Category: Uncategorized

Perhaps it’s time…

To share an experience, more than a dream, this was an experience of the multi-faceted, deep-layered loveliness of God, in all His honest, beautiful, gentle wisdom and love.

It was sometime before the first lockdown and I had a dream….or an encounter in the night. So many things spring to mind when I think of it. The burnishing snese of the Spirit of God going through the floors above where I was standing as I watched: He, the Spirit, was washing through, like a burnishing tide all of the places and spaces that were above the ground floor of the building that I was standing in.

It seemed like a place either in Brighton’s Lanes, or London’s narrow streets around Fleet Stree (perhaps) ancient, narrow paths through the centre of an ancient city whose streets have been trod for generations.

I was in a formerly industrial building, narrow, or seemingly so, just off one of thise side streets with boutiques and bars and expensive places to spend well(?)-earned money after work in the City. Smoked glass doors, metal handles and a sense that these pillars that I saw – cast iron, black, solid and recently painted – were here to stay.

The building was clean. The floors empty – donwstairs, where I was I sensed that the Lord had been in this place. It was awesome. The sense of strength and purposeof the Spirit’s move was immense and somewhat awe inspiring. Not a one for much cleaning of houses (!) I felt slightly intimidated at his abilit to get right into every corner and ‘clean it all out’ – I guess – for those who know of these things – it felt a bit like the time before Passover when Jewish families search every corner of their home for hametz (yeast) and brush it out with a feather, minuscule movements, forensic and totally oveboard! Perhaps fun for the Lord as He is Spirit and the search and the action are both one and the same, releasing cleansing power as He speaks into each corner of our minds…

And so I became aware of my own attachment (He the Spirit was evidently cleaning me out as well!) to things, belongings, material things, that I – like my own Dad – had stored away in my attic “for a rainy day” random stuff that I would one day (if need be such) sell and have enough to survive …but this was not the Father’s way. And I saw that I was attached – like a spaceman to his mothership – by a long umbillical cord of lust for things that I depended on to ‘survive’ financially, and I knew I had in a moment to commit to get rid of these things, and this attachment to them, so as to be able to fully depend on my Father for life, for provision, for freedom and peace of heart, connection – all things in fact.

So in my mind and heart there and then in the dream I knew i had to do that and get rid of the stuff that encumbered my trust and blocked relationship with His heart. I knew I could grow in intimacy, which is the lifeblood of my life if I could do that and then, settled I returned from seeing my ‘attic addiction’ to my the dream building…and I saw some more amazing things happening…

What’s going on?

I guess, it’s not a questio of ‘is anybody asking the question’ but of how many are asking this question?

And what is the answer?

Here I am – here we are – on the brink of another ‘wave’ of uncertainty, another roller-coaster of virus driven fear. ‘The Virus’ as it has become known, has taken on the status of some revered demi-god who must be bowed down to…a powerful entity whose rising determines our posture.

Do we bow and scrape, or do we defy? Do I run and hide, or do I rise and speak?

In some ways I think this was already known. What I mean is that it was already seen before it happened – by God – and our reactions, entirely human and normal, were known as well. The heart of God did skip a beat as He watched us reel in shock. No delight in the pain and fear it has caused us, but shocked – perhaps – as Jesus was in the Gospels – by some of our reactions.

Some of us are fleeing, some transfixed as the ground beneath our feet has split from ‘concrete’ (confidence in a world that we recognised, knew, understood and to a certain extent determined how it would be) to a looking down in uncertainty at the ‘ground’ (economic certainties for us in the rich West) which has turned to ‘water’ or liquid soil. Unpredictable, uncertain, fear-instilling, bewildering and dangerous.

We are perhaps entering a new age, or a new era where known things are mirages, mists that swirl and encircle our minds with new uncertainty. Perhaps we have to become accustomed with the need to dwell where we are – in our homes, our minds, our connections (or lack of them) and begin to walk through these new and undiscovered places.

Forced back into ‘isolation’ we are faced with ourselves in new ways. What we relied upon has been shifted and what is there? Emptiness? Fear? Eachother. Does it ‘drive us mad’ or does it drive us to seek? Does it drive us to endeavour to do things better or to seek some solution in a different way? Or does it simply make us ‘unwell’?

