got it so wrong, according to modern  ideas of how to win friends and influence people. Actually he knew that God’s Kingdom on earth gets built in places of dirt and dust, not in corridors of wealth and power. After all, behind whatever gold or silver or position or fame those we consider are important may possess, they like us all are made of dust. As human beings you and I are just handfuls of dust and dirt that heaven has kissed.

You maybe honour your pastor, your elders, those who work hard in the Lord on your behalf.  Paul tells us that is a right thing to do. But the world can do that remember. What distinguished the early church is that they recognised that in places where there is obvious weakness and poverty, the Kingdom waits to break through. Weakness has power in God, just like those tiny  premature babies had among people. Realising this and living it out is essential to a true  and healthy community of Christ emerging in the midst of any culture to challenge it rather than simply to mimic it with a  slightly cleaner version of going after the same things.

I find it interesting that now being able to do less through ill-health there are certain things I really miss. I miss the preaching and teaching of Ian our Associate minister  and Ollie our youth pastor. They deserve and receive honour. But I am missing too the humour, love and grace of the people in what we grandly have called Cafe Church. Some of them are unemployed, some struggle with addictions, some have had really hard lives. But I realise that I have found grace among them, acceptance, love, compassion. I honour them because in their weakness  and more obvious vulnerability they bring to me the Kingdom of God. For me that gathering of what might be labelled the weak and passed over, is a pace where more often than not I encountered the presence of God in powerful and humorous and unexpectedly gentle and tender and beautiful ways.

Paul’s letter to the Corinthians is one that is often used to bash those who believe in charismatic gifts. “Look at all the problems they caused in Corinth.” Actually, Paul’s instruction was to get more charismatic still, and learn to prophesy instead of just speaking in uninterpreted tongues! Even those who claim to come under Scripture seem to put themselves over it when it comes to this theme of “charismatic” gifts. So those who use 1st. Corinthians as an anti-charismatic tract are simply misusing it for their own theological prejudices.  Naughty, naughty! I am sure they know they are doing this but can’t admit it. Far more important though is  something we forget is an underlying theme that Paul suggests as he writes to Corinth. It was a church were the poor having experienced being despised in the world, were being despised in the church, not fully honoured. It was time to remember that being a church is heaping honour on those who have been given none in the world.

There is good teaching that comes from across the pond to us and erroneous teaching. Sometimes folk from overseas come and pray in very grand ways that Scotland would be delivered from its poverty spirit. But as they do it seems to me they are praying we would live the American dream rather than a Kingdom of Heaven dream and vision. I sometimes cannot say “Amen” to what they seem to be saying is the right sort of spirit to have . I hope they are not meaning when they say that to go against what Jesus said in the first beatitude: The most accurate translation of that text is “Blessed are those who have the spirit of the poor for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.” It is where humanity is at its poorest and weakest that we discover most about the Kingdom. Someone you may be passing over in favour of other more exciting people in the room as it were, may have more to teach you about the Kingdom than that upwardly mobile and successful person. May God deliver us from ever thinking that poverty is a good thing. It causes horrendous problems. But may we never be delivered from the riches discovered where there is the spirit of the poor.

Where are you poor today? Where are you weak? Are you allowing others to bless you there to honour you there? Are you honouring your own weakness of body mind or spirit or are you  seeing these things as enemies to you wellbeing and an unwelcome drain upon your friends or your church? Where you are weak you are strong, where you are poor you are powerful. Honour where you are weak, don’t despise yourself, and see how the Kingdom breaks through in fresh ways. To be healthy the church needs not just your giftedness but your weakness and poverty. Allow weaknesses to show. Allow where you are poor to show. If you and I learn to do that, we will find that the Kingdom is closer than we may think and that we are dearer to God than we can ever understand.

I suppose the church needs your giftedness, but I know it needs your weakness.

God Bless

Kenny

PS – You are very welcome to enjoy these blogs and share them with anyone “without money or price!” However, if you ever feel grateful for these blogs and are able to do so, then please make a donation to Open Doors, Scotland. Their website is

http://www.opendoorsuk.org/scotland

In case you have not heard of them, Open Doors works to help our persecuted brothers and sisters throughout the world.

I occasionally write poetry. Well, I call it that anyway. It is mainly for me and I seldom share it. I find that the starting point 99% of the time is a memory, and more specifically a remembered feeling that is sparked off by something in the “now.” Today, the remembered feeling is one of trembling excitement. It was the simply glorious weather today that sparked it off. It took me back to my first visit to the Mainland of Orkney when I was in the early stages of feeling the call of God to go to Orkney to minister. The day Morag and I first set foot in the islands  we were met by the interim moderator – sorry that is Church of Scotland speak: it means the person in charge of a vacant church until they get a new minister. He took us out for lunch. I suppose lunch lasted about an hour to an hour and a half as there was much to talk about. I do not remember a thing about the food. I certainly remember the kindness and integrity and warm encouragement of the interim moderator, Rev. John Waugh. The other thing I remember is a passing thought that he must have wondered if I was being rude, because I was fascinated by the changing weather framed by the window behind him as he talked. It was almost like a speeded up video, that compacted a year into an hour! Every season seemed to cross that window. There was sun, rain, snow, wind whipping up leaves followed by  calm. I had never seen such changeable weather! It was an early but definite sign that if we followed through the sense of call, we would be  coming to a place which was different in every way to what we had been used to and I felt  a tingling sense of nervousness mixed with a sense of an adventure that was beckoning.

By the time we had been in Orkney a couple of years, I got used to the rapid changes in weather so much so that I hardly noticed them.  I got used to the constant wind across the treeless sea-hugging island we lived on, so much so that if the wind ever stopped blowing, it unsettled me and I could not sleep! It felt as though something was wrong! I was soon just like the locals in that I would call what we in Scotland would call a storm, “Just a breeze!” I got used to the very dark days of winter and the wonderful long spring and summer days. These long summer days are bound to become a poem or a blog or both someday or other whenever I manage to name the feeling they awaken as I think of them. It is not just fiction by the way; you really can read a book outside at midnight if you so choose; you can also play golf at  that same hour, though in Orkney golf courses are rather rarer than hen’s teeth! But today it was the remembered first thrill of that changeable day that came forcibly to mind.

Somehow I was helped as I remembered. I guess  that for me these last three years have been a time when nothing has seemed quite as stable or straightforward as I might have wished. My health has been unpredictable and unreliable. Squash had to give way to golf, which had to give way to riding a bicycle which has had to give way to walking along flat paths beside the canal.  Changes are coming with where we will live, lifestyle etc. I am retired at least 8 years before the right season. Somehow that remembered day in Orkney  lessened the fear of rapid change and brought back somewhere on the wind of the Spirit  the call to adventure, the lure of  fresh places to go in God, wherever and whatever they may look like. Change with no anchor points of course is a fearful thing. Let me tell you two things that I have been thinking about today that are helping me move away from the anxiety end of the scale towards adventure. I don’t think I have successfully completed that journey but I am getting there, even if at times it is one step forward, two steps back. If you are facing changes you find  it difficult to negotiate, I hope what follows might help.

Firstly, there is one thing I know I can be certain about.  Brennan Manning says that if a Christian is asked what is certain in this life, before they answer along with the world “death and taxes, ” they can say, “the love of Christ.” I don’t always handle the changes that come my way as well as I would like and sometimes fall into self condemnation. Thankfully though my trust is not in me but in Christ in me, Christ for me not against me. His love is constant, it does not change like the weather. Perhaps you are going through changing seasons of life at the moment.  Perhaps the weather in your life is constantly shifting. You may be coping well. But perhaps you are not. It is so easy to  pour upon ourselves how we “ought” to be or “should” be  coping as a Christian. Somewhere in my mind I remember a preacher asking a question, “Which is greater; your capacity to mess it up, or God’s capacity to love you?” If you are tempted to say that you are making a hash of your life at the moment, that the way your are coping with the weather in your  life seems stained with the word “failure” then let me quote to you words the source of which I do remember. Duncan Campbell says in a tape recorded sermon that, “The blood of Christ can cleanse as deep as the stain has gone.” That is a wonderful thought. Please believe it. Whatever mark you would give yourself for coping or not coping with changes you are trying to negotiate, there is nothing more certain than the love of Christ for you.

Secondly, if you are struggling to get some sense of continuity and order to your days for whatever reason, let me share help I found in Henri Nouwen. Frequently in his writings he draws attention to the way in which Jesus life was ordered. There were 3 anchor points; solitude with His Father, fellowship and communion with his disciples, and mission/ministry to the world. Especially in times where not a lot is certain and a lot seems to be changing, I have found these 3 anchor points useful to keep in mind. They help keep anxiety at bay and bring a sense of balance and some sort of order. I am not wanting to be prescriptive here about what these 3 concepts would look like in your day or week or month. Find what works for you.  I am simply saying where I have found bread and  want to share it with you.

