Wastelands

Most weeks I meet up with a guy from my Church.

One of the highlights of these meetings is we sit and put the world to rights. I love doing that! It's one of my favourite things!

After putting the world to rights we often share dreams, decipher the past, and plot the future.

I love it!

Last night we got onto discussing the film the bucket list, where two cancer sufferers, draw up a list of things they want to do before they die and then go about achieving the list.

The conversation quickly switched to the subject of what we waste time on in our lives? How many hours we waste watching television, doing stuff that is pretty meaningless really?

It was an amazing conversation because earlier in the day as I walked through the urban dessert that surrounds where I live, I was struck by the amount of urban wasteland that lies in the landscape. As I walked I was struck by the different types of wasteland. Some of it covered in old tyres, discarded strips of rusty barbed wire, litter of all descriptions including evidence of weary misdemeanours in the form of used condoms, the occasional discarded needle, curse tape that lay in tatters, and smashed bottles and broken bricks in their hundreds. Other types of wasteland held the remnants of recent demolition where once rows of tightly packed housing would have embraced energetic life. There were other bits of wasteland that had been cleared ready for something new to be built there. On some pieces of wasteland there were old buildings long since discarded that had no purpose anymore.

Just wasteland.

As I walked my mind clicked into vivid action and my thoughts centred on translating these real time pictures of wastelands into the wastelands that are hanging around inside my own life.

I began to see that there was wasteland.

In other words things that I just waste time on.

Things that needed to change.

Wasteland that needed to become productive land.

My mind sent me to a story.

It is contained in the pages of the amazing old book, "The cross and the switchblade," by David Wilkerson.

He relates in the book how he used to for some reason get up between 12 and 2 am every night and watch television. He says he felt that somehow this was a waste of valuable time and often thought he needed to do something more productive with that time. And he said to himself what would happen if I used that time to pray? So he decided to put his television up for sale in his local paper. On the day it was published, he said to God, "If this television hasn't sold by a certain time (say five o'clock) then I will keep it. If it is sold then I will use the time every night just to pray. At about thirty seconds to five the phone rang, and someone bought the tele. From that night on he used that two hours to pray. It was during one of those prayer times that the whole story of the work with the New York gangs began which has seen, and continues to see, many lives turned around and transformed.

For me? This was a lesson in turning the wasteland of life into something productive and worthwhile.

My mind switched quickly back to the wastelands in my own life and I took a bit of a deeper look.

I have to say I didn't like what I saw.

There were things there that I have to say are wastelands.

Wasteful time, fruitless activities.

For instance the times I walk round shopping centres even though I can't really afford anything. The endless Taggart's and Silent witnesses on television. The times I waste worrying about stupid stuff at church that really has no bearing on God's work.

Wastelands.

The positive thing about it though?

There is plenty of room for new building.

What could I do that is more productive?

What could I do to turn that wasteland into something altogether more satisfying?

I got excited at the prospect of building new things on this wasteland.

Today why not take stock of the things in your life that could be just wastelands.

Are there wastelands in your life littered with rubbish that needs clearing? Is there ground in your life where demolition has taken place but you haven't got round to building anything new yet? Is there ground that has been prepared for the new to happen, and you really need to get on and build something? Are there empty spaces that could be better used rather than laying dormant?

What are you doing with your time? What are you wasting time on. What could you build on the wastelands?

Here's the thing!

The possibilities are endless. The prospects are exciting!

Have a reality check today. Find out where the wastelands are in your life.

What could you build there?

Missio Dei

The A1 is a nightmare road that connects the North East to the rest of the UK. It is always full of road works, sections of it close without warning, and every time we go anywhere that involves a trip on that road it turns Into an ordeal.

Yesterday was no different.

We were on the way to see family in Leeds and then on to Liverpool to see even more family.

But when stuck in extremely slow moving traffic, I found my eyes drawn to the back of a lorry that was directly in front of us in the queue of traffic.

The massive truck was representing a well known clothing company and was probably delivering it's contents around a chain of stores across the UK, maybe beyond.

On the back of it was the company name and then a kind of strap line.

The strap line said this.

Follow me, I'm going somewhere amazing!

In my mind I immediately thought of Jesus.

