Yesterday I hit a watershed moment.
Yeah.
One of those points where I had to say enough is enough.
Since coming to this new appointment in London, an appointment that involves a big responsibility to re-develop the Salvation Army's work in West London, but also means we are based in a Corps that frankly has been heading for the permanency of oblivion for many years.
I have had one humongous battle inside myself to connect to this responsibility at all.
To the point where I felt like walking way from it.
The development of anything new and effective seemed a million miles away.
And my head was telling me that this just is a hopeless cause.
And I just couldn't bring myself to commit to it.
To changing it.
To leading it.
To developing it.
And yesterday.
Enough was enough.
Another petty and resistive act by someone, had made my head say just get out of here Gaz, get yourself back home to Liverpool and live your life.
Alone in the main hall of the Church, a place that looks like a Salvation Army museum, it's ante rooms stuffed with pointless clutter, a piano with a daft red cloth on it that makes it look like a grotesque coffin standing at the font of the hall. Filthy walls that haven't had any attention for years. A carpet that has so many dirty stains on it that it looks like a map of the universe. Damp patches depicted by a kind of mushy mess cover different parts of the building. Blue chairs that look frighteningly austere and cold. Locked doors everywhere, locks on everything that opens, doilies' on the tables, I so hate those old lace cloths that people think actually look nice, but look so hideous. Yeah, standing alone in the hall, my 'enough is enough' point came.
So with everything I had, I got on my knees and prayed.
I was about to say to God, "Please get me out of here because I want to go desperately."
But.
I heard the voice of God penetrate my prayer.
"I want you to commit to this."
My eloquent prayer line was "you've got to be joking God."
I kind of forgot for a second that God doesn't say stuff he doesn't mean!
But.
His voice was really excessively strong.
"I want you to commit to this."
That started a two hour struggle on my knees because I didn't want to commit to it.
God reminded me of the vision he has given Dawn and I, and I had earlier that morning had a word from someone who had said to me, "the vision is God's and you are just carrying it out on His behalf"
We carry that vision into West London.
Yet this seems the least likely place out of all the places we've been and planted and developed Houses of Prayer to carry on the work he has set us.
But deep down.
As I prayed.
I knew.
I couldn't resist his voice.
I knew it was useless to fight any longer.
If God implies you to commit to something, it's no good battling it.
So kneeling in the middle of a place that desperately needs reformation, restoration and transformation?
I committed to it.
I shouted it out.
I committed.
To the vision.
To the cause.
To the Mission of God.
To joining God in breathing life into a lifeless place.
I stood up from my knees and felt free.
Free of the pain I've felt this last few months.
Free of the struggle.
Free to really grasp a hold of my ministry once again.
Dawn and I have some very difficult work ahead.
The only way the vision will come to fruition is to totally trust God, and to be in constant prayerful and worshipful connection with him.
So it truly begins for us in West London.
A very mountainous road ahead.
But what God ordains he does not go back on. What he speaks out he carries through. What he orders will be done.
I guess there are those struggling in exactly the same way. Your head tells you it's mad to continue, but in your heart a very different message is stirring.
The one thing I've learned is I wish I hadn't struggled this long.
If God wants you for a task.
We are required to commit.
If we don't, if we wrestle with it, it will get us absolutely nowhere.
The task remains undone.
Even if the task seems futile, hopeless, pointless, daunting or whatever?
It's not any of those things in Gods eyes, in Gods world, in the Kingdom.
Nothing ever is.
Nothing.
So I pray from the dust of yet another dying church, I believe God will raise his Army. A surging spiritual hothouse. A place where many lives will be changed. A place that God will restore what the locusts have eaten away.
I commit to that.
And from wherever you are now?
Is it time to stop struggling and commit?
