Advent 2015: Hope over Despair

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“And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these Love”
1 Corinthians 13:13

“Hope springs eternal” as the saying goes. I’m a big fan of the TV series “Boston Legal” where Bill Shatner’s character quotes it as “Hope springs a kernel” referring to a farmer planting seeds. It made me laugh.

It made me think.

We plant seeds every day. Hebrews 11 tells us faith is the substance of what we hope for. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians that if the greatest is Love , then logically we read importance backwards, making hope the second most important.

Without hope we can have no faith.

We accepted Christ out of Hope for a future Eternal Life in Him and Salvation through His Sacrifice. That hope allowed us to receive the Faith from God to believe.

Love may be the cornerstone of the bridge, but Faith and Hope are either side holding it in place.

Hope, then, is crucial to the Christian life. Hebrews 11 describes Faith as the substance of that which is hoped for. Without hope there can be no Faith. We would be lost.

The message of the Gospel, the words Jesus Himself spoke, were the “Good News”. He announced His ministry’s commencement in Luke by reading the prophet Isaiah’s words that said the Messiah would declare a year of Jubilee – the acceptable Year of the Lord. To us in our modern world this doesn’t mean much, but the announcement by Jesus to a synagogue full of Jewish listeners would have been profound. Only the Christ would make such a declaration. A declaration of Hope in a time of complete despair. The voices of the Prophets had been silent for hundreds of years, then came John the Baptist announcing the coming Messiah. Now Jesus declared His arrival.

Hope rekindled in listeners’ hearts.

Many thought he was blaspheming in the worst possible way. He’d grown up in Nazareth and was known by them. Now this declaration. They moved to kill Him on the spot:

“So all those in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath, and rose up and thrust Him out of the city; and they led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, that they might throw Him down over the cliff. Then passing through the midst of them, He went His way.” [Luke 4:28-30]

A message of Hope in a space where only despair has been known for so long seemed impossible.

Things are no different today.

We live in a time where the rich and powerful control everything. The poorest of the poor in the Third World are in countries crippled by debt to the First World banks. Even those African countries that might be able to be self sufficient are crippled by this debt.

Living in South Africa I see a world of contrasts every day. I have a friend who lives in a makeshift house cobbled together from corrugated iron and without running water or electricity. Another rents a room for herself and her daughter in a space too small to park a car in. Her six-year-old daughter was so proud to tell me they had moved in because now they had their own toilet.

Then there are the people I work with. Series 5 BMW car, living in an area where the regular power-cuts due to mis-management of the utility provider for 20 years don’t affect them. Houses there are large and have massive gardens. Some even measured in hectares. These homes cost millions of Dollars – tens of millions of Rands.

But more than the contrast I see one thing. The poorest people have long since given up hope of ever improving their situation. What looked so promising with Nelson Mandela’s election is a lifetime ago.

Hope wanes, and Faith goes with it. Just like ancient Nazareth under Roman rule.

Christianity at it’s heart is a message of Hope. It is a gentle wind to fan the embers of shattered hope back into a flame. Hope for the poor. Hope for the sick. Hope for the tired, the broken, the lonely.

Hope for those who are dead and empty inside. Jesus declared He had come to bind up the broken-hearted.

Depression defeated.

I’ve suffered depression. In 1999 I attempted suicide. Four times in less than 2 months.

I lost hope.

My friends and pastor were able to get alongside me and slowly pry the Hope of the Gospel back into me. After a year of deaths and illnesses I was gently brought back by the message of the Gospel. My broken heart was bandaged and healed by the Love of Jesus shown me through His people.

My life now is far from easy. Again, illness has rocked my family, but I have been able to hold onto the thread of Hope in Jesus so leaving a job that was making me sick and finally being diagnosed with ADD didn’t decimate me – rather it gave me answers to build on.

My Faith holds fast because I have Hope in the face of despair.

Read psalm 23. The table is spread in the presence of our enemies. Those who would seek to destroy us get to watch us feast – if we hold fast to the Hope He gives us.

Our hope is more than an Earthly one.

“To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” [Colossians 1:27] 

When we look at the Bible as a commentary on itself and consider Jesus’s teachings at the Last Supper, the hope we seek comes from two places: perspective and Godliness. Growing towards God will only bring hope. As we move through this life trying to do that we need to hold fast to perspective. When the World strikes us down in whatever way, we can find Hope in God’s message that all we are going through now is a birthing process for Eternity in His presence.

Surely that is something to have Hope about.

Advent 2015: The Fallicy of a "Normal" Life

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It’s that time of year again. Actually it’s been “that” time of year since October in the stores. Pseudo-Christmas music blares from the speakers in shopping malls and advertisers tell us it wouldn’t be Christmas without “X” – whatever goods or services they represent.

We get sucked in to this “normal” way of life in Western-style cultures. Blindly accepting the fact that Christmas was actually developed as a way for Sony and Nintendo to sell more units, Coca Cola to increase its profits, Apple to launch a new gadget and some guy who grew more pine trees than he knew what to do with has an opportunity to get rid of them and make a buck at the same time.

That’s “normal” these days.

How have we managed to accept this “normality”?

