I love Luke. Luke starts his gospel by saying I am writing this so you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught. And that is the heart of the matter, we don’t do church because it’s convenient, we don’t do the Gospel because it makes life more bearable, we do it because it is truth. It is certainty. And perhaps that is one point preachers need to emphasise more in these times of intense holy navel gazing and seeming triumph of relativity of all things.

We are grateful for all that God does for us, we are thankful that He is loving, gracious, kind, forgiving, magnificent, benevolent and faithful. That is a wonderful thing. But we do not believe in Him only so long as He causes us to benefit from those things. No, we believe in Him because He is. It so happens that He is the rewarder of those who seek Him. It‘s a win-win situation. The gospel is truth, whether or not it makes me happy, whether or not it is convenient for me. And sometimes it would seem as if it makes me, that is my unregenerate flesh that still dominates my emotions less than happy. And that is where knowledge of truth makes the difference.

In our generation preachers are raising mercenary, selfish, spoilt overgrown babies who are looking for a cosmic sugar daddy to ease the pain of life and make them happy. But, it’s never enough; never enough to make us devoted followers. If we miss a daily dose, we renegotiate our allegiance. Self seeking, opinionated …click here to read more

As I woke up on my flight from Addis, this song kept running through my mind leading me to indulge in some silent praise, ‘I am forever grateful to you, i am forever grateful for the cross, i am forever grateful to you that you came, to seek and save the lost’.  Over and over again I sang. Need one be deprived of the joy of worship simply because one finds oneself at high altitude? Most certainly not. Indeed biblically heights have a way of drawing our attention to the One who is the Most High, the One who is high and lifted up and who had a habit of meeting his people on mountains.

But the beauty of the new covenant is that there is no longer one single place where men go to meet with God.  He has made the whole earth an altar, better still; He has made our hearts His altar and calls us the temple of the Holy Spirit. Consequently the only prerequisite for worship is that we be present and our hearts can and indeed must constantly be lifted up to worship the Lord in every place.

12th century St Giorgis rock-hewn church, Lalibela

And what a joy to worship Him in different climes and amidst foreign peoples; while taking in the spectacular beauty of the vast New Zealand natural landscape and in Yoruba in Salvador da Bahia, home to the descendants of those carted off from my land centuries ago as slaves and who still maintain the Yoruba cosmogony whereby creation began with the Yoruba and the founder of the Yoruba nation literally descended from heaven (fear not, no syncretism here), What a joy to praise in teeming Shanghai , to prayer walk in sedate Stockholm.

And how thrilling to praise in Addis, to call on the name of the Lord under the skies of Ethiopia, one of the oldest Christian civilizations in the world.  Thrilling indeed as …click here to read more

The great affliction of the church is deafness. The problem of many Christians is not that they cannot speak, but that they cannot hear. And they cannot hear because they will not listen. Take prayer for instance. Many people will talk not stop but take no time to listen to God. And they do not listen because of the common misconception that prayer is talking to God when indeed prayer is communing with God, conversing with God; it is a two way communication. Besides, it does stand to reason, does it not, that if we have something to say, God just may, in His omniscience have some information, knowledge or other to share with us, and it would behoove us to listen. But how rarely we do!

Picture this! …click here to read more

Prayer for the United Kingdom at Parakletos 2010

He came. As did hundreds of persons, but the testimony of PARAKLETOS 2010, the enduring pleasure we feel, the marvel and wonder and delight of it all, is that He came. God came, and His presence was tangible, was real, and changed lives. This time we wanted more than people falling under the power, we wanted more than they being blessed, we wanted a prayer army. We wanted God to get hold of our lives and mobilize us to pray as we had never prayed before, we wanted God to change our perspective, to turn prayer into a delightful and desirable thing, to shake our complacency to see that the future of this continent will be determined by those men and women who get on their knees and cry out to God. And He did.

The place resounded with the cry ‘Europe shall be saved’. And a group of people from different nations, the Netherlands, France, the UK, Germany, the Ukraine, Poland, together rose up in …click here to read more

Oh God, make me a Simeon. That was my cry the other morning. God make me a Simeon. Remember Simeon? He is that old man, I suppose He was old because of what he said later, introduced simply as a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, a man described as righteous and devout, who had the Spirit upon him. He prophesied over Jesus at his dedication in the temple as a baby. Oh God make me a Simeon, why?

Simeon knew the voice of God, He had an intimate relationship with God, so much so that He had cut a deal with God that was unique, that he would not die until he had seen the Messiah. No one else as far as we know had been given such a promise. Oh I do want to be a Simeon.

Simeon was a man of faith. Israel had been waiting for the Messiah for generations, and here is one man who dares …click here to read more

And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.” And so concludes the book of Malachi, last book of the Old Testament and I turned my page with a flourish thus concluding our church’s Bible in one year project.

We started on January 15 2009 and concluded on January 14 2010, we began with the New Testament and then went on to the Old. No doubt a few stragglers will be limping in to the finish line throughout the week and possibly the month, but what a joy to conclude this project. A few lessons learnt :

• For many it was an eye opener to read through whole books of the Bible. …click here to read more

Yet another opportunity came my way a few days ago to think on the goodness of God. I had received an email from a lady from our church asking for prayer because was ill and on sick leave. I spoke to someone else on the phone later and asked them to call the person up and pray with her for her healing. They replied that they had already prayed with her on the Tuesday. I said, half joking ‘yes, but this time call her and pray with her on my behalf, the anointing will be even stronger’; then I added ’she must be healed and be in church on Sunday’. They acquiesced.

A few minutes later, the phone rang and it was my ‘pray-er’ who excitedly told me they had good news for me, the sick person had immediately felt all pain leave her body. We rejoiced and were even more encouraged as we saw her show up in church on Sunday. The other day, the person who had been ill , visibly moved, shared her astonishment that God would heal her so since her relationship with God at this time is not quite what it ought to be, she did not understand why God healed her.

Indeed, we do not understand why He saved us; we have done nothing to deserve anything we have in Him; His love, His tenderness, His favour are released when He finds someone who accepts to be His hand and His voice, someone who accepts to hold people close in His name, to love people in His name, to pray for their healing in His name, to feed them…..

Still wondering whether you should join us in Paris for the European Prayer Conference? Watch this!

Details, flyers et al availaible in the Pages section on the right. Hope to see you in Paris.

To kick off 2010 I’ld like to go back to a word we received from the Lord at the end of 2009. The last Sunday of the year while we were thanking the Lord for His faithfulness the Lord spoke to us and asked if at the end of 2010 we would be able, not only to testify of His faithfulness but also testify that we also have been faithful. It got under my skin and I have been thinking, meditating, eating, drinking, chewing on faithfulness ever since. And naturally, I preached on it this Sunday and will continue next Sunday.

I honestly think that often we are not aware that there are things God expects from us, and this i …click here to read more