Away days.
Just a quick note to say next weeks blog will be a couple of days after Thursday as we are going away as a family for a few days in Burnham-on-sea. Whatever the weather we are determined to find rest. Bless you loads, thanks for your continued reading, comments both here and on Facebook, and sharing of your own journeys. Catch you on either a week Saturday or Sunday.
Paulx.
Find Me An Ark!
Over the past weekend I have been on my almost annual pilgrimage to Greenbelt Festival. Greenbelt is an arts festival put together by Christians that thankfully does not just invite Christians to perform, talk, sing etc. This makes it an easy target for ‘charismatics’ to criticise and rant about ‘atheists’ debating with ‘gay’ vicars etc. These opinions really do miss the point of the whole festival and what touches something deep in the core of me. That whole sense of connectivity and gathering for those often found in the margins, that sense that God can be seen and found through all creation and art, that sense of being stretched and made to feel uncomfortable, but more than that, God really does want to draw people to Himself. They may not come away signing on our imaginary dotted line of faith but they may have touched the hem of a garment. This years main talking point was of course the weather and the flooding to parts of the site caused by rain of monsoon quantity. One of the art pieces was Noah’s Ark. We could have done with a real one of those to stop us floating away. But despite the weather the festival amazingly continued and I enjoyed bands, speakers, poets, dance, comedy, wandering, talking, watching etc. God touched me deeply as I listened to the Indian worship of the band Aradhna and the post rock of Immanu El. Encouraged me as I heard Lucy Winkett’s talk on the desert place even in cities and Cole Moreton reflect on Britain’s new soul. The highlight was a talk by a guy called Jonny Baker who spoke on another world being possible, and using Walter Brueggemann as an influence talked about some stuff that resonated so much. Here are some of the bits and quotes he used.
Imagine All The People.
He said that there are those who can get used to business as usual, people who like things the way they are. Also people who need things to be how they are. As he said that I though about pastors and leaders and how in reality although they preach change that very thing could be the greatest threat to their ‘calling’, gift, vocation. What if things really did get transformed they may not have a job! Dependence on people being submissive to them and their vision. When I was in the so called ‘pastoral ministry’ I remember saying a few times if everyone obeyed the commission and went who would be around for me to lead? In reality we preach go but want everybody to stay. Who would we preach to for starters? But there are those who are different. There are the dreamers, the poets, the prophets, the artists, the crazy people as Baker called them. The marginalised. The rejected. Could those of us reading this fit somewhere there? Those who see the days of the empires are over. He then shared about five keys to embrace and not be afraid of;
1 imagination
A very underrated and undervalued gift. People like those mentioned earlier who have a different sort of site. Quoting Brueggemann here, and I loved this, Imagination is a danger, thus every totalitarian regime is frightened of the artist. It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination to keep on conjuring and proposing alternative futures to the single one the king wants to urge as the only thinkable one. That was worth the admission price alone. That is one to chew over for a while. Baker also said that imagination is stirred by two things that seem opposites but are of the same story, a grieving of how things are and energising the hope of how things can be. I think this is important, especially that we do not get hooked on just grieving and looking back, this has to be a story of hope.
2 dissent
Turning imagination into action. Baker saw this as a positive thing rather than a negative. He pointed out that just moaning about how things are and nothing else is often not helpful, but dissent that leads to creativity is a good thing. Prophets who walk and speak out in grounds that have become domesticated. Release of new language. Discovering new paths in the overgrown hedgerows. Often living in tension with tradition. There can be no constructive change at all, even in church, unless there is some form of dissent.
3 the gift of not fitting in
What I loved here was that not fitting in was seen as a gift and not rebellion against authority. These people are there to cut doors in this world to connect the world with Christ. They are here to mess with boundaries and create new worlds. They dwell in possibilities and say ‘why not.’ For the first time in a long while I felt the embrace of acceptance and affirmation for being where I am walking at this time. Not that I was looking for that any more because I had learned to realise I needed no person’s pat on the back for this journey any more. But to hear someone outside say, it is okay, you are still a gift, what you feel is part of that gift, I felt deeply touched and moved. Trust others reading this can feel that embrace to.
4 best nurtured in community
Surely the hardest one to take in or sometimes even see or imagine. But hope for? Yes. A day when new community arises. Communities like the school’s of the prophets in Scripture, where it is safe and good for dreamers to meet, share, eat, laugh, weep, journey together. One thing Baker said that resonated so true, ‘it is tough and no fun to dream on your own, we all need someone to share our dreams with.’ Not to submit the dream, get people to judge it etc, but to dream together for a better world and be encouraged to live it. A safe place to detox the empire with others. I think these loose communities are already beginning to emerge and will continue to do so. What will they look like? Undescribable I hope, so that there is no model to copy. But it will look like relationships. Messy but real.
5 darkness
The place of stripping bear. Uncertainty and not knowing. Yet limbo is a most creative place. Learning to rest in this space as part of the journey and not fight for a destination. We are the missing scene and we need to improvise. Walking here we need to appreciate new worlds do not come easily and empires do not fall easily. He dwells in the dark places too. It is okay to walk here. Dreams often come in the night.
I’m Not The Only One
We may feel isolated and alone (I sometimes do in my own geography) but we are not alone. Elijah felt like this too and God even told him there were others like him. There are others like us too. The time and season will come to begin finding each other. Sometimes by ‘accident’, sometimes by looking. There are more in this cave than we first realised. My prayer is for those feeling alone that connectivity will emerge and that dots will be joined and a new picture of an imagined future will begin to emerge. You are not alone. I too am a dreamer like you.
