God’s Word is never wrong. His Spirit is never wrong. The trouble can be with our hearing, but more often than not, it is with our trusting, or our obeying. Most of us hear  God better than we think we do, but trusting what we hear, obeying it? Mmm… “Trust and Obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to Trust and Obey.

Has your  trust or obedience wavered this day? My trust wavered today despite a promise from God. I don’t like that it wavered, but it did.  I don’t think it failed, but “waver?” Yes, definitely, the cap fits, so I am wearing it and trying to learn from it.  If, as is sometimes taught, we just believe that Christ laughs when we get it wrong and congratulates us for trying anyway, then not only are we ignorant of the Jesus of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and the way He disciples people, but we dismiss the teacher that experience can become to us in the hands of Christ. All I can say is that the good thing I needed to happen, that God promised would happen, that my trust began to waver over, well, guess what it happened, even if it was all a bit last minute-ish. He really does bless us way beyond all that we could ask or think possible. Remember that.

I am so glad the prayer is there in the bible: “Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief.” Here is the wonderful thing… He does. Not sure that I did very well with the faith and trust thing today, but at least I know it, acknowledge it… and just as truly as I heard a word that all would be well,  I am just as clearly not hearing a word of condemnation. Rather there is a gracious presence around me, the presence of Christ. Somehow with His help I look forward to faith being steadier when it needs to be, next time round. Remember that Jesus is “Teacher”: it is a teacher’s calling to get someone from A to B; a skillful teacher puts in the necessary steps on the journey for the student or pupil and helps them learn from their mistakes. The mistake that bible teaching ministries can make, and don’t seem to learn from in time to rescue the relationship between themselves and their congregation,  is that the “Teacher” stands on the platform or in the pulpit or at the lectern calling everyone to move over to embrace whatever it is that they are teaching without putting in the stepping stones of the journey that show an understanding of humanity. That is an unwise teacher, in fact whatever that is, it is not being a teacher at all. Jesus is referred to in the bible as “Good Teacher.” I know that is probably meaning some sort of moral commendation, it may also have been said on occasions in an insincere way, but do you think Jesus has a bad teaching technique? Of course not.

Only a  foolish teacher would bypass the opportunities offered when someone gets it wrong as though mistakes did not matter and could be laughed off; that would be neither kindness, nor grace, it would just be folly. It is a misrepresentation of the Son of God; indeed it is a misrepresentation of the Father and the way He relates to His children; it is a misrepresentation of the indwelling Holy Spirit and the way He teaches God’s children. God is kind and good; He is not harsh when disciplining His children and helping us to learn, but He is not an idiot either. It is the Kingdom of God we are to live in, not Disneyland. There is Discipline and sometimes it is painful; however when God disciplines us, not harshly but at times painfully, it proves He regards us as His children, as belonging to Him. At times there are hard lessons to learn. Mistakes need not be fatal spiritually, though they can be; the idea though is that we are children who learn from our mistakes with the help of a loving and good Father and a loving and good Teacher  and indeed help others to learn from out mistakes too, so that that coming generations of Christ’s people don’t need to re-invent the wheel, as it were.

Oh yes, I should also say am so grateful for all of you who perhaps  felt led by God’s Spirit to pray for me today. Somehow I know those prayers were part of the good thing happening. It is good to be part of a body, in fact it is wonderful!

So how did I do today? Mmh, not sure. However:

1 – I come to the end of today thankful to a God of grace, having learned  once again that He really does speak to us by His Word and His Spirit and we can stake everything upon His promises to us; I find myself wanting to respond to that more fully than I did today; it would not only honour God if I did, but it would save me from needless stress;

2 – I come to the end of today, sensing anew that Jesus is the best of teachers;

3 – I also come to the end of the day thinking that one of the worst things in the realm of human experience is having no one who prays for you…

Have you learned from your “today”?

God Bless

Kenny

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.

C. G.  Jung has written many things that perhaps would not sit easily with bible believing Christians. However, I have to say that there are one or two things I have read over the years attributed to him that have brought the life and help of God to the deepest places in my humanness.

