This week it was pointed out to me by a close friend that I had made a theological error in one of my books. It was a bit embarrassing because my passion for preaching and writing is to understand, to help others understand!

If we learn any theology in Genesis, it is that imperfection and failure run in the family.  Even “perfect” specimens, who never seem to blow up, may be filled with anger, pride or judgmental pettiness.  The fact is that we all fail and, if we don’t give ourselves and others room to fail, we can breed dishonesty.  People fearful of disapproval can’t admit their mistakes and choose to live in denial. Brothers or sisters may be struggling with an issue which could be common to all people, but are afraid to ask for help. They could sink into a sea of despair believing that weakness is unforgivable.  It’s great to have a triumphalist theology where every believer lives in glory and power without error or mistake, but that doesn’t help people in their genuine times of struggle and need.

When Adam and Eve failed in the garden, it was no surprise to God, and He covered their failure with skins by the shedding of blood. God obviously allowed them to sin for a reason. After they sinned, He could do the thing he wanted most: to reveal Himself more fully to them, not just as Creator but as Savior, as Redeemer and Deliverer. Up until his failure, Adam had no idea of the depth and the beauty of God’s love for him.  He felt perfect without need of forgiveness. He also felt no gratitude nor understood God’s mercy. In short, he had no sense of God’s love.

Friend, the next time you feel you have failed, admit your humanity and embrace the mercy of your un-condemning Father, who you can now love with even greater gratitude!

Susan Boyle sang her song and her life was changed. “I dreamed a dream” became the song that unlocked her dream. The song we are singing determines our future. Our song is our prophecy to our selves. As Moses’ ministry was drawing to a close he reflects upon the wonderful God that had led him. Before he gives his last address and blessing to the people of Israel, he first sung his last song. “Then Moses spoke in the hearing of all the assembly of Israel the words of this song until they were ended" (Deut 31:30 )

It is the song in your heart to God that determines the message that we have to speak to men. Our song is our qualification and validation that we are heaven sent. Moses song was about Gods power and that Gods’ people are being led on purpose for a purpose. Without a song, leading people can be hard work. Without a song there can be death in our pot of doctrine and our disciplined lifestyle can become drudgery. Without a song discipling men and women becomes just a difficult duty. Moses and David had a new song in their mouth, and because of their song many trusted or gained greater confidence in the Lord. “He has put a new song in my mouth—Praise to our God; Many will see it and fear, And will trust in the LORD” (Psalms 40.3).
Friend, how is your song? God wants to put a new song in your heart. Ask for His new song today. It will strengthen you and those who are watching you. Make sure your “song” is prophesying the future that you are dreaming about.

The people of Israel slowly packed up their tents one more time to follow the moving cloud. To some it was a hassle to be moving again, to others it was exciting. A desert is a good metaphor for life. It is difficult sometimes and hard to negotiate. Sometimes its hard to see where to go or to orientate ourselves. It can be hard to make progress but there is always the hope a better day beyond the desert.

As they shuffled forward, everyone kept their eye on the Rock. In was their source of life in the desert and had come to represent the Lord Himself. Moses even called God “the Rock” and while it may seem strange, to call God a Rock, it made perfect sense to people who lived their whole life in a desert. In a desert, rocks are your best friend. It’s a hiding place from the harsh desert storms, be they sand or rain. The rock is a refuge from the floods; it is a rock that is higher that you. ( Psalms 61:2) The rock is a defense against your enemies. It is the best vantage point for vision if you can’t see where to go next. The rock is a shade from the burning heat of the midday sun and it was a welcoming place to rest. Earlier Moses himself had learned that the only way a man can meet with God and not die is to stand in the cleft rock, that God provides.( Exodus 33:22)
Eventually the ancient story tells us that the Rock brought them home to their inheritance. The Apostle Paul tells us Christ was that Rock in the desert and when Jesus came out of His rock tomb in resurrection life, he became the Rock of our salvation.
Friend, He is all we need in this desert – live by, stand on, hide in and depend on our Rock. He will bring you home.

Blind Bart sat on his mat on the side of the busy road out of Jericho. It was just another day, but when he heard the crowd and Jesus coming closer, he knew this was going to be a life changing day for him. He’d heard that lame people and even the blind had gone to Jesus and were healed. (Mat 21:14)
Bart wasn’t lame but he may as well have been; it had been years since he had walked anywhere. When you can’t see, you don’t walk very far, certainly not with confidence. He cried out for mercy over the noise of the merely curious and when Jesus heard the honest cry; he stopped, called Bartimaeus to Him and healed him. When blind Bartimaeus eyes were healed he immediately got up and walked after Jesus on the road.
When God raises followers, He touches the blind eyes of our hearts. God doesn’t start or finish with rules. God doesn’t try to change the way we act or walk, he just heals the eyes of our heart.
When Israel came out of Egypt, they had a change of religion but they never had change of heart. People cant walk differently unless they first see differently. Finally God said I’m going to show you Myself and when some of the Jewish people saw the heart of the Father displayed in the cross of Christ, their hearts were changed followed by their lifestyle. It is always the same. We change by revelation not rules. Our hearts are only changed by seeing the heart of God, in Christ. The way Father changes the way we walk and live, is enabling us to see more of Jesus.

Friend, if your sitting on your mat thinking no one notices you or that no one is listening, your wrong. Cry out in faith because I hear him coming closer to you right now.

What a feast! We enjoyed cakes, videos, hakas, speeches and prayer from all the generations in the congregation. Yesterday was amazing as the leaders of our local church sent us out to begin itinerant ministry. It was a beautiful day and we felt honoured and encouraged.

A number of years ago a man of God prophesied over us, that we were hidden in a quiver as sharp arrows, but there was a time when we would be released from the quiver.  That time has come.

But an arrow without a bow is powerless and pointless   It is the testimony, the credibility, the prayer backing and the corporate anointing of the local church, that gives flight to the arrow. Yesterday the bow was drawn back and released.

David said that God had enabled him to bend the bow of bronze. “He teaches my hands to make war, So that my arms can bend a bow of bronze. You have also given me the shield of Your salvation; Your right hand has held me up, Your gentleness has made me great” (Psalms 18:32-35).

 David was saying his hands were a weapon and our hands are still the weapon of the church against the dark kingdom. By laying on of hands we cancel sickness, cast out devils and impart life into death and we still need the strong arms of local church leaders to bend the bow and release the arrows of the Lord.

 I'm incredulous when I hear a Christian say they don't need a local church. It's like saying we can be a Christian without going to Church. You can become one but you can’t live as one without the local church. That is like saying I can be rugby player without a team. It is delusional for the best rugby player is useless apart from the team, as is a knee joint without the rest of the body or an arrow without a bow.

I love the local church for it is the genius of God and the dwelling place of God. To believe you can worship the Trinity and reject relationships in a local church, misunderstands the nature and the heart of God. He only wants to dwell within a corporate gathering of His people. Only Jesus Christ is enough for God to live in alone. He otherwise needs a nation to dwell in the midst of.  He constructed from a thousand parts His one tabernacle.  He had a temple constructed out of many thousands of components into a glorious unified house for His habitation.  And so it continues that only the whole body of Christ manifested in local churches can contain Him.  It is your brothers and sisters that carry Him within. To get closer to God we need to get closer to the Church. Apostle John said that we love God  as much as we love His people.

I was converted the day I encountered Christ all alone in a pup tent while goat shooting in the hills of Hunua but from that moment God’s people prayed for me, helped me, encouraged me and visited me. His church discipled me, befriended me, fellow shipped with me, taught me and lead me.  They then believed in me, trained me, prophesied over me and released me into ministry.  Eventually they listened to me, honoured me followed me, supported me and my family and enabled me to my destiny. Yet all they were doing was being Christs mouth, heart and hands.

Friend, I love Jesus and I love the Church.

I’m so glad He invited me to sit at His table and to “feast” on Him but do I want Church with that?  Yes please!

In New Zealand we remember our brave soldiers who went to war in WW one and two. We remember those that fell in battle and those that come home. Every soldier paid a huge price to preserve our freedom from totalitarian and godless regimes. What a great time to remember the certain future for mankind unless Jesus our Saviour, also went to war against Satan and evil. Hell was created for the devil and those who refuse to escape it, and it is not pretty. "The whole extent of hell, the present suffering, the bitter recollection of the past, the hopeless prospect of the future, will never be thoroughly known except by those who go there."- J. C. Ryle.

Because we have never visited hell we don’t know how great a death we have been saved from.  But Paul said “Who delivered us from so great a death, and does deliver us; in whom we trust that He will still deliver us” ( 2 Corinthians 1:10) To deliver us from such great death, God provided a great, chain snapping, bondage breaking, and sin cleansing salvation.  The Bible calls it a great salvation.

“How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him” (Hebrews 2:3). In this great salvation, Jesus has saved us, delivered us from death and hell but that’s not all. We are saved from the devil, from shame, hopelessness, and fear.

 Yes!  We are saved from sins power, from the flesh, from bitterness and hatred but greater than the things He saved us from, are the things He saved us for. He saved us for a new life - He saved us for peace and for purpose. He saved us for heaven for His family and for the kingdom of God. He saved us for divine power and for works of ministry but mostly He saved us for Himself.   Jesus purchased us at a great price and He paid the same price for you as he paid for Billy Graham and the Queen. He died to save Englishman and Indians.  He saved tinkers, tailors, soldiers, and sailors; rich men, poor men, beggar men, and thieves.  It is a great salvation!

When Jewish Peter was on a roof wondering if God could love gentiles like us, he saw a sheet came down from heaven holding unclean animals. It was not a handkerchief and it was not a size that could fit inside his lounge. No, it spread out over the earth.  “He saw heaven opened and an object like a great sheet bound at the four corners, descending to him and let down to the earth. (Act 10:11)  Every unclean thing was inside this great sheet. God said, "What God has cleansed you must not call common." Act 10:11).

