I made a semi promise to someone and to myself that this would be a blog free Sunday. I have not been sleeping at all well and am suffering a bit from that lack of sleep, hence the promise. It is not a good thing to break a promise, even a semi-promise. Our “yes” is to be “yes” and our “no” is to be “no.” Keeping promises is a sign of God in us as He himself is a promise maker and a promise keeper. He has made many promises to us in Christ and always says ”yes” to them, always keeps them.

However because of a dream early this morningI have to break that semi-promise.  This can’t wait until tomorrow. I just hope it is not to late to reach who I think it is meant to reach, namely preachers of the gospel preaching this very day. The dream was so clear: a minister was preparing to preach, preparing to lead a Sunday Service. In the dream they were combing their hair one last time, looking at themselves in the mirror and smiling because everything was looking good. However in the dream I found myself speaking out a plea; “But have you ever told people ‘You are lost, you are lost, you are facing a lost eternity, turn to Christ!’ ?” Preacher… have you?

The last time I preached in Holy Trinity before having to stop, my morning and evening services in a series on The Apostles Creed were based around the line in which we confess about Jesus, “He descended into hell.” I found myself sharing a secret fear with the congregation, namely that I had never made it clear enough that without Christ we face a lost eternity. I made it clear that day…

I know I have some friends who are preachers and who read this blog who do not share my theology and will find what I am saying today distasteful in the extreme. The worst consequence of this blog today is that you simply stop reading this blog. This blog may be the last blog from me that you read. But just as in my last sermon I want to ask you in case this is for you my last blog: “Have you made it clear enough that without Christ we are lost?”

For those who do share my theology, remember that Paul in 2nd. Corinthians places before every ambassador of Christ an amazing picture of what we are meant to look like. He places before us a begging Christ, a Christ on His knees pleading through His messengers, “Be reconciled to God.” Maybe we need to pray the line of the popular song and really mean it: “Break my heart for what breaks yours….”

Lost is a beautiful word. It implies someone belongs somewhere. There is a home to return to. If it is the final word over a life it is a horrific word.

“Have I made it clear enough…” was the phrase I used in my last sermons here in Holy Trinity. I did not know they would be my last semons. If today was your last sermon preacher, “Have you made it clear enough?”

So today, comb your hair, take that final look in the mirror to see you  are at least semi presentable enough not to be a stumbling block… but remember there are more important things than looking ok enough for folk to think well of you…a begging and entreating Christ on His knees is looking for begging and entreating preachers who say on His behalf, “Be reconciled to God.”

This is too urgent to check for any spelling mistakes etc.  I am putting out this draft as it is. If there are any I will correct them in future updates. I hope they do not irritate you to the point you angrily dismiss what I am trying to say.

Your brother in the Lord

Kenny

I feel this weekend I want to remind myself and all of you blog readers of something: Christians believe in the Church. In the Apostles Creed, a short summation of the essentials of the Christian Faith, after we have confessed together, “We believe in God the Father Almighty….In Jesus Christ… in the Holy Spirit…” one of the other tenets of Apostolic faith we confess is , “We believe in the Holy Catholic (Universal) Church.”

In these days when  even among Christians I often pick up a tone of cynicism about “church” I guess I just want each one of us to ask if we  personally can say, “I believe in the Church,” or have you or I  become the Church’s mocking  and frustrated critic rather than her defender?

I think it was Henri Nouwen who imagined someone responding to the idea of believing in the church with a thought or a question like “How can I believe in something so  obviously flawed?” It is a fair enough question. I would simply say the Church reminds me of two things:

Firstly, you meet some pretty awful behaviour in church and that reminds me that all of us are sinners and need to be saved – and I mean that in a non cynical way.  I remember hearing Dr. Jack Deere say that church can be a mean place. That is so true. We sometimes have a very rosy picture of the early church. Actually Paul had to write some pretty amazing things to some churches. He had to tell believers to stop brawling and fighting, to stop lying to stop backstabbing, to stop using bad language and being dishonest, and to stop behaving immorally!  I personally know a minister whose truthfulness I have no reason to doubt, who claimed another minister actually punched him after a Presbytery Meeting!! The Christian church and  sadly often the leadership of the Christian church, has demonstrated all through history the sinfulness of human beings and how terribly evil and distorted and ugly religion can become.

