Revving up for another month of 24/7 prayer

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Have you ever thought of what it would be like if the “Church” in a whole region united to pray and seek God’s face in a spirit of unity and a bond of peace? What does fourteen churches praying 24/7 look like? What would cause intercessory teams from the USA, and Australia to fly out to the southernmost tip of Europe and sit in a prayer room to seek the face of the Beloved?

This is what is happening again. As from 1st October most of the churches of the region surrounding Gibraltar, called “Campo de Gibraltar” will be supporting a month of 24/7 prayer, seeking God’s face, and blessing the region’s 250,000 residents. English speaking Christians from Gibraltar, USA, and Australia, and Spanish speaking Christians from several cities around Gibraltar will come together for a one month long solemn assembly – a prolonged season of “face time” before the One with whom we have to do.

Kick-off will be this Sunday at 10:00pm where all of the churches and ministries involved will hold a celebration service at the Hotel Solana in Spain, the venue that we have chosen for this month-long prayer meeting, and upon hitting midnight the various teams will start filing their two-hour blocks at the prayer room. Different focus nights have also been allocated such as praying for North Africa and all those involved in that field, also every Friday night the prayer room becomes a healing room where we will pray for the sick, and also other nights there will be corporate meetings and celebrations for youth, for pastors and such like.

I will be blogging through some of these events and experiences so stay tuned to this spot. Further information can also be obtained from the event’s website at campo247.com.

Technorati Tags: 24/7, Campo247.com, Campo De Gibraltar, Prayer

Testimony: Sister at beach receives Baptism in the Spirit

Yesterday afternoon was spent at the beach. Several from church hung out and chilled at this tiny beach in Gibraltar called “Little Bay”. Well, after most of the beach goers had gone home the group from church got talking and this sister shared how she had not been baptised in the Holy Spirit and did not speak in tongues. Right there on the beach a brother laid hands on her and immediately she was baptised, speaking with other tongues! A Baptism in the Spirit at the beach! Yea!

I am pumped!

Folks we have had an awesome meeting! I’m a little lost for words at the moment, and all I can say is “More Lord!”. God is setting us up for an incredible victory here. Yeah Jesus!

I spoke on the days of restoration of all things. My teaching notes can be found here. Other teaching notes can be found here. Knock yourself out!

Technorati Tags: Living Waters Tabernacle, Restoration, Jubilee

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How to transform your ministry through blogging

The time is ripe for bloggers in the Kingdom of God. Bloggers are modern day scribes. Jesus foretold of this day when He said that He would be sending prophets, wise men, and scribes in the end times (link). Some want to jump into the blogging bandwagon, fascinated by the hype surrounding blogging but knowing little of what the reality entails. Others do not even know what a blog is. Still others insist on ignoring a tool that has the potential to reach millions in today’s wired generation. What should you do? In the light of the potential that blogging has for your ministry, read up, think through, pray, and go for it!

What is a blog?

A blog (from web-log) is an online diary of sorts where the author (called blogger) posts daily articles (called posts) and where readers can often post their comments on these posts and in a very real sense enter the “conversation”. This concept is revolutionary, as most previous forms of “marketing”, including traditional websites (nowadays increasingly referred to as static websites) only offer a one-way flow of communication – from the author to the reader. Blogs are totally different as interaction and input from the reader is crucial and actually helps develop and mature your topic online. Readers and contributors of your blog become champions of your ideas, spreading (read evangelizing) your circle of influence far and wide as the more comments you get the more search engines on the Internet pick up your blog as a key resource on the topic being discussed. It is this pull method of marketing (The user pulling the message out) that becomes viral infecting others that in turn become carriers of your message. The traditional push method of marketing is old ways for old days.

Why should I blog?

Blogs are awesome tools for recording what God is doing through your ministry, church, or organization. The format of a blog helps, as posts appear in reverse chronological order therefore the newest posts are always at the top of the page and the oldest posts at the bottom. This format makes for a timeline in which you can chronicle a journey that highlights your adventures with God, life, and people. You can look back after several months and see how the Lord plans and directs everything.

