July 2019 - Paul Bennison

Kindness – is it dead, or alive and well?

Posted on July 28, 2019 by Paul Bennison Posted in Journal, Personal, Random Thoughts, Testimony, Travel, Uncategorized Leave a comment

I don’t know if any of you have watched ‘The Kindness Diaries’ on Netflix, but it’s amazing. Leon Logothetis is a man who, when young, was bullied and life was tough, and decided that the opposite of being selfish and being bullied – kindness – was going to be his goal in life, looking for kindness and, with certain people who showed him kindness, he rewarded them with whatever they needed.
I’m watching his journey from Alaska to Argentina, in a 50-year old VW Beetle, with NO money on him, needing help/accommodation/mechanics – and finding that, even in our selfish ‘me-me-me I want more money’ world, there ARE kind people who’ll help when you’re in trouble.
In the episode I’ve just watched, he was offered a good meal and a bed for the night in the home of a young woman and her fiancé, she was a refugee from from the Dominican Republic, and her life is given to helping others, but her dream to help thousands more is limited by resources. She wants to ‘stop the traffik’ of young girls, provide fresh water supplies for millions in many countries (and she specifically mentioned Ghana where I guess her roots are historically). Leon’s just told her he’ll arrange funding for her to go wherever she wants in the world to do it…
She’s crying, he’s ‘leaking’, I’m weeping…
Those who know me know that my passion has never been to ‘make it big’ as a preacher but to go to places where no one else who’s goal is money, will ever go. This is a series of programmes I’ll watch over and over again, as it’s my heart to love and care for people, pray for their healing, and do whatever I or my team’s can do practically for them.
Over the years that’s included water pumps for villages to have fresh water, homes for street kids in dangerous and war- torn countries, but it build homes for families and pastors, build (not flashy huge) churches in heathen villages…
You can imagine I’m loving this programme, and dreaming that one day I’ll meet Leon… And praying that God will give me the healed legs to do it a bit easier than I can right now…
I’d encourage to watch ‘The kindness diaries’. It’s uplifting and a blessing.

WHY NOT SO MANY MIRACLE STORIES?

Posted on July 23, 2019 by Paul Bennison Posted in Journal, Personal, Random Thoughts, Testimony, Uncategorized 2 Comments

I’ve been asked why there are not so many miracle stories in the blog and on Facebook recently. and I ‘sense’ the assumption is that not much is happening. That couldn’t be further from the truth, to be honest! A lot of what I DO post here and on Facebook are things that are ‘reportable’ and that I have asked people’s permission to post. An even ‘bigger’ side of what I do involves people with issues and situations that are NOT for public ‘consumption’ – personal /church/ family issues which, thank God, he deals with – but if those issues related to YOU, say, you wouldn’t WANT them put out for public viewing, even if no names are mentioned it’s often possible for other people to identify those concerned.

It’s a fine line to walk when you’re dealing with people’s lives, especially when it comes to any form of abuse – whether that’s actual, physical, sexual, or spiritual abuse, and those issues are NOT for general publication! The last few months – apart from blogs where I’ve been out preaching and can report what God has done through the people I’ve taken with me, and through me, where healing is concerned. Healing isn’t just physical, though: is very necessary when the issues have been destructive through emotional, often even worse when it’s spiritual, and devastating when it’s physical.

I believe that God told me – and it was confirmed by a number of other prophetic friends and advisors, that as well as the things that I have been doing. the move to England (and now Wales) was going to involve a whole new raft of things that God was opening up for me – things I’ve been involved with in the past but not to the extent that I was going to see, and that there’d be a whole host of new things – ‘you ain’t seen nothing yet’ sort of time.

That’s certainly been the case since moving back across the Irish Sea, and countless hours of listening, talking, advising, ‘pulling’ on experiences I have had over the past 40 years as they’re still relevant today, have certainly filled and occupied time, and – Praise the Lord – seen real fruit in people’s lives.

I was going to do a blog about my sadness of the catastrophic ‘demise’ of the ‘Jesus Army’ in Bugbrooke, Northamptonshire: but it’s been well-documented in ‘Christianity’ magazine this month, and tragically, is so serious that it’s featured on the BBC News, too: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-48447066 – it bears comparison with ‘Operation Yew Tree’ (Jimmy Savile, Rolf Harris, et al), and when a church issue causes the police to launch a similar operation – ‘Operation Lifeboat’ – you KNOW we’re moving into an era in history that brings the latter part of Scripture into vivid perspecitve. Hundreds of people have filed complaints about spiritual, personal, sexual, and physical abuse against the Jesus Army, which began as a perfectly normal Baptist Church in 1969, with an ‘Apostolic Social (Kingdom)’ charismatic vision, but it grew to a point where the leadership took over control of people’s lives, similar to Jonestown (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown) when 918 people (including over 300 children) were ‘told’ by Jim Jones, the former charismatic Apostolic Church pastor, to drink cyanide, and they all died. Six men from Bugbrooke/Jesus Army have already been sentenced to prison.

