Monthly Archives: December 2013

Christmas comes and goes so fast, doesn’t it? I remember when I was little, and desperately looking forward to the two week school holiday over Christmas, the week leading up to Christmas seemed to drag, and the week between Christmas and New Year disappeared into about 3 days! Being someone who hated school (documented reasons in previous blogs as to why! – mostly to do with the intense bullying by the Head Teacher for simply being a left-hander!), I almost dreaded the end of Christmas Day….now, I love moving into new years, as each year, and I’m grateful to God for this, I look back and say ‘That was an amazing year! The best yet!’, and look forward expecting even more from God for the one that is almost on us….

What’s been wonderful (for me) in the last few weeks is that two couples, one couple with two young children), have felt God tell them to quit what they were doing, without letting them know – YET – what His reason is. Both were doing great jobs: one a pastor of a church, the other couple pastors of major-league trauma issues. I remember only too well when God told me to get off of the treadmill, both, in fact, at years ends – 1979 to quit my job in banking (I hate it, but then, it was a good job, so it lost me my subsidised mortgage, in an era when mortgage interest was anything from 11-13%! and, of course, lost me what was blooming into a good career prospects: I DO have my £10 a week pension waiting for me in 4 years’ time, so that should help!!): and at the end of 1983, to quit youth ministry and spend the best part of a year at a ministry training centre. Neither transition promised any source or means of income: in fact, just the opposite! Leaving the 2½% interest mortgage behind in ’79, and needing a re-mortgage (at a mere 14% interest) meant that my income zeroed, and my mortgage went up 600%! Leaving in ’83 to go to Roffey Place, meant being willing to sacrifice the house – the last house I ever owned (if being mortgaged up to the eyeballs qualifies you to say you own it!). So new years have often meant major league changes for me. I’m not aware of such ‘block-busting’ changes for 2014, but I do know that I’m going into the year with a whole new vision for what God might(?) do in Colombia, and with invitations to three new (for me) countries – Malawi, Senegal, and Burkino Faso, and a return (after a few years gap) to Sweden. Throw into that mix Mexico (maybe twice?), Colombia (possibly 4/5/6 times!), Australia (maybe twice?), and some church opportunities in England, plus France….

….so I’m excited by what’s ahead! Often, when I pray for people’s healing, I ask if they have a ‘deadline’ of any sort – hospital/consultant appointment, scan/tests, sometimes – if it’s cancer, or AIDS, how long have you got? I personally find ‘deadlines’ good, because if someone has cancer, for instance, and they have no scan scheduled, it’s hard to know… but if they DO have a scan scheduled soon, then it presents a good ‘testimony’ time for the medics! My plan this year, after an amazingly hectic, blessed, and traumatic (in a number of ways) year in 2013, is (was?) to take January off, as I’ve really gone 7 months at full tilt, and in 34 years of ministry, have never taken a ‘sabbatical’ of 3-6 months – which most pastors get every 7 years….(by that reckoning, I’m due a 30 month sabbatical – I’d go crazy!). I’ve recognised that in the (more than) 4 years that I’ve been in Ireland that I’m still learning, doing ok, at working out what this ‘rest’ thing is all about, and, amazingly, in the past 6 months or so, have even begun to learn what sleep is! I’ve never been a good bed-mate with sleep, literally, in all my previous 60 years.

And, understanding that rest is rest is vital (and very enjoyable), I thought about January, and giving my knees their own sabbatical for a few weeks, especially as now, I have a ‘deadline’. I’ve got an appointment with an orthopaedic surgeon on 23 January, when I know the ‘advice’/prognosis will be to have both of my knees replaced, not at once, of course, but maybe spread over 18 months. Truth is, they ARE getting better, slowly. There are a number of reasons why I dearly want God to heal them! The first is that, whilst mine have been bad, sometimes very bad, I’ve seen dozens of other people’s knees healed: I know that doesn’t give me any ‘leverage’ with God, but I’m hoping that I’ve stacked up some credit in the knee bank!

Second is that it would take me ‘out’ of ministry for at very least 3-6 months, for each knee, and my passion, as regular readers here will know, is to go primarily to the poor and needy and see God invade their lives, their homes, and heal them. Third, and not the least insignificant, is that it is humanly impossible to have such ‘movement-limiting’ surgery if you live on your own. Which I do. In fact, that’s perhaps the MAIN reason why I’m asking God to come up trumps in the next 3 weeks and heal them: and if anyone knows my love for what God’s called me to do, God does! So, if you feel able to, could you agree with me for the deadline to be ‘Nothing wrong, Mr Bennison!’….