With this technology, it is the writer’s hour. With a blog youcan literally impact millions whilst sitting at Starbucks with your laptop and a latte. I am convinced that the Apostle Paul would have been a blogger, writing his letters and imparting his revelation around the world during the course of his travels. Blogs allow for conversations with brilliant generals and commanders in God’s army - what an impartation tool! I am frankly at a loss as to why more ministries and churches are not blogging.

Learn in order to write - write in order to learn. By putting down yourthoughts into an article and publishing it, you are forcing yourself to really condense and focus your thinking. It is in actually putting your feelings into words that you refine what is in your heart. I have found that a lot of what I blog about I end up using behind the pulpit including illustrations, points I have made etc. In that sense my blog has become something of a petri-dish - a place where I put stuff out there and cultivate thoughts leading to some stuff growing on it. Hopefully not all has been fungus and some worthwhile points have been gleaned from this process.

At the end of the day, I read a lot of blogs, gaining learning from the insights and experiences of of others, I then distill and churn all of this through my blog and the result is that I have used my learning in order to write, and I have used my writing in order to learn some more.

How much will this cost me?

Blogging has zero start-up costs. You can literally setup a free blog at Blogger or Wordpress in order to start blogging and once you get with it you can transfer the blog to a fancy website address (Called a domain) along the lines of yourname.com or yourtopic.com, you get the picture. The investment you have to make is not monetary, but it is costly.

Time investment. With all this talk of reaching billions with your message, I do not want in any way to anaesthetise you to the real costs involved in blogging. A serious blogger, aiming to build a serious readership
around their blog, will be looking at investing a respectable amount of time every day to blogging. Blogging involves writing, reading, research, and other background administrative tasks related to developing maintaining and
enhancing your blog. I normally spend around one hour a day doing some of these blogging tasks, and I post around one post every other day.

You will need to start developing ideas for articles/posts and researching these. Then write, write and write some more. When you have these articles down, do not forget to read, read, and read some more. Read other blogs, comment on them, join the blog conversations around the “blogosphere“. When people leave comments on your blog, reply to them as a comment too - acknowledge their input, build relationships with them, maybe even emailing them some information or follow-up to what they wrote. Take an interest and active participation in grooming and developing the readership of your blog, and your audience will grow.

Blogging is hard but extremely rewarding. There are technical hurdles to jump - any blogger will need to develop a relatively good grasp of tweaking their website design etc. However don’t let technical limitations hold you
back - you could always delegate the techie stuff to a keen youngster or capable family member. The bottom line is that blogging though time intensive has the potential to broadcast your message to the world. Ask yourself not therefore whether you can afford to blog, ask yourself whether you can afford not to.

Further information:

• The Blogging Church - This book is an indispensable resource for those
  thinking about blogging.
• A Glimpse Behind the Scenes of Successful Blogs - a more advanced blog
  post regarding blogging and its related activities
• The Nine Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers - along the same lines.

Getting with His programme

We are constantly learning to adjust. Constancy, predictability and comfort are words that God is erasing from our vocabulary in order to prepare us and train us for the seasons to come. One of the key lessons to learn is to be sensitive to the stirrings of the Spirit and know when to drop your ‘plans’ and just go with what He is doing. Some have called this “flow”. I want to honour flow and go with it every time.

A bible-study gets shelved.

On Tuesday evening we were due to have a bible study on the Centrality of the Cross. There was just a handful of us for this bible study that we are covering on what actually took place on the Cross. From the outset there was a drawing from the presence of God to go in deeper and enjoy more of Him. After we shared the testimony of the prodigal granddaughter returning to her grandmother we were pumped and ready to go for it as the Lord promised that He would repeat this testimony again, and again, and again.