I have been sharing with you over these last few months something of the journey into the new phase of life that I now find myself in, which is becoming easier for me now to genuinely enjoy and thank God for. Ostensibly it is because of illness that this new phase has happened. However I refuse to give illness the glory. It is God in his goodness that is in charge of all my days – and your days too –  and in that I rejoice.

There have been darker moments in this story of readjustment which is now progressing well. I found a little book by Joyce Rupp very helpful. She is from the Catholic tradition. I have found that tradition very helpful in recent times. It is not they have changed my Protestant theology but sometimes Protestant theology is not so good at connecting the truth it has taught us to treasure with the experience of humanness, or at least that has been my experience. At times indeed it can be so self consciously a defender of itself that it can be a bit militant and insensitive to human need, looking at all questioning or doubting as an assault. For that reason, I have found myself seeking refuge and finding life in writers that I would previously not really have bothered looking at. Anyway, in her helpful little book, “Little Pieces of Light: Darkness and Personal growth,” Joyce Rupp quotes C. G. Jung. It is a quote that is now added to the 2 or 3 other helpful quotes from Jung that are stored in my memory from somewhere or other that have been helpful to me personally and in my pastoral ministry over the years: I quote this by kind permission of the publisher, Paulist Press:

“Resurrection occurs only after the tomb encloses a resident. Psychologist C.G. Jung indicates the tomb or cave as the place where “a person goes when there is a great work to be accomplished, an effort from which one recoils.” Renewal whether of the earth or the human heart, contains its own “Holy Saturday” when the darkness smells of death and shows no evidence of movement. Yet, unseen during this period, life stirs, moves, and changes into something surprising.(Page 28).”

I found these words helpful. Our “cave” or “tomb” experiences can mean the beginning of something new, after something or even someone in our life has passed away. I suspect that we all know that, but it is the emphasis that Jung places on the cave experience, or I guess you could say the desert experience, as being where we go “when there is a great work to be done.”

Perhaps like myself, some aspects of ministry are not open to you as they once were. Can you believe that the best may be yet to be in your life?  I hope you believe that your contribution to the Kingdom of God and indeed to life in general is really vital, unique and needed. It is important to mourn to acknowledge a sense of loss when we are carrying it, but never forget that ours is a resurrection faith. When you think you will be stuck forever in mourning, remember that. Who knows what good things from a good God are still to come? I am believing that my best days are still to be. It may be a less “public” life, but that suits me fine, in fact it suits me, my inner DNA as it were, really, really well!  I think this phase of life is a gift of God’s goodness to me and indeed to Morag. God is good all the time and all the time God is good!

God bless

Kenny

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.

This is a verse I mentioned only a blog or two ago, but it will not go away from the forefront of my mind. I urge you to think and meditate upon these words, and as you do may the peace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

“The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me…” Psalm138 verse 8

God Bless

Kenny

(Put this on Facebook earlier today but I know there are a lot of you get my blogs in other ways… so here it is!)

Had the roof down in the MX5 yesterday. I am not a poser… how else can you get 2 x 6 foot curtain poles home. Remember that when you are at church today… you may look at someone and be putting together an entirely wrong story…. As for me, well church is out for this morning at least, and looking increasingly unlikely for this evening too. Today my body is telling me what those who love me most tried to tell me in one way or another yesterday but I didn’t heed, “You did too much today.” In my dreams 2 nights ago, a voice said,”Take heed.” In my dreams in the early hours of this morning, a voice said, “Are you deaf?” If only we learned to read our own story instead of misreading others’ stories….

God Bless

Kenny

Just another thought: “Creative” has become a sort of in word for Christians and Churches in the UK and probably in other Western Cultures too, who give off an air of self belief that they are going somwhere, but personally, I believe from Scripture we are overdoing the “Creative” thing a bit, not only in terms of exaggerating its potential impact, but more fundamentally in this sense: in the bible only God is said to create.

The thing is when God creates He makes things very obvious – like his power and deity; you don’t need to be arty to work it all out. When we get creative what we end up doing is as likely to veil as to reveal and make things obvious. He seems quite childlike, happy to paint stars and trees and daisies, and to paint them again and again, and never get bored. We tend to create things that need a lot of explanation: “This painting is really about the conflicts that there are in the existential experience of the eschatological tension we all carry in our own being,”  sort of thing.

