'Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,' Part 3

"What are you , O mighty mountain? Before Zerubbabel you will become level ground."
Zechariah 4:7

What is the dirt that has to be dug through? First to go is the life that grows out of that dirt: that which has a semblance of life and fruitfulness, that which seems to be benefitting you, that which has been with you most probably from the beginning - olive groves that have been here longer than the mountain - that which simulates the life of God and in some way it is unthinkable to lay the axe at its root: but I have been blessed by it! we declare. These things are the closest to our heart, that which we have yearned for and prayed for and God has allowed us to have and yet it comes between us and God. Will you lay it down? These are simply the extremities, the levers God uses to prize open our heart. The real work has not yet begun. Others will wonder: why have you done that? It will make no sense to them. Why would anyone cut down such beautiful olive trees? Even then you may be tempted to replant them.
Next will come the dirt out of which this purported life grew. Soil is a mixture: weathered rock, rotten life, water and air. In short, death. But it's fertile! It gives life! Life only comes by one death: the death of Him, not you! The death of your 'death' - the death of your sacrifice on your terms is the real death; it's not about your sacrifice, it is about His in you. But this is what I've achieved; I've spent years and decades on this! The death of your self-appointed and self-conscious sacrifice, where we whitewash our tombs, must come. We cobble together from the remnants of our life something that approximates to life, but supplants the real life. We stitch it together and rationalise it. The life of God needs no such explanation; it is self-evident.
The dirt is cleared to reveal what the Lord really wants to get at, and this is where the real work is done by the hands of God. Something which sticks up vertical needs to be laid down. At its core it is the rock-like obstinacy and stubbornness and self-will that will not bend or yield in certain or any circumstance. It will not allow the circumstance to dictate to it but wrestles with it. It bucks beneath the circumstance - not accepting that this is God's will. We wanted the victory and the triumph but He must conquer our hearts first. On first contact it must be broken and then peeled back and excavated to reveal the strata of the rock, its secret and hidden ways of how it was originally made. We protest and complain that its uprightness was for God. It's hardness and strata will be put to more glorious uses than it was otherwise intended for: an indefatigability for God, a defiance for God in the face of the world's onslaught, a strength that will take the whole weight of the House of God because it has been laid in a tomb of rock and not of earth.

'Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,' Part 2

"What are you, O mighty mountain? Before Zerubbabel you will become level ground. Then he will bring out the capstone . . .."
Zechariah 4:7

We want to start something; we want to plant and we want to build. Man has been doing this for millenia and he has built one of two cities: Babylon or Jerusalem, both with different foundations. One city of the 'I will' and the other of 'Your will'. But before a single stone can be dragged onsite, before a single stone can be laid as a foundation, before any of that starts, there is a mighty work to be done and it is not to build up into the air as in Babel - it has always been to dig down, down into the dirt to get to the rock.

And who is it that digs? It is not us who performs the work; it is the High Priest. And who is the High Priest if He is not Christ himself? And upon what or whom does He perform His destructive work? It is upon us. We are the object of His levelling. Up to this point we have got it completely wrong. We thought we were doing a work for God, but - in fact - it has been Him who needs to turn us into the workmanship of God. Like David, we have offered to build a house for His Name when in fact the Lord has turned round to refuse the offer. Instead, He will be the One to build a House for David to rule over for ever. We can always offer but God will always trump us; He always has something better in mind. We look to build something temporal when God looks to build something eternal.

That proud, rugged and wild mountain must be brought low and circumcised before God can begin to build. Where once people would say, 'Look at that fine, beautiful mountain,' they now say, 'Look at the temple mount, the house of God!' They no longer see the mountain, it has disappeared. Its pride has been brought low. Where once nothing could touch it save for groves of olives and wild animals, it is now brutalised under a building site, marred and scarred beyond recognition. Its lofty heights laid low, all that it took pride in is now despoiled. It is a woman bereft of her hair, a soldier shorn of his weapons. The mountain lies naked and exposed. The guts of the mountain have spilled over to reveal what is inside. And when people pass by to look at the work in progress they will be appalled - disfigured beyond that of any mount. They will not recognise the likeness of the mountain ever again. They will remember the former mountain and shake their heads. But the haughty mountian must go through this if it is to be beautiful once more for wholly different reasons. Before, it was beautiful for its own sake, now it is beautiful because of what it bares - a place for God to dwell.

