Travel and Weddings

Life is always odd and when one hands things over to God then things don't quite go as one would like.
There are loads of places in the world I would love to go to, and actually have been blessed with going to. And yet I had one lovely friend last year (07) invite us to her wedding and it was in Oregon, USA. Now it was great to go there and lovely to meet their families and be made to feel so welcome, but really the West coast of America isn't one of those places I would've ever chosen to go. Interestingly the only 2 times I have been to USA have been to the West coast, once for the wedding and once on a conference.
Then on Saturday I had a lovely friend and her lovely new man come to visit with our family and on our walk she ask me if I would be willing and able to come to Australia next December as they are planning to get married then. Again this isn't a part of the world I have ever wanted to visit, even though over the holidays Ian got offered the chance of a job there and nearly went there for work a couple of years ago.
I am totally flattered to have been asked and will very much see if God will let me go, but still do wonder why He wants me there.

Being bold on following what God says

I have been totally amazed at reading Martin and Gayle Scott's newsletter. I quote:

"We have been in Palma for the past 4 days looking for property. We were able to see 5 in total. One stunning place and excellent value but about 800 yards / metres too far away from the area where we have believed we should be located.

It was a good feel to walk away from it."

How many of us I wonder would be that accurate with the message God had given us? How many of us would've thought that it fitted almost and really 800yds is about a 10 minute walk so that is good enough?
It really has taken me back to God and I have been talking to Him again about what He has given me to do and how often I do the almost, or do things because I like them and well ..... they are good things.
And you know it has been really interesting since getting back to the place of checking things out with Him on where I am going and what I am doing that He has given me not a fresh revelation but a confirmed old revelation of what He has for me to do and I am going to have to go back and say No to a few people. And also make sure I don't do things just because they pleased others but to remember the call He gave me - which bottom line is "to equip the saints through discipleship".

Also I have noticed that when we take what God gives us to other people they will all answer differently because they all come from where they are, and we must make sure that we are not tossed like the waves with every new person we speak with but stick to that exact area that God has asked us to walk in.

Thanks Martin for showing us the way

Stars

This is a mix of the wise men and light pollution.

When Jesus was born the wise men were astrologers and astronomers and knew the signs of the times. They noticed a bright star appear in the constellation of Judah and so knew a new king was going to be born, which is why the rushed off to Herod. These guys weren't being dense and saw a star over a stable in Bethlehem, like we see on the cards. No it has been proven that it was a real star in a real night sky.

In the latest National Geographical they were discussing light pollution and how there is very few places now where we can see the sky clearly enough to make out much. Also we aren't really that interested in what goes on up there. Ok so they send loads of money to check we don't get hit by asteroids and also individuals spent money on horoscopes but we don't really gaze up at the night sky too much and if we did we do it so rarely we wouldn't remember stuff.
In fact it stuck me on Friday with that huge shiny moon and the papers saying this was the brightest moon for 50 years and there would be a meteoroid storm how little interested it raised.

Jesus told us to look to the signs and in it we would be able to read when He is coming back, but how many of us take that time out to know what the signs are now and to then know when they change.
We need to get back to being more observant, stop waiting for someone else to tell us, and start looking at what is normal then we can see what is different.

