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

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)

Can sickness be better than health?

The deepest, most precious, and most abiding spiritual lessons, which God has been pleased to teach me were learned in consequence of enduring my various experiences of sickness. . . . I feel it would have been nothing short of a calamity to have missed the physical suffering through which I have passed. . . . I am positive that I have sometimes met with God’s refusal to heal when I have been most in fellowship with him.

Hudson Taylor

If it’s good enough for one of the greatest Christian Missionaries 

Loving our enemies?

The Spirit is the One who can transform us from people who love only the people we like and the people who are like us, into people who love the people we don’t like, the people who are different from us, and yes, even our enemies. - Scot McKnight (Open to the Spirit)

Maybe it’s because of my Pentecostal background but mention the Holy Spirit and the first thing that pops into mind or is often mentioned by others is miracles, healing, speaking in tongues. Basically the 9 “gifts of the Spirit” given as examples by the Apostle Paul to the church in Corinth. (Yes for me Pentecostal friends I said examples as comparing this with other similar list I don’t think Paul’s intention was to create a definitive finite list for the gifts of an infinite God)

Now I prefer to think firstly about the Holy Spirits work in my salvation journey which is beyond doubt the ultimate miracle!

But I also think of Jesus command for us to love our enemies! The first virtue of the Holy Spirit is Love and the Spirit grows divine Love in our lives. Even love for our enemies. That could be the second biggest miracle of the Holy Spirit? Just a thought.