Films with friends...

Well, even though our Spanish weather can't quite decide it's it's summer, winter or spring (it's warm and sunny one day, cold and pouring rain the next), the awareness that the leadership development course is just around the corner reminds me that we're already in mid-April and this is supposed to be spring. Time for a less wintery background to this blog.
Even so, yesterday evening was a little chilly and I found myself digging out the firewood again as we settled down to watch a movie together. I thoroughly recommend, "End of the Spear" - a story about how the gospel came to the Waoudani tribe (the Auca Indians) in Ecuador. You may already be familiar with the story of the missionaries who were killed by the Auca in 1956, and this is a very well produced film telling the whole story of that time, and up to the present day.

I have a new housemate for the two month season of the LDC. Or perhaps I should say an old housemate. Sue and I lived together for a year when I first moved to Spain in 2008; we adopted a street cat and raised a litter of kittens together.  Although she then moved back to live in the UK again, she stayed in our home during the 2010 LDC and now is back with me again for the 2015 LDC. The cats seemed to have got used to having her around again, and took turns to sit on our laps while we were watching the film last night. 

The rest of the LDC staff will be arriving in Spain over the next couple of days, and we'll be having a week of prayer and preparation before the delegates arrive the following weekend. Not pictured here are Trudie and Ana, the two wonderful staff who will be cooking for us during the LDC; that is truly an encouraging answer to prayer.

Living with a Russian…. or a Norwegian?

Today in the library, I happened to meet the English woman who, a few years ago, told me that she thought Teddi and Tobi's father might be her neighbour's Siberian Cat, Caballero Oscuro (The Dark Knight, on the left.) She herself now has a Norwegian Forest Cat called Sooty (on the right.) And I continue to have a Malaga Street Cat called Teddi (middle)…. but couldn't resist photoshopping him in with the two pure-bred boys. He looks so similar. Actually if you google images of black Siberian cat or black Norwegian Forest cat, they do look really like Teddi and Tobi. The photos of black Siberian kittens look really like Tobi did as a kitten.
Meanwhile, after Teddi's little brush with fame in mid-March, I continue to get the occasional email from someone who has spotted him on a website in New Zealand or Texas or Hong Kong!!

Living water or cistern water ?

This morning, reading in Jeremiah, I came across a little verse that evoked a lot of memories for me. In this Old Testament prophecy, God was reproaching His people for forsaking Him, the source of living water. They had also “dug their own cisterns” and replaced God with other sources of refreshing, other objects of devotion, other things that they thirsted after and filled their lives with. But God was warning them, through the prophet Jeremiah, that these were cracked and broken cisterns that wouldn’t hold water and ultimately wouldn’t satisfy.

It’s easy for us to judge the Israelites for their idolatry, but I’ve been around church folks and missionaries long enough to know that there are lots of modern ways for believers to do exactly the same thing. Church friends tell me about the many hours they spend watching TV, playing computer games or hanging out with friends, and lament the fact that it’s so difficult to have a regular quiet time.

In the missionary community, it’s sometimes a little more subtle. There the idol is often work. People spend countless hours doing things for God: reaching the lost, going to Christian meetings, working with the poor and needy... They may even spend time in the Bible, but that too is “work” - preparing to lead the next group Bible study or preach the next message. Somewhere along the line, private prayer and personal time with God have got squeezed out. Spritually speaking, they are “running on empty” and in danger of burning out.

I remember one of the first times I was studying Jeremiah, back in the 1980s, being struck by the thought that cistern water was probably fresh and living water in the beginning. No one deliberately fills their cistern with old, stagnant water; it only becomes stale when it lies for a long time without being constantly refreshed. And if the cistern also happens to be cracked, it won’t be very long before it ends up empty. I remember realising that living water is a bit like the story of manna in the desert: it has to be replenished every day, because old manna won’t sustain us.

I’ve always had a passion for the Word of God and have probably filled more than fifty journals over the years, with insights and application from my quiet times alone with God. I guess I’ll never completely be able to explain why I let that journalling slip for a few years near the beginning of this millennium. Maybe because I did know and love the scriptures so much that they felt part of who I am. It was easy to be conscious of God’s presence and to reflect on a scripture while I was walking the dog or doing the ironing.

But I remember my shock, that day in 2005, when God challenged me that I was “grazing,” rather than eating solid meals. “You’re living off cistern water,” He said. I was horrified. How could someone who loved the Lord and loved the Word so much settle for cistern water? But I realised it was true. So often, in my times of reading the Bible, I was meditating on insights that God had spoken in the past, instead of discovering and writing down new words for today.

Ten years later, I look back with such thankfulness that I bought myself a new notebook and got back to my habit of drinking and writing down "fresh water" every day. It has made all the difference. My dozens of journals are an encouraging testimony to the things God has taught me over the past thirty or forty years.... but what keeps those fresh is the fact that they are daily being mixed with new and living water.

March in retrospect

It's almost April! Although "April showers" are the norm in many parts of the world, I'm hopeful that it will be different for us here in Alhaurín. After many days of torrential rain in mid-March, the southern Spanish weather finally seems to be catching on to the fact that it's supposed to be spring now, and we're having warm sunny days at last.

I look back on March as an alphabet soup of leadership meetings, filled with the various tasks of missions leadership. First the KKI European leadership team came down to meet for some days of prayer and planning in Malaga. Among other things, we took time to consider how best to continue providing pastoral care for our missionaries throughout the European region, and we began to make plans to hold our next regional conference in Portugal this November.

The following week saw me in Holland, still with KKI, but this time with the international leadership team. There we had some precious times of prayer and hearing God's voice together, stimulating times of considering how we can protect ourselves from drifting from our original calling and values ( a real danger when a movement gets into its third generation of leadership) and started to plan ahead for a leadership school and an international leadership conference in the Ivory Coast next summer.