God Bless

Kenny

PS – You are very welcome to enjoy these blogs and share them with anyone “without money or price!” However, if you ever feel grateful for these blogs and are able to do so, then please make a donation to Open Doors, Scotland. Their website is

http://www.opendoorsuk.org/scotland

In case you have not heard of them, Open Doors works to help our persecuted brothers and sisters throughout the world.

Today, for reasons that would take up too much blog space, I found myself thinking of the concept of “yearning.” I was thinking of places or experiences or whatever that I yearn to visit again. I got a very great surprise as I did. I thought I would yearn for a repeat of my conversion experience, or  of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, or the time I felt kissed by the Father’s love in the days of the Toronto Blessing , or of one of the times when I have experienced  a miracle such as transportation. However, strangely enough I did not find I yearned for any of these things. They happened, they are real, and I thank God it is so. However strange this may sound, let me tell you what I yearned to revisit.

The first place I found myself yearning to revisit is a mountain pool somewhere in Bavaria. We stumbled on it during a school trip. I probably could never find it again, but today I found myself yearning after it. There was something about it: it was ice cold and refreshing both to drink and to swim in; the clarity was almost mystical; it was somehow clearer than air, with a shimmering beauty. The colour, well I cannot describe it, but I have never seen a jewel more beautiful, alluring or captivating. I really wish I could describe it to you.

The second experience I found myself yearning for, was when I was sitting in a doctor’s waiting room a good few months back. I was feeling incredibly vulnerable, perhaps never more so in my whole life to date. However, the presence of Christ came. I was touched with the gentlest  of loves. He did not come to rebuke lack of faith and tell me I should not be anxious, as I was trying to tell myself in angry frustration. He came to do something about my anxiety. He met me with a love that would not break a bruised reed.

I was thinking about the link between these two experiences. I think the link is “beauty.” The prophetic hope offered in Isaiah is that  we “shall see the King in His beauty.”  I have always known that beauty ministers to my soul. I think of my friend Sylvia and her beautiful home where the CLAN team used to meet. There was something about the house itself, something too about its setting and the beauty of many of the objects in that house that ministered to me as did Sylvia and her amazing gift of hospitality. But the beauty somehow mattered…

Are you giving enough time to contemplate beautiful things? C.S. Lewis once said that we must not allow the devil to hold joy to ransom. Sometimes it is easy in the world such as we know it is, to feel it is wrong to laugh, or to be happy, wrong or even escapism to think about beautiful things in a world where there is much ugliness and brutality and injustice. Sometimes modern versions of Christianity can make us feel that if something does not help to minister to injustice or solve some need in the world it is illegitimate. This sounds convincing but it suffers from inadequacy as do most politically correct statements.. We know from the bible that Jesus was a man of sorrows acquainted with grief, but according to Hebrews Chapter 1 He is also anointed with the oil of gladness beyond anyone else in the universe. If our Christianity is simply turned into  a “how to”  for solving the world’s problems we have really gone down a wrong road. Some versions of Christianity remind me of an Orkney farmer in his 80’s who lived on the island of Stronsay which along with the neighbouring island of Eday was my first charge. Some incoming people had set up a water-skiing club. I asked him if he was going to try the water skiing? He was pensive for a moment and then he said, “No, I don’t think so. I never saw the use for it!” If Christianity has become only something that has merit because of its usefulness then we have  lesser spirituality than the bible encourages us towards.

Let me place these words of Paul before you. You could never accuse him of being so heavenly minded he was no earthly use. Actually I have hardly ever met this specimen of Christian. I think the problem is that more often we are so earthly minded we are no use for heavenly purposes here on earth. Think  about these words;  they may help you to live better and sleep more peacefully.There is a lot of talk these days about the Apostolic. Well, most of it I think has no backing in Scripture. It is not I doubt that the gift of the Apostle is a real one for today’s church. I just don’t think that many who say they have that gift really have, according to my understanding of the Bible. The gift of spiritual entrepreneurship is not the gift of Apostleship, though it is often presented as such. This is wrong teaching I believe, tthough often it comes from good people and is well meant… but that is for another day! But I do know Paul was an Apostle and hopefully, whoever you may think is or is not an Apostle today, you believe Paul’s Apostolic Authority is still in place for us all as  followers of Christ. Whatever church or gathering you are part of, it would do us all good to listen to these words:

Philippians 4:8King James Version (KJV)

“ Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things…”

God bess you with his beautiful  love.

Kenny

PS – I would commend to you again the Concept of Christian Mindfulness which is relevant in the light of this blog.

Go to

Welcome to Christian Mindfulness

I am finding this so helpful myself.

PPS – You are very welcome to enjoy these blogs and share them with anyone “without money or price!” However, if you ever feel grateful for these blogs and are able to do so, then please make a donation to Open Doors, Scotland. Their website is

http://www.opendoorsuk.org/scotland

In case you have not heard of them, Open Doors works to help our persecuted brothers and sisters throughout the world.

Today is Sunday.  I find myself thinking  of those of  you who are preaching, leading worship, working with children and young people, or leading in some other way  at church this morning. I am thinking most especially of those who are running ragged and a bit behind time! There is still time to pray some John Wimber prayers. Let me share two that have helped me a lot over the years:

1 – “ O God, O God, O God…”

2  – “Help!’

God bless you, as you seek to bless others today.

Kenny

PS – You are very welcome to enjoy these blogs and share them with anyone “without money or price!” However, if you ever feel grateful for these blogs and are able to do so, then please make a donation to Open Doors, Scotland. Their website is

http://www.opendoorsuk.org/scotland

In case you have not heard of them, Open Doors works to help our persecuted brothers and sisters throughout the world.

I hope this helps….

Yesterday I felt a sort of grief in my spirit, a concern given by God for those of you who are in difficult places as you have sought to follow the will of God. By that I mean that you followed what you felt sure was the call of God but have ended up in a situation perhaps in the church world, perhaps in the secular world of work that seems to be destructive of your well being. This was the thought that seemed to swim to the surface as I spent time with God.

I felt I had to put off writing a blog about this until today, as I don’t want to write something that may lead you to make a mistake as to the question, “Is it time to move?” or “Should I stay.”

In one sense, either could be right. Paul in the last chapter of 1st. Corinthians seemed to see opposition he was facing in Ephesus as one sign he was to stay, though it was only one of the factors that led him to beleive that. The other was that there was an open door to effective work. On the other hand, Jesus said that if His disciples  are not welcome in a place as ambassadors of His Kingdom, they are  to move on. Christian history is full of people who have persevered despite great discouragement, so much so that we can almost begin to think that is the norm, but perhaps when we overemphasise a truth it can become an error. This “staying in a difficult place” has been pressed at times to the exclusion of every other consideration. We need to respect the whole counsel of the Word of God.

There is a principle in Psalm 35 verse 27 that I feel I have to draw to your attention. It may not be the only principle to think about in deciding whether you should go or stay in a church situation, a relationship, a work place situation that is difficult, but I feel that God wants to raise the status of this principle in your thinking. Maybe you should allow this thought to swim to the surface rather than push it down  and drown it as illegitimate or  the thought of a spiritual cissy.  “God delights in the welfare of his servants.” Do you realise that your welfare is a matter of delight to God? I know it is possible to be well in situations that are not good, but I am just saying that I think God wants some people reading this blog today to put more stress than their inherited spirituality is allowing them to place on the principle mentioned in this verse: God wants you well, whatever may be included in that word. That glorifies Him.

I am just going a bit further with what I fee the Spirit is saying…. How do you know things will alter if you stay? The same Paul who knew there were times to dig in, also knew there were times to move on. In 1st. Corinthians 7 he writes into the possible situation of a Christian who is married to a non-believer and because of the problems that mixture is bringing about, there is no peace in the house.  The same Paul who writes about how godly behaviour can win someone around, also says that a non believing partner may walk out on the marriage. He is realistic enough to say, “How do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know husband, whether you will save your wife?”  “But… but… if I just go after them and we try again….” He seems to say that there are times to move on, because God wants us to live in peace, which sounds very similar to wellbeing. Lift that principle into other settings. Perhaps the congregation will never change no matter how long you stay. Perhaps there will be no reformation of a situation in the work place just because you are there. Somewhere in the back of my mind is something that Jean Vanier said. “Jesus did not come to reform the system.” It may not be a direct quote I am remembering, but that was the flavour of it.  In a sense that was perhaps John the Baptist’s confusion. In his cell, he begins to doubt he had got it right in testifying to Jesus. The system had not changed. The Sanhedrin, The Pharisees, the Sadducees, the political situation had not changed; it did not look as though the axe had been laid to the root of the tree. Jesus simply went around being light. Some people came to the light, others wanted to snuff the light out. Jesus did not try and change systems, He simply bore witness to truth. The systems actually didn’t listen and didn’t want to be changed.

So, I am not wanting to be directive here. I am not saying to those for whom the question “Go” or “Stay” in a situation is relevant, which you should do. I am just saying that in all your deliberations can you hear that God cares for you? Do you need to elevate this principle of Scripture so that it is heard as legitimate, heard as loud and clear as any other principle. Your wellbeing is God’s delight. Are you giving your wellbeing the same status as your Father in heaven?

