Thursday, May 14, 2020

Make me Lord a dreamer for your Kingdom



I should be in bed but a Facebook post has sent me down a path of nostalgia and blessing. I haven't heard this song in decades but can remember vividly the first time I heard it. A young kid going through Bible College with huge dreams for God and his kingdom.

As Chris Bowater sang these amazing lyrics I fell to my knees and as is usual with me shed a few tears as I begged God to do the impossible through me. Even driving back from Lincoln that evening to Mattersey Hall speech eluded me.

Now at the age of 57, I look back amazed at the journey God has taken me on. My dreams back then were to return home to North East Scotland and plant churches in the towns and villages with my friend Roger but God had other plans. (but it would have been cool to do)

England, not Scotland would become home for me and my family and God gave me the honour of serving a local church as a volunteer, an Elder, a teacher and the last 20 years as one of the Pastors. And, not just once, Mark, my leader and friend, have glanced at each other with a look that needed no words but each of us understood, that we can't quite believe that God would use us in his plans.

But that's enough looking back it is time to pray again....

Make me Lord a dreamer for Your kingdom
Plant in my heart heavenly desires
Grant faith that can say ‘Impossibilities shall be ‘
And vision lest a world should Perish not knowing Thee

Make me, Lord, a dreamer for your kingdom,
I would aspire to greater goals in God.
So cause faith to rise, to motivate each word and deed,
a faith that’s well convinced that Jesus meets every need.

Make me, Lord, a dreamer for your kingdom,
dreams that will change a world that‘s lost its way.
May dreams that first found their birth in your omnipotence
come alive in me, becoming reality.

Thanks, Chris


Saturday, May 09, 2020

The contradiction of courage


Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” - Jesus (Matthew 16:25)
“Courage is almost a contradiction in terms, it means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. . . . This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. . . . A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.

G.K. Chesterton
(Orthodoxy, p89)