God is simple. He is perfectly well and sane. God’s creativity comes from wholeness with no axe to grind or point to make. Ours often comes from brokenness and can be a mixed blessing: some poems and songs  or paintings and drama come from very dark places indeed and for all their honesty can drive the listener  or the watcher into  very disturbed and dark places too. I have met someone who was demonised through watching a creative fantasy film – by the grace of God, she was set free. I write poems from time to time… not all of them would bless others. Some I would never read out loud to anyone….not because they are untrue but just because they wouldn’t really help… that is maybe the subject for another blog: just because something is honest or true does it mean it should be said and shared? Sometimes we need to be careful about what things we make that we choose to  bring out and share… what may be healing for me might depress or confuse others. Many “creative” types have a ministry in confusion, God love them and bless them! I am very confused by about a quarter of modern worship songs, both by their grammar, and by the fact that song writers seem to believe we  all simply love words that have to do double backflips and a few sideward rolls to  fit the tune…We apparently all love to sing in another accent other than our own: “intimut” rather than “intimate” is what  even those of us north of the border in the UK seem to have  to want God to be with us for quite a few years now…and we are all “gonna” do things (which at least has the saving merit of sounding as though it is vaguely and distantly related to slang Glaswegian), instead of announcing what we are “going to” do or become for Christ and the Kingdom.. AND WHILE I AM AT IT….WHO  IN SCOTLAND WOULD EVER CALL GOD “POPPA”?  We wouldn’t even call our earthly fathers “Poppa” because it isn’t a word we use in Scotland. If we did, we would get told to put aside our fancy talk, though we would be told so to do  in a less than fancy way. I wouldn’t expect American Christians to call God “Faither!”

In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for “create” is reserved for God Himself, God alone. The rest of us according to the language of the bible simply make or do… we make with what He creates… humbling…. but then again we seem to be blurring the distinction between us and God in general. The popular teaching nowadays in renewal circles is that Jesus did the miracles as a man and not as God, so we can do them too… true and false at the same time. In the bible we are encouraged to do the works Christ did, but His miracles are also recorded as signs of His absolute Uniqueness as The Only begotten Son of God, a proof of his divinity….so that believing in Him, we might find life in His Name. Half-hearing is quite dangerous; you are more likely to get knocked down wherever you are trying to get to, albeit you are stepping out with good intention and nobility of motivation and purpose….

God bless you, especially all you who are the “making things” type: not as grand a word as “creative” but still pretty awesome… we need you…  we really do….

Kenny

Just to push the Charismatic boat a bit further out for you to think about. I referred in my last blog to supernatural fragrance. A good friend told me that one of the signs of epilepsy is that you can smell fragrances that are not there. Well, he was not dismissive at all of the claims I made, and has himself had many wonderful experiences of God and blesses me often with what he is learning about God in what is for him a difficult time… but maybe you are trying to find a rational explanation for what I wrote about?

All I know is that the fragrance at CLAN filled the whole building and was noticed and delighted in by thousands of people. Mass hypnosis? Well I guess some people have tried that argument with the five hundred who saw the risen Lord at the one time. What was particualrly beautiful was that some baby Christians from my own congregation, at that  time , St. Peter’s and St.Andrew’s in Thurso, ended up with their shirts drenched in fragrant oil. There was so much there was a pool on the floor around them. The lovley thing was they just presumed that this was the sort of thing that happened to you once you became a Christian. Oh for a generation of born again people who have not been told “God doesn’t do this, doesnt do that!”

FEAR OF FALSE OR COUNTERFEIT FIRE CAN MAKE US SETTLE FOR NO FIRE AT ALL.  IT CAN MAKE US SPEAK AGAINST THE REAL FIRE AND TAKE US PERILOUSLY CLOSE TO THE TERRITORY OF BLASPHEMY AGAINST THE HOLY SPIRIT… by the way, “Charismatics” are just as likely to tread this ground as anyone else… so much rivalry, so many movements speaking against other movements, writers speaking against other writers etc. Hope you are not frowning as you read this. Do you find it hard to believe that God can do beautiful things just because He wants to and that He can  call into being things that are not? God making copious amounts of oil seems quite biblical to me…and I don’t see why He would choose to make it to smell rancid…

