Praying at the Poppy

Yesterday, we drove two hours from Hainichen to Wittenberg - the town where Martin Luther lived and where he is reputed to have nailed his "95 theses" to the door of the Castle Church. We drove through torrential rain; in fact, rain and thunderstorms were forecast for the whole day - something that was a real concern for me, as walking around in wet clothes is risky for my lung condition.

To make good use of our journey time, we all had our "quiet time" (devotional time alone with God) in the bus. Our readings, from John chapters 15 and 17, were about what it means to bring glory to God - by obeying the things He asks us to do, and thus bearing good fruit in our lives. So we also had a time of listening to God and asking Him what He wanted us to do that day in Wittenberg.

In each vehicle, someone wrote down the different impressions that the children, teenagers and adults received. Some were impressions about what He wanted us to do or to pray in Wittenberg; several were impressions that we should hold on to God's joy and not allow ourselves to get tired or discouraged because of the heavy rain. One of the more mysterious prayer impressions was when 10 year old Mélodie saw a picture of a poppy. No one was sure exactly what it meant, but we wrote it in our notebook, anyway.

On arrival in Wittenberg, we had to dash through the rain to the first church we'd felt we should pray at. But, amazingly, when we came out of the church fifteen minutes later, the rain had almost stopped, and the weather remained dry and sunny for the rest of the day. The torrential rain only started up again when we were getting into the vehicles for our journey home... and it was really heavy the whole way. I think I was the most thankful of all that God seemed to have held back the rain for our time in Wittenberg.

At one point, as we were praying together outside another church building, someone noticed a little coffee shop called the poppy café. "Look," they said, "It's just like the picture that Mélodie had while we were praying." The café was closed, but we gathered in front of it to ask God what we should do or pray there. While four small groups took time to pray the things that God showed us, Mélodie's group rang the doorbell, hoping to meet the owners and ask them if we could pray a prayer of blessing for them.

It was only a small detail among the other things we did and prayed yesterday, but one 10 year old had her picture of God enlarged, being reminded that she too could hear His voice and bring Him glory by a simple step of obedience.

Days in Deutschland

After several days in Switzerland, we climbed into our three vehicles and began our road trip - the first leg of 5000 kilometres across Europe. Our first destination was the quaint little town of Altensteig, where we were meeting up with the young people of the local King's Kids group for some days of worship, prayer, friendship and outreach together. It made for a fun time of fellowship, as the German kids did their best to speak some French, and the Swiss group tried to speak as much French as they could remember from lessons at school. On the day we arrived, a local minister took us on a short tour of the old village (picture above shows us at the castle) and told us something of the history of the town, and in particular how Christianity had developed there over the centuries.

When the Reformation in Germany made the Bible available in the language of the local people and not only in Latin, the rich landowner who founded the town discovered the gospel and built a church and a school for the people. We heard how other churches and denominations grew up over the years, with each group thinking they had the right gospel, until it came to the point where the people of different groups didn't even greet each other in the street. In a village as small as Altensteig (only a couple of hundred people at the time) everyone knew who belonged to which group.

Some hurts continued to the present day, as Altensteig became a small town with several churches that didn't really relate much with each other.... until one of the local ministers said, let's put a stop to this and have a joint service for reconciliation. This will happen in November this year, and we realised that the passage of our multi-faceted, interdenominational team this month is like just a forerunner of the unity still to come. Part of our time in Altensteg was spent going to different church buildings to pray blessing and proclaim Bible verses about Christian unity.

On Saturday morning we had worship and outreach, together with the German team at the open air marketplace in the centre of town. Two of our group were able to pray with a man who himself used to preach the gospel right there, but after being wounded by church dealings, he hadn't been going to church for fifteen years. He was in tears as our young people prayed for healing and invited him to the special reconciliation service this year.

On Saturday afternoon, our mixed group of French and German speakers split into two teams. One group stayed in Altensteig, while the other group went to the nearby town of Nagold, where they partnered with a local church to reach out to refugees.

In the evening, we all gathered by the river for our last time together. A big barbecue, a time of goodbyes, and some moments taken to thank and pray for our wonderful hosts. It had been fun to see our Swiss kids making friends with the German group, even despite the language barriers. Everyone had to do their best with the French or German, or a little bit of English, that they'd learned in school, and it was amazing to see how God built us into a united team for these few days together.

Many hours in the vehicles lie ahead for us today, as we drive northwards to the part of the country that used to be East Germany, before the wall came down. There, we'll partner with KKI Hainichen, and take time to visit Martin Luther's city of Wittenberg. More adventures lie ahead.

Some days in Switzerland

 

On Monday, I was up at the crack of dawn for my flight to Geneva, Switzerland. Our "Reformation Tour" outreach has begun. We're a team of almost thirty people - young people and families - and we'll be travelling 5000 km around Europe over the next couple of weeks, following in the steps of the Reformers who played such a key role in the development of church history five hundred years ago.