In Difference Circumstances

It has amazed me how different I can be in different circumstances.
On Monday someone ran into my little red car whilst Ian had it parked outside where he works and has left a big dent in the back and the boot won't shut. The driver was drunk, has refused to take a breath test and was going too fast at lunchtime. Now I am very cross about it, grateful that no one got hurt, but also cross that he was drunk at lunchtime and also that he has made no effort to get in touch and even give his insurance details.
Ian was teasing me this morning that I obviously hadn't forgiven him, the driver, as I was still cross and wasn't saying nice things about him. And as I was in the shower I realised how I had changed.
Back when Ben, Tabi and I were in YWAM Scotland my car got stolen from the driveway of the house I was staying in by an underage driver who took it for a joy ride and then smashed all the windows with huge rocks writing the car off. Then I was very quick to forgive even making the Police think I was crazy when I want his address so I could let him know I had forgiven him.
So I got to thinking why was I so different now, when in a lot of other ways I have grown up more as a Christian? And what came to me then was that back in Scotland I was living in a Christian community and in fact when I told people about what had happened people were praying with me to forgive, the whole culture we were living in was much more about going into forgive others, not living with offenses, etc and also there was that accountability and discipling thing. As in my fellow Christians I was living and working with wouldn't have let me get away with not forgiving.
Yet now back in just regular church apart from Ian I don't have any group there just to encourage me to walk the walk and talk the talk. Yes we do see people regularly but because we aren't living in that same closeness, that closeness that involved all of us sharing our hearts with each other, I can keep a part of me back and not have that accountability.
And I am not saying this is the fault of "the church" whatever that may be, but I do think it is the nuclear structures we put ourselves in and the fact that we then only come out to do meeting type things because we are all too busy to really have relationships, whereas the key for what we were doing in YWAM Scotland was all about relationship.
So I will forgive this guy, not for any reason than actually because I have now made myself open on here I sort of have to, esp as I wrote on forgiveness a few days back.
In fact I also have to forgive a friend too who I have taken offense to, which may or may not have been meant to hurt, but that isn't the point. Forgiveness doesn't come with conditions and shouldn't only happen when we have others standing with us.

Believe in what you teach

I have been getting so many revelations every time I rehear the Christmas story that I am just so pleased we get to hear it once a year. In fact it must be the only part of the Bible we get to hear year in and year out. Though I know it depends on which congregations we are at which bit we rehear, or for that matter what we choose to reread.
What I love too about the Bible is because it is a living book, and if we read it and let His Holy Spirit guide us He can keep showing us more and more in it.
Last year it was that Elizabeth let Zechariah sleep with her after he was deaf and also that they were both old people.
This year it is that Zechariah himself didn't believe the stories he taught. Remember he was a priest in the temple and one of his duties would've been to teach the young boys the stories of thier forefathers. They took seriously the command to tell their children the stories of old. But one of those stories would've been about Abraham and Sarah and how God gave them a child when they were old. Now an angel comes along and tells Zechariah that the same thing will happen to him and he can't believe it. So can't believe it that he is struck dumb!!!
How often do we tell others things about God that if it came down to it we wouldn't believe He could do for us???
I think this comes with helping us to dream bigger and to trust God more.
For me it has helped loads because I have heard lots of things, esp recently that God has been saying to me, but I cannot see quite how He can pull it off, but then all these things are things He has done for others, and things I would expect Him to do.
So now I need to believe what I have been teaching to others and wait and be willing like Mary was for God to do what He is going to do His way. And remember with Mary she was willing to let God do something that wasn't recorded in scripture as ever having happened to anyone else.
Now I need to prepare myself to be willing to let Him do that!!

Forgiveness

This word "forgiveness" has been buzzing round me with a lot at the moment. Tabi and I watched Heroes in iplayer and in that Slayer and El come to peace with each other when he forgive her and gets her to forgive herself. Then on Dr Who, a rerun on iplayer, The Doctor says to The Master "I forgive you" and that has so much power. On both these occasions forgiveness changed things.

Do we do enough of it as Christians? There has been an incident recently that I almost got caught up in between Christians and really it all came down to not wanting to forgive that things hadn't gone their way.

Also I don't often see us as Christians repenting. In fact I will quote from my dear friend David Mitchell which he posted on Facebook -
"If I will humble myself...
I hear so much about grace and so little about repentance these days. It seems that, at all costs, we are encouraged to seek other remedies besides calling sin, “Sin”, therefore, we never really repent and opportunities to do so in a church setting are neglected."

Why are we so afraid to repent? and to forgive - others, ourselves and God?
Does it mean admitting we have done something wrong? And admitting we have been hurt?
Do we talk too much about Grace that we do forget that we so sin and we do get hurt?

We have the amazingness of being able to be totally honest with God, and if we fear God and not man and can be honest with God then we can be honest with others. And if we do it God's way then that honesty, repentance, forgiveness will all be done with Grace.