And this very funny, and incredibly profound joke, which I put on Facebook the other day, for those who only get the blog emailed!

I do hope and pray that you have a good New Year, and that your own hopes, dreams, and goals will find fulfilment in the coming months. ‘Without vision, the people perish’ (Proverbs 29:18 KJV)…so if you’ve got no dreams for 2014, or vision, you’ve still got 36 hours to get one from the Lord!

Thank you for reading here in the 8 months this new site has been up and running. I really do appreciate it, it makes it so well worth writing it! Bless you loads in 2014!

As the celebration of Jesus’ birth goes on today, in most of the western nations, I was listening to my iPod, which I always have on ‘shuffle’, and a song I hadn’t heard in a long while came on. Unsurprising I don’t hear it often, as there are 25,000 songs on it….!

The song is one that, when I first heard it, just got hold of me. It’s not a worship song, it’s a ‘CCM’ (Contemporary Christian Music song – the sort we used to listen in the olden days! I can recall the first hearing of it, perhaps more so because it had me in tears, and has never ceased to have the same reaction from me since. It probably came out in the mid-1980’s, and as I look back to that time, pretty much the era when God began me on the journey I’m still on, preaching, praying for, and – with God’s help, loving and caring for, people in the ‘worst’ parts of society. The singer/songwriter, Steve Camp, is not a ‘raving charismatic’ – according to Wikipedia, he ‘retains an orthodox historical Reformed theology, in the tradition of John Owen, Jeremiah Burroughs, Thomas Watson, Dr. D.A. Carson, Dr. R.C. Sproul and the late Dr. Stephen Olford. His musical influences (if you remember those years) are pure gold – Larry Norman, and Keith Green.

As I listened, and cried again, this morning, to ‘Don’t tell them Jesus loves them, until you’re ready to love them too’ , I looked back, even over the last few months, and thanked God that what Steve sang that 30 years or so ago, has become, and is still becoming, my life. I truly do love marginalised people, I love sitting in tiny churches buried deep in the heart of any given country’s poverty zones: and with the drug addicts, alcoholics, the desperately sick and poor, and – yes – the dangerous, the murderers, the cartel people…. Here’s the song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-IHw8wr_-M

I think it’s struck home with me even more as, over the past few months (and frequently, over the past 28 years of travelling), I’ve had people tell me that because of what God’s done, I ought to be ‘famous….on huge platforms with huge crowds telling of what God’s doing…. waving my books about for sale at the end of meetings…. demanding big fees and expenses…. on television’. I think just about every one of those ‘suggestions’ to enhance ‘my ministry’ (whatever that truly means!) and my life, and my bank account, makes me turn 180 degrees and run as fast as I can in the opposite direction (though ‘run’ might be a wee bit optimistic right now with the old knees!!).

What HAVE we done, as church, to make success dependent on those ‘attributes’? What HAVE we done when preachers spend 30 minutes before preaching, on their own promotion and fame, and stuff like ‘there are 50 people here God has told to give £10,000 to this ministry’? It happens, believe me, even if you might bot have heard it. What HAVE we done when success is gauged in numbers? We invite the poor TO our church in preference to GOING to them… and then comes the ‘loving them’ bit…

I’m so grateful that God sent Jesus to – primarily – the poor, the sick, the reprobates, the prostitutes, the addicts, the murderers, the helpless & the hopeless. If he’d come to only love the successful, I’d be looking at hell down the barrel of a gun. As it is, the poverty Jesus was born into makes it possible for people like me to identify with him, and follow – as best I can – in his footsteps. And it’s probably the same for you.

Love came down at Christmas….so that we could in turn love the unlovely. Lovely!

There are so many reasons why God sent Jesus to us – to save us, to give us eternal life, to give us instant contact with his Dad 24/7, to heal us, to radically change our hearts and minds, to suffer and experience EVERYTHING and every emotion that we will or can ever experience, to prepare the way for the Holy Spirit to be ours so that we can do what he did….

One thing Jesus NEVER did was tease or taunt people where salvation, healing, miracles, health, or our destiny are concerned. The addendum I put in yesterday’s blog I just want to re-emphasise. I hear from many people that they ‘don’t have enough faith’ for their healing, that they’re ‘not worthy of God’s healing’ – often because, in the past, somewhere, they’ve been told ‘You don’t have enough faith, that’s why’…. Jesus NEVER said, ‘You need to go to hospital, I can’t do anything about what you’ve got wrong’, or ‘Go home, and keep taking the tablets’, or ‘Hmm, you need surgery, really’….

