If you really want to be part of the building of a church community then offer your weakness and limitations freely and openly. A community based on the affirmation of strengths alone produces the falsity of a degraded type of Showbiz at best (the church dominated by gifted celebrities meeting for entertainment), or the evils of Nazi Germany at worst, but not the church of Jesus of Nazareth. Weakness is fundamental to the strength of the community and fellowship the Spirit of God plants and builds. Strengths are a bonus, a gift we can offer, but not as essential to life as the reciprocal gifting of our weakness to one another, a gift we honour with mutual and collective thankfulness.

So then, let your weaknessess shine before the church and the world. Don’t despise them or think your witness would be better if only God removed them. Calling the weak!

God bless

Kenny

Have just read some wonderful poetry by a celeb! it is brilliant. However all of a sudden I saw it: how Satan can beautify our lostness with noble thoughts and adorn the step before the endless abyss with sentiments that blind though they may draw acclamation from “The Times.”

The flames of hell became as real as the ground I was standing on in the days leading up to my conversion. Glad to be saved. My wife’s background a prior to conversion or knowing each other could not have been more different. However the same grace of God worked in us both by different routes to bring us to the same point : we both, individually, became awware that without Christ, should we die, hell was where we would spend eternity. It was not blood and thunder preaching that brought us to that awarness but the Spirit of God through the  black and white reading of the Word of God.

Not sure if it is out yet, but I was blessed to read a manuscript of a book by R T Kendall a few months back called, “Whatever Happened to the Gospel.” If you can, get hold of it, or preorder it if it is not yet out. It is a timely call to the Church in a day when it has perhaps lost more than its way in general. It has perhaps, in many of its manfiestations, lost the gospel itself. Nowadays the gospel seems to be more about being saved from my poor self image, from not being recognised, from the hurts of life rather than first and foremost from my own sins which have consequences in time and eternity that only the grace of God can alter. Oh yes, there are more buttons on the garments of salvation than the first one, but let’s get the first button in place first and all the others will fall into place too.

God bless

Kenny

The love of God for lost human beings is something that angels ponder. It is a mystery that they cannot fully understand.

Well, today I woke with this truth living and bursting to be shared: some who read this have caused the devil great confusion. He has thrown everything at you to keep you settled in a place of gloom, and you have indeed been living in a dark place, precious child of God. This morning, like the manager of a hotel, the governor of the prison checked the register of rooms. There was full occupancy last night…but not this morning!

To those struggling with weakness you would not necessarily have chosen: I hope this helps to sustain you: As I said a few posts ago, I am trying to follow Jesus in knowing the Word that will sustain the weary, asking that I will have an instructed tongue that comes from having an open and instructed ear. I guess that some mornings I may hear nothing for whatever reason. However, this is what I believe the Spirit of God helped me hear and see this morning:

You may think that everyone, everything, even God’s Spirit is whizzing past you, like a train at speed as it goes full pelt through the station where you are standing… waiting. Not so: Wherever the train of life around you, wherever the train of your particular”church” circle is set on going, the Heavenly Father sees His waiting-on-the-platform children and their wondering. Today, you are fully part of His destination. He has no destination in mind that does not involve noticing and responding to your waiting, your longing and the preparation of your heart. The people involved in the rush need you. They need to see what God does for those who wait for Him.

After receiving this soon after waking, I decided to look up the origins of the phrase, “full pelt.” No one is completely sure where it comes from it would appear! However, the best bet is that the thought is of moving something by pelting it. It may have a military origin. Moving is good, but not all movement is good. It depends who or what  is doing the pelting that is causing the gathering speed. If you are “waiting” at the moment, if that seems to be the persisting tone of your days, one of the most useful things you can do is to pray for those who are doing the moving and the shaking, that they will be discerning as to who or what is driving things forward.  The movers need your prayers from a quieter place. They may even find themselves being drawn to you sensing in all their full pelt moving they have lost something they need to find again if the train despite its apparent speed is indeed going to get somewhere other than hitting the buffers.

God bless

Kenny

Dreamed just as I was waking up this morning that someone was delivering an acceptnace speech for an award, a life time achievement award. It was for their career in “Voiceover.” The image lingered. I felt that in it there was a word that would help to sustain the weay, which is part of why I write these blogs.

Voiceover is when someone unseen speaks over what is happening on screen in a film or an advert or speaks off-stage as a narrator in a play or whatever. Or it may be the voice over is the voice of an actual character in a film or play speaking into that role. Voiceover is important. When used properly, it gives sense, interprets, explains what needs to be known but might not be understood without help and guidance.

