Crushed

The weight of the world crushed me.

I couldn't breathe

I couldn't see

I couldn't hear

Anything.

The crush was total, brutal and suffocating.

Blackness came,

I felt I may well die.

Yet out of the corner of my eye I could always see a chink of light.

A sliver I hope in a sea of hopelessness.

And

For all the weight of the crush,

In spite of the blinding darkness,

I held my gaze on that needle hole of light.

I focussed solely on that tiny piece of hope.

That chink of light held all of the good things that I had to look forward to

A new identity

A new approach to life

A whole new vision that would lead to quiet blissfulness and contentment.

As I concentrated on that light

It began to get bigger.

The crush lessened.

The pitch blackness greyed up.

More and more light poured in

More and more weight lifted from me.

You may feel crushed

You feel shrouded in darkness

But there is always a chink of hope

Aa hard as it is to do

Look at the light

Take the hope.

A beautiful life is waiting to be grasped.

I wrote this this morning. I was sipping my hot black coffee just reflecting on my journey up until now.

I haven't wrote for about a year.

I have had to go through a year or two of fighting to recover from what I experienced as a Salvation Army Officer.

The Salvation Army UK leadership crushed me. Their sad focus on their own sorry progressions meant that they made sure that anyone who threatened that progression needed to be crushed. I have been kind to them despite the total lack of compassion, respect and love. But now I have been able to shake the dust off my feet and finally be in a place where I am free of those sad people for ever. I can only pray for them now.
Some of the wounds they inflicted on me mentally would make you wince if you knew the truth of how they were administered to me.

But

Enough

It feels fantastic to be able to speak about that now.

The bitterness has all but gone.

I started writing this just as a personal note to self.

But

God intervened and reminded me that I hadn't wrote for such a long time on my blog.

I felt a serious prompt to publish this today.

And

I want to encourage whoever feels crushed by whatever today, that there is always light. People may crush you, but they cant win. Hold on to that chink of light. Focus on it. I don't deny there is an easy fix for a wounded soul.

But

There is a fix.

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5)

Yeah

That's the light in talking about.

By his stripes we are healed.

DEJUNK!!!!!!!

Hi

My book Dejunk has now been released

To get a copy please make a payment either by cheque made payable to William Gary Lacey to Gary Lacey, 7 Shepherds Fold Drive, Winsford, Cheshire CW7 2UE.

or Alternatively

Pay via the PayPal button on the right hand side of my blog:

Also send me your Postal address to garylaceybusiness@gmail.com so we can send you your book.

Be blessed!!

Goodbye Ealing

I was reading scripture this morning, in the quietness of an upper room in an old Church here in Ealing. A room that has been my writing atrium for a few years now. It has nothing in it but a chair and a table. No distractions whatsoever.

I'll be sad to leave this place.

The scripture?

Genesis 12.

It depicts the call of Abram.

The very first verse says, The Lord had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your Fathers household and go to the land I will show you."

In the bare quietness of my writing room, my mind shares pictures of the years of my Officership in the Salvation Army.

Particularly the last five years here at Ealing.

God has showed me the land guys.

We have been blessed to have been used to create new projects and to revive some dying Corps along the way.

Here at Ealing we were appointed as West London Development Officers to try and stem the amazing decline of the SA in West London.

Ealing itself was on the brink of extinction.

I go back to my first Sunday meeting at Ealing.

I was feeling lost as I was about to deliver my first sermon there.

Dawn and I as many of you know are not traditional Salvationists in any way.

I was dramatically rescued by God from the clutches of Salvation Army traditionalism when I got saved.

I looked out as I stood noteless and ready to deliver what the Holy Spirit would have me say that morning, the defiant posture of the death grip of the bad side of  tradition sat before me. They were in serious 'bless me if you can' mode.

I felt the spirit of God ask me to say nothing.

I simply put a picture of Jesus up on the screen.

And

Sat down.