I pray that you will be helped forward in knowing whether through the pressures you are facing your Father who delights in your well being is saying, “Grow” or “Go.”

(I am updating this blog to include a comment from my brother-in-law, Rev. Stewart Birse. What he says is so true and helpful: Thanks Stewart.)

“Thanks, Kenny. This applies to friendships too. If there are friends who are constantly pulling you down then sometimes we have to realise that this is not what a loving Heavenly Father would wish for our friendships. Yes, he cares for our welfare. But it is not easy leaving a friendship.”

PS – You are very welcome to enjoy these blogs and share them with anyone “without money or price!” However, if you ever feel grateful for these blogs and are able to do so, then please make a donation to Open Doors, Scotland. Their website is

http://www.opendoorsuk.org/scotland

In case you have not heard of them, Open Doors works to help our persecuted brothers and sisters throughout the world.

In these blogs, I  have often mentioned the name of Hugh Black, a headmaster and Pentecostal pastor and preacher who had a great influence upon me. There is one thing that did frustrate me about his wonderful Spirit filled preaching. Sometimes he would take about one third of the sermon, or so it seemed to me, to tell us all how the sermon had come to him!

Well, let me do a Hugh Black on you and take this blog to tell you how blogs come to me.  It is all very new to me. No one has told me how to do it. I am just stumbling into it, one step at a time. It is actually a different process from preaching or teaching as the pastor of a congregation, which I no longer am because of my health, or rather the lack of it. I guess that in that setting a minister has to look at what the sheep need in order to be strong and well as a flock.  However,  through blogging I have a nameless and faceless congregation and I am not your pastor or church leader. I find therefore the inspiration comes in a different way. I asked God to help me share it with you. I hope it helps. Anyway, here goes:

As I think of each blog, I find that my spirit is  like a sea, full of life. It feels as though there are ten thousand possible thoughts  and indeed ten thousand more after that which I could share with you, all of which could bring life. They are swimming around there. Some of them seem to be quite comfortable swimming around in the depths of my spirit for a bit longer, but I am aware of one or two that seem to be kicking their feet to come up the way out of the depths. They must get to the surface…. right now. That is how I go about sharing. I simply trust  that as I share the thoughts that come to the surface of my spirit, they may bring life to some.

For example, I had a thought today: “Jesus did not see himself as coming to reform the system.” I felt it was a word for some of you that a time is coming for a move. I will drop that into this blog today and come back to it tomorrow or in a couple of days. I mention it today in case some of you are thinking.”Go or stay?” God is on your case. What I have to say about that sort of issue may help you…

…but  perhaps this explaining of how a blog comes will help you whatever your situation to learn a bit more about how to hear God. That thought seemed to break through to the surface ahead of the other one!

1 – First of all, be sure of this, that if you are a Christian, you will find that your spirit knows life giving truths. There are truths swimming about in you, put there by the Holy Spirit Himself who knows what is in your depths and brings us the depths of God. I am so grateful for those the Spirit has used at times to birth these thoughts. Preachers, teachers, friends, family, even the most damaged of people in whom I have seen God at work and learned from what was happening in them. Many people and situations have gone into the life that there is swimming about in the sea of my spirit. By word, deed or experience many over the years have shown me things about the Kingdom, so there is some sort of a store within me from which treasures can be drawn, some of them reecently learned  treasures and some of them old, just as Jesus said.  SUGGESTION: TAKE TIME TO THANK GOD FOR THOSE WHO HAVE INSTRUCTED YOU IN THE TREASURES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

2 -Added to all that life giving truth where the source can be traced, I am also aware there are some things that are just there and have been taught by no one. I just know them. Perhaps that is because the Spirit of God can show us things directly. Although God blesses us with preachers, teachers, pastors etc. actually every believer is taught of God directly as well. The Apostle John tells us that we have an anointing from the Holy One that teaches us. SUGGESTION: THANK GOD FOR THE DEEPEST SWIMMING TRUTHS THAT THE SPIRIT HAS BROUGHT TO YOU AS A WORD FORM GOD, WITH POWER AND MUCH ASSURANCE.

3 – Try and make a quiet moment to listen for the truths that are swimming to the surface. It is not hard. Just take time to be alone, commit those moments to the Spirit of God and see what treasures new or old come swimming up. SUGGESTION: FIND A QUIET PLACE…

I don’t know what church or theological camp to put myself in any longer; Evangelical..Charismatic?…. Perhaps from what I have shared today some of you might think I simply belong in Camp Weird!  I am quite happy with that so long as you add Wonderful to the word Weird. It is actually the place I like living in the most personally…. and through this blog today,  I am offering you hospitality. Come into the place I am learning to live in as I enter this new phase of life and ministry, the place of swimming things, of sparkling  water, “kick of the feet thoughts” coming to the surface; treasures new and old from God.

PS – You are very welcome to enjoy these blogs and share them with anyone “without money or price!” However, if you ever feel grateful for these blogs and are able to do so, then please make a donation to Open Doors, Scotland. Their website is

http://www.opendoorsuk.org/scotland

In case you have not heard of them, Open Doors works to help our persecuted brothers and sisters throughout the world.

In yesterday’s blog (“Marks out of 10”) I mentioned that there were one or two “tools” that I have found pastorally helpful over the years. The first “tool” is in the aforementioned blog, so read about it if you haven’t done so yet. Let me today share something else that  I have found helpful. It might be useful for you to think about this for yourself, or even use it to help someone you may be concerned about.

Often I find that people’s lives are hampered by lies they carry around about themselves which become almost like “strongholds” in their thinking. They form how a person thinks of themselves, of life, of others etc. These hidden sentences really have a powerful influence upon us. But when they are lies they need to be challenged.

Let me explain one way you can do that. Going back to yesterday’s blog, the truth about every single person reading this blog itoday is   that your worth as a human being is 10 out of 10. I asked yesterday if that is the mark you would give yourself? If not, then it is good to try and work out what has gone wrong. Here is how I would begin to help you if I was speaking with you face to face:

1 – Take a sheet of A4 paper and for a few days or a week, write down the sort of sentences you say to yourself about yourself. We all speak to ourselves about ourselves, mostly in our heads but sometimes even out loud.  Here are some examples:  “There you go again, making a mess of it.” “You idiot!” “You were foolish to think the good times would last.” “Don’t be stupid no one could ever truly love you or like you!” “You are such a waste of space.’’ “You are a disappointment.” “You are boring.” “How ugly!” “I hate you.” “You disgust me!” You will never amount to much” “You are getting above your station.” “You will never change this.” “You will never be free.” “You deserved this suffering and unhappiness because of who you are and what you did.” The list of possible examples could go on a lot longer…

2 – One you have your list  on the left side of the page, take a look at each sentence and ask a very simple question: “How did that get there?” Give some time to think about that. What or who caused that thought to be there? Look especially at significant relationships. Were these words put there by someone else, by what they said or how they treated you? Why have you come to believe that sentence?

Now….pause and tell yourself a really good thought that  I heard Bill Johnson mention:  “I cannot afford to make room in my mind or heart for a thought about myself that isn’t the way my Heavenly Father thinks of me.” To all those in Christ the Father says, “I love you as I love Jesus. You are my son, my daughter with whom I am well pleased.  You bring me great joy!” How am I going to move on from stages 1 and 2 towards truly believing that I am who “I AM”  says I am, rather than believing the lies the sentences are telling me about me?

3 – Either on your own or with someone else look at what the Bible would say about the thoughts and sentences you have listed. On the right hand side of the page write down the truth of the Word of God that counters the lies on the left hand side. So for example, perhaps on the left hand side of the page you have written a sentence like, “You never deserve to be forgiven for this!” Well,  on  the right hand side of the page you would now write  a bible verse such as the declaration from Romans Chapter 8: “There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Or again, if  on the left hand side of the page you have written that you are unloveable then  on the right hand side of the page you would write something such as  the declaration of Jesus in John 16: “The Father Himself loves you affectionately and warmly!”

Do you get the idea? Do that with each troublesome sentence, so that you have a list of Bible verses on the right hand side of the page. THAT LIST BECOMES YOUR SPIRITUAL MEDICINE. TAKE IT 3 TIMES A DAY FOR A MONTH AND THEN SEE HOW YOU ARE GETTING ON. I literally mean that 3 times a day you sit down and take time to read the truths that God will use to set you free. I promise you, strongholds will start to crumble. There is something about truth getting through that sets us free.

Charles Spurgeon suffered from depression. If I remember aright it was his grandfather who one day took him aside and encouraged Charles to take the thoughts he was thinking, dangle them before his own eyes as it were and ask one simple question: “Did this thought come from my Father in Heaven who loves me?” Charles’ grandfather said if it did not pass that test then it was a lie, one of the devil’s brats and that Charles should kick it out and give it neither head nor heart room!

