Don't fret about what you can't control

"Take your belt off sir. "

The security guy in Newcastle airport departure gate was in no mood for messing about.  He was stern, deadpan and seriously jobworthy.

I removed my belt.

In front of a massive queue of travellers?

My trousers fell clean down!

I was supersonically embarrassed!

That was at 6am last Monday morning before I flew to a meeting in Bristol.

And the week went downhill from there.

It's been a week of travel. 

Bristol on Monday,  Newcastle Thursday,  Liverpool Saturday and I'm writing this in London today.

Planes, trains and automobiles has been the thing this week. 

Airports I dislike with unprecedented passion.  The lining up,  the waiting,  the delays.  Trains are mad, getting a seat is difficult even if you've booked it,  getting your bags stashed and getting to your seat is a pain. Then there is driving,  traffic jams,  people pushing you in the fastlane.

I have been doing a bit of reading while travelling,  reading a trashy but fab crime thriller by Lee Child called "the hard way." The main character,  Jack Reacher is a cool, calm guy.  He has a saying that he keeps repeating to himself.  He says,  "don't fret about what you can't control. "

That's really helped me in this week of rush and frustration.

Don't fret about what you can't control.

I've learned this week that even though there has been a whirlwind of frenetic frustration.  I can't control what is happening around me.

I really felt that even in this short blog post,  this statement was for sharing today.

So if you are fretting about something today?

Don't.

Who's in control anyway?

You or God?

Lay that fretting down right now.

You can't control what's happening around you.

So why bother?

Sanctuary

Sanctuary.

The word sanctuary always raises up pictures in my mind of beautiful quiet spaces.

You know with candles and incense and stuff like that?

It's a calming kind of word.

The original meaning of the word is a sacred place, such as a shrine.

People would see these places as kind of safe house. So today one way the term sanctuary has come to be used for is any place of safety.

A sanctuary in Christian terms can be a sacred space such as a church.

In legal terms it can mean an immunity to arrest for fugitives, a part of English law from the fourth to the seventeenth century.

In political terms it can mean a person asking a Soveriegn authority for the right of assylum.

So it seems to me sanctuary, which ever way you look at it is all about safety and security.

The Salvation Army Prayer Centre I help to run is called sanctuary 21.

Last week it didn't feel so safe.

We have a large number of people who gather every day in our place, many of whom are struggling with alcoholism, drug addiction, sex addiction, and other forms of criminality.

This sometimes brings unrest to the camp.

Last week a fight nearly broke out between a few of the lads.

Sanctuary 21 didnt feel much like a sanctuary at all.

The incident was nearly a disaster.

That afternoon I met with the City police chief and a drug addiction expert who is employed by the police. We discussed the earlier incident and agreed to put some extra safety measures im place. During the conversation, both police officers commented how they were excited by the headway we were making with these guys. The drug addiction officer brought up a guy called Micheal. When Micheal came to us over a year ago, he gave us a list of establishments he was barred from in the city. He asked us to see if we were on it. We said he was more than welcome here. Micheal was imitially a very aggressive guy, he was angry and raging inside with bitternesss and resentment. He is addicted to drugs and had a problem with theft. He was also prone to violent behaviour. Throughout the year our team has sat with him, talked to him, listened to his aggresive rants, fed him, clothed him, loved him. The police were saying what a dramatic change had happened to Micheal. He is no longer aggressive, hes trying to change old habits, he hasn't stole for months, he is changing.

Micheal has been changing. He has had lots of prayer over his life.

The police chief then said a significant thing.

"I think this is the only place he feels safe. The only place where people give him the time of day  "

I thought yeah.

Sanctuary.

I visualised Samuel 22: 3.

My God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

Sanctuary isn't just a building.

Sanctuary is God himself.

Sanctuary is God in us.

We can be living sanctuary's.

If we ourselves cling to the only safe place there will ever be.

God.

If we cling to the rock, others will see God in us.

They will sense God in us.

They will experience God through Jesus in us.

I guess if we aren't finding refuge in God then we are guaranteed to be insecure.

Heres the thing.