There is always a Voiceover being spoken into the unfolding events of our lives. The important thing is that we do not allow any old voiceover explanation of the story of our lives. God can help you begin a new voiceover career today, one in which the Holy Spirit in you or You through the Holy Spirit are speaking the interpretative narrative over your own life; a voiceover carrying the truth and tone of the Living God the God of goodness, of redeeming mercy, kind love and purposefulness.

Back to the dream: the acceptance speech. It was a bit like the Oscars, though less emotional and more sincere, with less acting if you know what I mean! Whoever the person was, they were saying a simple “thank you” for all those who had got them started in Voiceover.

Well, all of that gets me to what I beleive God wants me to share. it will not be for everyone but it will be for some of you. The verse/thought of Saint Paul came to mind, admittedly not strictly in context! “When I became a mature adult, I put aside the things of childhood.” There are some reading this who need to let go of your childhood voiceovers ohterwise they may lead to perpetual childishness where you pass on any responsibility for the unfolding shape of your adult life and settle to live as a victim, only remotely functioning when you say “poor me” over yourself or hear others saying, “Poor soul.”

Believe me, The Voiceovers are there in every one of us, but they are not necessarily the Voiceovers of the truth of God. Some of us are very fortunate in that the Voiceovers spoken into our lives from earliest days were from loving parents, from encouraging families who may even have deliberatley sought to echo the truth of God into your life. For some there were lots of postive voices like this, but other voices seemed to have a more powerful and detrimental influence. Voiceovers can be sinister. Was that the case for you? Was your dominating Voiceover the ancient career of one who lies and deceives with a forked tongue? That tongue can be terrifying or silky smooth but poison filled either way. The enemy gives false Voiceover narratives to the events of your life, the event of “you”, suggesting and reinforcing false outlook and a false understanding of our own identity. Of course, the Voiceover he offers can paradoxically be one of complete silence, that can put a sense of  hidden menace into the living of our lives resulting in fearfulness and anxiety.

At some point, whether the Voiceover action of others was good or bad, helpful or a hindrance, we have to begin our own Voiceover career with regard to our life. However, remember that essentially Voiceover does involve a script. What script are you reading and speaking forth this day? May it be true for you and for me that the script we are learning to submit to as Voiceover artists is the one written by the Author of our Salvation and no other.

God bless

Kenny

Woke early, having slept well.  Immediate thought was of those  of you who are struggling with physical pain, severe physical pain. The mantra that, “Pain is a good thing, it tells you something is wrong; think of the leper etc.” does not work. That is more about others finding a cheap answer to the unease in their own faith about your pain.

Please forgive us, the church, for ever minimising your struggle with pain. Praise God for support groups. Often they are fuller of the presence of Christ than a church with impeccable doctrine. There are others near the isolating borders of your pain with nothing to offer but gentle and faithful presence from their own isolating pain.

Believing and declaring God’s Word over ourselves must go hand in hand with honesty before God in the secret place about what is happening in our hearts, which at times will be in line with the Word we are believing and declaring and at times will be quite different. To hold these ingredients together is to worship in Spirit and in Truth.

Today as I woke I saw that some who will read this, are in fellowships that without meaning to do so, foster dishonesty, demanding a forced brightness and joy in the name of so called ‘faith’ which isn’t! To gain acceptance and approval you have had to mask the distresses of your heart, to mask even that some of you are on the Autism Spectrum, that you have Aspergers, or that you are on antidepressants or antipsychotic medication etc. It is making ‘going to church’ an increasing experience of what could truly be called terror, to the point of fearing a panic attack may well happen.

Every so often when I was preaching regularly, the Lord would challenge me to step into approaches to that calling that stretched me beyond my comfot zone and pushed me into a new dependence  uopon His Spirit. (When I can do what I do with my eyes shut, it probably means my ears are shut to the Lord. My confidence has come to rest in my gifting rather than in the Lord.)  I actually find that He does the same with my blogging. I will not bore you by going through the various stages of blogging ventures  thus far, but I will share where I think the Lord has me now in this regard.

My blogging started as a substitute for preaching when illness had made it impossible to continue as a parish minister. However as I blogged from that reality as it were, I soon became aware through responses sent to me that there is a vast underbelly in the Christian world full of people who  struggle with weakness beyond the norm in one form or another, for whom Church and what Church demands is often beyond the realms of possibility in terms of their phsycial, emotional or even spiritual resources.  God gives resources to do His will not other people’s will or even the Church’s will, where the Church’s  leadership and will has taken on an authority that has stopped listening to God and stopped being aware of people. It is easy to feel worthless when you are unable to measure up with what is being asked of you. The feeling can arise that you are not making a very good job of this Chrisitan thing.

