Surrender

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When hearing God's voice may save your life

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When hearing God's voice may save your life

It was very early on a wintry Saturday morning about three years ago. I had set off for an event I was speaking at. I had driven for about twenty minutes without passing a single vehicle.

Often I use time alone in the car to pray. As I was praying, and without any warning, I heard a voice speaking to me. The words were clear as crystal: “Danger ahead, slow down.” If it wasn’t audible to my ears, it was sharply audible to my spirit.

I have learned not to analyze words God speaks. If you analyze, you place your own reasoning above God’s, and you’ll miss it. My instant mental reaction was to question. After all, with no one out and a clear road, what could the danger be? But I obeyed.

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The death of death

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The death of death

We should always be ready for the unexpected when it happens.

We were sitting in church this morning at Firm Foundation in Centreville, Michigan waiting to ordain elders. Everything had been planned well in advance.

But just as we arrived the previous day, word came of a terrible accident in which the daughter of a couple in the church had been tragically killed. The couple showed up at church the next morning. Part way through the worship time, they came up to the front and simply fell down on their knees at the edge of the platform, casting themselves upon the grace and mercy of God.

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A handful of quietness

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A handful of quietness

A handful of quietness.

It sounds like the title of a novel you found at your local Christian bookstore, doesn’t it? Or maybe just somebody’s desperate cry for peace after a busy day.

It is in fact a Bible verse. The full verse reads like this: “Better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after wind.” It goes on to talk about the futility of a man who keeps on working harder and harder in order to amass more and more riches, but has no heir to pass them on to.

There's a lots of interesting things in Ecclesiastes, and you really have to study up on the background to understand it properly. But there’s gold in it if you look.

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The challenge of change

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The challenge of change

Change can be lethal. I was trying to exit a congested British roundabout in a large urban centre the other day. I was driving a rented car with everything on the opposite side of normal. Having survived the battle of the roundabout, I fixed my eyes on the busy road at the end of the exit ramp. What I missed was the lady quickly stepping onto the crosswalk with her large umbrella concealing her view of the oncoming traffic. Which was me.

Thankfully in God’s providence and mercy, I whizzed past her and we both went our own ways. Under the cover of her umbrella, she may not even have noticed how close she came to meeting the Lord.

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The doorway to divine power

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The doorway to divine power

Thirty-seven years ago, with the help of a brave band of a dozen university students, I started a church in the cathedral city of Durham in northern England. At the time, the situation looked totally bleak. Everything was ranged against us. We had no money. Hardly anyone even had a job. I had been falsely accused of being involved in a cult. The university launched an inquiry, and I was nearly thrown out of my PhD programme. All the pastors of the town were upset with me for overturning the ecclesiastical applecart, fearing that my new church would steal their members, which was never my intention.

I had given up my scholarship, funded by the Canadian government, in an act of faith that God would provide. I felt he had called me to do something significant in England, yet I had arrived at a place of desperation where it seemed I had hit a brick wall. There were moments when it looked pretty dark.