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The Holy Spirit

Ok, so what hap­pened to me in Africa? Was there an “expe­ri­ence”? Did I enjoy a spir­i­tual enlight­en­ment?
Yes.
It’s all about the Holy Spirit and how He made me aware of my rela­tion­ship to Him.
And this blog is a record of how it hap­pened.
So a few months ago, Eliz­a­beth “Utugi” Kamau was stay­ing in my house with my wife. She is a ded­i­cated ser­vant of Christ and does a great deal of work with the Holy Spirit as an Inter­ces­sor. She lives in Kenya, and she is the woman I went to see.
Those peo­ple that know me know that I’ve been liv­ing for Christ actively for some time now, but like any Chris­t­ian, I want to be able to serve Him more, to learn how to Glo­rify God through obe­di­ence and ser­vice. So when we had this amaz­ingly spir­i­tual per­son in our home, Kathy and I dis­cussed it at length with her, ask­ing her what could we do to “take it up a notch”?
At the time, I was mak­ing some excit­ing deci­sions in my per­sonal and busi­ness life, deci­sions that I was directed to make by the Lord through my prayer life. But, like most peo­ple, my expe­ri­ences with the Lord were inter­mit­tent. I would have “good days” and “bad days”. On a good day, I would have a lot of time (even the entire day) with the Lord, think­ing about His Word, His Will and what He wanted for my life. On bad days, I would won­der what I’d done wrong, how I could con­vince Him to do what I want, or what spe­cial prayer I could make to get what I thought I needed. So it was a roller-coaster ride.
Like any active believer, I learned that in times of trial, it was about pray­ing to the Lord and even­tu­ally, after I’d calmed down, I’d hear Him clearly enough that I’d learn (not fig­ure out, learn) what I was doing wrong and get back in line with the Lord’s Will for me. Some­times the res­o­lu­tion would come after a sin­gle visit to Scrip­ture, some­times it would come after days of prayer, com­plain­ing, fear, shout­ing and finally… sur­ren­der. But it wasn’t clear to me what I had to “do” to get on the Lord’s Path con­sis­tently… to have the strength to put the world aside and embrace the Spirit con­sis­tently.
So, Utugi under­stood the ques­tion bet­ter than we could artic­u­late it, and she showed a wide num­ber of pas­sages to me and Kathy. Some of them were:

• Judges 13:24–25 — The woman gave birth to a boy and named him Sam­son. He grew and the Lord blessed him, and the Spirit of the Lord began to stir him while he was in Mahaneh Dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol.
• Judges 14:19 — Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon [Sam­son] in power. He went down to Ashkelon, struck down thirty of their men, stripped them of their belong­ings and gave their clothes to those who had explained the riddle.
• 1Samuel 16:13 — So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the pres­ence of his broth­ers, and from that day on the Spirit of the Lord came upon David in power…
• Luke 3:21–22 — When all the peo­ple were being bap­tized, Jesus was bap­tized too. And as he was pray­ing, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bod­ily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”
• Acts 2:1–4 — When the day of Pen­te­cost came, they were all together in one place. Sud­denly a sound like the blow­ing of a vio­lent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sit­ting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that sep­a­rated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

In addi­tion, I’d add the following:

1. Gen­e­sis 1:1–2 — In the begin­ning God cre­ated the heav­ens and the earth. Now the earth was form­less and empty, dark­ness was over the sur­face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hov­er­ing over the waters.
2. Matthew 1:20 — But after he had con­sid­ered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is con­ceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.
3. Matthew 3:11 — [John the Bap­tist said] “I bap­tize you with water for repen­tance. But after me will come one who is more pow­er­ful than I, whose san­dals I am not fit to carry. He will bap­tize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.”