I've been studying a lot lately. Studying all things mission, seeing as I am just completing a Masters degree in mission. A concept that is widely talked about in missional practice is the Missio Dei. The Missio Dei, loosely translated from the Latin as the God's Mission, is basically the concept that God is already at work in our neighbourhoods and our world in general. He is at work carrying out his saving work and basically us Christians need to join him there to carry out that work.

I thought of the times I have had to find a definition for this in books about mission, books that quite frankly are enough to throw the whole of Christendom off course forever. Written by academics who sometimes it would seem need to get out more. In fact they have given me a personal mission, never to read one ever again if I can help it!

But here in front of me on the back of an old red wagon was a fantastic definition of the Missio Dei!

Follow me, I'm going somewhere amazing!

Of course I can't use this as a reference!

Can you imagine.

Old red Truck: (A1, Scania Trucks, 2011)

The boundaries of academia don't stretch that far!

As I thought of that statement, follow me, I'm going somewhere amazing I thought of a meeting I had last week.

There is a guy who works for a Church in Durham who pops in to S21 for a coffee during the course of his kingdom business in the week. This guy, like me has a heart for the poor and the needy. We have had some conversations lately about the poor homeless or needy people that congregate in Sanctuary 21 the SA Corps I lead along with My missus Dawn.

We were talking about the need for these guys to have some structure in the day, something to keep them occupied yet something that will make a difference spiritually, emotionally and physically. Suddenly we found ourselves engrossed in a glut of suggestions about ways for S21 to carry that out. And before long we found ourselves praying together about it and after that felt we were armed with a way forward.

I love this type of meeting. We don't really bother with those formal lifeless agenda driven meetings in our place. We have what we call ICMs (Impulsive Creative Meetings)!

They would probably drive the perfectionist business type person mad! But at least they achieve something other than a date for the next meeting!

And God seems to like turning up to them! (of course not that he doesn't turn up to other types of meetings!)

After this meeting I went home really full of hope and scope!

And looking at this strap line on the back of a lorry seemed like the perfect thing that God was saying to us about this work. Follow me, I'm going somewhere amazing.

Of course venturing into the lives of people who have been in prison for long periods of time, who have rap sheets as long as your right arm, who are often drunk and disorderly, who demand your attention constantly, who have immense physical needs before we even start on the emotional trauma and the spiritual deficiency, to the human eye, doesn't appear to be a humans idea of amazing.

But in Gods eyes?

I can't speak for God on his idea of amazing because his ideas are far higher than my ideas.

But I'm guessing God finds the possibilities for transformation amazing. The potential for change in a persons life amazing, the ability to carry out his saving work amazing?

I guess this is what people like William Booth sensed when he said things like, " go for souls and go for the worst?

Sometimes our attitudes as Christians sometimes is that we want to reach people who fit into our idea of suitable for us to mix with. Maybe they are musicians and would be useful to the church? Maybe they dress smartly and would be good welcoming people in to Church on a Sunday? Maybe they are DIY enthusiasts and could fix our building up and keep it maintained?

I guess you get my drift?

You've probably seen it?
I know I have. (I've fell into that trap too)

So we make up the baseline for amazing!

It would be amazing if.............

But the thing about the Missio Dei , about following God into somewhere amazing is that the possibilities in Gods view of amazing are infinitely endless!

I remember being in Liverpool Boiler room a few years back. It was one o'clock in the morning. Dawn and I were just packing up to go home after a long day and we were tired.

There was a knock at the door.

We opened it up and there was one of our regular people. She was lady in her fifties. She was a lady who worked on the streets as a prostitute in one of the darkest areas of the City.

She had been working since four o'clock in the afternoon, and was in need of a coffee.

So we had to put our tiredness on hold and Dawn went into the kitchen to make her a coffee.

I sat with her in the main worship space. And began a conversation. It was always hard because I had to act level and normal with her as I always did, but inside my heart was always breaking.

On this occasion she looked at me with vibrant eyes and said, "Gary, I've got a song for you! Will you listen to my song?

Now at one in the morning when your shattered and just want to crawl into bed, a song is the last thing that you want to hear.

But me being me, I said OK.

