Miracles do happen!

As a little girl I had such a simple understanding of what having faith in Jesus meant. It was very clear to me that Jesus could do anything and when I asked, I asked simply, believing that He would sort whatever it was that was troubling me. I lived carefree because I was young but I also understood that He was in charge. When I went to University I had my first real experience of anxiety and in that time I lost a little bit of who I understood Him to be, I lost sight of the simplicity because I took my eyes off Him and it has never been quite the same since.

It appears we live in a world where wisdom seems to come with age, but I am finding that actually I know less now in some ways than I did as a child. I think I understood more then about how big God is. I know He’s big but with age and so called ‘wisdom and understanding’ have come limits because I think I’ve got things sussed and actually, I don’t know anything much! The God that I talked to as a girl is exactly the same. He is a God of miracles. Why then do I forget to pray prayers and simply leave them with Him to sort out?

Smith Wigglesworth is one of my biggest inspirations. I love to read stories of what God did when He prayed. He was also, at one time, in need of a life saving miracle. Have a read of the account in his own words:

At one time I was so bound that no human power could help me. My wife was looking for me to pass away. There was no help. At that time I had just had a faint glimpse of Jesus as the Healer. For six months I had been suffering from appendicitis, occasionally getting temporary relief. I went to the mission, of which I was pastor, but I was brought to the floor in awful agony, and they brought me home to bed. All night I was praying, pleading for deliverance, but none came. My wife was sure it was my home call, and sent for a physician. He said that there was no possible chance for me- my body was too weak. Having had the appendicitis for six months, my whole system was drained and because of that, he thought it was too late for an operation. He left my wife in a state of broken heartedness.

After he left there came to our door a young man and an old lady. I knew she was a woman of real prayer. They came upstairs to my room. This young man jumped on the bed and commanded the evil spirit to come out of me. He shouted “Come out you devil; I command you to come out in the name of Jesus!” there was no chance for an argument, or for me to tell him that I would never believe that there was a devil inside of me. The thing had to go in the name of Jesus, and it went, and I was instantly healed.

I arose and dressed and went downstairs. I was still in the plumbing business, and I asked my wife, “Is there any work in? I am all right now, and I am going to work”. I found that there was a certain job to be done and I picked up my tools and went off to do it. Just after I left the doctor came in, put his plug hat down in the hall, and walked up to the bedroom. But the invalid was not there. “Where is Mr Wigglesworth?” he asked. “Oh doctor, he’s gone out to work,” said my wife. “You’ll never see him alive again,” said the doctor; ‘they’ll bring him back a corpse.”

Well, I’m the corpse.

Since that time the Lord his given me the privilege of praying for people with appendicitis in many parts of the world; and I have seen a great many people up and dressed within a quarter of an hour from the time I prayed for them. We have a living Christ who is willing to meet people on every line.

                                                Smith Wiggleworth: The Complete Collection of His Life teachings, pg 351-352

This man was a plumber! A husband! The doctor said he would not make it but he did, and then he spent his life believing God for miracles and he saw them in abundance. It is simple, he was dying and Jesus brought him back to life because someone understood the power in the name of Jesus. Someone saw the evil spirit and forced it to bow to the highest name.

I believe that we need the gift of discernment in this area and I believe too that God will give you that gift if you ask for it. I hate giving the devil too much credit but we have to acknowledge that he is working with his spirits to destroy and disable us. He will not win. We need to be people who are able to discern evil spirits and cast them out in the name of Jesus. Sickness will leave people if an evil spirit is at the root of it and we will see the power of God in our everyday lives if we understand this.

The other gift that we can ask for is the gift of faith. Romans 12:3 tells us that there is a degree of faith apportioned to all of us and Matthew 17:20 tells us that faith the size of a mustard seed can move a mountain. A mustard seed is very small but if used well it can move a mountain. The Holy Spirit distributes spiritual gifts but imagine what would happen if you were given the gift of faith. I need more faith but also if faith the size of a mustard seed can move a mountain, and I dare say anyone who believes was given that, perhaps we all need less doubt. Doubt tells us it can’t be done; faith tells us anything is possible. So we actively need to combat doubt. We need to work against it as though it were something that was working against us.

When we read stories of God’s miraculous works it builds our faith and pushes doubt out of the picture. When I read Smith Wigglesworth’s stories I find myself longing for an opportunity where God will show me what He can do. Actually these opportunities are all around me and I miss them because I don’t want to look silly, or I arrogantly assume there will be another opportunity to pray or I just don’t see them! I want to pray that God will show me these opportunities. I love to read old stories but I believe we can read stories from yesterday and today and tomorrow, and I know that around the world these things are happening but I am desperate to see these things before my eyes.

The God of Smith Wigglesworth is the God of Jacob, of Abraham, of Joseph. He is the same God who told Noah to build an ark; who parted the red sea for Moses; who gave Hannah a baby; who shut the mouths of lions for Daniel. He has not changed. He is the God of our ancestors and the God of the generations to come. He is your God. He is my God and He has not changed. His power is available to us today.

I believe in miracles. Miracles happen everyday, look for them and look for opportunities to pray for them. Be thankful for seemingly small miracles because they prove God’s faithfulness and they are evidence that He is working, but pray with faith that we will see things beyond our wildest imaginations. Can you make yourself wholly available to Jesus and dedicate yourself to Him? Can you work on His behalf? It is simple, we want to do what Jesus did and He performed miracles. The disciples saw it. In Mark 6:6-13 Jesus sends out the twelve disciples and the account says in verse 13:

‘They drove out demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.’