Another quote from another dear friend across the "pond" Chickie Taylor:
"There is a struggle going on in my heart at the moment. It's like nothing is satisfying my soul these days except for the very basic christian things. I can't seem to get excited about anything but the message of God's love."
Hey now if that was all we were really excited about we would change the world.

Bring it on!!!

Liturgy

Is there a point to it or not? In the charismatic traditions liturgy has very much been thrown out. Is this throwing out the baby with the bath water?
in Roy Godwin's book, Grace Outpouring, about the growth of Ffald y Brenin he says they use liturgy based prayer so that all can join in, from whatever background without feeling marginalized or ignorant.
They use liturgy to bring people into a comfortable safe place so they can then encounter what God wants to do with them, rather than having to try to work out what to do next; which was interesting after having some friend round who felt that friends of theirs were caught in some sort of religiosity through their use of liturgy and weren't meeting God for real because they didn't do free prayer.
Now in Ffald y Brenin their liturgical prayer has space for free prayer too, but I feel that especially as the liturgical prayer in Ffald y Brenin has the Bible verses printed with it, at least one does know that what one is praying is in the will of God. And I have found that He uses it to take me to some very deep places.

Pegs!!

I just had to buy these whilst out shopping, though I am afraid that the advertisers will think I have fallen for their jargon!
These clothes pegs were sold as "eco pegs". The reason? Because if you hang your washing outside on the washing line you save lots of energy that you would've used from putting your tumble drier on.
And also they were even better for the environment because they were made from post and pre-recycled plastic. Now I am sure post recycled plastic is plastic that hasn't been used for anything else yet so not able to be recycled. So these pegs weren't even from 100% recycled plastic though the wording could've confused someone, and probably did.
Or has everyone bought them because the wording is just so amusing?

Don't get complacent

We had some lovely friends round for supper last night who we hadn't seen properly together for a while so there was a bit of catch up. They have been through a hard time with various churches they have been in in recent years and have found somewhere that they feel like they can be themselves.
But what stuck me is how much, once one gets into knowing a congregation one can see the human failings and can so easily dwell on that. These lovely people are now going to a congregation with a youth group of about a dozen, the most they have ever had in any congregation they have been in before, and yet at Bath City church we have a 11-14yrs group of 40plus registered, and about 30 who turn up each week. And the older teens, 15-18yrs there must be about 25plus, who do come at their age out of choice, no longer cajoled by their parents.
Also Mark had just had a brilliant healing of his knee during a time of worship on their church weekend away, but again it struck me how things like that have become almost common place where we are and often people don't get excited enough to get up the front and praise God.
We did get spoiled with all the Fire stuff that came from Lakeland, but actually we had lots of this going on already - a large group of young people, regular healings, respected teachings from our speakers who are international speakers and we take so much of it for granted.
So often we have that tendency especially of seeing the negative rather than the positive, a very British thing. So this has got me thinking that even though God has blessed me with being able to "see" things, and at times very much like the Old Testament prophets I need to be like so many of them, and even though I do get to see the negative side at times I need to hear God and what He says on it.
As Patricia King says on her web link how we need to be like Habakkuk and let God gets us to see the blessings He has even if the situations seem bleak
As Stephen Wood preached in our church on Sunday we need to make sure that we don't give the negative things in our lives power by focusing on them, instead we need to look at what God has done before and what He is going to do.
Please God help me to focus positively on You and where You want me to be for now.

Being Humble

As I trogg through the wonders of life and of dear friends who have known me for years and so value my options and want to hear what I have to say, and yet how draining that is on me - though I do love you guys, Amanda and Sharon who I spent time with this weekend gone. And dear family I love you too even though you took the brunt of my tiredness and frustrations with life. But you are great and so so forgiving. Thank you.

And then how I try to find my space in where God has me know, in what I should do and what I am not meant to be doing, in doing things I've never done before and not having the space to do things that I use to be let lose in, and also having to deal with the physical stuff of being in my late 40's peri-menapausal and have days when I have no energy at all.