Sensitive to what the Lord was doing that night, we scrapped our bible study and had an encounter instead! The times of refreshing from the presence of God were upon us as He removed all our mourning and the spirit of heaviness and gave us a mantle of praise and the precious oil of joy. After an extended time of “face time”, resting in the presence of God, the New Wine of His Presence begun to flow. As wave after wave of supernatural joy broke loose, emotions were healed and hearts were strengthened. The Holy Spirit was ministering deeply during this extended time of worship and just allowing Him to show up and move and touch His people.

A brother came up for prayer and shared how he felt that lately he had lost “the edge” - we prayed for him and he went under the power of the Spirit and lay on the floor for a while connecting his heart back to its life source and getting filled and refilled.

The New Wine of His Presence.

The New Wine was pouring and we were drinking deeply. The intoxicating effect of this was obvious. After tasting of this you can never go back. After tasting of this you give it all up in exchange - what you will have to surrender will be too small a price. The oldness of religion will not cut it with you any more.

Steering wheel or spare wheel?

Always be prepared to align yourself with what God is doing and do not expect it to be the other way around - ever. Ask yourself this question - what is the Holy Spirit for you? Is He the steering wheel or the spare wheel? Is He in control, or do you have Him as a fallback when you blow it and your plans and schemes do not work?

Sunday teaching notes

For the millions of you who read my blog I’d like to announce that my teaching notes for the talk I gave on Sunday (Friends of God) can be found here. Other teaching notes can be found here.

Over and out.

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Testimony: Estranged granddaughter gets reconciled and saved!

We have this sister at church that has believed for an estranged granddaughter for several years now. A prodigal. A girl who was actually raised by this sister who loves her like a daughter. For several years, a failed marriage, deception, hurts and wounds all conspired to embitter this girls heart towards her grandmother to the extent that she used to walk past her and ignore her, turn right round when she saw her or simply corss to the other side of the street to avoid making contact with this grandmother who yearned for relationship.

For years this veteran of the faith simply believed. She took God at His word and refused to acknowledge what she saw with her eyes – in the eyes of her heart, her granddaughter was coming back one day.

On Saturday morning this lady was shopping at the market when her granddaughter actually came up to her and fell on her neck crying – through sobs and cries she said that she could not stand being away from her anymore and that she wanted back! C’mon! She then said that she was attending this church in the neighboring town of La Linea in Spain but wanted to visit our fellowship.

She visited on Sunday together with her boyfriend (also unsaved but hungry) and her mother who had also been estranged from the family. They were really impacted during the meeting, and during the evening went to an outreach at this other church and this girl and her boyfriend both got saved! Jesus! The joy on this grandmother’s face is awesome to behold.

I now live for this. All of the prodigals – come back home!

Fear not, for I am with you; I will bring your descendants from the east, And gather you from the west; I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’ And to the south, ‘Do not keep them back!’ Bring My sons from afar, And My daughters from the ends of the earth— Isaiah 43:5-6

The Lord is calling you. We got a word from the Lord last night. It goes like this:

I will do this again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again.

Just arrived! Bill Johnson - Face to Face with God!

Just arrived via the good folks at Amazon. I am finishing off this little book first, after which I going for some Face time! Stay tuned to this spot and I will share some nuggets on this gem. Whoa!

Technorati Tags: Bill Johnson, Face to Face with God, Revival, manifest presence

My Story

I have always been a seeker. I once read a book by Francois Fenelon called “The Seeking Heart“. That is what I feel that I have always had. Ever since an early age I was always seeking, craving for fulfillment in external activities and driven to succeed by a need to feel worthy. My emptiness was not rooted in the way I was brought up. Few people in the world can ever hope to have had such a loving and caring environment as the one I was brought up in. My pain was not due to lack of love, I had plenty of love to give away. There was always a sense of emptiness, a predisposition to feel depressed with myself, an indefinable void that I believe every person really has and that is the need to find his or her creator.

A series of accomplishments alleviated the pain somewhat, wild partying helped me to forget it at times, and my upbeat outward socializing character helped mask me externally from enquiries as to my condition in the world, but at the end of the day, at night, by myself the void and the vacuum was always there staring me in the face.