Perhaps you should begin a course of spiritual medicine soon…. Perhaps there are a few brats that need kicked out your head and heart….

God bless you if you go ahead and choose to try and work with this tool…. and God bless you, even if you don’t!

Kenny

PS – You are very welcome to enjoy these blogs and share them with anyone “without money or price!” However, if you ever feel grateful for these blogs and are able to do so, then please make a donation to Open Doors, Scotland. Their website is

http://www.opendoorsuk.org/scotland

In case you have not heard of them, Open Doors works to help our persecuted brothers and sisters throughout the world.

Yesterday’s blog was very long! So here is one that is mercifully short, but may have more impact for all that. I hope it will leave you to do your own thinking!

There are one or two “tools” that I find I have used more than once as a pastor over the years. I want to share one of them with you today. I cannot remember where I first read or heard of this, so if it was “you” I learned this from, please forgive me for not acknowledging your ownership of it!

Here goes:

Question: “On a scale of 1 – 10, what is a baby worth?”…I think we would all say 10.

Question: “On a scale of 1 – 10, what is a baby with a disability worth?”…Again, I hope we would all say 10.

Let’s just pause there. Most of us reading this blog probably believe in the sacred worth of every human life, regardless of race, colour, creed, ethnic or religious background or whatever. We believe a child born in poor circumstances has as much worth as a child born in better circumstances materially, and so on. I don’t think I need to labour the point…. so….

Question: “On a scale of 1 – 10, what are you worth?”

If you say anything less than 10 then I simply want to ask you one more question; “So where did things go wrong?”

You might want to pause again, gently shut your eyes  and think about that quietly in the presence of the Living God who is near you right now because He loves you and wants you to discover He is for you not against you….

Much love

Kenny

PS – You are very welcome to enjoy these blogs and share them with anyone “without money or price!” However, if you ever feel grateful for these blogs and are able to do so, then please make a donation to Open Doors, Scotland. Their website is

http://www.opendoorsuk.org/scotland

In case you have not heard of them, Open Doors works to help our persecuted brothers and sisters throughout the world.

Today I was visited by a wonderful lady who greatly encouraged me by her presence and prayers. She is a friend of my Session Clerk, Ann,  which got me thinking about her  too today. I am particularly fond of the way Ann prays. I was trying to work out again today what it is about her prayers that I particularly feel blessed by. I think it is the fact that they are free of cliches and full of thoughtfulness. She tends to pray about a person or an issue with a slant that no one else has seen. It is very refreshing.

I like unusual thought when I come across it.  I think that is why I like looking at the sermons of Spurgeon every  few years. The end of his sentences often unfold in a way that you would never predict from their beginning.  C.S. Lewis and G.K Chesterton do something similar in their writings. Again it is refreshing. Whatever it is about  poetry I have come to like, I know that part of what I like is poets who have the ability to use phrases to describe events or places or feelings that I would never think up given the same starting point of whatever is being observed or talked about. Today as I read more of Kenneth Steven’s poetry in a new book freshly arrived from Amazon, I read about a lady called Peggy who was “kind as a whole glen and generous as a harvest”; I read of children collecting conkers being likened to the way pirates used to treasure and count pearls; I read of birds on telegraph wires being like musical notes in a score on a stormy day; I read about a sheepdog called Fleet flowing down a field “like a bouncing waterfall of black and white.” (all thoughts and quotes from ”Salt and Light” by Kenneth Steven.)

So, I really do like sentences, unfolding thoughts, descriptions in poetry that end in a different place from where you would predict. Perhaps as you look at the title of this blog you are anticipating me speaking about the turning over of the tables in the temple by Jesus. Actually that is not where that title at the beginning is leading to; I am rather thinking of the day that Jesus told a story that  ended up in a completely different place from where the story had begun;  the story of the Good Samaritan. That story which you will probably know well comes about as a result of a question Jesus is asked, “Who is my neighbour?” If we are to love our neighbour as ourselves, it sounds like a legitimate question to ask.( I have just updated the blog to say if you have not read the story you can find it in Luke Chapter 10.)

I am not sure how much genuineness was attached to the question when it was asked that particular day by that particular questioner, but the interesting thing is where the story leads to from that starting point. Perhaps the questioner was really asking, “Where are the limits of this “love your neighbour” thing?  Jesus you dismissed my spiritual questions with such easy sounding answers, that I feel foolish.  I need  more intricate, more complicated spirituality than you seem to be speaking about. So, “Love your neighbour as yourself?” Well, just exactly who is my neighbour? Let’s get a bit more profound to show how profound my original approach to you really was: is it literally the person next door  whom I am to regard as a neighbour, the people in my street, my community? Define “my neighbour”…..

…But Jesus turns the tables. He does not tell a story that defines who my neighbour is but to put the challenge back to the questioner and to each of us to be a neighbour . “Who then was a neighbour to the man who fell among thieves?” “The one who had mercy upon him,” and  out of that mercy helped him, replies the original questioner. “Well then, go and do likewise.” Having started with a question about who is my neighbour, the original questioner has had the tables turned. “Who are you being  a neighbour to? What does that mean? It means crossing the road to help.” Do I have  the heart and actions that show I am a neighbour? Do I cross the road to help where I see need?

I have a love/hate relationship with this story. It was very much a cornerstone in the church  I attended as a young teenager immediately before I became a Christian. I got the impression that Christians were just people trying to be good.  It was a message that almost tended towards preening as though Christians were  the good people in a neighbourhood. Then I heard the gospel of God’s grace to us all as sinners, how Jesus had died on the cross to save me and that I was to live thankfully and with gratefulness for his saving love and grace not to earn my salvation but as a response to being saved by the blood of Christ shed for me. I grew to hate this story of the Good Samaritan  because of the way it had been so wrongly preached upon almost in a way that made it sound as though Jesus never had to leave heaven for the cross to save us, we could get to heaven just by trying to be good! I managed to get my dislike worked through eventually and now come back to this story often. Sadly many preachers in many denominations preach that  blasphemy I encountered against the cross still and deny people the good news of salvation at the cross of Calvary – and nowhere else. So averse  are they to the idea of being saved by the blood of Jesus Christ shed for us, that they hardly ever mention it and thus confine their congregations to a lost eternity.  One famous Irish preacher  of the past  called it “unbloody Christianity from unbloody liars.” You may stop reading these blogs now, but before you do, do you count yourself as a sinner saved by Christ taking the blame for your sins?  Did you believe that once but now scorn it? Are you telling others so they can be saved too? Even if you block this blog now  because you don’t like my theology, at least you wont be able to say to God when you stand before him to give account that nobody told you, nor can you plead ignorance that you didn’t  know you were to tell others, even those in your own family or your own congregation.

Who I cross the road for shows who I have been a neighbour to. It almost worries me now that in the Christian circles I became most familiar with since the day of my conversion and salvation, I have hardly ever heard this story being preached upon. To be sure that is less damaging than it being preached upon wrongly, but it is sad nonetheless. Evangelical and Charismatic circles tend towards an introspection that can become either narcissistic or morbid. It is not there is not much good in these stables which  is broadly where I still belong really, but as one of that circle and having had a significant degree of leadership in a more than local setting before my illness, I can see my faults, our faults, too clearly, and sometimes worry if I furthered these faults and deviations. Evangelicals can often be obsessed with their own spiritual pulses and how far along the road of sanctification they have got and how deeply are we growing in our knowledge of the Bible and am I praying well enough etc.?  Charismatics, sadly perhaps, don’t think often enough about such things but on the other hand  can be narcissistic;  glaringly, boringly and unattractively obsessed  about everyone seeing my calling, making way for my gifting, that we are the ones that the whole of Christian history has been waiting for in order that the church may reach its full effectiveness!  Actually even King David had the humility simply to serve the purposes of God in his generation and then fall asleep. There were generations before him there were generations after him. At most all of us are simply intermediate points in the story of God, until the return of Christ; no less important than that, and no more.

I guess most of those reading this will tend to be evangelical or charismatic in  theology because somehow you have had a connection with me in the past or have decided to make a connection because of what you have read already.  Some of you may have a good relationship with me even if you don’t like what I believe. Today I am  mostly thinking of my fellow evangelicals or charismatics as I write. Do you need the table of your spirituality turned on you? We are good at calling other forms of Christianity religious, but “evangelicalism” and “charismaticism” can be horribly  religious too. I referred to Tom Smail not long ago in a previous blog. He was a sort of champion theologian in the earlier days of charismatic renewal and what he said then is very much still worth reading and applying now. There was an occasion when was speaking to John  Stott who was less warm towards charismatic truths, to be as generous as I can in this  regard to that great man of God.  Tom Smail said in their conversation that he personally as an insider believed that 2/3rds of Charismatic Christianity was of the flesh and  not really of the Spirit of God at all. John Stott seized upon that thought and  asked  Tom  if he could quote him in a book. Tom Smail said, “As long as you say that  I think 2/3rds of Evangelicalism is of the flesh as well!”