Secondly, I have discovered the forgiving and encouraging love of the God who saves in the Church as well. I have been convinced of that love though the preaching of the Word I have heard in church through faithful ministers; through formal and informal celebration of the sacraments;  through the psalms hymns and spiritual songs I have sung as part of a worshipping congregation. Alongside all of that I  can genuinely say that through the ministry of the people of God ,who are the Church, I have caught glimpses and much more than  glimpses of the merciful  love of God in word, deed, forbearance, understanding and encouragement.

So amid a myriad of other things I could say, the church at its worst convinces me  that men and women including myself need saved from ourselves and our sin,  and at its best helps me to believe the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, His mercies never come to an end. “It” or perhaps more lovingly and personally I should say, “She” helps me believe in the good news of One  called Jesus.

Perhaps the prayer some of us need to bring as  ministers, pastors, elders, leaders and people, is “Lord, help me to keep believing in the Church.” As some preacher somewhere quipped, “My mother has wrinkles but I still love her!” Remember any clever cynicism you direct towards church lands on Jesus, for the Church is His body. Mock His body, you hurt Him. Bless His body today or any day and you will bless Him.

So, just a thought for you to mull over as Sunday rolls around once more… “We believe in the Holy Catholic Church…”

Kenny

P.S. – Remember there is only one Church. If you are tempted to look down on another denomination or congregation  thinking their obvious sins and failings are not the sins and failings of your church or denomination or your non-denomination, remember we are part of the one holy catholic church.  Jesus taught us to pray  as his disciples,”Forgive us our sins.” Remember too that our persecuted brothers and sisters are part of that one church too…so…

P.P.S – 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 made the decision yesterday to live by the UK tax year spiritually. I mean I made the choice to begin my year in April, in the spring, in the season of  new life and of Easter and to end it as new life and Easter are  breaking forth again. I have decided that I won’t live from January to December, from the darkness of winter to the darkness being around once more, though being a Scot I will still say, “Happy New Year,” on January the 1st and celebrate!

What drove me to that decision was feeling a quite unexpected and unsought deep sorrow for those who have no faith in God. When I was younger in spiritual terms I remember Psalm 14 verse 1 being referred to quite a lot: “The fool says in his heart there is no God.” The word fool, it was explained, was someone in whom something was lacking morally not intellectually. In other words atheism was a moral not an intellectual choice and therefore liable to justifiable judgement. No genuineness was ever conceded to those who claimed they were agnostic or atheist on other grounds.

I still believe what the psalm says, that there are those who know God is real but who are fools, speaking against what they know for moral/immoral reasons rather than intellectual or any other type of reason. Indeed I believe that the world is full of those who  want to shut God out and will continue to do so no matter how loving and compassionate the witness of Christians or the church to them may be. But today I am asking that you pray for those who may want to believe, who are not angrily fighting against faith but find they do have more honest barriers to believing.

I am thinking for example of the many people I have met over the course of my ministry for whom believing in a good and caring God is not easy because their experience of  life at very best has been chaotic and at worst completely destructive of their well being or their happiness through no fault  of their own other than being born  into a certain place and time and into a certain family or indeed into either a non-family or into no family.  I am thinking too of sensitive and caring people open to reality, who may have a real love for people and for living things who look out on a world of suffering and though they may see what is good and beautiful and may indeed feel awe and wonder, they cannot get the sum to  add up that at the centre of everything is a God who cares.