All this is possible for those who believe. It is as simple as that.

Going back again to when I was little, if I hurt myself or had tummy ache, my Mum would very often pray at bedtime that Jesus would make it better. I went to sleep with great confidence; there was no doubt in my mind that God had done what we asked Him to; that I would wake up with no concerns. In fact I expected Him to so much that I believe often I received healing straight away, I didn’t think of it like that though, in fact I didn’t even give it another thought most of the time. I do not remember any point where God did not answer our prayers, there might’ve been some, but I don’t remember them. I know that life is so much more complicated now but the simplicity of my understanding then is still somewhere inside me. ‘Jesus can make this better’ still stands simply and powerfully on top of any sickness, or problem, or trouble. I don’t get why sometimes He doesn’t do what we hope for but I do believe our time would be well spent trying to do the things that Jesus did, instead of opening a door to doubt. Pray prayers of faith and believe that miracles do happen!  

Rejoicing and weeping

Isn’t it great when every thing in life seems to be really good, thing’s just seem to fall into place and life is easy? We find ourselves in times of great joy and yet sometimes we forget to rejoice. When things are harder we then realise how easy we had it and that we should have been more grateful. By nature we are selfish. We expect that life will go our way and when it does we forget to say thank you and when it doesn’t we struggle.

Romans 12:15 teaches us an amazing lesson and if we can grasp hold of this and let it root itself in our hearts, our hearts will beat with the heart of God. “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” NASB. (Some translations say ‘mourn with those who mourn.’)

Our Wedding day was arguably the best day of my life. I was excited and full of hope for the future. We invited others to share in our joy and it was a great day of rejoicing. I am very grateful to God that we have each other and our journey together began that day, but there had also been some very sad times and as a result amidst our rejoicing there was still a deep sadness. My husband’s brother had been killed two years before in a car accident and there was a hole where he should have been at our wedding.  His wife was with us to share the day and though she came to rejoice with us, we were also weeping alongside her. It’s not easy to go to a wedding and hear ‘til death do us part’ in the ceremony and be facing the reality of that just two years in to your marriage. But she came and we rejoiced.  We rejoiced as a family and as a family we wept too. The pain of losing a son, a husband, a brother or grandson does not go away. It changes but it remains.

When I think about this verse it sounds easy to say ‘rejoice with those who rejoice’. It’s easy to rejoice and be so pleased for others when you are happy. I often wonder though, if we get so consumed in our joy sometimes that we fail to notice those around who are sad. It is right that we rejoice. God has done, is doing and will do great things for us! We should rejoice with everything we have and with each other too but let’s be sensitive in that. Don’t be robbed of joy but don’t be insensitive. Real rejoicing is felt deeply it doesn’t have to boast; it makes your heart glad and doesn’t need to be arrogant. I want to seek to get the balance right.

If we look then at the part where it says, “Weep with those who weep”, again this poses a challenge. We can shed a tear at someone’s sadness, in that brief moment we can feel the pain of someone who has just lost someone close to them or has received bad news, but then we can easily carry on with our day. I believe that when the verse says ‘weep with those who weep’ it means keep on weeping, remember that they are in pain. Of course it is unrealistic to think that we can do that for every single member of our congregation all the time but you can do it within your circle of influence and if everyone did that we should have it covered.

We forget, when there is a lot of rejoicing, that there are many who are weeping. Time heals to an extent but it also forgets if we let it. The person who is weeping however does not forget. It is a challenge to us all to remember those who carry pain. A simple “ I was thinking of you today’, ‘that must have been hard for you’ or ‘ we still think about that person you lost you know, they won’t be forgotten’ means everything and it actually frees the ‘weeping’ person to ‘rejoice with those who rejoice’ because someone has remembered that they still carry pain and took the time to bring a word of comfort and to lift their head.

If you carry sadness it can be hard to find your place. It can feel like no one really understands and so you don’t know where you fit, but there are many who understand and if we remember that, it reminds us that we are not alone and that our experience could be of use to someone. God always works all things for good if you let him, no matter how bad it was or is.

Sadness is not your friend. It may be present in your life but don’t make friends with it. It may feel like you don’t know how to function without your friend ‘sadness’ because that is what you know and you can’t get away from it, or you might actually have got yourself comfortable there or even worse, that your sadness has turned to self pity. Please don’t get me wrong on this one. I am not saying that pain isn’t real, it is, but if we get stuck in a place where sadness has become a ‘friend’ then self-pity can get in and self-pity stinks! Pain is real and raw. Self-pity clings on to a time when pain was really deep and it tells you that you deserve to feel sorry for yourself and that you deserve for others to feel sorry for you even if actually the pain is not as bad as it was. We must get this balance right and be responsible for our actions and decisions. Check yourself to see if actually your need for others to weep with you is about attention. Check that you are not using something that has happened to you as a reason for not rejoicing with others because you get attention from it. It doesn’t mean that it is not hard but you have a choice to make to try and move away from self-pity for the sake of someone else’s joy. In fact, the antidote to self-pity is ‘rejoicing with those who rejoice’ genuinely! You might have to force yourself to do it at first but it will turn from a choice you made into your natural joyful reaction before long.

I came across this challenging quote:

‘Those who show pity and are always ready to help during times of trouble are seldom the same ones who rejoice in our joy: when others are happy they have nothing to do, they become superfluous and lose their feeling of superiority, and so they easily show their displeasure. Friedrich Nietzsche.’

