Humbled by hard core missions!

Had a great time at the recent conference and thanks to all of you who prayed for us. I spoke twice the first time on how to create a local church culture that both preaches the gospel and demonstrates it with signs and wonders. It was a real priviledge to share some of the lessons that God has taught is although I struggled to communicate it via translation – speaking so quickly one translator nearly melted down. It was also about 35 degrees in the room and its the first time ive preached with a towel! I shall never complain about the temperature in our school hall again! However God is good and we had at least 3 people healed by the end of the session and many more encounters. Second session was helping these leaders get free from junk that is robbing them of their identity in Christ and it was wonderful to see the power of our risen Jesus delivering releasing and binding up broken hearts. What a saviour!

Overall though I received more than I gave and come back the richer. It was so humbling to talk to people who are on the front line of missions in some of the most extreme countries in the world. Talked with one guy who’s gospel tv broadcast is watched by 1 million people in a very non Christian state! His life is under threat especially after he led some people to Christ live on air yet although he has a young family he is quite matter of fact about the risks and considers it worth it for the sake of christ.

Another guy I spoke to was telling me that of the 50 native believers in their church (they’ve been on the nation 16 years) it was wonderful to know how many had come to faith through divine encounters. One lady had bad epilepsy until Jesus appeared to her in a dream and cut her with a shining sword. Black smoke poured out of her wrists and she woke up. It didn’t take her many days to realise that her epilepsy was healed and after the doctors confirmed that she was clear she wasted no time in finding the closest church despite the risks. She quickly gave her life to Christ and her son is now too a believer.

Another young couple left their young children for a year with their parents to go away to study at bible school as they needed to have crash course to equip them to lead a church. It was wonderful to see them both touched dramatically by the love of God and as we prayed again for the wife the next day she saw fire all around her and even the tablecloth was on fire. We’re expectant of mighty signs and wonders when they return to their extreme Islamic state!

The whole thing made me realise afresh how critical that we make the most of every opportunity to share the love of Christ wherever we go – and particularly to those who are in the UK from otherwise closed nations. Is there more we can do to reach them?

But it’s great to be flying back to the uk and can’t wait to see Caroline and the kids. Here’s to more when Peter Jackson arrives tomorrow.

If you do get a minute to pray please pray for my sleep. I haven’t slept well for around 2 weeks now and batteries are running low.

Vision and more

We had a great vision Sunday at KA yesterday reminding ourselves what God has done but also what he plans to do. It’s such a priviledge to lead a church of people so on fire for Jesus and willing to contend for breakthrough in our town and nation. Looking back over the year we were so excited to realise that 26 people have made commitments to Christ so far this year and around 60 people have testified to being healed or improved when prayed for on a Sunday. That’s on top of the 60 or so weve seen healed on the streets this year. What an awesome God we serve who’s taken us from such a place of unbelief and moved us to begin to believe him for the impossible. It was so encouraging for me to think that every Sunday 1.5 people will be healed and every other week someone is giving their lives to Jesus. It changes our expectation somewhat! Anyway if you missed the message it should be online later today hereand I tried to pack in as many great stories from the year as I could to stir us to expect more!

Heading off overseas today to speak at a Newfrontiers conference for people working overseas (bit vague due to the nature of where they are working!) – would appreciate your prayers for more breakthrough and a rise of faith for people to see what were regularly seeing now in Bedford in nations all over the planet. Hope to learn also from these guys – some of whom are working in extreme situations. Your thoughts and prayers also for Caroline and the kids – particularly ethan who had a real hard time with me leaving this time.

And then back on thursday for our Fathers heart conference. Can’t wait to meet up again with Peter Jackson and catch hold of more of my heavenly Fathers heart. It’s all about the presence!

Catching up on healings and salvations whilst I’ve been on holiday

Been back from holiday this week and it’s been great to catch up on some of the healings and salvations that have happened over the last few weeks. In total 7 first time commitments (3 on Sundays and 4 at New Day youth conference), 1 recommitment and numbers healed. Thank God Jesus doesn’t take a holiday! Here’s a few of the healing stories;

Lady with a right thumb and wrist very painful, diagnosed as chronic condition – pain left after prayer

A guy who had a potentially life threatening abdominal aortic aneurysm (related to hernia) – his wife prayed and when he saw the consultant it had completely disappeared with no trace.