She got up from her seat and walked over to the kind of stage area where the MIC stands and amps, and guitar stands, drum kit, keyboards all those things for the worship band were set up. She grabbed a MIC stand ( with no MIC on it) and began to sing this song.

It was a song that made absolutely no sense. Mentioning people like Saddam Hussain and other characters and it went on for about ten minutes! She was dancing around the stage and doing a mock version of a rock star with the MIC stand.

When she had finished she just stood in silence with a massive grin, waiting for me to say something.

Waiting for my approval.

Just then Dawn came in with the coffee and started to clap her hands appreciatively, so I joined in with the clapping and she sat down satisfied.

As we sat down, she said this.

"I'm so pleased you listened to my song. No-one listens to my songs."

As I thought about that, the tiredness, the slight annoyance at having to stay late when I'd rather be in bed, and the seeming inconvenience just faded away to nothing.

And I realised God was already working in this beautiful child of an incredible Saviour. I realised that I don't have to take Jesus to this woman he is already there working away with his saving work.

But I had to join him there.

And on a human level at one o'clock in the morning it didn't seem particularly amazing.

With this lady it wasn't about the quality or the content of her song.

She just wanted someone to listen to her, to appreciate her, to accept her, to open their arms to her. To love her.

Gods there doing that.

Already!

Are we?

Let God take you to places you never thought possible!

They might not be our idea of amazing.

the places he takes us may at first seem not so amazing.

But what does amazing mean?

God speaks this.

and its worth taking note today.

"Follow me, I'm going somewhere amazing"

Truly Live

Braveheart starring Mel Gibson is a great film.

I had a brilliant night just laying on the couch watching this three hour epic unfold before my eyes.

Towards the end of the film, the part where just before William Wallace is due to be hung, drawn, and beheaded, he is sitting chained up in a jail where he receives a visit from the future queen of England who quite frankly fancies him. She pleads with him to pledge allegiance to Edward Long-shanks, the King of England, so that his death sentence may be put off or even overturned.

William Wallace says a very remarkable thing.

He speaks a sentence that caught my attention. A few words that really inspired me as I watched the screen that night.

He said this.

All men will die, but few men truly live.

As I lay on the couch I reflected on my life so far. I especially reflected on my Salvation Army Officership so far.

Have I truly lived?

Well there have been moments when I have felt kind of dead. There have also been moments when I have truly lived.

I have experienced failure, I have experienced successes.

But as I lay on the couch I suddenly sat upright.

Inspiration lifted me up from my lazy prone position.

It dawned on me that one thing is for certain. I will die one day physically. I don't know when, I don't know the day or the hour. No point even thinking about that! It's guaranteed so it's not really worth thinking about.

It also fell on my spirit that whatever has happened so far in my life that I can't actually do much about the past either. What's gone has gone. Good and bad.

But I want to truly live.

Few men truly live says William Wallace in the film Braveheart.

As I sat bolt upright on the couch that was my pledge to God.

I want to truly live.

My mind went back to a moment in my life that was pivotal in my shaping.

It was a moment.

Only a moment literally.

It was nevertheless a moment, a few minutes that brought restoration and healing and the platform from which to march forward in life.

It was when my father was dying. In fact it was the day he died. I went to see him and spent five minutes alone with him. He hadn't been the best of fathers. We hadn't really had a lot to do with each other for about fifteen years. He had left the family home years before and married another woman. He had hurt me and my family badly. This had left me bitter and angry with him.

This bitterness and anger is not great to have hanging around your life.

It is immobilising and quite frankly prevents you from truly living.

And that was the case for a large part of my life. Whether I knew it or not was really irrelevant.

But in that moment, when I had that five minutes alone with him, I looked at a frail man ravaged with cancer. I took his hand and the anger, the bitterness, the shame, the disappointment, just kind of left. It was almost as if they just walked away from me in that room. I looked into my dads opened eyes, whether he could see or not, whether he could hear or not, I really will never know. But I whispered the words, I forgive you, I love you. That was it, those were the words I used. These were the words that I had found it almost impossible to say when he was alive and well.

That was just a couple of years ago now.

As I thought of that moment, I felt that my dad hadn't truly lived and neither had I in terms of that relationship.

I couldn't change the past in that moment.

But I could certainly change the future.

