Same old Lesson. Listen to God. No, Listen.

During a half-hearted attempt to tidy up over the summer, I found a postcard that a friend had handed to me two years ago. I remember that evening in July ’07 very well. My family and I were staying in a house belonging to other friends while they were on holiday. Nothing unusual in that, except that we were homeless. Since moving out of our previous address, and in the months previous to that, God had remained silent as to where we were to live.

God hadn’t been silent about buying certain people flowers, or in steps we should take which led us to places we could stay temporarily, or on small details we were not so bothered about. On the big questions, “What exactly are we supposed to be doing now that we have no employment, no savings or capital, and no home?” or “Where is the new home that you have been promising us for so long?” there was the chilling echo of nothing at all.

Two things happened while we were staying in our friends’ house. Firstly were able to meet some housing association representatives who were soon to be in receipt of newly built houses and had been alerted to our plight. The second thing was that, seeing as I was nearby for this particular fortnight, my very good friend was determined to drag me to a gathering of some people who were accustomed to listening to God, which on this occasion was to be visited by some prophetic ‘dude’ named Martin Scott. (I’d never heard of Him then, but now he’s on my blogroll. Click below if you are intersted)

What a night.

Over refreshments, my friend who had insisted I go along, handed me that postcard. He’d prayed about our meeting with the housing people and copied down what he felt God was saying. This was a big moment. My friend and I had been meeting weekly for years, until our routine had been disrupted by my new nomadic lifestyle. He had walked with me as the life and ministry that I had known had steadily fallen apart. He had prayed earnestly as we searched for new dreams, new directions, and a new home. God had promised much but those promises were yet to be fulfilled. Then there were the weeks of turmoil with our belongings in storage and our lives in transit, and God seeming to shut his mouth completely.

Until now. God broke his silence.

The meeting started  with introductions. That was enough to finish me off. What on earth was I going to say? I decided on as little as possible.

“I’m…. This week, I live in….. “

I think most people laughed as I gave a “help, I’m lost”  glance to my friend. Not the prophet bloke though. He sensed immediately that I was living through trauma. Once he’d finished saying what he’d come to say, he asked to pray and prophesy over me.

“I declare over you that you have known what it is to be spat out….”

Whatever else he went on to say, this opening line was a Holy Spirit slam-dunk, or bullseye, or move-stopping rugby tackle. Choose any analogy you like, but I can’t quite describe that moment as Martin uttered these words over me and I just broke. I hadn’t met this guy before, but I recognised the Spirit of God talking there and then. I couldn’t lift a finger to copy any of it down. I looked up at my mate and he was no use either, tears streaming down his face. Martin went on to say a lot more, but perhaps the most significant part for me on that night was that what I had experienced as an abrupt, premature, violent tearing from my former life and ministry had in fact been God’s timely rescue.

Now this is a long post, far longer than I envisaged when I first sat down at the computer, but stay with me because you’ve still to find out what was on that postcard.

God said that we would move into one of those new houses, and that I would then be close to three specific areas to be prayed for, which would require my ongoing commitment.

As I re-read the postcard this summer, I wondered if the word was accurate, or if I’d been listening to God properly since, as I didn’t think I could name three things or areas that I had continually prayed for during the past two years.

As I wondered about this, my wife ventured a simple solution. “Why don’t you ask God what the three things requiring ongoing committed prayer are?”

Well, yes of course, I was going to do that, wasn’t I? Once I’d thought of it. Maybe.

Anyway, I followed her advice and asked God.

Guess what?

He told me what they were.

This ended two years of introspective speculation using one simple question suggested calmly and simply by my wife. What is it about men and directions?

What I noted first about God’s answer is that if I’d ever sat quietly enough before God for any length of time, I would have known these were the three. They were not a surprise list and had been there all along. Secondly, I had the wrong idea about what God meant by ‘committed’ and ‘ongoing’. I had not prayed for these things every day or even every week over the last two years. There had been no regularity in praying for these things. I had not organised any teams or prayer events regarding these matters, though interestingly, one prayer event did walk,  Spirit-led, straight into one particular issue. Yet the absence of such activity did not mean that I had not responded to God or that I had not prayed properly. There were days where I had been prompted to pray into one or more of these areas. On such days, I had responded and gone and prayed. When I was praying into these areas and issues, I did so with firm commitment.

So, there had been ongoing, committed prayer in three specific areas after all. I just hadn’t recognised it. There had been no great programmes, no organised plan or timetable, just simple responsiveness to God. You know why?