All of us even in the theological camps we feel are most right are capable of horrible behaviour and stupid  nonsense. I am asking particularly today if  Jesus would turn a table of undue obsession with your own spiritual pulse, your own sanctification or your own giftedness? This to me is one of the weak points of the stable I am in. Everyone  according to current teaching is apparently born to be a superstar.  I love the love of God for me in my sheer ordinariness! The beginning of spirituality is actually saying, “I thank you God that I am like all other men” as Thomas Merton once said. In the Bible much of the instruction is about ordinary things that ordinary people need to learn in life: teaching people  how to be husbands and wives, how children can get on with parents and parents with children, how to be a good worker or a thoughtful boss; how to stop being impatient and start loving.  So much is about how we are in relation to others and to the world God still loves as much as when He sent his son to die for us.

So be honest! Is crossing the road to be a neighbour a vital part of the expression of my Christian faith? It should be. One of the historical interpretations of this parable is that Jesus is  the good Samaritan. I think that is a hysterical interpretation even if it is historical! But I can see why it came about.  Think of the wideness of the road Jesus crossed to come to help us. “You came from heaven to earth to show the way, from the earth to the cross my debt to pay, from the cross to the grave, from the grave to the sky, Lord we lift your name on High!” Think of the roads of culture and religion Jesus crossed to give value to those who had none.

We have grown to love the phrase “a relationship rather than a religion,” haven’t we? We tend to confuse non-believers by being smart and telling them we are not religious but we have a relationship with God. LISTEN, CHARISMATICS AND EVANGELICALS, MY BELOVED BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN THE LORD: FOR ALL OUR SMART TALK ABOUT RELATIONSHIP RATHER THAN RELIGION, WE ARE AS RIDDLED WITH RELIGION AS ANY OTHER PART OF THE CHURCH. LETS STOP CLAIMING A SUPERIORITY. BEING NON RELIGIOUS IS AS MUCH A RELGION THESE DAYS IN THE SAME WAY  AS AETHEISM HAS BECOME A  FAITH. When will we let Jesus turn the tables on Charismatic and Evangelical religion with the phrase “Go and do likewise,”? THINK OUT THE WAY! Whatever else following Jesus is about, it is about crossing the road to help. No amount of bible reading or exercising of spiritual gifts or ministries can replace that or mask its absence from the eyes of the Lord.

PS – You are very welcome to enjoy these blogs and share them with anyone “without money or price!” However, if you ever feel grateful for these blogs and are able to do so, then please make a donation to Open Doors, Scotland. Their website is

http://www.opendoorsuk.org/scotland

In case you have not heard of them, Open Doors works to help our persecuted brothers and sisters throughout the world.

Just a thought; much of the Father Heart Teaching  that has been prevalent in the last 20 years or so, isn’t, or at least is incomplete.  It tends to be  about the child or the orphan spirit more than it is about the Father, which of course has value and the potential for bringing people healing, and has done so innumerable times.  But, I think  the only folk who can really understand the Father heart of God are good parents who have been wounded by their children, and right now are longingly awaiting the sound of footsteps coming up the path and the  return of sons and daughters who have rejected them. Take some time today to think of the story in Luke Chapter 15.

The thing is that the prodigal son in Luke 15 was not an orphan. He had a good and loving father but was living as though he didn’t. The elder son had a good and loving father too, but didn’t know it. There was a stronghold of delusion about the way he saw things.  He was not living in truth or reality. He nursed a lie about his Father and  nursed the silent building up of rage that deep seated lie produced  until it exploded in unjust accusation. The Father was not to blame, yet he was the one who had to suffer and learn to conquer the possible response of living in a spirit of rejection and abandonment and keep an open door. He had to hear unjust things being said about him and not respond in like manner. The story of the bible, whatever else it is about,  is about the Father heart of God continuing towards a  rebel world hat has rejected him in word, deed and spirit. It is about God loving rebels who have had His goodness and love showered upon them. This rebel world has a Father. It is not an orphan without a Father.  It chooses to be a rebel against a Father of goodness and love. The story of the bible, in the Old Testament and the New and supremely in the Lord Jesus Christ, is the story of God calling out like a Father to his children saying, “You are not an orphan! You have a Father who loves you. Let me be who I am to you! Come to Me! Turn to Me! Run to Me! Stop rejecting Me!”

We hear so much about the wounds parents give to their children, and these wounds are real. They range in scale from the sort of childhood pains we all have to conquer, for no parents are perfect, right through to truly horrific abuse. Yet to truly understand God’s heart we need to hear from parents who have been wounded sorely  by their children. Maybe there is someone out there who might be  able to write a blog or a book about that experience, or just maybe it is such holy ground that no one will ever write a book on “The Rejected Father.” The nearest I have seen to that title is “The Forgotten Father” by Tom Smail – it is excellent by the way. In the present rush of so many to tell their story of being wronged  and satisfy a market for spiritual voyeurism that seems to be almost insatiable,  perhaps the holiest stories of some of the deepest pains will have to remain ever untold or unshared. Thankfully they are not unnoticed by the One who understands these pains only too well.  I think it shows Henri Nouwen’s insightful brilliance and understanding of humanness that when he speaks about the pain of rejection he does not only speak about the rejection that children experience, or spouses rejecting one another ; many other writers, Christian and secular  write about such painful experiences. It takes little intelligence or insight more than the slightest observational awareness  to see these wounds all around us. However Nouwen includes in his lists of possible scenarios of rejection, the rejection that parents can experience at the hands of their children. I think it is the rejection that dare not speak its name….

Just as no sermon is equally significant for everyone every week, neither are blogs.  My prayer today is simply for parents who have been rejected. At great cost to yourselves there are things you can help us understand about the Father heart of God that many others could never teach us, even those who can share stories of the grace of God healing them from wounded childhoods.  I pray that something of what you have come to know of the Father Heart of God will leak out to the church and to the world somehow in a way that is not crushingly painful or humiliating  for you. You have been crushed and humiliated enough, I think.  I pray too  that like Jesus you may yet see fruit for your travail and be well pleased. God bless you with His consolation today and every day.

PS – You are very welcome to enjoy these blogs and share them with anyone “without money or price!” However, if you ever feel grateful for these blogs and are able to do so, then please make a donation to Open Doors, Scotland. Their website is

http://www.opendoorsuk.org/scotland

In case you have not heard of them, Open Doors works to help our persecuted brothers and sisters throughout the world.

A friend sent this to me saying the only difference is that I have an immaculate hairstyle. Actually he is wrong. As my friend, he should know my favourite cup is blue…..

Hopefully by now you will be used to me saying things in these blogs that at first reading will strike you on a scale as being anywhere from helpful to insane! Well, I am only sharing where I have found bread.  If you can’t eat wholesome bread maybe you are eating too much spiritual cake… there is a lot of it around!

I will send this out on  Sunday but actually it is being baked  on Saturday Night. I am taking a Sabbath break from my blog for a day tomorrow like a good Scottish Presbyterian! However as I think toward the Lord’s Day I am reminded that worshipping on a Sunday centres us on  what is at the core of our faith, namely that Jesus rose from the dead. Of course we can worship Him any time, place, or day, but it is good not to lose the focussing  or re-focussing benefit of Sundays to bring us back to fundamental things. We believe in the resurrection of Christ and we believe in the resurrection of our own bodies too!  We actually believe that this world is not all we are living for, though we are to care for it and its people. Paul once said that if we were only living for this life then of all people Christians should be pitied the most; he wrote that at a time when Christians were being mocked and persecuted. His words may come into their own with a fresh measure of reality in these days when many of our Christian brothers and sisters are being persecuted with horrendous brutality. Heaven probably  takes on more importance in such times. Perhaps we are too at home in this world and have forgotten this is not our truest home. Actually we are aliens here according to the bible. If you are still reading this blog, then along with me, hopefully, you are still waiting for your truest home.

In my mind today is an experience that I will leave you to think about. Someone I knew was dying. I found myself sitting in the bath singing over them in my spiritual imagination, “God sent His Son they called Him Jesus, He came to love, heal and forgive…” In particular I found myself moved as I sang, “And then one day, I’ll cross the river, I’ll fight life’s final war with pain . And then as death gives way to victory, I’ll see the lights of glory and I’ll know He lives”  I started to clap for the valour this person was  showing as the end of their life on earth drew nearer and I went on to sing the chorus, “Because He  lives, I can face tomorrow, because He lives, all fear is gone: Because I know, I know He holds the future and life is worth the living, just because He lives.” I sang and thought no more of it. Only later did the man’s wife share that as her husband was nearing the last moments of his life he heard a choir of angels  sing, “ Because He Lives, I can face tomorrow!” Did I join with the angels? Who knows? I don’t care one way or the other.  I only know that the Gospel is that the Kingdom of Heaven is close. So why should we not join with the angels? Why should we not expect the lines between time and eternity to be fudged a bit? Why should we not expect miracle, heavenly things to happen that cannot be understood in earthly terms? I am sure I am not the only one to have met an angel and benefited from their ministry to God’s people… but that is for another day….!