Remember this when the stone masons get to work on your stone heart, when the chisels and the pick axes fall, when God digs deeper and flattens you out. You thought you were a mountain; now you are a footstool.

It will stop. The rasp of metal on stone will cease and all will feel like paradise. And when they bring out the capstone what a shout will rise up from the mountain. What delight will be yours when the perfect stone is laid on a perfectly level surface. Before anything is built the mountain has as its heart one joint, one union upon which everything is built, from which everything is measured. What delight will be yours when God comes to rest in your centre, upon you, without a gap between you . . .  complete contact.

You thought you were a mountain, now you are the resting place of God.

Confession of Total Losses

At times there is no godliness in me, just jealousy and competition to be better than someone else: a deep abiding wish to be more correct, more holy, more right, more powerful.

In the past I have griped and complained and judged, nursed bitterness over debateable matters, ignored warnings given by the Spirit, not recognised direct intervention from angels. I have been wreckless with God's gifts and promises.

This is the type of man you have been reading. Want to read on? Or am I too contaminated? Is this too close to the bone?

We want our leaders to have a dark night of the soul elsewhere, in private, so we can invest some of our God-stock in them and we don't have to deal with the mess. Ignorance is bliss. Would we invest in something that was as totally bankrupt as this? A total loss? Perhaps we wouldn't, but God definitely would. In fact he invests in nothing else. But we are so ingrained with our own value and worth through what we do that we cannot conceive of coming to God with empty hands. We bring our 'talents' and 'gifts' and we expect God to import these into the new life.  We bring the shame of our conduct and past lives and expect God to forgive it over and over again. How can life be new if it has the old? Until all is considered a complete loss how will we ever know the surpassing greatness of knowing Jesus? Even the greatest things we have done in our own strength must be considered unclean and must be expelled through the Dung Gate. For all the 'good' and 'bad' we have done are all alike under God's gaze. Only God is good, so be prefect as your heavenly Father is perfect. If you are His child then inheriting his nature will bring this perfection forth unconsciously.

How often have you heard it said: "God could use a man like this . . .". God will use no such man or woman, not until they are 6 feet under or at the bottom of the River Jordan or in the stomach of a whale.

Of Dreams and Log Jams Part 2

When I cogitate these log jams appear as symbols and metaphors in dreams; stories to unlock that I will think on for days and weeks after. They, at times - much to my shame - have a way of prizing open my heart in a way that undiluted scripture doesn't, a bit like a parable. They are impenetrable; I come up against a wall I cannot scale. I meet the end of my own understanding. I flounder in my own weakness and can't fathom it because I am in the flesh or using the power of my soul. Spiritual signs are spiritually discerned by the Spirit of God.

When we hear scripture we are in danger of thinking we know what it means and maybe apt to dismiss it. Characters with actions and metaphors with meaning are there to be understood and unlocked. It is because we are weak. If God were to speak plainly our conscious mind might object to it and reject it. His command would give a chance for disobedience. Reason it away and we will be in peril. God persuades us in story and anrrative. Then I am led full circle back to the scripture in the first place to say, 'Ahhh, that's what it means!'

One thing we mustn't do in public is admit our weaknesses; the show of 'faith' must go on. We must look competent and in control. Our weakness and emptiness is the door for the grace of God to get to work to fill us up. Let us hold to no pretense.

Our weakness is the beginning of dependence on God.

Of Dreams and Log Jams Part 1

Last night I dreamed; I have been dreaming a lot recently. A friend once said to me that a person only dreamed when they weren't listening to God - when God couldn't get their attention. The implied criticism at the time was that I wasn't listening to God. It may well have been true, but I think my friend was simply stating that they didn't dream and they listened to God and He spoke to them clearly.

I have always dreamed, big swirling epics and little flashes. It occurs most often when I'm deep in thought and mulling things over, when something concerns me, when I search or yearn for something, when there are rocks in my heart and I hate myself for something, when something is frustrated and the life of God does not flow easily, when peace has seeped away, when I doubt, when I am in disobedience, when I have neglected prayer, when a burden will not let me go. Somewhere there is a log jam and something has to come out, otherwise I'll go mad.