Oh by the way I had a conatiner full of the oil: It is all used up now. It had no particular powers that it added to ordinary prayer; it would have been easy to assume it would have  had such powers and for superstitions to develop around it perhaps to counter the question, “What was the point of it?”   There are a lot of pointless daisies in the world.  Our God is the Lord of hosts, which basically just means “many.”  We really don’t need as many stars. We could even do with less music, colour etc. I guess God likes daisies, stars and colours a lot – he makes hosts of them.  Maybe He even likes the daisies you hate in your lawn! Why should God only make useful things? Can’t  He make something that has no other purpose but to be beautiful and make us smile?  Oil can be both useful and beautiful. In this case, it simply was beautiful…. oh yes, there was a fleck or two of gold in it as well which was quite curious…I know that one day, face to face, “We shall see the King, IN HIS BEAUTY!”

God Bless

Kenny

Something I heard Duncan Campbell say once in a sermon came to mind a moment ago, so even though you should all be in bed by now (UK time), I thought I would just “blog” and share it without saying too much. He once defined revival as “the impact of the personality of Christ.” It got me wondering what a life looks like, what a church looks like, what leadership looks like, what mission looks like that has been impacted by the personality of Christ; what does it sound like, feel like?  What does it look like to have our own personalities impacted by His? As I mused, the fire burned…

I remember being in a Christian campsite once in the West of Scotland  and smelling the fragrance of Christ; I never asked for that experience, it just happened. All I know is that it was utterly beautiful, and I longed to smell it again and over the next few nights visited the same spot on the campsite, but I never did …. but then it is not an “it” it is a “Him.” “It” is one of the things that has happened in some revivals in times past, even in Scotland. I remember the late Rev.  Jack MacArthur being moved when he spoke at CLAN Gathering because he smelled the same fragrance that he had known in revival days. I long to encounter such beauty again! The impact of the personality of Christ whatever else it may invovle, is an impact that makes you long above everything else for Him, just for Him above every other aspect of Christian living and Service; beyond even every God given vision and calling that we may be faithfully attending to:  He makes everything that the world and a worldy church with worldly ways and methods  and goals chases after seem so lifeless, dead and pointless and even rather ugly looking by comparison.  “Oh when shall I behold Him?” He really is, as we sung a few years ago now, “beautiful beyond description, too marvellous for words, too wonderful for comprehension, like nothing ever seen or heard…” I found myself singing that as I walked on a quiet beach not long ago. It seemed to say what I was longing to say. It seemed to keep me out of the picture apart from saying, “I stand, I stand in awe of you…” Oh at times I have hated the focus of attention that  being a minister/leader/conference speaker/CLAN leader brought to me…WHEN, WHEN, WHEN WILL WE GET OUT THE WAY ENOUGH TO LET THE PERSONALITY OF CHRIST IMPACT US ALL? GOD DELIVER US FROM OUR FASCINATION WITH PERSONALITIES OTHER THAN THE PERSONALITY OF CHRIST.

Bruce Collins, one of the very best church leaders I have ever met, used to lead the International work of New Wine and is now deeply invovled in New Wine Wales. He said in a sermon once that Jesus is the most beautiful person he knows. He said it with a voice slighly breaking with emotion.  I have never forgotten the simplicity and the integrity of that moment. The impact of the personality of Christ….

My Dad used to  love Harry Secombe’s singing voice; indeed he thought he was Harry Secombe! I remember hearing Harry Secombe singing a song on a rather scrathcy LP that seemed to be played ad nauseam in my childhood home: “The Lost chord.” It was about an organist who struck a certain magnificent chord while playing randomly and feeling weary and ill at ease… and he could never find it again. I wonder if there is a lost beauty in Christ that we are in danger of forgetting about in our modern day church angst about church, and where it is heading and how it needs to change and so on…

Let me ask you if you are a parish minister, do you know enough about the beauty of Jesus to speak about him every Sunday Morning of your ministry, or do you need to fall back into using (misusing?)  Sundays to  mobiize the church towards something other than Jesus Himself?