A guy with a trapped nerve in the shoulder 80% healed

A lady who had been told couldn’t have children due to damaged ovaries. Lady from KA prayed for her (at work I think) and 2 weeks later she was pregnant – and at least one ovary has been fully restored

A county athlete who hadn’t been able to train for a month due to ankle injury. Prayed and movement came back and most pain gone

And about 5 others! Thank you Jesus!

One last one. I’ve been challenging KA people to ask for words of knowledge particularly for visitors. Last Sunday one of our guys approached a new person with a prophetic word that left them moved to tears that God was speaking to them. At the end of the meeting this person gave their life to Christ! We serve a great God and how awe inspiring and humbling that he would choose to partner with broken people like us!

Good to be back!

Newfrontiers Together on a Mission 2009 talks now online

For those of you who couldn’t make the Newfrontiers Leadership conference this year all the talks are online and you can get them here

Also for those who’ve been asking about the session that I did on creating a culture that sees signs and wonders on the streets you can get it here

Enjoy!

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What is Twitter?

I’ve got in to the habit of using Twitter to update with short ‘micro-blog’ posts (or ‘tweets’). These are more regular but shorter updates that I send from my phone with stories of God moving, inspirational stuff I come across or other bits and pieces. If you’d like to keep updated then join twitter by clicking here

However, if you want to get these updates but don’t want to have to check another website/thingy or have to join twitter then you can get the updates by email. I use feedblitz to email out my twitter updates- just click here

Divine Justice

Bill Johnson spoke one time on the theme of divine justice and it made me think about this subject and do a little study.

In Exodus 22:1-5 God lays out his principle for justice against theft. Basically the thief when caught must repay five to two times the value – depending on the value. The greater the value, the greater the repayment. Bill made the point that this points to a greater reality – God’s justice against the greatest thief Satan.

John 10:10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

I’ve been mulling over that God is a God of justice – he loves to give justice. Numerous scriptures illustrate this (Matt 12v 18-20 etc)

But the best example is Luke 18

Luke 18:1   And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. 2 He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. 3 And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ 4 For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’” 6 And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. 7 And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? 8 I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

Here we learn that any delay is NOT an indication of God’s lack of heart for justice – the phrase ‘will he delay long over them’ is an indication of God’s tremendous heart. He longs for justice and any delay is no indication that God is uninterested or impotent. In fact this story does not explain why there is a delay. It instead teaches us two things. One – to remind us that God is a God of justice and will bring it about. Two – that the widow’s actions of repeatedly crying out for justice are a sign of faith. Jesus was concerned that this kind of faith must remain on the earth until he returns. We are not told why but perhaps the amount of injustice or the length of the delay would cause this type of persistent faith in the goodness and justice of God to shrivel up.

THE POINT. This is what God has been speaking to me about – and it applies to every area of ministry but especially to those who minister to the poor, broken, addicted etc. It’s this – whenever we lose someone to suicide or someone who was getting free goes back into drugs or even overdoses from drugs or whatever situation we face where we have loss, instead of questioning ‘why God’ we must use our pain and anger at the situation to cry out to our FATHER OF JUSTICE that he bring about HIS DIVINE JUSTICE. “Lord, give us two people set free from drugs for this one lost. Give us five clean drug addicts for this death. Give us three cases of cancer healed for this one lost. LORD we have been stolen from by a great thief and WE YOUR CHILDREN CRY OUT FOR YOU TO BRING YOUR JUSTICE BECAUSE YOU ARE GOOD AND YOUR LOVE ENDURES FOREVER AND YOU ARE JUST AND YOU SAID YOU WILL BRING JUSTICE SPEEDILY!

We should live in this place. Stand in this gap. Cry out for this breakthrough. I believe this is how we can help turn what the enemy has planned for evil into good.