The conclusion being: when I dream something is wrong, in me or somewhere else. If God isn't digging up the rocks in our heart, what is He doing? Do we assume to be so prigishly perfect that this will never happen? We must keep up our facade of being 'spiritual' and holy. Sometimes a hard questioning cynicism(distrustful of the presented virtue of yourself and/or others) is the only cracker that will crack the nut of prudish religiosity, to provoke what is truely inside.

If we are on a even keel then the waters haven't risen yet; we are still in dock. The door of the ark may be shut and we may be sealed in pitch but we await the deluge. We cannot see what is happening let alone understand it. We can only hear it when it starts to fall. Will the seal hold? It starts with a slight movement, then a jolt and a judder, a bob. We are afloat in a waterproof nave being taken by God through the difficulties of life - not taken out of but through - with walls of gravity-defying water hanging beside us. Nevertheless, we must look at the pillar of fire, not at what surrounds us.

Beware of harsh metallic faith, like Paraoah's chariots, that reduces life with God to a succinct dismissive rule - when it rests upon a person. Flee from them. They cut you open like a surgeon, gutting you like a fish while they themselves remain immutable and untouchable. A rough ride awaits you upon the good ship 'Ark' rather than upon the smooth chariots as a captive. Beware of smoothness, ease, convenience, routine that lulls, inward neatness and tidiness. Nothing will remain the same while the ark bucks and tosses through the waves.

"It is dangerous to get into a settled state of experience. It is preparation and preparation."

Oswald Chambers.

So dreaming occurs when everything is in flux, when something that means everything has been tossed into the air . The music starts again and we are up and running, not knowing where to go, only knowing we MUST go and go now. Respond now lest our hearts congeal and become hard. Dreaming is God's kneading of the heart before the oven, it is his pressure and hands upon you in an unseen way, getting your attention, especially when you think deeply. The heel of his hand rolls into you again and again, flattening and moulding, spinning and throwing into the air: His - not to play with but - to do with as He pleases. Dreaming comes when there are phases of resistance to this. His fingers press in. Respond to Him now before He sends circumstances to shape you, respond in the small and mundane; be faithful in the little. The perplexity of that dream will nag and annoy, it is meant to be inscrutable until your heart keeps pace with it and then it unfolds (or evaporates into nothing as it was born of the worry of your soul). It forces you back to God knowing He is the holder of yours secrets. You have been trained by the sheepdogs of God's dreams, hounding you into submission; He tracks you down and corners you into a decisive moment in time and the decision is not left or right but it is down: down and submit, yield!

He MAKES me to lie down in green pastures!

Then the peace will come.

What is true fellowship with God?

It is not the tingling of the hands or the hairs of your neck standing up. It is not the flitter of your closed eyelids or any relaxed respiration - though all these things maybe present while in the presence of something 'other'. However, this is still not fellowship, it is not even the signs of fellowship. It is not by the flesh, it never starts with the flesh - it is always by His Spirit.

We must not confuse His Presence with His Fellowship. It is possible to be near God and not know God; it is possible to enjoy His Presence but never let His essence and character possess us. We can be tourists looking for another experience, another march up to the top of the hill with the Grand ol' Duke of York with the trumpets in tow - but never enter the holy citadel. We may admire its imposing gates of pearl and its immense walls of pure crystal from the outside, but then it's just an object in our lense and the conceit of the eye is to control what it sees; what should be truth to us suddenly becomes a lie in our own mind, and we deceive ourselves. We say: I have experienced God. We might as well have dipped our finger into the still waters rather than go down completely into the River Jordan. Our world is saturated with synthetic and simulated experiences of one kind or another. We go from one meeting to the next looking to re-live something past and it becomes nostalgic and if we ever experience it again we reminisce; we look over our shoulder at something we should flee from: the reduction of God to a series of senses. It is not by flesh . . .

God is not in the earthquake nor in the storm, nor even in the dark clouds that shroud his immense light from the known universe. These are all 'things about the thing'. We must concern ourselves with the Root and not the leaf, the cause and not the symptom. We could build a whole life around these 'things' and never know the 'thing' itself.