I had the privilege of meeting John Coleman on several occasions. He served as a missionary doctor in Iran for many years prior to the 1979 revolution. During the revolution he and his wife were held captive for almost a year. John and Audrey are no longer with us but their youngest son, who grew up in Shiraz, lives in the same town as me. Andrew and I met and discussed our forthcoming trip. I told him that we wanted to start in Shiraz, in the South West, working our way to Masshad in the North East. Andrew then told me that his Father had been given the ‘Freedom of the City of Shiraz’ by the mayor, in recognition of the service he had given to the people of the area. Here was an amazing connection, an open door right on my doorstep.
Our third gatekeeper was a young Iranian asylum seeker, a poetry student. I cannot write here many details about him, except that he was enthusiastic about us visiting the home of Iran’s most loved poet, Hafez.
If you begin to study anything about Iran you will quickly discover that their poets are their cultural heroes. Their poetry is more widely known, quoted and revered than the Quran. There is an uneasy relationship between the hard-line Shia clerics who rule the country and the beloved mystic poets. The subject matter is often un-islamic and subversive, but it has to be accommodated. It’s too close to the hearts of the people to touch.
Shiraz was the home of Hafez, who lived approximately between 1325 and 1389. His tomb is the main attraction in the city. When we visited it, it was Friday prayer time and there were far more people visiting the tomb than attending the nearby mosques, especially the young. That was a surprising thing about the Islamic Republic of Iran – how unenthusiastic the young people (which is more than half the population) are about religion. Egypt, by contrast, was completely different.
Iran and Vatican City are the only two states in the world that are ruled by clerics, where the king is a priest in other words, where the two roles have merged. Never a good idea in this age. In the 1980’s, senior ayatollahs wrote Khomeini a letter setting out certain concerns they had. If he did not back down a bit and allow some democratic reforms, he was risking putting young people off religion. In fact, he risked causing Islam to lose an entire generation. He refused to listen, and that, in fact is what is happening in Iran. No other Muslim country has such a high rate of conversion to Christianity. The Islamic Republic, although it persecutes the church and executes pastors and converts, seems to have served the gospel well. It knows it has a problem, and strangely, it is in the Holy Shia shrine cities of Qom and Masshad that they are noticing it most.
Khomeini needed the war with Iraq to consolidate his grip on power. Winning or losing, it was the martyrs he needed. An Islamic Republic now losing popularity with a generation of young people probably needs another war, to win or to lose, but it needs more martyrs. I believe this lies behind the intransigence over their nuclear reactor.
In the main domestic airport in Tehran is an interesting, but chilling shrine. There is a scale model of the nuclear reactor they are building, in a glass case. Above it hang the ever-present twin portraits of Ayatollah Khomeini and the present Supreme Leader, Khamenei. Arrayed around are hundreds of portraits of martyrs of the Iran-Iraq war, decorated with foliage and flowers. The blood of the martyrs is the foundation for everything. The twelve days or so we spent in that land carried quite a strong burden to pray that there would not be war, that there would be no more Iranian blood spilled, that world leaders would be able to find a way of dealing with Iran other than the point of the spear.
For us then, to live out our prayers, this was stepping over the border, a step into the territory of what has been regarded ‘the enemy’, believing that in Iran we would not find an enemy, but would find love, friendship and welcome there. In Jungian terms, embracing our shadow. It was to pass through the knife edge of hostility as people in whose hearts east and west are reconciled. In our vulnerability it did at times seem to be a land that could easily capture us, a land of exile, but we took seriously the legacy of Cyrus the Great, the king who responded to the times and seasons of the Lord for his people, releasing from exile and facilitating resettling and rebuilding. I was 49. It was my 50th year, my jubilee year, and it felt appropriate to be going to a land of ‘captivity’, with an expectation of release and freedom and inheritance.
Another strange but alluring irony is that this land which seems so hostile from the point of view of a Westerner is also the land of ‘The Garden’. Some have claimed the garden in the east was near Tabriz. I don’t suppose we will ever know, but it’s a connection that attracted me. There is a word in old Farsi that means ‘Garden’, in particular the four-walled garden that is a feature of a traditional Iranian home, a private and sacrosanct family sanctuary where no government official or religious cleric is allowed to pry or enter except by invitation. The word is ‘Paradise’.
In the past my intercessory journeys have been quite task oriented, like I was on assignment for God. Iran sealed a change. It started to become a challenging exploration of my own soul; the journey went underground and it stuck with me for months after I came back. Perhaps it was the influence of the Persian poets, or what the land itself was requiring. The most redemptive thing we can do for a piece of land is to live on it the way it was made to be lived on. If you find a blocked well, dig it out and drink from it. It wants to be drunk again.
There’s a poem by another Persian poet, Rumi, called ‘That Journey’s are Good’. Poetry never translates well, but a few lines of this are:
You could travel from your manhood into the inner man,
Or from your womanhood into the inner woman,
By a journey of that sort,
Earth became a place where you find gold.
So to go in search of ‘the garden’ was to seek my origins. Not for things to be the way they were, but to discover that where I came from is real, so that its reality can make my present and future more certain. It was a discovery of who I really am.
If there is a garden to be found, it seems it is inaccessible as it was, but the Tree of Life has now come to us outside that original garden, the Tree is Jesus and we may eat of Him as often as we want. The Tree is at the centre of us and we have become the garden.
So these were the beginnings of the gift and treasure of the land of Iran – it’s a costly land to embrace, but let’s stop calling it an enemy and let’s not give the Islamic regime (or any for that matter) another blood transfusion.
