Drop the dead thing!

My eye caught sight of something that led me to change something today.

One of those things you see in the mundane movement of everyday life.

So in the five years I've been in Durham, most days I've walked through Millennium square and not really took much notice of it really.

Took notice of what your thinking?

Well.

A statue. (See pic at the bottom of this post)

A replica statue called "The Journey" by Dr Fenwick Lawson which depicts six monks carrying a coffin which contained the relics of Cuthbert, a monastic who became a saint, and who is deeply entwined in the history of the UK Church. The story goes that Vikings invaded the Island of Lindisfarne so a group of monks carried the relics of Cuthbert's body which were apparently so anointed that miracles happened whenever anyone went near them. They carried these old bones and a few precious items in a coffin, fleeing to various places including Melrose, Chester Le Street, Ripon and finally Durham, where he is buried in the Cathedral in an elaborate shrine, that draws pilgrims from all over the world.

I pass this statue every working day.

This morning it kind of drew my gaze.

And an overwhelming sense of God speaking enveloped me.

And what I saw was where I've been at this last week or so.

I saw a group of blokes carrying something dead.

I imagined how carrying this from an Island on the North East Coast to various places which are miles away from it must have been.

Carrying a dead weight about.

It must have been a complete trial.

It must have slowed them down.

Burdened them.

Weighed them down.

Of course there is a side to this that speaks about faithfulness and devotion and respect.

But really what I saw this morning was a group of weary monks, who are tired of carrying something dead around.

For what must have been years.

They were trying to carry something from the past around with them.

Holding onto it with everything they had.

And it looks heavy.

I wrote in my last blog post that I felt a real pull back to the past when I went home for a funeral last week.

And this last week has been a bit burdensome for me.

The past weighing me down.

I've started carrying something from the past around with me..

The Spirit of God speaks into my life this day that my past is actually a dead thing.

And I need to actually put it down.

Now.

So I can journey around quicker and more efficiently, so I can claim what is new, so I can break into new ground without carrying a dead weight into my future.

My head clicked into a scripture.

Matthew 8: 18-22

When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other side of the lake. When a teacher of the law came to him and said, "Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go."
Jesus replied, "Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head." Another disciple said to him, "First let me go and bury my father." But Jesus told him, "Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead."

I was reminded of the initial awe and amazement I felt when I first gave my life to Jesus. I knew I was crossing to the other side of the lake as it were. I knew God ordered me to walk from the place I was standing to a new place with him. A new life. A completely changed life.

And I committed right there and then to follow him.

The feeling enveloped my very being causing excitement and wonderment that just hadn't been part of my life up until that point.

This week though, I've kind of been in the "First let me bury my father" mode. In other words "Yeah I will follow you God but I have this heavy weight from the past, first let me deal with that."

Then today God hit me with a gaze upon a frankly spooky statue.

I hate it when he does that kind of thing!

He gets it right every time!

How annoying!

Yet?

How incredible.

The fact is Dawn and I will be breaking new ground in 2013. We will be walking into new things, new situations, a new phase.

God says to me in a way that you just know that its him speaking, "You have to Drop the dead thing Gary!"

He says, "You can't take it with you."

And so as he shared that personal order with me, I laid it at the foot of the cross today.

And it feels so much lighter.

So I felt that this may help someone out there today too.

What is that dead thing you are trying to take with you into your future.

Is it something from the past?

Is it a blast from the past?

Is it a thing you are holding onto with all your might, but its actually dead?

Is it heavy and tiresome and frankly getting in the way of your life's journey.

Are you called to follow God but need to sort a shed load of stuff out first?

It's probably dead in the shed actually.

The Spirit of God says this today.

"Drop the dead thing."

I pray downpour of strength on our lives today to be able to put the dead things of the past down and walk away from them.

Forever.

Dark familiarity

In my last blog post I mentioned being at my old Corps (Church) for the funeral of an amazingly faithful lady.