God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with Him . . . we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship . . .. (1 John 1:5-7)

There is no fellowship without light; light that searches and knows; light that deals and exposes the shadows of the heart we have long since been blind to; light that prepares and prepares; light that reveals every secret. Fellowship with God is exposure to God's searching and testing, standing still for His plumbline to stop swaying, falling upon Him to be broken, being spun to be moulded, being poured out to be refined in the fire. Fellowship is not knowing God's secrets but allowing God to deal with yours so there is nothing between you. God longs to remove from you all that stains and casts a shadow so that there is nothing between you, that He might enjoy you for Himself. This is the highest calling of man, not that you might enjoy God in your flesh but that God might enjoy making you like Himself for darkness has no fellowhsip with light; only light fellowships with light.

Prepared in Obscurity

God prepares in the desert, in the quiet places out of the way of gazers. They disappear and then reappear. You cannot set your clock by them and they may seem inconstant. An earthly kingdom is not theirs and they will appear feckless in the ways of the world. They have not come to tend gardens but to the Lord. And - like an iceberg - the unseen dealings of their God are hidden from public view:

"Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"

"We know your parents!"

"Your brothers and sisters are here with us!"

"We know who you are! You're nothing special!"

Hidden is Bethlehem and the manger, the wise men, the shepherds and the angels but also the long trip into Egypt. Few will see these things. So don't get all antsy when you are not seen, for when you are hidden then you are with God in the secret place to abide. Obscurity is the birthing ground of the men and women of God: Moses, Gideon, David and little Israel. They begin and end in obscurity so that God will give them a lasting epitaph. And their praise is not from men but from God.

The Hidden Question of my Heart - Part 4

There is one person I must mention. I see her ruddy face and round spectacles framed in a nun's habit so clearly, a ready smile, great warmth and a face like a cherub: Sister Paul Joseph.

If it hadn't been for her I am sure my whole life would have been different: I wouldn't have got into grammar school and I wouldn't have liked learning. The whole class loved working for her and I would have done anything for her.

I fainted one wednesday morning in mass when the church was really hot. I was in the front pew and must've collapsed across the wooden bench in front of me. The next thing I remember was my little 10 year old body being swept up into Sister Paul Joseph's arms as she rushed me outside into the cool air. There was some urgency in her stride and I felt cared for. It was a stark contrast to the general sternness I received at that Roman Catholic primary school where teachers could be tad harsh and firm without any gentleness. I revived almost immediately when she swept me up, but I just lay there in her arms. To this day no one has ever carried me like that - not that I would expect that thesedays at 13 stone! To be loved and cared for in the midst of an abrasive school was the difference I needed.

If there was a test for her compassion, this was it and she passed it with flying colours. By the grace of God Sister Paul Joseph rescued me from more than just banging my head on a pew; she rescued me from myself, from being lazy in school and behaving badly. She put the joy back into life and learning and I have much to thank her for . . . now that I'm a teacher myself.

I am sure if you look back at your own life people have been placed there at crucial times: from God and from the Devil. The war for your attention and your heart might still continue and you may still have many choices to make along the road. Before you make that choice consider this: wide is the road to destruction and many travel on it for it is easy - the path of least resistance. However, the way to life is narrow and at times treacherous for it often goes against the grain of the masses. Few travel on it for it is difficult to find its beginning. (Matt 7:13-14)

Who are you following? What crowd are you going along with? If life is easy, ask yourself: has God made it so or have I avoided all those difficult decisions to make life easy. Are you cocooned in your little world or would like to take the first steps on an epic journey? There is a narrow alley, a side street just for you to slip away with the Lord. Go and walk with Him; He will give you His lifetime to know Him. And if you faint be sure of this: there is always One who will scoop you up into His arms and let you rest until your are revived again.

Walls and Gates Prophecy

"Gates have been thrown open so wide that they cease to be gates; doorways widened that the very pillars of the building are removed without thought to the integrity of the structure.

A church without walls is a church that will fall down, a church that will implode on itself and many destroyed in its collapse.

The narrow way has been exchanged for the broad way in the name of ‘love and acceptance and grace’. Many will come in and will not be wearing wedding clothes. Many will be surprised to find themselves there, for they will blunder their way in without realising, for there is nothing to mark their way, nothing that announces their entrance into God’s Ark.

The hedge around My Church that separated Her from the world has been torn down and neither can one tell the difference between her and the world - they have been so fused with one another. Their words are Her words and She touts Her wares in the streets like a trader, like a huckster selling something fake. She attempts to allure, She tries to beckon but She will be trampled by the heathen and the pagan in her midst that She once called ‘saved’, for She has treated as saved those who are not; She has exchanged, She has trafficked, she has swapped her glory for something commonplace and profane. She has left her position of grace, She has abdicated her throne and gone down into the valleys to make herself more accessible, more ‘real’, more ‘relevant’.