Am I/are we able to re-evaluate? To reflect on who we are and what our life is? Do we have more time to reflect and read and consider the big issues beyond our need to rise and feed and look after ourselves by going to work or collecting our social security payments, looking for work or whatever else it is that drives us to keep going?

Prising ourselves away from these things. Perhaps creates a margin, a space for something different?

My feeling for the church in the nation

It’s time for awakening, to our responsibilities and to our calling as a church. To hear the voice of the One who raises the Dead, who speaks Life and calls into life those things that were unspoken, those things that are dead. He calls us forth. Into new things, as yet unspoken.

He calls us into newness of life and wants good things for us.

I’ve just come back from a visit to York. Awesome city. AWESOME! I loved it, full of open sky and rich history. Full of people who are riding their bikes – which is good by any measure.

There are new things for us as a nation. I feel that Revival of the society, the community of church will come.

I sense that we will have to change our itineraries, change our expectations and enter into a new understanding of life  – full life – that God wants for us. In the same way as the King diverted the river to create a Fish pond at the Red Gate in York, and it disrupted life and changed the landscape, so we will have to respond to an influx of “water” – the Holy Spirit’s life as huge numbers of people come into “the church”.

People expecting things to be different, hoping for new things; expecting us to react and respond to the difficulties of life around us for so many.

People will make demands of us because they will have a new revelation of the power and presence of God that is not bounded by previous expectations of what church has been – but fixed in their eyes will be a hope for what church should be. Their eyes will be “undivided” unwavering. Hope-full. Inspired by encounter in the secret place with Him who opens the eyes of the blind and enables them – us – to see.

“If he can do this, why shouldn’t He also do x and y and provide for those in need around us?”. So the flow will begin and continue over the ground that is our nation. Precious people, men and women – perhaps especially women – will flood the land with His ideas, ideas that have their source in His Presence.

For most of the Church?

This must be true for most of the church (in the UK).

James 1:22 in the Voice translation is like water to a thirsty soul for anyone who is puzzled by the following conundrum:

 

  • we go to church a lot
  • we speak about Bible knowledge as if it is the paragon of virtue
  • yet we don’t practice some of the most active bits: prophesying, casting out demons, healing the sick and “raising the dead”

It struck me as I read this that we are being deceived! The sharp cutting edge of the church – its super-natural sharp edge is being worn out, ground down by a load of heavy Bible teaching that somehow takes the edge off the ‘dunamis dynamic’.

 

It’s time we woke up, us old sleepy heads and got with the programme!

 

Young people (and some older) are indeed getting with the Programme and are on the front foot. Taking the power of the Spirit, in love to the front doors, the station platforms, the bars, the clubs, the streets and the hospitals and front rooms of people – our friends who don’t yet know, or haven’t yet tasted the “sweetest of Loves”. This power cuts through the religious stuffiness of the “let’s all meet behind closed doors” mentality, until we feel strong enough to go out…(and we end up seeing it never happen, because somehow the teaching seems to make us full of cotton wool comfort, not realising it is anaesthetising ourselves from the sharp pull of the Holy Spirit into an action and love filled “movement” of the Holy Spirit.

You see, He is always moving (no-one knows where He’ll go next – unless of course, you are listening, as John says in his revelations: “to what the Spirit is saying to the churches…”!).

The willingness to live on the frontier of our self-knowledge, on the edge of our understanding is rare – the willingness to take a risk, a punt on being wrong with a prophetic word, or of having the door shut in our face, or of failing to find the words when faced with anti-christian sentiment is cushioned by the motivation that drives us forwards – the Love, the Love of Jesus.

He is our motivation, this love must be our driving force, even if we get it wrong! It doesn’t matter, even when we fall or fail, it doesn’t matter. God looks for the heart, not the “success rate”! He grades us not by the level of souls won, but on the fire of love in our heart….He promises to give us what we need, so much so that we can afford to “give away our coat, if we have two!”. Meaning we can afford to give away anything (the gifts, the river of life, the river of the Holy Spirit) so that the Presence and love of God gets out. We can give away our whole lives to this and yet still get replenished, filled and “more than enough”.