I felt a kind of electrically charged surge of desire to write again this morning. I don't usually write blog posts close together, but it feels like I have to this morning.

This is for someone out there today!

Definitely.

So in for a penny, in for a pound!

I mentioned feeling an old familiarity when being at my old Corps and went onto say it gave me a warmth that was comfortable and it had a pull about it.

Pulling me back to the old life.

The familiarity and comfort of the old.

It's kind of, well, a bit like religion really.

You know the bad side of religion.

The side of religion When it becomes about staying positively fixed on the old instead of allowing Jesus to lead us into new ground.

And I realise that one of the spin offs of that kind of rigid expression of Christianity is familiarity.

A familiarity that is pretty much desirable.

So much so you could fall in love with it.

It is a fact that it draws you, it pulls you, it calls you backwards.

It has its dark attractions too because it lures you.

As much as I loved being home God has called me to follow him to the wherever, the whosoever and to the uttermost parts of the Earth if it comes to it.

As I returned from Liverpool to Durham after the funeral, I felt like there was an elastic band around the car, pulling me back. I felt unsettled in my Spirit as I advanced further and further away from the comfortable place.

The next morning I went to work.

Terry was waiting for me.

Terry is an alcoholic, and is in constant trouble with the police. It is unbelievable the scrapes he gets himself into. He has been living that kind of life pretty much for his entire existence. He was slightly drunk at 10.30 am. He wanted to tell me that he was going to court next week for crashing a car that he had borrowed, he was drunk and driving without a licence. Just another scrape on another day. This time he may go back to prison for the umpteenth time. He talked about how he is desperate to change. How he wants to know God but can't talk to him. He can't talk to him because he sees himself as completely unworthy. I listened for about an hour then talked to him about the unconditional love of God. I could see the pain etched onto his face. A struggle I can't possibly truly understand. I prayed with him and will try and go to court with him next week.

It wasn't a comfortable place.

But situations like that are the dark places in people's lives that God is imploring the church to head for.

A friend of mine asked me the other day, "Where are the Salvation Army heading?"

It's a big question. One that the whole church can ask itself.

A question we can all concoct an answer to.

The fact is wherever we are heading, we need to be heading away from old familiarity and head towards God.

Because Jesus Is in the dark places, geographically spiritually, emotionally, and physically.

He's already there.

We definitely need to walk away from the warm and sexy comfortablity of safe old religion and strongly reject its magnetic pull.

There are too many Terry's in this world to just stay at home under the duvet with old familiarity.

So if you are sick of old familiarity, rise up. Get out of there, now. Resist its strong pull.

If you are longing for the safety of safe religion? The Spirit of God says run away from it.

If you truly want to see the love of God at work, miraculously saving and transforming? Then join Jesus in the dark places of people's lives.

Go now!

I pray that we would be strengthened to run towards God and run away from the bad side of religion.

Battleground

I traveled to Liverpool yesterday to attend the funeral of a lady who I've known my whole life.

It took place in the Salvation Army Hall where I attended for the years between me being born and me leaving to marry Dawn.

I only just made it to the service two minutes before it was about to start. It was standing room only as the church was packed.

So I ended up standing near the front against a radiator that was so hot it wasn't funny.

As the service progressed, My mind focused on the years I spent coming to this Church.

Faces from the past flooded in to my mind.

I scanned my eyes over the congregation and felt a warm feeling envelope me as I stood face to face with old familiarity.

I saw aspects of the building that brought memories flooding back.

As I glanced sideways, my eye fixed on a pair of double doors. I was standing right next to them.
As I looked at them, I had a major flashback.

I remembered the many times that I had headed for these doors during meetings when I Was a teenager and into my twenties. If I felt emotional or under any kind of conviction, although I didn't understand those feelings back then, I would take the opportunity to" Go to the toilet" that lay just beyond these double doors.

In other words get out of the situation.

I used to" go to the toilet" an awful lot!