Arriving in Switzerland, I immediately noticed how different everything is from southern Spain. Everything is so green, while down in Malaga things are already dry and brown from the summer heat. Although it was a lovely sunny day, there was a noticeable drop in temperature. I slept with a big feather duvet for the first time in many weeks. And, because we're further north, it was strange to go to bed when it wasn't yet completely dark.

On Tuesday we had a full day in Geneva, walking around the city on foot and learning more about what the Reformation had meant historically. God had warned us in prayer that there would be surprises in store and that we shouldn't feel put out when unexpected things cropped up to "mess up" our planned schedule. Sure enough, there were some interesting "divine appointments" in the course of the day.

The first of these happened when we were in the cathedral. We had been hearing about how the Reformation helped the church recover the understanding that salvation comes through faith alone and not through anything that we can do to earn it. Someone in our group proposed that we sing a song of thankfulness and worship to the Lord, so we lifted our voices and sing right there and then - most in French, some in English, some in German. Suddenly we were joined by a Korean lady, and then by a full choir, who invited us to sing with them. As the strains of, "How great thou art" still echoed around the cathedral, we also spoke out the Lord's Prayer together. Their cameraman also interviewed a couple of us about what we were doing there. (Perhaps I'll unknowingly appear on Korean TV.)

The second surprise encounter happened in the afternoon. We were visiting Geneva's Reformation Museum and had heard how the invention of the printing press had made it possible for the Bible in their own language to be spread more widely to the people of the day. A huge replica of the first printing press had been set up, and some of our kids were enjoying inking the text and printing a page from the Bible. Suddenly, one of the museum staff came up to me and said, "Could you move aside for a moment, please? The King of Egypt would like to print a page."

The King of Egypt, as you may know, has been in exile since a revolution in 1953, and currently lives in Switzerland. As he printed his Bible page, our kids huddled two by two in the next room, taking time to pray for him and for his nation. Then, as he finished printing,  we asked if we could sing for him, and he said yes, he'd like that. Once again our music filled the building, but this time is was the museum and not the cathedral.

That evening, debriefing the day in small groups, we reflected on how the effects of the Reformation had reached the whole world.. and how, on the first day of our tour, we had met people from all over the world.

Having heard a lot about the Reformation on Tuesday, we took some time on Wednesday to learn more about how Catholics express their faith in the 21st Century. Finally, we took the team to the town of Rolle, where we had a time of worship, a picnic and a swim in the lake. That concludes our days in Switzerland, and on Thursday we take to the road, travelling northwards into Germany.

Fun and fruitful

A full, fun and fruitful week lies behind us. Young leaders from different parts of Europe and beyond (Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, Netherlands, Wales, Canada, USA, Nigeria, Brazil, Australia...) were with us for the B2b seminar - a fun interactive week designed to help emerging leaders "be the leader God wants you to be."

Hands-on spiritual workshops, creative worship and intercession, teaching and interactive group processing, an outing to the beach, question times with a panel of experienced leaders.... All of these things made for a stimulating and inspiring week, and we were encouraged to hear many of the young leaders give testimonies about the various ways they had grown and met personally with God.

As they all return home to their own nations, I too am leaving Spain at the beginning of July and will be travelling 5000 km though Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Italy for our Reformation Tour outreach. You can read more about that in my July newsletter.

Life Lessons

Isn't it amazing that you can read the same Bible passage again and again, and still discover new things in it? But sometimes it's the opposite that happens, and it's the old lessons that come flooding back to your mind. This weekend, while reading in Joshua chapter three, I opened my journal and made a note of four principles that stood out to me as I read. As I paused to look back over my notes and pray, I was struck by the fact that these were not new insights; they were "life lessons" - things that had cropped up several times over my lifetime. I could remember writing some of them in a notebook way back when I was a teenager. I could remember when one of the verses had been significant in a time of personal decision making in 1985. I reflected on the time God used that passage to speak to us as a ministry in early 2000...

Do you have verses or passages like that? They played an important role in your journey with God, and when you re-read them, you are reminded of some of the life lessons that God has taught you throughout your lifetime? Here are four of my recurring life lessons that God has taught me through the events of Joshua chapter three. (It's the story of how the waters of the Jordan river part, in order to allow the people to walk across and enter the Promised Land.)

Vs 4 - when you're in unknown territory ( you haven't been this way before) it's particularly important to follow God's guidance, and not rush ahead too fast.

Vs 5 - intentional purity is a prerequisite for seeing the power of God work in you and through you.

Vs 8, 15 - 16 - sometimes you need to take a seemingly risky step of faith (the priests needed to step into the flooding river before a path appeared) before the way ahead becomes completely clear.

Vs 6, 17 - leaders need to be willing to take such steps,of faith, and also willing to hang in there and see the task through to completion.

These four lessons from Joshua chapter three are insights that I have built my life around when it comes to hearing God's voice and taking steps of faith? What are some of your life lessons, either from Bible stories or from the stories and events of your own life?

An inseparable pair?