I guess you can imagine the uncomfortable moments that followed.

But I guess God was making the simple point that everything is all about Him.

A lady came up to me after the service and said these very words.

"Captain, (which I hated anyway! My name is Gary!) We don't want Jesus in here! We just want to be the Salvation Army. We don't want any of that spiritual stuff."

Well?

You can imagine my shock.

I was so shocked it made me laugh.

I gently asked her if she would help me to understand what she had just said.

I knew then.

I just knew

That the Lord was asking us to make some very tough decisions and some very drastic changes to this Corps, which had the death rattle and was heading into oblivion.

So some big decisions were made.

I don't want to dwell there, but I want to speak about what the Lord did from there on.

Nearly the whole of the remaining congregation at Ealing transferred to another Corps.

Which left us virtually with a blank sheet!

Prayer has always been the lifeblood of our ministry so we started to pray.

Furiously.

We had nothing left.

So God gave us a simple plan.

Of course we had experienced his miracles in our previous appointments in Liverpool where the amazing Liverpool Boiler Room happened, and in Sacriston and Durham where we saw growth like nowhere else.

We planted and developed Sanctuary 21.

We helped God turn around another struggling Corps in Sacriston.

So we had previous!

But here?

It had to be God's simple but devastatingly brilliant strategy.

That strategy had three elements. Pray and teach others to pray, build solid relationships showing total love, acceptance and compassion to everybody, and in this case get the doors of the Church open.

The doors of this Corps were shut most days accept for Sunday and few hours in the week.

Sounds a bit flimsy.

But it is the strategy God will use no matter what any Church Planting strategy manual will tell you.

So everyday Dawn and I prayed on the streets, prayed in the building, built relationships and opened up everyday for hospitality.

For the first few months?

Nobody really came?

But we had learned a long time ago that you have to dig in with God's plans.

Today?

As we prepare to leave?

We have a team of around fifty staff and volunteers.

The attendance in the month for hospitality and prayer is in the thousands.

Homeless and needy people have been drawn to this place by the bucket load. Refugees, prostitutes you name it come to us everyday to be fed, clothed and blessed.

This week, as we prepare to leave this place I sat with a guy who had come to us early on in our journey. I and others have sat with him and filled forms in for him, prayed with him and gave him food and clothes. He said these words to me? "Gaz, I'm so sorry you guys are going. I will miss you. Then with tears rolling down his face he said, I never had a family, but I honestly have one in this place now."

God spoke into my heart.

He said

"Gary, your job is done. I will look after this family, you move on in the land I will show you next."

So I wanted to say goodbye to Ealing publicly.

I know I resigned here, but that was to do with the Salvation Army System not the people, but hey, you guys have taught me so much. You have taught me about humility and family, community and selflessness, and you guys have added a new dimension to my ministry and mission too.

So thank you.

I say thank you, to Nicky, Sue, Tanya, Cynthia, Linda and the whole team who have contributed so much to the phenomenal growth here.

And

To those who have given your lives to God while we have been here, so many of you, keep going in the faith.

And

To the new leaders coming in I say be blessed.

But

I leave saying thank you to God who has shown me miracles of epic proportions and taught me that he can turn around the most dangerously sinking ships.

God, you are astonishing.

And

Now to a new part of our ministry.

Dawn to Winsford.

Myself to the whosoever.

Where I am waiting like a caged lion to see the breathtaking power of God at work in the everyday.

Book release

Hey

My new book, Dejunk (Less of you and more of God is being launched on July 4th.

Please email me at garylaceybusiness@gmail.com or Message me on Facebook if you would like to join the preorder list.

It's a book sharing some of my experiences as I have gone on a journey to get rid of some of the junk that lay in my life that took up so much space God was getting pushed further away!

It is a book that is not designed to give answers but my prayer is that it will set off some thinking about what we clutter up our spiritual lives with and how we can best Dejunk it.

I really pray you will enjoy it and be  be blessed by it.