Look back 150 years and Christmas had more meaning. It was a time to remember Jesus. Advent looked not only to the coming celebration of His incarnation, but also to the return in Glory on the Last Day. St Nicholas was a tall, thin man with a dark beard in a blue coat who was remembered as the man who threw a handful of coins through a window of a poor man so his daughters could get married. Fast forward and he’s become an overweight red-faced, white-bearded giant of a man in a Coca-Cola Red suit (yes, they were the ones who put him in red) who parks flying reindeer on the roof and climbs down impossibly thin or non-existent chimneys to put the previously mentioned Nintendo into a stocking.

We need to be better than this. The Manger leads to the Cross and mankind’s Salvation.

Stockings and consumerism don’t feature in any other religion in the world. Anyone ever wondered why that might be?

Satan has no interest in undermining false religion that leads people away from God and Salvation through Jesus. Christmas he makes about a fat man in a red suit who bears more resemblance to the Roman deity Bacchus than Jesus or even Saint Nicholas. Easter becomes about rabbits hiding eggs for children to find, chocolate consumption inducing early-onset diabetes in already obese Westernised children and the other Christian festivals are ignored and abandoned altogether.

And we’ve accepted it as “normal”.

That strange rattling in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome is St Peter turning in his grave.

We bought the bait and set the trap ourselves, embracing consumerism instead of Christianity. The rhetoric of hate-speech currently pouring out of Donald Trump – a man I admit I once respected – is as far removed from the Gospel as it is possible to be. His plans are reminiscent of Hitler’s identification of the Jews in the 1930’s leading to the Holocaust.

And we sit blindly by likening the refugee crisis to a bowl of M&M sweets where 2 out of 20000 have been laced with poison and we are asked in this obscene picture how many we will eat!

Don’t get me wrong. There is only ONE way to Salvation – Christ’s work on the Cross and Resurrection. Islam is a false religion of legalistic dogma and predestination not free-will. I have a friend I care about a great deal whose husband is divorcing her for the third time (yes, the third time) who I may not have any contact with for 3 months now because I am male. She has to stay in her home and not even wear perfume until she has had three periods to prove she is not pregnant with his child as the divorce is finalised. He on the other hand is free to marry another woman the moment the ink dries on the divorce certificate.

But this isn’t about bashing other religions. It’s about shining a light into dark places.

That’s what Christmas is about.

Eliminating the false concept of what has become a “normal” life and rediscovering the Truth of a restored relationship with Jesus and God the Father.

This year, how about we do away with trees and tinsel and perhaps go feed a destitute Muslim family over the holidays. I can’t think of a better way to honour and respect the tru meaning of Christ’s incarnation than that.

He forgave the soldiers as they were killing Him. He forgave the torturer flaying the flesh from His back with a scourge-whip interlaced with flint or bone slivers to cut deep into the flesh.

That was the purpose of the Manger. That is what we must remember this Christmas.

Not a new Playstation.

Not a Worldly “Normal Life”

Look to the Cross behind the Manger.

Blessings and Miracles

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I’ve been listening to some interesting teaching recently on God’s delivery methods to His Children. Studying around it has led me to the conclusion that He basically has 2 ways of delivering His supply to us, be it health, finances, food or whatever the need is we’re coming to Him with.
God wants to give us the very best – it’s His nature. He demonstrated that as John so eloquently puts it in John 3:16 when describing the gift of Jesus to the World to deliver Salvation.
Salvation is a Blessing. Once we have it it’s very difficult to move out of it (although I believe not impossible) and it is a continuous supply received by us through His Grace.
Living in a Blessing is God’s desire for us. It’s the very Best He can supply us with. Imagine being so financially Blessed that if the car breaks down and needs replacing we don’t have to become a slave to the bank to replace it, rather that we are so abundantly receiving God’s Best in the form of a Blessing lifestyle that we can simply go and replace or repair with the funds He has given us for our storehouse – that’s a savings account in modern talk.
Living for miracles is a way God can get things to us, but before we receive a miracle we have to have a crisis.
In the last five years, my wife and I have lived from miracle to miracle with much time spent in deep distress seeking where the provision will come from. It’s far from God’s Best, and mercifully we seem to finally be moving out of that and into a longer term situation where stability can be re-established.
We all need miracles from time to time. A sudden loss of health or a devastating accident involving loss of property can cause an immediate need that only a miracle can supply, but in the greater pattern of our life, we should be seeking God’s Blessing rather than miracles.
Living from crisis to crisis and depending on God for miracles to bail us out is an incredibly stressful way to exist. It impacts all areas of your life. Personally when I’ve been in financial need for a miracle the stress has been overwhelming. The stress impacts my health, my sleep pattern, my relationships with everyone – especially my wife – and in particular my creditors, most of whom have no concept of how hard it is to receive a miracle on their timetable instead of God’s.
Health is another issue for me. I take regular medication to treat diabetes. When I’m stressed my ability to simply control things goes away and my sugar in my blood either drops or rises dramatically giving me very unpleasant symptoms.
There’s a big “BUT” when it comes to my health though.
Around fourteen years ago now I first began to hear teaching about living in Divine Health and that it is always God’s Will for us to be healthy. The problem is that we limit God – a topic I’ll cover another time – and His ability to give us what He wants us to have. Since I’ve learned more about living in the Blessing of healing my eyesight has not deteriorated, where before I needed a stronger prescription at least once a year to be able to see. Diabetes is classified as a “progressive” illness, meaning over time it gets worse. In my body with the exceptions of a few times I’ve needed a miracle because something extraordinary has happened the progress of the disease has halted. It should affect my kidneys but there is no kidney damage. It should affect my eyesight, but as of last week when I went for my most recent forced checkup I was told I have the eyes of a non-diabetic.
In short, I am gradually moving into living in the Blessing of Health rather than looking for a miracle of healing regularly. And it’s something that I only realised looking back over the last few years and seeing when the changes stopped.
Financially we move from crisis to crisis as Christians because somewhere we got it into our teaching that having more than we need is ungodly and that being permanently broke makes us closer to God.
Utter nonsense.
God’s plan for us is to have enough of His supply to handle His work. If we only have enough to put food on our own table, how can we be a Blessing to someone destitute? We need to break the poverty mindset that has wormed its way into the church over the last few years.
I’ll be the first to acknowledge that the “Prosperity Gospel” was over-emphasised in a big way by some well known speakers who talked about private jets and cadillacs and this resulted in a terrible time where people entered a “Greed Gospel” reinforcing of the concept that God was all about money. It also led to the counter message of poverty being Godly.
I’ve never met anyone with a cheap vision. Not one.
I’ve met plenty of people too afraid to step into the vision God gave them because of the financial costs involved, in fact I spent many years being one of them before I began working on EWM.
But God’s plans for us are lavish. Look at the description of Heaven. Streets paved of gold, not tarmac. Mansions for His children, not corrugated-iron shacks.

Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, That there may be food in My house,
And try Me now in this,” Says the Lord of hosts, “If I will not open for you the windows of heaven And pour out for you such blessing That there will not be room enough to receive it.

“And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, So that he will not destroy the fruit of your ground, Nor shall the vine fail to bear fruit for you in the field,” Says the Lord of hosts;
“And all nations will call you blessed, For you will be a delightful land,” Says the Lord of hosts.

Malachi 3:10-12

 This description in Malachi’s book clearly shows God’s heart is to give us a Blessing so great we can’t store it all, but so often I hear of Christians being put down for buying a new car instead of second-hand or repairing the old one with the hole in the floor – by other believers!

We should be a light to the World of what God will do and what His nature is. He even names Himself “God Will Provide”, so why do we shun those who have been able to receive this promise and try to make ourselves believe it’s holy to be in lack?

I’ve been wealthy financially. At one point I owned two cars and a Harley Davidson motorcycle. I lived at that point in the Blessing of Prosperity. I’ve also been so broke that in the middle of an English winter I had to choose between food and heat. At that time I relied on miracles to stay alive.

Living Blessed is better. It’s less stressful for one thing. You are able to be more free with your giving because the enemy doesn’t get the chance to whisper doom and gloom in your ear when the offering tray comes round or you meet someone in need.

We need to seek Jesus first in all we do. Place God at the very center of our heart and allow Him to guide us in what we do.

There will always be instances where we need a miracle, but it is possible to live so focussed on God that we live in His Blessing.

That’s exactly where He wants us.

An Unequal Yoke

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The Bible tells us not to be unequally yoked in marriage with someone who’s not a Christian. It seems pretty obvious advice. How can someone of another faith or no faith understand the nature of a relationship we share with Jesus that by necessity for the health of our marriage should come before the relationship we have with our spouse?

It’s beyond a tricky question, and the answer is simple: don’t get involved in the first place.

But what happens when circumstances change during a marriage? What do you do when your spouse begins to question what you hold – and more importantly they hold – as the core of their being?

The picture is a bit extreme, nobody in their right mind would tether an ox and a donkey, but we run the risk of ending up in that situation every day. What unsettles one partner slightly may derail the faith of the other completely. The result is a very uneven spread of the burden of marriage.

I’m not going to pretend I can cover all aspects of marriage in one single posting here, so this will probably be one of several over the next few weeks.

Imagine a couple who have been married for several years. One day they hear that one of them has a terminal illness. How do they respond?

The “right” answer is to run to Jesus and live happily ever after.

99.99% of the time that just won’t happen.

In an equal yoke, each spouse takes on a role that supports the other, irrespective of who has the diagnosis itself. But sometimes faith is a fragile thing. Getting the diagnosis may shatter what faith one or other has. How then do we move forward?

What generally happens is that the stronger one shoulders the load while the other regains their footing. That is what partnership is about. It is what marriage is about. But for how long?

Imagine five years later one partner still cannot deal with the situation. What then? By that time the other is being weighed down. And during that time the Enemy has ample opportunity to whisper to the standing partner that they “can’t ask for more help” from outside, not even from close family members because of what they have done already. Perhaps the healthy spouse has had to stop working to care for the sick one. It was imagined to be a temporary situation, but now it’s five years later. Medical bills are piling up and income is dropping. Assets are liquidised – not always voluntarily – to pay for the mounting debt in the hope of a solution.

How do we maintain hope in this?

It’s not easy.

Depression worms its way into the daily life, robbing the sufferer of hope and shattering faith as a result. It could be the sick spouse or the healthy one who becomes despondent. It could be both.

But by the time we admit it’s there, depression has often left us with an unequal yoke. One focussed on the hope of healing and the other on the despair of the loss.

The yoke we carry often becomes unequal as a result of events in our lives. Hopefully it’s only for a short time, but that time can feel like eternity while you’re in the middle of it.

We need to hold on during those times to Hebrews 11:1 and remember that Faith is the result of hope. We need to hold fast to the hope Christ gives us even if our husband or wife loses sight of it. It takes time, but holding to that hope yokes us with Christ and allows Him to carry the load. His burden is easy and we need only focus on Him.