For some weeks now, I've been meditating daily in the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy and, as I near the end of the book, the final chapters continue to re-emphasise a major theme that has emerged throughout the book: obedience is the fruit of love.  In the second half of chapter 30, for example, the people are being given a choice between life and death, and are urged to "choose life." Verse 20 unpacks how they can make this choice in practice: by loving the Lord your God, obeying Him, and committing yourself firmly to Him.

The pairing of these two words - love and obedience - has raised some questions throughout centuries of Jewish and Christian history: Is it possible to obey God without loving Him? Is it possible to love God without obeying Him? Or are these two an inseparable pair?

From my perspective, the first is more possible than the second. It is possible to obey God without loving Him... but it results in cold and joyless legalism.

I'm not so convinced that it's possible to love God without obeying Him, because that kind of warm sentimentality doesn't seem to measure up to the Biblical definition of love. Jesus Himself said (in John 14: 15): If you love me, you will obey my commandments.  The apostle John unpacks this even further (1 John 5: 3) by writing, This is what loving God looks like: it means keeping His commandments, and His commands are not burdensome for us.

The New Testament seems to be picking up a truth that was a major theme of the book of Deuteronomy: that authentic love for God goes hand in hand with a genuine desire to do what He says. The proof of love is our joyful, willing obedience to our Creator.

Exploring some pueblos blancos

It's already two weeks since the leadership development course finished but, for a variety of reasons, I didn't manage to get a break after the end of the school. Unexpected things cropped up that meant the past two weeks turned out to be busier than I had planned. So a friend and I made a radical plan to get away for a "real break" and to have an overnight stay in one of southern Spain's "pueblos blancos" - those picturesque white villages that are scattered across the mountains in this part of the country. We chose Vejer de la Frontera as our destination, deciding to drive there by an inland, over-the-mountains route and return home by the coastal route.

My little car had just passed its annual ITV inspection (like the British MOT) at the beginning of the week and, small as it is, we felt confident it could cope with the 500 kilometres we would cover. From my home in Alhaurín de la Torre, we began by heading north (the grey route on the map) until, for the first time since living here, I crossed the boundary from Málaga province into the neighbouring Cádiz province. Our first stop was in the quaint little town of Olvera, in the heart of the olive growing region. We enjoyed a picnic lunch on the little square between its old church and Moorish castle.

Then we kept driving westwards, past olive groves and fields of sunflowers, until we came to Arcos de la Frontera, another pueblo blanco perched high on a sandstone cliff. There we also explored the old part of town, with its castle, churches and narrow winding streets, before taking refuge from the sweltering heat by going into a tapas bar to have an afternoon snack and a refreshing glass of ice-cold, home-made lemonade. Our thirst quenched, our journey took us southward again, towards our overnight destination: Vejer de la Frontera.

The uphill drive to the mountain top setting of the old town of Vejer was the steepest part of the trip and my little car (which only has a 1.1 litre engine) went very slowly for that last couple of kilometres. Soon we arrived, though, and found the "hostal" (cheap hotel) where we would spend the night. After a welcome shower, we were ready for action again and headed out to visit the old, historic part of Vejer. It's a walled town, still with the watchtowers and ramparts that formed the fortifications of these old settlements during the centuries that Spain was occupied by the Moors. The landscape is also dotted with windmills - some of them the enormous modern kind that produce electricity for southern Spain, and some of them the really old wood and plaster kind that made for great photos as the sun was beginning to set.  (This sunset photo was taken by my friend, Lisa, of a windmill that was just fifty metres from our hostal.)

We wandered around the old town, with its narrow cobbled streets, picturesque plazas and rundown old castle. We climbed on the ramparts, looked out from the towers and took photos of quaint corners and archways. We chatted with the locals, watched children in a flamenco dancing class in the castle, and then (as Spanish dinner time finally came around) we decided to eat fresh, locally caught fish in a little restaurant. Lisa had tuna steaks and I had swordfish, and both were delicious. In fact, my piece of swordfish was so large that I couldn't eat it all, so I took half of it home with me and today I ate the leftovers as we enjoyed our picnic lunch at a roadside stop that had such a amazing view of nearby Morocco that you almost felt you could reach out and touch it.

This morning, after a cup of coffee in Vejer, we started our homeward journey along the coastal route. (That's the blue route on the map at the top of this post.) First we drove downhill to the seaside town of Barbate, where the Atlantic Ocean was a deep shade of blue, and I had to dip my feet in it to check the temperature. Onwards to Tarifa, the main ferry port for ships to North Africa, and the southernmost point of Spain, the part where the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean sea meet. We had planned to eat lunch there, but couldn't find parking, so we simply drove around the town a bit, past the port and the old fortifications, before heading further east to our roadside stop with the stunning view of Morocco.

From there, we started driving northeast again, past the rock of Gibraltar, and all the way up the coastline of the Costa del Sol, until we were finally back in Alhaurín again - which seemed the best place to stop for a delicious ice cream. We had driven 500 kilometres and walked another 10 kilometres on foot, but we had thoroughly enjoyed our short break visiting some "white towns" of southern Spain.