Tabloid Nation, Tabloid Church.
I am sure I am not the only person around that is getting sick and tired of the take over by celebrity of our tabloids, TV’s and magazines. We have become a nation obsessed with the just about famous and the used to be famous. Everyone seems to be getting their own five minutes and in that time we can read about every movement (including bowels) and every word. Their marriages, their failings, their drunken nights out, their night club antics, what they are wearing, the list goes on and on. We love to raise them up and then we love to pull them down. We love to pretend these people are role models one minute and a disgrace to society the next. This obsession seemed to come into vogue in the 1980′s but in a way it has been around since the days of the media. Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, the Beatles, the Kennedy’s, amongst others, made incredible stories and sold papers. But I am going to make a wild suggestion here, I think the cult of celebrity has some history way before the media in the roots of the church and it’s history. Infact Paul makes reference to it in his epistle to the Corinthians. “One of you says, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; another, “I follow Cephas”; still another, “I follow Christ.”" Even in the infant state of the early church there were clear followers of people instead of Christ. Factions, people held in high esteem above other people, spiritual groupies waiting for their favorite preacher to come to town. Denominations and divisions and obsession with personalities and celebrities seem to have always been in the hearts of men. I am sure Paul would have hated this personally, as he would have detested being called the Apostle Paul, and that is why Paul quickly says it is not about my name or doing anything in my name. But we all love names.
A Christian Groupie.
As a young Christian I loved the ministry of Gerald Coates. I first heard him at Grapevine as an influential 15 year old and from that moment I had my celebrity hero in the church. If I ever heard he was speaking anywhere near where I was situated I would travel to hear him speak. I had become a Christian groupie. This is something that remained with me for years as more and more speakers were elevated. As a Pastor I travelled all the way from South Wales to Sunderland not to experience the refreshing but because Paul Cain and Mike Bickle were speaking there. I returned there many times for their conferences because they had the big name prophets in town that I needed to hear. I could not hear them anywhere else so I invested my time and energy to travel and live in these venues to hear these anointed men and women of God, my celebrities. I would hang on every word, buy every book, CD, even got Sky so I could hear them on the Christian channel. Christians had their very own tabloid station, and I loved it. Rick Joyner, Cindy Jacobs, Steve Hill, all these named revivalists in my own front room. Then all of a sudden Wales was on the agenda of everyone into revival and they started coming into Wales. Teams from Morning Star, the Arnotts, Elijah List people, wow these people on the doorstep. Conference after conference after conference, heaven on earth. Then I was invited to host a conference with Chuck Pierce, speak at a conference with …. Was I now becoming a mini-celebrity myself? I was living the dream with those dreamers. Yet even as the names began to pour through something was nagging inside. What is going to come from Wales will be from the guts of the Nation not imported from outside. The more God called us to ignite a wildfire the more people we invited in. Celebrity had overtaken the desire for a raw, deep, land crying, wilderness walking, indigenous move of God that had to be like a seed dying before it could bear fruit. The stages and platforms needed to be dismantled, the crowds dispersed, maybe even a bit of disappointment to set in to realise that the break out is not going to be like we think it will be. In my own personal journey I am no longer a groupie. That is not to say I would not go and hear somebody speak or be inspired by others, it is just names no longer mean that much to me.
Hornet’s Nest.
This thinking all came about because I seemed to have stirred up a hornet’s nest on my Facebook page again. Unlike me I know 
. I had read the article about Todd Bentley being refused access into the U.K. and I felt a bit stirred about it. Not angry thinking the devil was stopping him getting a visa, but stirred to write the following; Strange but I have mixed feelings on this. Was a time I would have been so excited he was coming to town and incensed at the decision, but now I think it’s time to stop looking outside to influence inside with the next big thing. Names just don’t do it for me any more, celebrity is not going to change the U.K. or anywhere. Of course some then replied by calling him a heretic and others said he was wacky, others were supportive and said we should honour him and show grace. My comments were never aimed at Todd or a judgement on his ministry. Just a comment on where I feel I am at this present moment in my perspective of this. This was a reply I wrote; My words are in no way a comment on Todd himself but on the cult of celebrity in the church. I am all for grace and mercy and in no way judge Todd for anything past, present or future. What I am challenging us to watch is how easy we follow the influence of men/women which leads us to elevating them up. Infact I do not blame Todd for falling but us for lifting him up high enough to fall. I honour him and others who have walked a path. Honouring does not mean agreeing with everything but before God seeing God in and through all of creation. . I still shout grace, grace. Todd was booked to speak here in South Wales. I would not have gone. Not because I do not honour him as a man trying to walk his path in God, or because I judge him for failures. But because to me personally the landscape has changed. My life has moved from a tabloid Christianity to a broad sheet, wide screen knowledge of God in and through all things. Celebrities come and go. Christ remains as alpha and omega. Celebrities let me down, they are human after all, Christ never let’s me down. And if relationship is key in Christianity, how many of us have true relationship in a celebrity world? Like the tabloids, celebrity Christianity is a fabrication of the real thing of everyday life. And I love my return to life.
This is going to be a tale in several parts. I apologise if that is frustrating, and I hope it’s not pretentious, but if it’s not your cup of tea you can take a break from reading my posts for a few weeks. My daughter is getting married on the 1st September, so it helps me to give myself a thread to follow through for a while, just in case my head is elsewhere.