What DID ‘the church’ (people) do to itself? In the gospels, (and throughout the New Testament), Jesus never said to someone, ‘Your lack of faith is the reason you aren’t healed!’ There WERE times when he said ‘Your faith has made you well’, but mostly, he healed people who had little or no hope or expectation, or were looking in the wrong place, or for the wrong thing – like the man at the gate of the temple, in Acts 3. No faith that after almost 4 decades, he’d ever be healed, and just wanted money. Trying to get Christians to believe that they can do what Peter did that day is so, so hard. But WE ALL CAN.

And, if we know we have the Holy Spirit in us, then we can speak with the same confidence as Peter. Don’t forget, that it was only a few weeks earlier he’d denied Jesus, and a few days after that quaking in fear of his life with the other disciples, because their ‘world’ had ended, and Jesus was dead. Even THEY didn’t believe, or have the faith, that what Jesus said he’d do, HE’D DO! ‘In three days, this temple will be up and running again’ (the Paulus Bennisonus paraphrase!).

Yet that transformation in Peter, especially, was remarkable. Perhaps I’m alone in having always thought (and often heard sermons of others like it) that Acts 3:4 began with Peter saying, ‘Silver and gold….etc’. It doesn’t. It begins with an amazing declaration of faith in who Peter was, what he now KNEW he’d got: ‘Look at us!’

He’s saying, in those 3 words, ‘We’ve got what you need, not what you want’ – saying it confidently, and all that had changed was that he’d been filled the Holy Spirit. And if we have, we can say, ‘Look at me!’ The cripple had NO faith, no expectation but for a few denarii. So did Peter say, ‘You’ve got no faith! I can’t heal you?’ Nope. And, of course, you know the rest of the story, with thousands finding salvation and faith in God.

The wonderful American prophet, Dutch Sheets (I always hope that one day, I’ll hear that he and his wife called their children Egyptian Cotton, and Polyester!) says: ‘The only faith that God needs is the faith that you are willing to TRY and obey’. Doesn’t that take the pressure off of you? And don’t forget, after the disciples miserable failure, in Matthew 17:14ff, Jesus whacked them around the head (verbally, of course!) – ‘You unbelieving and perverse generation!…’How long shall I put up with you?’ – only to say 4 verses later, ‘Nothing is impossible FOR YOU’….

I have to confess, and maybe I’m alone here, but certainly in the first half of my life, maybe the first three-quarters, I NEVER heard anyone tell me that. But IT’S TRUE!!!!! And, until Acts 3, the disciples didn’t believe it, either…..Then they went after it with the same confidence, the same Holy Spirit, the same authority, that was in Jesus – and it’s in you and me, too. In Colossians 1:19, Paul writes, ‘For God was PLEASED to have all of his fulness dwell in him (Jesus)’ – and in John 20:21, Jesus said, ‘As the Father has sent me, so I send you’… with ALL OF THE FULNESS OF GOD IN US.

But most of us live as though we’re pretty powerless, and still pray begging prayers to God for healing: ‘Lord, please, if it’s your will…’ – it’s time that phrase was erased from our brain hard-drives. We KNOW God’s will: I am the God who heals. Using that phrase is our excuse to blame God or someone else if a person isn’t healed. Jesus didn’t heal everyone: he DID heal ALL who came to him, and others he felt his Dad lead him to: like at the Pool of Bethesda, one man in a multitude (Biblically that seems to mean at least 5,000), and to be honest, Jesus was quite ‘brutal’ with him: ‘Do you WANT to be well? Well, get up then!’ Of course, there will be people who God has an alternative plan for: my dad would be one of those people, a wonderful, Spirit-filled man whom the then-pastor of our (then) church, likened to Stephen – ‘A man full of the Holy Spirit and faith’ – but at 41, he went to be with Jesus. I wish I could answer the question, ‘Why?’ but I can’t: God is sovereign.

For years, I pussy-footed it around praying, often long, begging prayers, until one day, I heard so clearly, almost (maybe it was) audibly, ‘Get on with it! Declare it, like Jesus did!’ Since that day, the acceleration in ‘success’ rates (no, I don’t keep a percentage record or a log of all the healings! – in fact, often, by the time I get back to where I’m staying, and write the blog, I’ve forgotten many of them!)…. I once heard a wonderful theologian say that the longest ‘be healed’ occurrence in Jesus’s ministry was a mere 11 words….