My loved one has become a whore and I find prostitution where I should find prayer, worldliness where I should find holiness, noise where I should find quiet, work where I should find rest, lip service where I should find repentance, faith in man’s strength where I should find the faith of Abraham.

Is not My Ark a holy vessel to save utterly through? What would it be if She were holed? How would She float if She leaked? How could She possibly survive any storm that was sent against Her. That sacred boat needs to be sealed by Her Lord and covered in pitch; She must be watertight against the ingress of the world. My unction and My oil does not mix with the world, it sets apart. My Spirit seals those I know and they shall be delivered through the storms. You have called ‘saved’ that which is not; you have called holy that which is profane; you have committed a fatal reversal.

The true vine has withered and in its place is an imported vine, one that I did not plant and that will not produce any fruit – just itself, there will be no bud, no flourish. It will creep and crawl and bind up everything in its midst, it will demand ad demand like a baby that will not wean, like a child that will not learn and all the while it grins and demands more proof of love, “if . . . if . . . if . . .”

Your sin started at the gates and how you think people enter the courts of the Lord. You thought it wrong to judge but does not the man of God judge all things? You thought it wrong to divide but doesn’t the man of God rightly divide the word of truth? Doesn’t the Son of God separate the goats from the lambs?

Isn’t a wall in place to show that which is and that which is not?

Remove that and you remove the courts of the Lord and it merges with the space around it to mean just what the space around it means – nothing! If there is no wall or no hedge then there are no courts of the Lord, no entrance through which to enter. Did I not tear down the only wall that mattered in my own flesh? Did I not rent the veil in two as my body was torn? This was the only rending required.

You have torn away the steps for a man to know me. How is he to find Me if he is treated as one who already knows Me? The hand of the wicked is strengthened and he feels he is justified before God, when he is not.

You have entertained when you should have praised and prayed. You have put on a show when you should have grieved and mourned. You have advertised when you should have kept you mouth shut, but you boasted proudly of your inheritance without living in it or giving thought to how it was obtained.

My baptisms are mere rituals to qualify for church membership. My baptisms are for wholeness and for healing. They have been neglected in this age like no other and I find it an abomination. Where can a man go to dip himself in sorrow for offending me? Where can a man go to be united with me in depths of the waters of baptism? And where can a man go to be sealed with that unction that seals against the world and that jealously possesses a follower? You must go through the former to get to the latter, there is no short cut, no convenient or easy way. It must be whole-hearted, but you have made disciples for yourselves and of your selves to mirror what you are before me . . . tepid.

You speak and your prattle on and on, you discuss theology and doctrine in mere theory, you discard it for you do not see its value, therefore this holy doctrine and theology will not save you. You will go down into sheol and there you will remain like Pharoah’s chariots, rusting. You don’t cherish my word, though you have a doctrinal statement. This is a mere technicality.

It will not save you, none of this will save you, not one jot, for you have abandoned my plan of salvation, you have abandoned me and who is it that saves? Is it not I, the Saviour of Israel? I am the only one who saves. Man does not save though he portrays every day that he does; he speaks of salvation but he shall see none.

Let a man come to me, let him seek me, let him exercise his faith, let him approach the throne of grace in his hour and perhaps he will find me, if he seeks me with all his heart. I knock and I wait, but here is always a door, a wall to separate a place ‘that is’ from a place ‘that is not’.

Did I not divide the day from the night, but you have mixed it together; did I not divide work from rest, but you are in continual upheaval; did I not appoint the sun and the moon to govern day from night? Did I not separate man from the other creatures? How much more the my chosen vessel to reveal Me in the Last Days? How much more my chosen Bride but She has dissolved in anticipation of the end, She has backslidden and not trusted Her Saviour.

There are always walls and there are always gates.

Bring each one to Me; bring them all: they are mine - not yours! Make them disciples of me - not your church: they are mine, you are all mine. They are all mine, if they have the Spirit of Christ and if anyone doesn’t, he isn’t mine.