One of the things I would have liked to have done before I die, is to continue my sort of pilgrimage or journey of prayer east until I reach China. Not walking all the way, but hopping from city to city, country to country all the way. I am not driven by a clear agenda of what I must do or accomplish through it; I wouldn’t be setting out to preach or fight anything or change anything in particular – except perhaps myself in the process. It comes more from a belief that I can discover God in new ways in new places, and that the encounters, spiritual and human, personal and involving other people, that crop up in such journeys are part of redemption; of heaven touching earth, for me and for the places I go through.
It’s not a foregone conclusion that I can complete this journey though. I feel rather stalled at the moment, but that too is part of the journey. The trouble is some places have a big impact on you, you go in as one person and come out as another – well almost.
We’ve been through Arabia now, but that territory had such a huge impact on one friend and travelling companion. There are consequences; you can’t just push on regardless. So then we were down to two. I managed to breeze through that one, but the next territory, Iran, was the one that got me. When you go on pilgrimage these are not just physical places but dramatic journeys of the soul that take you to new and unexpected territories. Pakistan is next in line, but at the moment I can’t summon whatever it takes. Adam took me to Bombay Stores in Bradford to buy a Shalwar Khameez. Wearing the clothes might help, but he came away with a new outfit and I didn’t. I’m just not ready. Adam is probably thinking, “So now we are just one.”
Many years ago a respected African intercessor told me,
“You know, if you want to go into a place, you have to enter spiritually first before you try to go physically. If you go physically before you’ve entered spiritually, it will give you trouble.”
Since then I’ve experienced doing it wrong and doing it better. The Lord gave me controlled experiences to illustrate it to me. These African intercessors know what they are talking about. They are used to seeing themselves walking in spiritual landscapes that have been covenanted in various ways. They see themselves and the environment around them quite clearly in the spirit. I don’t, not yet anyway, but I’m trying to learn, trying to pick up the clues.
So Iran – well here’s how it seemed to work for me. The first thing you come to in any place is the gates, you have to go in through them, and they are controlled. We stood and looked at the Gates of Iran for months. Incidentally, I choose not to use the name Persia, because that’s the Greek name, People of the land have always called it Iran – the land of the noble.
In Gates there are levels of permission, temporal and spiritual. If the spiritual welcome is there, then the temporal stuff should eventually come into line, although it might make a fuss for a while. Those gates are at the knife-edge of global hostility between east and west right now. Maybe that springs from Alexander’s first symbolic spear-thrust into Asian soil as he crossed over for revenge. He chose to greet ‘Persia’ with the point of his spear. It was clear no warfare was going to get us in, the reverse in fact, only a willingness to die.
I came to realise that the true spiritual authority in that land lies with the martyrs. If you get a chance to read the testimonies of converts who died for their faith in Jesus during the Khomeini years, you will begin to think Iran is a holy place – they are beautiful, moving, powerful. In fact the whole land is oriented around martyrdom – it’s in the Shi’a soul. It’s why Iran will not baulk at sacrificing itself to US and Israeli nuclear weapons if necessary. The power is in the dying you see – these spiritual powers are highly intelligent. The regime draws its power from the 600,000 ‘martyrs’ of the Iran-Iraq war. The symbolism is quite blatant there. Iran is built on the blood of the Martyrs. Subsequently I’ve begun to ponder national personalities in Enneagram terms. A friend of mine says Iran seems to be quite strong in Type 4. It makes a lot of sense and if there’s anything in that, it really helps understand why things are the way they are. I realise that subject will now have to be revisited. With Iran there’s the poetry and art of course – it’s sublime.
So to enter in there was a fellowshipping with the Martyrs for Jesus in advance, which unavoidably brings your life at one level to an end. It’s a very Iranian thing to do – pilgrimages to the shrines of martyrs. There was a city called Mashhad in the East which we wanted to get to eventually. God knows why, its name means ‘place of martyrdom’ and I think it’s the spiritual heart of Iran – you meet Iran’s soul there. But I’m not morbid or gloomy by disposition, and I am blessed with an extremely buoyant, capable and positive travelling companion, and what’s more I had the promise that the Lord had a treasure for me to find there, something precious to bring back for my children, my descendants, my community perhaps.
Amazingly, Iranian visas were granted in days, we were exempted from the usual interviews and fingerprinting, bar the queueing we sailed in. That kind of thing reassures you. But there was this hostage crisis going on at the time. There was what appeared to me a very real walking into possibilities I might not come back. Once inside it’s quite sealed off by sanctions. Politics there are volatile and we were always going to be suspect. We know we were followed.
There was another gatekeeper though, also passed on from this life, who I will tell you about next time.
To be continued…
Well my terms might not be too accurate but I am interested in breaks from the norm and how we respond. Derren Brown who likes to diss the supernatural is a master at this. Shake someone’s hand, hold on to it too long, switch hands, give them something to hold and then walk of with the person giving him his wristwatch without realising s/he has done so – well maybe a little more complicated than that. His point though is that if the norm is broken we become very susceptible to all crazy possibilities.
Last week I had an appointment. I went into the consultation, fully expecting one thing to happen and it did not and the room was set out for that to happen, however, the consultant suggested something different. I ended up closing the door – he left it open, and I stood there facing the door in a moment of confusion. He said to me, ‘It might be better if you turned round!!!’ Polite words indeed as any consultation is better taking place face to face. I did feel just a little more foolish than normal, but thought about it afterwards. I had an expectation, something totally broke that expectation and in a moment as my mind was seeking to subconciously work it all out, I had a moment of almost-trance. All normal reasoning was suspended for a short while. (In case you are wondering I did turn round, we talked, and I think that more or less my rational mind is back!)