Notice a theme? Every­one who has done any­thing of “power” in the Bible (even includ­ing Christ) did so after the arrival of the Holy Spirit. The pas­sage in Gen­e­sis shows that even before the Light was cre­ated by the Lord, the Spirit of God moved on the sur­face of the waters. The Holy Spirit is the Power and Pres­ence of God.
Inter­est­ingly, mod­ern Chris­tian­ity often over­looks the sig­nif­i­cance of the Holy Spirit, rel­e­gat­ing Him to some sort of strange “third” posi­tion in the Trin­ity. Many peo­ple even refer to the Holy Spirit as an “it”, which is dread­fully wrong!
So Utugi made this clear to us that if we were to begin work as inter­ces­sors, or what­ever the Lord had cho­sen for us, we were first going to have to have a true Bap­tism in the Spirit; pen­te­costal style. She talked of the expe­ri­ence, what it means to peo­ple, how the pres­ence of God’s indwelling has been known to instantly heal, drive peo­ple to tongues, knock them out flat, and so forth. Pretty heady stuff for an old-school Epis­co­palean like me.
But it sounded pretty cool, like the “secret” I was miss­ing… maybe if I could go and get me one of these Bap­tisms of the Spirit, I’d have a more mys­ti­cal rela­tion­ship with the Lord, I’d be more in tune… see flames on peo­ple or some­thing. So I was sold, and just needed to fig­ure out how to get to Africa to pick up my sou­venir of Spirit…
A week before I left, I was rid­ing pretty high on the Lord’s Word, and feel­ing pretty cool that I was going to travel all the way around the world to have a truly spir­i­tual expe­ri­ence and get Bap­tized in the Spirit. And then an inter­est­ing thing hap­pened.
A friend of mine at church had a prob­lem, a seri­ous prob­lem, one that only I could help her with. It was some­thing pri­vate, so I won’t go into detail, but it was spir­i­tu­ally treach­er­ous too… if I helped her, I might actu­ally weaken our rela­tion­ship, I might in some way skew the spir­i­tu­al­ity that the two of us shared. So I was pretty baf­fled as to what to do. Espe­cially because the solu­tion to her prob­lem was some­thing that only I could accom­plish in the short time-frame needed.
I sat down with Kathy and we prayed to the Lord for guid­ance. He led me (coin­ci­den­tally) to Judges 14 … but the part about the rid­dle. I read the pas­sage and all I could get was that the Lord was very clearly say­ing that He would tell me what to do in three days, not before.
So I called my friend, and I told her that I would have an answer for her in three days.
Then an amaz­ing thing hap­pened. I found myself alone with the prob­lem and the Lord. Not a per­son could advise me, nobody had the blend of resources, expe­ri­ences, and belief that I had that made me uniquely qual­i­fied to answer this spe­cific prob­lem. And since it was highly spir­i­tual in nature, I was faced with hav­ing to turn to God for the answers. And the answers came. Wow, did the answers come.
He gave me a list of Scrip­ture. I think it was some­thing like 8 pas­sages, each of which was specif­i­cally related to this com­pli­cated puz­zle. The Scrip­ture gave me the direc­tions I needed, and the Lord guided me through it to know what to tell this friend of mine. Suf­fice to say, it was a very pow­er­ful expe­ri­ence!
I met her on the third day, told her what the Lord had told me, how He’d come up with the res­o­lu­tion to the prob­lem (a solu­tion I would not have come up with on my own, I con­fess whole­heart­edly), and it was done. She was placed onto the path she needed and the Work of the Lord was com­pleted. It was pro­found.
So then I headed off to Africa, lit up and loaded for bear.
My blog out­lines a bunch of the expe­ri­ences that I had, includ­ing the Lord telling me to get rid of my cross, my expe­ri­ence in Heathrow Air­port, my oppor­tu­nity to wit­ness on the plane to Nairobi, and of course the mis­sion across Kenya prior to the retreat.
What I haven’t men­tioned, and won’t dis­cuss in detail, is the rite of deliv­er­ance that we did when I first got there. Basi­cally, six peo­ple gath­ered with me and prayed to have some seri­ously bad things removed from me, things that had been get­ting in the way of my hear­ing the Lord clearly. Things that had been stum­bling me up for a long time. That was prob­a­bly one of the most pow­er­ful expe­ri­ences I’ve ever had, spir­i­tu­ally.
So, there I was, com­ing back from the mis­sion, feel­ing a lit­tle alien­ated, a lit­tle alone, a lit­tle apart. We were sup­posed to get to this retreat, to dis­cuss the Holy Spirit and cul­mi­nate in a lay­ing on of hands that would instill the Spirit in me (and about 20 other peo­ple). It was a two day retreat.
On the first day, I found myself in an inter­est­ing posi­tion. I found myself detached and apart from the entire group… and com­pletely immersed in my rela­tion­ship with God. He was talk­ing with me, He was walk­ing me around inside Scrip­ture, He was intro­duc­ing me to the liv­ing fel­low­ship that I now have with the Apos­tle Paul through his writ­ings; it was won­der­ful. I spoke in tongues, I sang in tongues, I started read­ing the Bible and didn’t stop for about four hours. The Lord guided me away from the main room of the retreat and He and I had deep fel­low­ship together, in spite of the retreat.
So by the evening of the first day of the retreat, I felt like I wasn’t going to want to come back for the sec­ond day. Utugi asked me to come any­way, even though I wasn’t get­ting a con­nec­tion. So I did.
On the sec­ond day, it was “show­time”. The ser­vice was about Bap­tism in the Spirit and it was a big deal. Peo­ple were singing, peo­ple were jump­ing around, peo­ple were clap­ping and mak­ing joy­ous sounds on one side of the room and wail­ing in tears on the other side of the room.
And I was sit­ting in the midst of all of this in my own per­fect spir­i­tual oasis with God. I was read­ing my Scrip­ture, lis­ten­ing to His Word, and just feel­ing like I wasn’t a part of this thing that was going on around me. I was so far removed that I almost felt rude, almost as if I wasn’t tak­ing what they were doing seri­ously. Almost as if God was say­ing to me that this ser­vice was not for me. So I stood spir­i­tu­ally apart, lis­ten­ing to the Lord.
Then came the time for actual lay­ing on of hands. Utugi came over, I was pray­ing with the Lord inside my heart, and she came over and laid her hand on me. I felt the need to ask her for­give­ness (pri­mar­ily for stand­ing aloof dur­ing this entire expe­ri­ence) and she said that she had already for­given me, which was kind.
Then the Lord did some­thing amaz­ing…
I remem­ber that the night before, Utugi had told me that God needs to break a person’s will before they receive the Spirit, that the Spirit will not reside inside a will­ful per­son. I assured her at the time that I had already had my will bro­ken…
… so here comes the Lord, I’ve had hands laid on… sock it to me, God.
And Christ said, in pass­ing as He pointed at me to the Holy Spirit, “No, not this one…“
…and they moved on.
Excuse me? I beg your par­don? Did you say… oh no.
So I cried. I gen­tly lay myself down in the cor­ner of the room and I cried like a baby. I accepted that the Lord had set me out­side the cir­cle, that the Lord had decided to put me aside. I asked Him to take care of Kathy and the kids, and I com­mit­ted to do what­ever work I could do for him out here in the bad­lands. I was still a ser­vant of God, I would just be among the bro­ken and rejected. I cried.
”…are you fin­ished?”, the Lord asked.
“what?“
“Get up.“
So I got up, picked up my Bible and wiped my tears. And real­ized so much all in a flash that I’m still pro­cess­ing it.