There is a way and it is narrow. There is a gate and it is narrow. There is a lock and Only One is worthy to open it – even myself. It is by constraint - not by throwing off restraint; it is by tightness and squeezing; it is by passing-by and passing-over that I save. If anyone does not come through Me, he is not mine and you are not to welcome him. Let them come and let them tremble at your holy assembly.

I am the Only Saviour."

Given 02/12/10

'Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,' Part 1

'Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,' says the Lord Almighty. (Zechariah 4:6)

The signature verse for this blog was given to me as a baptismal 'promise' 26 years ago. I didn't like it at the time as I always wanted some great promise about me as a great man of the future, not some note of caution or rebuke implying some character flaw. I never liked anyone telling me what I couldn't do or the limitations to my evidently great spirituality; my flesh had always to be pampered to and puffed up and very few people in my life opposed this in me. I couldn't take criticism at all and was always extremely sensitive to it. I wished someone had opposed me with some godly wisdom, but I am completely responsible for this flaw.

The upshot was that I spent the majority of my christian walk trying to make something of myself when I should have been making nothing of myself (Philippians 2:7). I got it completely the wrong way round: I had been taking the high way instead of the low-way.

Back to this verse: it has been nagging away at me for decades now, like a bad penny, like the big bit of grit in the centre of an oyster. It has puzzled me in its conciseness and plainness. It's language appears straightforward and it sounds spiritual. I barely know what it means today!

Recently, however, something was unlocked inside of it when I read Watchman Nee's "The Latent Power of the Soul". Something clicked into place. To put it simply, the "might" that is disallowed by this verse refers to the physical strength to achieve and build; the "power" that is forbid may well refer to political machinations to achieve, but for the individual, it prohibits the use of the soul in all its intellectual, emotional and psychological (conscious and sub-conscious) power to counterfeit any work of God; this includes any projection of the soul to persuade and manoeuvre people into your way or methods.

It is not by the use of soul power that God's temple is built, though that could quite easily achieve the required end result more swiftly. No, the Spirit of God must build His temple if He is to dwell in it, He will dwell in nothing less than His own creation. Other temples maybe built with more guile and apparent skill and may appear more beautiful, but they will not stand in the flood or the fire. It is only the true spiritual house with its foundation on Christ that will stand both.

How often are we tempted to counterfeit God's work with our own well-qualified programme or ministry. Therefore, bind up your flesh and your soul as you plant the seed of God's work and make them slaves to the will of God for His purpose - do not start your work and ask God to bless it. The world will but God won't.

Burdens not to carry

Never allow the empathy for pain to becomes pain's reward and pain's attention. The empathy is not for the pain but for the person. Do not become encumbered in their story and their reasonings for their present state, rather carry them. Often, people will want you to carry their burdens, to do their work for them, to give them a brief respite, only for them to pick them up once you have laid them down. They had no intention of giving them up. Many people talk around themselves but there is a nugget inside that needs to be got at. Burdens and 'crosses' are used to avoid all this, the heart of the matter: we speak of the burden rather than the person carrying the burden.

All burdens when carried by a follower have one destination: Golgotha. To the cross the burden must go. We can no longer negotiate another destiny for these burdens; we are not taxi drivers or social workers giving brief comfort. Eternal rest is where we come from and where we go to. To give brief comfort as we see fit is to reinforce that burden's weight and power over the prisoner. Do not carry a burden unless its carrier wants to be rid of it once and for all. To the cross you must go and end all suffering and oppression derived from this burden. The carrier and the burden are tied together with a yolk. To carry another's burden when no eternal rest is given is to subject yourself to the same burden and to come under the same slavery. You were not made for slavery but for righteousness.

Faith and Shaggy Dogs

Faith is simply the trust that someone will do something that you expect because of a simple, transparent request. The foundation of this is knowing that person and what that person is like; it rests upon relationship. The person of faith therefore rejects all manipulation, all coersion, all interfering in someone's life as a means to get them to do the 'right' thing. Their last resort is their first resort - prayer.

This afternoon my shaggy dog galavanted across a field of snow to play with a black lab. I let him go but kept walking. I called him a few times and just kept walking. He's only one years old but he came back willingly and joyfully. He made me smile. I didn't have to bellow or run after him because I didn't trust him, I just kept walking, trusting his need to be with me was greater than his need to play with a black lab - it was.