The world definately doesn't need an insecure Church.

The Micheals of this world need a rock to cling to.

A sanctuary.

So I guess all that is left to say is lets make sure we are clinging to the rock of our salvation.

Lets make sure we can say with absolute certainty

My God is my rock.

My sanctuary.

Hope for the downtrodden

The Tension was thick in the atmosphere.

One gang of guys sat at one end of the hospitality area in S21 Salvation Army Building in Durham, at the other end of the hall sat a solitary guy, high as a kite on a cocktail of drugs and alcohol and you could see he was seething. Something had gone down as they had made their way up to Church.

The day had started with Dawn, myself and our volunteers opening up the building at 10am.

We had already cleared a stack of empty vodka bottles from the steps that front a doorway on the front of our prayer centre.

One guy was already asleep in the doorway waiting for us to open.

We both sensed this morning that we needed to pray extra hard for some reason, so we prayed in every area of the building, whacking huge amounts of prayer on everything that we have at our disposal, calling down a rain of blessing into every inch of our place.

And the air was electric with a kind of uneasiness that had your inner warning antennas buzzing wildly.

Suddenly it kicked off.

I have no idea what started it but the solitary guy stood up and started walking quickly toward the group of lads at the bottom, shouting stuff like “I’m going to break your neck you ..........!

Me and another guy who was helping this morning somehow managed to calm it all down, and the lads all left quickly possibly taking the fight to another place.

We are constantly inundated with the marginalised and the downtrodden, the needy and severely broken people who have frightening stories of past lives, and many who just haven’t had a chance in life of any kind.

This brings a dangerous element into the mission mix, everyday.

And this morning, as we almost witnessed a free for all brawl in church, I wondered where the hope I believe in, preach about, and operate in, actually was.

But my mind filled with a re-run of the whole David Wilkerson, Cross and the switchblade events from the 50s, a book I’ve read seven times! I remembered David Wilkerson saying that he only saw life changing transformations in the lives of vicious gang members, heroin addicts and other needy people when the Holy Spirit was brought into the picture.

It’s funny because just before this incident this morning I had felt the urge to turn to Luke in the bible, Luke 1: 26- 38, Mary the mother of Jesus’ encounter with the Angel Gabriel.  The Angel had just told Mary she would give birth to Jesus, and she couldn’t work it out, because she knew she was a virgin. The Angel says, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the most high will overshadow you, then after some more info tells Mary “For nothing is impossible with God.”

The transforming factor in this part of the events leading up to the birth of Christ was the Holy Spirit. For the impossible to turn into the possible then the Holy Spirit has to be involved.

And there is the hope.

The Holy Spirit always makes the impossible possible.

So that really means there is hope for these people, many of whom seem so lost in drugs, alcohol crime and violence.

We pray for these guys and girls, we feed them, we help them, we clean up unspeakable messes that they leave on our floors, we’ve cleaned up their urine and their vomit. We’ve responded with love to their aggression and their unreasonableness. We’ve found shelter for some of them; we’ve prayed with them and talked for hours with them. I’ve seen people showing incredible care in dangerous situations.

And so often it seems fruitless.

Even impossible!

Transformation feels unreachable and unattainable.

But that’s not how God sees it.

When the Holy Spirit touches a situation or a person absolutely everything changes.

The impossible becomes totally possible.

We are going to keep on fighting for these people, hanging on to the truth that the Holy Spirit can transform the hardest of lives, the most lost of all lost souls, the darkest of beings, the seemingly unreachable.

I realised today that maybe I had been trying too hard. I desperately want to see these people’s lives turned around. But maybe Gary was getting in the way a bit? Maybe I was bringing them Gary Lacey instead of bringing them the Holy Spirit.

I relearned this morning I will never help these guys unless I let the Holy Spirit come through.

And the Holy Spirit will come upon us, and we will be supercharged with power from God.

We will continue to pray, love, and walk in the Spirit.

Without that?

Last man in church hand the key back in.

If we want to see justice and liberation for the poor, for the lost, for the broken? Then we can have all the conferences and the programmes and the ventures we can set up, but we need to remember it’s the Spirit of God who transforms.