It is not always the case, of course, that people need to feel superior in their pain to have a role but there is a danger of it. Please don’t become someone who is superfluous because you have nothing to do if people around you are rejoicing, instead find your place in the midst of rejoicing with others and let go of self-pity.

There is a challenge to all of us to ‘weep with those who weep’ and not think so much about ourselves, but I think that actually it is a bigger challenge to ‘rejoice’ when we are weeping. It is very hard to feel joy when you are jealous that someone has the thing that you desperately want or if you are just genuinely filled with sorrow. Their rejoicing can feel as though they are being smug but often they are just rejoicing and it is our view that is distorted. People should be rejoicing and if we are suffering it is a massive challenge to join them in their joy but it is to our honour if we can try.

In Mark 9 we read of a story of a boy with an evil spirit. When the spirit sees Jesus he sends the boy into convulsions and Jesus asks how long as he been like this? His father tells Jesus that it has been since birth and he says, “But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us” Jesus replies, “If you can? Everything is possible for one who believes.”

We can be sure that the one who knows our deepest pain is Jesus and that he pities us. He feels great compassion towards us. The father of this boy says ‘take pity on us and help us’. We can say that to Jesus when we feel sad. We can make a choice to rejoice with those who rejoice, even in our sadness and ask Him to help us. If we want to rejoice we will be able to rejoice because ‘everything is possible for one who believes’. I am reminded again of Philippians 4:13  ‘I can do all things through him who gives me strength’. It can take all the strength we have, and then some, to make the choice to rejoice but we can do it through Christ, who is our source of strength.

If we understand again what Jesus did for us, we can rejoice. I remember one Sunday morning at church, I was in the worship team and we were singing a song called ‘rejoice’. At that time, life was great for me, but then I saw someone walk into the back of church and I knew that her sister had died that week. It felt flippant to be singing ‘rejoice’ when she had had the worst week of her life, but actually it wasn’t flippant. It was deep and true. “Let all that seek the Lord rejoice” we sang. I watched her and she lifted her hands to God in worship and I knew that she understood that the joy of the Lord was her strength that morning.

If we rejoice we don’t forget our sadness and equally, if we cry with someone we don’t forget our joy. There should always be lots of rejoicing but also lots of remembering: lots of praising God for His goodness but also acknowledging the need for His help.

Rejoice with those who rejoice: Weep with those who weep.

It is no coincidence in my mind that these two opposites were pulled together into the same verse and this verse describes the family of God. Let’s try to get the balance right.

In the waiting room

A waiting room is a strange place. Sometimes it is filled with lots of people all waiting to find out the outcome to their predicament and other times you are alone and the waiting seems to take forever. We have all spent time in one at some point in our lives. For some it feels like we spend our lives in a waiting room. For others we find ourselves in a waiting room at certain points for different reasons. For others we may pass through them from time to time and it’s not usually pleasant but it doesn’t last long. However you see the waiting room when you are in it, it is very hard to look beyond the thing that you are waiting for. You might be able to distract yourself momentarily with a magazine or a game on your phone but it is momentary: ultimately you are there for a reason and you want to leave the waiting room to find the outcome of your visit. God is in the waiting room with you. It may not always feel like He is but He is.

You may feel that you spend your life in the hypothetical waiting room. It may feel like others join you but they get to go in first. You may have seen that happen time and again. People walk in, and walk out with a smile on the face having received good news. You may feel as a result you have been overlooked and so you go to the desk and say, “Have I been forgotten?” And they says, “No we are running on time. Please take a seat!” you may have asked God and had no response. So you wait… and…wait and you reside yourself to the fact that you are stuck in the waiting room and it may feel like life is passing you by.

For others you may find yourself unexpectedly in the waiting room. You never thought you would be sitting there at this time. You thought you would nip in and out with the outcome that you wanted and now you are forced to wait and it’s not fair and it feels lonely. It might be life changing and the waiting room is not where you want to be.

You might be someone who is comfortable with waiting rooms. You find it easy to chat with people and are happy to smile while you wait. The waiting room has never been anything more than somewhere you go every so often because you have to but it is usually quick and painless. It is inconvenient but that’s all it is.

Which ever of these images suits you best, and maybe it is more than one, the waiting room can feel like a place where you wouldn’t choose to be. You may feel like your place is found in the waiting room because that’s all you know. It will not remain there. You were not born to sit still, watching people go in and out before you. Sometimes we can choose to leave our waiting room. We may have gone there because we thought that was where we thought we should go but the waiting has actually led us to the conclusion that we are in the wrong place at the wrong time so we can choose to change our circumstance and get up and leave.

The Bible says that patience produces perseverance. These two attributes are the fruit of the waiting room. We don’t wait so that God can teach us these things, we wait and these are the fruits that God brings. He will enlarge us in the waiting room if we let Him. At the start of the year Pastor Duane White from Texas came to speak to our church. He said, “There is opportunity in your inconvenience”. There is opportunity in the waiting room to chat with others, to lift someone’s head and to let faith arise. I was stirred to look for opportunities that could come out of my situation: my waiting room. I looked for fruit and I found it.  God gave me ‘beauty for ashes’. Inconvenience is inconvenient. We don’t want it but it will remain in our lives so we have to choose to look for opportunity in it. We persevere. We learn patience and God makes us beautiful. We must also remember that waiting is temporary. It will not last forever.

Someone very close to me recently found herself unexpectedly in the waiting room. Her journey was hard and very painful and the actual hospital waiting room that she found herself in was cold, bare and lacking anything that would bring hope. She decided that she would invest some time into planning how to change that room, and make it warmer and hopeful and take the presence of God into that room. She did not want anyone else to have to sit in there while their world was falling apart surrounded by emptiness. She wanted a sense of hope in that room. She chose to bring something beautiful out of her ‘waiting room’ experience and I believe that in other people’s sad times that room will be a place where God can bring hope again. She handled her waiting room with grace and insisted that good would come from it and it will.

