Dec | 11 | When one man’s madness was turned into music!

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When one man’s madness was turned into music!

Habakkuk 1:1
The burden which the prophet Habakkuk saw.

Habakkuk is no insightful ‘deducer’ of present circumstance, he is no futurist ‘perceiver’ of coming possibility, he is a ‘seer;’ a man of God granted future sight.

Yes, either in dream or in vision, Habakkuk is shown a coming horror movie, a film so vicious, so fearful, that it keeps him awake at night and through his long and burdensome days, bends his knees in complaining prayer, the volume of which seemed to increase in logarithmic decibels all directly related to God’s lack of response. In other words, the more God declined an answer to Habakkuk’s prayer, the more the volume of the prophet's pleadings increased, and to such a volume, that the sound barrier of the spiritual environmental noise levels were left smashed in pieces on heaven’s front porch, seemingly forcing God to finally come to His door, only to then dump six more carrier bags full of cinemascope full color Chaldean violent ‘slasher’ movie, into the shocked hands of the much troubled seer, with a now further command to ‘watch closely, and write an honest and no holds barred movie review’ concerning that which God was about to release. Now then, how is your prayer life? Now then, do you still want to be a prophet?

In response to these malevolent movies from the Most High, Habakkuk’s cacophonic and conclusive written review contained such powerful, such awful, such majestic and moving, fabulous and fantastic observations on God, his nation, and his own calling as a prophet and a man of faith, that it could only be rightly expressed and communicated as a stunning symphony, accompanied by a fully tuned up professional orchestra all attacking their instruments in full and vigorous volume, and in the so doing, Habakkuk delivered a film score which make even Scorcese weep.

Little is heard in the Scriptures of the ‘seers sheer delight in delivering a tasty little talk on God,’ however, much do the Scriptures speak about the prophetic burden, the weight, the knee squatting exertion of iron pumped heavenward, of the pregnant pain of pictures convulsed, that will only disappear in the delivery of the same. Note then, that the prophets of God are the pumping poets of the Most High, they are the poorly paid members of heaven’s Public Broadcasting Service, all painting pictures with words, whilst frothing at the mouth in unkempt discomfort, wet with sweat, wrestling with God whilst walking with a hammer in one hand, and a chisel in the other, with a paint brush and a pallet knife in their back pocket, whilst swaying over the face of blotted paper which has been pierced with broken nibs that indented hard words on sermon notes bathed in hot salt tears. Now tell me Pastor, speak to me preacher, what is the atmosphere of your study? What is the aroma of your place of work? How replete with blood bought Holy Spirit caught and prayed over arrows is your quivering Lord’s day message?

TALKS! “Come and here our talk!” “There will be a brief talk on the Bible!” Man – for I refuse to call you a man of God – man, if all you can do on a Sunday is deliver a tame and timid talk, then you may as well go buy yourself a feather duster, a furry top hat, a pair of buck teeth and coat made of budgie feathers! For all you are is a comedian, a joke, an amateur of letters and feathers. Church. We need to pray that God would make our preachers men with a burden! Even men with a message from the Most High God. And I tell you this, if all you are getting on a Sunday is a piece of dry bread on your dry hungry table, then I counsel you to stay on bed, for the comedies better when it’s delivered via cable.

Listen:- The burden against the Valley of Vision. What ails you now, that you have all gone up to the housetops, You who are full of noise, A tumultuous city, a joyous city? Your slain men are not slain with the sword, Nor dead in battle. All your rulers have fled together; They are captured by the archers. All who are found in you are bound together; They have fled from afar. Therefore I said, "Look away from me, I will weep bitterly; Do not labor to comfort me Because of the plundering of the daughter of my people." Isaiah 22:1-4 NKJV

Pray: -  Lord, send your men to the coal face of the study, to the hot stoves of heaven’s kitchen, that they might bring us back some coal for our cold hearts and some got food for our empty souls. Lord Your church is hungry! Send us some battle chefs into the field to feed Your sheep once more. Amen and let it be so.

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May | 31 | Sweet Salbenduft

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Sweet Salbenduft

Song of Solomon 1:3  
Because of the fragrance of your good ointments, Your name is ointment poured forth;

The ‘latest’ show shenanigan in the Christian world is the poorer spectacle of the ‘Outpouring’. My brief observation is that this is totally man made and as heavenly as a revival meeting being held every other night at 7:30pm if its not raining. Prominent ‘Outpouring’ people say that these events are not of course revivals but rather prayerful and hopeful precursors to a bigger footprint of the ‘Divine touchdown,’ where the spiritual atmosphere is thick and heavy with the glory of the Lord. Hogwash. I have seen this ‘guff’ and despite the hype, it is invariably a mixture of exceptionally poor preaching, bad exegesis and obvious psychological manipulation which always ends up with someone making a fast buck and having their profile and branding raised substantially.

How can we know Christ? By the preaching of His word. “How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, Who bring glad tidings of good things!” Romans 10:14-15 

Sent preachers of God’s Word are the means by which the box of the sealed up special fragrance of Jesus is opened up to be so mightily diffused into this stinky world. Yes, sent preachers of God’s Word are the means by which the warm bottle of the liquid compound of all that is Jesus is poured out onto cold and stony hearts. The Word, preachers and the mighty act of proclamation are the keys to the Kingdom of God. If this is the case, then it behooves such preachers, such handlers of the very oracles of God, to know what they are talking about and to be prayed up, practiced out, and thoroughly prophetic in their calling. I see little of this at the moment, but rather, the very poorest of preaching cheered on by menopausal women and middle aged men acting like menopausal women.

The great Baptist preacher John Ryland was so short sighted that he examined a text quite literally as one would put words underneath a microscope. Consequently, his writing were so intricate yet perfect in construction that many of his letters are preserved for posterity. All preachers must get back to an intricate examination of the text, a fuller understanding of what the Lord is saying and then couple it with cultural and contextual application. This is no mean feat and such preparation takes hours, if not days. Without this, the name of Christ is no longer made precious nor is it like ointment poured forth.

It was the German Theologian, Georg Heinrich August Ewald (*B.T.S.O.A.P.) that compounds the words ‘ointment poured forth’ into a German common name, ‘Salbenduft’, meaning: 'fragrant anointing'. Christ’s name then is a sweet and fragrant anointing. Now then, here is the test for the preacher and the meeting. Does the preacher or the meeting cause a stink? Do folks lose their mind and marbles in the fog of deception? Or does the preacher disappear behind the sweet pungent unguent from the preaching that should permeate the mind, the heart, and the will of hearers. I tell you now, once you have sniffed of the latter, you will need a clothes peg to go near the former.

Pray for your preacher. Encourage him in his preparation. Do not disturb him when he is in his study. For you see, not much prayer, too little study and far too much disturbance always produces a stink instead of a Sweet Salbenduft.

Listen:- Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. 2 Timothy 2:15 NKJV

Pray: -  Father, once again, send us men who are mighty in the Word. amen and amen.

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May | 29 | Dragon’s Den and The Shark Tank

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Dragon’s Den and The Shark Tank

Romans 15:20-27
 And so I have made it my aim to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build on another man's foundation, but as it is written: "To whom He was not announced, they shall see; And those who have not heard shall understand." For this reason I also have been much hindered from coming to you. But now no longer having a place in these parts, and having a great desire these many years to come to you, whenever I journey to Spain, I shall come to you. For I hope to see you on my journey, and to be helped on my way there by you, if first I may enjoy your company for a while. But now I am going to Jerusalem to minister to the saints. For it pleased those from Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor among the saints who are in Jerusalem. It pleased them indeed, and they are their debtors. For if the Gentiles have been partakers of their spiritual things, their duty is also to minister to them in material things.

The church is not proactive enough. Mostly its members are ‘nesters’, nice people happy for some comfort and some empathy and willing to pay for Pastors to make that state of affairs continue. The proactive mission minded can still be sent away. Out of sight, out of mind and one less pain in the backside for the rest of us.

The church, however, for it to grow, for it to expand its borders, widen its tent pegs, must have proactive people pushing things forward. These are spiritual entrepreneurs, ‘chancers’, Apostles, Evangelists, Prophets of the truest kind. Without these people, these proactive gifts of Christ’s spiritual entrepreneurs the church is dead. Safe, but dead. I speak to these people today.

Now, in considering the forgotten and neglected entrepreneurial and proactive side of the Christian worker, it was Hudson Taylor, the founder of the China Inland Mission who said "It will not do to say that you have no special call to go to China. With these facts before you and with the command of the Lord Jesus to go and preach the Gospel to every creature, you need rather to ascertain whether you have a special call to stay at home." In other words, the general command and great commission to ‘go into all the world and preach the gospel’ has been given to the church. We must therefore either find a greater reason not ‘to go and do this’ or find a million other ways in which we can obey this command. This means we must go and find ways to go.