I sense He is calling me, you, all of us Church-dwellers out from behind the walls of the church, to come out from behind our sofas (“oooh! the world is soooo scary”) to an adventure of Love. Into the lounges and dwellings of those around us, the neighbours, the workmates, the colleagues.

To love them well, to put their needs first, not ours, to put aside our judgements and our fears and to bring the flow of His fire to them – healing for mind soul body and spirit. Restoration of friendship, of finance or family, repairing broken bodies – He can do everything – everything!!!

James 1:22
The Voice

Put the word into action. If you think hearing is what matters most, you are going to find you have been deceived.

Spent

Interesting discussions with RV and JB have first allowed me to express my frustration (yippee!) then enabled me to see what the Lord is doing in the nation (England). Frustration at the ever turning wheel of conference+worship+ happy punters + return for more = no deep change to the Church or our thinking. It’s not that I dislike these things – I love them (ask my wife!).

But RV captured it when he said, “if success is measured by bums on seats (a measure which most of us use) then the model we’ve been using isn’t working”. By this he meant Christian conference life. Repeat conferences, big platforms, same old, same old stuff, similar teaching, same worship style…no real changes that could approximate to the type of profound life-filled life that Jesus empowered people to live.

After teaching, Jesus breathed on them and then sent his friends on an adventure. The expectation for us is that we are sent home! Not on a great adventure. Admittedly, it was not everyone who was “sent out” -not initially at least. He chose the 70 and then the 90. But once Holy Spirit was poured out, let loose after he died and was resurrected, everyone was called on a mission, to be empowered to drive out enemy superpowers, to cleanse them in His name, to set them free; to heal the sick and to raise the dead. Pretty amazing stuff (even if you are “sent home” rather than into “the nations”).

Thing is that we are not sent with that expectation. We’re not sent with a vision that we (you and I, simple people) will be able to transform our culture, our society through the message of the Kingdom. We’re sent with the expectation (deliberate or not) that we will return to the same place at the same time next year…not that we will be the people “that turned the world upside down”.

So our model, our concept of the Christian existence has been ever so gently modified and our expectations ever so slightly lowered, so that what we see and expect is more “life” – but life within the four walls of our church. Spend more time there, rather than more time in the world, with other people who could receive sight, live life to the full, enjoy His Presence freely.

GV’s assertion is that – still – no-one has time for Church or church leaders who somehow separate themselves from “the masses”. Our model of church is far too ‘wall-ified’ – too many barriers, too much officialdom, not enough street. Not enough accessibility for the majority of people. Say the right thing, do good, be this or that. He sees that there is something more earthy needed – a new mission of living normally, in communities that have much more of the normal about them – following ancient paths of the rhythm of the seasons, working close to the land, the air, next to your neighbour, where anyone can join in the journey. Not an exclusive “club”.

I’m not sure how far I go with his vision yet, because I see the next step for us is to break out of the paradigm by moving onto the streets, into the neighbourhoods into our friends homes and lives with a bold message of Love and power. It’s stuff that some churches speak but few do.

We are sent to do this one simple thing: to meet people where they are, by being approachable servants of their circumstances, knowing this God is the God of the inner life of every person, not just the chosen few. He already knows them. This is where the prophetic fits in: insight from heaven carried in the hands of gentle, humble yet powerful people like you and I, will break open their resistance to a distant God who is disdainfully, maliciously, contemptuously authoring the destruction of our beautiful world. But this is the lie. The prophetic delivered with love accelerates a heart’s journey towards God. Like the woman at the well:

“Give me a drink” turns quickly into “He told me everything I ever did – I need to tell everyone about this man” – it turns a whole social order upside down – and she feels known, accepted, “elevated” honoured even, for the first time in so many years. Her life receives the water, the elixir of Life itself. Prophetic insight unlocks lives, heals wounds and releases Heaven on earth like no-ones business!

The gospel – carried on the Horse of Holy Spirit into our hearts –  means that this inner explosion of life was deposited in each of us (it’s already there!) – this ability to bring people close to God by supernatural means (not intellectual or well-meaning words) it’s just that we expect less than He wanted. Not that we should feel bad or guilty about this, just that we should begin to question our foundation a little more, to unpick the model that we’ve become used to and begin to walk free from the walls that (I) we’ve inadvertently built around ourselves.