It has been priced at £10 in the UK and $13 in the USA

Hope you like it.

G

Book launch

I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and the mire, he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God; many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord. (Psalm 40: 1-3)

I thought I would just share that verse with you today.

It's pretty much the truth of my story.

So

I wanted to alert you to the fact that next month my book will be released.

It's called dejunk.

It is about obliterating the junk we collect in our spiritual lives

Is your Spiritual life struggling?
Is your Church life suffering?

Then you may need to minimalise the junk that clogs up space that God needs to fill.

So there will be

Less of you and more of God.

Watch this space for further news on a precise date.

If your interested in a copy please Facebook me or email me on wglacey@outlook.com

Blessings

Two years

Two years.

It’s taken me to recover from total burnout in ministry.

But.
I’m recovered,  healed, restored,  whatever you want to call it.

Last night I took to the stage to preach once again.

And

I noticed a big difference in comparison to my two-year recovery period.

The life was back in my voice.

The life was back in the words.

I felt calmer,  sharply focussed and clear in attitude,  mind and approach.

The clarity has come from a determination to see lives transformed.

That’s the end game for me.

My purpose.

My vision.

My mission.

I took the two year remission from all things church and more specifically all things Salvation Army.

I took Jesus advice literally when he invites us to come to him all of us who are all heavy laden and I will give you a real rest.

And

I should have known.

It really does work.

It works supremely well.

Not only am I now like a caged lion ready to get back to what I am called to do,  but I am changed. 

Changed completely.

Better,  stronger,  refreshed and prepared.

So.

Why do I share this little insignificant piece of information about my progress today?

Well,  when I woke up this morning I had this incredible urge that someone was in desperate need.

I have no idea who that person is.

But I just knew I had to write it and blog it.

Whoever it is.

This is what the Spirit of God says to you.

“Come to me and take a real rest.  I understand your pain. I know you’ve hit rock bottom. Lay down the battle you are experiencing, let me fight that for you. But you,  you need to recover.  You really need my kind of recovery,  a restoration of a broken spirit, a damaged heart and a tired mind. I know about your weakness,  I know about your constant striving to please people that you are never going to please. Leave that battle,  just walk away and run to me. I will give you a recovery like no other. Come to me and I will give you rest.”

Guys.

I know it is never easy to lay something down.

But I sense the urgency this day for you to do that.

O listen to the heart of a saviour who loves you and cares infinitely for you.

Step up and take a real rest.

And you will recover your life.

I don’t know who you are but I will be praying for you.


         

Who is leading you?

Every year I read an old book from start to finish.

It's a book that has had, and continues to have, a big impact on me.

The book inspires me.

It spurs me on.

It teaches me lessons I need to learn.

The book is the Cross and the switchblade by David Wilkerson.

The story of Wilkerson powerful ministry to the notorious gangs of 1950's New York.

This time.

On this year's read through.

My God spoke powerfully into my heart.

I'm about to move to Cheshire.

And I've had all kinds of ideas about how I will continue to minister there.

But.

I couldn't truly see the way forward.

Yet.

I read about how Wilkerson, when everything seemed lost, when he couldn't get to see seven boys who had brutally murdered a young polio victim in Highbridge Park, New York, felt he had met a massive block seemingly in his way. The authorities wouldn't let him see these boys without the signed permission of every parent. He had no names and addresses. He only had the name from a magazine article of one of the boys.

He needed those names and addresses of parents.

But.

He didn't have them.

He prayed this prayer.

"Lord I have reached the limit of my own humble ideas. If I am on your errand, then you must lead me from now on."

In an astonishing answer to that prayer God led them to pull up and park on a Bronx Street right outside the parents apartment of the boy who's name was revealed in the magazine article.

As I read Wilkerson's prayer today, I realised something. That I too have reached the limit of my humble resources when thinking about my future.

Suddenly a scripture appeared in my head.

"Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path. " Psalm 119: 105

And

That was quickly followed by a question.

" Who is leading you Gary?"

Right then?

I had to admit it was me leading me.

Trying to set into motion my humble ideas.

But

I became gloriously aware that I had to trust God, to lead me forward, to put my faith once again where it might get knocked down.

I got a shiver down my spine.

Letting God lead me instead of me leading me, was incredibly more exciting and sure.

So I prayed the same prayer as Wilkerson's prayed on a New York Street in 1957.

Lord, if I am on your errand, then, you must guide me. I have reached the limit of my humble ideas. Lead me where I must go for I do not know.

Maybe there are people reading this who don't know where to turn next in some situation or even in your life?

Then the message for you this morning is that when we step out on God's promise to be a lamp to our feet, and a light on our path, then doors will open on the way.

Who's leading you?

Spacious

This last week has been a brilliant week really.

It started with a new birth.

Dawn and I pulled up outside our daughter Bailey's house expecting to spend some time with her. as she opened the door her waters unexpectedly broke!

And to cut a magnificent story short,

Clark William Warner was born a few hours later.

As quick as that.

And,

He is gorgeous.

Then I have had a fantastic weeks writing on my book, one of those weeks  where the text flows from your heart at breakneck speed. Only a couple of months work to do until it is more or less complete.

Dawn and I also managed to visit Winsford SA Corps where Dawn has been appointed Pastor.We met with a few people and they made us feel so welcomed. They were so nice to us we could almost eat them.  We are so looking forward to swapping the intensity of the City of London for the Cheshire countryside. We have had three major challenges in our Officership, and we are excited by the challenge ahead for Dawn in the coming years.

For me, my own ministry is developing brilliantly under God's direction. And I know he is positioning me back in the North for some major Kingdom opportunities, so I'm busy trying to secure some part time work to aid me a bit in my ministry. So please pray for me in that quest.

Anyway back to the baby!

I got to hold him for the longest time.

He was hours old.

I was being careful and gentle and saying all that daft baby stuff like you do, when God showed me something.

He showed me, well, me.

How far I've come lately.

I was trapped by the damage that some of my experiences as an officer had inflicted on me so badly. I had really forgotten how to live, how to love life, and how to love myself basically. Yet as I sat with my new grandson in my arms I could have wept because I saw how God had held me through that mess inflicted by different people who may be leaders but are really clueless and lost.

And,

I realised something brilliant!

I've finally come out the other end.

I am finally free.

Living in the freedom Jesus won for me on the cross.

It's taken a long time to recover from the wounds inflicted by people who were meant to care for me.

But.

My life is now spacious and full again.

I'm stronger.

Rehabilitated.

Fresh and ready for the fight again.

I think that's why I'm looking forward to a new start in Cheshire. Its spacious and open, and, as much as I have loved London, which I have and always will, I have felt a bit claustrophobic lately, like the City is closing in on me.

And,

That reflects just what God has done lately in my life, he has brought me into a spacious place where I can move and breathe and spend my new healing well, He has brought me there from a place where the ungodliness of religious rules and regulations closed in on me and strangled my Officership to death.

Yeah,

I'm ready.

Ready to help people to know a God who holds us all in his arms no matter what is happening in our lives.

Change

My current writing project is well on its journey presently.

Every working day starts at 8am with my old Lenovo ThinkPad X230.

I work in an old office on the top floor of the Prayer Centre Dawn and I imagined and fruitioned when we were appointed as West London development Officers back in 2013.

Coming in every day has allowed me to watch and marvel at the transformation which has taken place.