It may be that some preachers will read this blog before going out to preach. Can I encourage you to believe that something heavenly will happen in someone’s life as you share the Word of Life? I always believed something would happen for at least one person when I preached and when I get the strength to preach again will believe for that still. As I honour the gospel of the Kingdom being near, I trust that the God of heaven will be close to touch someone’s life with heavenly grace and help and even with transformation.

Most of you will not be preachers. If you have the health  and feel emotionally it is within your reach even if with a struggle, then go and join with God’s people this Sunday. When you do, remember the God of heaven is close to meet with you. Can He not meet with me anywhere? Of course He can. But He is helping us truly to be the body of His Son, where each part or member blesses the other. So often heavenly help comes not direct form God or through the angels but through that very ordinary person sitting next to us in the pews. David Watson once shared that he was at a conference where everyone was asked to turn and say to their neighbour, “I could not live without you!” I guess the idea was to give a practical response to the idea that as members of Christ’s body we need one another. David Watson said that sitting next to him was the most strikingly beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life! He kept his eyes firmly to the front! I hope though, you get the point! Believe in the closeness of heaven. Believe in the singing of the angels and their ministry to us. But believe also that the people in your local church, who  you may well have issues with, could be the touch of heaven to you too. It is so irritating when God at times insists on meeting with you that way! Don’t dismiss the angels, but don’t disconnect with people, even if you have got issues with them. The Word of he Lord to you might simply be. “Get up out your bed and go back to church!”

What if you are on your own this day and for good reason cannot be at church? Well, the gospel is still wonderfully true for you. The Kingdom of heaven is close. May the touch of that Kingdom be upon you. The Risen Christ can meet you this Lord’s Day, even if you cannot be with His people for good reason. I am thinking especially, but not exclusively of  those who would love to be with fellow believers but they are right now imprisoned and even being tortured for their faith. Richard Wurmbrand shares that on one occasion when he was in solitary confinement during his many years in prison for his faith,  he asked the Lord to speak to Him, and The Lord Jesus did;  Jesus screamed….  This is Holy ground where even angels would fear to tread but would veil their faces: when someone’s body  is being hurt or in pain, the head of the body screams. Perhaps today the heavenly thing that will happen for you will be that you really do realise one of the holiest and most precious of “heaven being near earth” mysteries;  Jesus, the head of the body is touched with the very feelings of your infirmities and mine.

…Changed my mind. Am sending it out tonight. Had a feeling someone needed to read this before tomorrow morning…..

PS – You are very welcome to enjoy these blogs and share them with anyone “without money or price!” However, if you ever feel grateful for these blogs and are able to do so, then please make a donation to Open Doors, Scotland. Their website is

http://www.opendoorsuk.org/scotland

In case you have not heard of them, Open Doors works to help our persecuted brothers and sisters throughout the world.

You have probably read a personal statement put out by the Archbishop of Canterbury in the wake of his discovery in recent months that the man he thought was his father was not in fact his father. The following words are part of what he has said in response to that fact:

“This revelation has, of course, been a surprise, but in my life and in our marriage Caroline and I have had far worse. I know that I find who I am in Jesus Christ, not in genetics, and my identity in him never changes. Even more importantly my role as Archbishop makes me constantly aware of the real and genuine pain and suffering of many around the world, which should be the main focus of our prayers.

Although there are elements of sadness, and even tragedy in my father’s (Gavin Welby’s) case, this is a story of redemption and hope from a place of tumultuous difficulty and near despair in several lives. It is a testimony to the grace and power of Christ to liberate and redeem us, grace and power which is offered to every human being.

At the very outset of my inauguration service three years ago, Evangeline Kanagasooriam, a young member of the Canterbury Cathedral congregation, said: “We greet you in the name of Christ. Who are you, and why do you request entry?” To which I responded: “I am Justin, a servant of Jesus Christ, and I come as one seeking the grace of God to travel with you in His service together.” What has changed? Nothing!”

These are words of tremendous comfort and challenge to those of us who are pursuing healing from the difficult part of our life story. The comfort and challenge is the same: as a follower of Jesus you are who you are in Christ. Sometimes when I meet pastorally with people, the place I am trying to get them to by the grace of God is helping them to see that this is my identity; “I am who I AM says I am.”

A Christian is described in many ways in the bible, but one of the commonest ways that reality is described is that a Christian is someone who is “In Christ.” If  I am in Christ then my deepest identity is in Him. If I am in Christ then the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ says over me what He says over Him. Nowhere in the bible do I find God the Father saying about His Son that He was an accident, a mistake, unplanned for, a problem, a disappointment etc. etc. Instead I find the Father saying over His Son, “ You are my Son, whom I love and you bring me great joy!”

Whatever life has said about you, others have said over you, will you take time today to remember who you are in Christ? You are His son, His daughter, whom He loves. You bring Him great joy!

PS – You are very welcome to enjoy these blogs and share them with anyone “without money or price!” However, if you ever feel grateful for these blogs and are able to do so, then please make a donation to Open Doors, Scotland. Their website is

http://www.opendoorsuk.org/scotland

In case you have not heard of them, Open Doors works to help our persecuted brothers and sisters throughout the world.

I have just found out that Rev. Jm Graham, the former senior pastor of Goldhill Baptist Church has been diagnosed with inoperable cancer. In a public statement he asks for our prayers for himself and his family.

I have been thanking  God for the influence of his ministry upon my life personally as well as to the church in general. I am remembering today times when he used to come up North to Thurso to speak at conferences. Whatever else people may remember from these days I remember being stuck to my seat by the presence of God that attended Jim’s ministry to the extent that I could not get up to close a meeting, and Jim, the visiting speaker, had to do that instead of the host!

Jim is one of these people that I always think of with a smile but also one of these people who intrigues me still. His ministry among us in Thurso was so powerful and blessed. Why?

I can think of 2 or 3 reasons, which I want to share with you briefly. Whether you are a pastor, leader or not, I think they are lessons which could help us all to carry the presence and fragrance of Jesus in the way that I think of when I think with continuing thankfulness of Jim today.

1 – He has always been someone who honours the Word of God as the Word of God. One of the things he often said when he was with us in Thurso, when teaching something that he knew might be difficult to receive was, “I did not write this stuff. I am only telling you what it says!” God honours above all things His Name and His Word according to the Psalms, and He blesses the man who trembles at His Word, who reveres His word. A word for preachers and teachers;  have you forgotten to tremble before the Word of the Lord and are you seeking to earnestly and correctly divide the word of truth for your listeners? A word too for those of you who don’t preach; are you carrying something in your heart each day from the Bible, seeking to live it out? That will help give your day direction and make you aware when opportunities to live out what you have read come along.

2 – Jim has aways been someone open to the Hoy Spirit. So often you get preachers and teachers who are open to the Word, others who are open to the Spirit. In my experience I am not sure I have ever met anyone who honours both in equal measure better than Jim Graham. I recall a time when he prayed for me personally, Things were going well in the church, in fact we were the fastest growing congregation in the Church of Scotland. However things were not going well with me. I had worked myself to a place of exhaustion and was not at rest in the Father’s love. For years I had carried about a feeling of not being good enough or successful enough. Over these years I used to have a recurring dream of looking into the picture gallery of heaven. I would see portraits of those who had achieved great things for God. I would wake up distressed, longing that there was a place in God’s picture gallery for me. Jim, not knowing about this recurring dream started to pray for me. He stopped after a moment and said, “Kenny, I don’t understand this but God is saying there is a place in his picture gallery for you.” I was stunned and started to cry gently. I said, “Jim, are you just making that up?” He became quite serious at that point and said, “Kenny, I don’t make this stuff up. This is what God wants you to know.” That moment became the start of a journey which a month or two later led me to find rest in the Father’s love, a love that is not there because of my achievements but because, I, Kenny am simply loved. In a sense my whole minsitry as it is now, flows from the God encounter of that day.

A question to us all based on that  personal experience: Are you open to hunches given by the Holy Spirit. Follow through that hunch today to say something, to do something that inexplicably you find laid on your heart, so long as it passes the tests of being strengthening, encouraging and comforting. By the way if you are particularly passionate about truth, something being true is not the go-ahead to say it in an unacceptable way. Ask also will it help and is it kind? That may not alter the truth but it may alter the way you which you say it.

3 – Jim has a ministry in encouraging the church. It is easy to see the faults in any congregation. That usually takes no prophetic ability or insight of the Spirit. In fact as Dr. Jack Deere said once at CLAN gathering, always seeing what is wrong with a person or a church, does not mean you have a prophetic ministry, but it may mean you have a psychological disorder that requires treatment! It takes the Spirit of God and a loving heart to see what is good and to encourage it. Jim certianly did that when he ministered in the far North.  He made me personally feel as though he had been waiting all my life to meet me, which he made everyone  he met feel. But he also talked about good things about the church. In these days there is a lot of cynicism about the church, which seem to come as a mix of bright new ideas but a rather scathingly superior, sarcastic and judgmental  tone towards the church as it is at the moment. Those whom God significantly uses harness more than the frustration of disaffected people. People like Jim Graham have a love for the church, not blind to the faults of any situation but very keen to encourage the good.