Now, some would charge people like this with presumption rather than faith, with self-glory rather than God’s glory, with building their own kingdom rather than God’s kingdom and a maybe a few other accusations besides. Sometimes they are correct, for I have observed that there is not a fine line between these things, but rather, faith and presumption overlap and intertwine, as does self-glory and God’s glory, as does personal kingdom building and God’s Kingdom building. Spiritual pro-activeness and spiritual entrepreneurship, obeying God’s commands to go, is a demanding and messy affair. But rather, the mess and better the great demands, than to deny the command and to die in comfort.

 I have observed that for the truly proactive Christian, the hyper active Christian, approaching God sometimes feels like entering the popular T.V. program’s ‘pitching scenario’ in ‘Dragon’s Den’ or ‘The Shark Tank’ and making a presentation to get some backing and some helpful support for the project to begin and successfully complete. Well, I have news for you. Often times, it is just like that.

I wonder if our pitching to God is a pleasurable experience for Him. I think it is. For better an obedient son with a bag of ideas than the indolent and the silently insolent, sat smiling and waiting for the call they know will never come. Oh and yes, listen up my friends, when God says  “I’m out”, you had better go find another project. Meanwhile, press on brave hearts, press on.


Listen:- “it seemed good to us, being assembled with one accord, to send chosen men to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who will also report the same things by word of mouth. Acts 15:25-27

Pray: -  Father, let us always bring our ‘it seemed good to us’ to You! That you might vlidates the throughts and intents of our heart. Train our arms for war and wings our arrows for flights in the direction of Your desires that You would be glorified, Your purposes fulfilled and that we would be happy in You. Amen and amen!

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Jan | 29 | Told you so!

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Told you so!

Galatians 6:7
Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. NKJV

So the bald and aging white collared vicar sits in front of the five year olds, again, and says "Well children, as I looked out in my garden this morning, I saw my friend. He was grey, with large front teeth, a large fluffy tail and was sat on my table eating hazelnuts. Can you guess who he was? Most of the children knew it was Mr Squirrel but it was smart little Jonny, seeing that it was the vicar who thrust his hand in the air father than a rocket shouting "Was it Jesus?" I know I’ve maybe told you that one before, but it still makes me laugh so I thought I would tell you once again. 

One definition of 'epigenetics' is that it is ‘the study of heritable changes in gene function that cannot be explained by changes in DNA sequencing.' Or how about this definition: "epigenetics is the study of the structural adaptation of chromosomal regions so as to register, signal or perpetuate altered activity states.' Or better still, "epigenetecis is the study of heritable phenotypes resulting from changes in a chromosome without alterations in the DNA sequence." Yes, I much prefer that one.

Epigenetics proposes that a genetic sequence, without being altered, can in fact be 'packaged' or 'wrapped' in such a way that the 'expression' of those genes changes. Indeed, epigenetics suggests that not only the physical environment we inhabit, but also what we do in our life, changes and effects the epigenome in such a profound way that the expression of our genetic makeup is not only changed but those changes are also passed onto our children and then on to theirs. Some scientists have suggested that because men have always historically chosen younger women to mate with, that older women's bodies have therefore ceased to be fertile and consequently, men are to blame for the menopause. Most husbands would say that whether they are to blame for the menopause or not, they are still surely going to 'get it in the neck' if that estrogen patch comes off in the shower again.

Speaking as a poor theologian and an even poorer scientist, I never the less always smile when all the drip, drip, dripping in the dark caves of the so called 'deeper discoveries' of science, eventually echo the simple statements of the revelation of God in the Bible. Truly, the more man uncovers, the less he seems to know. Even so, the 'unifying fact’ ( not the theory) of all things is clearly and wonderfully placed before us in the Scriptures. Jesus the Word, you see, holds all things together. He is the unifier of all that is seen and is unseen. He is the ultimate answer to the ultimate question. He is the answer to your question. That is, unless you are wondering what color to paint your bedroom. You get my drift. Read your Bible and believe your Bible, especially if you are dabbler in the depths of all the expressive perfections of God Most High. Oh and remember….whatever you sow, so shall ye reap.

Listen:- God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. Hebrews 1:1-4 NKJV

Pray: -  Father, son and Holy Spirit, you have made be body soul and eternal spirit. In these three areas, guide me to the good that I might reap the same and so be blessed and so be a blessing. Amen and amen.

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Did you know that we are preaching from each of the 66 Books of the Holy Bible in the 66 Most Influential Cities of the 250 Nations of the World? That's 16,500 cities which will hear a solid prophetic message from each book of the Bible over the next 25 years! Do you want to be part of this? Then please go to www.66Cities.TV to find out how.