I decided to pursue studies in Business Management from Gibraltar, and that I did so after three years distance learning I earned my degree in Business Management through The Open University. At the same time, a mountain of self-help books did not give me the answers that I was looking for.

During the Christmas period of 1993 my brother-in-law Paul was visiting home and presented the gospel to Annabelle and myself. I listened to him but carried on with my thing. However, in the days that ensued a haunting pursued me – it was a deep conviction that there must be more to life than this. Could there be a God that so cared tom have a relationship with me that even when I chose to rebel against Him He was sending His own Son to die on a Cross as my substitute? It was settled - I gave my life to the Lord and Annabelle followed shortly after. The void was finally being filled. Mine was no miraculous event. No sudden flashes of light. Mine was an awakening, a dawning of contentment and purpose in life that continues to grow to the present day.

In 1996 I married Annabelle and we now have two beautiful boys Aaron and Eli. I was by now teaching and preaching the Gospel and found myself being set in the ministry in 1998, and served as part of a pastoral team in a church in La Linea, Spain right up to 2002 when I felt a leading to plant a church back in my home town of Gibraltar.

Living Waters Tabernacle was born in 2003, and I continue to serve as its bi-vocational pastor, and am continually being wrecked by God’s Father Heart. It has been a very interesting journey. Every day I am being wooed by this Lord who has love to give away! And give away He has! His love has captivated me and turned me from empty religion to meaningful friendship, from the striving of an anxious heart to the rest of a weaned soul, from the pressure of performance to the victory of grace. I can never go back to the emptiness of before; I refuse to serve God from the bitterness of religious striving; Father has me now, and it is well with me – More Lord! Onward and upward!

Relational authority and the Kingdom of God

“All authority is relational. Period.”

Such is the conclusion my friend Mark over at Made to Praise Him has reached in this article. This has got me thinking. Jesus only did that which He saw His Father do. All of His works were the result of the overflow of intimacy and relationship that Jesus had with Father God, feeling what He felt, His heart beating in unison with the yearnings emanating from God’s heart of love. Intimacy and relationship: the two essential components for Kingdom fruitfulness.

Intimacy before fruitfulness.

In a marriage, intimacy is what produces new life. Such is the case with our relationship with the Lord: All fruitfulness in life and ministry come as a result of intimacy. It is a closeness of relationship with the Father that creates the spiritual realities necessary for His Kingdom to invade. Our all too often lack of authority speaks volumes about how close we are with the Lord. It is time to address this lack of authority by wasting time with the Lord – getting to know Him, enjoying His presence, learning His ways and His heart. For me, this essentially translates to how I am spending my time. What other impostors are stealing my face time with God? What affairs have I got going on in my heart of hearts that take my gaze away from my Beloved?

Friend of God

Abraham was called a friend of God and his life had the fruit to prove it! I mean, when the CEO of the universe is your buddy, you do tend to have some clout yourself…….regardez:

• Abraham and his lovely wife went into Egypt and were noticed by Pharaoh who happened to be the leader of the world’s superpower (link)
• King Abimelech saw the favour on Abraham’s life and decided to pay him a visit and enter into a covenant of peace with him, lest Abraham’s “buddy” smite him on the backside (link). What sort of man was this that he had an audience with a king? Geez, when was the last time I had a king pay me a visit?
• Abraham was a mighty warrior who, along with a couple of tribal chiefs, and his 318 servants, fought against five kings and armies and recovered his nephew and all the spoil that had been taken from the five cities that were under tribute (link)

Such is the influence that a friend of God can expect.

It is our turn now

“No longer do I call you servants….but I have called you friends” – John 15:15

Like Abraham, we are now called friends of God. We can expect to leave in our wake the same history-changing legacies as Abraham who is the Father of the faith. If my friendship with God is a given – it is in the word – then the only other issue that might be uncertain is my level of intimacy with Father God. Again I ask, “What other impostors are stealing my face time with God? What affairs have I got going on in my heart of hearts that take my gaze away from my Beloved?”

Jesus, we have some talking to do – can we have a coffee together later?