In short, by reject­ing me, the Lord accepted me com­pletely. I can’t put it any more directly than that. He took what I had been, my will, my per­son, my “old self” and snapped it across His knee, in a sec­ond. All the “power and might” that was Mal­colm Mead was less than a moment’s hes­i­ta­tion to Christ. He didn’t even break stride as he broke my will, my per­son, my life. He didn’t even break stride.
So all that was left is what I have now. I’m with the Lord and that’s all that mat­ters. The old self is gone. I died at that moment, and in that death, I found the Per­son who has been here with me all along: the Per­son who had told me to make the deci­sion I did in busi­ness, the Per­son who told me to give my Com­pany to Him, the Per­son who taught me that my com­pany had never been mine to begin with, the Per­son who brought me to St. Charles, the Per­son who took me to Cur­sillo, and BSF, and even­tu­ally even Africa, the Per­son who told me to get rid of my Cross, the Per­son who was with me in Heathrow Air­port, the Per­son who used me to talk to two peo­ple who were seek­ing Him on the plane to Kenya, the Per­son who intro­duced me to the per­son of Paul the Apos­tle, the Per­son who was caus­ing me to sing in tongues, the Per­son who took me down off the cross after I’d been bro­ken and res­ur­rected me by show­ing me that He has always been here, and He always will be.
Every­thing that had been my life was removed from me, and all that was left was the Holy Spirit. Mal­colm was rejected, thrown away, set apart as unwor­thy … and now here I am, filled and sus­tained with the Holy Spirit, know­ing only His Will and know­ing that as I move, it is because He tells me to move, as I think, see, real­ize, grow and learn, it is because He decides it.
…and I am learn­ing what He wants for me. Mostly, what I’m learn­ing right now is that He is com­mand­ing me to learn con­tent­ment. Believe it or not, that’s what He’s teach­ing me. He’s teach­ing me to just sit still, calm down, be at Peace with Him… and it is enough. It is more than enough. It is every­thing I want, and every­thing I need.
So what does this all (and the thou­sands of other verses in the Bible about the Holy Spirit) mean? What does it sum up?
It sums up the pur­pose of this whole endeavor, it out­lines why I went to Africa and it explains why Christ died for you. The Lord resides in us as the Holy Spirit, and He only comes to us through the Sal­va­tion that was ful­filled in Christ. That “liv­ing rela­tion­ship” that you see in believ­ers? That’s the pres­ence of the Lord in our hearts, that’s the indwelling of the Holy Spirit Him­self, who is the man­i­fes­ta­tion of God in our lives. When some­one has the Holy Spirit, that per­son has become a ves­sel for the Lord, a Tem­ple for Him to dwell inside (1Cor 3:16), and is liv­ing a life in con­stant fel­low­ship with God.
Still grap­pling with why Chris­tian­ity is a good idea? Still won­der­ing how any­body could believe in it so much that they’d be will­ing to die for it? I mean, come on, would you die to be a Repub­li­can? Would you die to be con­sid­ered a lib­eral? Either thou­sands of mar­tyrs are just men­tally dam­aged, or there’s some­thing very real hid­den inside all of this. Well, this is it.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could have a con­stant, ever-growing, per­ma­nent con­nec­tion with the Real God? Wouldn’t it be great if you could know that every sin­gle moment of your life, God is present and with you, not just as an idea or a set of moral codes, but as a liv­ing per­son, a per­son more real than you even, going every step of the way with you?
Wel­come to the point of the exer­cise, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in your heart… a heart made clean of sin by Christ’s Sac­ri­fice. It is through belief in Him that we can be cleansed by His Blood and made ready for the arrival of God Him­self, in the form of the Holy Spirit.
One thing you’ll notice in all the pas­sages above (and any oth­ers that you find by search­ing on “Spirit”) is that in the Old Tes­ta­ment, every “arrival” of the Holy Spirit is said to be “on” the per­son; while every ref­er­ence in the New Tes­ta­ment is said to be “in” the per­son. Except Christ. Before His birth, He is the only per­son in the Bible who is referred to as being made “of” the Spirit. It is this very essen­tial rela­tion­ship between Christ and the Holy Spirit, this mutual iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, that makes the Holy Sac­ri­fice pos­si­ble.
Look, the Power and Pres­ence of God are rep­re­sented in each of us as the Indwelling and Abid­ing of the Holy Spirit. It is His arrival that gives us a direct con­nec­tion with God the Father, and it is Christ that makes it pos­si­ble by cleans­ing us of the sins that are in us. God will not abide with sin. In fact, for those mediocre post-moderns who believe that sin is just the absence of God, then in essence God “can’t” abide with sin.
So by hav­ing sin in our lives, we are inca­pable of hav­ing God in our lives com­pletely. So what to do?
Well, along comes Christ, whose Blood washes us, as the say­ing goes. But what does that mean? Is Christ some sort of eter­nal washer-woman, scrub­bing us clean of sin all the time? No.
He teaches us the very les­son that I learned in Africa… it is only through death and rebirth that we can be made pure in the eyes of God, and this res­ur­rec­tion enables us to have the liv­ing fel­low­ship with God that we all crave.
But what I really learned (among all the other thou­sands of things that are still unfold­ing before me) is that we can’t do it. Even if you com­pletely under­stand the point of dying to your­self, of giv­ing in com­pletely to God and turn­ing your will and your life over to Him, it is only God who can make us die to our old selves. I mean, think about it, if you’re made of your old self, how can you negate what you’re made of? It’d be like a snake eat­ing its own head until it was gone. What we are made of can­not die to itself alone. In essence, it must be sac­ri­ficed for us… through the exam­ple and true Sac­ri­fice that Christ com­pleted before we were born. When we become will­ing to become uni­fied with Christ, one in the Body of Christ, com­mit­ted to the Holy Fel­low­ship with Christ, we become will­ing to become the same as Christ. Yes… the same as Christ.
And what does that mean? Well, if you truly become the same as Christ, which can only hap­pen if He enables it to hap­pen, then you become a per­son who has died com­pletely and for real, been saved by God, made pure and res­ur­rected into a new and eter­nal Life with God. When you accept the pres­ence of God through the Holy Spirit, you accept the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with Christ (aka the Body of Christ). All at once, you accept the Power that is able to Res­ur­rect you Spir­i­tu­ally and in a real way, you die to your old life, you are brought back to a “New Birth” and you are com­plete.
Then, after the dust set­tles and you begin to see what’s hap­pened, you see that you have become one with the Son, who is already one with the Father, and thus, through the min­istry of the Holy Spirit, you have a liv­ing, per­sonal Fel­low­ship with God Him­self, in you… all the time.
Moment by moment, sec­ond by sec­ond, God is with me, and He is teach­ing me. He’s teach­ing me while I write this… He is the one who is show­ing this all to me right now, and mak­ing it avail­able to you, dear reader.
God is always with us when we die into Him, when we give up our old selves com­pletely and give in to Him com­pletely. The world tries to call us back, but we need only sur­ren­der again to the Lord and we are saved… and every day it gets eas­ier to reside in His lov­ing arms, learn­ing from His heart, hear­ing His Word.
…and prepar­ing to do this for eter­nity…
God is Good, all the time

