Aaag!!!!!

I've had problems accessing email and my blog for a few days. Not a major calamity but annoying especially as I was dying to blog about a funny thing that happened during Annual Appeal. This is my third attempt to publish this so I might end up with three posts that are the same but nothing ventured nothing gained.

A young guy of about 18 or 19 opened the door and I gave him my usual patter that I was calling for the Salvation Army appeal envelope. He looked at me as if I had arrived from outer space and then shouted, "Mum, it's a woman from the Starvation Army!"

God Bless

Carol

I've a few moments to blog before supper. What are the significant things that God has spoken to me about this week?

Urgency
Someone who has drfited away from the Lord has been joining in fellowship with us for a couple of weeks but warned us that work will take her away very soon. I am really aware that we must not waste the opportunity we have left to really be extra alert to what God wants us to preach and to "grasp the nettle" in terms of speaking a word in season. Yet I also question this. Isn't the matter of someone's salvation always urgent given the fact than none of us know what tomorrow will bring?

Acting with authority

There was a timely word at a leaders prayer breakfast. There are some prayers that God cannot answer because there are some things God will not do for us because he has already given us what we need to deal with the situation. We want God to do this or that but God sometimes says, "No you do it with the resources I have given you." e.g forgiving someone, casting out a demon, taking each thought captive......

Christian armour
I am reading the Christian in Complete Armour by the Puritan writer William Gurnall (the modernized version) This stood out:

"Cowards never won heaven. Do not claim you are begotten of God and have his royal blood running in your veins unless you can prove your lineage by this heroic spirit: to dare to be holy in spite of men and devils. YOu should find great strength and encouragement in the knowledge that your commission is divine. God himself underwrites your battle and has appointed his own Son the captain of your salvation."

Supper awaits


God bless

Carol

On the sofa


I really wasn't feeling well yesterday so following the morning meeting crashed out on the sofa. I then watched a film on one of the God channels, which was basically about the error of separating morality from the authority of Jesus.

The film was Ok, a bit cheap budget and cheesy but there was one line in it that I can't get out of my head.

"Jesus can't save someone he can't command."

Do you agree or disagree?

Also whilst I was still "on the sofa" I received a phone call with the news that someone I had spoken to earlier in the summer about faith issues had got saved! I hasten to add that there were lots of other factors than my involvement in his decision to say yes to Jesus but I am so delighted with the news. It made my day.


God bless

Carol

Joy and sorrow

Joy
Two weeks ago I put a guitar into the hands of a young prisoner and taught him three chords. He has a natural talent for music but had never tried the guitar. Today with a beaming face he told me how excited he is about playing. A whole new world has opened up for him.

Today he also sat in the chapel group and the word of God was put into his hands. I don't think he had tried it before. I pray that a whole new world will open up for him.

Sorrow
A prison visitor and I sat with a confused and devestated young man reeling from information received in a letter that came this morning. He had enough problems and challenges already without this. I wanted to hug him but its not allowed. I pray he will know that he is not alone, he will find comfort and a way through.

For the joys and for the sorrows
The best and worst of times
For the this moment, for tomorrow
And all that lies behind
Fears that crowd around us
For the failure of my plans
For the dreams of all I hope to be
The truth of what I am

For this I have Jesus
For this I have Jesus


(Graham Kendrick 1994)

Harvest

I am and have constantly been encouraged by the words of Zechariah 4:10 in the Message translation says, "Does anyone dare despise this day of small beginnings?"

Back in May I was very much aware of the fact that we had been in Northallerton for 6 years and I recognised that we are not now really at a point when we can say anymore that we are beginning.

The work here is good and my heart was filled with gratitude at so much answered prayer and for the good folk who are part of our mission. But there was a Saturday in May when I sobbed my heart out in frustration when I thought of the amount of ploughing and sowing we have done in comparison with the harvest we have so far reaped. Alongside some glorious victories there have been activities and people who have promised much but yielded little and there has been pain in that.

In the early hours of Sunday morning I woke still chewing over what God wanted us to do about all this. I felt him say that we must recognise the season we are in. We have been sowing the seeds of the gospel in this town and in people all this time. That has been good and right but it is time to reap. We must do that by giving people opportunities to respond to the claims of the gospel and that will involve challenging them and upping the stakes. This will take courage.

For the farmer, harvest time happens every year. Whether it yields a good or a poor result the harvest season happens. We have kept sowing because we have been afraid that the results of our reaping might not meet with our high hopes and expectations. Rather than face disappointment we have tried to pretend we are still in the sowing season. We have let our English reserve and fear of being thought pushy overtake the impulse of the Spirit to challenge people to move on in their faith.

