Reflections in 11-11-11- a strategic gateway

November 8, 2011 By

I am aware that we are in significant days not only for the UK but for Europe.The drama being played out in the financial sphere of nations reverberates around the globe.

Along with others I feel that this day is significant not only for the UK but also for Europe. It is a gateway day, and one where there is an opportunity for strategic shifts.

For some time I have been musing on the impact of the Enlightenment on European history, Industrial Revolution etc and see the Armistice Day renewal of covenant with death and re-affirmation of the lie embraced during the Enlightenment on a continental level. I have not as yet been able to do further research but my initial thoughts, albeit simplistic, run something like this …

I have been involved in personal prayer ministry for a number of years and this has included praying with people who have experienced severe and overwhelming trauma and ritual abuse. The mind’s God-given defense mechanism for ensuring the individual’s survival is to dissociate from the overwhelming trauma – to split off that experience and lock it away, embrace a lie that says “this isn’t happening to me”. My sense is that as a continent Europe has dissociated faith and emotion as a response to historic trauma.

I have reflected on the history prior to the emergence of the Enlightenment movement and it seems that the seed-bed for it was, amongst others factors, the pain of the 100 years of religious wars and the inability of the church to engage with new developments – renaissance, philosophy, social, political, and discoveries in science.

Faced with a failure of the existing religious authority structures to deliver peace and safe society Europe as a continent dissociated faith and emotion, relegating them to the private sphere. The influence of Greek rationalism, the reliance of science and ‘progress’ and man in control of his own destiny led us into the Industrial Revolution and the de-humanising approach to work. Work became the means of self-improvement and was given a moral imperative by the preachers of the gospel of ‘progress’.

Descartes’ influence and in particular his cutting a ‘turf deal with the Pope’ (where he gained permission from the Pope to dissect human cadavers to further medical research i.e. Descartes took the body and the Pope had the soul) being a significant factor in the devaluing of emotion and our humanity, the elevation of rationalism, and contributed to the conditions for the rise of western capitalism, economic slavery and the present disease of consumerism.

The lie embraced – that we do not need Father God, can’t trust him and have to take care of our own needs – a rejection of His parenthood and values became a place of refuge (Isaiah 28:15 and 17) It resulted from the church’s mis-representation of the Father – they were his face on the earth and, for the most part, it was an abusive one.

The systems and nation-states that emerged across the continent of Europe as they took refuge in the lie that they do not need a Heavenly Father, there was no supernatural/spiritual realm that had any value in the public sphere have been crumbling for some time. Some say the first death blow to modernism was in the aftermath of WW1 where across Europe young men and women were treated as cannon fodder and sent ’over the top’ at the behest of the generals far away from the front line. The disposable nature of humanity, the carnage and immense loss of life made possible by ‘progress’ left many disillusioned and questioning – whilst the arms business thrived!  Add to this another world war, Hiroshima, and Vietnam and the dissociative mechanisms break down further.

In the last 50 years there has been an increasing hunger for spirituality as we have gone deeper into the post-modern malaise, lurching from crisis to crisis. The 2008 banking crisis is a further indicator of the fault-line running through the cultural assumption and expectation that we can always make it better and there can always be more.

The riots in 2011 for me, in part, reflect the expression of a marginalised and disenfranchised underclass of ‘flawed consumers’ who lack the wherewithal to access legitimately (through money) the experiences and goods flaunted as the badges of success and worth by the advertising machine and celebrity culture.

At this time of year, as the focus is on Armistice Day and its annual renewal of the sacrifice of the young men and women in 2 World Wars some of the roots have to trace back to the embracing of the lie, the flawed Greek thinking of the Enlightenment period and the church’s compromise and complicity in the process.

What emerged from it is foundational to western society and in particular Europe today. I believe we are at a gateway place – a strategic point of entry into a new expanse in the spirit where we will see the ‘sons of Zion’ roused against the ‘sons of Greece’ (Zech 9:13) – a move of God marked by supernatural signs, wonders and miracles that will show the heart of the Father and the values and ways of the Kingdom of God through all spheres of creation. The challenge for me is to get low enough to see it!

 

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Wales – wear your own clothes! – part 3

July 1, 2011 By

Across the nation of Wales there are many people for whom the name of ‘Father’ has been redeemed over the last 15 years or so since the Toronto move. Many are still on that journey.