The devil will tell you that God wants you in the waiting room, that it is His will that you remain there until you have learnt your lesson. It isn’t true. God can teach you in the waiting room but He has not put you there to punish you. Throughout the waiting I found it hard to pray “Your will be done” because I thought it meant that I wouldn’t be given what I was waiting for, that I was accepting the punishment that I deserved in some strange way but that wasn’t the case at all. I was scared, but I felt that when I let go and started to pray “Your will be done” God reminded me of the rest of the sentence. “Your will be done ON EARTH AS IN HEAVEN”. When we pray ‘Your will be done” we are saying, “God bring Heaven to earth” or “God invade earth with Heaven”. Revelation 21:4 says”

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death, or mourning, or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

Sad news is not given in Heaven. People are not lonely in Heaven. We don’t need to cry in Heaven. Heaven is not the waiting room; it’s the real thing. When we pray “Your will be done” it is good. We all want Heaven to come to earth and we see glimmers of it even in the waiting room. I want to do what I can to usher Heaven down to earth, and so I shout without fear but with confidence “Your will be done!”

This verse says that ‘the old order has passed away’. At the moment we live in the old order of things, we experience glimpses of Heaven here on earth, but we live in a fallen world. Things go wrong. They don’t always follow the order of Heaven. Too many of us spend time in waiting rooms, we waste time worrying and tears can become a normal part of the waiting room but they are temporary. Psalm 30:5 says, “weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning”.

Maybe, instead of asking ourselves how long must I be here, we should be asking ourselves the question, how will I behave while I am here? How we behave in those times will determine our future. God feels silent sometimes. But He is there. If He hasn’t spoken to you recently think about what He said to you last time and keep doing what you are doing. When we seek out opportunity in our inconvenience we look for ways to bring glimpses of Heaven to earth.

We have to trust God’s perfect timing. This is not a cliché. It is not something that I say lightly because waiting is hard, but it is true. God knows what He is doing even we don’t. He is on time. Please don’t try to take things into your own hands, tempting as it is, and make things happen, God opens doors, He knows. Habakkuk 2:3 says this: ‘There is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and it does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay.’

If God appoints something over your life it will happen, even if it looks like it won’t, it will! And we must keep focused on God’s promises over our lives. Does our vision or dream remain clear or have we let it go because waiting was too hard?

Look for opportunity in the waiting room. What can you do for others in this time? What have you learnt that you can pass on? What does God want to do with you? Will you let Him shape you? Will you trust his timing? Somewhere, something is waiting to be known and it is in our hands to find it. Don’t miss the opportunities because of impatience and heartache but make the most of them. We are clay in God’s hands, look for beauty in the molding and ask yourself this question: Who is God making me into? You can be sure the waiting is not in vain. He will give you beauty for ashes and He will work everything for good.

Why am I here?

Is life just a cycle of occurrences? We get up, we have breakfast, we go to work or school, we have lunch, we come home, we have tea, we clear up, we go to bed. There are many things about life that are just mundane. We can get trapped in them. We have to do them, but there is more: there is more than we could hope for. Imagine if we really understand what our purpose is on this earth. You know, this world is temporary, it is a breath in eternity, but it matters. It matters how we choose to spend our time. It matters that we understand our purpose.

You may feel that you are not sure where you fit, that you don’t know what your gifts are. There are some things you need to understand. When we become part of the family of God we get our purpose. You might say, “Well I’ve been a Christian for a long time and I still don’t know what mine is, so that’s not exactly true”. You have missed some vital Biblical truths and the sooner you can grasp these, the sooner you will step into the promises of God and find your place in this world. I believe there are three simple points that, if we can grasp them fully, will help us understand why we are here.

The first thing is that we are the salt of this earth, the light of the world. This may be a familiar verse to you, so familiar in fact, that you may have become immune to it’s power. In Matthew 5 verses 13-16, Jesus says:

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt looses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot. You are the light of the world. A town on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand and it give light to everyone in the house. In the same way let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in Heaven.”

This is what Jesus is saying to you today. The Message puts it like this:

“Let me tell you why you are here. You’re here to be salt seasoning that brings out the God-flavours of this earth. If you loose your saltiness, how will people taste godliness? You’ve lost your usefulness and will end up in the garbage. Here’s another way to put it: You’ve here to be light, bringing out the God-colours in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I’m putting you on a lamp stand. Now that I have put you there on a hill top, on a lamp stand-shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open to up with God, this generous Father in heaven.”

This is why we are here. This world needs people who will bring out the ‘God flavours’ of this earth: people who will bring out the ‘God-colours’. Our world sees limited colour. We think we can see God-colours, but we haven’t seen anything yet. When something goes from black and white to colour we see more detail. The picture comes alive, but it can also expose more flaws. In a way our job is to expose the God colours by going to the areas of black and white and bringing life to them. This is true in our own lives too. The devil does not want us to see full colour so he is working to get rid of colour, to keep things dark. The Bible brings colour. Jesus brings colour. We bring colour, but the way our eyes see these colours in an earthly realm is nothing compared to the colour of heaven. Those colours are indescribable but we can see glimpses here if we work hard enough to find them. We can expose them in places where the devil believes we will never go. So turn your light on and let it shine, let it bring out colours that we have never seen before. We were not born to live in black and white, we were born to understand colour and to expose the beauty of it in our every day lives. Be people who make generosity something that cannot be contained. Be open with your lives and your homes.