I new that in that moment of forgiveness and healing came life.

A new platform from which to take my life forward. At that point in my life I was sick of the pain of that, I was also sick of the irrelevant stuff that was going on in my life, and in my ministry.

You know stuff that's not important or relevant, helpful, or life giving?

I remember thinking then that I wanted to do things that count. I want to count for goodness sake. I want my life to make a difference to other people.

That thinking resurfaced on that couch that night while watching Braveheart.

All men will die, but few men truly live.

And I knew for sure right then and there that the only way to truly live is to truly live for Christ.

2 Corinthians 5: 15 says, "And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again."

The truth of this really made my heart come alive.

William Wallace lived to bring freedom to the Scots. And he was dangerous individual.

Jesus lived and died, and rose again, to bring freedom for the whole of mankind.

Not living for ourselves but living for Christ means we have a cause, we have a purpose, we have a mission.

To bring freedom to the captives

That makes us dangerous people, in a good way, in kingdom terms.

So today it would be good to be challenged by God.

Who are we living for?

Are we living for ourselves? Are we measuring life in personal gains and success, in appearance? in finance? in possessions? In promotion? in fame in personal glory? In status? in position? in standing?

Do you know what? I reckon if that is the case, then you step out of that game.

It's just, well I hope you don't mind me saying, rubbish.

Are we living with unforgiveness and a lack of mercy towards others, especially those who have really inflicted hurt on us?

Sort it guys?

I know it's not easy I've been there, but listen, all men die that's guaranteed. Do you really want to get to that moment and you haven't really lived?

Live to fight for a cause.

It makes life worth living. The cause of Jesus to save the world from total spiritual destruction is cause enough.

And in Christ we will truly live.

So today guys choose life.

Choose to truly live.

Are you tired of stuff that has been going on way too long. Those relationships, those issues, those fights?
Drop the battle guys.

Because, all men die, but few men will truly live.

For me, I want to truly live.

Futuristic

I've been thinking about my future a lot recently.

Isn't it funny how your mind creates pictures of the future. What it will look like, what it will bring and before long your convinced that's how it is going to be.

I have big dreams.

I have things I want to see. I have things I want to accomplish.

Of course it's healthy to have dreams and visions. They are ultimately important and sometimes spiritually essential.

Iv'e found myself in daydream overdrive recently.

But the thing is, in that state of overdrive they can become really distracting too.

They can distract you from the now.

And the now is really the fulcrum of life.

What we do now effects our future. The now becomes our past and shapes our future.

In our bathroom at home there is a little white porcelain picture frame. Written in the middle of it is this. Life is what happens when we are busy making plans.

I've kind of being doing a bit too much making of plans in my head lately, and the life that has been happening around me has kind of passed me by.

In leadership I have to dream big. I have to discover God in the future. Because one solid feature of following Jesus is that we have a future and others have a future because of our future if you know what I mean?

But!

I also have to deal with the now.

There are real people in the now. There are people who need me in the now.

Life is happening!

Now.

I can't spend my hours and days busy making plans for the future.

I know a guy who calls himself a church planter. Every time I see him he plans. He has plans to plant in this area of the UK. He has plans to move to such and such a place. He is always talking about plans. I've never heard him mention what's going on now! He is futuristic! A man who incessantly lives in the future.

I asked him a couple of weeks ago, "what's happening with you right now?" he answered excitedly, "God has said to me I am going to build a church and paint it gold, I don't know yet where it's going to be but I know I am to call it the golden Church!
I had asked him what's going on now?

But what was happening for him now was still futuristic!

Golden Church?

OK? (are you thinking the same as me?)

He still hasn't built the church of a thousand souls that he told me about last year, or the curry church he had dreamed up last year. (Curry Church? How original! That's one church I would love to go to! Can you imagine chicken Korma, pilau rice, a poppadum and God! mmmmmmm!

The problem I guess is that if he doesn't get himself into the now the future will never materialise.

And I guess that is teaching me that I need to get in to the now right now!

Life happens when we are busy making plans.

I guess it's best to leave the future in Gods hands.

He says, "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.(Jeremiah 29:11)

So if God has plans for us why do we get so wrapped up and busy in making plans.

