Flash forward several years: my wife and I are commuting to a church plant in Morecambe (a place I formerly loathed as I saw the worst it had to offer as a bin man in the area, battering my way up and down filthy back alleys, but now Christ has worked a deep and real love into my soul for the place and the people who call it home). I was coming back from a leaders meeting and felt a real sense of pressure, or 'burden' in Christianese, to pray for more detail about the vision God had given me all those years ago. I prayed a long time, deep into the morning hours, and felt a strong sense of direction in a more specific way than I ever had before.
I went after work to share with my good friend and pastor, Richard Scholes, what I felt God had put in my heart and mind: a shared house where people, disconnected from family or from dysfunctional and destructive family backgrounds, could come and be a part of our family and the wider church family. Richard was not home, but his wife was, so I described this renewed vision to her. No sooner had I finished my speechifying than Richard walks in.
He had just come from a meeting with a young man of our church who desperately wanted help to move on from destructive cycles. He had asked if it were possible for him to move in with any church family that might take him. Richard mused "woulden't it be great if there were a place like that, a family home where people could move in and be discipled in a family context?"
I nearly fell of my chair at this confirmation from God that I was not mad (okay, not just mad. Okay, not isolated in my madness).
If God tells you something, share it with others. Many people will try to put you off, but I do believe that when it is His will, He will encourage, nurture and provide for His Kingdom growth.
Showing posts with label Introduction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Introduction. Show all posts
Monday, 16 March 2015
Friday, 13 March 2015
Where we have come from Part 2
We were, at one point in our tempestuous history as a family, homeless. Don't get me wrong: not the 'living on the streets, begging for food, sheltering under an overpass' kind of homeless. We were sheltered by the family we inherited as part of joining God's Kingdom, church family, family by The Blood rather than blood family. With two kids, both under three, it was not an easy time, but I don't want to make out it was that difficult either. It was the discomfort of close community, of being guests, of having no space to call your own, of uncertainty and anxiety about the future and the pride-breaking charity of others. It was good in the way that the gym is good: hard work, discomfort and results you cant see immediately but you feel down deep in the fiber of your muscles.
During this time I was confused and not a little dismayed. We looked at housing but my wage only allowed us to consider places that literally made my wife cry. Dripping, black and furry damp, cold with no internal heating, single glazed windows where the breeze visibly lifted the curtains when the window was shut Not good.
So I went out one day on the farm we were staying at, took my Bible and, like Jacob, said to God "I'm not moving till you bless me", sitting down and struggling in prayer as I asked God what He wanted me to do. An hour passed, then two, and all I was getting was bone cold and further discouraged. I attempted to build a kind of alter, realizing as it collapsed that I was still trying to do something to reccomend myself, my cause, to God. To blackmail Him really. Finally I surrendered, sat, opened my Bible and read, ignoring my own voice, ignoring the doubts and fears that battled with my faith. I read and read. Another hour passed.
But by now I was not seeking God for what He could do for me. Nor was I trying to recommend myself to Him with my actions. I was just seeking His face, seeking Him for Him.
At that point, 7 years ago, he asked me clearly what I wanted, then gave me a vision for "a house of many rooms, that The LORD would build, where the orphan would find sanctuary". His vision, my heart's desire.
This did not answer my questions. It did not get me and my family a home of our own immediately. It seemed impossible. But He spoke, and the rest became suddenly less important.
We have been praying about this vision ever since then. Asked others to pray. Asked Him to bring about what He said He would, never moving a step in our own strength to attempt to make it happe, as we had no strength to bring it about without His action on our behalf.
Now I sit in a 'Kingdom built' house, many roomed, and one we hope to make a peaceful place where anyone abandoned by family can find new family. We offer it as sanctuary.
And this is just the beginning.
During this time I was confused and not a little dismayed. We looked at housing but my wage only allowed us to consider places that literally made my wife cry. Dripping, black and furry damp, cold with no internal heating, single glazed windows where the breeze visibly lifted the curtains when the window was shut Not good.
So I went out one day on the farm we were staying at, took my Bible and, like Jacob, said to God "I'm not moving till you bless me", sitting down and struggling in prayer as I asked God what He wanted me to do. An hour passed, then two, and all I was getting was bone cold and further discouraged. I attempted to build a kind of alter, realizing as it collapsed that I was still trying to do something to reccomend myself, my cause, to God. To blackmail Him really. Finally I surrendered, sat, opened my Bible and read, ignoring my own voice, ignoring the doubts and fears that battled with my faith. I read and read. Another hour passed.
But by now I was not seeking God for what He could do for me. Nor was I trying to recommend myself to Him with my actions. I was just seeking His face, seeking Him for Him.
At that point, 7 years ago, he asked me clearly what I wanted, then gave me a vision for "a house of many rooms, that The LORD would build, where the orphan would find sanctuary". His vision, my heart's desire.
This did not answer my questions. It did not get me and my family a home of our own immediately. It seemed impossible. But He spoke, and the rest became suddenly less important.
We have been praying about this vision ever since then. Asked others to pray. Asked Him to bring about what He said He would, never moving a step in our own strength to attempt to make it happe, as we had no strength to bring it about without His action on our behalf.
Now I sit in a 'Kingdom built' house, many roomed, and one we hope to make a peaceful place where anyone abandoned by family can find new family. We offer it as sanctuary.
And this is just the beginning.
Monday, 2 March 2015
Where we have come from pt 1
We have been privileged to "stand on the shoulders of giants": to be a part of this vision is to be a part of something that has been seeded a long time before we arrived on the scene in the hearts of others, others who had their own vision and goals blocked in the will of God so that we could see their prayers answered through us.
A recent visitor to (and, hopefully eventual, member of) HomeChurch has been a long time lover of Morecambe. Committed to the cause of Christ, His kingdom come, and the people of Morecambe, she and a few others from various churches in the Morecambe area used to meet up to pray for the city and it's inhabitants. They wanted to open a place where people without a family could be a part of a family: the family of God. They prayed to this end for a long while, and looked at the very house we now live in, hearing from God that it would be a place of discipleship, love and spiritual growth. they attempted to buy the place, even put in an offer to it's owners around 2012, but for one reason and another the whole thing fell through.
I can imagine what that felt like. I may be guilty of ascribing my own experience to others, but it is not hard to imagine them feeling let down, even hurt by God, and possibly angry at themselves. "He said it! Did I hear Him wrong? was I imagining it? Why would He point to something and not deliver? What did we do wrong? Have we failed?
I'm not sure any of these questions are wrong questions, as long as they are asked directly of God and not grumbled at His people. We can be guilty, like the children of Israel in the desert, of complaining about God, rather than dialoguing WITH Him. All of the Christian walk boils down to relationships. Us to Him, Him to us, us to others. When we put the relationships in the wrong order we end up with various kinds of very destructive sins: gossip is taking a one another relationship and spreading it across to other people, but gossip against God, grumbling and complaining, is taking the us/God relationship and spreading it to others in the same way. The questions we have of God should be shared privately with God and our anger dealt with. Some of this is contained in the LORD's prayer: Your Kingdom come, Your will be done is a statement that implies my will is secondary to the all encompassing purpose of the "hallowing", or showing as awesome, holy and righteous, of His name. Sharing one's own will with God is a part of the process, but only the beginning. It is sharing and allowing His sufficiency, His good, perfect and pleasing will, to overcome our own feeble empire building.
I am glad that those faithful folk submitted to His will. What He promised He has delivered, and not because of anything better or more significant about us, but because it pleased Him to do so, and His will is the hope of the nations. Every endeavor we pursue in the cause of Christ is surfing on the back of another's faithful prayer and service: we have been privileged to see that. Many, the Bible says, do not see the fruit of their faithfulness, the promises of God come to be. remember they are no less blessed for it, for everything done in secret will be made known, and many who are last shall be first. Let us remember that the next time we confuse our worldly success of perceived failure with the blessing or disfavour of God. God does not promise our own dreams will come true, but that He will place us in the middle of His dream: a world of saved sinners, made saints by His blood, a world of love, peace and joy, a world that can only be fully realized at His return, but a heaven that invades earth in the here and now as we live before Him in humility and repentance. A good dream. A revolutionary dream.
Who wants to be a part of that?
A recent visitor to (and, hopefully eventual, member of) HomeChurch has been a long time lover of Morecambe. Committed to the cause of Christ, His kingdom come, and the people of Morecambe, she and a few others from various churches in the Morecambe area used to meet up to pray for the city and it's inhabitants. They wanted to open a place where people without a family could be a part of a family: the family of God. They prayed to this end for a long while, and looked at the very house we now live in, hearing from God that it would be a place of discipleship, love and spiritual growth. they attempted to buy the place, even put in an offer to it's owners around 2012, but for one reason and another the whole thing fell through.