But the whole thing got me thinking. The abusive potential in that. How we can walk away with more than a wrist watch if we either worked on how to manipulate people in that way, or came across them while they were experiencing something like that. And the potential.
There are many moments, many of them small moments of time, when that happens to us. A moment when we think:
Many times we face that in our Christian activity, and often shut it down with everything is OK, after all everyone else does it this way / thinks like this.
A church planter was talking to me a few years back and he explained the shift in his journey came when on a particular Sunday he was not travelling, so thought he would be able to get along, be refreshed in one of the local congregations. He considered them one by one and thought, for different reasons, of each one, ‘Wouldn’t want to go there’. He faced a choice. He had helped plant these congregations. He could decide ‘But I am different, I am a leader’; or ‘There is something in the core of them that is not good, I helped put it there, now I have to think again.’
Of course no congregation is perfect, but that was not his concern. It was of something deeper than that (maybe as we wrote on the stages of faith how congregations can journey with people to stage 3 in their faith but then can become a block not a catalyst for release after that).
So an aside: not a few church leaders would not wish to be part of the church they lead. There can be legitimate reasons for that, or ‘it’s different for me I am a leader’ thought process can kick in.
So my consultation has provoked me to be ready for the moments of dissocation, the liminal points when I will have to analyse my behaviour. The moments are subtle but the result can be very profound.
Accuser of the Brethren and the Cistern.
It is amazing how easy it is for people to jump to conclusions about you, your life, your beliefs etc, just because you have made a conscious decision and actually put that decision into action, to go against the flow. There are all sorts of accusations and arrows flying around when you make the decision to walk outside the walls of the church construct, and they are just the one’s you get to hear about, there are plenty of others flying around behind your back. Just this week I was told “you could be in a church sharing the presence of God with other people and hearing how good he is instead of being alone”. They were right about one thing, I could be in a church, but I chose not to be because I didn’t want to be. That then leads to all the other stuff that is taken for granted, misinterpreted, misunderstood, thrown at those of us on the journey. I could be sharing the presence of God with other people. Just because I chose to spend time alone on Sunday night does that mean I cannot share the presence of God with others? Have I lost my opportunity? Can I not share in that presence in work on a Tuesday night as I walk the aisles with my colleagues? Do I not share in that presence when I meet a friend for a coffee or have a meal with my family? Just because I am not singing repetitive songs and listening to someone expound Scripture does that mean I am not sharing the presence as I walk through life. This whole interpretation of God living in the building and His presence comes through doing religious stuff is more heretical and has caused more damage than any of the other beliefs that are causing a stir at this time. Does this mean I do not like sharing with others? On the contrary I love sharing life, stories, love etc, but in a totally different context now. I could be in church hearing how good He is. Is that the only place we can hear it? I hear and see how good God is all the time. I see it in creation and life. I celebrate it as something good happens at work to my of my work colleagues, I see it on television in programmes of fact and fiction. I see it continually in my family. Since when did the goodness of God get wrapped up in all the trimmings? Instead of being alone. I had already said I did not get to experience alone very much in my house. You try it with a wife, four kids, friends calling at the door and on the phone (for the kids not me !!!). There is very rarely space to yourself unless you make it. When it comes I love nothing more than just being with Him. That does not mean pressing in or even what we may call praying, but just being, sitting, resting, chilling, loving Him. Those moments are to be treasured. But because I love those moments people think I do not want to be around people at all. It isn’t people I have a problem with, I love people, it is just this obsession with crowds and gatherings being greater than solitude that I have a problem with.
Wooing Us To The Wilderness.
Bobby Connor has just released a prophetic word titled ‘Wooing Us to the Wilderness.’ I love that thought. He is wanting us to come away with Him. He wants us to rediscover the unbeaten and untrodden paths. He wants us to see that there is more to life than being with others, there is being with Him. Just being. I love reading the life of Jesus and you can see His total love and compassion for people, but it is also not difficult to pick up on the fact that he gets a little uncomfortable around crowds, demands, gatherings that go beyond being personal and relational. How many times does it say ‘He withdrew from them.’ He got into boats, sailed to Islands, slipped away quietly, went in the night, anything to try and escape the crowd. There were times He would withdraw even from the 12. Does this mean He does not love people? It was because He loved people that He had to get away from the crowd. He loved people so much He would go out of His way to meet a woman of questionable history at a well. It was because He loved people that he would lean aside to talk to an ‘invisible’ blind man. Jesus loved people, and He loved solitude. He knew we had Martha moments where stuff had to be done, but Mary moments are better, just sitting at His feet, listening, still. We hear loads about getting together but nothing about shutting the door when you pray. Loads of accusation thrown about neglecting the gathering together, but nothing about neglecting the wilderness and the secret place.
Loving Solitude, Loving Others.
There must be an embracing of the former to truly embrace the later in a fresh way. To me this is the walking out of the words of Jesus when He said ‘love others even as you love yourself.’ There must be an appreciation of how we are loved before we can learn to truly love. To be and not do for God becomes a release that then releases others. We soon realise that what occurs in the name of gatherings is maybe not a gathering at all but a meeting, a religious to do. We start drawing together with those who have walked the wilderness too. Sharing life, love, laughter, tears. Dwellers of solitude being joined together. When we come away with Him, we then draw away with each other. Not in a religious way but often as a friend or family to eat, drink, share. Not in a ‘we must do this every week’ way but in a releasing loving way that cherishes the solitude of others and recognises the wilderness we are filling with heavens irrigation. Being a part of you does not mean being a part of your group, tied to you and you alone, but there for one another. Relationship with Jesus on the earth was never one that encouraged dependency on flesh, He was too all over the place for that, and He disappeared after three years. It was encouragement to depend on walking with Father through the life of the Spirit. This can only be done away from crowds. I love sharing in the presence with others and I do it all the time. I see His goodness all over the place. In being alone I am never alone. Yet I cherish those times just being with Him. There is no greater place to be than to be with Him.