We have found our identity in the connection with God as Father and allowed His heart for us and the safety of that connection to draw us from the places of pain and imprisonment that warp who we really are. He has also drawn from us the expressions in the arts, media, workplace, life, family, and community that manifest the uniqueness of His design in us.

As a community at Antioch there has always been a focus on creativity but we are seeing a significant increase in creative expressions – writers, poets, crafters, designers all on the up!

We have just finished a Creative Retreat with a difference. A mix of prayer, worship, play, artistic expression, history and vulnerability as people shared their journey and risked it to try something new. Generations coming together for a weekend that included professional artists sharing creative space alongside people just starting to explore what it all means for them.

The Holy Spirit and the presence of God and angels was at times intense as we felt the atmosphere change – so many angels in the room! It was a marker time as Heaven pressed through a thin place. We agreed with the Father’s perspective on His creation as we declared over our lives that “We are very good” and that in Jesus “We are the gate of Heaven,” and  “We are the House of God.”

We connected with the heritage of Wales as a creative nation expressed through many of the Celtic saints that lived in the 5th and 6th Century and how encountering Jesus in the meeting place of the heart can release creativity in us as we journey with Him.

Some of the images in the gallery and words are included here, give a flavour of the time and show the promise of what is to come – a fresh movement of creativity in the arts, crafts, media, innovation and creative solutions to problems facing society in all spheres of life.

 

Spikey

 

Spikey that’s what people call me

They don’t see the pain I’m protecting inside

Fragile, broken, hidden, protected

Locked away where no-one can find

But He found it

He dodged around the spikes, peering deeper, seeing the loss

No-one else saw.

 

A bright summer’s day when I lost my fear

The heat….oh the heat… the warmth on my skin

He melted the spikes and I could dance again, free, wild, bright, spinning, prancing, jumping, laughing

Oh the heat of that day, the warmth of that day.

 

Spikey that’s what people call me

The drugs. The drink, the anger,

They locked me up. They closed the door. They laughed when I threw up.

But they didn’t see the night when my father came, they didn’t see my mother’s scorn hatred despising me, or my granny’s vil words, or the rejection of my siblings,

They didn’t see the whole school laugh, as blood poured from my mouth, or three boys who molested me in the dark.

 

Spikey that’s what they called me as I hid inside myself

 

But the summer’s day is coming when all my fear is gone, when my ashes are exchanged for beauty and darkness is gone

 

Oh the heat of that day, Oh the warmth of that day, spinning, twirling, dancing

That’s where I am going to stay!!

 

 

 

Gift

 

“I’ll give you a gift

Will you throw it away?”

 

I lifted my head

And I looked in His eyes

I saw the hurt

 

“I’ll give you a gift

Will you throw it away?

 

I’ll guide your hand

And help you along

I’m giving this gift with my love

I’ll give you a gift

Will you throw it away?”

 

No Lord, I won’t

And I looked at His face

And He smiled.

 

mountain girl

Psalm 23:5 (by Bob aged 81)

I look at this verse and realise how blessed I am, my cup overflows, and then I look at this picture of a woman. My first impression is the look of despair in her eyes. It’s as if she is thinking what is life all about, what have I to look forward to? I sit here all day just knowing it is what I will be doing every day. I am bored. Nothing exciting ever happens to me. I might as well not be here.

Then I take a closer look at her. She is focussed on something that is happening to her left. I wonder what it could be. Maybe I am wrong in my thinking. She may be happy and content with her lot, her cup does overflow. Could it be the young man who will soon be her husband. My eye is drawn to the young lamb lying in the shade of her shadow. In hot countries the heads of sheep were anointed with oil to protect them from the hot sun. I have done a full circle. Thanking God for His goodness and protection

 

 

 

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Wales – wear your own clothes! – part 2

July 1, 2011 By

What would an indigenous move of God look like in Wales? Some understanding of the journey of the last 10 years or so might help answer that question. Over the years I have participated in some times of reconciliation between the 3 strands of Cymru: Welsh-speaking-Welsh, English-speaking-Welsh and the Incomers (those who have come into Wales from outside, usually English but not exclusively so, and who have sown their lives in the nation). During these times there has developed an understanding of the journey and the pain of each strand of the 3-fold cord, along with a release and receiving of forgiveness that has brought healing to some of the wounds. In the process some of us recognised that our lives and choices were an intercession for the land, calling for a new standing together, and creating room to live as equal partners, free to express who God made us in the land He had placed us.