It sounds trite to say it. Almost a cliche in fact, but it’s true nonetheless.

Hold onto hope. It balances the yoke.

Ordinary Life…

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The last couple of months have been explosive for Eagle’s Wing Ministries to say the least, and we want to take the opportunity to say thanks to everyone for their interest and contact with the ministry.

That being said, I feel the need to say a few things as part of my testimony within this project…

The vision for EWM came about in 1999 to be a support for the Church, not any specific denomination, providing teaching, testimonies and advice (both solicited and unsolicited) for leaders and church members alike.

The organisation started with Isaiah 40:31 as a prophetic verse to give direction to the vision. We were to “wait on the Lord”. It seemed simple enough at the time, but days turned into weeks turned into months turned into 2011…

That’s where the testimony comes in:

EWM is my passion, but I am a simple man with normal human failings that God gives me strength to overcome. One of these is a strong tendency to procrastinate – hence the delay from 1999 to 2011 – and (though I hate to admit it) the constant feeling that I am not good enough to do what this ministry is called to do. I first felt called to write at the age of 19, some 24 years ago. I didn’t feel I could fill the shoes being offered to me so I ignored the call and did other things, none of which made me feel fulfilled.

I was offered the chance to speak occasionally at my local church – several over the years – and when I spoke unhindered by structure and from my heart I could feel God’s pleasure. Looking back I guess that was where the first inclinations of EWM began.

My heart has always been to encourage the church to truly become disciples themselves, and to make disciples. I felt in recent years that there was a huge gap between what we were called to do by Jesus – make disciples of all nations – and what we ended up doing: making converts. I found people regularly who would tell me they were “saved” twenty years earlier, but they lived very much in an infancy faith, their churches never being equipped to make disciples or never having attended a local church regularly. I’ve heard preachers refer to these as the “saved and stuck” people.

Billy Graham’s crusades for decades have drawn tens of thousands into Christ, but after the crusade moves on many simply fell backwards without the tools to grow. I must stress I in no way am speaking against the crusades campaigns as the church has benefited massively from them. More recently, HTB in London devised the Alpha course, a wonderful tool for leading through to faith and beginning the road to true discipleship. I’ve been privileged to help lead a number of these courses over the years and have seen the churches running them move from strength to strength.

Many of the contacts I’ve received in the last months have been from pastors, church members and representatives of groups of churches wanting to join the church of Eagle’s Wing Ministries.

It’s a huge honour to be in contact with all these people from across the globe and if you’ve not heard from me personally it’s purely because of the amount of correspondence I have to deal with – don’t worry, I promise I will reply personally as soon as I can!

What this whole message and the ministry boils down to is one simple truth: I’m an ordinary guy, no more special than anyone else. People have sent me messages of encouragement for which I am incredibly grateful, but some have said how they wish they could be like me.

I put off writing for many years using the excuse that I wasn’t CS Lewis or John Eldridge or Max Lucado. I kept praying and God kept telling me to write what He gave me and I kept resisting. Eventually I felt Him saying to me “David, I have a CS Lewis, John Eldredge and a Max Lucado writing for me already. I don’t need you to be them – I need you to be YOU!”

It was a revelation. That night in 2011 I began this blog and started to work on the book He inspired me to write. The book is a work in progress as I can only write it part-time, but I try to make time to grow this web page as often as I can.

The Truth is that God has spent thousands of years working through normal, everyday people like you and me to do incredible, extraordinary things.

Don’t settle for a “normal” life. Don’t be “ordinary”.

God wants us to be extraordinary, and if we’ll listen and act then there’s nothing He calls us to that we can’t do.

Hope

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I first wrote this in 2011, just after my family had received shattering and life-changing news.

A few weeks ago I wrote about Faith. Today I find my thoughts dwelling on Hope.

According to Paul in 1 Corinthians 13, Hope is one of the three things that is eternal, the other 2 being Faith and Love.

The last month, for reasons I’ll not go into right now, has been one of te hardest of my life. Harder than my brother’s death. Harder than my father’s cancer and death.

The thing that has kept me moving is Hope. It’s fragile. It’s sometimes just out of reach. It gets put off.

We all live in a constant state of hope. We hope we’ll get the promotion, win the lottery, get the girl. These little hopes keep us moving. Then there’s the bigger ones. We hope the test result will be positive, or negative, or neutral. We hope it was a mistake. We hope it wasn’t. (whatever “it” is!)

But these hopes are not exactly what was meant. The “Hope” Paul speaks of is Eternity. But it’s not the only time Hope is referred to in the Bible. Proverbs 13:12 says “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life”. And so often we have to live with a deferred hope.

This 21st Century is filled with deferred hope. It’s the trademark of modern life. Hardly surprising then that there are more people diagnosed as depressed now than at any time in history, and medications to counter the effects of depression are handed out to children like candy.

Now I’m not opposed to antidepressants. I’m not ashamed to say I’ve needed them in the past. I used them for over 2 years to help me get through a deep depression a few years ago, and my friends who got round me and helped me through that time can testify to the state I was in. And to my attitude to these meds before and after I had to take them.

But this isn’t about medication. It’s about Hope.

Hope when I was depressed, was a continually elusive phenomenon. Always just out of reach, and always “tomorrow”. It was soul destroying. I struggled with suicidal thoughts (and a few tries) and self-harming when the emotion was too strong. The hope I had was that the pain would stop.