That moment was a recognition for me that it is harvest time whether we like it or not. To do nothing is to lose what we have already sown and to try to harvest is to risk facing that there might not be much to reap. Yet we must face that possibiity for the sake of those who have let the seeds of the gospel become planted in their lives.

The line of a Bible verse that came to me, I believe from the Holy Spirit was “Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. He who goes out weeping carrying seed to sow will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him.” We must have boldness and trust in God.

I then read Isaiah 44:22-5 and it seemed that God was speaking those words directly to my heart.

Having shared the above with the congregation on Sunday who responded with simple and beautiful prayers I have had an anxious day today, knowing that we planned to have the first session of our next Alpha course tonight and we had only two people plus helpers signed up. By late morning they too had disappeared because of their work circumstances. I thought so much for reaping then and what I said on Sunday.

We decided to go ahead anyway just in case of the remote possibility that somebody by turn up from posters and leafleting. Then whilst I was at the dentist having a tooth filled and feeling very sorry for myself a lady rang with a message to say she was coming with a friend. The friend turned out to be a lady I had worked with in the prison and with whom I had spoken to about faith issues a couple of years ago!

OK so there are only two new people on the course at the moment but to me it's confirmation of God's word to me that we can reap from seeds that have already been sown.

God bless


Carol

Preaching Christ

I am reading David Wilkerson's book Hungry for more of Jesus. I read this in it before I settled down to prepare my sermon for Sunday.

"Nothing will get us in the flow of the revelation knowledge of Jesus Christ until we put up our notes, stop studying other preachers and study Christ alone in the secret closet of prayer."

"Away with all success preaching, motivational preaching, self image preaching, political preaching. They are but dregs peddled by those without a fresh revelation of Christ."

O Lord, break the bread of life to me.

God bless

Carol

For Jesus only

Whilst we were getting ready to go off to the Dales, our daughter was watching one of those Day-time TV property programmes. It featured a couple who were buying an old church which they were going to convert into a private dwelling.

I am not usually overly sensitive about church property being sold off. To my mnd church buildings have too often become a wrong focus. Yet this really got to me. I could not help but feel saddened that this building that had been dedicated to God to be used to assist a whole community to worship and work in his name was now going to be lived in by just one couple, who although very nice people were seeking personal gain from the purchase. One of the final shots of the church was the doorway over which was inscribed, "Jesus only"

That night I had one of those powerful dreams that when you wake up you know it was significant. My dream was of a Salvation Army songster brigade, all dressed in their summer uniforms. I was leading worship but was suddenly aware that as they got up to sing, each person had fitted white linen covers over their blue epaullettes so that their S's were no longer visible. In the dream I was shocked by the action but also confused as to why they didn't just take their uniforms off and go and sing in a secular setting if they were ashamed of the dedication implied by the motto Saved to Serve on their uniforms.

In the dream my challenge was met with total surprise at my being upset. They thought their behaviour quite normal rather than ludicrous. They could not see that there was a contradiction in wanting to be called a Salvation Army songster brigade but covering up the evidence. In the dream I discerned that this Songster brigade once dedicated to God was now being used as a vehicle for pleasure and power. In turn I was deeply disturbed by how little it mattered to them that God was not being given what belonged to him and that they thought they had a perfect right to use the songsters in this way. In the dream was ended up outside praying with some children who had not yet been influenced by the attitudes within the hall.

Before I am accused of having a go at army sections, that really was not what the dream was about. It is about giving to God what truly belongs to him and seeing that as normal.

Later that day I read Isaiah 43:20 "I provide water in the desert and streams in the wasteland to give drink to my people muy chosen, my people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise. Yet you have not called upon me O Jacob, you have not wearied yourselves for me, O Israel."

I truly believe that the battle for the Army and for the church at large in this day is a battle of consecration. Will it be "Jesus only"

Up the dale


We've just come back from "up Dale" There is nothing quite like driving through Wensleydale and Swaledale, listening to Our God is an awesome God on the CD player. As we drove through mile after mile of this breathtakingly beautiful landscape a sense of wonder at the splendour of God's creatvity just kept on growing until even this was put in perspective as the next song on the CD rang out with the words

Above all powers, above all kings
Above all wonders and all created things
Above all wealth and treasures of the earth
You were here before the world began

Crucified, laid behind the stone
You lived, to die rejected and alone
Like a rose trampled on the ground
You took the fall and thought of me
Above all

Later we sat in an old barn that our friends have turned into a prayer room. There is no electricity, just a few candles, the floor is covered in shingle, the walls were once whitewashed decades ago and the seating was made up of old wooden chairs. It is the antithesis of the classy, theatres of modern Christian worship seen on God TV. Yet it was just the kind of place in which I imagine Mary gave birth to the new born Jesus. In the stillness, looking out through the doorway at the hills outside Jesus spoke and I heard.

Thank you Lord