“This is what I do.” That thought came to me last night, after a few hours thinking about what God might have me say at the Conference in Lewis, God willing.

I am so conscious of “gaps,” things I cannot do, areas in which I have no knowledge or skills at all. God seemed to set my heart at ease in a way as never before, by helping me to accept that I do what I do.

I think it is important not only in a general way to keep the main thing the main thing in these days when all sorts of fads and persuasive and excited  voices blow across the evangelical and charismatic church, but to also keep the main thing the main thing in our calling and find peace and happiness and God’s smile as each of us try to do that.

Dr Johannes Tauler, a preacher in the 14th. Century, stepped out of his pulpit for 2 years as he realised he needed to die to self. Quite something.

The story: He was one of the most famous preachers of his day. His church in Strasbourg was packed out, but he stepped down. A man called Nicolaus of Basle had listened to him speaking on death to self but realised Dr. Tauler did not know that truth by personal experience. He challenged him: “ Dr. Tauler, before you can do your greatest work for God, this world and this city, you must die to yourself, your gifts, your popularity and even your own goodness, and when you have learned the full meaning of the cross, you will have new power with God and man. Get alone with God. Leave your crowded church, your admiring congregation, your hold on this city, go aside to your cell, be alone and you will know what I mean.”

As I think about Lewis, I am challenged by what Rev. Jack Macarthur said in an interview about Duncan Campbell. He said he did not impose his style on Lewis, thinking, “we will help out these poor Lewis folk with bringing them our ways of doing things.” No, you would have thought after he had been there a few weeks that he was from Lewis, he so honoured the ways of the church there. He identified himself with their spirituality, to use another phrase from Jack MacArthur. What a wonderful spirit. I want to go to Lewis in that same spirit: honouring what God is doing there right now, not wanting in any way at all to take over and impose my ways or preferences. I want to be myself but honour those who have invited me into their setting. It is actually a very easy thing to do if humility and love are present in our hearts.

I have always felt like a child when it comes to understanding God and His Ways revealed in His Word, and always will I think, so I am glad when the Bible speaks about God in almost childlike ways. I love the verses I quote further down from Malachi for that reason. They speak of God noticing, listening or paying attention, and of something being written down for purposes of divine remembering, which in Scripture in the Hebrew language usually implies a day of purposeful divine action in the fortunes of His people, after a time of apparent non-activity or silence.

There are many subsets of allegiances within Christian devotion and living. Not bad in itself. We need planted somewhere or we will self destroy through proud independence and end up suffering from the self righteous, angry, rejected prophet delusion. However, never let your devotion to someone or a group, their teaching, their literature or their leaders dead or alive be greater than attentiveness of the ear that listens for the voice of Christ, the Shepherd of the whole flock, and His Spirit speaking through Scripture. If you allow that balance to settle in the wrong direction you are effectively a member of a cult and may miss the truest calling of Christ upon your love and service.

Be grateful but not blindly loyal to any body of literature ancient or modern, any theological system no matter how biblical and revered its devotee may claim it to be, any body of discipleship local or widespread, any leader dead or alive where help, love, life and guidance have been experienced. If a buy in is demanded that smacks of exclusivity or slight or overt superiority towards other approaches to Christian living, service and discipleship, it is time to look elsewhere and listen to the Spirit’s lack of peace within.

“Call no man Father” is teaching from Jesus we need to heed. It is a terribly inconvenient word for those who want a following and want to establish something new with their name attached to it…

God bless

Kenny

A disciple in bible days was just someone who was attached to a Master and wanted to be like him. That’s all. The principle was exactly what Jesus said: It is sufficient for the disciple, the servant, to be like the Master. That’s it. Nothing complicated. Often costly.

David Ravenhill gives a good insight. He says that every believer in Jesus at the start was a disciple. They then became called Christians, first of all in Antioch. Folk saw they were Christ’s men and women. Nowadays he says we call people Christians and then add on discipleship as though it were an additional step for the extra keen. I think he is probably right. “Discipleship” has become a buzz word and a bit of a new industry.

Discipleship is simply, “Jesus, as I follow you, I want to become more like you.” Nothing more, nothing less. I have my bible, prayer, the encouragement of God’s people, God Himself who has made His home in me. “All I have needed thy hand has provided.”

My discipleship pattern that seemed to work for me at the start and ever since has been this. I read my bible, pray and try to get on with the Jesus life. I am encouraged by the teaching and fellowship of church on a Sunday. In fact Sundays, what could be called the Sunday Service, is vital to me.

Don’t make a meal out of discipleship. Read your bible, pray for help, live it out, share something of Jesus with those who don’t know him, making the most of opportunities, join with the saints to encourage them and serve them and be encouraged by them.