BECAUSE HE HAS THE PLAN.

HE KNOWS THE STRATEGY.

So why do we think we need either?

How many times have I gone off on one with a grand plan when God was asking me to do something far simpler to fit into His plan?

Doesn’t He say that His yoke is easy and his burden is light?

Peregrinati anyone?

God has had this little word game going on with me for the past year. It all started one day over a meal where I was telling a friend what I’d been up to that week, as a way of explaining how my life is lived. I had described a compulsion to walk from one specific place to another, and how God had brought to mind certain scriptures and prayers as I made the journey.

My friend spoke of ‘The Order of the Peregrinati’; people who God asks to be available, so that when He needs to partner with a human to get something done on Earth, they will follow His instructions and the thing will get done. I must say, I liked it. There was also mention of another chap I should meet who had similar experiences to me.

When I threw ‘peregrinati’ at a search engine it threw back stuff about pilgrimage and ‘wandering for the love of God’. Oh yes, now I was liking it even more.

It has taken a year for our paths to finally meet, but this last weekend I bumped into the aforementioned chap of similar experiences. There were many things in our conversation which are going to feed me and keep me asking questions for a long while, but the one that has got me going first was this idea of ‘peregrinati’. This chap spoke, in a kind of throwaway, offhand manner of a link to peregrine falcons. “Is there?” I asked, jumping in immediately, because I’d spent sometime last week (3 hours drive away) looking with my son for a pair of peregrines.

“Oh yes,” he said and proceeded to tell me that there were peregrine falcons living in the city where I live.

No Way.

I’ve taken my son on several birdwatching trips over the past year, often deliberately taking in a spot where there are peregrine falcons in order to see his favourite bird. Funny thing is, its my favourite bird, too, though I’d never told him that. So we’ve travelled all over this nation to see a bird that we could have hopped on the bus to see in the very city where we live. There have been people in Royal Society for the Protection of Birds uniforms with telescopes offering the public a chance to spot these birds in one of the city’s squares. And we didn’t know about this? In planning our trips I’d used the internet a lot, but never discovered  the easy to find website with a web cam and diary charting the progress of a pair of peregrines in our city centre over the past three years.

So, two things…

I’m pretty sure the arrival (not introduction, but natural arrival) of the peregrine falcons in our city – and incidently, other cities – contains a sign from God. I’m not sure what that sign is, but I’m sure there is one. Why are these previously endangered, scarce birds now here (spring 07, 08, 09)?

The fact that this very public event has been hidden from me (and my son) is remarkable. I think God is saying something to me about this too. I’m starting to pick up some of this, but I haven’t heard it all yet.

What do you think?

Is God speaking to you about any of this?

Hope. Fulfilment. Now? Dream on…

When you have got your wife, a couple of friends and the Holy Spirit on your case, you know it’s time to give in. So here I am blogging for the first time in a while.

One of those friends who has been prompting me to blog also inadvertently prompted the subject. You see, he sent me a text saying “… really believing that we are on the verge of some new and exciting Jesus stuff here …”

“Yeah, yeah, yadder, yadder, heard all that before…” that was my initial response (No, I didn’t text that reply!). Still his hope got under my skin. Seeing as I’d seen “The Shawshank Redemption” on stage the night before, I figured the Spirit had hope on the agenda. Anyway, a couple of days later I found myself confessing to another friend (another one who has challenged me to blog more) that I was feeling ‘on the verge of something’. I had no evidence of it, but somehow, I couldn’t shake the conviction that something new was on its way.

I was convicted to wander this morning. It was no surprise to me that some words from the Song of Solomon came to mind as I walked:  ”Come now, my love… the winter is over…”; because Brennan Manning writes about those verses in “The Furious Longing of God” which I’m reading at the moment. What I was surprised about, even shocked about, was that I found myself speaking those words over the town I live in, declaring the love of God for this town and the fact that its winter is over and its spring is here. It was another one of those “Say WHAT?” moments when God prompts a wandering and an utterence that seems to come from nowhere. In my better moments I know that this is heaven breaking out on earth.

Wow. If those words are true for this town….

Here’s another thing. I felt prompted to to write those words on the floor of a prayer room in this town some five years ago. Since then, all the evidence has pointed in the opposite direction. Could this be the time for fulfilment? Can I bear to hope?

You know what? There is other evidence around me, other murmurings, and the inner voice of the Spirit which prompts me to write unequivocally:

This is the time of fulfilment.