‘I tell you the TRUTH: ANYONE who believe in me WILL do what I have been doing, and greater things than these you’ll do, because I’m going to the Father’. John 14:12, I’m sure you don’t need me to remind you of that verse! That’s become my watchword now. I’m still looking forward to the ‘greater things’ – and thoroughly enjoying doing the ‘ordinary’ stuff that Jesus did.

We can COMMAND in Jesus’ Name…. mostly, we don’t: perhaps it’s worth considering that that’s another reason WHY we don’t see in the western world what happens in so many countries. Samuel Lamb, a much-persecuted Pastor in Guangzhou, China, who had, by the time I first met him in 1987, seen many raised from the dead (it was in his church I met the first-ever two ex-dead people I’d EVER met…. something happens inside you when you’ve shaken hands and held people who have been dead, and are alive again, by the Power of the Holy Spirit), always used to hold his enormous Bible in my face (it looked enormous ‘cos he’s such a small bloke! – but a giant in the Kingdom), and ask me, ‘What’s your problem, Paul? It’s ALL in here. And if it’s in here, it’s going to happen. And it will either happen because of you, or despite you and without you’.

Those days, and visits into China, and Samuel and other pastors, changed my life forever. It’s a shame that it wasn’t a pastor from the UK, or USA, or Australia, who told me I could do it: but I’ll tell you – ‘YOU CAN DO WHAT JESUS DID, AND GREATER THINGS….’ – and imagine my big burgundy coloured Bible being pushed into your face!

And that’s why we celebrate Christmas: because heaven touched earth, kissed it with truth and reality, and God LONGS for us to pick the WHOLE truth up, and run with it….

But first, maybe we have to repent of the generational, inherited unbelief I wrote about yesterday???? Don’t forget, unbelief and faith can’t live in the same place. If Jesus could do no miracles because of unbelief, how on earth will we if we still carry that unbelief, even though we might not be aware of it?

Have a very blessed Christmas, my dear friends!

It’s probably the most-asked question I hear, and, I guess, many in the healing ministry get asked it, too. ‘Why? – Why doesn’t God do in the west what he does in South America, China, India, and so on?’

I’ve pondered this for years, and have a number of reasons, even perhaps answers, at least in part. I often use these when preaching to explain a little as to ‘why’, so if you hear me preach ever, you might hear some again! So, here’s a few….