I was meditating on this scripture about freedom from the fear of death. I realise that I am about to take it in a way that is beyond the purpose in Hebrews yet the application I think works. (I have been so long since writing on ‘Interesting Scripture #…’ that I have dropped those titles.)
Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death. (Heb. 2:14-15)
So we have a series here:
So this is where I am applying this Scripture. In a time of major shifts it will be brave people who have seen that self-preservation cannot be the way forward. They must be willing to trust in the God of resurrection to take them through, and I am thinking of this not at a personal level but at a corporate level. Where are those involved in the structures of society that know the dear of death / failure, the need to survive and succeed has been broken?
I was recently in a discussion about how do we know who we can work with for transformation. This was the text that came to mind. We need to find those who are not bound by fear of loss, nor are they committed to the preservation of the corporate. Slavery can only be broken by a refusal to submit to the call for corporate self-preservation. Otherwise we are serving the ‘it’ and will be found to be in slavery to a power greater than the ‘it’.
Everywhere Adam and I went on our five year prayer journey leading up to the Olympic Games we were attended by fire engines. I don’t remember if they were there the first couple of times. They may have been and we just didn’t notice, but in Cardiff in February 2008, we had just reached a roundabout when three circled it, sirens sounding, and sped off down one of the roads. Five minutes later they returned and overtook us going down the main road to the docks that we were walking down. They were lost and searching for the fire. When we arrived at the end of the road it had been sealed off due to ‘an incident’. After that we began to notice that fire engines turned up everywhere. Nearly always they were on the key trade arteries of towns and cities that we had deliberately chosen to walk and pray down. In fact, in the last three years, I remember the one place where there wasn’t one – Wolverhampton. We always puzzled over what they meant, drawing no particular conclusion, but drew encouragement that they seemed to be recognising us and that they meant we were in the right place at the right time.
Last week I was working in a kitchen that I was decorating, and mulling over the Olympics experience and our now finished journey in the light of it. What a big part of my life all that travelling was, and yet, compared to the grandeur and drama of the Olympics now taking place, what an insignificant thing it seemed. I am sure there are many others who prayed about the Olympics and what it was marking in our land, in their own ways responding to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, who have wondered the same. Here it is in full flow, with millions watching all over the world. Did we do what we had to? Were we ready?
Then the Lord reminded me,
“I am able to do far more than you ever ask or imagine.”
It occurred to me that we’ve been hearing the theme music from ‘Chariots of Fire’ at every event, far more than any National Anthem. So were those fire engines ‘chariots of fire’, or being drawn to a fire of some kind? The flame symbolism is all about something being passed on to the next runner, or the next generation. That’s what happened when Elisha saw Elijah being taken up in his chariot of fire – a baton, or mantle, was successfully passed on. (So I am so glad that, in the opening ceremony, the cauldron was not lit by some famous old hero, as everyone expected, but that the final torch was given to unknown young people who have yet to make their mark.)
The film ‘Chariots of Fire’ was re-released for the Olympics. I wondered, did the organisers realise that film was not just a film about Scotland’s most famous runner, but also about an evangelist and missionary, and a man who came from China and returned to China. Apparently, because of Liddell’s birth and death in China, some Chinese Olympic literature claims him as Chinas first Olympic champion. Eric Liddell returned to China as a missionary after the 1924 Paris Olympics, and he died there in a Japanese internment camp.
In 2008, around the time of the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese government released previously unknown information about Liddell’s life. At one point Liddell had been offered the opportunity of release from Internment camp on a prisoner exchange deal. He declined, giving his place instead to a pregnant woman. The revelation was a surprise even to his descendants.
We were aware of a spiritual connection between Beijing and London represented in these games and the pathway of the Olympic flame. Perhaps we were anticipating a spiritual flow, even anticipating the worst given all the pagan symbolism, nationalism and glory in human achievement that comes with the Olympic movement. Personally I spent five years praying in response to a warning that this year, with this event at its centre, was a pivotal one in our destiny as a nation and in our relationship with the rest of the world, a destiny that could go either way.
How amazing is the grace of God that as the Olympic spirit berthed in our capital city, he reminds us that we are a missionary land, a mission-sending people. There is a grace in our connection and destiny with nations being revealed and restored to us that we had maybe written off. There are prayers and sacrifices counting for us in the reckoning of heaven that we didn’t know. He reassures us our prayers have been heard; even the ones we didn’t pray are being answered. And Eric Liddell turns up unexpected at the 2012 Games, reminding us the wells are still there to be drunk from, the mantles waiting to worn again if we can glimpse the chariots of fire. It was certainly more than I asked for or imagined.
Well, the Olympics so far have been a bit of a high, haven’t they? The press are calling it ‘Olympic fever’. It’s an understatement to say it’s been something enjoyable that’s drawn our island folk together in a shared experience – whether you’re one of the lucky few who got to sit in one of the stadia or along the roads or rivers or even on the banks or beaches at the seaside or one of the millions who’ve been glued to laptop, TV and phone to try and catch as many sports as possible at once or even one of the thousands who are serving in some way as a Gamesmaker or chaplain or security or because of some talent you have like a musician or dancer or training, such as a doctor or nurse or Queen! A huge effort has been made to include as many ordinary and extraordinary people as possible and in many ways, the whole event has lifted the UK’s mood in a way that’s been almost unique. And that’s been a fantastically positive thing for us all.