What prompted this blog was a memory of being in a certain city a while back and seeing a world famous apologist for the Christian Faith walking in the city centre. I recently watched two clips of this person in action. It seemed to me that there was a certain ridicule being poured on unbelief, as though all unbelief came about for reasons that could and should be judged as nonsense. It seemed to me as well, that the apologetics being presented would only sound convincing  to those already in the camp of belief , and probably would not convince many non believers if any.

But it was the tone of ridicule and lack of respect and compassion that bothered me most. How different from what I was reading yesterday in poetry  by Kenneth Steven. I am putting a couple of his poems together in my mind as I write. He talks about the results of a society growing more and more away from a belief in God to not believing in God. He says this: there is no one to say a final prayer to at night before turning off the light.  There is such pathos in that thought and sentence. It causes to rise within me  the same sadness that I feel when someone has lost their spouse of decades, or their very best friend when they tell me that  the hardest thing is having no one to share things with at night any more. Furthermore I realised through reading these poems that the atheist or agnostic may be able to admire beauty in the world, but ultimately has the feeling it has no eternal meaning. He or she can look at the universe and think that its beauty is like the beauty of a soapy bubble. It is indeed beautiful, full of colour, but it ultimately bursts. Its beauty does not last , nor could it, nor was it ever meant to. It has no ultimate meaning nor is it meant to have. It is as though everything leads to December and to extinction rather than everything leading to spring and  to life. This strikes me as being something other than that which is morally culpable. It strikes me as sad that someone should carry this belief, that ultimately  winter is the verdict over all things rather than spring or summer.

Not everyone who says there is no god falls into the category of the fool in Psalm 14. If you think that psalm  does cover all unbelief then come with me round Wester Hailes for  a while and hear some life stories such as I have heard. Is there any compassion in the heart of the church, in your heart and mine for those who find faith difficult? Perhaps I am just asking us as believers, do we love non believers the way that the God who sent forth His only Son did when he did precisely that?

Kenny

I said in yesterday’s blog that one of the easy things about blogging is that you can begin a new topic each day. You do not have to follow on from the last one the way you might have to if you were preaching a series of sermons. However today I felt I was to continue on from yesterday.

Basically, if you don’t want to read yesterday’s blog, I  was talking about not ignoring warning dreams from God. I would hate you to think that I never fall into that mistake. I don’t want to do anything in this blog other than to  exalt the mercy of God to us all. I realised that the blog yesterday might sound as though I never makes mistakes in terms of listening to God. I make plenty…

So let me tell you about a time I did ignore a warning from God. It came not so much as a dream but as a thought when I was praying. The setting is Stronsay, the  7 miles by 5 miles island that was part of my first charge. A man had gone  missing . That actually was quite worrying as suicide was not unknown.  Perhaps it was the negative side of the draw of the sea. People were searching. I prayed as I was driving around and felt the Lord put this thought in my mind; “He is in his house.” I decided to go to the man’s house to investigate. As I approached the door, a picture flashed into my mind. It was a picture of a farm gate with a warning sign, “Beware of the bull.” So what did I do? I ignored the warning from God and opened the door and walked in. The missing man was nowhere to be seen. It was only later that night that he was indeed found in his  own house. He had crawled between the plasterboard and the outer wall and was hiding there… with a loaded shotgun in his hands. I hope you can see why I want to stress that anything that appears to be positive from these blogs arises from God’s mercy, not from my spiritual strength or obedience. I find it as difficult to do the right thing as anyone else. I often get it wrong.

However, let me tell you what I really pushed against  as I pushed open that man’s door. I pushed against an agitation I felt within. I pushed against a lack of peace. For me, I learned then and many times thereafter had to relearn that one of the best ways to know what God is wanting us to do is to look for the sense of His peace resting on an intended course of action. If that peace is not resting upon me personally, then it is a good sign I am about to step out of the will of God. That day on Stronsay ,I pushed against a lack of peace and stepped out of the will of God quite  deliberately and intentionally. The consequences could have been dire. I am indebted to the mercy of God. Mercy is what you need when you have not got a leg to stand on, when you have no excuses for deliberate sin and disobedience.