At His right hand……

Walking with God means tasting of the pleasures forevermore that are at His right hand. In the church, however there has been a general presumption against pleasure, as if it were wordly. Now there are wordly pleasures, but are’nt they the enemy’s counterfeits? Last time I checked, a counterfeit looks almost exactly like the real thing, but is not as valuable.

Yes, the word promises us pure unadulterated bliss, pleasures and joy unspeakable at His right hand. Now let me see, according to Ephesians 1, Jesus is sitting at the right hand of God now – the place where there are pleasures forevermore. “Must be awesome up there,” you say? Check your bible again, especially Ephesians 2:6. Yes, that’s right, you are seated in the heavenly places in Christ. In Him. And where is He? At the right hand of God – that is where you are right now. What can you find there? The pure unadulterated bliss of everlasting pleasures.

Jesus’ death and resurrection has bought us an ample entrance into that Kingdom. Now I can appreciate that there is no place for a downcast spirit when I am confronted with these good news – when we cling on to the old wineskin of sour religion, may big brother’s words themselves convict us deeply: “What kind of conversation is this that you have with one another as you walk and are sad?” (Luke 24:17)

He is risen!

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Farewell Bongo-Lady!

Tuesday was our last worship set with Nadine a.k.a. “Voz” a.k.a. “Bongo-lady”. She leaves us to finalize her studies in Cardiff, Wales. We sure will miss her contributions to our worship - it has been an awesome season for us and we thank the Lord for having lent her to us! :)�

Nadine, we will miss you dearly. You have an awesome gift, and an incredible heart for the Lord. Go Rock ‘em in Wales!

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Train up a child in the way he should go

Technorati Tags: Eli Baw

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Sunday wrap-up

We were very thin on the ground on Sunday, with only a handful turning up for church.  This is the skinny on my day:

• We had a great worship set.  We normally go through seven songs or so, providing about 45 minutes of worship time.  This works for us at the moment.  Although some do find the 45 minutes of worship to be too long, I really feel that we are called to spend time in the presence of the Lord in worship - it is one of the key stirrings in my heart.

• Every first Sunday of the month we celebrate communion and after the meeting we order a take-out and eat lunch together as well.

• During communion we celebrated the life of the New Covenant that Jesus bought for us at the Cross.

• Getting my inspiration from my last post, I spoke on our church’s history and our vision.  My teaching notes can be found on our church website teaching notes page.   (Link)

Technorati Tags: Living Waters Tabernacle

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When history and vision combine

Jesus knew where he came from and where He was going (John 8:14). In that verse Jesus seems to indicate that he had a combination of heritage and vision for His life that was critical in order for His witness to be a true witness on the Earth.

I have found that I either tend to value heritage or vision,but rarely embrace both at the same time. We tend to place great value on our history or tradition, and neglect a powerful revelation and vision of bringing tomorrow into today, or we polarize to the other extreme of groping after tomorrow whilst ignoring what God has done in the past, and the wells of revival that are there for us to drink from.

Unlocking the past through honor

“Honor you Father and Mother, that it might be well with and that you days may be long upon the land which the Lord you God gives you” (Ex. 20:12)

In this verse, we are admonished to honor fathers and mothers….”that your days may be long on the land”. It is amazing how mother and fathers have length of days, at least more than you, and the bible encourages you to honor them, in order for you to receive what they already have. A key principle for spiritual maturity, in order to unlock the grace that was upon those spiritual fathers and mothers that have gone before us, and in order for us to get what they had, is to honor them and their heritage. One practical way that I do this is by reading up on past moves of God and the biographies of the key figures that God used in them. Honor involves holding the person in a very high esteem, holding the person’s reputation in a weighty way, and to respect the hand of God upon a man of God. When God anoints someone, the anointing oil poured on someone is a most holy thing. That was what haunted David all those years that he was persecuted by King Saul. He could not touch the Lord’s anointed - he had reverence for the stain of God’s holy anointing oil upon the head of Saul. He ended up getting what Saul had, and was able to build upon that.

