travelmonkey4christ

I have ministered in Cambodia for more than a decade and this video was taken of the church that I have worked with there. The kids and adults I know so well and each time I see it my heart leaps. If you are interested in a missions experience, join a team and GO!!!!

Through pretty much all my ministry, I believed and taught that we can be a PIPELINE to others of God's love. It's not about us it's about Him. It's about what He has to pour into hungry hearts. I taught that God wants to use us to pour through to the lost. Great concept, right? But this year God allowed me to go the full length of that philosophy, to explore the ultimate result of that vision. I came to a place of extreme emptiness in which God allowed me to see the fallacy of this symbolic lifestyle. It was more a concept from man than a concept from God. Look again at the picture. The problem with the pipeline is it can never be a destination! True it is a conduit, but it will never be a destination . It is the image of a servant but it is not the relationship God desires for us. In John 15:15 Jesus said, "I'm no longer calling you servants because servants don't understand what their master is thinking and planning. No, I've named you friends bec...

No, it is not yours to open buds into a blossom. Shake the bud, strike it, it is beyond your power to make it blossom. Your touch soils it. you tear its petals to pieces and strew them in the dust, But no color appears and no perfume. Oh, it is not for you to open the bud into blossom. He who can open the bud does it so simply. He gives it a glance and the life sap stirs through its veins. At his breath the flower spreads its wings and flutters in the wind. Colors flash out like heart longings, the perfume betrays a sweet secret. He who can open the bud does it so simply Tagore

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!

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 ...

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..."