I am still frightened of a vision I had once before I spoke at a conference of Jesus “waiting in the wings” while everyone and everything else took centre stage and took the applause. I know when a vision comes from God and not just from myself; I cannot change it, no matter how hard I try to imagine it differently: I have never been able to change this awful sight of  of Jesus in the wings and everything being brought to an end before He was even allowed to come on stage. Maybe the problem is that if we let Him take the highest honour, no one would want anything but Him. Our ministries, our worship leading, our preaching  would not be as sought after, in fact we might not be able to minister, we might be out the picture, no part to play, forgotten about. Our theories and talk might look a bit like the Emperor with no clothes. When I was involved  along with others in leading CLAN Gathering, we had some unspoken rules that guided our invitations to speakers: they had to have scars; in other words they could not just be speakers, but needed to be people who had done the stuff and paid the price; they couldn’t just be experts going round the conference scene with wonderful sermons and stories and some theories to share. I had another rule which I kept a little more secret: I would only ask speakers who in my heart I knew would not mind if they spoke or not during the week when they were with us. Many wonderful speakers were never asked to CLAN, though their presence and names on a programme could have boosted the numbers! If Christ’s personality impacted a meeting, all eyes would be upon Him, everyone would desire Him and fall at his feet overwhelmed….or hate Him with deadlly, jealous, all consuming hatred. By His impact the hearts of many are revealed…

God Bless

Kenny

We were sorting through Christmas decorations the other night. My mind went back to this time of the year many years ago in my early childhood. I held in my hands on that occasion a tiny house with bright baubles for slates, frosted walls, beautiful red glass windows, and I said to my mother, “Would you like to live in a house like that?” “Oh yes,” she replied, “I would love to live in a house like that.” Well, that evening as usual I was being tucked up in bed, prayers were being said and my mother left my bedroom to go downstairs. The nightly ritual at that point was that I shouted out “Night night!” She replied, “Night night!” Then I would shout out as she got further down the stairs, “God Bless!” “She would reply, “God Bless.” If it was my Father that had tucked me up in bed, the same conversation ensued. However from the day of that passing interaction about the little Christmassy decoration of the  beautiful house, I added another shout to my mother, “You won’t go away to another house, will you?” To which she replied, “I won’t go away to another house!”

The thing is, I was such a secure child, deeply loved and I knew it. However it did not mean I didn’t need to hear that reassurance that I was loved, that I would never be abandoned. Did that extra question represent loss of faith in my mother’s love? That would be a harsh verdict to pass on our night time conversation. It simply represented humanness.

Today, I read a verse in Psalm 138 that greatly blessed me. In verse 8 of that Psalm, the psalmist says, “The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me: your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever.” However that assurance does not stop him from voicing the words that follow: “Don’t abandon me…” Was that a denial of his previously stated faith? No, it was just humanness.

At times I used to get myself tied up in knots about the whole faith thing, It happened increasingly the more I listened to “faith” preachers. Some charismatic teachers seem to unhelpfully confuse biblical and true faith with psychological certainty, so if, for example, you have prayed about something once with true faith, you never need to pray about it again, for that would represent you didn’t really have faith in the first place! At times, this psychological certainty view of faith is represented as not being double minded, which of course Scripture tells us we are not to be. Indeed, Scripture tells us if we are double minded we will receive nothing from the Lord. However absence of psychological certainty is not what being double minded means. To suggest it does mean that is bad Scriptural exegesis… but more of that another time…

There are forms of Christianity that are violent to humanness. However the Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love. The Lord knows out frame. As a Father pities his children so the Lord pities His children who are seeking to walk in His ways. He remembers that we are dust.

If you need to cry “Father, don’t abandon me!” you might be nearer true faith in God than you realise. In Romans 8 we read about the Spirit helping us to cry out, “Abba Father.” There has been a lot of teaching in the last decade about the Father heart of God, much of it very good, but some of it not so. The prevailing impression is that God wants to bring us to some dreamy, balmy assurance that we are loved by the Father, that our heavenly Father is some kind of Disney-like Papa (if our God is British) or Poppa (if God is American) or whatever. However Romans 8 envisages something very different. It speaks about crying, “Abba Father.” I remember hearing Dr. Sinclair Ferguson preaching many years ago now in my own home church in Glasgow saying that the imagery here was of a child who had fallen in the street crying out for help! “Daddy, help me! Daddy, don’t leave me.” Rowan Williams puts it even more strongly. He says “The cry to God as Father in the New Testament …is the Child’s cry out of a nightmare…It is the cry of outrage, fear, shrinking away, when faced with the horror of the “world” – yet not simply or exclusively protest, but trust as well: “Abba Father, all things are possible to Thee…” (Quoted in “Celtic Daily Prayer” Book One, Copyright The Northumbria Community Trust, page 28.)