I think I want to encourage you to learn to read the peace of God or the lack of it in your deepest heart, in your spirit. After all, according to Colossians 3 verse 15 the peace of God is like an umpire helping us to know when something is out of or inside the court of God’s will. I know that verse is perhaps more talking about collective church decisions but I think it has a valid individual application as well.

So may the peace of the Lord Jesus Christ be upon you. May you learn to discern that peace, both its presence its absence.

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.

This almost daily blogging business is so much easier than preaching once or twice a week, that’s for sure. As I have said before, I just ask God to bring something from my spirit to the surface of my attention  and then share it with you. It doesn’t need to follow on from the blog before ,such as in a series of sermons.

Well, today the verse that came to mind occurs in the story of the Kings or the Wise men, the Magi, or whatever you prefer to call them. After worshipping Jesus and presenting gifts to Him, they left again for their own country but as we know they did not go back to Herod, because  of what is recorded in this phrase: “And being warned by God in a dream…”

For some reason, I think God wants to say to some today not to ignore warnings He gives you in your dreams. I know that some of you fine Reformed fellows out there might have difficulty with this notion, but I do believe God speaks to us through dreams. I am not the world’s best at interpreting dreams. There are courses and books available to help with that. I will try and find some links and put them at the end of this blog…if, that is,  I can work out the technicalities of how to do that! However, I have found that warning dreams can be understood even by a novice like me. Warnings need to be stark and clear and obvious. Let me share a couple of that type of dream with you.

A good few yeas ago, I dreamed one night when I was a minister in Thurso, that a man I greatly respected in the Lord, who I had always wanted to meet, met me in my Church Hall. I had never seen this man, only heard of him, so I had no idea what he looked like. I just knew it was him. He was standing on one side of the church hall and I was on the other. There was an invitation to join him on his side, in what he was doing, and something in me longed to do that, but I felt in the dream that despite the attractiveness of that offer to me, I was not to accept it. The next day I opened the door of the manse, and there was the man I had seen in my dream standing there in the flesh! I must have looked like I had seen a ghost for such a thing had never happened to me before! It was so tempting to want to throw in my hat and join him in the work he was doing, but I remembered the warning of the dream.

The only other time I experienced something similar was a dream about someone who has a ministry in counselling. Counselling is a wonderful ministry, but I felt that there was clear warning that this particular person’s approach to counselling and  what they were trying to bring people into was not right, in fact could perpetuate habits outlook and behaviour that would not produce freedom and wholeness. Now again, I had not seen this person, nor had I ever met them in my life, but I knew this person in the dream was them and there was some sort of warning about the influence they were having. A few days later I met them in a church meeting, and picked up from that meeting something of the unease I had felt about them in the dream.  As I said already I had never met them before nor have I ever met them since. I guess the purpose of the dream was to be alert to their influence upon people and to pray God would help this person to come more on the right track. I am not sure I have prayed for them as I should since that experience, in fact God forgive me I know I have not.

I think that for me God speaking in dreams is not something that is my main things as it were, although He has been doing that now and then since my childhood up until the present.  Nor do I find that for me it is “on tap.” I have found though that a dream from God is more likely to come when I ask him to speak to me in my dreams and then expect Him to.

There are all sort of dreams, but I guess I am wondering if God put this on my heart today because there are maybe some of you who have been warned by God in a dream not to go down a certain path, or in a certain direction, or be involved with some person or other. If this seems at all that it could be you, then please don’t ignore the possibility that God may be speaking to you trough this blog. Not every blog every day will be equally relevant to every person. If this is not for you then just say a prayer for those for whom this might be the Word of the Lord as they read it. Perhpas with simple faith you could also ask God to speak to you through dreams.

Your brother in Christ

Kenny

I  think this link will work. This is a good place to begin if you want to find out about God speaking in dreams…

http://www.thedreamhouse.co/about

You could also click the following for me excellent help and information:

http://northatlanticdreams.net

Both the above Ministries would not exist without the excellent ministry of John Paul Jackson the founder of streams International. Here is another link:

http://www.streamsministries.com

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.