And then today Tabee and I have spent the afternoon preparing stuff for the boards for the Prayer room at Bath City church to help focus people on prayer I came across this great blog as I was doing a search on 2 Chronicles 7:14 " if my people, who are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land" in which he talks about what it is to be humble. So here is an abridged version.

1. Appreciate your talents
2. Understand your limitations
3. Recognise your faults
4. Stop Comparing
5. Appreciate the talents and qualities of others
6. Dont be afraid to make mistakes
7. Dont be afraid to defer to other people's judgement
8. Rejuviante your sense of wonder
9. Seek guidance
10. Think about yourself under different circumstances - as in would you be able to do what you did if your circumstances had been different
11. Help others
12. Be real and dont pretend to be humble
13. Dont think being sycophantic makes you humble - you cant praise others so you get praise for yourself

Keep in mind that being humble has many benefits. Humility can help you be more content with your life, and it can also help you endure bad times and improve your relationships with others. It's also essential to being an effective learner. If you think you know it all, you won't be open-minded enough to seek out new knowledge. Humility is also, somewhat counter-intuitively, an excellent tool for self-development in general. After all, if you feel superior, you have no incentive to improve. Most of all, being humble allows you to be honest with yourself
Thank you to http://www.consumingworship.org/

And when I do things like this I think that maybe I'm getting somewhere but I still have a long way to go. But at least I've got Jesus by my side and rooting for me to keep me going! Thank you Jesus, and thank you too Ian, Ben and Tabee for not letting me get away with things, but loving me too when I make mistakes.

Open Doors and Connecting Lives

Lots always seems to be happening and some of it interesting enough to blog - and staying on that positive theme!

Tabi and I got an offer about helping to put together some boards in the prayer room to help direct people's prayers. I've just heard we could have 2-3 boards now so loads of space which means we could both chase our own ideas. Sounds really exciting and something I have been wanting to do. Both with Tabi and I are creativity comes in arranging, though she can do the drawing and painting bit too, but mine is very much in being able to place things and make them look right.
This is going to be great. Though we do need to focus as it is working with someone who wants to hear what we are going to do first!
Oh no a plan!!

Am also in the middle of trying to sort out seeing a friend in London. I am going up for the evening to see one friend for her birthday and was chatting to another on Facebook chat and thought I could catch up with her too, but now it seems to be getting a bit complicated. I want to meet her kids but they are an hour from the station and I only have 3 hrs free. But I know too how much I always want people to see my kids too.
Another, a bit like the prayer boards, of co-ordinating and working with others!!!

Will try to let you know how it goes next week.

It is all about open doors and how and when to walk through them

A poem by Lisa Borden

Without Ceasing by Lisa Borden

And this is how we pray
Backs nestled into the hammock
Faces turned toward the stars
The warm air lifts against us
And we are quiet, quiet
As you, God, speak to us
About how big you are

And this is how we pray
Sitting on the leaf strewn ground
Peering across the pattern of sun and shade
The clear pool under the giant fig
Where the monitor lizard slips through the water
And we whisper our worshipful thanks
Again and again

And this is how we pray
Standing in the kitchen
Speaking out the worries in our minds
Telling this perfect parent God
Just how small our faith feels
Conscious of how sweetly ludicrous
Our doubts must appear

And this is how we pray
Curled into our duvets
Safely tucked in on this wind blown night
Thoughts far from here
With our friends who sit in vigil
Waiting for a precious life to pass
Maybe even tonight

And this is how we pray
With longing
And with hope
With stress
And with joy
With daring
And with simple words

(Check her out on "Put the Kettle on")

A Prophecy I liked

From Emerge Wales:

I had a vision recently from the Lord. In this vision I saw the River of God was very very wide. At the edges it was shallow and moved very slowly. But the deeper out you went the faster the current got. In the centre of the river it was like a torrent moving so quickly. The Lord explained this is what it is like in this season, for those who have one foot in and one foot out of the present move they show little or no progress (comparatively) over time. Those who are in the shallows are gradually moving but it takes years to see the change. They have to move forward through a lot of effort. But for those who have chosen to give themselves fully to this, they have ditched the old hag, the old wine skin and have thrown themselves in 100% they being swept away. They just let God take them. Before long they have moved into the distance and are in a new place. This vision is exactly what we're seeing. Those that debate the whack and try and do the old hag of religion seem to be plodding along. Their meetings look the same year after year. Others are going backwards, slipping back, loosing their footing, becoming critical because it doesn't look like they want it to look. They fear it. They resent it. They don't want to let go. But those that have really plunged in to this are in a turbulent fast flow of the river which is changing them so rapidly it is becoming hard to recognise them. Great faith and joy is manifesting in them. They are becoming a company of burning hearts - so melted in the fire, so in love with Jesus, so jacked up on the Ghost. Their testimony in heaven will be this - that their fire never died. They are burning for Jesus and burning for the world. It's a wild fire revolution that cannot be stopped.

And it has totally spoken to me about how we can so often hang on to what the man at the front says, be led by the hand always and not be willing to jump into that river of God and let Him just take us and go with Him. Its not even about running with Him but about letting Him just take us away and no longer be in control. Oh how we struggle to keep in control of all things!

Far From The Madding Crowd

Tabi and I had to watch "Far From the Madding Crowd" for her English Lit GCSE. Thankfully I didn't have to read the book too. How Hardy became a classic I will never know! Though I have a good friend who would disagree and thinks he's brilliant. Each to their own. And why if we all have so many different tastes in what makes good literature do we have certain people picking what is a "classic" and what to make young people study of GCSE and 'A' Levels, which often put people off reading for life?

Anyway I was struck by 2 things:
Firstly Bathsheba is so upset that Boldwood shoots her husband and is going to hang for it that she gets his case sent back and makes sure he is then locked up in an insane assylum for the rest of his life. This at least eases her conscience but I am sure is no fun at all for poor Farmer Boldwood, and if not insane when he went in definitly would've gone insane.
And it got me thinking of how often we manipulate situations because they ease our conscience and may not be what is best for others. But we feel better about it.

And the second thing was when the sheep go off in the clover field and get really, really sick eating something that poisons them and how Gabriel Oak is the only person who knows how to deal with their gassed up stomachs without killing them. And of how we are often compared to sheep - sheep who have gone astray, sheep in need of a shepherd.
And it struck me that so often we don't let the Holy Spirit come along and get the bad stuff out of us in the way He knows best, but that so often as church we think we know the right formula and so deal with it as we have always done and actually can cause more harm than good. Instead of waiting, which is what they had to do, asking in the right way (as Bathsheba had upset Oaks and banished him - oh don't we often do that with God too??), and then letting Him do it in the way He knows best.

Which side of the divide?

For this reason, we are meeting with intercessors at the New York Stock Exchange and the Federal Reserve Bank and its 12 principal branches around the U.S. on October 29, 2008. We are also going to intercede at the site of the statue of the bull on Wall Street to ask God to begin a shift from the bull and bear markets to what we feel will be the "Lion's Market" or God's control over the economic systems. While we do not have the full revelation of all this will entail, we do know that without intercession, economies will crumble.
Quote from Cindy Jacob's recent intercessor's appeal before the event and also on a blog link that is very anti Christian after the event

And it got me thinking how as Christians we think the world will view us. I know this one is an extreme event but I think so often because we know what we mean then we expect the rest of the world to see things the same way. So we go off and do some major amazing prophetic symbolic praying and the world goes "what weirdos!".
I think too we do this with especially evangelism. We tell people the story from a church point of view and expect them to get it. And I know that if we heal people in Jesus name and interpret their dreams in Jesus name a few will come to know Jesus, but not everyone.
A friend of mine said that it is the way we view Jesus that empowers how we view mission and so empowers how we do church, but actually we do things the other way round and it is the way we view church that engineers how we do mission and in turns engineers how we see Jesus. Jesus comes at the bottom of the pile. (Quote from a Michael Frost book)
Now I don't say we stop doing what we do but I do think we need to be doing it because Jesus is the first place in all things.