The second thing we need to understand is that we are here to take ground. You have heard the saying, “You are here to leave a footprint”? Well imagine that everywhere you tread you have the potential to take that piece of ground for the Kingdom of heaven. Where we put our feet matters. We are in a war and our purpose is to take ground. The enemy is a thief. He has stolen ground and we need to take it back. Ephesians 6:12 says this: “ For our struggle is not against the enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

We need to recognise that in this world the devil is working. He is into degeneration and he works against regeneration which of course is what God is about. God wants to regenerate our lives, our cities and towns and the people around us. When we decide that where we put our feet matters, we will take back a bit of the power of degeneration and put back some regeneration, resurrection power. Sometimes we just go. We feed the hungry, we stand up for justice, we bring colour wherever we go, but sometimes we have to be willing to pick up our swords and fight for that piece of ground. That is why, if you read the following few verses in Ephesians, we are told to put on the full armour of God. The victory is won. We don’t need to be afraid but this stuff is real and we have to be prepared.

Sometimes we need to acknowledge as the Bible says that our battle is not with flesh and blood but with the ‘cosmic powers of darkness.’ That means that we need to fight to keep relationships good within the body of Christ. If you fall out with someone, put it right straight away because otherwise you leave an open door for the devil to get in and disturb the peace. Someone may have done something to you but the bigger issue is what the devil will do with that situation if you don’t sort it out straight away. None of us can fight this fight alone. We need the armour of God and we need each other. Today you can mend a broken relationship. ‘Sorry’ should be an easy word for us. When we say sorry, whether we are right or wrong, we take back a bit of ground. If the enemy has taken something from you, get your armour on, call on the army of God (E.g. the family of God), go together and take it back for the glory of God. Our purpose is to build the Kingdom until Jesus returns.

The third thing that we are here for is to make Jesus famous. Why do we find it so hard to tell people who He is and what He can do? It is not hard to tell someone your story because we can assume that God is already working on their story. People cannot argue with our stories. No one can say “that didn’t happen to you” because it did! Psalm 45: 17 in The Message says, “I’ll make you famous for generations; you’ll be the talk of the town for a long, long time.” What if it was Jesus who everyone was talking about? What if our stories made Him famous? What if the love we show reveals His love for all? I want to make this Psalm my mantra “I will make you famous”.

We can make Jesus famous by telling stories of His goodness but we also need to remember that we can make Jesus famous by the way we live our lives. This works both ways. If we are here to show Jesus to others it really matters how we live. We might be someone’s first introduction to Jesus and I don’t want them to look at me and say “if that is what Christianity is like then I don’t need it.” It matters. Don’t be known for being someone who is always complaining, someone who is selfish or tight, someone who does not look after our world but rather as someone who sees beauty and goodness and life at every opportunity. That doesn’t mean we won’t make mistakes; we will, but we have got to try not to. We can see miracles if we do what Jesus did and they will make him famous. Be careful that you are not trying to make yourself famous. We are nothing without the grace of God.

So how are you interpreting your faith? The way you interpret the Bible is what others see. If you are not reading your Bible you can guarantee you are not interpreting it as well as you could, because you don’t know what it says! How we interpret our faith is how others see Jesus. We don’t need to go shouting on every street corner or pressurising people into thinking how we do, we just need to lift His name higher in our lives and our households and make it our mission to make Him famous in a credible way. People know if what we say and what we do don’t match up. Work hard on your character; it matters. Colossians 3:1 in The Message says, ““So if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ-that’s where the action is. See things from His perspective.” If you are serious about trying to be more like Jesus: act like it! It matters.

So why are we here? We are here for purpose.

We are here to:

1.    Bring out the God-flavours and God-colours of this world.

2.    Take ground and expose the work of the enemy.

3.    Make Jesus famous.

If you don’t know your purpose, there it is. Do these things first and the rest will follow. Don’t miss these truths because you may have heard these verses before. God has a plan for you beyond what you could ever dream or imagine. You are not a mistake or an accident. You are a child of God and you do not need to fear. Keep going; keep loving, and don’t give up.

Do our lives really matter? More than we will ever know.

I submit!

Do you remember in the 90s there was a real craze of wrestling? I am sure you know who the ‘Undertaker’ was or ‘Hulk Hogan’. This craze did not pass my brothers by and, most days, wrestling would be on their agenda in some form. Sometimes they would play with their figures in a ‘wrestling ring’ made probably from a shoe box and some string, and sometimes they would get Dad involved and have a ‘Royal Rumble’ in the living room! On occasions I was known to partake in these rumbles and me and my two younger brothers would wrestle my Dad, while my mum and baby brother looked on. We knew that if we clenched our fist and rubbed it on the side of Dad’s neck he would squirm and if another were to tickle him at the same time he would submit! So we would pin him to the floor shouting “Submit?” And he would say “No way!” so one of us would try the clenched fist thing and eventually he would have to say “I submit!”

There was a time in my life, I am sorry to say, that these kind of occurrences happened most days. The only way we could get Dad to submit was for all three of us to work as a team against him, but he somehow managed to get all three of us to submit in one round. After that, very often, one of us would go off in a bit of a strop because we were made to submit when we didn’t want to and we were taken out of the game!