It’s so difficult to gauge the psyche of a nation. It was only a year ago this week that we heard the huge cry of anger and abandonment that came welling up out of London and other cities (as the press are currently reminding us). The anger that rose up a year ago was partly, I believe, a violent expression of fatherlessness. The reality of its depth was validated by a friend living 800 yards from it – but there are still many who take the view it was unnecessary egoism born of idleness and greed. Probably, both are true of some people in some of those situations. And, in this present climate, I think a similar thing could be true of the Olympic mood – there will be those who haven’t engaged with the Games, seeing it as irrelevant and an unnecessary expense at a time of apparent international crisis. Syria continues to burn. Egypt hangs in the balance. There has been no real Olympic Truce in Afghanistan or Iraq. Many of the Eurozone countries still cannot pay their bills.
I’m physica
lly located in a sort of spiritual swing door between town and country but this also, for me, symbolises a door from the past, into the present and on into the future. However, the door swings so I only get partial glimpses! Looking beyond the Olympics and the Jubilee, will we be anywhere different? Will we be dehydrated, depressed and facing a reality check as we sober up? Perhaps our nation’s ego has been stroked a little (all right, a lot!) by how well it’s all gone and our incredible (and wonderful) number of medals.
But we can’t depend on ego. The road into the future isn’t paved with white road markings just for us. I think we’ve got used to believing it is. It never has been. Richard Rohr suggests that ego loves the status quo (even when it’s not working) and is fearful of the future. At the moment, the status quo is working and the nation’s ego is content. This summer, these islands have experienced a psychological break, a holiday from anxiety – almost suspended time – it’s almost been like a gift, given to strengthen us for what may be ahead. But what happens when the status quo stops working as it did last summer? When those things that’ve been wiped off the news headlines come crowding back and there may be little to look forward to? Our recent past has been a time of uncomfortable transition that has influenced our present (including the Games). It seems to me that this will continue. So, do we need to change our perspective?
As I look through my swing door, I see glimpses of a future alternative. It’s been prophesied by more than one that this year will be a hinge towards the end of what we know. The future’s an unknown, yet I believe, will be shaped by us as ekklesia and will undoubtedly prove to be challenging to the status quo. But it’s so easy for us to talk grace and truth and not actually have that mixed with the mature realism of what’s been called “both-and”. What we prophesy can become that reality. As church, we are wrestling like Jacob to become Israel – a man with both a new name and a new life. Can we, like Jesus, be forgiving, compassionate and radically inclusive? If we, the ekklesia, are able to express maturity wherever we are set, accepting reality as what it is but believing and trusting God that a murram road set before us with no markings is worthy of a journey, this might propel us into a future worth exploration. This road less travelled is the one we’re travelling now and we’re all in it together.
Time To Fly the Nest.
There comes a time in any parents life that they dread, letting their children grow up and spread their wings. Recognising that they need to stand on their own two feet and not be dependant on mummy and daddy for the rest of their lives. We are facing this at the moment with our boys as they grow older. My eldest son is in University and my 17 year old has been in what he sees as a serious relationship for about a year now. it was so much easier when we knew where they were. Yet for everyone the parent/child relationship has to change dynamic. This should also be the case for spiritual parents and leaders and preachers. There should be that time of flying the nest and yet what ends up getting created is lots of dependant relationships. No encouragement for spiritual sons and daughters to fly, in fact sometimes the opposite, encouragement to stay because they need to have a covering, be in fellowship, have strong relationships. Then this in itself kills the creative walk in others to find their own farrow in the wide open field and live. What if they lose their way/fall/get hurt? They will, and in some ways they need to as this is the process of finding themselves rather than just being a copy of their parents. And it cannot just be a case of letting the chord stretch, it must be completely severed, burned, cut. Spiritual mothers and fathers your call is not their call. Your walk is not their walk. Your journey is not their journey. How you view things is not how they will and should view things. There must be encouragement to grow up. Those words in Hebrews have always struck me, ‘by now you should all be teachers’. Yet we want to keep teaching them and keep them under our wings. We keep telling them to learn from our mistakes when they need to make a few of their own and really learn. All good parents spend their lives equipping to release and let go. Investing their lives so other lives can be invested.
Parenting the Jesus way.
Not that Jesus ever became a natural parent, but spiritually He invested His life into at least 12 people. He told them stories and gave them pictures of the kingdom of heaven. He demonstrated the kingdom and let them have a go themselves. He watched them nearly drown in storms, deny they knew Him, question His actions, interpret His life wrong, not understand anything. Yet one thing He never allowed them to do was create a dependant relationship with Him in this form of flesh. He prepared them continually for the day of dependence on Father and life in the Spirit. He kept reminding them that a day would come when the dynamics of relationship would change. After three years of investment they were on their own, unexpectedly, unprepared, floundering around like a fish on dry land. Occasionally He would appear in their lives to remind them that He was still around, but they day came when they were on their own, but not alone. Life in the Spirit. No dependence on the flesh of another, but totally guided and led by Father and the Spirit. Being not ready seemed to be a qualification. Spiritual parents and preachers and leaders, if your spiritual kids are still sitting around your feet reliant on you and your counsel and ‘ministry’ after many years then something has gone drastically wrong. We need a fresh wave of spiritual Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, times of coming of age when children become people encouraged to take responsibility. Not enrolled into a religious responsibility but to a life of freedom.
The Parable of the Loving Father.