Culture Shock

So I’m back in the States, have been for a few days, and for some rea­son, I’m feel­ing worse off than when I was in Africa. What’s that all about?
Here I am, in the lap of lux­ury, and I feel worse off than when I was in a place where one out of five toi­lets worked right.
Well, one of the things that was def­i­nitely to my lik­ing in Africa was the way that every­one was in it together. That even though there were “bad guys” roam­ing around, the group I was in met, talked, had a pur­pose and was pur­su­ing God’s work every sin­gle day.
Here, it’s so easy to get lost. With TV being so large in our lives, with every crea­ture com­fort on hand, you get soft fast. Here’s how it feels.
You go away to camp. When you’re there, you live in a tent, eat rougher food, and every day you com­mune with nature, go on hikes, inter­act with other peo­ple who are work­ing hard to get along also. You focus on what’s inside each other, not what’s out­side. If a per­son has a phone, that’s a big deal. Most peo­ple have the clothes on their backs, a few books maybe, and a pur­pose to make things bet­ter.
Then you come home. The bed is softer, the TV is on, the food is always present, rich, and var­ied. Well, you get into a rut very fast.
I don’t want this life. I don’t want the life that just has me sit­ting around eat­ing bon-bons. I want a pur­pose, a direc­tion, a rea­son for exist­ing.
I per­son­ally believe, hav­ing returned here, that God put these resources in my hands for a rea­son. He made this stuff avail­able to me not because I deserve it, or I need extra toys… but because He also made me so I wouldn’t want it so much at this point. I want to use these resources for His Pur­pose, not mine.
So that’s why I’m writ­ing this lit­tle blurb on the blog. Because it’s 5am, I’m sit­ting up enjoy­ing my QT (Quiet Time) with God and He’s telling me to write… write any­thing … just write.
…mean­while, for any­one who’s still read­ing this blog, I will prob­a­bly have a sep­a­rate page some­time soon with all the pic­tures I took … espe­cially the safari pic­tures. I’ll make a link for it here in the blog.
I know I ram­bled a bit on the blog, and I still haven’t got­ten to all the things that hap­pened, but I guess that’s what the blog is for: to get my ideas down in a raw for­mat. I hope this is of some enter­tain­ment to you, but really it’s sup­posed to be for me.
That’s an inter­est­ing point about a blog. It either dri­ves you into “writ­ing for other peo­ple” mode (e.g. wor­ry­ing that you might not enjoy this con­tent), or it gets you to a place where you don’t care what other peo­ple think about what you’re writ­ing and you just write (which is the key to good writ­ing, btw).
So, if you want to keep read­ing the blog, I’m cer­tain that there will be more about Africa, more about my own thoughts work­ing for the Lord, and so forth… but at this point, I’m home, I’m try­ing to fig­ure out what I learned and it’s more about me with my thoughts… or some­thing
Hope you’re enjoy­ing the blog.

How to Talk to God…

Ok…
Let’s talk about “talk­ing to God” … or more sig­nif­i­cantly, lis­ten­ing to God.
I’ve men­tioned it a lot myself, and one of the things that is said a great deal around inter­ces­sors is “the Lord told me”.
Now, how could any­one in their right mind believe that God is talk­ing to them? How can you live your life believ­ing that God, the Almighty cen­tral force of the uni­verse, is going to stop and chat with you? You’d have to think pretty highly of your­self to believe that God takes the time, right?
Well, no. Actu­ally, you’d have to think pretty highly of God to believe that He can pay atten­tion to so much all at once. In fact, He sees it all simul­ta­ne­ously. He sees the past, the present and the future, and still He wants to talk to you (and me). What’s that all about?
Well, God tells us in the Bible that He wants fel­low­ship. He cre­ated us in His image and He wants us to wor­ship, adore, fol­low and com­mune with Him for­ever. (See John 13:4 for details) In that verse and the fol­low­ing ones, the Lord puts on the garb of a ser­vant, actu­ally nearly a slave, and washes the feet of His dis­ci­ples. What’s that all about? Shouldn’t we be wash­ing His feet? Shouldn’t we be step­ping and fetch­ing for God, not the other way around? How is his being a ser­vant a form of our ado­ra­tion? Well, God needs to reach us first, and fix us, “un-break” us, before our wor­ship will be at all mean­ing­ful. Imag­ine the praise of a con­victed mur­derer… is that of any value? Well, what about the praise of a repen­tant con­victed mur­derer?
God wants to be in our lives. He wants to guide us, lead us, teach us, watch us grow, like His chil­dren. And any par­ent will tell you, to be a lov­ing par­ent, you become a ser­vant. You carry, you pro­vide, you fix, you con­sole, you lis­ten, you feed. Why? Because you love.
So, here’s God, who loves us, is will­ing to serve us in order to take care of us, and is all-powerful.
Does that make it any eas­ier to see that maybe, just maybe, if He wants you to hear him, He can make it hap­pen and is will­ing to go to any lengths to make it hap­pen?
Well, yes and no. God made us able to defy Him. In fact, He made us in order to defy Him. He has known all along that we’d be here, sin­ning and ques­tion­ing His exis­tence, He knew it when He cre­ated this sit­u­a­tion.
So why’d He do that? Well, the short answer is to gather greater Glory to Him­self. God deserves wor­ship and ado­ra­tion. But if every­thing adores and wor­ships Him because it has no choice, well, there’s no “value” in that to God. So He cre­ates crea­tures that can choose not to love Him, then wins us over to Him… and that makes our Love of value to Him. When we finally suc­cumb and give our­selves over to Him com­pletely, give every­thing we are, will ever be or ever have been to His use, then we finally begin to have worth in the eyes of God, which of course is the goal for us all, isn’t it? To have eter­nal worth… to have a “rea­son” for being here? So, in a com­pli­cated way, the demand for wor­ship from God is a gift to us from Him, giv­ing us a Pur­pose that will sat­isfy us for eter­nity… we’re here to wor­ship God and reflect His Glory back to Him.
He uses every­thing He’s got to get us to turn to Him, because He also knows that there will be a time when the option is no longer avail­able, that we won’t be able to choose Him any­more. Since He loves us, He works in every sin­gle moment to get us to find Him, sur­ren­der to Him and embrace His Love.
So…
Each and every moment of your life, every thought, fan­tasy, idea, expe­ri­ence, per­cep­tion, taste, dream … God is in it, try­ing to reach you. Other things may be there too, but some­where, in each ker­nel of time, God is present, wait­ing to be found. If you con­sider a sin­gle moment in your life … try this one, right here … you will see that some­where in it, there’s a mes­sage from God par­tic­u­larly geared to you, point­ing at you and your imme­di­ate cir­cum­stances, and teach­ing you what you need to know to get back to Him.
I want you to con­sider just how far away into the dark­ness we are. God is God, ok? He’s like some sort of infi­nite ball of light blaz­ing through all eter­nity in a huge corona of power and Glory… eter­nal and unde­ni­able. Ever pow­er­ful, ever present.
Now you and I, we’re so far into the shad­ows that we not only can’t see that lim­it­less fire of Love, we can’t even imag­ine it… we’re so far away that we strug­gle to imag­ine whether it even exists.
That’s pretty bad. That’s dark. That’s so dark that we’re sit­ting just a mil­lime­ter away from obliv­ion, but it’s too hard to see that.
Now imag­ine that your kid has gone into such a dark place that he’s for­got­ten you exist. Imag­ine he’s in the dark, stand­ing on one foot on the edge of a cliff that he doesn’t know is there, but you do. What do you say?
He doesn’t even know that your voice is real, that it’s not just his own voice in his head. Your kid is sit­ting in dark­ness so pro­found that if he moves, he’s lost for good.
What do you say? How do you reach him?
well… first and fore­most… you say what­ever he’s lis­ten­ing for. If he’s expect­ing music, you speak in music… if he’s lis­ten­ing for psalms, you speak in psalms … if the only thing he’ll believe in is a well-timed rain­bow on a sunny day, well, that’s what you put in front of him. You’ve gotta reach him, any way that you can.
But it’s so dark where he is, that even if you reach him for a split sec­ond… he’s back to the dark­ness the next split sec­ond. He has a “moment” where he feels closer to you, then he’s back to the dark­ness, and his pay­check, the rent, the girl next door, the war, what­ever… and he’s lost track of you again.
So you keep talk­ing… hop­ing he’ll lis­ten for two sec­onds in a row…
… and slowly… by choice, by cir­cum­stance, or by direct inter­ven­tion …
he starts to hear you… and lis­ten…
what do you say?
“I am the way, the Truth and the Light… fol­low me“
“Here is my Word, believe in it“
“I am“
…but c’mon, Mal­colm, how does God talk to you? Is it a voice? An inkling? Ran­dom pat­terns of color? Coin­ci­dences? What is it?
Well, the answer is this:
what, dear reader, would you believe?

coincidentally…

So after post­ing that last post… I turned on the TV, and there’s some woman dis­cussing the Scrip­ture…
She is talk­ing about the Spirit of the Lord lead­ing peo­ple, guid­ing peo­ple…
She even said that a min­is­ter she knew was check­ing with “his prophet” for guid­ance and the “prophet” told him that he wasn’t get­ting his daily “proph­esy” which is why he didn’t feel good.…
to which she chuck­led and said “No!”, it’s about the Spirit being inside. She is talk­ing about her “guide inside”.
I just find it an inter­est­ing coin­ci­dence that this is what’s on TV right now

the Voice of God

(con­tin­ued from pre­vi­ous post…)
Well, I’ll tell you some­thing. I think the horn woke up the wrong folks, cause after that, every­thing got hairy. So les­son num­ber one, when doing spir­i­tual bat­tle, try to stay low-key
Ok, so at this point it was night­fall, and we were in Eldoret and needed a place to sleep. We had planned to be far­ther along on the trip, but we were still rel­a­tively ok, because there was a place known lov­ingly as “the White Cas­tle” that was the house of a very devout Chris­t­ian fam­ily.
Here’s what it looks like in the day­light… what a blessed place!

I know that hos­pi­tal­ity is one of the gifts of the Spirit, but I’ve never really expe­ri­enced it per­son­ally before on a spir­i­tual level. This house was awe­some. The matron of the home had orga­nized it so that there were a lot of bed­rooms avail­able and a cen­tral gath­er­ing room which was orga­nized to present food and have fel­low­ship. From what I under­stand, all sorts of pil­grims, inter­ces­sors, mis­sion­ar­ies and so forth stop off at the White Cas­tle all the time, so their home is blessed with a great deal of very inter­est­ing Chris­t­ian work on a reg­u­lar basis.
When we got there, there was a local pas­tor there with his kids. We all spoke until about 10pm, and then I had to crash, it was late for me.
In the morn­ing, we had Kenyan tea (which is great, by the way, noth­ing like the stuff we drink at home and some sand­wiches and we were ready to go. That’s when the “fun” started.
Then we all piled into the car, and were headed on our way.
We stopped at a gas sta­tion to check the air in a tire and get “petrol”.
There was an attack at the gas sta­tion. A pretty big one. I almost left the coun­try, and go fig­ure, right at the moment that I was half-heartedly look­ing for a bus at the side of the road, one rolled up and the con­duc­tor waved at me to get on board. The Lord com­manded me to stay.
Which is exactly what I did… thank you Jesus.
So, we all drove around in silence for about an hour.
… so I opened my Bible and started read­ing…
… and the Lord started talk­ing to me very clearly through the Scrip­ture…
He started mak­ing it clear to me that this was what my trip was all about… that hear­ing Him here, while read­ing Scrip­ture, while pray­ing, while med­i­tat­ing; this is what it’s really all about.
Some of you know that I came here for a Bap­tism in the Spirit, which is often the time that a per­son first begins to “hear” the Lord, and speak in tongues and so forth. Well, any­one who’s been around me for the last year knows that the Lord has been walk­ing in my life pretty clearly, so why go all the way to Africa to get offi­cially Bap­tised in the Spirit?
Part of it was the excite­ment, no doubt. Maybe there’d be some­thing I’d never real­ized before… or some new under­stand­ing or “vision” that would set me apart and let me really see and hear the Lord. Well, yes, that did hap­pen, but not in the way I expected (of course).
I had come to Africa, in part, so that Utugi, who is clearly liv­ing very close to the Lord, could show me how to inter­act with God through the Spirit. But on the way, I learned some things.

1. Utugi, and the Van­guard, are just peo­ple, like all the rest of us
2. The only per­son who is ever going to teach you how to talk to the Lord, is the Lord
3. God wants noth­ing as much as He wants to have fel­low­ship with each and every one of us, directly and personally
4. If you seek Him, no mat­ter how far away you go to find Him, you’re going to real­ize that He’s found in the clos­est place to you that there is… your heart

It’s very easy to get worked up on the cer­e­mony of things in the Church, but the real­ity is that the Lord is look­ing into your heart and watch­ing what you’re think­ing and feel­ing. If I had gone to Africa for an inter­est­ing light show, I would have got­ten just that… a light show.
If I had gone to Africa expect­ing noth­ing to hap­pen, I would have got­ten just that… noth­ing.
But I went to Africa, expect­ing and hop­ing that my out­look would change, that my under­stand­ing of my rela­tion­ship with the Lord would be changed and that I would come back a dif­fer­ent per­son. And that’s what the Lord gave me…
So, there I was in the car, real­iz­ing that the only true friend I had to lis­ten to at the time was the Lord, as He expresses Him­self in Scrip­ture. That’s not to imply that the other mem­bers of the group weren’t my friends, but we’re all bent. None of us is true, in the sense that a plank of wood is true, or a straight line is true.
So if we’re all sus­cep­ti­ble to the adversary’s attacks, who can we rely on all the time? Who can we turn to with­out fail? You got it… God.
Wanna know where that lit­tle real­iza­tion came from? The Lord explained it to me while I was read­ing Scrip­ture. He wrote it into my heart in a way I’d never really under­stood before, and I found myself doing some­thing I’d not expected… I found myself run­ning scared into the arms of the Lord.
And He was wait­ing expec­tantly for me when I got there, just like the truest Father there is.
… So here I am, hav­ing a pri­vate dia­logue with the Lord about His Grace, His Peace and His Sal­va­tion, while “out there” every­one in the car, that I had expected to be my teach­ers in this thing were run­ning hot, hold­ing silent anger and just pale in com­par­i­son.
So I guess the moral of this lit­tle part of the tale is that we are here for fel­low­ship with each other, that we are here to love one another, but we are never here to become the be all and end all source of knowl­edge for each other. That honor is reserved for God. If you find your­self fol­low­ing a sin­gle per­son or group and think­ing that they are the only way, you’re cre­at­ing a very sub­tle idol in your life. More often than not, theyre doing it with­out their knowl­edge, but it’s hap­pen­ing all the same.
It’s called cult of per­son­al­ity, and the Lord explained a great deal about it to me on the rest of the trip. It’s funny… I went look­ing for the Lord in Africa, and He was with me before I got there… my trip was all about get­ting it dumbed-down enough that I could under­stand that He’s already here
Praise the Lord, even in adver­sity, Christ is King
(gotta pack… more later)

Ok, I’m back

Sorry for the long delay. This post is the last one I’m gonna do while still on the road. I’ll prob­a­bly fol­low up with one more big post when I’m home, full of safari pic­tures and stuff like that… so it’s worth check­ing.
Mean­while, here’s what’s hap­pened thus far.
I went on a spir­i­tual mis­sion with three mem­bers of the Van­guard Min­istry. The pur­pose of the mis­sion was to address a vision that some peo­ple had in the Van­guard dur­ing a prayer ses­sion. The vision was that the entire coun­try of Kenya was “hang­ing by a thread,” and the laypeo­ple of Kenya needed to pray.
It seems that, about a year ago, a sim­i­lar call went out, pri­mar­ily because the gov­ern­ment was cor­rupt in Kenya (Kenya, at the time, had the dubi­ous priv­i­lege of being rated the 3rd most cor­rupt coun­try in the world). So Chris­tians across Kenya prayed daily for the nation, and changes began to occur. Dis­cov­er­ies were made, peo­ple were brought in and the nation received a newly elected gov­ern­ment that was bound to do bet­ter.
Now, Kenya has moved to 18th most cor­rupt nation in the world, but its econ­omy has been dec­i­mated. 25% unem­ploy­ment, and a new wave of gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion have gen­er­ated new prob­lems and an expec­ta­tion that it will take 5 years to come out of the tail­spin.
So the Van­guard, which does inter­ces­sory prayer, began to pray. And really inter­est­ing things have been hap­pen­ing.
The first day I was here and awake, the Van­guard mem­bers grabbed me and said we had to go to the Safari Resort (which is the finest hotel com­plex in Nairobi) for break­fast. It was very clear very quickly that I was being “invited” because I was a large west­erner who would not be doubted or ques­tioned at the gate.
So in we went.
When we got there, we had break­fast alright, and prayed con­stantly (while smil­ing and nod­ding and pass­ing the salt) against the gov­ern­ment meet­ing that was going on at that moment in another part of the com­plex. The Pres­i­dent of Kenya was on the grounds meet­ing with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the IMF (Inter­na­tional Money Fund), dis­cussing a $1Billion loan to the gov­ern­ment that would result in 48,000 lost jobs in Kenya. Such a loan was con­sid­ered a bad idea by most cit­i­zens of Kenya, but the gov­ern­ment wasn’t lis­ten­ing.
So there we were, in prox­im­ity, pray­ing against the loan while we had break­fast. It was a lit­tle sur­real, pri­mar­ily because I wasn’t even a guest of the hotel, but I’ve seen enough movies to know to chat up the serv­ing staff and give big tips, so nobody both­ered us.
Just as we were leav­ing, a very inter­est­ing thing hap­pened.
We had seen a man work­ing on the pave­ment in the grounds, being over­looked by two secu­rity guards tout­ing shot­guns. The Lord put it on my heart to go back and say hello. When I turned around, there were three shot­gun car­ri­ers, and I was a lit­tle ner­vous. But the Lord told me to go over and ask them if they were Chris­tians.
So I went back, asked them if they were Chris­tians, to which they all responded yes, and I intro­duced myself. They all told me their names, but the man who was kneel­ing and doing the work was named Naboth; which is the name of the man that was cheated and killed by King Ahab in the 1Kings. An inter­est­ing coin­ci­dence that the one man I was meant to go and talk to had the same name as the man in the Bible who rep­re­sents the evils of gov­ern­ment greed.
So…
The next day, even though every­one knew that this unwanted loan was going to go through, the IMF sud­denly changed their minds and gave a lot of rea­sons why they were no longer inter­ested in giv­ing the loan at this time. Score a vic­tory for the Lord.
Hav­ing had an intro­duc­tion like that (crash­ing a pres­i­den­tial party to pray against the IMF), I was ready and will­ing to go on this cross-country mis­sion to notify churches and pas­tors that peo­ple needed to pray. The vision, as I men­tioned before, was that Kenya was hang­ing from a thread and peo­ple needed to pray (not inter­ces­sors, but the actual laypeo­ple of the nation) to avoid falling into a grave dark­ness.
So the four of us piled into a car and headed out of Nairobi. Just like that. Pack your bags, we’re off to save the planet (or some­thing
Now the first thing you have to under­stand is that the roads are… really bad.

So trav­el­ing on them takes a LOT longer.
Any­way, we were just gonna drive through the coun­try, stop­ping at var­i­ous churches and hope­fully incit­ing pas­tors to get their con­gre­ga­tions to pray. That was the plan.
So the first day, we passed through some really gor­geous coun­try­side:



and handed out fliers to get the word out. The Van­guard mem­bers were smil­ing a lot because this was dif­fer­ent than nor­mal inter­ces­sory prayer mis­sions. Nor­mally, they sneak into a place (like the Pres­i­den­tial meet­ing) and pray under cover… but this time they were walk­ing right up to pas­tors and churches and hand­ing out fliers. It was a dif­fer­ent call they were receiv­ing for the Lord.
So, on the way, Utugi (my host) was call­ing ahead to find out who was around and would be able to receive their mes­sage. About mid-day, we reached Nakura, which is a rel­a­tively large town by Kenyan stan­dards. While we were there, we stopped off at a diner that was run by a friend of Utugi’s and grabbed a lit­tle lunch.
While we were there, a cou­ple showed up who hap­pen to be involved with a national cir­cuit of inter­ces­sory prayer groups through­out Kenya. So we gave them a bunch of fliers and they headed off to spread the word.
A good day’s work. We headed on to Eldoret, and night fell. Once there, we stopped off at a large tent-church (prob­a­bly could seat a few thou­sand) and gave the mes­sage there also. Utugi also blew the sho­far (which is a big horn) … and I fear that’s when the enemy fig­ured out we were around, because the next day, all heck broke loose…
stay tuned

Preparing for takeoff

Ok,
I’m hav­ing trou­ble get­ting to the Cyber­Cafe reg­u­larly here in Nairobi. I fly out tomor­row at 11pm (that’s Tuesday/Wednesday) so if you’re read­ing this, hang tight… I’ll have a ded­i­cated high-speed con­nec­tion in my hotel in Lon­don and I’ll get a lot done there (I hope).
Basi­cally, if I want to do any­thing inter­est­ing from here… I have to resize the pic­tures I took… burn them to CD, walk across town to the cyber­cafe, load them onto the com­puter and then upload them to the blog using a web inter­face, which is a bit slow.
SO! Hang in, hang out and I’ll be back with pic­tures, sto­ries and way too much on the blog in a day or so…
God Bless!

Nairobi Family

Hi all…
I’m stay­ing with Utugi in her house in an area called Buruburu (it’s sort of like a sub­urb).
These are a few pic­tures of her kids and grand­kids.
This is Emmanuel (Manu)… he’s a pretty good kid, and likes com­puter stuff, so of course we’re get­ting along well

This is Ian, as you can see, he got his hands on my dig­i­tal cam­era and decided to take his por­traits him­self

Mean­while, lit­tle Elisa decided that she pre­ferred my MP3 player

And this is Car­roll, who is one of the old­est in the house

I’ll have other pic­tures later. The BIG list of pic­tures will prob­a­bly have to wait until I get back. The con­nec­tions to the Inter­net are kinda slow here!!!
God Bless all!

Nairobi Notes

There was a black­out last night, while we were in the Inter­net Cafe. We walked through Nairobi in the pitch black while folks just put out their can­dles like they always do. It was beyond tak­ing it in stride, it was as expected as the rain.
The water comes and goes here, usu­ally there is pres­sure in the morn­ing, but by 7am the city pres­sure is gone and you’re down to the tanks on the roof of your own home. The guest house I am in has a very scary show­er­head that heats the water on the fly. It has elec­tri­cal wires attached to it, cov­ered with elec­tri­cal tape, and it flashes inside every time you throw the switch; that tends to be an excit­ing expe­ri­ence when you’re stand­ing naked cov­ered with water… but so far, it hasn’t been shock­ing.
The bed I am in is about 4 inches too short for my lanky ol’ body, and the mat­tress is harder than I pre­fer.
My alarm clock is the roost­ers that crow through­out the neigh­bor­hood at the dawn.
…and I have never been more at peace and con­nected with the Lord than I am right now…
He is show­ing me so many things about my own per­sonal min­istries, about the bur­den of mankind for each other and about the ways in which He is so much more equipped for this world’s prob­lems than any of us. Every moment that I am awake here, He is right with me; telling me that this is a prepa­ra­tion, an instruc­tion, a time of new under­stand­ing.
I don’t know if it is because I’m jaded, or because I’ve had the chance to meet poverty before, but the things like the muddy streets, the ubiq­ui­tous piles of garbage every­where, the ram­shackle con­struc­tion and ever-present rust… they don’t affect me so much. It’s star­tling, but on some level, it’s so big and so vaste that you just let go and focus on the more sig­nif­i­cant issues.
It’s as if these are a peo­ple who are stuck up to their necks in rock, and we are peo­ple who eat, drink and breathe dyna­mite every day. The sim­plest things, a flow of a few dol­lars, would make a change for some peo­ple here… but I’m not jump­ing on the “for the price of a cup of cof­fee” band­wagon, it’s insult­ing.
This nation is not even 50 years old. Its gov­ern­ment is cor­rupt, and that leads to an ethos that all gov­er­nors are cor­rupt or will become cor­rupt. They are cur­rently suf­fer­ing an incred­i­ble eco­nomic turn-down, one that they pre­dict can’t recover for five years. Peo­ple are los­ing jobs left and right; young peo­ple, able-bodied peo­ple.
So that’s what it looks like for these “poor, sad, down­trod­den” peo­ple from the out­side. But the Lord is show­ing me a dif­fer­ent point of view. One from the inside, as much as I can get there know­ing that in about ten days I’ll be in a fine hotel in Lon­don, eath­ing crum­pets and hav­ing a hot shower.
So this is what it’s really like, from what I’m being shown.
One day, you wake up, you pack every­thing you can fit into the back of your car, and you move with all your friends, neigh­bors and fam­ily to the coun­try. When you get there, to the thou­sand acre woods/giant con­cert in the park/fair grounds, you’re given a place to park it and you unpack.
Then they announce that you, your friends, your neigh­bors and every­one else there can­not ever leave, but you are in charge of the area, nobody out­side the area will tell you what to do.
Now fast for­ward 45 years. You’re still there. The folks who live in the place over there where all the build­ings have been built? They are in charge of the water, the power, and all the sell­ing of stuff that goes on with the out­side world. You, your fam­ily and your friends are liv­ing in some of the old con­crete build­ings that were left behind by the folks that cre­ated the fair grounds to begin with.
You look around for things to sell to oth­ers, skills to learn so you can make some money. One of the best things you can do is send some fam­ily out of the fair­grounds, where they can get “real” jobs and send money back to you.
Things like cof­fee cans, plas­tic bowls, cups, and so forth, well… when you get one, you keep it.
and when it rains… every­thing is muddy… every­where…
and it’d be really nice if folks wouldn’t just pile their food garbage by the side of the trail like they do, where it devolves back into the soil until some­one piles on some more or sets it on fire. But nobody at the con­cert is in charge of clean­ing up the trash, so it’s just a big ol’ pile of garbage… and lots of lit­tle piles… and scat­tered lit­ter every­where.
Nairobi’s bet­ter off than that, but not much. We have build­ings, elec­tric­ity that’s semi-reliable, beat up but work­able roads, flow­ing water, tele­vi­sion, cell­phones, an air­port and even real-live super­mar­kets that sell west­ern goods like microwave pop­corn and after­shave.
The prob­lem is, just like Wood­stock, for each per­son going around sell­ing cold drinks, there’s 100 sit­ting around with no way of mak­ing money or doing any­thing.
A lot of peo­ple sell used cloth­ing, fruit and live­stock in these lit­tle makeshift shel­ters… and by makeshift, I mean made out of a few long sticks, cov­ered with plas­tic gro­cery bags type makeshift.
It seems that a lot of those clothes that you donate to the Red Cross or wher­ever come here in bales, where they are of course sold by the peo­ple who have con­trol and run the cor­rupt gov­ern­ment. Then the peo­ple that buy the bales for pen­nies sell them for a few more pen­nies, and the econ­omy crawls around a lit­tle or some­thing.
So… what you’ve got is a bunch of folks that started with very lit­tle, trapped in a sit­u­a­tion that they didn’t start, but mak­ing a pretty good way of it. What is miss­ing in this lit­tle park is jobs!
It’s not just about cre­at­ing work for peo­ple, it’s about money com­ing in across the bor­ders to pur­chase goods or ser­vices, to get jobs cre­ated for decent peo­ple so they can make a bet­ter way of it all. That’s the thing, it’s about giv­ing folks the abil­ity to step up, not just hand­ing them “the price of a cup of cof­fee” hand­out, which doesn’t usu­ally make it to most of them any­way.
So, that’s what I’ve got thus far…
So, what would you do? Your mother and father are get­ting older, your kids are chug­ging along, learn­ing the way, and you’re outta work. You can’t leave the park… what are you gonna do?
You have about 5 hours to fig­ure out the most impor­tant prob­lem, the next meal… because then it’ll be time to fig­ure for the next one.
You know the way you and I think about our money? Do I have enough for the rent? How far will it carry me? Well, that’s the way some folks around here think about food and shel­ter.
And then in all that, some­one comes along and raises you above it all… shows you that, Praise the Lord, the world doesn’t count, the only thing that mat­ters is the joy that you feel in rejoic­ing in the Lord. And you know what? That per­son is right.
That’s what the Lord is show­ing me today

Image Problem

Hi all… minor image prob­lem with the web­site… so pic­tures are delayed… watch this space
Please ignore the borked images… they’re place­hold­ers for when I have the link up.
Sorry