If you feel you need to cry out today, “Daddy, don’t leave me!” then do so. It does not mean you are weak in faith. It is what God birthed and true faith sounds like in a human being. The cry will be heard. It will not be disregarded. It will not receive harsh judgement. When a father hears his child crying because they have fallen, if he is worthy of being called “Abba” he picks them up, helps them, consoles them with reassuring love and helps them to their feet and to have confidence to walk again; when he hears a cry out of a nightmare, his compassion runs towards the sound. Well, how much more our Heavenly Abba….

God Bless

Kenny

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.

Looking back over the years once again….

… I have always wanted something more than the brilliant logic of  The Apologist, which if there is nothing more, leads to winning and belittling smugness on the one hand, or alienation and humiliation on the other; a clapping Christian crowd applauding their champion fighter and a defeated foe who of course may have asked  their “question” or made their case with or without genuineness, but whatever, is still made by God and sought by Him. Apologetic debating victory when it comes from and by the grace of God may indeed save some and “Hallelujah” does indeed do so, but when it is mere cleverness rather than the wisdom from above, it can send many a prodigal still a great way off back to the far country to feed themselves on pig swill, feeling more lost and wretched than ever, mocking themselves for ever hoping that a kind or welcoming rather than a publicly shaming and condemning God might be there after all…

…I have always wanted something more than to be someone who teaches accurately, though I hope I have correctly divided the Word of Truth over these last decades as part of my calling to be a parish minister. If there is nothing more from the pulpit/lecturing lectern, that accuracy can turn a listener’s soul into a dry and arid place built on sand even though it seems convinced it is providing good grass which the sheep will eat, or offering bread for the soul and rock on which to build a storm-surviving life and a judgement-surviving eternity. Orthodoxy without the Spirit’s fire (and by that I do not mean anything to do with style or delivery or emotionalism) may fill the preaching centres to the rafters but it stunts the church it thinks it feeds and also delights the devil, for it can hinder the expansion of the Kingdom of God into a lost world…

… I have always wanted to be more than a strategist who can enthuse people with a vision – in fact come to think of it I have never remotely wanted to be a strategist at all… Vision Sundays are a close second to Stated Annual Meetings in my book for the most dreaded Should do/Must do occasions in the church diary!  I am glad I had a team at Holy Trinity who I  could get roped into such things along with somehow managing to manipulate the Preaching Rota so that I hardly needed to do a children’s address for 11 years!  My Session Clerk realised when I said to one or other of the Ministry Team at our weekly Team Meetings, “You would be terribly good at that,” it was meant but it was not the whole motivation behind what I was saying! Strategy is good and I praise God for those who are gifted in this way even if over the years I have made them feel I am disinterested in what makes them tick and  deaf to what they want to enthuse about and have perhaps even studied or thought about  and prayed about for years. Strategy and Vision may lead to influence and impact of to varying degree, but if that is all there is, it has a limited life span, a firework sort of life for a few years or a decade or two:  it may greatly excite and mobilise some of God’s people but it will also wear out some of God’s people; it may unintentionally alienate other faithful believers who battle just to get to church themselves in the hope that there might be something said or sung that might give them fresh hope and energy to live. The keener someone’s gifting in Strategy, the more easy it is to walk along the knife edge of putting something helpful into the heart of the church and the risk of placing, however unintentionally, “The Vision” or “The Project” or “The Movement” or whatever, higher than “That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His suffering…” from which every lesser vision (that sometimes thinks itself grander) must spring.