The term “I submit!” was familiar in our house growing up but it is only now that I recognise the importance of it. I am not talking about Royal Rumbles or the act of doing an elbow drop!! I am talking about the significance of being able to submit to God. God will not necessarily pin us to the floor and say “Submit?” but He is asking us to ‘give in’, to ‘yield’ our own will to Him. James 4:7 says, ‘Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Resist the devil and He will flee from you.’

Do you ever feel like life is one big wrestling match, that just when you think you have fought one battle another one appears? We try to resist the devil in these times and stand up to him because we have authority over him, but still battles come. Joyce Meyer says that we have to look at this verse as a whole and understand that the first part says ‘submit to God’. If we say that the enemy is under our feet but we don’t fully submit to God, he (the devil) still has a way in. I think that means that if we are not willing to submit a particular aspect of our life to God, the devil will use that as a way in and he will bring destruction with him, but if we are able to say whatever you are asking of me Lord I will do it, we are able to walk in peace and then the devil does not know what to do with us, he will flee from us.

God knows who we are: better than we do. The Bible says that He will work all things for the good of those who love Him. We have to be able to trust that He will do that. We can say, “What if He doesn’t do what I want Him to? What if he doesn’t answer my prayer in my timing?” By human nature it is difficult for us to let go of our own will but with God it is safe. He knows what is best and it will always be something that is good, even if it doesn’t feel like it at the time. It can be uncomfortable but if we spend our lives always doing what we want to do we will very possibly carry with us a low level of pain all the time.

I once heard one of the pastors at my church, describe the book of James as “Exfoliation with a rasp!” Ouch! But we cannot ignore the truth in it. Chapter 4 verses 13-17 say this:

‘Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.” Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wishes, we will live or do this or that”. As it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the right things to do and fails to do it, commits sin.’

That is a challenging verse, but there it is, plain as day, if you know you are being disobedient to God you are sinning. If you know that the speed limit is 60 and you are doing 75 you commit a sin. If you know that you are allowed to park in a space for 1 hour and you leave it there all day you are committing a sin! If you know that God is asking you to give something up and your stubborn nature will not let you do it, you are committing a sin! Wow! I can be very stubborn. I find it very difficult to give in, my husband will tell you this, but I have to submit my stubborn ways to God and give Him full charge of my life.

When there is no known sin in our lives we can walk in peace. I said it earlier, but I will say it again, the devil does not know what to do with you if you have peace in your life and in order to keep that peace you have to let God rule. We loose peace when we try and do things our way. Colossians 3:15 says, ‘And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful’. The Message translation puts it like this ‘Let the peace of God keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness.’

We are in a war, the only way to win is submit to God and keep hold of His peace. That is the thing that will keep us marching forward as His great army. We need to question our movements by asking ourselves if we feel the peace of God in the decision we have made. If we don’t we mustn’t do it. We mustn’t do life on our own, it doesn’t work if we just try to do it our way. We need to be so thankful every day that we serve a God that loves us so much that if we submit everything to Him, He will bring us good things, things beyond what our hopes were.

Sometimes we might need to ask ourselves the difficult question “What will happen to my faith if I don’t get what I want?” If you are asking yourself that question please do all you can to make your answer, “I will keep going. I will keep building the kingdom and the enemy will not get a foot hold in my life.” Smith Wigglesworth, in his sermon What Wilt Thou Have me to Do? Written in October 1914 says this “If God can have His way today, the ministry of somebody will begin; it always begins as soon as you yield.’’ If you don’t know where you place is submit everything to God and your ministry will begin.

If you are stuck in a rut and you need to let go of your own will, can you say “What will you have me do Lord?” Smith Wigglesworth tells the story of a Russian man who was very much used by God and amazing manifestations of the power of God were seen around him. People asked him what his secret was and he said,

“First God called me, and His presence was so precious, that I said to God at every call I would obey Him, and I yielded and yielded and yielded, until I realised that I was simply clothed with another power altogether, and I realised that God took me, tongue, thoughts, everything, and I was not myself but it was Christ working through me?”

I know the word ‘yielded’ seems like an old fashioned term but it carries so much meaning with it. To yield means to surrender, to give over, to relinquish. It also implies the idea of producing or profiting, like a farmer would yield a good crop. If we yield ourselves to the will of God, if we give everything over to Him we will profit from it because God is good and He can be trusted. I want God to work through me more than anything. It has not been easy to come to that conclusion because it can be very hard to give up something you really want but nevertheless, here I am, saying I will yield my will to His.

God did not get me in a headlock shouting “submit?!” If we want to see the advancement of the kingdom of God, if we want God to use us in a powerful way we have to be obedient to Him and we have to submit. In fact it is not actually that hard to assume that our creator, the one who knows us better than anyone else, might actually have a plan that exceeds our expectations. The choice is ours but the outcome will always, in the long term, be good and God is to be trusted. We can walk peacefully as Jesus did, knowing that He has the victory and the enemy is under our feet.

Move

“For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “move from here to there”, and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you”.

When I was a little girl I always wondered what the point of moving a mountain was. I saw this verse very literally and believed that God could move a physical mountain to a different place if I had faith the size of a mustard seed but I never really got why he would want to. It is only as I have got older that I have realised that a mountain is a metaphor for our situations. The mountain is the problem in your life. A mountain is anything that is a barrier to you completing God's Will. A mountain is anything that is slowing down or getting in the way of your progress in the Kingdom of God.

You may find yourself daunted by your mountain. You may find yourself circling around it wishing and praying that someone would move it, but you will never find your place here. If your mountain is a hindrance to you moving into the things of God you have to GET UP and tell it to move.