Christ suffered pain and emotional torment in the Garden before the crucifixion. He sweated blood and cried out to God to let the cup pass from Him. Ultimately He regained His Hope by handing His despair over to His Father. It took me several years to be able to do the same. Jesus’ victory may have been finalised on the Cross, but the greatest battle, arguably, took place in Gethsemane.

And Hope won out.

Jesus’ human nature didn’t want to be crucified. Who would? His human hope was the passing of the cup. His Godly Hope was us. We were the Joy set before Him. Our salvation and restoration of relationship was His Hope.

We must lean on God, accept His Spirit as the Comforter, and look to His Hope for our lives. We must live as though now is the only moment we have, because it is. We are only guaranteed this heartbeat. But Hope for our Eternal Future is what we must hold on to.

Hope is sometimes all we have. Paul and Silas hoped God would move in the Jail Cell. Paul chose to stay in this world when he wanted to go to the next for our benefit, but that too was a hope. At times all the apostles had was the hope of what would come in the next world, and it gave them peace in this.

“Let not your hearts be troubled” is a recurring theme in John 14, 15 and 16. Jesus repeatedly said to the disciples not to be troubled. Then He went out and was crucified. The disciples temporarily lost hope because they missed what He had told them. To avoid anyone else having to go through that John wrote a detailed account of what Jesus taught them that night.

He pointed out how important perspective is. Hope is based on perspective. We cannot be hopeful if our perspective is wrong.

Hope is eternal. It is tied to eternity. But it is easily overthrown in this world. The Enemy is an opportunist, and since Hope leads us into Faith and Love, he seeks to destroy it.

Guard your hearts, for they are the wellspring of life we are told be the writer of Proverbs – possibly Solomon. Hope feeds that spring. God speaks to us through the Heart, and we must guard it. Hope gives us life.

Hope made us ask Jesus in in the first place.

Guard your heart. It’s fragile. But strong when it’s filled with God’s Hope.

Get Out of the Boat

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“But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, “Be of good cheer! It is I; do not be afraid.” And Peter answered Him and said, “Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.” So He said, “Come.” And when Peter had come down out of the boat, he walked on the water to go to Jesus.” [Matthew 14: 27-29 NKJV]
Picture the scene. For hours the disciples have been battling the wind and waves of a severe storm on the Sea of Galilee. They are swamped with water. The little fishing boat is filling with water.
They know they are going to die.
Suddenly they see a figure walking over the sea towards them. He calls a greeting to them. The sequence of Jesus’s greeting is significant. First He tells them to be of good cheer. Then He identifies Himself. Then He tells them to not be afraid.
Imagine you were in that boat. Soaked, half dead from exhaustion. Now this figure defies everything you know from years of working the sea and walks to you over the surface of the water. Which way would you lean?
Eleven of the disciples go the “sane” route. They cling to the mast, the bulkhead, anything that’s still in one piece on the boat.
Peter calls out to Jesus.
Be careful what you say to God in times of trouble. Peter says “If it is you”. He paints Jesus into a corner. He forces God’s hand. Jesus can either deny Himself or call Peter to Him. “Come”.
The other eleven must have thought Peter had lost his mind as he climbs out of the sinking boat. But then imagine their incredulity as Peter walks on top of the water, just as Jesus was doing. He looks Jesus in the eye and walks towards Him. He’s nearly there when he realises what he’s doing and fear starts to grip him.
But immediately as Peter begins to sink, Jesus has His hand there to lift him out. Immediately.
They return to the boat and climb back in.
Hang on… They return to the boat? How often this little nugget gets missed in the story. They don’t teleport. There’s no cry of “Beam me up, James”. They return to the boat, walking on the water. The storm lifts as they climb into the vessel. Peter returns with Jesus to the boat.
He walks back.
Calling to Jesus in his desperation restores his Faith. The miracle of walking on water is restored. Presumably he walks either hand-in-hand with Jesus or alongside Him. But he walks.
Every day I get up out of bed to face the day. It’s not easy. I suffer several major illnesses that by God’s strength in me are not getting worse for the first time in years. I trust in time I will see improvement and eventually healing for all of them, but for now I have to fight these agents of the Enemy every morning. I start my day with tea, eggs and medication. If I don’t, diabetes causes me to feel too ill to function, my mind cannot focus as ADD takes hold and I sink into deep depression.
I have my storms. You have yours. Maybe you don’t have the daily reminders I do, but you have your storms. They may be financial. Like me, they may be illnesses. They could be a feeling of helplessness as you are forced to watch someone you love suffer with terminal sickness.
We all have our storms. And we all have our boats.
But Jesus walks over the very things trying to kill us. Just as He walked over the sea through the storm to the disciples, He walks to us through the middle of our battles. Just as He called to Peter “Come” He calls to us. He calls us out of the storm. He reminds us we are not subject to the wind and waves, that they are subject to Him.
If we listen.
Faith comes like a muscle grows. By use. We can’t (usually) go from not believing for $1 to believing for $1,000,000 in one step. Muscles just don’t grow that strong that fast. We can’t (usually) believe for healing of cancer or AIDS if we can’t believe for healing of a cold. Faith and Miracles are different. I’ll cover that another time.
There are always exceptions, times when a full-on miracle occurs. These are few and there tends to be little if any form of logic to the miracle. It just seems to happen.
In general we need to be patient. If you’re broke now and have been for some time it could be cataclysmic if God were to suddenly drop millions into your hands. First He needs you to let Him change your mindset. Once you’ve done that you can step out of the boat.
Peter saw Jesus on the water. A fisherman by trade, he realised if he stayed in the boat he was a dead man. So he trusted. They had seen Jesus save the sick and demon possessed. They had seen Him feed 5000 men plus women and children with a packed lunch. He took the chance that he would see Jesus save him from death by doing something “logic” said was insane.
“There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.” [Proverbs 14:12]
It looked like staying in the boat was the right thing to do. It seemed right. But stay in the boat and you drown. Peter saw that.
In the situations we face every day we have the same dilemma. Do what everyone else does in this circumstance or try something that looks crazy. Like taking a heart from a dead man and putting it into the chest of another. But today a heart transplant is almost a routine operation. Investing in a time of recession seems crazy by the World’s logic, but there were more millionaires at the end of the Great Depression than there were at the beginning of it because they had the recognition that it couldn’t be a permanent slump. Their investments looked crazy.
These are Worldly examples of course. But Peter grabbed the hands of a cripple and pulled him to his feet in Acts. To a man without Faith, an insane act. To an imitator of Christ, a simple command.
We lose sight of the fact that we have been given Christ’s authority over earthly matters. Health, finances, family. We need to get back to basics.
We’ve spent our lives on the fence, watching others who have walked on the water and marvelling at the “special anointing” they have. But that’s what Christianity – imitating Jesus – should look like. We need to take the chance He gives us.
We need to get out of the boat.