… I have, however, always wanted this: fire-words. I still do … and I want it for you too dear zealous Apologists or Apostles or Evangelists or Entrepreneurs;  I want it for you dear listening-to-God Prophets and devoted Teachers or Transformational Strategists; I want it for you my fellow pastors and for all of you, my dearly beloved Brothers or Sisters in Christ, whoever and wherever you are. Tonight I simply offer you this poem that I have never forgotten since I first read it. When ill health is making itself felt, or when energy is low as it was unexpectedly for me today, well, to be honest, I forget this is what I want at times … but then I remember. The Poem is  by Amy Carmichael, a missionary of the 19th. Century whose life story and books are well worth reading.

Fire – Words

“O God, my words are cold:
The frosted frond of fern or feathery palm
Wrought on the whitened pane –
They are as near to fire as these my words;
Oh that they were as flames!”  Thus did I cry,
And thus God answered me:  “Thou shalt have words,
But at this cost, that thou must first be burnt,
Burnt by red embers from a secret fire,
Scorched by fierce heats and withering winds that sweep
Through all thy being, carrying thee afar
From old delights.  Doth not the ardent fire
Consume the mountain’s heart before the flow
Of fervent lava?  Wouldst thou easefully,
As from cool, pleasant fountains, flow in fire?
Say, can thy heart endure or can thy hands be strong
In the day that I shall deal with thee?”

“For first the iron must enter thine own soul,
And wound and brand it, scarring awful lines
Indelibly upon it, and a hand
Resistless in a tender terribleness
Must thoroughly purge it, fashioning its pain
To power that leaps in fire,
Not otherwise, and by no lighter touch,
Are fire-words wrought.”

I still want this….I think…I still want to ask for this with trembling faith…I think….

God bless,

Kenny

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.

​A lot of you liked a post I put on here saying spiritual exaggeration is lying. If you don’t know me you might get hold of the wrong end of the stick. I believe God is who He has always been and does what He has always been doing. I know a man who was transported supernaturally from one place to another a couple of times, who has seen a few deliverances and healings, who has known seasons when God came down, who has known other biblical experiences of the one holy, true and living God.. if I wrote about that man’s experiences I would not be lying or exaggerating..but as for me I will only boast of my weakness….

God bless

Kenny

Somebody who reads my blogs sent me this quote from Duncan Campbell. It brought back memories of a time when I had made a long journey to  go to a meeting where I believed genuine healing was happening through a visiting evangelist. Perhaps it was, I cannot say one way or the other, but there was so much hype that I felt deeply grieved in the core of my being. It left me so so hungry for the Living God by comparison. Fortunately there was a Christian bookshop nearby where I found some tapes by Duncan Campbell, tapes which include the words quoted below. It was like Manna to my soul and I wept with relief and joy as I listened to them back in my B and B. The disappointment of the meeting was entirely undone. I was reminded of God.. not man…God. I hope these words create a spiritual thirst in you for true revival as compared to revivalism or renewal.  Have we any idea what it would be like to be where “God came down”? Are we praying for a day when we will say in  the words of Scripture, “This is our God and we have waited for Him”?

Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones mentioned in a recorded sermon I listened to once that the “Oh God” note needs to come back into our praying. I think I know what he meant. I hope this creates an “Oh God” longing in your heart. Let’s not settle for smoke which does at least show something is happening, but go after the fire!

“There are two things that I would like to say in speaking about the revival in the Hebrides. First, I would like to make it perfectly clear that I did not bring revival to the Hebrides. It has grieved me beyond words to hear people talk and write about “the man who brought revival to the Hebrides.” My dear people, I didn’t do that. Revival was there before I ever set foot on the island. It began in a gracious awareness of God sweeping through the parish of Barvas.

Then I would like to make it perfectly clear what I understand of revival. When I speak of revival, I am not thinking of high-pressure evangelism. I am not thinking of crusades, or of special efforts convened and organized by man. That is not in my mind at all. Revival is something altogether different from evangelism on its highest level. Revival is a moving of God in the community, and suddenly the community becomes God-conscious, before a word is said by any man representing any special effort.”

God bless

Kenny

What if “more of God” lies in the very place you wish you were not in and are trying desperately to get out of prematurely…? Can you pray tonight in surrender, trust and peace, “Hineni”: Hebrew for “I am here, I am ready,” Lord?

When the Son of God came into the world, He said to His Father, “Here I am.” The outworking of everything  depended on Him saying that. Will you ask Jesus to help you say to His Father  and yours what He said?

God Bless

Kenny