Whatever you want to call it, it's real.
Hey
It is so sad people are dying .
Families are blitzed and hurting. People are seriously ill and many are fighting for their very lives.
Many of us are marooned in our houses, only going out for necessary reasons.
Yet
Directly in the middle of all of this devastation is God.
And
In all of the uncertainty of the present, he is the one true constant.
The one true hope.
And
He is still transforming lives, still at work, still on a mission to save this planet.
This week we had a burglary at the Salvation Army hall where my wife Dawn is the minister. There was smashed doors, a broken safe, a right royal mess. We had police and crime scene investigators, and around £300 stolen. I watched the CCTV with a policeman and we saw at ten to three in the morning, a lone shadowy figure, hooded up, scale around the back of the building and dissapear, only to reappear around twenty minutes later and fade into the night.
It didn't feel like God was around at all.
But
As people in the community got to hear about it through the local news, we have had kind people donating five times what had been stolen.
God is astonishing
And
He is constantly at work .
And because of that.
We can never stay the same .
And hey
In the centre of the Coronavirus crisis, God is really at work .
I was reading Joel 2 the other day as I've been intensely praying at this time. I've been reading about swarming locusts devouring everything in their way. Hey, it is hard not to compare coronavirus with these locusts.
But
God instructs his people to "rend your hearts", and to turn to him with all our hearts.
Then
A beautiful promise
"I will restore to you years that the swarming locust has eaten."
Wow
In the very moment I read these words. The Lord gave me a word for the Salvation Army.
It was this
You cannot come back the same as you were. My mandate is spiritual. My story has you in it. But my mission is to the broken, the powerless, the hopeless and the lost. It's time to step beyond the citadel, beyond the stuff of doing, beyond what we have always thought was the right thing. For too long we were heading inwards, so far inward in fact, oblivion was barely a heart beat away. But I am working to transform people. I am working to host the whosoever in Heaven. In the midst of this global crisis, there is a magnificent opportunity for change. An opportunity you may not see again for a long time. And the change starts in you. My child let me in. Let me give you a heart of flesh. Let me transform you whole. Let me touch you, light the touch paper again. Rise from this crisis reshaped, reformed and restored. I love you .
And
God can do tremendous things.
He will restore the years the locusts have eaten.
Five times the money we had stolen was immediately a reality at Winsford this week.
So
Rise up faithful Army.
But rise differently.
Rise changed.