The Financial Crash - how much of it is our fault?

I wanted to give you our testimony regarding money and the present financial crash.

A while back the company Ian was as working for got sold, which meant that all the shares the employees had bought over the years were up for being sold for an interesting amount. We decided to sell and got enough that paid off our mortgage and released Ian to be able to leave that company and start exploring things that God had been nagging him about for a few years. It gave us a nice little cushion to go exploring.

Well we were greedy and now our money is held in Iceland until that all gets sorted out, but actually Ian has been blessed with enough work that we have been able to live nicely. Thank you God! But there was a bit of a worry that we would have to pay a whack of tax on money that we couldn’t get hold of. Well Sunday afternoon Ian spent the time working out his tax returns and due to the fact that he had bought these shares years ago it looks like we will only have to pay about £5 in tax! Wow isn’t God brilliant.

And this is the whole thing of where God uses those monetary systems in place to also bless us.

It has taught us a lesson about who we do rely on and just how much our great God loves us and also about not being greedy.

Like Stewart said we do need to be part of the banking system if we live in the West but we can bank ethically and here are some places to be able to do that:

Reliance Bank Ltd - www.reliancebankltd.com

Kingdom Bank - www.kingdombank.co.uk/

Triodos Bank UK - www.triodos.co.uk/

God is just so brilliant though!

But even though God is brilliant we do need to do some repenting, as a nation as well as individuals of our greed and the way we have mistreated the poor across this world, to the point where is it just so "normal" that even as Christians so many of us don't think twice about where our money goes, but just put in in the bank that is either easiest to go to as its near where we live, or because our parents always did, or whatever, but we dont really think about it too much.

Dear Father God please forgive us for our ignorance and for our greed.

Opening Doors

The verse today is "Not by might nor power but by My Spirit says the Lord". And again I am noticing what is happening. He is up to stuff and I have to go alone with it. But I think I may have noticed a key here!
Ever since I have decided not to blog anything that is detrimental to anyone and to make sure my thoughts as I write are purer, to clean up the "airwaves", it has made me have to think more "purely" about things, about people, about life.

Again there has been another door opened. I got to share some motivational gifts/personality stuff with a group of guys from Genesis Trust who come together to learn about getting back to work. Man, it was challenging and I had to be really on my toes. One of the guys was very anti God and the fact that most of the stuff I use has come from a Christian perspective it was a challenge. And the fact that he was as far the opposite motivation as I was as was possible we did great.
I could just feel through the whole thing God tugging on my heart and just leading my tongue. And I want more of that. I did slip up at one point where I shared some stuff about my childhood, and realised I had lost the plot but God in His graciousness gave me the courage to come back to it, to explain how I had moved on, had forgiven and how we all need to grow up and not blame our parents for stuff. So hopefully I did retrieve this for God, though I think it was Him who did the stuff.

Again too I am finding in conversation that I can just talk about God more, talk about Jesus more, and that it is become a more natural thing. But again this is a heart thing. And as I sort my heart He can open more doors for me!

John 3:27

John 3:27 "A man cannot receive anything unless it has been given from heaven" has really been speaking to me.

I get easily confused about how I can push at certain doors and they remain firmly closed and yet others just fly open. I would love to be more involved with prayer and prophecy in my congregation but the doors there seem to be very sticky, even though I am gaining an amazing relationship with the people involved in leading these things, but it just seems a slog to go further. And then out of the blue God suggests about encouraging a prayer group here in the town where I live, about 8 miles from where we do church. I chat with the pastor, apparently miss out on the welcome they wanted to give me and turn up a week after they had been expecting me, and then get the amazing pleasure of Ian and I being able to meet with the woman who heads things up at the moment with the prayer, praying for her, encouraging her and prophecying over the town and over her. Amazing! And this is what God said - that this time was what He has given us from heaven. And I do think that He has loads of people in the congregation we are at who do what we were blessed in doing with this lady.