Paul had the temerity to say on one occasion, “Imitate me as I imitate Christ.” Jim would never take these words and apply them to himself today, so I will do it. These words are applicable to my memories of Jim. I hope that the brief thoughts I have shared about someone you may or may not have met will give you fodder for thought and for life this day.

PS – You are very welcome to enjoy these blogs and share them with anyone “without money or price!” However, if you ever feel grateful for these blogs and are able to do so, then please make a donation to Open Doors, Scotland. Their website is

http://www.opendoorsuk.org/scotland

In case you have not heard of them, Open Doors works to help our persecuted brothers and sisters throughout the world.

Today was a day when in a quiet moment God reminded me how important it is to remember! That is one of the lessons from Psalm 42. At a time when the psalmist was not feeling in tip top condition, he said among other things, “Therefore I remember…” He remembers joyful times and somehow as he does that, hope in God is reborn.

Today  as I remembered to remember, I found myself remembering 2 people in particular and as I did that, I felt a bit like the first time I saw the Niagara Falls. Morag was not with me on that occasion, and somehow the joy of the experience was lessened by the fact that  she was not there to see what I was seeing. I so wished she could have seen what I saw and shared in the  sheer wonder and blessing of it all. I am glad to say that we did subsequently see the Falls together! Well, leaving places aside, there are people I have met over the years that I wish all of you could have met and  been blessed by.  I wish you could have seen what I saw in them and been blessed as I was. Let me tell you about the 2 people I metnioned at the start of this paragraph.

The first is the minister who was my “bishop” when I did my probationary time as a Church of Scotland Minister. His name is Rev. Ian Paterson and he is now retired. I learned so much from his quiet wisdom when he was minister of St. Michael’s Linlithgow, as have many other people serving in the ministry. I was remembering one lesson in particular. There was a discussion among the elders about the introduction of individual glasses for communion. I could not believe the passion with which some people spoke, especially those who were against such a thing happening. One elder ranted, his face going red then purple,  then  worryingly black, as somehow he developed his case that introducing individual glasses was undermining the very existence of Presbyterianism! When he sat down, I asked myself how on earth a minister is meant to handle situations like that and people like that. Mr. Paterson looked quite unconcerned, smiled his usual smile and simply said, “Thank you. Any more comments from anybody?” I was seeing the gift of wisdom in operation, part of which we know from the ministry of Jesus is about not stepping into a trap. You don’t have to automatically go into fight mode over everything! You can avoid confrontations when they are neither helpful nor necessary. So through my time today  of “therefore I remember,” I had a look to see whether I was getting het up over anything that really I could adopt a calmer approach to. So since I have looked at myself already, are you getting involved in an unnecessary fight? If you are the type of person who goes to the stake over every blessed opinion that you have, that may be a good question to ask yourself. Can you allow other people to make their comments, to have different opinions from you and be comfortable with that? Right now are you involved in unnecessary confrontation perhaps in your family, your work place or your church? Is there something that you simply need to calm down about? Perhaps your  Heavenly Father  would actually say to you, “Do you know what my beloved? This doesn’t really matter as much as you think.”

As I continued with my “therefore I remember” private session, I found myself thinking of the islands of Stronsay and Eday in Orkney which was my first charge after completing my probationary time in Linlithgow. I was thinking of a man called Willy. I remembered how if he met me on the roadside he would stop his tractor and speak as though nothing else in the world mattered, or at least could wait. I am remembering the laughter of sitting at a  fully laden table with him and his sister eating cake after cake with laughter and without guilt. I am remembering the joy with which he spoke of his annual holiday in his childhood to the village on the other side of the  7 miles by five miles island, and of his one trip off the island to to the nearby island of Westray to buy a horse called Sheila! I am remembering when a mischief making 70+ year old lady was eventually taken on a police barge to spend a night in the cells in Kirkwall that after a good laugh Willy said with tears in his beautiful eyes, “The vilest offender who truly believes, that moment from Jesus a pardon receives.” I remember him too telling this city boy the names of flowers and weeds on the roadside, delighting in their colours and shape. Life always felt like a good thing after a visit to Willy of Burrowgate. He was considered by many to be an eccentric but there was no house in the island that I more enjoyed visiting. It was so much the opposite of that intensity that marked that elder I mentioned above. There was simply a joy of life about Willy that perhaps not even his fellow islanders quite understood.

As I thought about Willy I realised I had not noticed today that the sky was blue, the sun was bright. I had not noticed the beautiful baby who was looking at me smiling as I sat in Starbucks drinking my Americano. There was so much that I had neither noticed nor rejoiced in…

“Angst”  does not make the gospel attractive, yet it seems a common thing among Christians. Knit-browed intensity does not really commend our claim that in Christ we have found Life in al its fullness! So as I remember Willy I want to ask you a couple of things. Firstly, are you worrying about something that Jesus never actually asked you to worry about?  Secondly, did you notice today the sky or the wind or people or whatever? Did you hear the birds and notice the flowers which according to Jesus Himself  are  messengers saying to us,  “Don’t worry, your heavenly Father knows.

Well, that is my “Therefore I remember” sharing. Perhaps tonight before you go to bed, you need to let go of undue intensity and start remembering experiences or people that brought you life. There are things of course that need to be forgotten, but in the light of this blog is God reminding you of the wisdom of the Psalmist? “Remember to remember.”

PS – You are very welcome to enjoy these blogs and share them with anyone “without money or price!” However, if you ever feel grateful for these blogs and are able to do so, then please make a donation to Open Doors, Scotland. Their website is

http://www.opendoorsuk.org/scotland

In case you have not heard of them, Open Doors works to help our persecuted brothers and sisters throughout the world.

I was reading again today the story of the death of St. Columba. He knew when that day and hour was coming. He did not want it to be at Easter to disturb the Easter Joy of his friends, so he put on hold his desire to depart and be with the Lord until these celebrations were over. On the day he knew he was going to die, there is a story that says that his faithful white horse came to him and rubbed his head against the old man’s head and started to weep into his lap. There may be a lot of legend surrounding Columba, but I have no difficulty believing that there is at least truth behind this story, even if not every detail may be trusted. Columba remarked that men did not know that the hour of his death was coming, but the horse was instinctively aware!

According to actors, we must never work with animals and children! I hope this wont offend you… well actually if you need your pride offended I hope you are offended! We can learn from animals and children. They have not had sensitivity to unseen things educated out of them. I heard a snippet of conversation between a toddler and her Mum the other day. I don’t know what preceded what I heard, but the wee girl was saying with tremendous happiness on her face, “I am not talking to you.” “Why are you not talking to me?” asked her mum. “Because I am talking to Jesus.” It is so so sad that children nowadays have spirituality indoctrinated out of them. It is a sort of abuse.

I simply want to say that your cat and your children or your neighbours cat and children can teach you a thing or two! They can probably hear and see better than you or I.

You will be used to me saying things that probably make you wonder about my sanity. Well, just add this to the list. Watch the cats and watch and listen to  the children…. and by the way if your child or grandchild tell you they have heard or seen something, don’t be too quick to shut it down out of anxiety. Of course as they grow they may need help to work out what is real and what is imagination, but pray God’s blessing on all that is genuinely of Him. They may well help you to be truly born again and see the Kingdom.

The line of a song is playing somewhere in my memory:

“I want to be a child again, I want to see the world through 5 year old eyes…”

Abba’s child, if these song words cause a yearning to rise within you, give that yearning a name if you can and then  turn it into a simple prayer to your Heavenly Father.

PS – You are very welcome to enjoy these blogs and share them with anyone “without money or price!” However, if you ever feel grateful for these blogs and are able to do so, then please make a donation to Open Doors, Scotland. Their website is

http://www.opendoorsuk.org/scotland

In case you have not heard of them, Open Doors works to help our persecuted brothers and sisters throughout the world.

I said in an earlier blog that if I could put a book in everyone’s hands it would be R.T. Kendall’s “Total Forgiveness.”  That book arose out of a situation in which R.T. himself had to totally forgive. I think truth that is proved in personal experience has real power to help others. I was brought up in a spiritual tradition that seemed to say  it was wrong for  preachers ever to speak about themselves. I know there can be dangers in doing that and there needs to be some limits so that the sharing becomes a help to people rather than a burden of concern for them to carry, but I would encourage all of you, preachers and non-preachers, to share your experience of God in you. That can be self indulgent but it need not be when we are sharing to glorify God and out of love for other people. Henri Nouwen says that we are most universal when we are most personal. People are looking for something that works these days, that helps them to do life. In a sense there is danger in that, in that it pushes concern for truth and rightness aside and can lead people to embrace what seems to work with no questions about right or wrong or consequences. “Does it work?” seems to be the prime question in many people’s hearts. But behind that there is fertile ground for the gospel. We can share our story of something that has worked and continues to work in my life.