 Friend, He has cleansed you. You are not common or unclean. God gave Peter a great picture to say that no person is too unclean nor is their sin so great, that God cannot save them by His great Grace. 

A new day dawned and the sun rose a lot higher than Elijah’s hopes.  In his cave, he still felt useless and slightly betrayed.  “Then God said, “Go out, and stand on the mountain before the LORD.” (1Ki 19:11-13)

God was telling Elijah to come out of his cave and stand with his back to it. In the Bible, caves were never happy experiences. Abraham and others buried their loved in ones in caves. David hid in caves as he was rejected and pursued by those who should have loved him. We will all have a “cave times” but if we spend too much time there, the cave can start to feel like home. Often the worst thing about a cave, is that you have no vision from your standpoint.

Caves are not good places to hear from God but Gods word is always to turn your back on the pain, the lack of fruitfulness and failed expectations.   Purposely turn toward the Lord and position yourself to hear again.     Before Elijah could move outside, the Lord passed by.  Winds and earthquakes split the rock with its power but God was not in any of these things for Elijah.  Manifestations without a meeting with God are meaningless.  Father’s gentle voice was needed to heal the heart of the prophet and it came.

Friend, don’t make a cave, your home.  Don let yesterday’s pain determine your expectations for today.  Don’t get stuck. Tomorrow is not going to be the same as yesterday. Turn your back on your cave. Don’t listen for a mighty manifestation but for His voice. He has something to say that will restore your heart and answer your pain. If He asks you “What are you doing here? It is only because God never wants you to be in a place where you doubt His care or become stuck in your circumstance.

Jesus sat in the upper room with the disciples as he faced the cross and give them this assurance.  “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me.  In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.  And where I go you know, and the way you know.”  John 14.1-56

But Thomas protested.  Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”  To the question of where and how, Jesus gives the answer of who! Jesus said, “I am the way.” Jesus answer to Thomas’s question about how to find the location of the Father and how to get there, was to find the person of Jesus Christ. It’s not where or how but Who. God did the same with Abraham saying “Go out of your country to the place that I will show you”  So Abram went out not knowing where he was going. He didn’t know where he was headed or how to get there. God said just walk before me. The point of reference for Abraham to arrive at God’s chosen place was God himself. What was important was the way he walked before the Lord and when he got there, God told him.

Our walk with the Lord is like that. Maturity, perfection, full stature is a destination that we can’t pinpoint and it’s impossible to know the steps of how to get there.  Really our journey with God is always toward a place that we have never been before. We don’t know where it is or how to get there.  It is a walk of faith and abiding in Christ. Jesus was saying “You don’t know what the end will look like and you don’t know to get there but if you pursue the Way, respond to the Truth and the draw from the Life I provide, you will arrive at your destination.  Our walk with Jesus is a journey, not a destination. No body learns anything on the exam day but on the weeks of practice leading up to it.  It is always on the journey that we learn. Abraham didn’t come to know God by arriving in the promised land after only a few months, but from his journey of 100 years with God.

Friends, arrival is only guaranteed by abiding. Trying to find how we can get to our spiritual destination, is like asking how a lily grows into its full glory. The way it grows is never by trying or striving or even thinking but by abiding in the conditions for life. Growth is then possible, inevitable and beautiful.

David was hiding in the hills from Saul and needed food for his men so he asked a man for help. “The name of the man was Nabal, and the name of his wife Abigail. And she was a woman of good understanding and beautiful appearance; but the man was harsh and evil in his doings.  1Sa 25:3  Nabal didn’t help David but Abigail did.   Eventually, after Nabal died, David chose Abigail to be his wife.  Nabal (meaning fool) saw David as a threat and a thief and dismissed his value completely.  On the other hand, Abigal (meaning source of joy) saw destiny and worth in David.  She decided to do for him what he couldn’t do for himself.  Her honourable heart saw honour, therefore she showed honour and her future was changed forever.   The foolish-hearted died and the joy giver became queen! Her future was the result of how she saw David. Our heart has eyes; therefore our heart determines how we see others.   Your heart, not your circumstances determine the future of all your relationships and your true success in life.

What came into Abigails “tomorrow” was determined by what was in her heart “today.”  “Out of the heart come the issues of life” Prov. 4:20-23  The condition of our heart is the source of our life. “As a man thinks in his heart so is he.”  Prov 23.7   If we wish to change our life, we only have to change our heart.  Our two choices in relationships are, to be a “Fool or a source of Joy”  We decide what is going to be in our heart; mistrust, faultfinding and negativity or love, faith and honour.

Friend, don’t let your life circumstances determine what goes into your heart,  rather let your heart determine how you go through your circumstances.  Who has God sent into your life for you to help?  How do you see them?  There is only one thing affecting your marriage relationship – and it’s not your wife’s habits. There is only one thing affecting your happiness at work and your ministry in the house of God – it’s what is in your heart. How are you seeing people?