Other things happen like that all the time and it is amazing. And what I think He said to me was about always having an open heart and an open spirit to go where He leads but to not get dispondent when He doesn't take me where I think I would like to go.

I was even thinking of how 10 years ago, after my marriage had split up and I moved back to somewhere I felt safe, that I had the job of praying for my neighbour's marriage and they are still together now. And yet if my own marriage hadn't failed then I wouldn't have been there to pray for them. I know God could've sent someone else but it was very odd to be able to do that from the place I was at the time.

I am going to learn more though of how to keep my eyes open to know what God has in heaven for me and to make sure my heart stays in a pure place of being able to receive that.

Jesus loves me this I know .........................................

I had an edited version of this published in our congregation's weekly magazine so thought I would share the whole of it with a wider audience -

I was doing a lot of thinking after Stephen Wood spoke on Sunday 5^th Oct. And really believing unless we totally get our heads round that whole thing that God is good all the time and that He loves us all the time then we have very little to offer the world.

It was interesting that it was the tree of knowledge that Satan tempted Adam and Eve and we are still being tempted with the whole desire for knowledge ever since. We cannot believe it unless we know! (Read Rick Joyner’s book Two Trees in the Garden for more on the why of this and where it has led us.)

Once we can truly say that God is good all the time and that He loves us all the time then the rest of the things will flow from that place.

I remember when I first became a Christian, maybe I was a wee bit naive, but when someone told me that as a Christian I needed to read the Bible every day I did. I read it so much, as I hadn’t got caught up with the whole thing about specific quiet times that I read it through at least four times in the first 2 years I was a Christian, and also devoured multitudes of other Christian books. Couldn’t get enough of it! And I believed what it said.

Read the Psalms, many of the Psalmists are having a really hard time of life and are being really open in what they think and feel. They have a very open relationship with God, but never do they say “If you loved me you would take this away”. No, they do often say “I don’t know how I can cope with this but even in all this I will praise you”.

Some great books on this are from Mervyn Caruthers, for example “Prison to Praise”. We need to know our Bibles more and then we will know that God is in total control. He is in charge and He does what He does because He is God.

Here is a quote from Pelagius, a Celtic saint: “There is no follower of Christ who is not at times perplexed by the suffering of good men and women. When we see a bad person suffer, we can interpret it as punishment for sin. So if an evil person contracts a painful and fatal illness whilst still young, if their house burns to the ground, if they lose their wealth in some dishonest transaction, we feel that justice is being done. But if a good person falls fatally ill in their youth, if an honest hardworking person becomes destitute, we are indignant. We cannot understand how God can permit such injustice.

Our indignation arises from superficial knowledge. We look at pain and pleasure, sorrow and joy, in shallow material terms. Yet a good person, even if undergoing great physical distress, still senses the serene peace of God deep within their soul. The loyal disciple of Christ who is compelled to live in poverty knows that they are sharing the poverty of Christ. And the Scripture assures us that in poverty and in agony of the soul Christ knew the heavenly joy of God”

And I think some of it is we want to share in the good things of Jesus but not in His suffering. We forget that Jesus was abused and misunderstood by most people for most of His life, from conception to crucifixion. But then if we knew and read our Bible then we would know that.

We do also need to know some of the deeper stuff because that is the meat which will also change our lives. If we know why God put the things in the tabernacle and why then we would understand so much more. We do need to get into the whole thing of why certain things are in the Bible and why certain things aren’t. But we need to do all this in the light of God is good all the time and He loves me all the time.

It has been prophesied many years ago that true revival will come when the Spirit and the Word are in unison, so let us start reading our Bibles more and hearing from God through them more and more and not keep waiting for the guy at the front to spoon feed us milk.

Hey let’s go for a revolution and break out of being fed and really get on with what Jesus commissioned us all to do – Go and make disciples of all nations!! – which we can only do when we know totally in our hearts that God is good all the time and God is love all the time, and also some of the deeper things, the meat that is in there. It says there will come a time when you will not need a teacher, but the Holy Spirit will teach you all you need to know. Well I am afraid that will only come about when we start reading the word as well as resting in the Sprit!