So that's it. All the shouting, wrapping, frantic shopping, penny counting , eating to excess, drinking to excess....not me of course.....is over for another year. Do we feel better for it or not. For many, probably the great majority the answer is no. Celebrating the Birth of a Saviour has left a nasty taste in their mouths and a hole in their wallets and a fear to open the credit card bills. I am surprised how many folks dont have a budget. Dont have an idea on what they earn or how they spend it. One person that I talked to on a low income said they didnt want to budget as they would have to stop spending on things that they liked and when they sat with a friend to help budget his some of their debts so the actual budget was useless. Now is the time to take stock, get some help look for the nearest CAP course , they are free or talk with Ciutizens Advice, but dont spend money on a 'proffesional' they are just after a wage. But DO get some help and start today. Maybe next Christmas you might actualy get a glimpse of light. THE light .

Leading Sheep

Leadership can be a lonely place. There are times you have to make decisions without being able to tell people why because of the confidential nature of a situation.

It’s at those occasions you need to know why you are a leader.

It’s been said by me and others that God really isn’t interested in your gifting, after all the gifts you have and use come from Him. He is really interested in your character. Is your character strong enough to support your gifting?

Over the years we have got to know many where this wasn’t the case and as a result when their character came under pressure they lost their way and despite being incredibly gifted people lost their roles as leaders. Such a waste.

It comes down to the call of God.  What do I mean by that? Well what has God told you to do? What is burning deep inside your spirit? Many of us have all been to meetings where a visiting preacher has prayed amazing things over our lives: prophesying that we are called to the Nations...called to an international ministry..called to do great exploits..

The trouble is that often this is not from God or if it is, its time sensitive.  We hear it, get excited about it and wonder why it’s not happening or worse still we rush out  and try and make it happen right now. So many people rush out and start a ministry, give themselves a title and role but  often lacking the gifting to make it happen our the character to see it through. God has not called you to be the next Matt Redman if you can’t sing.

For nearly all of us there are two distinctive calls from God. The first is the ‘Big Picture’. Where we will one day be:-  Leading a church, preaching at conferences, leading worship for hundreds.

Moses was to lead 1-2 million people out of Egypt across a desert for 40 years. He started by leading sheep for 40 years through the same desert. It was only after that the God said “What have you got in your hand” The answer was his shepherds’ staff. This was more than a piece of wood. Shepherds carved their staff with little maps to the best pasture. Reminders of their successes and failures. Every time he touched it, it reminded him where he had been and what he had done and what God had done for him.

So don’t be in a rush. You see there is the other call of God. That is where he has placed you now. What are you doing NOW for the kingdom? Are you prepared to lead sheep? Clean the church toilets? Stack chairs?  

Some years ago I helped head up an evangelistic team. One young man came from abroad to join us. He thought he was a great worship leader. I set him on with stacking chairs into a trailer so we could go out to do a tent crusade. After an hour or two he walked away saying he had come to lead worship not stack chairs. Guess what he went home. Years later I found out that he had become that worship leader but he had had to learn some hard lessons on the way.

What is God calling you to do today? Do it with all your heart. Learn from leading sheep because one day God may call you to lead a nation. But it will only happen successfully if your Character has developed.

Kingdom

What is it that makes church ministers so self centred? Is it the stats that we do each week? Are we scared that these stats will show us to be a failure? Sure it would be great to say hey we had 250 at our morning service and guess what 240 made decisions to follow Jesus.

Wouldn't it? Honestly?

We want our church to be the next Revival centre of the world with the cameras, lights and travelling circus. We want our every word to be poured over and listened to time and time again on the internet and God TV. Hmmm well maybe not.


The truth is and it really hurts when we hear this but it isnt about 'you in your small corner and me in mine' , its about the Kingdom.

We all preach 1 Corinthians 12 :27 and extol out folks to realize they are part of the body, the church and have a roll and job to do;- even if its cleaning the toilets. And by the Body and Church we mean our Church, our Holy Place. The trouble is Paul isnt saying that at all. He is talking about the Kingdom not our church. Jesus' Church not our corner of it.

Could you imagine what it would be like- I can - just- if all Christians of what ever flavour actively supported the Kingdom and each others small corner. Where we met as one Church,wirth one Lord and One hope. A time when church titles and church names were removed. No longer an Anglican Church or a Pentecostal church but a JESUS church. I wonder what our Lord thinks when he sees us fighting each other for our market share. In a world where we only get less than 5% of the population scattered amongst ......well how many churches are there in your area.....that leaves a huge number if they all came  church any church we simply couldnt hold them all.