I think people were worried I had some extreme bladder disease or something!

I then began to realise as I reflected on those days that this hall had been a battle ground for a large part of my life.

I had, without realising it, been the subject of a battle for my very soul, and a battle for my life .

A battle that is ongoing in the heavens.

In the days spent in that hall I was a different Gary.

I was losing that battle back then.

But the real battleground wasn't the hall.

It was my mind.

This morning when I got back into Durham, the first thing I heard on the street, was that yet another student had fell into the River Wear that flows through the city centre, and had been pulled out dead at 3 am this morning. Drunkenness was at work in the lives of bright young people once again. I felt a real pain in my heart for this young man and his family.

I believe he was under the same battle for souls that I am under, that we are all under.

This tragic scene  made me think this morning.

It made me think back to the funeral yesterday. It made me think about the battle ground, the hall I am talking about.

I can see it now.

God was constantly trying to get through to me. I was choosing to walk away from the intense spiritual heat that God poured on me. I was choosing to literally walk away through those double doors to pretend to go the toilet.

But walking away from conviction, only led me further and further into oblivion, into emptiness and a purposeless existence.

Getting out of the heat of God led me into the hand of darkness.

The land of nowhere.

It wasn't until my thirties that I stopped choosing to walk through that door.

I stopped running away from God and made the choice to run towards him instead.

That choice transformed my whole existence.

The young guy who died in tragic circumstances last night made a choice that led to death.

That's really what the double doors I was transfixed on yesterday led to. They didn't lead to an imaginary toilet.

They led to death.

A dead life. 

I'm glad I chose to allow the rescuing hand of Jesus to save me from death.

I chose life.

There is a battle for our souls that will rage until Jesus returns.

But the battle has been won.

At the cross.

Which means we have the amazing power to choose life.

The blessing  of choosing life is a powerful weapon in the selection of weapons God has graced us with.

So today if there is someone out there who is reading this right now and is feeling the heat of the battle for your soul and you feel like your losing.

Choose life.

Don't run from God anymore.

Run towards him instead.

Whatever you think, however you are now, whatever you have done.

His arms are open.

Massive blessings

Remembrance

My mate said this to me.

'I want to show you something.'

He took me to see a grave.

My mate has become a Christian recently. He does amazingly missionary things. He also does amazing unseen things.

So here we were in the eeriness of a darkening winters evening, walking through a graveyard looking for a grave.

My mate knew exactly where the grave he wanted to show me was.

It was a fairly well kept grave. 

It was the grave of a young guy who died in an accident back in the late 70s.

My mate told me that this guy had sat next to him at school.

They were friends.

He explained to me that he came and took care of the grave regularly.  The young lads family had long moved out of the area, and he felt someone needed to look after the grave plot.

In this bizarre scenario,  I was touched deeply.

My mate had wanted to keep this young lads memory alive,  and remembered him by taking care of his grave.

That's what I call a friend.

So this morning as I was speaking at a remembrance day service,  this visit to the grave that night flashed into my head.

I was speaking from Malachi 3.

God's people were having trouble remembering what God had done and was doing for them.

Except for a remnant,  who talked to each other about God and then honoured and remembered God by writing their names on a scroll in His presence.

The rest of the people were just dismissing what God had done.

They seemed to have forgotten.

We remember today those who have fought and died for our freedom.

It is quite right they should never be forgotten.

But I really felt in my Spirit this morning that we should never forget what God has done for us, or is doing for us,  or will do for us in the future.

I love that picture in Malachi 3:16 of a remnant of people who hadn't forgotten God sharing stories and then deciding to symbolically to write their names in a book of remembrance of God.

They wanted to honour God.

They made sure they would never forget him.

It's something for us all to maybe reflect on.

Do we want to be part of the remnant?

Or part of those who refused to remember what God had done for them?

My mate showed me that night in the graveyard that remembrance is important.

He didn't forget his friend.