During one weekend I remember having a clear revelation of the effect of Edward 1’s campaigns against the Welsh and the crushing legacy it left in the land. I can remember praying out that the strand I represented, the English-speaking-Welsh were the bastard children of Edward’s rape of the nation. Edward had forcefully introduced English speakers into Wales after his defeat of Llewellyn. Centuries later this was reinforced with the prohibition of the native Welsh language being spoken in schools and the mass influx of other cultures and languages to south Wales to feed the rabid demand for labour in the Industrial Revolution.

The legacy for most English-speaking-Welsh is that of not having a voice, not being seen and feeling illegitimate as the focus is usually on the English as oppressor and the Welsh-speaking Welsh as victim.

Part of the shift I have seen taking place over the last few years has been the loosening of the hold of the victim mentality in Wales as we have sought to stand as sons of God, co-heirs with Jesus and embrace our identity in Him.

It feels like we are at a point where we can not only throw off the legacy of the past, but come out from underneath its unequal yoke and stand more fully into who we are. (more in the podcast Unchanging Father )

It is a pivotal point and not a time to be borrowing someone else’s coat. The Father has a wardrobe for each one of us, full of clothes, robes, mantles, and anointings that we can as individuals and communities of faith put on as we discover together what He has for us and where He wants us to be. It may be that some will pick up the mantles left lying on the land by the saints who have gone before us many centuries ago.

It may be easier and quicker to wear someone else’s clothes than to find out what the Father has in mind for us. But here is a cry for perseverance, not selling ourselves short and opting for what worked for someone else in a different culture or nation. There is not here, and His word is always for where you are.

I long to hear the sound the Lord will make through Wales, carrying the full resonance of the 3-fold cord that will reverberate across the nation and the nations. That sound and language will look, feel, smell, and taste like no other.

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Wales – wear your own clothes! – part 1

June 30, 2011 By

We are in remarkable days of shaking and shift – to state the obvious! A time is now where a new standing, a fresh dynamic is continuing to be released.

As nations across the continents from Greece to Hungary to Libya to China to New Zealand feel the physical and economic shakings we know we are in a time of incredible turmoil. Value systems, belief systems, power structures and cultural archetypes are all reverberating to the shock waves. The church is not exempt; controversy over hell, heaven, salvation, shape of church, new creation realities, the gospel are all generating heated debates.

Is this a loosening of the powers that hold the status quo in place or simply the consequences of decisions, both good and bad, made generations and centuries ago? Are we just reaping what we have sown, but on a global scale?

Whatever the answer, and my sense is that its not either/or but more like both/and, I have felt stirred to mark the journey in Wales, as I see it from inside the church and inside the nation.

There is a lot going on in Wales at the moment, lots of activity and noise and not without some contention. I am aware that a number of influences have come in from outside the nation. This is not necessarily a bad thing but at times it has felt like Wales has been given someone else’s clothes to wear, at other times like a heavy stone has silenced the voice of those in the land and at other times like a cage has been placed on the land – a bit more room to move but restricted nonetheless. It feels like the challenge we face as ‘church’ in the nation is to be fully ourselves, wear clothes that reflect who we are and carry the marks of an indigenous move of God.

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Make room for what is coming!

October 18, 2010 By

I have such a sense of excitement in my spirit! I see a flow of grace and favour coming towards us as a community of believers that is unstoppable. As we enter the last quarter of 2010 we continue to face challenges, but there is a sense of buoyancy and expectation in the air.

We are about to start sorting and ‘de-junking’ the Centre, clearing out stuff that has been in the store rooms of the building that belongs to an old era and has no place in the new.  This feels like a prophetic act of preparing for and making room for all that God is sending our way. This Sunday we spent some time asking Jesus what He wants us to make room for, what he wants us to get rid of and calling for the new arrivals.

It felt significant that we prayed for a family who had just had premature twins. a sign of the new births and the new things that will emerge as we move forward. We put a marker down, calling for all that He wanted us to make room for: the poor, broken, prostitutes, children, young people, those with life-controlling addictions to drugs, alcohol, sex, shopping, gambling, pornography – a supernatural move amongst those in all kinds of bondage, politicians, business people and people of influence, movers, shakers and millionaires!

Having firmly nailed our cross-generational colours to the mast it is even more important that the older generation take responsibility for sorting their stuff or the next generation will not only have their own stuff to deal with but our rubbish as well. What is left unsorted or unresolved by one generation gets handed on, multiplied, to the next! Its time to clean house!

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