It’s the Spirit of God that saves.

It’s the Spirit of God who makes the impossible possible.

The afternoon settled down a bit.

I felt so much better things this afternoon.

Hope was restored, life has returned to my heart. The Spirit of God has changed me today, and I feel free and liberated and ready to fight once again.

Massive blessings on your life today.

Prayer, What's the point?

Lately, I have done a fair bit of travelling, doing talks, and the thing about travel is you get a nice long space to do some reading.

This is good because I am trawling my way through Dostoyevsky’s classic script, Crime and Punishment.

Travelling to London on the train today, I read a line in the book which struck a chord with me, and it had me reflecting for pretty much most of the journey.

Raskolnikov, the books main character, is reflecting on a question that an old guy, who had lost his job and had been sleeping rough for five days, who he had met in a drinking den in St Petersburg had posed him in a drunken conversation.

“Do you understand, dear sir, what it means to have nowhere left to go? For every man must have at least somewhere to go.”

I stopped at this sentence and began to think about where my life was heading right at that moment.

I found myself thinking about a conversation I had with a desperately unhappy minister of a church, which by all accounts is in dire need of some kind of miracle. He has a critically low congregation, a desperate lack of funds and a vacancy for a vision.

He said to me, “We have nowhere to go, we are going nowhere fast.”

I could see a connection with the question Raskolnikov was dealing with, “Do you understand, dear sir, what it means to have nowhere left to go?”

I guess this poor minister did understand that question.

I asked him a simple question as I tried compassionately to help him through this issue a little.

I asked, “Have you taken this to God?”

His answer kind of astonished me, but didn’t at the same time. (If you know what I mean?)

He said, “What’s the point?

What’s the point!

I guess he had personally lost connection with the only reason the church will ever exist, so I guess that explains the lack of vision then.

I guess Christian leadership is going to be pretty difficult if a person can’t see the point in including God in it.

And if the church can’t see the point in including God in absolutely everything, then I guess it will understand that question too, (“Do you understand, dear sir, what it means to have nowhere left to go?”)

It’s funny because God has been giving me words lately to share with various gatherings, the main thrust of which has been imploring the church back to the spiritual.

It’s funny how we can get drawn into fixing our gaze on how we look, how we sound, whether or not we are holding up the traditions of the past (The really sinister traditions im talking about, you know the ones? The ones that really aren’t Godly at all?) or how cool our church is, the wackier the better? Hours are spent in pointless meetings trying to sort out the church. Trying to pamper to peoples egos, trying to please everyone?

Well here is a simple truth.

There are people in desperate need of a saviour.

Everywhere!

In my simple thinking unless we take everything to God? Mission isn’t happening guys, no matter how cool we are, no matter how many people attend our service. No matter what amazing strategies we come up with, and believe me, I’ve seen some pretty amazing strategies come a tumbling down because God isn’t really included.

This is where prayer is so vital.

I know we hear that and think we understand that and I think we actually do, but do we really work hard it?

Prayer I mean?

I mean it’s our connection apparatus in our relationship with Jesus.

So

If we don’t pray, or place it low in the pecking order of life, then we are not really honouring our side and our input to a relationship with God.

Are we?

I guess the guy I have been talking to about his dilemma with the church he leads has lost the basic need to pray.

He says, “What’s the point?

Here is the point.

Without prayer we are nothing, in terms of spiritual.

Without prayer we will never liberate a trapped world.

Without prayer the church or indeed our individual Christian journeys will have nowhere to go.

Nowhere.

Dostoyevsky says, “For every man must have at least somewhere to go.”

The Holy Spirit ensures we will always have somewhere to go.

Forever.

Prayer is the avenue we need to walk down when we feel we have nowhere to go.

So today ask ourselves a straight question.

Are we praying?

Hard?

Is God allowed into every aspect of our being?

Commit to pray more.

I promise you (More importantly the bible promises you) it will change everything.

It can change a family.

It can change a church.

It can change a Nation.

It can change you.

All the vain things (Re-run)

Tonight I was almost at the end of another blog-post.

I had an overwhelming feeling that I shouldn’t post it yet. 

I kept seeing this old blog-post in my mind’s eye.

And I had a strong spiritual urge to publish it again.

I guess for some reason God wants me to re-publish it.

I wrote this nearly five years ago on a cold night in an old SA hall in the North east of England.

I was feeling homesick, and a little lost. I felt that the direction of my ministry was drastically off course.

God spoke to me.

So here goes, I pray it helps someone tonight.

Recently there have been times when I have really felt like I make no difference in the world whatsoever.

I have struggled for one or two days with the question why am in here in Sacriston?

Why this appointment Lord? The people here are fantastic and I love them so much already but I have felt so isolated lately, as if I have been ripped up from a City and a ministry where there were lots of people all around me. I had my places to go in Liverpool, especially Anfield. I had my family near, and I had all my friends nearby. Liverpool is a gateway City so you can fly, get the train or drive anywhere in the world quite easily. Liverpool is a bit warmer when compared to where we live now, and I really hate the cold! The North East is really beautiful and the people are amazing but it seems so far away from anything I am used to, especially City Living.

So why here Lord? 

A few weeks ago I went into our little dilapidated Church Building here in Sacriston.

There was no-one around, it was so silent, it was so still.

I began to pray, and I was struggling to even speak to God. (I guess I was puzzled and more than a bit angry with him) But I struggled on. I was walking around our hall shouting, “Come on Lord please answer me!” For about half an hour I kept saying this over and over again. As I was in the middle of my frenzied ramblings to God, a little thought zoomed from seemingly nowhere directly into my head. And I tried to dismiss it. It was the line of an old song, an amazing song really, but just one line kept coming to me, and boy it began to get strong. It stopped me in my tracks completely. “All the vain things that charm me most I sacrifice them to his blood.” Suddenly tears began to lace my face as something in my deepest parts just broke. I found myself kneeling on the ground just crying out to God.

A simple yet profound realization came to me as the Holy Spirit began to make me seriously aware of a very serious fact.

When I became a Salvation Army Officer God required me to make some massive sacrifices and I have to admit I had kind of lost sight of that.

I had somehow got into my head that my destiny was in my hands and I can manufacture what type of ministry I do or where I do that ministry.

I’d lost sight of the sacrifice.

If anyone is out there struggling with where you are right now? Don’t lose sight of the sacrifice!

All the vain things that charm me most I sacrifice them to his blood.

I wrote this prayer, I share it with you guys now.

Lord I came to understand why right now I am here, it’s because it’s not about me it’s all about you. All the vain things that charm me most I sacrifice them to your blood. I realize that I have given my life to you as a sacrifice. So Lord I have to sacrifice the city, my home, my family, my friends, my thoughts, my ambitions. I realize Lord I can’t have it my way, only your way. I need to sacrifice all the vain things that charm me most because you want to use me right here right now. Lord I have to live with these feelings of isolation. I have to live with the fact that the things I see in my mind like, travelling, tackling cities for you, will only happen when you place me there. Right now you want me here for such a time as this. I have to live with the fact that I desperately miss my daughters and my family, my friends, my comforts and some of my pursuits. I have to live with these things because you have called me and I agreed to accept that call and I really realized today Lord that my life is not my own and I need to dedicate my all to follow you. Please forgive me Lord for taking some time to realize this. But I thank you so much for being so patient with me, so understanding and so merciful. Lord I will go anywhere for you, because I know you go before me. Lord use me in this place you have me in right now.

So nearly five years on from the night I wrote that prayer, I have seen God do some remarkable things. I understand more about Him, about myself and about leadership.

The urge to go back to work in a major city is still there, in fact ten times stronger than that night!

And I know more than ever that is where I have to go. But I understand now that I needed more shaping, more experiences, good and bad, preparation for more ministry in new places, and I can now see why the Lord has placed us here. 

So tonight I don’t know why God has asked me to re-hash this five year old blog-post, but I just know I have to publish it.

And I believe I have to say these two words for someone.

Hold on!

So I pray this re-hashed post will help someone today?