Christian Security

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Theologian and Apologist CS Lewis hit the nail on the head in “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader”, one of the Narnia stories written for children of all ages in an allegorical way. In the scene, Lucy has found a spell book in a magicians house and is reading from it aloud. She finishes the spell to make the invisible visible and this follows:

“Oh Aslan,” said she, “it was kind of you to come.”
“I have been here all the time,” said he, “but you have just made me visible!”
“Aslan!” said Lucy almost a little reproachfully. “Don’t make fun of me. As if anything I could do would make you visible!”
“It did,” said Aslan. “Do you think I wouldn’t obey my own rules?”

CS Lewis Voyage of the Dawn Treader ch.10
Aslan represents Christ, obviously. I found myself pondering this for years, but recently it began to dawn in my lightning fast mind that what Lewis said of Aslan, God says of Himself.
Aslan was not a tame lion, but He was predictable and reliable when the Narnians knew he was there. 
Jesus is not a tame lion either, but He is predictable – He will only do what the Father does as the Likeness of the Father. He will empower us to do the same in His name. Freely receive and freely give of what we have been blessed with. This knowledge gives us a security that simple theology cannot. It transcends mere intellectual information and truly enters the realm of Faith.
We should therefore be able to walk in Faith for what we need. The predictability of God should allow us to first hope for, then have faith and believe for, then finally in Love receive what our heart’s desire is for us – in every circumstance.
It’s not important how many years have passed with nothing. What’s important is how much longer will we make God wait to give us the Blessings he longs to give us? My own life has been – on the surface to the outside world – devoid of visible blessings for over five years. But seasons change. Bulbs push through the frozen ground in spring and carpet fields and woodlands with breathtaking colours. They are a blessing that begins long before the fruit is seen. It’s part of God’s Natural Law.
Aslan in the Narnia allegory had to follow the laws set out by his father, the great Emperor over the Sea. So in our world, Jesus did only what He saw His Father doing. He healed the sick, raised the dead, provided food and drink for crowds of exceptional quality. He never rebuked anyone who came to Him in Faith. 
Not a single time was someone told “You need to learn from your illness!”
Jesus was predictable – even in His apparent unpredictable behaviour He did only what He saw the Father do. We can see it reflected in creation around us from the tiniest atoms to the mightiest supernovas, everything has a purpose: to praise God. And God designed creation to do just that – a continuous choir of worship singing God’s Goodness to anyone who will take the time to listen.
That’s where predictability, and as a result security, comes in. For a Christian, something being predictable will not equate to being dull. Paul’s arrest, imprisonment and execution were predictable, not boring. We need to learn to walk the victorious Life we have been given by learning the Law of Faith that God’s Kingdom is built on. Faith is the foundation, along with Hope and Love for everything we will receive in this world and the next.

By seeing Jesus was predictable, or rather by realising it, we free ourselves to receive predictably from Him. We allow ourselves to walk a predictable path, meeting Him daily and talking with Him the way King David did – and getting replies. We need to bear in mind that God is Himself bound by choice to the Laws He made. He desires our company so He makes a way to have it. The Law of Faith. The Old Testament is completed by the New, not eradicated. That makes for predictability in our life.

How?

In 2 Kings 4, Elisha is able to see the widow of the prophet provided for by a single jar of oil, and the implication is that she will be able to live for the rest of her life from the proceeds of the oil multiplied to her. Elisha asked, and received. He expected God to come through. He was secure in his Faith that God would provide.

In Daniel we see repeatedly Daniel and his friends expect God to come through for them, but they leave no room for Him not to. They are willing to endure fire and lions rather than quit the Truth of the God of Israel. And we must remember we serve the same God as Daniel.