Bringing tomorrow into today

It is not my day. The echo of that lament resonates within the deepest recesses of our soul. We feel unprepared, un-commissioned, before our time, with the burden of responsibility upon us but without the spiritual resources to boot. The secret is to bring tomorrow’s anointing into today.

Jesus was faced with this all the time. A Greek Syrophenecian woman had a daughter that had an unclean spirit. She besought the Lord to cast the devil out of her daughter to which Jesus responded that it was not right to take the children’s bread and give it to the dogs. The benefits of the Lord’s covenant (The children’s bread)a t that point belonged to the Jewish nation, and this could not be cast to the gentiles (dogs). That privilege would be reserved for the day in which the gentiles would be grafted into the good olive tree. The lady replied that even the dogs can eat of the children’s crumbs . Jesus was well impressed with her faith, and her faith invited the miracle. She reached out and partook of the blessing that was reserved for another day.

Mary was at a wedding with her now famous preacher son, and the organizers of the wedding had somehow miscalculated how much wine their guests were going to consume. Mary informed Jesus that they had run out of wine to which Jesus replied “my hour is not yet come”. Mary then grabbed hold of tomorrow’s anointing and pulled it into today by saying, “do whatever He says to you.” The wedding disaster was averted. She reached out and partook of the blessing that was reserved for another day.

We have the awesome privilege of reaching out to tomorrow’s anointing and bringing it into today by faith. How about you activating ministry gifts that have been reserved for another day?

Never despise your spiritual heritage. Honor your spiritual fathers and mothers, holding their anointing in a weighty respect and esteem. Have faith for tomorrow, Bring what is reserved for tomorrow into today. Let it be said of you, “He knows where he comes from, and where he is going”. May your witness may ring true, declaring unto the heavens that you have been with Jesus.

Technorati Tags: Vision, Heritage

Church mission: Lessons from marketing

In this video, renowned marketing expert Seth Godin delivers a speech at Google where he shared his insights on marketing, excellence and building a remarkable organization. Although the video is fun to watch, and very insightful, it is in the applications that I see to church planting that the gems are there for the taking.

He touches on the following points, each of which are main points on each of his books:

• Permission marketing – In western cultures, in order to approach people with a message, you really have to ensure that they have given you permission to approach them. In other words, speak to those who want to hear you, have shown an interest, and are open to the message.
  • All too often marketers will blanket bomb the town with a message that nobody wants to hear. This is “spam” type of “evangelism” and it risks proposing a solution without the person having an underlying relationship of trust with you – a recipe for rejection.
• Have a product or an idea worth talking about. The concept, idea, service or product must really sell itself.
• Purple cows – All cows look the same (read boring) – but a purple cow is remarkable. It makes you stop, take notice, call friends, and make a remark. Always seek to build a purple cow.
• Ideas are like viruses – evangelists are like sneezers who sneeze on people who give them permission to get infected, who in turn become carriers and then sneeze on others.
  • Infecting a small group of people who want to be infected – they then infect others and you have effective growth.

What type of organizations are we building? Purple cows are organizations that are remarkable because they stand out from the crowd – the marketing funnel (Getting people from the target audience and feeding them through your organization) has been turned on its side to become a megaphone that preaches your distinctives from the rooftops.

Fernando Morales at Living Waters Tabernacle

Yesterday we had a visiting speaker with us from Madrid, Spain. Our dear friends Fernando & Marisa spent the weekend with us and Fernando ministered a powerful word on Sunday. He shared how it is awesome to have a hunger for the things of God but it is even more awesome to actually go to Jesus and HAVE OUR HUNGER SATISFIED! Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled (Mat. 5:6). Worship wast great too - so all in all it was a tremendous day which we wrapped-up with a good meal at a local restaurant.

We have had lots of time to share, have fellowship, catch-up on news regarding friends and church family. There is a spirit about this couple, watch this space to see God do awesome stuff in Spain through them! Now its my turn to make a trip to Madrid!

More pictures: