In 1881 The Salvation Army sent its first soldiers into France: Captain Kate Booth (after whom my daughter is named), 21 years old and her two Lieutenants.

None of them spoke French.

They carried the first ever Army flag with them. General Catherine Booth’s instructions to her daughter were:

“Carry it to the slums and alleys. Preach under its shadow wherever there are lost and perishing souls. Charge the hosts od hell and see whether they will not turn and flee”

Within a week they were ridiculed, sworn at and pelted with stones and mud. Later she was but in jail.

Kate and her Lieutenants rented the only rooms they could afford in Paris…It was on the seventh floor of a tenament building in the slums of the Rue Parmentier.

It was occupied by prostitutes and rats. They lived on boiled potatoes and beans.

Kate says: “when I went to France, I said to Jesus ‘I will suffer anything if you will give me the keys.‘”

When she was asked the secret of her power in France, she answered “First, it is love; second, love; third, love. And if you ask me hot to get it, I answer first, by sacrifice; second, by sacrifice; third, by sacrifice.”

Makes me feel like a bit of a wimp really.

Andrew

We can, by faith stand at the throne of Heaven…Jesus has opened up the way for us.
He stands as our High Priest, we can access the throne of Heaven because as the Lord’s redemmed we are there now, our Spirit houses the presence of the Lord, God makes us his Holy Tabernacle, we can experience his heavenly glory in our hearts.

Jesus said he has gone to prepare a place for us, well, he has gone, and that place is prepared, we can inhabit it by faith. We are all already promoted to Glory. When we experience the Glory of the Lord, when we understand by faith that we are seated with Christ in the heavenly realms, we discover the richness of heaven. We are called into heavenly citizenship. We live, as Paul says, in the unseen realm by faith. Our faith is supernatural.

The scripture tells is that it is no longer we that live, but Christ who lives in us. I’ve heard a lot of talk around in recent days asking if we’d be so brave as to take a bullet for Jesus. My response to that is that for me to live is Christ and to die is gain, but I think there is a greater challenge in today’s world…to live as walking martyrs.

As Christians, we are the walking dead…already promoted to glory, our old self has been crucified…the challenge for us today is to simply provide a body, a moving and physical for the

When I came to the Lord, I knelt at the mercy seat…it appeared that nothing had happened apart from my repentance. At home, after the meeting I lay on my bed and the electricity of the Holy Spirit came upon me and I heard music from heaven. Orchestrated singing, glory, like I had never heard before…that’s why the accounts from the island of Lewis where people heard heavenly singing is so precious to me.

When we minister in the power of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit delights to come and fill our souls to over flowing. We have got ourselves to the place where we don’t trust the Holy Spirit moving in power….we say ‘Oh, we don’t pray in tongues in the Army, O we don’t flop out on the floor and we don’t raise our hands or go over the top.” If that’s you then your recollection of Army history is rather shaded and limited by your own personal experience of the Holy Spirits freedom to do what he likes.

Friends, I believe that if we are worshipping in Spirit and in truth, we are functioning fully in the power of the Kingdom and we will experience it in all its fullness, the whole Kingdom and its weaponry are available to us as we walk in faith. As we walk around the world, we should carry with us the aroma of the throne room as ones who have met with the king and been in his presence.

I simply believe that the Lord wants heaven to break loose amongst us, his people. I believe he is here to heal and to minister His Grace, His Charis…from which we get the word, charismatic. Charismatic is simply a term that implies that we are operating in the Spirit of His grace, both in character and power, both in our conduct and in our ministry.

Our prayer is that the Glory of the Lord will come down and rest upon us in power, that as we approach the throne of confidence, so God will supply our needs in Christ Jesus.

I’m now the leader of a Ward Corps! Our Ward System kick-started this week and its been great to see so many of our corps folk plugging into bible study, prayer, fellowship and accountability. Thats probably about more people coming to mid week fellowship than we’ve had coming to mid-week studies all year! We pray it continues, gains momentum and becomes an expanding network for effectively reaching our communities. We talk about communities here because we have several small communities in our charge…and we are just beginning to get to grips with reaching these.

I have four Ward Sergeants, four Assistant Ward Sergeants plus ourselves leading a ward until we can develop some more leadership. We also lead the leaders Ward…the leaders meet together monthly for their own benefit and for a little bit of training, teaching, feedback etc…I guess you could call it a really functional PCC!

The system is in its infancy, and will take a good little while to take shape fully, but praise God we’re started, and even after a week there is so much positive stuff. All the wards have met now, apart from mine which meets next Monday evening.

The benefits of this system already, is that I feel much more confident that we can care for our people pastorally. The Ward Leaders (collective term for Ward Sergeant and Assistant Ward Sergeant) are the first point of contact for our people, who have all been linked up with a ward. So, instead of two sets of eyes looking out, we now have so much more. We should be able to avoid people falling though the cracks. I’m chuffed about that.

Potential problems? I feel very strongly that the evangelistic nature of the ward needs emphasis, ensuring that they don’t become insular.

We are using materiel by Neil T Anderson, Freedom in Christ as the teaching element, which is so eye – opening. I was ‘supervising’ our youth ward last night and it was such a blessing to see some major biblical teaching sinking into the young people.

I’ve had a burden for the ‘freedom’ of the people of this corps since we arrived, with a strong feeling that so many walk tied up in baggage and restriction. Just praying that the Lord will use this material to see people getting untied!

I’ll be sure to keep this blog up to date with developments in the Ward journey. Keep watching!

Andrew

Artical in local paper….

WITCHES ATTACKED DURING PILGRIMAGE

18:00 – 02 November 2006
A youth pilgrimage will not be invited back to Glastonbury after a weekend of attacks on witches in the town. Youth 2000 were invited to hold a retreat in the town by the leader of the local Catholic church, Father Kevin Knox-Lecky.

The supposedly peaceful event included a procession from Glastonbury Tor down through the High Street to mark the 467th anniversary of the beheading of the last Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, Richard Whiting, and fellow martyrs.

However, the event turned the weekend into a nightmare for the town’s sizeable pagan community with salt being thrown at witches, attacks on their shops and abuse to staff.

Much of the dissent focused on the pagan shop the Magick Box, owned by Maya Pinder, which was on the route of the march.

Mrs Pinder described her weekend of hell, a weekend that she said is one of the most important in the pagan calendar as it celebrates the upcoming pagan new year.

“We have had a terrible, most stressful weekend,” she said.

“We’ve had to hear comments such as ‘burn the witches’, we’ve had salt thrown in our faces and at our shop people were openly saying they were ‘cleansing Glastonbury of the paganism’.

“It was as if we had returned to the Dark Ages. This is hugely damaging to Glastonbury, of which I would suggest two-thirds is pagan.

“It is hard enough to trade in Glastonbury as it is, if you were to take away the pagan element it would be a dead town.”

Following problems during last year’s procession, when marchers allegedly spat at the shop’s windows, around 20 witches and friends of the Magick Box stood guarding the shop during this year’s march, some wearing their trademark black velvet robes.

One suggestion put by a resident of Glastonbury that the Magick Box staff were intimidating and aggressive has been dismissed by Mrs Pinder, as well as her staff, and fellow witches.

This week Father Kevin has met representatives of the pagan community and has made the decision not to invite Youth 2000 to the town again.

——————————————–

Interesting…
Andrew

The Lord desires to move through you like a north wind, quickening, awakening, helping the church to realise that its time to reap a harvest before the winter. Put your boots on, grab your ploughs and head to the fields for the harvest will be plentiful.

The wind will bring floods flowing down from the mountains of the highlands into the lowlands. There will be streams of running water that will make even the cities polluted streams taste sweet. The streets of cities and villages will be blocked with streams.

Some will set barriers around the streams and mark danger, but clansmen will know no fear and follow the flow to the deep water where the invitation is to get in above the waist.

————–

Test it and weigh it…whats good is the Lord, the rest is me.

yours
Andrew

We had a great time in Lewis…really great holiday and great time of refreshment (in more ways that one…boy is it cold up there!)

I could blog loads about it, but I’ll just jot down a few observations:

– the only traffic we encountered on Sunday were busses full of people travelling to church.
– I’d guess 70% of this community (of 20,000) go to church every sunday
– at the evening Service of Barvas Church of Scotland (where the 1949 revival broke out) there were 70+ people gathered for worship from a township/parish of only around 300 altogether…and thats the evening service on a bitter autumn night!
– The Salvation Army on the island is a lovely community
– at the service at the church mentioned above, the air was thick with the presence of God…first time I have ever experienced that in a Church of Scotland…moreover, it was soundly evangelical. The first time I have heard the gospel preached in the Church of Scotland!
– as I just drove round the island (everything else was shut) I just kept asking God ‘why this island Lord? why send revival here?’ The answer: prayer. If it can happen in Lewis, it can happen in Pill.
– I loved hearing the language spoken naturally in everyday settings (gaelic, of course).
– Harris is empty…there is no-one there. In fact, its not true…after travelling 50 odd miles round the coastal road we found one man who waved at us enthusiastically as if we were the only civilisation he had seen in years.
– Hebridean hospitality is lovely
– Lewis has the most consistent surf in the UK!!
– it never stopped raining the whole time….did you know that there is even a word in gaelic for the period of time between showers?
– I feel in my spirit that the Lord is going to move again in Scotland, that Lewis will play a part, but it will have a wider impact this time.
– The Minch is the choppiest section of water I have ever crossed!

God spoke several things to my heart when I was there…things for me to treasure, ponder, act on. He also shared several things about our corps ministry which I shared with them last Sunday.

It took us 3 days to get there, 3 days to get home, but I’ve never taken such a worthwhile journey!