I can imagine what that felt like. I may be guilty of ascribing my own experience to others, but it is not hard to imagine them feeling let down, even hurt by God, and possibly angry at themselves. "He said it! Did I hear Him wrong? was I imagining it? Why would He point to something and not deliver? What did we do wrong? Have we failed?
I'm not sure any of these questions are wrong questions, as long as they are asked directly of God and not grumbled at His people. We can be guilty, like the children of Israel in the desert, of complaining about God, rather than dialoguing WITH Him. All of the Christian walk boils down to relationships. Us to Him, Him to us, us to others. When we put the relationships in the wrong order we end up with various kinds of very destructive sins: gossip is taking a one another relationship and spreading it across to other people, but gossip against God, grumbling and complaining, is taking the us/God relationship and spreading it to others in the same way. The questions we have of God should be shared privately with God and our anger dealt with. Some of this is contained in the LORD's prayer: Your Kingdom come, Your will be done is a statement that implies my will is secondary to the all encompassing purpose of the "hallowing", or showing as awesome, holy and righteous, of His name. Sharing one's own will with God is a part of the process, but only the beginning. It is sharing and allowing His sufficiency, His good, perfect and pleasing will, to overcome our own feeble empire building.
I am glad that those faithful folk submitted to His will. What He promised He has delivered, and not because of anything better or more significant about us, but because it pleased Him to do so, and His will is the hope of the nations. Every endeavor we pursue in the cause of Christ is surfing on the back of another's faithful prayer and service: we have been privileged to see that. Many, the Bible says, do not see the fruit of their faithfulness, the promises of God come to be. remember they are no less blessed for it, for everything done in secret will be made known, and many who are last shall be first. Let us remember that the next time we confuse our worldly success of perceived failure with the blessing or disfavour of God. God does not promise our own dreams will come true, but that He will place us in the middle of His dream: a world of saved sinners, made saints by His blood, a world of love, peace and joy, a world that can only be fully realized at His return, but a heaven that invades earth in the here and now as we live before Him in humility and repentance. A good dream. A revolutionary dream.
Who wants to be a part of that?
Monday, 16 February 2015
A word about getting here, and a warning about where we are going.
How to start? Or, a better question, where and when to start?
This project (a word that is neither accurate nor adequate, but will have to do while I give you the skinny) has been brewing and bubbling in different lives for a number of years, and, as you will see, is just part of a plan that God had in mind before space and time became here and now. So I will start with posts explaining in a bit more detail what we are doing, or at least flailing around with the intent of doing, and then in further posts give you some history, which has been fascinating, terrifying, miraculous and a privilege to live out.
The great thing about this blog for you, dear reader, is that you get to miss out on all the bits that were, well, boring, if I'm being honest. The day in, day out stuff: the painting, praying, plotting bits, the waiting, wrestling, walking stretches. The life outside of the Facebook highlight reel we all seem to judge ourselves by these days. It is important to remind myself, and you who will be witness, that all this did not happen at once, that much of what happened, though resolved with hindsight's rosy glow, was far more mysterious and obscure to walk through than it might appear from a simple summary of it's parts. Now we see the picture: then we saw a step, had a word, felt a push. Faith kept us going when we couldn't see, and faith will lead us on as we continue on this narrow road. You get to look back with us and judge for yourself if coincidence is explanation enough, if faith is folly, or our folly faith, and this testimony shall be a reminder, in old Christianese an 'Ebeneezer', for us as we walk on in the same glorious mystery.
And this is key: what shall follow these initial summaries, these statements of intent and explanations of the how, why and what, are just the beginning. What follows this will be the ongoing chronicles of normal people, broken people, believing for their daily bread, believing that Christ came into the world, lived, died, rose for the forgiveness of sin and holds out the real hope of the nations. Not a utopian ideal; not a political revolution; not 'faith' for faith itself, a kind of naive wish fulfillment towards a cosmic 'force'. Hurt and hurting folk in a busted world trying to live with, not just around, each other, in the belief that all who are 'in Christ' are one together, are family and closer than family. We have a real, living hope in a real, specific Kingdom, with a real and wholly glorious King. This will mean posts where we are riding high on fulfilled promise, or sinking low in doubts and fears.
I intend for it to be a real tale of real family, not a set of perky updates about "living in the victory"! We live in victory for real, but all that 'best life now' nonsense? You want that, this isn't the blog for you. The life we lead in the flesh will be resolved one day: our ultimate hindsight will be postmortem, when all our questions will be answered by our Man of Sorrows, our Prince of Peace, our Friend of Sinners. Till then we will fight and strive with all the power God allows to will and to work His good pleasure.