I found myself at the foot of two mountains, both seemingly immovable. My husband and I felt we had done everything to try and keep going, working around them, facing them head on, fasting, praying, believing wholeheartedly that God would step in. At the time I didn’t acknowledge these problems as mountains, they were problems that we believed God could solve. We were waiting on some miracles and then one day we day we thought that we had received one. The relief I felt was immense. I cried out of relief and thankfulness and belief that God had done all that I had asked him to. A week later our dream was shattered and the miracle was not there anymore, it was a mistake. I hit the bottom but at the bottom I was reminded of the power of the resurrection and I got up again.

For the first time I saw our problems as mountains. There were two and to us they were big. We couldn’t climb them and I did not want to stand at the foot of them. I recognized that I could tap in to the power of the resurrection and I was desperate for these mountains to move. I couldn’t see clearly and I was so distracted from the will of God and who He wanted me to be that I had to do something about it.

I was reminded of the verse: “For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “move from here to there”, and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you”.

So I sat at the top of my stairs and something stirred in me and I began to whisper “Move!” God knows what our mountains are and ours felt very big to me at that moment, but nevertheless I carried on “Move!” “Move!” The thing that was stirring in me turned into something much louder than a whisper and I started to speak it out “Move!” “Move!” “In the name of Jesus move!” “Move!” Imagine the scenario, what must the neighbours have thought? But in the end I didn’t care, and an anger against the power of hell rose up in me and I screamed louder, “Move! Move! MOOOVE!” and then, after a few minutes, a peace descended on me that I can’t explain. In my minds eye, I couldn’t really see the mountain any more. It was vague and hazy, and the thing that seemed so big didn’t feel quite as big anymore. I saw that God was uprooting it. My outlook changed and I felt lighter. He was moving it and I believe that by faith I moved a mountain that day. As the days unfolded I recognized it was not there anymore.

God is moved by faith. I don’t understand why sometimes He moves mountains and other times it seems like He doesn’t. If it looks like He hasn’t think about what you can do, have you spoken to it? Have you told it to move? Do you really believe it can move or are you comfortable at the bottom of it because it provides you with an excuse as to why you are not moving forward? Some people describe the mountain in full detail to God and ask Him to move it. Maybe the reason that we are told to move the mountain is because it is us who view it in this way, we are causing the blockage between us and God with our blurred vision. I am not saying don’t pray about your problems, of course you should, but when there is a mountain it is worth telling it to move. When you do it, don’t look at the mountain, look through it to what is beyond. Look into the eyes of Jesus because He is the one who will move it. I believe He can move mountains, I have seen it, but you have to tell it.

If you don’t talk to your mountain your mountain will talk to you. It will tell you it can’t be moved: It’s too big. The mountains in my life seemed immovable and the devil kept telling me that God wasn’t going to do what I hoped for. He is a LIAR! He doesn’t know the future. The truth is he is scared that God will do exactly what we ask in faith and he loves to tell us it can’t be done, that it is impossible, that God doesn’t love us enough, that we are not worthy of a miracle, that the sin we committed isn’t really forgiven. He is a LIAR! God is the only one who knows the future but we can see glimmers of it in faith when we look beyond the mountain and we can be confident that beyond the mountain is the goodness of God. So don’t listen if your mountain talks to you, it will bring doubt and anxiety. Don’t stand there looking at it. It will overwhelm you and overtake you, but speak to it, shout at it, command it to move in Jesus’ name.

The interesting thing for me is that over a period of three or four days I went from hitting the bottom of the ocean, to tapping in to the power of the resurrection, to moving a mountain. My circumstances did not change. They still remain but the mountain, the blockage, moved. I can see more clearly now what is on the other side of the mountain, in fact most days I can see that more clearly than what is actually in front of me.

“Faith apprehends as real fact what is not revealed to the senses, it rests on that fact, acts upon it and is upheld by it in the face of all that seems to contradict it. Faith is real seeing.” (Vincent)

Faith is real seeing. Even when everything seems to contradict it we can be upheld by faith that our God is a God who moves mountains. I like the part where it says, “acts upon it!” Act as though your miracle is on it’s way. Get ready because God is moving. Make plans in faith that your mountain will not prevent you from moving forward. Make a decision to move. Get up and move!!! You do it! No-one else will move that mountain for you. You do it and keep looking to what is next.

Interestingly when our mountain has gone we have some choices to make. Are we going to let ourselves go back there? Will we keep going even though our circumstances haven’t necessarily changed? We must be obedient to Jesus. We have to learn to be obedient to Him and yield everything to him. The mountain is the blockage and when it’s gone are we able to yield our miracle? What I mean is, are we able to submit to God and say, “Whatever you want me to do I will do it, even if I don’t get what I want in the timing that I want?” He will work all things for good and He can be trusted. In his letter to the Philippians Paul writes in chapter 4 verses 11-13 “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all things through Him who gives me strength.”

Paul shows us that it is possible to be content even if our circumstances are not as we hoped they would be. We can settle and find peace if we move our mountains, the things that are a blockage between us and God, and we can move forward into His will with faith and confidence that all things are possible and that we can do ‘all things through Christ who strengthens’ us. Tell your mountain to move and then learn to be content to be in God’s will. That is where our place is and it is the best place to be. 

There He is!

Have you ever found yourself surrounded by darkness? At the bottom of the ocean or in the deepest valley and you feel that God is nowhere to be found there? It is a frightening place to be. It can feel like life is caving in on you and you don’t know how to breathe. It is in those moments, when God seems so far away, that we have to look harder to find Him. Jeremiah 29: 13 says, ‘When you search for me, you will find me’. It is very hard to muster up the strength and courage to go looking when you can’t see a way out of your trouble, or when all that seems to be around you is dark, but it is in those times that we have a choice to make and that choice will determine our future. He is there, He is closer than we think but some times we can’t feel Him.

When I was younger, my grandad died. He was a man of great faith and we prayed and prayed that God would heal him. God didn’t heal Him here on earth and when it was his time to go he knew exactly where he was going. He told my grandma that he could see angels coming to take him home and when he died he left traces of heaven in the bedroom. My grandma was there and my dad and uncle were with her. She was overcome with grief. That moment was the darkest moment of her life. She couldn’t feel God but my dad and my uncle could. In fact they tangibly encountered the presence of God in that room and they shook because of it. I tell that story because in the darkest place was God. My Grandma couldn’t feel Him but the others could. He was there, in that room. The power of the resurrection was in that room.

I want to look for a moment at the book of Jonah. When we think about Jonah, we think about a man who disobeyed God, was swallowed by a big fish, then was spat out and went to Nineveh. Sometimes we even picture scenes from the Disney film ‘Pinocchio’ and we imagine the story, as a child would, with Jonah in the belly of the fish alive and well, with his boat and his cat to keep him company. Maybe that’s just me! But this book is powerful. There is part of this story that I have missed every time and it was opened up to me by my dad.

So we find Jonah in a boat with some sailors. He is trying to flee the presence of the Lord, but God sends a storm and the sailors are frightened because they know that it is God who has caused the storm. Jonah owns up to being the problem and eventually they throw him overboard. The storm immediately stops. Then God provides a large fish to swallow Jonah and out of the belly of the fish Jonah cries out to God, saying

“I called to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried and you heard my voice.” Jonah 2:2.

The rest of the prayer that follows is Jonah’s psalm of thanksgiving, but if we stop here and look at what is written we find an interesting thing. It is written, ‘out of the belly of Sheol’. The term ‘Sheol’ in Hebrew means a grave or pit. It was thought by the early Hebrews to be the place where the dead gathered and was believed to be located beneath the earth, perhaps at the roots of mountains. The dead were thought to lead a conscious shadowy existence there, they were not in torment, but had neither hope nor satisfaction. Some thought they remained cut off from God. So Jonah is in great distress and ‘out of the belly of Sheol’ he cried and God heard him. You could argue that Jonah had sunk to the bottom of the sea, in fact he could’ve drowned and found himself in Sheol. If he had died this means that God provided a fish to swallow up his body and it remained dead inside the fish for three days and three nights. When God heard his cry from Sheol, He told the fish to spit him out on to dry land and in fact, after three days and nights God brought him back to life. This could well have been a resurrection.

In the darkest place we can call out to the Lord out of our distress and he will answer. He is our provider. For Jonah it was a fish, for us it is the thing that sustains us. He will bring us out of our ‘Sheol’.

Now the other interesting thing about this is that Jonah remained in the fish for three days and nights. This fact is referred to in the book of Matthew and in the book of Luke. Matthew 12:38-42 tells us that the story of Jonah is a sign. It says “For just as Jonah was for three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” Jonah was a sign to the people of Nineveh and so Jesus is a sign to this generation. He was and is greater than Jonah. He is the resurrection!

Does death have the last word? Rob Bell says in his video Resurrection:

‘Resurrection announces that God has not given up on the world because this world matters, this world that we call home, dirt and blood and sweat and skin and light and water; this world that God is redeeming and restoring and renewing. Greed and violence and abuse they are not right and they cannot last because they belong to death and death does not belong. Resurrection says that what we do with our lives matters, in this body the one that we inhabit right now. So every act of compassion matters, every work of art that celebrates the good and the true matters, every fair and honest act of business and trade, every kind word they all belong and they will all go on in God’s good world. Nothing will be forgotten, nothing will be wasted it all has it’s place. Everybody believes something, everybody believes somebody. Jesus invites us to trust resurrection; that every glimmer of good, every hint of hope, every impulse that elevates the soul is a sign, a taste and glimpse of how things actually are and how things ultimately will be. Resurrection affirms this life and the next as a seem-less reality embraced graced and saved by God. There is an unexpected, mysterious presence who meets each of us in our lowest moments, when we have no strength, when we have nothing left.’  

When we can’t find God we must look at the resurrection. We must ask him to resurrect our hope and strength from the depths of the ocean, from our Sheol. We must look to the power of the resurrection. You know the Bible says that the same power that conquered the grave lives in us! In us! We must tap into that power and get up. We have a choice: do we let the enemy take us out or do we trust the power of the resurrection?

Nobody wants the suffering. Jesus didn’t want the suffering but He knew that after three days He would be brought back to life. God is our provider. God has seen to it. When our eyes are fixed on Him, there is where we will find our source of power: this resurrection power. When we wonder where Jesus is we can be sure He is not dead in the tomb! Whenever you touch someone’s life, resurrection power is there. There He is! in the resurrection.

You can find Him in the wind, in the trees, in creation. I found Him at the beach again. I found Him whilst looking for shells with my family, whilst hearing my children shouting ‘Wow! Look at this one!” whilst looking at a piece of glass that had been smoothed out by the torment of the waves of the sea and I saw myself as that piece of glass. Broken but beautiful and smoother because I choose to let God use the stormy waves to shape me. There He is! (At the beach in winter.) There He is! (In the flowers in spring.) There He is! In the resurrection and we can never be the same again. Will you trust the power of the resurrection? Trust that it can lift you out of the grave and into life? There He is! He is on the beach.