We love making plans for our lives and our churches. Hey we even set up planning committees, appoint organising people, we plan our strategies, our mission plans. And I guess they are valid? (I'll say that to be nice!)

But what's happening now?

No I reckon if God has plans for us, especially plans to prosper us, not to harm us and plans to give us a hope and a future. I think I'll get on with now and leave the plans to God.

Abundant showers of blessing on your amazing life today.

From this dark mess

I want to take this opportunity to thank those who read my blog, so many now, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart.

Every day I come across so many lost people.

So many beautiful people who are just so far away from God in their own experience yet it's so frustrating because God is so near to them.

Who is praying for them?

Prayer for the lost is mission.

Prayer for the lost is vital.

So vital that God says this.....

"And he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor: therefore his arm brought salvation unto him; and his righteousness, it sustained him." (Isaiah 59:16)

God here is seeing no- one interceding for the lost! In fact he says therefore his arm brought salvation to the lost.

Of course he is referring prophetically to Jesus Christ here.

One of the reasons he had to send Jesus was that there was no intercessor?

God really wants his people praying.

The salvation of this world really depends on it.

So why does the church so often relegate prayer to some back shelf place in the scheme of it's mission?

You hear comments like, "Well I can't do much else but I can always pray!" or "the house bound people in our church are praying while we do other stuff."

Prayer meetings are often Poorly attended, even discarded.

"I'll pray for you!" often resonates around the draughty corridors of Christianity.

You get a kind of picture that prayer is a bit of an afterthought? Especially praying for the lost.

God says where are the intercessors!

Wow!

That sounds like a challenge! A challenge I think we need to hear in the now.

I've just been speaking to a young girl from the city here in Durham. She is right now, as I speak, hammered with drug addiction. She looks like shes just hit a fix. She is pregnant, she is vulnerable and in danger, she is alone, lonely, and lost. She comes into the Salvation Army everyday for a cheese toastie.

Everytime she comes in she writes a prayer card out.

The prayers she writes out are not your normal prayers.

They are deep cries from the heart.

They are pleas out of the dark mess of vulnerability and mistreatment.

They are not the language of a lovely warm big-cheeked Christian grandma (I'm not talking about you mum) The words are the language of the lost, and some of that language is not very pleasing to the reformed ear.

But they are intercessory. The lost crying out to God whether they know it or not.

And God hears their cry.

She's praying for herself in a way.

But where are the intercessors?

Where are we Christians?

Are we bringing our pleas on behalf of the millions of people who are trapped in all kinds of hellish traps?

Where are we?

Are we feeling the desperate cries of a lost nation? Do we bring them to Jesus?

Are we feeling their pain?

The thing about praying for the lost is that it doesn't seem like we are making headway.

Yeah, in the natural realm sometimes it's hard to see results of prayer.

So?

The thing is prayer is supernatural. But has an effect on the natural world. It's necessary because God has raised the Church to be his hands and feet.

Being Gods hands and feet and eyes I might add, means work.

Hard work.

Prayer for the lost is hard work.

It is about looking beyond ourselves, our church issues, our self indulgence.

And it's not up to a chosen few. We all have a responsibility to chip in.

In fact if God deems it important enough to send Jesus because one of the reasons is that no-one was praying for the lost? I guess enough said?

Imagine a Church on it's knees crying out for the nations, for the needy. We hear guys with a microphone on stages imploring us to pray and what could happen if we pray. A favourite line of loads of speakers is "every great revival was birthed in prayer."

Yeah?

That's cool information.

They are right of course.

So where are the intercessors?

I looked into the eyes of this poor wrecked slip of a girl. O how she needs God. God I look into her eyes and almost see hands reaching upward to be picked up.

It moves me to my knees.

I love it when my two year old grand daughter puts her arms up to me when she is crying. You know the way kids do? I just cannot resist picking her up and holding her tight.


Listen. No matter what we see in a person. No matter how much they have hurt us, no matter how far from God they are, whatever religion they are, whatever race, whatever social standing, whatever they look like, smell like or speak like. That is what God must feel he wants to pick everyone up and just hold them tight.

And we can take them into those arms as we pray for the lost.

I kind of implore those who read this today. And believe me I am challenging myself too.

Let's bring the masses to God in prayer.