It all happens naturally if Christ is in you and your desire is for Him. It is not an optional course you sign up to beyond perhaps a short Beta type course following an Alpha type beginning. After that it’s just being an apprentice to Jesus: learning to be like Him because despite every stumble and every lazy day, every scared, cowardly or rebellious day, something within persists in desiring it will be so.

When I tie myself in knots in my thinking and living and praying and in anything else for that matter, I remember K.I.S.S. “Keep It Simple Stupid.” Being male it works neatly for me to translate that into the truer tone of Abba, rather than it being only an expression of frustration from myself to myself: “Keep It Simple, Son.”

God bless

Kenny

“And His that gentle voice we hear, soft as the breath of even…” I guess control freaks would wish it so, would wish The Spirit always came as a dove, after all that was the Jesus way. The Spirit descended and remained on Him as a dove.

Well, when Jesus poured out the promise of the Father, the Holy Spirit upon His church, the Jesus way was this: “Suddenly there was the sound of a mighty rushing wind!” A violent hurricane. It reminds me of what is written of Samson: “the Spirit of God rushed upon him.”

As you know I had to throw out all my books, because of the danger they could be to my lungs, so I cannot check details, but I remember the bare bones of a story which Dr. Helen Roseveare told. One glimpse of her face on one occasion, remains one of the most significant influences upon my life and service today, 46 years on. I have never seen the glory of God on a human face in such measure before or since. As a teenager the sheer beauty of God shining upon and from her face made me weep and search the grounds of Kilcreggan House, during a Crusader Camp, for a space to be alone and offer my life in fresh surrender to the will of God. Anyway, she tells in one of her wonderful books, the story of a day during her time as a missionary in what was the Belgian Congo. There was the sound of a strong storm outside the building where God’s people were gathered. Some went to close the shutters but outside not a blade of grass was moving. Suddenly the violent wind of God’s Spirit rushed in and around the building. God had come.

With Lewis in mind, I am remembering a story that happened in Bernera the coast of Lewis. Things were tough. A fifteen year old boy (Donald, whom I met in the 1990’s in Thurso the day after I dreamed of meeting him) stood to pray. He was looking into heaven and prayed after sobbing, “O God, there is power there. Let it loose!” At that moment, the Spirit of God came down. It looked like a battlefield. On one side of the church people were prostrate before the Lord, compelled into that posture by the presence of the Lord. On the other side of the building, some had their arms flung back above their heads, holding them up in the air, rigid.” God had come.

I met the Principal of a well known prestigious Evangelical Bible College in England who was in a meeting in the late 70’s when the same thing happened as happened in Bernera. People on one side flung forward, people on the other flung back the way as the Spirit of God swept into the building. The glory of God upon him in the briefest of conversations I had with him in almost the immediate aftermath of his experience was another of those spurs to seek after Acts 2 for myself.

Well, I for one believe we need the rushing mighty wind to hit the Church in Scotland. It may be God will move you to pray for that too. It may be you even want to pray for that for yourself.

I can testify it is possible for the Spirit of God to come in such power that you can no more stand than you could remain standing in the force of a hurricane. I was told as a newly converted teenager by people of undoubted Christlikeness that Acts 2 is not for today. I never believed them fully though I respected them . It was to their credit I did not believe them! You see, they had taught me to respect the bible as my supreme authority for faith and life, and my bible led me to believe God is unchanging. It led me to pray for a personal Pentecost, to pray and seek that for approximately 7 years. In a way I never expected, it happened! Why the 7 year wait? I have no idea! But I know there came a day when all I could say in the midst of what was happening as the Spirit of God filled my study in our family home in Torrance, was, “Oh, it is real! It is all real!”

I still seek “more” whatever more may mean. Perhaps your heart is telling you to seek the hurricane and the fire. I hope your hunger exceeds your caution or your fear. God the Father who loves you, gives only good things to His children when they ask Him for the Holy Spirit. You are not deceived to ask. He will guard you against being deceived in the receiving. It is an age old problem: some believers have more faith in the devil to deceive those who are seeking God with all their hearts, than in Our Heavenly Father’s willingness to give His Holy Spirit to those who ask and go on asking, seek and go on seeking, knock and go on knocking. Ask! Seek! Knock! “Come wind of God! Breathe upon these slain that they may live!”

God bless

Kenny

I was remembering today one of my Professors at University making fun of me for going to the Keswick convention when I was 18. He held his hand to his heart and mocked the whole thing as mere sentimentality.

Cynicism and its attendant Mockery always hangs around the edges of Life. It can even be the landing pad for a trans local demonic Principality and Power. Make sure you are not an unwitting soldier in its camp. I have heard even born again Baptised in the Spirit believers mocking old songs such as “Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb.” Its laughter is often lurking undetected in the current trend to dismiss everything that smacks of discipline, duty and requirement as a spirit of “Religion.”

Actually, here it is!

Click here https://youtu.be/eG1e9KrmS7M

God bless

Kenny

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iASv8xjflZY&feature=share