Back in Spain, my next week of leadership meetings was with the field team for YWAM Europe; a new eldership group with a heart to pray and seek God for the present and future development of our mission initiatives in this continent.

With all those leadership tasks behind us now, April will be quite a different month. I'm wrapping up all my coaching and curriculum writing, and we're busy with all kind of practical preparations for hosting and leading the next leadership development course (LDC) here in Alhaurín. Thanks for your prayers.

Shepherd and King

This morning, in my personal time with God,  I was meditating on Psalm 100. It was one of the few parts of the Bible that I knew by memory even before I came to know God personally, because verse 4 was part of the liturgy and was recited every Sunday morning in the church I grew up in. The concept of entering God's gates with thanksgiving has appeared in dozens of songs over the years. The idea of being welcomed by the King in the courts of His royal dwelling is an amazing privilege… but somehow I think that the Shepherd picture of vs 3 is even more special to me. No pomp and ceremony about that; just quiet intimacy and care. Unhurried intimacy is what we observe when we see the shepherds walking with their animals in the fields and country roads that surround Alhaurín.

And so I love the fact that both of those aspects are found in the psalm I was reading this morning:

Know that the Lord is God.

It is He who has made us (our Creator)

and we are His. (our Father)

We are His people, (our King)

the sheep of His pasture. (our Shepherd)

It reminds me of a worship song that we used to sing when I lived in France during the 1980s:

Prosternons-nous devant le Roi  Let's bow down before the King. 

Fléchissons le genou devant le Père  Kneel before the Lord our Father. 

Car Il est notre Dieu For He is our God. 

Et nous sommes le peuple de son pâturage We are the people of His pasture. 

Le troupeau que sa main conduit.  The flock guided by His hand.

The song begins with God as King and ends with God as Shepherd. Sometimes we need to recognise Him as King and embrace His authority before we can truly experience Him as the Shepherd who guides us and cares for all our needs.

Recently, one of my Alhaurin teammates was out walking the dog when she spotted our local shepherds coming towards her with a large flock of sheep and goats. Shepherding is a traditional vocation here, that continues to be passed on from one generation to another, and so we often see two shepherds together, an older one and a younger one. My friend said that she had to laugh when she saw the difference between the two shepherds: the old man was chewing leisurely on a twig, while the young man was making a call on his mobile phone. A cameo picture of a huge generational difference, and yet a reminder that God is a God for all generations. He understands and not is not the least bit threatened by our modern technology… but He also invites us not to miss out on the unhurried fellowship that previous generations knew, when the pace of life was slower.

This morning in our team meeting and prayer time, someone else commented on how the shepherd sometimes stops the traffic, so that the sheep can cross the road. Our God is always able to make a way for us, and to stop the things that would be obstacles or dangers for us in our sometimes fast-paced lives. But He also calls us to walk unhurriedly by still waters, to lie down in green pastures, and to allow Him to restore our soul. Let's make time to enjoy friendship with our Shepherd as we approach the season of Easter, the time when we remember Him also as our Saviour.

Worship as warfare

This morning in my Bible reading, I was reflecting on the topic of worship as warfare. I remember, I think it was back in the 1980s, the first time I discovered the story of Jehoshaphat's army in 2nd Chronicles 20 and began to realise the power of praise and worship in spiritual warfare. Around the same time, however, a number of books were published that promoted praising God for bad stuff (disaster, sickness, crisis, etc) in order to see the situation turned around. I remember feeling kind of uncomfortable about that, as it seemed to me that God deserved to be worshipped for who He is, rather than our seeing worship as a "magic bullet" to solve our own problems or defeat the enemy.

And therein lies the key, I guess. It makes no sense to "praise" God because my child has cancer, or because I was raped, or because my house burned down…. but if I can honestly praise God for who He is, for His unchanging character, despite the horrible or tragic circumstances I find myself in, that authentic worship is a powerful weapon that pushes back the enemy, as well as giving us strength and grace to face our difficult situation. And yes, sometimes it does bring about a complete turnaround, especially when our circumstances were largely caused by enemy oppression.

I remember back at the end of 2011 (recorded in this blog) when my Dad was critically ill in the intensive care unit, and doctors couldn't tell us from day to day whether he was going to live or die. All I could do amidst the stress and uncertainty, was to proclaim in faith that God is good, and my Dad's life was ultimately in His hands.  Some months down the road, God's goodness was proved to us, and my Dad is still with us nearly four years later.

Whatever your circumstances today, don't give up trusting and praising the character of God.

Teddi in the spotlight

In an unexpected turn of events, my YouTube cat, Teddi, has extended his fame this week by appearing in at least six Scottish newspapers - two of whom laid claim to the talented boy by calling him a "Scottish cat" and even alleging that he "spent his formative years" in Falkirk.

He appeared first in the Falkirk Herald, and you can read the article here: 
click here to read.
And then I was contacted by another newspaper, the Daily Record, who also wanted to feature him in a funny news spot on their website: click here to read.

The Daily Mail was next (click here to read) and, before we knew it, the "cat who thinks he's a dog" angle went viral: the story was featured in half a dozen more newspapers, some of them making outrageous claims that I was going to enter Teddi in talent competitions or take him to see if he could make a name for himself in Hollywood! I began to get emails saying that people had spotted Teddi on news websites as far afield as Australia and India. A friend in the USA was reading a cat lovers' website and stumbled across an article featuring one of Teddi's videos and referring to me as Tobi and Teddi's "momma." One of Teddi's YouTube videos took a thousand new hits in just a couple of days, and got a couple of new subscriptions from people in China and Canada!! Meanwhile, my handsome boy is quite oblivious to his new found fame and is working hard on his piano practice for his upcoming music video.