• 1)      The Gifts of the Spirit clearly separate ‘healings’ from ‘miracles’ – I know miracles cover all sorts of other things, too, like natural phenomena, provision, etc: but often people look for the ‘miracle’ when God is in the process of healing, which by the very nature of the word implies a process. I strongly believe that no prayer goes unanswered, but if we are looking for the instantaneous, when God is doing the process, I believe we end up disappointed….
• 2)      There are some people – many more than we think there are, and some surprising ones, I’ve discovered – who are more secure in their illness than they desire their healing: BUT they like ministry, attention, empathy, sympathy… I could give you some extreme examples of that – like a guy in Sweden who came forward in a wheelchair, stroke victim, whose first question to me was, having seen two other similarly aged men, also stroke victims of a similar 2½ year period, get out of their wheelchairs, ‘what will happen to my social security if I’m healed?’…. he decided then he didn’t want to be healed, his security was in his benefits, and he preferred that way of life to being a fit and well husband, dad, worker: he asked me not to pray for his healing, which clearly he didn’t all along. And he was only 38…..married, with young sons….
• 3)      For years I asked God why the ‘hundreds’ happen in other countries, and not, to the same degree, in the western world. One day, I know that I heard God answer (at least to me, but I think this a ‘national’ thing) ‘I want you to repent of the unbelief you inherited by omission’. Not knowing what that meant, I asked for an explanation! For generations in the western world, anything remotely supernatural wasn’t taught, omitted from preaching, because of the ‘trad’ evangelical way churches had gone…. I didn’t think, up to that point, that I had too many unbelief issues, but I did repent of the unbelief that I had inherited by not being grounded in the Power of the Holy Spirit. I know we had occasional people who moved in power during those years, like Wigglesworth, George Jeffries, John G. Lake, A.A. Allen, and others, but they were ostracized and alienated, and often despised: it was only after Wigglesworth’s death that he really became a hero! Like Lake, Allen, and all of the others….
• 4)      In Mark 8, even Jesus had to speak to the blindness more than once…. Many people ‘terminate’ their healing (process) almost immediately by saying/thinking, ‘Well, it didn’t work then’, or ‘God did nothing’. Like I said above, and had this rammed home to me by some pastors in China in 1987/88/89, that it IS NOT POSSIBLE FOR GOD NOT TO ANSWER PRAYER. Something changes: it HAS to. Why God chooses healing (process) sometimes, and miracle (instant) another, I can’t explain. I’m not God(phew!), and He’s sovereign, so he can choose whatever is good and right. Sometimes, the illness/disease/problem presents itself in a certain fashion, and to heal it, God has to put other things in place FIRST. Yes, of course he could do everything instantly: but healings and miracles are separated for a reason. I wish I knew why, but I’m glad I’m not God…. The film ‘Bruce Almighty’ brought that home to me! Sometimes, we need to be like the persistent widow (Luke 18:1-8). That story, as with everything in Scripture, is there for a purpose. Sometimes, God wants to see how persistent, determined, we are….
• 5)      In Matthew, he couldn’t do any miracles in Nazareth because of the unbelief in the place (and if we live in a generational society that promoted unbelief for decades, surely that applies so much of the western world?) (Matt 13:58, Mark 6:4-5). It is IMPOSSIBLE for faith and unbelief to occupy the same room. The wonderful prophetic wisdom of American preacher John Paul Jackson, believes that for every person with unbelief, they cancel out every person who has belief, or faith, or at least WANTS to believe….
• 6)      Often, we prefer to believe in a doctor’s diagnosis and prognosis rather than healing: I’m praying more and more against the curse of both, and, frighteningly, praying for people whose bodies have been severely damaged by doctors – a lovely girl some time back, for instance, 25, cancer, many lumps, tissues, and bits of body removed, who GOT additional skin cancer because of the radiation treatment she didn’t need…. a lady, Josellina, in Cali, Colombia, diagnosed with cancer, treated with chemotherapy/radiation, was then told the doctors had got the original diagnosis wrong: by then, they have over-radiated her, and effectively friend her flesh and some of her organs, and she was dying. Graciously and wonderfully, God healed her. Earlier this year, I was initially diagnosed as having bowel cancer: it was 3 months before I had my ‘video-shoot’ (colonoscopy!), and, by then, if I’d allowed FEAR to cause me to believe it, I know I’d have had it. I constantly spoke against the fear, and the possibility of having cancer. And I don’t, thank you Lord! I love doctors: some of my best friends are doctors. I’m grateful for them, and allow them to dispense, for my knees, pain-killers, steroid and stem cell injections: but I’m not crippled, I won’t be crippled, just because a doctor has told me it’s likely. And I’m scheduled to see an orthopaedic surgeon at the end of January to discuss possible knee replacements (both knees, though not at the same time!). So, I’m believing that, as my knees are better now (not healed YET) than they were a year ago, that God will heal them totally, or much, much more, before that appointment…
• 7)      Whilst the National Health service is marvelous in many ways, the easy access to treatment and medication undermines the gift of faith for healing….
• 8)      I’m coming to believe, more and more, that we need to repent of being sick… it’s so clearly NOT part of a plan whereby God said, I’ll heal ALL your sickness and disease, by Jesus’ stripes etc., and Jesus ‘you’ll lay your hands on the sick and they WILL get well….’ I repent of my arthritic knees even as I type this….
• 9)      I frequently hear it said that God does great stuff in other countries because ‘they have no hospitals’… that is patently untrue: many people worldwide DO have access to doctors/hospitals/medication. It might NOT be the sort of hospital we’d want to be ill in, but they do have hospitals.
• 10)    I frequently – more than you’d probably believe – pray for people in meetings overseas who are there WITH a migraine, HAVING an asthma attack, etc. and they go to a meting despite their pain/problems because they want/believe that God will heal them. In the west, migraines and asthma attacks would cause us to say, in the main, ‘I can’t go to church because….’.

So there are a few of my thoughts, musings, things I believe God has shown me after 30 years in a ‘healing’ ministry. I’d be interested to know if you know of other reasons!

This is an addendum (I’ve put it on Facebook as a ‘comment’) to the blog…..