Just a few days ago the Lord challenged me. He challenged me to believe that what was true of Jesus could be true of me in some measure at least, by the power of the Holy Spirit. In  Isaiah there are several passages where we hear prophetically the thoughts of Jesus centuries before He walked on earth to think them. In Chapter 50 verse 4  we read this:

“The Sovereign LORD has given me a well-instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being instructed.”

So I trusted Him to do that for me  yesterday and this morning, as soon as I woke. Today, I saw someone arriving at the  door  of a house. Inside there seemed to be a bit of a party going on at which this shivering  wrtetch of a visitor was clearly not welcome. I asked what this meant. I believe this is what was given me:

“Who is that at the door? It is “you” at your most naked, wretched, bedraggled. It is “you” that you hope no one ever sees, whose existence you have told no one about. Will you open the door of love, welcome, acceptance tender compassion and grace to “you”? Will you bring “you” in from the cold or send “you” away into the cold dark territory of rejection once more clothed with shame and panic, unwashed, unkempt? Introduce “you” to your best friend Jesus.”

I hope that may be a thought, a word, that will sustain some of you in your weariness whenever you may happen to read this.

God Bless

Kenny

That familiar thought that disturbed you this morning. You woke up feeling good! Then, like a heavyweight punch in the face it came: “Is  it my fault that things are like this?” That punch has come so often to a bleeding cut. It is the enemy seeking to stretch you out on the floor. It is  the cruel manipulation of your sorrow and grief about what has or has not happened.

At times you have turned your wondering  into a question to God, but He has never answered “Yes” or “No.” If He said “Yes” you could not live with the increased grief. If He said “No” the black boxing glove would still keep hitting you.  He is not into blaming anxious and sensitive  souls. He wants you simply to trust the process of His grace and the purposes of that grace for you and for “them.” You did what you could at that point in time. You did the very best you could. Jesus has always looked upon those who did what they could with tender favour and blessing and affirmation. What the malevolent boxer calls “fumbling inadequacy” Jesus calls “a beautiful thing.”

God bless

Kenny

Due to technical illiteracy concerning blogging, coupled with general illiteracy about all things web or internet related, I keep forgetting that not all of you are on Facebook and not all of you are on Word Press. I am told  if I put something on Word Press first it will automatically appear on Facebook but not the other way round. So then, below I have copied something that has been with me all day and will not go away which has already been posted to Facebook. It will have a niche “market” probably, namely being of interest to those who live or minister in the North of Scotland or its islands. However, it may just interest some of you in other ways, hence its apperance here. Explanation over! I am not saying it is prophetic, but I hope it may do the work of a prophecy in the curch era: that it may strengthen, encourage and comfort the people of God.

While driving up and down the A9 when we lived in the North of Scotland, I was very aware at points in the journey I was crossing in and out of different spiritual territories. For want of a better phrase, I could feel that reality again and again. It was something unrelated to existing formal boundaries, secular or religious. At times I felt a joy in my spirit. At other times, crossing other unseen boundaries a sense of revulsion and darkness. Not so aware of that since moving to the Central belt in 2005. Maybe it is just I am not travelling the length and breadth of the country so often, but just maybe it is because there is something in the plan of God waiting to be released in the North that is very opposed by something not flesh and blood… felt all day I should share that.

Be blessed, you overlooked Northern places. Pray on in faith. Stand your ground. If possible swallow pride and come back into unity where it has been dented. The way back is not always easy. You may get met by suspicion. Humble yourself all the same and there will be blessing in the awkward journey. Some of you need to humbly become sheep again instead of shepherds.

Seek first The Kingdom of God and His righteousness. Pursue holiness in the reverential fear of God. Be submitted to one another in reverence for Christ, in obedience to Apostolic authority and writings in the bible. Listen to no other self-appointed apostolic ministry, in whatever shape or form it comes to you. It is not needed. There is more happening in Northern Places than can be observed with the eye, more than is happening in places further “South” that have the name of being alive. The death around you is real, but where there is death there can be resurrection. That is your hope, the God of Resurrection. Don’t think, “it is happening elsewhere, never here.” It is happening with you. May God give you open eyes to see the horses and chariots of the Lord around you. You have not much strength but you have not denied the Lord’s name and have kept His word. Some have turned away by deliberate choice. Hearts harden and cannot hear pleadings. For some, it may too late. But not for you. Some of you got off the wave and are observers from the shore. It is as though you have not heard there is a Holy Spirit… but you know it was real…you said it once, “It is real.” Get on to the wave again. Encourage others who have been discouraged by you. Encourage one another.

Oh yes, one more thing. Is it him, her, or the Lord. You must choose.