The first Sunday service I did at the Corps that was Ealing Citadel left me cold and saddened. You have to understand Dawn and I came to London from a brilliant Church we had started where uniform wasn't important, Where worship took place every day not just on Sundays, where you could go to church at 12 midnight and find people worshipping or praying, where love acceptance and compassion was the norm. Dawn and I had always up until that point been able to create new projects from scratch. This was the very first time in our Officership we had inherited a Corps. But the situation was dire. We had been brought in to try to turn the tide of dramatic decline of the Salvation Army in West London. The first thing I saw when I entered the hall that Sunday was a lady wearing a bonnet. I nearly fainted. Then I saw a songster brigade taking there places, all five of them. The hall looked like some weird kind of heritage centre with more flags than the Royal Navy, flags which represented the Eighteen or so Corps that had closed down over the previous thirty years. The hall was really only open on a Sunday and the situation was dire. really dire.

We had been asked to turn this around.

It seemed impossible that Sunday Morning.

Dawn and I went home for our dinner that day and we don't mind saying that we seriously considered packing up and fleeing the country!

But

Four years on?

I'm sitting in a thriving Corps. Open every day, financially sound, full of people who have had their lives turned upside down by encountering a saviour they had never known. full of those who desperately need help, the homeless, the addict, the lonely, the lost.

Only one person of the original Corps survived the change.

And it was a change and a half.

I had learned very early on a very profound lesson in planting new things. This lesson stood us in good stead as this sinking ship was saved by the power of prayer and the power of God. The lesson is this. In the twenty first century, Deep change is required. You can't do incremental Change. or what some people in business call straddled change. In other words you can't hold on to things and just change a bit. many people reading this will have seen SA Corps who have tried to mix tradition and so called contemporary stuff. That is straddled change and is proven not to work. and there have been some disasters believe me.

We implemented a deep change to this project. This involved a cessation of the traditions that this particular Corps had held onto while heading further and further towards extinction and I mean a complete cessation, and a reimaging of the part we could play in saving people from destruction in the community of which we are a part, which in our case was the 3.5 million people that live in Ealing borough.

In the end.

The reimaging actually turned out to be more of a reawakening. Prayer, Hospitality, Mercy and compassion were the elements that needed to be instilled into the fabric of our work and the Spirit of God really has instilled them. Many people have been touched by the kindness of  Jesus through our amazing team and our tireless work for the kingdom.
.
Why do I bring you this little glimpse of our time at Ealing, a time I could actually write a 40000 word book on if I was so inclined?

Well recently I've been undergoing a bit of a change in my life. And when I have given myself the space to think and reflect, I realised I needed not an incremental change but a deep change. So right now I am in the process of trying to change everything about my life. I've realised the things that are important to me and have to stop wasting time on the things that really aren't. I am stripping back, which as it happens is what my book is about. I am reimagining my life.

I'm so looking forward to moving to Winsford in Cheshire not only because it is close to where most of my family live, but because it will be a complete change to the intensity that living and operating in a City like London brings. obviously I want to support Dawn in her new ministry there, but I also know God is gearing me up for some new ministry opportunities too from that area.

Its a complete change for us.

And.

I am excited to be on the journey I am on to a deep change.

And.

I guess I write this as always in the hope it may help someone to focus on their own situation right now.

Maybe you need a deep change too.

Head Space

It took a long time coming.

But.

I have had to admit that my life is digitally infected.

I had an epiphany moment the other day.

I realised that notifications are the framework for my daily living.

And.

As Jurgen Klopp would say, "it's not cool."

So.

I have embarked on a very difficult treatment.

A digital detox.

I declare I am giving up my smartphone.

On order is a new phone.

A Punkt MP01.

The thing about this phone is that the Swiss company Punkt, product range is designed to carry out a digital detox.

The phone although brilliantly designed by top industrial designer Jasper Morrison, only allows you to call and text. No email, No internet, NO camera No Facebook or twitter, The tweets the likes, the loves, the posts can wait until I reach my computer.

The idea?

A less distracted life.

By no means can I give up on emails, Facebook etc all work tools to me, but they will not be dropping onto my smartphone every five minutes distracting me from real things and real life.

While I've been waiting for my new phone, I have got an old nokia out of the draw and started.