So – whatever your situation, whatever your loss, whatever has been stolen or killed or destroyed. Cry out for divine justice today.

Long range breakthrough

I was talking on the phone the other day to a friend in another nation who expressed that he was experiencing some serious oppression in an area he’d previously seen real freedom. He thought it would be good to pray the next time we saw each other but I said let’s pray now. So we did and as I commanded the spiritual oppression to leave it did immediately and very noisily – I had to hold the phone away from my ear!

I was telling this story to my friend Wendy and she said that recently she prayed for a friend with a stomach ache through ‘facebook chat’ – literally typing the words ‘be healed in Jesus name!’ Her friend immediately typed back ‘all the pain is gone’

Then Caroline mentioned that her friend had also had massive deliverance whilst speaking on the phone to someone.

I take note when I hear 2 or 3 similar stories that God is on the move and speaking about what he intends. The apostle Paul saw miracles through handkerchiefs – we’re the generation that will see even more through twitter, facebook and mobiles!

Oh and if you’re sick while reading this ‘be healed in Jesus name’

One step closer

We moved one step closer to a permanent home for Kingsarms today when Roydon and I finally signed and exchanged the contract for the Crayola building. We’re not ready to move in quite yet (!) but it’s a massive hurdle overcome. It was actually a bit of an anticlimax in the end – over 2 months of waiting thinking that it could be signed any minute and in the end we didn’t even have a bottle of champers ready to celebrate. I took the obligatory photo of Roydon signing and we were done! A huge sigh of relief and thank you Lord for one more step taken. I’m increasingly excited at how we can use this 30,000 square feet to extend the kingdom of God. A guy in our church recently had a dream where he was standing in the A&E on ampthill road and there was a huge queue of people outside the gates. The nurses and doctors were wondering why the people were not coming inside and in the dream he went out to investigate. When he reached the people he found that instead of queing for the hospital they were in fact waiting in line for our building (located at the other end of ampthill road) and as he approached the building he saw it had a huge green cross on the side and the clear sense that there will be two healing centres on amphill Road. Bring it Lord! What adventures of healing, salvation and kingdom advance will come from this place?

What’s also exciting is today a lady from KA was praying for a man with two hearing aids. He was completely healed! Another sign that today is a significant day of kingdom advance.

One last story. Went treasure hunting with a group in Chelmsford yesterday. We had a clue of guy in brown jacket outside argos whose son was sick. We stopped a guy and his wife and told them about our hunt. He immediately replied that his son was dead and that they had just found out. The man and wife were just walking home from the doctors where they had had a scan to find their 16 week unborn child had died in the womb. We knew immediately that we were standing on holy ground as we ministered the love of God to this poor broken couple in a busy shopping centre – the wife in tears and the husband close to it. The guy also opened up about his 4 heart attacks and we were able to pray for healing for him aswell. What a God we serve who knows our hour of greatest need and sends 2 random strangers on an errand of His mercy.

Key Quotes from Bethel trip

I’m running to catch up on returning from Bethel but I though you might like to see the key quotes that I recorded while I was there from the various speakers. You can get the full document here…

Here’s some of my favourites

“When a person learns to host the presence you can go into any situation and change the odds. The Lord is wanting to teach us to give place to the Person (of the Spirit). Host the presence – it’s a lot easier than having to think up a good prophetic word or heal them. Just host the presence and give it away.  The Lord is raising up a new company of people who host the presence. There is a major shift in thinking”

“In denominationalism we gather around truth and when we disagree we split. In apostleships people gather around fathers.”

“At our local college the contractor did not put any paths in. He planted lawn everywhere and a one year later he saw where the paths lay that had been made by the students and faculty and built paths there. The main thing is the wine – the wineskin must serve the wine.”

“Either go or send – one of the two. Every believer has that responsibility. This is the apostolic mandate.”

Thoughts from Bethel

Not much time to blog this week since returning from Bethel but for those who weren’t at King’s Arms this Sunday Julian Adams and I gave a brief outline of some of the highlights of the trip. You can get it here