He is not to be contained. He is far too powerful to allow that – He is always on the outside. Seeking those by Love who want something more, but we are rarely there with Him seeking them with him. We have been locked away in our own closet seeking Him! But He’s now moved outside (of course, He’s still in the closet as well!) into the streets, into the bars, into the cafe’s, the building sites, the farms, the shops and the places where no-one would dream of going unless we work there or are professionally qualified to go there. Homes for children who are abandoned or abused – who are so violent no-one can contain their anger. Places where people shoot up and snort substances designed to numb the pain of frustration and cover them up until they end up dying on the street corner.

Places that most of us try to ignore or to push out of the view of our lives. But the energy and effort that has gone into creating these arenas for worship and teaching is spent. The model becoming defunct. The halls will echo for want of purchasers of a dummy gospel, which enriches thinking but lacks power and love and drive for us to meet the least, the last. We need POWER and LOVE – and He is already in us (if we’ve accepted Him, the loving Divine deal that swaps our death for His life).

People will come to homes, communities, not churches to find Life.  People. People are where it’s at, not places. Hungry to experience the life-giving truth on a local level, in their neighbourhoods, not in the temple or the tabernacle. We all become carriers of Holy fire, of supernatural, Holy fire that is uncontrolled and uncontrollable. Revival will break out from lives who want to live it on the outside, not on the inside – not in churches but in their communities. Love pouring from their hearts towards others. And their beating, full hearts will not stop until they see others’ hearts filled with the same “blood” – of brother and sisterhood, of reconciliation and love and healing; of freedom that knows no bounds.

All the resources of heaven are there. No limits.

But God is not against us. He is not angry with us for the way we’ve walked so far. It’s just a new day of favour. A new river of love flowing from His throne, a new availability of his life – and to keep it to ourselves will mean that we are guilty of lack of love and have become greedy and selfish – and the food we eat will rot (like manna kept too long) unless we give it away. It will be like a drug, adrenaline flowing, as we get hooked and high on the feeling of meeting someone’s eternal longings by introducing them to His great Love.

So the energy we have given to the edifices of modern ‘christianity’ in this nation will not serve as nothing, they have brought us this far. We are blessed to be free in this nation; to enjoy freedom and joy and liberty to dive deep into His knowledge in church, in conferences, BUT NOW! BUT NOW says God “for something completely different!” as the saying goes!

Who knows what He will do – He is Aslan. He is deeply against the predictable yet is wrapped up in the everyday of every one of us. Longing for the outbreak of His love. Motivated by the vision of seeing many hundreds of thousands of people flowing in His Love; motivated by Heaven on Earth – the restoration of this dusty place to His incredible, light and joyful –  joy-FULL – Rule. There is no stopping Him if we will just listen to what He is saying to the churches and are willing to join that ‘army’ of gentle lovers, the multitudes who are getting ready to embark on a single journey of love. We who are by his grace becoming single-hearted,  ‘single-sighted’ and willing to give it their all to see the barriers and dykes that hold us back overflowing with Love and Life and joy: to see sadness and sorrow banished, tastes of heaven poured into open spirits who long for the supernatural to invade earth.

It’ll come, yes, it will come. Let’s listen and move on from this spent model of dry Cerebral Christianity. Move into the heart-country and flow with His compassion and be driven by His great love to change the world forever. Dig out the old foundations and bring down the walls, opening up the areas where only the privileged few have had access.

Let’s bring down the high places of “church” and find love in a corner of the rubble that is left behind. We won’t regret it. His Love is enough to satisfy and some more.

If we are willing to overturn the tables of religion, he won’t leave us alone, He will accompany us. He will be with us, he will breathe His courage into us so that we can arise and move, tentatively at first, like worms or insects, with ‘tiny feet’ at first, if need be, as we recover our sight and get used to the light flooding in from the outside. Then with confidence, as we arise and see the Son is shining – His warm love of approval on us – as we move out from the ruins into the harbours and streets we’ll be changing the world with the brothers and sisters and new friends that we’ll meet on the way.

The biggest thing is to begin to move in a new way. To crawl out if necessary from the crowded thinking that “we had it right before” and to question. To begin to live out the reality of the faith that was promised us and is now deposited in us.

Let’s go, Joe.

 

 

 

It’s hard to imagine…

Recently (in the last month or two, the Lord spoke to me when I was in a place of worshipping Him – it was a flasah of revelation “you would not believe what a tidal wave of the supernatural was released when I was raised from the dead. You’ve not even begun to see the thousandth of it! You’ve hardly even glimpsed how big and how wide this supernatural wave of love is. It is so wide, it engulfs the earth, it enfolds the world and all of it’s inhabitants throughout all the generations, there is not one that is or was beyond the scope of the Love that I poured out at the Cross. There is more than enough for every situation, to redeem every life on the entire planet earth!

Even the most lowly, the most perverted, the deepest in darkenss, the most “occulted” hidden in darkness: there is and was no corner of earth that is or was beyond the scope of my love to reach them. No corner. No place unreachable.

 

Women and the church

It may be a little contentious in some circles to admit this, but the church would be ineffefctual and weak without the strength of women’s leadership. Often seen as the hidden power in a marriage (‘behind every good man…’) women have long been the unseen partners in the leading of the church. All this is set to change as I believe the Lord is about to raise up a new wave of leaders who are motivated by love and who walk in step with Him, in Love, so much so that He will give them the power to perform miracles, and that they (the miracles) will be multiplied by Him as His power is released.

Nothing new or unexpected there – as the Word of Christ says that “these signs shall follow those who believe… [ref]…sick will be healed”. Potentially contentious would be the thought that it would be women who rise to take leadership in the church – His church, as the Holy Spirit comes on them and they begin to understand that there is nothing stopping them from proclaiming the good news with signs and wonders.

 

Long has the church in the UK been hiding their light under the proverbial bushel: the light being meant for the world (not for us to light up the inside of churches so that we have everything lit up and right there, while the world outside goes to the wall. No! Our calling is to rise up and bring good news, God’s goodness, kindness His love to every living person outside the church! And who are more numerous? Women or men? Women. Is it possible that not releasing women to be the leaders that the Lord wants them to be has held back a wave of evangelism and love?

Not that women or men are somehow to “blame” for a lack of growth in the church, but it’s just that we are entering, by His love, a new season of fruitfulness where every woman will feel empowered to rise up and take their royal positions as daughters of the One who chose them! In so doing they will realise the power they have inside them! THe great unlimited power that coursed through the body and Spirit of Jesus Himself! They will begin to believe that they do not need men’s permission to go out on the streets to evangelise, or to start greatworks of social change and innovation, or to start businesses or to heal the sick and raise the dead. No longer wll they – or we as men – be held back by the notion that women are somehow second line partners in this great mission to reach the rest of the world.

Women do NOT need our permission to follow His voice! Women you must obey His voice! I am no more a vessel than you are: different we are, but better? No! Never! Do you deserve the Lord’s blessings of being able to bring freedom to t he captives; sight to the blind; hearing to the deaf? Yes, as do I, but not because of our own merit or de-merits! We are equal in our needing to accept that ALL is a free GIFT! We no more “merit” it than the next person. We are given it. No woman needs to wait or to ask permission of the male leadership to rise up in her identity as a daughter of Christ. We are not to work independently; but we are to be fully activated in all of our inheritance in and from the Lord – and this is done through an act of agreement and submission to the Spirit.

Some may argue that women should be submitted to men – yes, but we should serve women!  Each preferring the other! So, women: BE FREE and enter all the Lord has for you. Ride in on your royal horse into all the good things He has in store for you. Enjoy your inheritance, sing, dance, be free, rejoice in the gifts he will give you and has already given you. Astonish us (men!) and please your Lord first! Go forth and proclaim His goodness and the beauty of the Risen Christ and tell all you meet, with power and conviction, that He loves them! And that His power is at work in you. Raise the dead, heal the sick and accept His callings on you, beautiful Bride of Christ, be His fully and as He sends you out, be filled with His Spirit!