Sitting in Nero's this morning I kept reaching for my phone. It took me a while to get over what I might be missing on my emails and social network platforms.

But after a while?

It was kind of nice.

I had a face to face conversation (Remember those) with my wife. I looked out of the window and admired the architecture of Turnham Green Church opposite.

I found I had some head space!

Further more when I had a little prayer time I found an interesting thing. I found I couldn't keep looking with one eye on my notification bar. I couldn't hold the phone in my hand to wait for the next vibration.

Someone called me mid head space but it was nice to have a conversation instead of whacking out a few sentences on a touchscreen keyboard.

I was able to engage in conversation with God in a way I haven't felt for a long time.

Head space is important in prayer.

Head space is important in life.

I'm really into my digital detox now and its as if life has been illuminated. Im reading books again, Im noticing things in my area I have just missed because my head has been too often in the screen stoop position.

I'm claiming my life back from the digital grip.

I am entering the real world of live face to face conversations.

Its also making feel more alive to the need around me.

Maybe you should try it

The Junction of a thousand roads

It’s been a mad week or so.

Dawn received her change of appointment that sees us both move to Winsford in Cheshire on July 13.

We have been to visit family in Yorkshire and Liverpool.

One of my daughters is pregnant and boy doesn’t she talk about anything else!

I’ve had to slip in and out of my various life roles constantly. Father, Brother, Husband, Son, Friend, acquaintance and so on and so on.

All of this?

While trying to reassess where I am in life.

And.

Attempting to engage with God about what he would have my future to look like, you know, which direction should I go down.

I kind of feel like I’m standing at a junction with a thousand roads ahead of me, anyone of which I could take.

It’s kind of exciting.

It’s kind of scary.

If you stand at the junction too long?

It gets a bit confusing.

I’m shouting at God ‘What would you have me do?’

Then

Without warning.

An old song from the days when I was stuck in traditional Salvation Army stuff, one of those golden nougats out of the time before my transformation out of that dark place, flew into my head straight from Heaven and landed smack bang in my mind and my heart.

"Mid all the traffic of the ways, turmoil’s without, within. Make in my heart a quiet place, and come and dwell within."

My study for my Master’s degree came flooding back. I wrote a dissertation on silence. I had written about how silence is massively important to be able to effectively join Gods mission.

Basically?

If we don’t stop and hear God?

Listen to what he is saying?

Reflect on what he is doing?

Then forget effective.

In fact, I remember at Sanctuary 21 in Durham, a prayer centre that Dawn and I planted from scratch, when one lady out of the hundreds of people that came for one to one prayer ministry with either Dawn or myself or one of the team, came into be prayed with, and she was in complete turmoil. Some serious stuff had happened in her life and she was all over the place. Before we minister to anyone we obviously pray to catch a hold of how God would want us to approach the session. When I was praying, I really felt an overwhelming feeling that God was saying, “Send her to the prayer room without her bible, without her handbag, and tell her to be silent before me, for however long it takes. I don’t want you to minister to her on this occasion I need to directly minister to her.” So, being as obedient as I could be I sent her to prayer room five to be alone with God. When I explained this to her she looked at me as if I had two heads. But she went. About three hours later she emerged out of the prayer room looking tearful but radiant. To cut a long story short, she had been incredibly touched and changed by God and he had given her a new direction.

So.

Hey.

Remembering all of this?

I stand at the junction with a thousand directions ahead of me.

Mid all the traffic of the ways, turmoil’s without, within. Make in my heart a quiet place and come and dwell therein.

I head for a silent space today in the third prayer centre we planted, a fantastic place that is testament to the power of God.

And.

I wait.

To hear where he requires of me next.

To point me to the right road.

And.

I write this today because there maybe someone out there standing at the junction of a thousand roads.

I urge you to try silence.

Get away, no notebook, no bible, no pen.

Just you with all your inner stuff. With all your anxieties, with all your thoughts.

Be still and know he is God.

Be silent.