For this we will need a reminder of all the good, bad and ugly we have already walked through. We will need to look back, see the LORD's faithfulness to us even as we staggered and stumbled through our 'before', and trust ourselves afresh to Him when the way is dark, the load is heavy and our steps faltering.
So this blog is for us too, oh reader, and not words on a screen, but breath, and blood, and memory. A A journal of sorts. I hope it will bless, encourage, rebuke, exhort and inspire you to pray for us. I pray that it might be a word in season to some hopeless soul, some questor for truth, some traveler without a home destination, some angry revolutionary bitter with the world's failed answers, and turn them to Christ. A big hope turned over to a big God.
I hope that you too will be challenged to live up to the counter-cultural vision that is the heart of true Christian living: each to so love his neighbor that personal cost is no consideration. I hope this for myself. I hope this for my family. I hope this for those who come here. God above, let none who read and none who write be left unchanged for the process.
Grace and Peace.
This project (a word that is neither accurate nor adequate, but will have to do while I give you the skinny) has been brewing and bubbling in different lives for a number of years, and, as you will see, is just part of a plan that God had in mind before space and time became here and now. So I will start with posts explaining in a bit more detail what we are doing, or at least flailing around with the intent of doing, and then in further posts give you some history, which has been fascinating, terrifying, miraculous and a privilege to live out.
The great thing about this blog for you, dear reader, is that you get to miss out on all the bits that were, well, boring, if I'm being honest. The day in, day out stuff: the painting, praying, plotting bits, the waiting, wrestling, walking stretches. The life outside of the Facebook highlight reel we all seem to judge ourselves by these days. It is important to remind myself, and you who will be witness, that all this did not happen at once, that much of what happened, though resolved with hindsight's rosy glow, was far more mysterious and obscure to walk through than it might appear from a simple summary of it's parts. Now we see the picture: then we saw a step, had a word, felt a push. Faith kept us going when we couldn't see, and faith will lead us on as we continue on this narrow road. You get to look back with us and judge for yourself if coincidence is explanation enough, if faith is folly, or our folly faith, and this testimony shall be a reminder, in old Christianese an 'Ebeneezer', for us as we walk on in the same glorious mystery.
And this is key: what shall follow these initial summaries, these statements of intent and explanations of the how, why and what, are just the beginning. What follows this will be the ongoing chronicles of normal people, broken people, believing for their daily bread, believing that Christ came into the world, lived, died, rose for the forgiveness of sin and holds out the real hope of the nations. Not a utopian ideal; not a political revolution; not 'faith' for faith itself, a kind of naive wish fulfillment towards a cosmic 'force'. Hurt and hurting folk in a busted world trying to live with, not just around, each other, in the belief that all who are 'in Christ' are one together, are family and closer than family. We have a real, living hope in a real, specific Kingdom, with a real and wholly glorious King. This will mean posts where we are riding high on fulfilled promise, or sinking low in doubts and fears.
I intend for it to be a real tale of real family, not a set of perky updates about "living in the victory"! We live in victory for real, but all that 'best life now' nonsense? You want that, this isn't the blog for you. The life we lead in the flesh will be resolved one day: our ultimate hindsight will be postmortem, when all our questions will be answered by our Man of Sorrows, our Prince of Peace, our Friend of Sinners. Till then we will fight and strive with all the power God allows to will and to work His good pleasure.
For this we will need a reminder of all the good, bad and ugly we have already walked through. We will need to look back, see the LORD's faithfulness to us even as we staggered and stumbled through our 'before', and trust ourselves afresh to Him when the way is dark, the load is heavy and our steps faltering.
So this blog is for us too, oh reader, and not words on a screen, but breath, and blood, and memory. A A journal of sorts. I hope it will bless, encourage, rebuke, exhort and inspire you to pray for us. I pray that it might be a word in season to some hopeless soul, some questor for truth, some traveler without a home destination, some angry revolutionary bitter with the world's failed answers, and turn them to Christ. A big hope turned over to a big God.
I hope that you too will be challenged to live up to the counter-cultural vision that is the heart of true Christian living: each to so love his neighbor that personal cost is no consideration. I hope this for myself. I hope this for my family. I hope this for those who come here. God above, let none who read and none who write be left unchanged for the process.
Grace and Peace.
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