I ought to add here: not ‘appearing to be healed’ has nothing to do with the faith of the recipient – that’s one of the most damning, condemnatory things used by people praying FOR someone. Nor is it too much to do with the person praying, because everyone who prays for the sick, or is known to have a healing ministry, can’t heal a piece of paper without sellotape, let alone a cold, let alone cancer. God’s sovereignty HAS to be recognised in it all, and again I’d just add, for the third time in this blog! – that something DOES happen when you’re prayed for, as God DOES answer prayer. It might not always be what we want, what we THINK we need, sometimes we’re looking in the wrong place at the wrong thing… like pain level, symptoms… when God is wanting to revolutionise the person being prayed for from the top of their head to the tips of their toes. I’m so glad I’m not God….

…And through Facebook even!….. the most fantastic Christmas present I have ever had! x Jennifer Acklam

Jennifer is an (almost) lifelong friend! – we met 45 years ago, in the same youth group – she was Vater then, and I was slimmer, and had hair… Jenn’s now a Church of Scotland’s Vicar’s wife, and was really unwell, and facing surgery, when God healed her… through a prayer in a Facebook message. God certainly moves in mysterious – and unlikely – ways….

Braving the driving wind and rain across Bodmin Moor and Salisbury Plain, on my way back from West Cornwall, visiting my sister & brother-in-law, was an ‘interesting’ experience! Fortunately (though not for those behind me a little later) I missed the chaos on the A303 (if any road needed to be dual carriageway or motorway all of it’s length, that one does!) when a tree went over and blocked over and blocked the road for quite some time. Still, back safely, having taken in visits to my last Cali trip mates, Simon and Nick, and the adorable families. It was lovely to spend time with Vivien and Derek, especially as it’s a year today that their lovely son, Stewart, went to be with Jesus, and the first day we were together was his last day in their home.

And so, back home, to catch up on a lot of admin stuff that I’ve kept putting off, and putting off again! To think that once upon a time, in another life, I used to love admin, and was full time administrator for Youth for Christ in Sussex! Those were the days – not(!) – – nah, they were good days, but I wouldn’t swap them…. 🙂

It’s the time of year when my inbox is inundated with people’s newsletters, and cards stuffed with them. I’m one of those unusual souls who reads them, it’s always good to keep up with friends’ news. In one of them, was this lovely testimony from my long time friend Roy Beaumont, in Plymouth (so I’m glad I read them!!):

• I was well blessed in June too – for a while I had been finding myself without warning, swallowing the wrong way, resulting in coughing and spluttering for sometimes up to 10 minutes; which was most embarrassing, annoying and frustrating, particularly as it was happening maybe 2 or 3 times a day. Then we had a visit from our friend Paul Bennison, a man whom laps the world a few times a year by faith (i.e. trusting God to provide the air fares etc. and He does) and who has seen enormous miracles as he’s prayed for people – anyway, Paul prayed for me and I’m glad to say the problem is simply……. gone, thank you Lord!

So, now for the pile of paper… I hope that your Christmas preparations are going well! Maybe I ought to shop for Christmas soon… 🙁

Another year older…. (and not in debt, despite what the song says!)…

It really doesn’t possible to me that it’s a year since my last birthday, nor does it seem possible that I’m 61 years young. That was the sort of number, 50 years ago, that made me think that my grandparents, and anyone above 40, were so ancient, and here I am…now a stride further forward into the decade considered by most to be ‘retirement’ territory. I think I prefer to think of it as I once heard someone say, ‘I’m just being re-tyred!’ – ready to go on for another 100,000 miles.

Looking back over the last twelve months, it has been, without doubt, a roller-coaster ride, but, thankfully, where the highs exceed the lows by a vast percentage. I’m thankful to God for all that he’s done this last year, ending it as only God can do with wonderful trips to Colombia and France. It’s great to reach this age, realising – for me – that the 17 years I’ve been going to Colombia, whilst mind-blowing and outstanding in just about every way, could merely be the ‘platform’ for what happens there next. It’s almost like those years have been preparing the foundations for the real thing.

My dear, dear friend, Pastor Wilmar Gomez, of the church Mision El Abrigo, Cali, wrote this to me today, as a birthday message (I’m sure he won’t mind me repeating it, as it blessed me out of my boots, and brought me to tears):

• Wilmar Gomez
• my dear friend, today I thank God for this day, create you and make you a man of blessing, for your legacy and example, you become that friend dreamed, are a gift of God for our nation and for me and my family. We pray that in this new year begins for you, the Lord protect you, health, direct and bless supernaturally … we love you and bless you on this day … Happy and Blessed Birthday …