This may put some of you off reading my blog ever again. I want to share something that happened today…

Due to tiredness, medication and not sleeping last night,  I got on the wrong bus. That meant ending up somewhere I was not meaning to go. However there was blessing in it. I met two folk from my congregation, Holy Trinity, Wester Hailes. On more than one occasion over the course of my illness, at unexpected moments  I have bumped into  people from my congregation who I know pray for me. I usually meet them when I am feeling vulnerable. For example once I met two prayer warriors when I was about to go in for the results of a biopsy. I was feeling shaky  in every way; physically,  emotionally etc. The biopsy was supposed to confirm bad news, but the news turned out to be much more hopeful than was expected.  Somehow it felt the two people I met on that occasion, Ann and Mary, were a sign that God was with me, that all would be well. They felt like guardian angels, sent by God just when they were needed.  Today, ending up where I did not mean to go, I  felt foolish. It may seem a  small mistake to you, but for whatever reason it upset me and even concerned me and worried me slightly. I was passing condemnation upon myself, judging myself harshly. “How could you do that? Stupid!” Meeting Ian and Eileen from my congregation, people who I know pray for me and who have consistently over 11 years and more shown they care  for my family and I, somehow ministered to me an assurance of the goodness and the compassion  and the presence of My Heavenly Father. I was blessed too as they shared a story about how they had experienced the goodness of God just a few moments before we met.

Well, nothing  to stretch you so far in the blog, nothing offensive to the mind so far… but give me time, I am not finished yet! Being in the wrong place, I needed to take two bus journeys now instead of one to get back home. I was five pence short. I knew that before meeting the couple from my congregation. Anxiety  came back again. How would I get home? The very next second there was a clink and there at my feet was a 5 pence piece. There was no one around…

The religious will say I should have handed it in or given it to charity… But those who know the God I have come to know  by expeience will know what I did. I took my bus journeys, well actually a tram journey and a bus journey, with an extra helping of gratefulness, laughter and wonder. I felt cosseted in the care of God.

How did that 5p get there? Well, I know what I think but that would be another level of stretching for many… I may come back to it another day and tell you. Make of this what you will. I am still thanking my heavenly Father and smiling about it all!

I am also praying that you will remember that your Heavenly Father knows your needs down to the last 5p… In fact, He knows your needs even beyond that point. He has infinite resources and an infinite variety of means of getting the help you need to you.

I am not into the so called “Prosperity Gospel.” That may be the most understated sentence I have ever written in any of my blogs! I think Prosperity Gospel preaching  is a twisting of the truth of God – that statement has just  broken the previous record for understatement achieved in the last sentence!! I do believe, however, that our Heavenly Father  knows His children’s needs and can supply them. May the joy and laughter of discovering the truth of that come your way today or soon!

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.

Just an observation: I think most of my Christian Life I have lived mainly in my thoughts. By that I mean, I have ignored my body. There is a tendency I think for Christians to think of our bodies as unimportant, as though they are not spiritual compared with  our thoughts. Usually we are a bit ambivalent about emotions as well and tend to get mixed up as to their place or importance in our spiritual walk. However, one of the most wonderful discoveries of being not well has been the discovery of the presence of God in the weakness of my body.

What was Paul’s thorn in the flesh which the Lord did not take away despite Paul asking him three times? Well, I don’t know any more than anyone else. You pay your money and take your choice as to what he was talking about. He could have been using the phrase in the metaphorical sense of people being thorns in his side. This has biblical backing.  Certainly he had more than his fair share of detractors and of those who followed him around distorting his message or offering something they claimed was a superior gospel than Paul’s. I guess if you are committed to the idea that God always heals, by necessity you have to  say that is what the passage means otherwise your doctrine is in difficulty. I don’t want to get into the “does everyone get healed” debate. However for me, I have to be honest and say I have never found that line of thought remotely convincing. I believe Paul was not speaking metaphorically. I believe his thorn in the flesh to be a physical suffering or bodily ailment beyond normal levels. I believe that too has biblical backing. Personally I think the language shows that is what he was meaning. He was talking about something that felt like a stake being driven into his body. Yet in that experience, He became aware of the grace and strength of God.