Right at the start of the book of Malachi God makes a statement.

He says to his people, 'I have loved you, but you ask,'how have you loved us?

My mate loved his friend and if he was alive he would know what my mate had done for him.

I pray that we would understand God loves us and we would always remember him.

Forever.

The Cost (A bad week in ministry???)

Here is a summary of the main bad points of my working week last week.

 

1.    Threatened to be killed by a knife wielding homeless guy.

2.    Had my brand new phone stolen.

3.    Had my wallet with cards in stolen.

4.    Filled three different police statements in.

5.    Been confronted by a doctrine freak who wanted to challenge the Salvation Army doctrines.

 

It was a hectic week and one that I need to forget, but won't in a hurry.

 So right now after a two-hour meeting with a police officer, talking through profoundly important justice issues that we are involved in, I am just thinking last week through.

 

In the silence of my office.

 

In the presence of the King of Kings.

 

The first thing that drops into my head is how aware I am of how much ministry costs.

 

Every Thursday afternoon St Johns college do a mission lecture for second year ministry students in our building.

 

It was the day the knife incident was happening.

 

The guy who does the lectures said, it was a fantastic lesson for these guys who maybe had visions of ministry being all pomp and ceremony and nice people.

 

They spent most of the lesson praying for us.

 

Yeah, Ministry costs.

 

It's definitely not all nice cosy meetings, with everyone behaving correctly, with people who are respectfully dressed in nice clothes.

 

Definitely not!

 

And this week nearly cost me my ministry.

 

Because I felt like I had been pummeled into the ground with a mallet.

 

The thought crossed my mind, wouldn't it be nice not to be a Salvation Army Officer?

 

At the end of the week though, on Sunday morning to be exact, we had our weekly gathering.

 

Our Sunday morning gathering at S21 is a sight to behold.

 

Our congregation has a lot of people who can't even get in to some churches because of the way they look or the way they act, mixed in with students, and people who are called to our church community to help, along with people who just wander in off the street mid service.

 

As Susie, one of students, an incredibly gifted worship leader, led worship last week I just stood back and watched people. Homeless guys with hands in the air, people, who in some cases, have been unloved in almost every other situation other than ours, were kneeling, some with arms out, some with hands pointing to the skies. Drug addicts kneeling with arms around each other. Alcoholics sitting at the back slouched on the couches worse the wear for drink.

 

It was awe inspiring.

 

It takes my breath away.

 

We ain't a nice cosy Christian love-pod that's for sure.

 

Then when I get up to preach?

 

There is no chance of delusions of grandeur there. 

 

As soon as I start speaking, I get interrupted with people wanting to interject..

 

They are Holy interjections!

 

It's so life giving to have people feel they want to speak too.

 

But this last Sunday, the last day of a really difficult week.

 

God steps in.

 

Forcefully.

 

Not with a still small voice on this occasion.

 

No, he came into the messy week with a bang, not that he hadn't been there in all of that mess of course because he definitely was, but on Sunday morning he gave me a glimpse of the reason why I have to minister into the constant mess of life.

 

He showed me, in the eyes and actions of people whose lives are broken and chaotic, just how powerful he is. Young drug addicts being prayed with. A young couple feeling called to be soldiers in the Salvation Army without any prompting or even information from us. A lady coming in from the shops and just crying as she witnessed the moving scene she was looking at. Police officers sitting on the stairs in tears, as the Spirit of God moved like a hurricane.

 

Ministry may cost something.

 

But if we stick with it?

 

There is treasure to be seen, power to be felt, transformations to be witnessed.

 

So if anyone out there is struggling with your ministry, whether that be full time or doing your thing, God says stick with it baby.

 

Hang in.

 

God needs an Army standing strong.

 

There are big battles ahead.

 

Lets run towards them not away from them.

 

When we get knocked down? Get up again.

 

When its hard?

 

Cling to the rock.

 

It'll be worth it.