What we call the parable of the lost son should really be renamed the parable of the Father. What a picture of unconditional love towards His sons. The question was asked by Wayne Jacobsen ‘at what point in the story did the Father love his son the most?’ Many of us will say a certain point like when he saw him from a distance or when he got him home again. The truth is his love never changed, for either son. He loved both passionately, even when the dynamics of the relationship changed. Spiritual parents can learn some lessons here, as can natural parents. When a child wants to fly the nest let them go unconditionally with their inheritance intact. In fact both sons were given their inheritance at this point. Both were in a sense encouraged to live now. As a parent all of life from day one has led to this point. It needs to happen and yet for many spiritual parents we would rather have the dynamic of a relationship like with the older son, always faithfully serving the parents from home. We know who made the biggest mistakes and yet who learned the biggest lessons? Who learned the true dynamic of relationship with Father? Whose life was shallow, boring, safe, void of love and true relationship? Not all will mess up, many will find their way, but not without a few bumps in the road or wilderness times. But even if they totally screw it up spiritual parents are not there to say ‘I told you so’, ‘serves you right for coming out of the covering’, ‘told you you needed to keep in contact and fellowship regularly with me.’ Whatever mess they make, even if they lose everything and end up living outside what we term ‘law’ sitting with the pigs eating swill, grace and love abounds. When the son returns there are no questions, no explanations needed, no excuses, no repentance, no promises he will not do it again, just grace and loads of it. The father has never tried to hunt him down or intervene, he just keeps looking, watching, loving from a distance. When he comes home with his tail between his legs instead of rebuke there is embrace, instead of advice there is a party, instead of going back to serving the family there is relationship and even more blessing. Robes, shoes, calves, fun, freedom, music. The recognition that no matter what went on, how many women he had slept with, how drunk he had got, how much money he lost, this is my son. No matter what the journey holds the kids need to be left alone to discover themselves, Father, true relationships, love and grace. Keeping them wrapped up in cotton wool dependant on us will never create a generation ready for the new landscape. Dynamics of relationship must change.
Some time back we were put in touch with Andrew and Natalie (and Naomi) Brims. They had moved out to Badajoz from SW London. We were delighted to be able to meet up and connect while on the way to Hervás.
Badajoz is a very key situation. It is on the Portuguese / Spanish border, and common to many Gateway cities has a history of warfare. There was a major rampage during the Napoleonic conflict and again during the Civil War when men, women and children were rounded up and herded into the bullring to be slaughtered.
In the aftermath of fight that released the town to ‘freedom’ from the French military discipline largely disappeared and the town was subjected to two days of pillage, murder, rape and drunkenness by the British survivors. The only way to restore order was to erect the gallows, which were evidently not used, and to flog many soldiers.
In the Civil War we read that:
several thousand of the town’s inhabitants, men and women, were taken to the town’s bullring after the battle and after machine guns were set up on the barriers around the ring, an indiscriminate slaughter began. On the 14 August 1936, 800 were shot in batches of twenty. In the course of the night, another 1,200 were brought in. Overall it is estimated that over 4,000 people were murdered by the Nationalists after the battle
The commander was known as the butcher of Badajoz, and was also appointed after the civil war as Ministry of the Air by Franco.
A challenging place, and how history repeats itself. A very noticeable aspect to the town is how they join the new to the old (in architecture) but with the old subsuming the new. This we see as a physical manifestation of the spiritual. (Unproven) I believe that in history there was an event where a firstborn heir did not survive and someone was ‘adopted’ who had to swear allegiance, subsuming his own desires to that of the place. This I see as resulting in some strongholds: false loyalty and not releasing the future.
Andrew, Natalie and Naomi moved to Spain some 2 years ago and then to Badajoz. They have teamed up with Az and Abby who have been there for some 9 years. They are all involved in teaching English and work with a Christian community there. The commitment to the area is wonderful, and although they have only been there a short time, Andrew and Natalie are going to rent on a building and opening a school for language teaching there. In an area where the unemployment is higher than the average in Spain this is a bold move. Our sense was that the school will be very key, not just in teaching language but being a place where people will begin to think beyond the old restrictive boundaries. The image to the left is of a book Andrew wrote (reminiscent of Hirsch/Cole in content). Well worth a read. Click on the image to be taken to the download page, and if you wish to follow Andrew’s blog it is at Brimming Over.
We were glad to be away in Badajoz and also Hervás. Glad to get home too, particularly as we had to push the car to start it on some 8 occasions to get home. The starting motor stopped working (el motor de arranque dejó de functionar!!!). No we did not get a reduction – just glad they did not charge us extra for renting a car with a difference!
Much of the material that will be central to these posts will cover perspectives on the 'gates' of society, the places of influence that shape the culture. If transformation is a desired outcome, such aspects as strategic prayer and understanding the redemptive gifts of places will play their part. As prayer opens up space, filling it will be vital, not in a controlling, top-down sense, but with a servant spirit. Finding appropriate terminology is difficult. Maybe 'transformation' is not the right term, perhaps 'transfiguration', where inner qualities burst through.
I have chosen to use the term 'gates' and although they can be defined any number of ways these are the seven ways I have chosen to group them by:
These are in two formats. Epub can be read in many ereaders, such as Ipad, kobo etc.; if using a kindle then the format will be mobi. If there are difficulties in reading the format an internet search should show any peculiarities for your specific ereader
Vol 1.1 Epub format Vol 1.1 Mobi format
Vol 1.2 Epub format Vol 1.2 Mobi format
Vol 1.3 Epub format Vol 1.3 Mobi format