We must act as if it will happen, not out of a gamble but out of the certainty of knowing the Person of God. The more we know Him, the more we can be certain of Him. We do not need to cry or to plead to persuade God; He knows us already. I am not saying tears will not be present but they will not be used as a lever against God to force Him to act, we cannot cajole Him nor force Him to do something against His will, but we can pour out our hearts in honesty as Abraham did for Sodom and Gomorrah.

The Rest of God and the Work of Man

The Only One to work His way into Rest is the Lord God. He is the Only One worthy enough whose work is sufficient to bring Him to Rest for it is complete and lacks nothing. Man is not like God: his work is not worthy enough, everything he does from his own strength has a canker to it; he has to work his way out of Rest.

He must therefore, as we all should, enter His rest in the first instance. The world works so that it might rest; however, we Rest so that we might work God. The first day of the week, Sunday, signifies the Rest we start from. If spiritual Rest - then physical as well. All of God's mighty work is born of the grace of God's Rest that His complete work wrought in His Son maybe shown in us. All work that is eternal is born of Rest. What He works in, we work out that we would be the perfect workmanship of God.

Adding and Taking Away

I have listened to many children read over the years. There are two types of readers: the faithful and the careless. The former struggles word by word to get it right. They might find reading difficult or easy: it's not the technical ability with words that matters but cleaving to what the writer meant.

The careless reader, often more able, is hungry to finish: hopping and skipping their way to the end of the sentence, the paragraph or the chapter; they want to know; they want to find out. The words are just stepping stones, and they can miss a few out on the way, can't they? After all, they are hungry for the story. They can also slip a few words in if the sentence doesn't sound quite right or if the writer got it 'wrong': writers are often getting it wrong. The reader's eye barges its way through the sentence, ahead of the mouth or the understanding, but there are hidden corners, blind alleys and invisible dips. The undulation of the text is inconvenient; we want a straight Roman road with a sprint to the finish. But the writer is writing their story with their words. Though the story maybe more than the words, it is no less than those words.

How dare the writer make us stop and think and slow us down . . . so, we edit. Isn't this the cut and paste generation? Aren't we allowed to challenge everything that challenges our self-interest? We frequently expect certain sequences of words to occur together and we are seriously put out when our expectations aren't met. Isn't the customer supposed to be right? Therefore we skip our way gayly over the passage, not paying complete attention to the words, but smearing the text with a vaneer of our own story, our own expected meaning. The writer doesn't mean that! He means this! We miss out the little words; we insert a few of our own. The story isn't in the words after all; the story is bigger than the words; the story is in our head; we make it up.

And this is what God's children do to His Word.

One evening, whilst listening to a tutee, it hit me: I was having to correct the tutee frequently; their speech slurred close to an interesting bit; as they sped up, more words were missed and extra ones slotted in. So much was being missed as the speaker hauled their way over the words: gems of meaning were overlooked for the sake of gobbling-up and eating the events. It had to be consumed; it had to be used-up. The fluency and rhythm disappeared as they stuttered in their haste and came to several premature and confused halts. Every few lines, they recomposed theirselves and continued much in the same vein as before: stumbling until their interest waned.

So often we slide over the words as if they're an unimportant conduit, a means to an end, and our balloon sails high above them while we look to the horizon. And nothing must come between us and our destination, must it? But is not God as good as His Word? Was not the Word in the beginning? And isn't His name the Word of God? Satan has railed for centuries against the person of Jesus Christ and maligned the Spirit of Holiness but his defeat means he now attacks the basic premise of how God communicates to Man at all: the meanings of words. Language itself is being attacked and subverted daily, confused and hyperbolised so that it is rendered meaningless in the glut of competing advertising rhetoric, whether personal, corporate or 'spiritual'. A tired Man-World seeks to infuse some semblence of life to his life through various devices of artifice. Where there are many words, sin is not absent. Never in the history of humanity have there been so many words spoken, published or reported. And never has Man been so far from God. The last thing he needs is more words.