Over and again, even in the tiny verse about Jabez buried in 1 Chronicles 4:9 & 10 we see God’s predictable generosity when we ask expecting a miracle. Peter expected the cripple to walk. He wasn’t surprised because it was a predictable result.

James 5:15 says “And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.” Expectation of the miraculous – real and genuine expectation not vain hope – will produce more than asked for. The prayer of Faith not only heals the sick person, it forgives their sins. Jesse Duplantis said in a talk back in the 1990’s “God’s not enough – He’s too much”, a sentiment which is essential to a predictable walk.

If we can grasp the concept of a “too much” God being our daddy-God, then we will begin to move in a predictable way of seeing His provision, healing and restoration in our lives.

I keep saying “we” because although I’ve begun to grasp this concept, the fullness of it eludes me. I see some provision, some healing and some restoration in my life. My health is not deteriorating, but I still need diabetic medication for example. I’ve used the same prescription of spectacles for over ten years – an eye examination last week confirmed my prescription has still not altered in 15 years – since I began to understand with my heart that God wants to restore me and heal me. But I recognise my head, after 40+ years, gets in the way of a fully predictable life.

But setting off on a journey still gets you and me closer than sitting around.

Predictability in God may not be a popular idea to the “Can’t put God in a box” crowd, but it makes sense. God chose to create and follow His own Law. And if we understand the Law, we can see the heart of God in the Law, and live in the knowledge that if He created it then it will never change. We didn’t put God in a box. He chose to design and work within His own set of rules for the universe.

And as a result we can live a predictable and a secure Christian life.

“ I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have [perfect] peace and confidence. In the world you have tribulation and trials and distress and frustration; but be of good cheer [take courage; be confident, certain, undaunted]! For I have overcome the world. [I have deprived it of power to harm you and have conquered it for you.]” (John 16:33 Amplified)

God Changes Not…

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Way back in October 2011 I wrote a little about the hymn Ev’rything Changes that I sang as a very young child at primary school.

I don’t have much memory before 1985, the reasons for which I’ll relate another time, but one thing did stick. Every time we sang that chorus, Bernard Ward – our terrifying headmaster (who was actually a REALLY nice gentleman in the proper sense of the word) would emphasise the same point.

God changes not.

My life is in a transition at the moment. I’m writing this entry from a hotel in a town four days ago I’d never heard of (Colesberg, South Africa if you’re interested) on my way to take my wife for a job interview which, should she be successful, will mean moving away from Cape Town for a minimum six month period. In addition to this I’m caught in the throes of trying to formally register Eagle’s Wing Ministries as a legal entity Faith Based Organisation so it can grow.

In the last four months I’ve seen growth and had contact from more places than I’d ever had before, and from two countries I had to google to find out where they were! It’s exciting times as I can feel God leading this change in my life simply by being true to the call He placed in my heart 30 years ago.

I’ve changed a lot in 30 years.

God hasn’t.

Much in my life changed. Deaths, births, weddings, cancer, emigration to name just a few. But the call in my heart to make this ministry a reality has never changed because God placed it there.

I can’t do it alone, and I’ve had many offers from people all over the globe wanting EWM to visit or partner with them. Thank you all so much for those letters. I’m praying right now for guidance for where to step first is. I’m certain God has it planned, and has had from the beginning.

There are resources the ministry will need to advance – primarily able and willing bodies – so we can move together.

Eagle’s Wing Ministries is changing. We are evolving into the butterfly God made the caterpillar to become.

And what makes it possible is the unchanging nature of God.

We forget as times change and we see reality TV shows like Survivor, The Amazing Race and the Republican Party debates dominate the airwaves that people’s ideals shift. A political wind can decimate a Christian community – like ISIS has.

Pseudo-martyrs can turn people genuinely suffering for their belief in the Biblical Jesus into nothing more than a footnote on page 30 reporting their execution.

The enemy changes the picture we see. Remember the scene in the original “Matrix” film where Neo sees the cat and then sees it again because the Matrix changed something? What if our perception of reality is shaped by something other than our own experience. It’s been said that simply putting a film crew in with a combat unit changes how that unit behaves on the field. The pictures tell the story the editor wants to show.

We need desperately to return to the uncut raw footage of the Gospel. I don’t read Aramaic or Greek so I use about a dozen translations when I’m researching to find the whole meaning of a passage. The simple translation of a single word can alter the meaning of an entire phrase.

But God doesn’t change.

He is the same today as he was 2000 years ago on the cross and as He will be in 2000 years from now.

God. Changes. Not.

Don’t Throw It Away

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“Do not, therefore, fling away your [fearless] confidence, for it has a glorious and great reward. For you have need of patient endurance [to bear up under difficult circumstances without compromising], so that when you have carried out the will of God, you may receive and enjoy to the full what is promised.” [Hebrews 10:35-36 Amplified]

There’s this concept in modern Christian beliefs that has become insidious in the lie it holds. The thought is that once we have been accepted into Christ, that’s it. We have nothing more to do.
Nothing could be further from the Truth.
I recently wrote a piece on Persecution from a Western perspective, and found several articles on Huffington Post saying how American Christians are not persecuted and they (we if not from the US) should be dropped into Syria to see what persecution really is.
Yes, there is a strong argument that the persecution experienced in the Middle East under the genocidal rule of ISIS is an extreme form – like the Crusades but with AK47s – but the role is more damaging and deadly from a spiritual perspective in the West.
The writer of Hebrews was onto something major when he wrote chapter 10.
What we have from God, we have to hold onto to move into it.
CS Lewis touches on the subject briefly in “The Last Battle” when the Narnian Kings, Queens, Lords and Ladies are pulled into Narnia one final time but Susan is not with them. Peter tells them gravely “my sister Susan is no longer a friend of Narnia.” The others from our world explain to the Narnians with them that she has abandoned Narnia to the whims of this World, described by Lewis as “Lipstick and Nylons”. It’s a disturbing concept as it evokes the verses from Mark 13:

“Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed)!’ or, ‘Look, He is there!’ do not believe it; for false Christs and false prophets will arise, and they will provide signs and wonders in order to deceive, if [such a thing were] possible, even the elect [those God has chosen for Himself]. But be on your guard; I have told you everything in advance.” [21-23 Amplified]

Susan, chosen by Aslan himself has been lured away from Narnia by the cares of this World. Jesus’s own words in Mark’s Gospel more than imply, they categorically state that even those specifically chosen by God Himself will be deceived and drawn away from the Faith by the World’s cares. He warns us to be on our guard against such things.
What troubles me right now is the way Christianity – or what passes as such in the mainstream – bends it’s will to that of the popular media. I read a statistic recently that suggested 1-2% of the US population identifies itself as LGBT while 15-25% describe themselves as Christian – including non-denominational house churches and less formal church groups within protestant ideology in addition to Catholic, Anglican, Baptist and other mainstream denominations.
That’s a massive discrepancy. maybe 2% of the population is forcing it’s religious and ideological beliefs onto a majority that remains silent or is portrayed in the news as Kim Davis nuts – a grave slight on real loving Christians by an over-zealous official. There were many ways for her to handle the situation she was in. She chose one which tarred all Christians as bigoted, hateful people.
Let us remember Jesus was rejected by the establishment of the day because he went and associated with prostitutes, sinners of all kinds, tax collectors, Samaritans and those outcast from society. Leprosy was the AIDS of the day, yet He went out of His way to touch the lepers. The first one to proclaim the Resurrection was an ex-prostitute.
He caught the fish, then cleaned it by His work in it (us). We seem to expect the fish to clean itself out to make itself worthy.
Then we beat ourselves up for falling short.
That’s where the Hebrews verse comes in.
Our confidence comes from placing ourselves in Christ’s care, not relying on our own abilities or works to become acceptable to God, but recognising that we NEED the sacrifice of Jesus to reach the relationship Jesus wants for us. The recognition of the need is our confidence. That’s good news.
The bad news is that the World tells us another story – especially in the West. We’re not good enough if we don’t got to church every Sunday, help in the soup kitchen on a Tuesday, attend home group on a Wednesday, midweek prayer meeting on Thursday mornings, start a prayer group at work to meet every day at lunchtime, never watch a single secular TV program or listen to anything but Gospel music and tell at least 20 people a week about Jesus and how He will save them if they do all of the above.
I guess I’m going to Hell. If that’s the definition, I guess we all are.
For accuracy, look to the thief on the cross next to Jesus. He didn’t live long enough to do any of the things the World lays on our plate as being “essential” to being “saved”. All he did was accept Jesus’s offer of Salvation. Nothing more, nothing less. He put his Faith in the sacrifice of the broken body on the cross next to his own.
And he died with confidence.
We throw our confidence away.
We live in a world where doubt reigns supreme. Consider the books of the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and compare the characters with those in the movies. Bilbo remains doubtful of himself and his abilities, Frodo and his companions return to the shire and resume unassuming shy lives. Aragorn has to be virtually begged to become King. But in the books, Bilbo returns a changed person, stronger and more adventurous – you do actually see flashes of that Bilbo in the opening sequences of Lord of the Rings, but not in The Hobbit. In the books it is Aragorn who requests the shards of Narsil be reforged, he does not have to be convinced to put the ranger behind him – He knows who and what he is. The sanitised ending of the movies has Frodo, Sam, Pippin and Merry returning to Hobbiton unchanged by their adventure. In the books they find the shire under evil rule and overthrow it because their change is profound.

But the World looks for insecurity. Consider how many modern movies have protagonists torn with self-doubt from beginning to end. The characters with confidence all the way through tend to get killed off.

Nothing scares Satan more than a Christian who is confident in what God has given him in terms of authority. He throws sickness and the confident Christian brushes it aside. He throws financial ruin and the confident Christian steps through more like the Terminator than a hobbit.

“No weapon that is formed against you will succeed; And every tongue that rises against you in judgment you will condemn. This [peace, righteousness, security, and triumph over opposition] is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, And this is their vindication from Me,” says the Lord. [Isaiah 54:17 Amplified]

No weapon formed. To walk in that promise we need confidence.

We were made in God’s image. A part of that is “The Lord is a Warrior, the Lord is His Name” says Exodus 15:3. Somehow we have swept that under the mat. Granted our battles are waged on a Spiritual battlefield, but they are war nonetheless.

Be confident. Satan cannot take it from you, but if you look at the wind and the waves of the storm around you, you’ll find yourself throwing that confidence aside.

Put your Faith where it belongs: in the one who made us in His image.

Hold fast to your Confidence in Him.

Don’t throw it away because things are a bit tough. If you do, you’ll never receive the glorious and great reward waiting for us.

Hold fast. Jesus is right there.

Be confident.