I like R.T’s honesty in his book. He speaks about total forgiveness, but then is honest enough to say that when he saw the people who had wronged him, he could feel his peace disturbed and he had to forgive them afresh to recover that peace. My thought to share with you today is simply this; is there some victory in your life that needs to be renewed? Is there some area of your well being that seems to be coming under familiar attack? Go back to what helped you and renew the victory.

I have mentioned the name of Hugh Black more than any other name in these blogs. He is in glory now but he is someone whose words come back to me often. I remember an occasion when a friend was in deep trouble and distress. He had received great blessing through Hugh Black’s ministry but at the point of time I am telling you about was not in a good place spiritually. I phoned Mr. Black and asked him to go and see my friend. There was silence at the other end of the phone and then Mr. Black said, “No Kenny, I am not minded to do that. He knows where he got help.” In other words it was up to my friend to return to the place, to the people, to the truths that had brought him help before. There was no special treatment necessary. Mr. Black was always straight to the point like that! I put down the phone in a state of shock… but within minutes I saw he was right. There were steps my friend needed to take back into spiritual health. A visit could have pandered to his unwillingness to do what he needed to do. Perhaps some pastors reading this need to take a lesson form this that will release you from guilt. Is someone in your congregation in the huff with you and shown that by stopping coming to church?  Are they manipulating you by their absence, almost forcing a visit from you? “They know where they got help.”

I am presuming that most of you reading these bogs are neither preachers or pastors.  You too are looking for what works, but hopefully have not abandoned the concept of right and wrong. You want to do life as a follower of Jesus. I feel I have to say to everyone today, “You know where you got help.”  If that is not a relevant phrase today for you, keep it on the back burner somewhere. Today or someday  all of us will need to revisit the places where we found help, freedom and peace; give up resentment and go back to the church that brought life to you; re-read the books that brought life to your soul; what truth from God brought you help before?  What victory or deliverance is in danger of being stolen from you? Renew the victory in your life. Do it now and recover or re-enforce one of Christ’s most precious gifts to his disciples: His Peace. Perhaps the longer we do try and do life as a follower of Jesus while living in this world, what we value tends to change. I am not sure as a young believer I much appreciated the preciousness of what Christ was offering when he said, “My Peace I give to you.” Now, in a phase of life where I am confronted by my own weakness and fragility I think there is nothing more precious. May you seek, experience and appreciate  that precious gift today.

 I was going to stop writing there and sign off. However a story is coming to mind.  I am remembering the testimony of someone who was resiting a move of the Holy Spirit in revival in their island community. This person and her friends did not want”it.” They did not want “what” was happening to others they knew. But then “it “happened to her, and she said to her  best friend with joyful amazement, “Oh Fay dear, we have been so  blind ! It is not an ‘it.’ It is a ‘who!’ It is the Lord Jesus Christ!” When you revisit the place you found help, you will discover a person, the Lord Jesus Christ. Christianity is not a “what” or  a “where.” It is about a “who.” It is all about the Lord Jesus Christ. When I talk about places where you found help, I am ultimatley inviting you to a fresh discovery of Him.   It is a “who” I am offering to your question as to “what” works. I am offering you the Living Bread Himself. May the mouthwatering smell of the Living Bread reach your spiritual nostrils today. May you taste Christ.

PS – You are very welcome to enjoy these blogs and share them with anyone “without money or price!” However, if you ever feel grateful for these blogs and are able to do so, then please make a donation to Open Doors, Scotland. Their website is

http://www.opendoorsuk.org/scotland

In case you have not heard of them, Open Doors works to help our persecuted brothers and sisters throughout the world.

I hope Kenneth Steven’s Book, “Coracle” has known increased sales figures  since I started blogging!  I have mentioned it at least twice before. In one of the poems in that collection he speaks of men collecting agates from a ploughed field to take home for cutting and polishing to bring out their hidden beauty. However as they make their way out of the field, the “narrator” in the poem starts to think that perhaps the best stones are maybe still lying out there, undiscovered.

It is a thought worth musing upon. We live in an age where people are discovered through talent (?) shows and so on, but it stands to reason there are perhaps better musicians, singers, comedians etc. than have yet been discovered. Probably somewhere there is someone who can run faster than Usain Bolt, but no one knows about them and maybe never will. Probably someone can hit a golf ball further than Donald Trump. (Oh hang on a minute, lots of folk can! Sorry Donald you will need to find another reason why you should be President.) Probably there are treasures under the desert sand somewhere that are greater than the ones found in the tomb of Tutankhamen.

I think the more I follow the Lord the more I discover fresh treasure. It is not so much it has been discovered by no one else, but more  and more I discover treasures that other believers from other traditions have learned to appreciate, but I have not

I was thinking about that today. I don’t really follow the Church/Christian Year as such but I might be converted, at least temporarily, to give it a try. What might push me into that is discovering today what some of you out there already know; yesterday, the  second Sunday of Easter, is called “Divine Mercy Sunday” by those who give particular Sundays a particular focus.

I don’t think for a minute that those who do delight in the Church /Christian Year mean that God’s mercy is not available every other Sunday or every other day for that matter. But I guess giving a Sunday a name like that acts upon a truth like the banks of a river which focus the flow  of  water giving it added strength and  power. Whatever, I cannot think of a better name for the Second Sunday of Easter than “Divine Mercy Sunday.” Mercy was much needed after Easter! It was needed by Thomas who disbelieved what Jesus had clearly and repeatedly said  about the resurrection. It was needed by Peter who disowned Jesus. It was needed by the confused disciples who as they walked to Emmaus were increasingly damaging one another with a toxic despair… they needed help for they were not helping one another at all.

Perhaps today you need the Spirit of God via this blog to focus your thoughts on divine mercy.  As I write this today, I find myself thinking of a mistake I used to make as a new believer, which I continued to make for years. The mistake was that when I was aware I had gotten it wrong in my discipleship,  I felt I had to prove myself by getting it right for a few days before I could expect the Lord to welcome me or receive me, forgive me or help me. I can’t remember the day on which I suddenly saw that it is precisely when I sin that I need to come to Jesus afresh for mercy, nor can I remember the particular sin that became the route to that revelation. But this truth, of coming right away to God for mercy struck me with the force of a mighty river as I was going upstairs in the manse, and so right there and then on the stairs I got down on my knees and said to Jesus, “Jesus, I need you right now.”

I have found that going on my knees to confess my need of mercy is a good thing. I used to kneel for a bad reason only, namely when I was begging the Lord to let me out of something I knew he wanted me to do but I did not want to do! I have found that going on my knees when I need mercy brings me a beautiful sense of the Lord’s nearness. It is clear throughout the bible that worship involves our bodies, not just out cerebral thoughts or sung words. Going on our knees in humility, asking for mercy is a good thing. Do you need to find a place to kneel today, in fact this very minute?

The only bodily movement I see involved in worship in many churches trying to do things differently from usual is a sort of sloppy sauntering out to get a coffee and a cake and sauntering back in again, presumably an indicator of how relaxed I am with God and what good buddies this particular church and the Almighty God are. I may be wrong, but it seems to me that  perhaps for many of  us in the more Evangelical or Charismatic wing of the Church,  God’s mercy  is no longer something we receive with awe.  In Isaiah’s experience, mercy came after a feeling of being completely undone before the Lord’s holy eyes. (Isaiah Chapter 6.) The particular thing he was convicted of was the sins he committed with his mouth, unclean language. It may be that too many “OMG’s” have escaped your lips, or language of a type which the bible explicitly says are not to be a part of a believer’s speech. It seems to be becoming common as we dismiss more and more of the bible’s instructions to believers as being “religious.” Have we forgotten there is a religion God likes and that pleases him, part of which is keeping ourselves pure and unspotted? There is a religion that proves a relationship we may claim to have with God is real. Sins of the tongue may or may not be  why you most need mercy. It might be something completely different. But coffee, cake and “OMG’s” are becoing so common that they are the new demand for Christians who want to be really up to date, which seems to mean being as like the world as I can be but still be saved. There seems little space for bowing of the knee or even falling as one dead before the glory of the Lord.

Do those from more obviously liturgical traditions have some treasure to share as yet undiscovered by those of us, like me myself,  who have had little contact with that way of doing things? Why not find a place and a posture that shows you are taking the joyful news of God’s mercy seriously? Perhaps you need to find that place and posture right now!

PS – You are very welcome to enjoy these blogs and share them with anyone “without money or price!” However, if you ever feel grateful for these blogs and are able to do so, then please make a donation to Open Doors, Scotland. Their website is

http://www.opendoorsuk.org/scotland

In case you have not heard of them, Open Doors works to help our persecuted brothers and sisters throughout the world.