I am fortunate in that my illness does not cause pain of the type I believe Paul carried. I don’t want to minimise the struggle some of you may be having with bodily pain. This blog is looked at in many countries in the world to my amazement. Sometimes I get private email responses that speak of struggles with pain. I can’t imagine what that is like. However I want to be honest to my experience. I have observed this: that some of my most memorable experiences of the presence of God drawing near have been precisely at those moments when I have been aware of a bodily weakness and illness that as yet has not been healed. It does not feel good to feel weak, but it has been a lesson in trust and in the faithfulness of God to his children.

Don’t ignore your body. I said something like that about 20 blogs ago, but I felt today it was worth  saying again. If you try and deny weakness, illness, then you may miss a wonderful drawing near of the love and strength of God. By all means pursue healing unless you know God has said “No” for one reason or another. But however vigorously you pursue that, don’t deny the thorn in your flesh. Let God draw near, there.

My prayer is that you would know the sweet presence I have experienced at times of weakness, or to use the words of Paul that you would experience God saying to you, “My strength is made perfect in weakness. My grace is sufficient for you.” If you think this is anti-healing you have missed the point. Read it again and be blessed.

Much love

Kenny

Having had to get rid of my books, as old books can exacerbate my lung condition, I am in the frustrating position of not being able to verify quotes I want to use in my blog. However I am remembering a phrase from somewhere by someone: “Life consists in a whole lot of little deaths followed by little resurrections.” I think it was Brother Roger of Taize who said that or something near to that , but can’t be sure. However today in the midst of a season of life where much is changing for my family and for me myself as well as for my congregation, I found myself thinking about this quote and it seemed to bring life to me.

I think the particular aspect that brought me life is this: It is ok to mourn. In fact Jesus promised a blessing could be found in that. Am I allowing myself the space to mourn and through mourning and saying goodbye to certain things allowing myself to move into all the life in Christ that I can know in the present and the future? I think I almost accept things too quickly. I guess part of “faith” seems to be that one “accepts” things. I have no quarrel about that. What I perhaps don’t allow weight for is that mourning is important as well and is allowable. I am looking back to  an interesting examination by an Occupational Health doctor a few months back. I explained that I had to give up squash for golf; then I had to give up golf for gentle cycle rides along the towpath of the canal; then I had to give that up and go for gentle walks along the same towpath. I actually enjoyed each of these activities, but while speaking to the doctor I realised I had not allowed myself to mourn at each stage. I had moved on without mourning a loss. He then asked me if I had ever mourned my loss of health. I realised with quite a shock that I had not. I was so much focussed on adjusting, so focussed on how many people were praying for my healing, that I had not allowed myself to mourn that obvious loss.

I think I want to say today, that faith is more than a stiff upper lip and stoicism. Living faith in the Living God has space for more than that. It has space for mourning as well as for resurrection.

I am wondering if there is a loss or grief that you may need to be honest about before God, so that you can feel permissible pain and allow yourself a permissible and indeed necessary grieving. We don’t grieve our losses as those who have no hope, but as believers, we do grieve nonetheless.

I can see all sorts of applicable mournings poking their heads up into the surface of my thoughts gasping to be expressed. For example, what about the mourning of the loss of songs and hymns, psalms and paraphrases and styles of worship that were meaningful in our younger days  of faith journey but now seem to be outlawed in the church of today, and judged as inadequate?  But, I will have to ask these thoughts to go down and swim about some more before they surface again.

For today, do you need to remember and apply in unexpected ways Jesus promise, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted,” ?

May God bless you as you pursue your Christian walk, a walk of little deaths and little resurrections.

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.