God bless

Kenny

Monday Mornings can be difficult for anyone invovled in up front church ministry. Mondays can be hard for anyone for that matter! Remember that Jesus Christ gives you the right to be called a child of God. So then, whatever people said or did not say yesterday, whatever all your yesterdays say, whatever condemning and mocking declarations seem to be finding a persistent voice, whatever looks and words may be waiting for you as you step out into this day and into  a new working/not working week……..look at yourself in the mirror and say, “Good Morning, child of God.”

You have been chosen in eternity, come for, sought for, died for. You have been bought with a price and are the object of the continuing delight of an eternal love. You are wanted, valued, appreciate by your Father. He proudly owns you as His, delights over you, dances over you to the confusion of angels and archangels who cannot quite see whatever it is He sees in you, but ponder it all the same.

The world won’t necessarily reocognise who you really are today, son or ddaughter of God, any more than it recognised The Son. You might meet no one today who will remind you who you really are. So before you leave the house, or before you settle for another day in the house because of disability or illness, or unemploymen,t or age related struggles, or weakness of mind or body of some sort or another, take one more look in that mirror and smile into your own eyes and receive your smile full of the sparkling ife of God looking back at you: “Good Morning, beloved.” Jesus Christ gives you the right to say that.

God bless

Kenny

Your outburst of violence…

Someone living a shame filled life needs to hear this: It is not a “thus says the Lord” wordy thing, but it came to me in prayer. It may be for you.

Violence happens even in the most intimate of relationships, even relationships between Christians who deeply love one another. Often it is the violence of words. Sometimes it can become physical. There is someone, deeply ashamed, who needs to hear this: “You are not the only one.”

Kenny

As another snowy morning dawned today, these thoughts came to me. Well, I say “thoughts”. The thoughts seemed to change into truth which I meditated upon which seemed to then turn into something to be shared. Here it is then:

Siege: a favourite weapon of the enemy in our battle which is not against flesh and blood. A siege cannot work when within impenetrable walls there is water and bread. A “word thingy” for someone?

“You looked out of your window this morning. Yes, nothing has changed. The snow is still there. Remember that when “nothing is changing,” you have living water within: “There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, The holy dwelling places of the Most High. God is in the midst of her, she will not be moved; God will help her when morning dawns.…’ “

“The Kingdom of heaven is near.” Just thinking over difficult moments in my life with regard to that truth. So often at such times I have experienced that truth as the touch of divine gentleness and kindness, as gentle but as real as the brush of a butterfly’s wing upon my hair. It is so real as to be tangible. God comes into our sadnesses in this fallen world with kindness that says, “I know, I know….I am with you, with them, in the shadow lands of the coming brightness.” The touch of the butterfly wing of God often goes  unnoticed even by believers.  Should Almighty God not be more substantial than that? Well, He made the butterfly and the lion.

As a charismatic, I love manifestations of the Spirit when they are the real thing.  I regret sometimes that all that people seem to accept as being acceptable in such circles is when God steps in to overturn a situation with raw power, though of coruse it is wonderful when He does that and a cause of  high praise. There have been claimed manifestations of the roar of the Lion of Judah in recent years in charismatic meetings and occasionally that has been very genuine and changed the very atmosphere of a gathering releasing the roar of God Himself against the enemies of human wellbeing. There has been manfiestation of the Warrior roar crying “Freedom” and very occasionally that has been real as well and more than a sort nationalisitic fervour or  release of emotion. We have had macho preaching that has stung like a bee which is once in a blue moon genuinely the Word of the Lord. I have yet to see someone fluttering around manifesting the Maker of butterflies! No doubt that has happened or it will happen in some meeting somewhere  and on occasion  it will be genuine, but I have never seen that yet. I am not sure why.

An overemphasis of any truth becomes an error that stops people finding what God is actually doing, including the truth I am seeking to set forth here.  However, state the truth I must, in the hope that it might just be the particular truth from Jesus that some of you need to hear this very day, a truth that will set you free. Gentle kindness in the midst of an unaltered situation is a wonderful miracle, very precious indeed: indeed to me  it is one of the most treasured treasures of the Mystery of the presence of the coming Kingdom. In a world that is often aggressive and intolerant of weakness, a world that gets angry when things don’t go according to our wishes and sense of justice, gentle kindness can be very counter cultural, the sign of another Kingdom, another world making its presence known where the moleclues of this world’s thinking have become broken, stretched apart, creating many holes through which truth can shine. There are indeed parallel universes intertwined with one another. Faith sees that.

May you taste of the Kindness of the Lord, whoever you are and whatever you are going through: may you help others to taste of that kindness too.

Click here and it might just make you smile!

God Bless

Kenny