Challenge . How much time do we truly give to the Kingdom compared to how much time we give to our little plot. Time to rethink. Maybe.

miracles

Its almost the churches 90th birthday which has made us start to look back at our history.
Elim started in Northern Ireland almost a hundred years ago as an off shoot of the Welsh Revival. In 1921 George Jeffrey's was invited to Leigh on Sea to run some revival meeting and out of this the first Elim Church in England was birthed here at Leigh.

the hallmarks of this was a move of the Holy Spirit in signs and wonders. By this I mean that miracles were common place in the early church. people were healed, delivered and set free from addiction. People left wheelchair and canes behind in churches because they no longer needed them.

The early church magazines which we still have copies of today were full of stories of how this or that person was healed.

So what has happened? In the latest edition of Direction our current National Magazine as far as I can see there isn't a single story of a healing. It reports extensively about this years Conference and as far as I can recall there wasnt a single story about healing there either.

Has God stopped healing? Certainly not. We see it in our services on a regular basis. Its maybe that we are frightened to talk about it for fear that someone will investigate it and find it isn't true.

What a shame! If we stop talking about the Power of God to Save Heal , Deliver and Bring Freedom then how will people hear.

If God is at work in our lives we must speak out.

Rioters use Social Media to orchestrate looting. We need to use the same media to talk about how Great our God is.

Speak up before it is too late. Give Glory to God for what He is doing in your life.

Holidays

For many of you you will be embarking on the great summer get away in the next few weeks. I have just had mine, almost three weeks away from church and home. I didn't realize how much I needed it. Its very easy to take time off but actually not take any time off at all. Although I kept in touch regularly with family and church I had done something this year that I have never done before. I made a public declaration that I was handing over the reigns to my two elders and giving the decision making to them too. Spiritually it broke a bond and meant that I could relax without thinking I was responsible for stuff happening 450 miles away.
Well I'm back and like the pilots of planes say "I have control" .
When you take a break make sure you do that, don't check and answer emails every day, don't expect staff to run to you to make decisions, or worse still leave those decisions till you return otherwise you will need another holiday.
Rest relax take time to get your head sorted, take time to get personal issues resolved then come back and "take control" . You will feel better and your church, business, family life will feel the benefit too.

Revival Fires

One of my greatest joys is travelling to other churches and speaking with Christians from other places and even different streams, by that I mean from different church backgrounds.

One thing I have found in recent months; There is a real expectation across the board that God is about to move.

I have a real sense in my spirit that the next move of God will not be in the major revival centres where folks flock to ‘catch’ something new from God. It won’t be a Pensacola, Toronto, or any of the other high profile churches. I believe it will be spontaneous combustion in the small, little, faithful churches of many denominations. Revival springing up in the ordinary every day churches who faithfully preach Jesus.

We need to be faithful to the message and develop a hunger for God to move. It won’t come to those that look for the publicity that these large scale church revivals  brings: the  My church is better than yours  or my church is featured on The God Chanel mentality that seems to  pervade many evangelical ministers minds. No it will be for those people and congregations who simply want more of God and to be used by Him. I think that it will have many different faces and not be identified by one manifestation of the Spirits power but by many. Each church will have its own unique experience of God.

Are we ready?

How would we cope?

I sometimes wonder how we would cope. Could we actually survive and keep our faith. Persecution. All over the world Christians are facing persecution; they are having their churches burnt, being arrested and even killed for their faith.

I have over the past challenged our folks at church about this wondering if Persecution will ever reach our shores.

The other morning I was awake about 4.30 am just before dawn and was thinking about this. I know I should have been asleep but its a sign of getting old.

For the first time I realized that here in England the Christian church has been persecuted and is being persecuted almost to the point of extinction. We have listened to the lie that we should turn the other cheek, be silent when our faith and lifestyle is being undermined when legislation so hard fought for by our forefathers is systematically undermined and repealed.

Christian leaders are frightened to speak about what we believe. The days of Political Correctness have all but silenced our Christian heritage. Minority groups with loud voices change our fundamental laws and we remain silent. Is that persecuted ? It sure is!

We need to wake up before it is too late. There needs to be an audible loud Christian voice in our nation. Our Church denominations need to raise up a public voice for our views and shout and shout it from the roof tops.