Keeping Passionate for God

Frequent encounters with God will keep any flame burning.

When camping overnight in the mountains the temperature drops as the darkness descends. The experienced camper will build a fire for the night near a large rock if possible. Then when he is ready for sleep he will lay his sleeping bag down between the fire and the rock (which is now heated from the fire) so he gets warmth on both sides!

The fire is God’s presence. The rock represents other people in your life who spend time in the presence of God. Nothing replaces the personal time you spend in God's presence but the reflected heat from your relationship with strong believers is a welcome compliment in keeping God’s passion in your life!

Halls Creek

We have just come back from ministry time with Aboriginals in the Halls Creek area of Western Australia. One of the areas we visited was at Debbie's camp (a group of houses in an area which comprise a people group) and she produced old photographs from a book showing her mother emerging from the Great Sandy Desert in 1967 - her first sight of white people. They had been forced out of the desert because of near starvation, and had followed a plane trail to the nearest settlement. Amazing - just 40 odd years ago. On Wednesday we ministered together, Carolyn and I, to the women (complete with kids running around - good that this does not worry us in the slightest and God moves in spite of noise!) Carolyn ministered on Isaiah 61:1 and 2 and felt to emphasise the "binding up the brokenhearted". She had made some cut out hearts with a word or two on each on things that break our heart. Loss of dreams - Grief through loss of a loved one - Loss of Relationships. Then I came out and shared part of my testimony concerning the loss of a friend and mentor and finished with the illustration of the torn and restored heart - where I take a paper heart, tear it into several pieces as I reiterate the things that break our hearts, including sin, and then as we give our brokenness to God, how He restores it - which is where the heart opens up as a whole piece. It is a neat illusion which is just so powerful. I then made a call and the women flocked out. One grandma Carolyn prayed for was looking after three kids, asked for prayer that her son would be out of jail and would be able to beat the drink and look after his family. We prayed for sick kids, for boils and fever; for pregnant girls. One lady the following day said her boil burst that night and is now draining freely, fever gone. What a blessing it was to us to begin to glimpse an insight into their culture and to pave the way for future visits.

Turning our Mourning to Dancing...

One of my favourite writers is Henri Nouwen. In his book, "Turning my mourning into Dancing", he says:



"If God is found in our hard times, then all of life, no matter how
apparently insignificant or difficult, can open us to God's work among
us. To be grateful does not mean repressing our remembered hurts. But
when we come to God with our hurts - honestly, not superficially -
something life changing can begin slowly to happen. We discover how God
is the One who invites us to healing. We realise that any dance of
celebration must weave both the sorrows and the blessings into a joyful
step...



Gratitude in its deepest sense means to live life as a gift to be
received thankfully. And true gratitude embraces all of life: the good
and the bad, the joyful and the painful, the holy and the not-so-holy.
We do this because we become aware of God's life, God's presence in the
middle of ALL that happens..."