When we come to the holy text of His Word we frequently bring the same attitude: manipulation to get a desired result that conforms with our present status. We measure scripture and too infrequently is scripture allowed to measure us. We take the lofty position of examination without the Word of God examining us, rending soul from spirit in spiritual sacrifice. It is God's word that is a hammer or a sword or bread from heaven or rain on a mown field. The Word of God acts upon us and cannot be heard in the human spirit unless the words uttered are Spirit and Life itself, that is, the Spirit of Truth rushing through the vocal chords of God Himself so that the divine Logos of God can be heard by Man. He is the One who speaks; we are the ones who hear and obey. It has always been thus. Let us not be so egotistical to think we are the ones who confront God, rather, it is God who confronts us. And this should be our attitude to His Word. Very often we want answers to irrelevant questions and the Lord would say, "It is not for you to know . . . but you will BE . . .". God's words are Life and Spirit and will speak to your spirit. Your soul may express it but your spirit will apprehend it. Therefore, bind your soul up when you come to God's Word, bind up your love for things material and immaterial and your love for position before the world; it is just you, God and the invisible cloud of witnesses.

The warning at the end of Revelation to not add or take away from God's Word applies to His whole Word, not just the book of Revelation, and it applies to God's testimony in our lives and if the Word does not become flesh in our lives then it is not God's Word that has been working but our words . . . and there are plenty of them.

God's Spirit never empties God's Word of meaning unless it is to dismantle our misapprehensions, but even then the Spirit of Truth is the very one who undercuts our falsity with a truth that can be expressed with words but most importantly with a truth that can be lived and gives life, and if it cannot be lived then it is not truth - just a mere technicality. All scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching . . .. There is nothing in God's word that is 'obsolete' under some dispensation that God's Spirit cannot utilise for your edification in being living truth yourself.

What is it that the churches and teachers of God's Word avoid? What books, what topics, what sections are simply left out of church sermons? What is it that they emphasise and major on? Answer those questions for you and your own church and you will be a step nearer to ascertaining the extent to which 'adding and taking' has happened in your life and in the life of your church. It maybe that they cannot take you somewhere where they themselves have never been, but the Lord can take you there Himself, if you are willing.

One thing the present church does major on is money and tithing: I have heard more sermons on Malachi 3 than anything else by a very long way. One thing she does avoid is the Cross of Christ. I honestly can't remember the last time I heard a sermon on this subject, apart from the late Art Katz' "And they crucified Him". I am recognising less and less of what is called 'church' as the true church. Their 'adding and taking away' has now accumulated over centuries for certain denominations and decades for individuals. At some point God's accounting year will come to an end and all balances will have to be settled upon the debtor.

Pray therefore for God to show you where you have taken from and added to His Word, disavow yourself of all rhetoric or any leaven that makes you appear 'spiritual', pull you investments out of your word and put them into His, allow Him to judge you in this lifetime - not the next.

Going Barefoot

Tough, tough morning.

I heard it said once: "If Satan attacks you, he's working for Jesus."

It happened before I even got up this morning - a little domestic incident that reveals my incompetence as a husband! (I don't disagree that I'm incompetent.) It's always those tiny stones in your shoe that stop you from walking: too big to be sand yet small enough to slip in unnoticed. Your foot moves in your shoe and that tiny stone moves as well . . . ouch, where did that come from?

I didn't switch the tumble drier back on after I pulled stuff out of it last night. The result? Someone didn't have dry kit for work this morning. I could have sworn I pressed the button, but I didn't check that it had started working again. I should've pressed and held the button. Oh dear.

God does give notice, but why was it such a surprise? I didn't listen. I saw it coming. It usually happens when I'm tired. But it caught me blindside. I complained and blamed, heard things that were never said and, eventually, called out and scrambled in prayer to get out of the hole I fell in.

But it's not the stone that God is bothered about, it's not about the source of irritation or the sandal you're wearing as if He just cares about your comfort; it's about the heart that gets irate and irritated. It's about the heart that responds out of self-defence. There is only one way out, and it isn't up - it's down, not a highway but a low-way. Don't bother to stop and lean on someone so you can whip your shoe off and make yourself feel better - just kick them both off and go barefoot.

When you hold something - anything - against or within yourself there will always be a little 'thing' that can work its way in between you and that 'thing'. It's presence to remind you there is a 'thing' between you and the outside world, that hard skin of leather. Throw it off: it only insulates you from feeling the pain and suffering that are yours, so that when the real thing comes along you are unprepared and give up in despair for comfort's sake.

Go barefoot and take nothing with you; allow the stone and grit of the road to grind against your feet all day long until, at its end, the Lord will be lower than you and wash it all away.