Let's trust that God will touch the nations through an outpouring of passion and compassion for those whom we have been sent to reach.

Let's allow the love and compassion of God to move us to our knees.

Whoever is reading this now? You are amazing! God says so.

Breathe

Words sometimes penetrate the very fabric of your life.

Particularly simple words, the type that make you say, "o yeah! That is so true."

The bible does it all the time.

On this occasion the words were not from the pages of the bible but from a book I happened to be reading.

They were in the form of a question. "How come Christians hold on to so many dead things when we say we believe in the resurrection?"

And you know what?

It's true isn't it guys?

But I am not sure if we hold on to dead things or whether they just need new life breathed in to them.

This has been rattling around the airspace that surrounds my brain for a few weeks now!

Especially in my prayer space. My one on one times with God that have been pretty potent lately.

Once in a while amazing revelation comes in these times. Although I have to admit that most of the time these times are fairly tough, and I have to commit to work really hard to maintain the work of personal prayer, and any other type of prayer for that matter!

But it's well worth it.

On occasions though I get real clarity from God.

I guess you know what I mean?

I'll skip back to the prayer times later!

But for now I want to share something with you today that is simple but important. Important enough for me to feel compelled to write it down to share on my blog today.

And I want to put a health warning on this blog! Please read it to the end, especially those who love SA bands! I love you honestly!

This last week brass band fever has hit the SA. A concert featuring a number of Salvation Army Staff bands was happening in London at the weekend just gone. The brass band community of the Salvation Army has been really excited.

I am not a lover of brass bands. They do not float my dinghy!

Which is a real big thing to say considering I was for a large part of my life in the Salvation Army probably affectionately considered as a bando! I was brass band mad. It was my life in the Salvation Army.

For a long time I did everything band.

My life had room only for football and brass bands, O and the occasional girlfriend!

But didn't know God at all. Even having been born into the Salvation Army and being a fifth generation Salvationist.

I had no understanding, and absolutely no relationship with God whatsoever.

But I loved my cornet. (for those who are reading this who have absolutely no idea what I am talking about, that's a brass instrument not an ice cream!)

God saved me from all that band stuff.

I say saved because I was not a Christian. I was just doing the band thing in the Army.

And I really needed saving from that because it kept me from having a relationship with Jesus.

Big time!

I have managed to keep myself away from the band scene for many years now.

But this week I was invited to a concert in Durham. A concert featuring the Chicago Staff Band. So I felt I had to go.

And during the concert I found myself amongst a very niche market of people. Mostly people who liked Salvation Army bands. And I was once an integral part of that niche market.

But it was as if I was in a concert in the 70s, 80s or any other time in brass band history because it was pretty much the same as any concert I've played in or listened to. And I found myself praying all the way through asking God to show me what was the point to this?

I could appreciate the skill of the musicians. I could acknowledge the limited appeal of brass band music to a certain minority of the planets public. The red tunics were resplendent even if they did make a person look like a wine gum. The shoes that they wore you could see your face in them wow! But if we say that everything should be missional in Christianity then what was missional about it?

I still couldn't make head nor tail of it.

The best thing to do in that situation is talk to the king of the heavens.

So I prayed.

"What's the point God?"

It was a genuine request.

I didn't get an answer that night.

I went from the concert with a heavy heart.

Back to the prayer times.

In fact, fast forward to the very next morning following the concert. I was locked in a prayer room at my church. I had actually forgotten about my question the previous night.

I put some Albert and Kimberly Rivera on my iPod. Quickly I connected with my beautiful Jesus. I had just started to talk a few opening sentences to him when a picture just dropped in my head from seemingly nowhere.

It was a blast from the past.

I pictured the ROOTS conference big top a few years back.

In one of the praise sessions I remembered a fantastic trumpet player called Raul, who was part of Graham Kendrick's backing band for the weekend, coming down from the stage and walking in and out of the aisles playing his trumpet over the gathered people. I remembered the spiritual high I experienced as those notes landed in my heart with Exocet like precision.

As I pictured this blast from the past.

I heard the voice of God in my thoughts.

The voice said, "I am in the breath."

I am in the breath!

I connected quickly my question from the previous night and the words that had just been spoken into my ears.

I had asked, "What is the point of SA bands?"

God had answered, "I am in the breath."

And. Realised a simple thing. If the breath of God isn't in SA banding then it is meaningless.

But if the breath of God is in the hearts of the bandsmen, the notes of the music, then it is has to be missional because Gods breath is being breathed over those who hear.

And I warmed to SA bands once again almost immediately. And I bless what they do, and admit here and now that maybe I have been wrong about them for some time. And I truly hope that they touch the lives of thousands as they embrace the breath of God.

But the breath of God isn't just about brass bands. (thank God!)

Those of us who say we are Christians have the breath of God breathed into the centre of our lives. I think sometimes we breathe in the wrong air, that's all.

But the breath of God, the ruach, (a Hebrew word used to describe words such as wind, Spirit and breath in the bible) the wind that comes from all directions and the wind of the Spirit that flows out from us is mighty powerful and without it Christianity is completely worthless.

I began to picture this guy Raul playing his trumpet over these gathered people but then suddenly, the people had been replaced by lots of bones, very dry bones.

But as he played they formed and fleshed out and then became alive as the breath of God came from the end of his brass instrument and into the bones.

I obviously then read Ezekiel 37 as I saw this picture. To see if God had anything more to show me.

1. The hand of the lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones.

2. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry.

3. He asked me, "Son of man, can these bones live?"
I said, "Sovereign lord, you alone know."

4. Then he said to me, "Prophesy to these bones and say to them, 'Dry bones, hear the word of the lord!

5. This is what the Sovereign lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life.

Every breath we breathe. Everything we do, If we are serious about mission, it has to be done fuelled by the breath of God. If God is in it, dead things come to life, seemingly spent things can receive life, a new lease of life.

It doesn't matter how clever our mission plans are, how cool our churches are, how hot our evangelistic work is, or whether we have a brass band or a few guitars, or a kazoo for that matter. What really does matter is whether or not the breath of God is flowing through it.

Because if it isn't.

IF IT ISN'T!

WE HAVE NO CHANCE.

We have no chance of reaching anything or anyone, anyhow.

When I surfaced from my prayer session, full of revelation and changed just that little bit more, I headed upstairs for a coffee at our church.

Sitting in the couch area was a girl of about 23.

A girl who we know is broken by poverty, abuse, mistreatment. She had spent the night in a local park sleeping in a bush.
She was tired, hungry, unwashed and by large parts of society, unloved.

There was a vacancy in her eyes. She had a kind of empty blank stare going on.

She just looked like a dry useless bone.

God asked me the same question as he had asked Ezekiel.

Gary, can this dry bone live?

I think this scriptural question is one of the biggest questions facing the church right now as we do our task of reaching the world for God.

On the face of it. This young girl looked hopeless.

But wait. God says I will breathe life into those dry bones?

And I saw the potential, the hope, the possibilities in her sad eyes.

I began to speak to her.

As she spoke back in her beautiful soft voice which kind of cut through the matted hair, the smudged make up, the pallor of her skin. She spoke of her night I the park, how scared she was, how cold she was, how hungry she was.

I really felt her pain.

I heard God again say to me, "speak to her of me."

And I did.

I couldn't find what I thought was an appropriate thing to say.

So I just began to speak words of comfort, encouragement and let her know that God really had plans for her.

We had dealt with her physical needs such as warmth and food. But she needed much more.

As I spoke it dawned on me that the same breath I had been thinking of in terms of the brass band thing was in my lungs as I spoke. And even if the words didn't seem to be landing in her heart too easily.

I knew.

I knew the Spirit of God was in the breath.

And God can do immeasurably more than we dare ask or imagine.

And I knew that a little life was being breathed into the life of this amazing girl who is desperate for a saviour.

There is a great song that says, "This is the air I breathe!"

God challenges us today. Is it? Is the breath of God the air that we breathe?

If it isn't?

Let God breathe his breath into you this day.

Can you imagine?

Dead things come to life when the breath of God touches them!

Can you imagine every time a brass band plays dead things come to life?

Every time we speak, sing, shout or act, dead things come to life?

Surely that's what we want to see?

I know I do.

You are amazing (especially you SA bandsmen and women!)

Blessings

Gaz