Control and manipulation in a growing number of influential churches is on the increase – and the rapid rise of the Jezebel spirit (see Revelation 2:20-24) is destroying people’s lives – or attempting to destroy them – in increasing numbers. I had experience of battling that very spirit a good few years ago, it nearly destroyed me (burn out, near nervous breakdown) but thank God I survived and came out of that battle stronger. And it’s this very issue I’ve been involved in helping people with over recent months. And that help doesn’t involve a short prayer at the end of a meeting: it involves countless (very worthwhile) hours of talking, praying, explaining – and Jezebel attacks the person praying too, which is why I believe (along with 36 or so stairs at an apartment block!) that my knees have been pretty grim, as the spirit goes for your ‘weak-points’ too. Control in churches is on the rise: it’s evil it’s witchcraft, and when one of the last things God had to say to humanity in Scripture, was about Jezebel, we need to take it seriously. It’s in churches that ‘seem’ good, look good, and attractive to people with many migrating from existing churches to them….

So maybe you’ll understand why I haven’t blogged so many miracle stories: people’s LIVES are vital, as well as healing their ailments, and I’m grateful to God for what I’ve had personal experience of in order to help others in the same situation!

TO THE LAND OF REVIVAL: BRING IT ON, LORD!!

Posted on July 13, 2019 by Paul Bennison Posted in Journal, Personal, Random Thoughts, Testimony, Travel Leave a comment

To say the last 18 months have been unusual would be an understatement in the extreme! To all those who think ‘living by faith’, seeing thousands healed over 35 years. travelling to lots of countries (many of which I’d never have CHOSEN to go to but fell in love with after God made it clear I’d be going!), is a wonderful life, let me put a few of the not so wonderful things into perspective for you when you try and follow the call of God obediently – and these just in the last year and a half!! (Not including, in previous years, losing my home completely 5 times, having to choose to give up the last house I owned – mortgage, but some equity! – 36 years ago in order to go to a ministry training centre for a time which the equity paid for!). If you still want to be a missionary and live by faith after this, then I’d say that God has called you!

But do you know what? I wouldn’t swap the house, equity, or anything, for what I’ve seen God do in the last 40 years, more especially the last 34 years – because He’s blown me away with what He’s done with and through this plonker from the East End of London, with where He’s taken me, with who I’ve met and become friends with all over the world (having never travelled abroad before apart from to France), what He’s given me the grace (and guts!) to eat (cow’s eyes, live flying ants, snake, cow’s lips, cat, dog…..want me to go on??!!), and now, arriving in Wales on the next ‘leg’ of my life of adventure, knowing that people of the Kingdom of Heaven have been praying that I’ll come here – for 4-5 years… I’ve not been part of too many churches in my life – most have been long-stay churches – I have to say it’s wonderful to come somewhere where the folk want me, are totally non-religious, not threatened by anyone with an existing ministry (you might be shocked at how many churches are, so they don’t want you!), and I’ve had more people visit me and help me here in 5 days than I had in the last 6 months!

Here’s the last 18 months in a nutshell(!):

the previously documented wrecking of my right knee by an orthopaedic consultant in Belfast in January 2018, to then not being able to walk (and acute pain) for 10 months as a result,
somehow managing a 3-4 week trip to Colombia in a wheelchair, to waking up one morning IN Colombia with my legs looking like I’d been stood in a barrel of beetroot juice all night and being diagnosed with chronic cellulitis
some preaching – with mobility difficulties! – in Northern Ireland
speaking at a great conference in Dublin in November and seeing God heal
being told by other orthopaedic consultants that I might never walk again
not being able to walk from my living to my kitchen (about 15 feet/5 metres) so not being able to eat for many of those months (but losing 120 pounds weight/8.5 stones/55 kg was a bonus)
having the blessing of wonderful friends, Roy and Angie, from Plymouth, flying to N Ireland to spend 5 days with me to clean my house, and cook many meals I could freeze and then just stick in the oven, my not-yet-Christian neighbours in Northern Ireland frequently cooking Sunday lunch for me so often I had one meal a week(!)
to being persuaded to move from Northern Ireland to Gravesend – and most ludicrously to do the move without a removal company
giving away about half of my home in Northern Ireland as it wouldn’t fit on the trailer
to renting a second floor (third if you’re American) flat/apartment without seeing it first, realising that there was no lift/elevator but about 36 stairs (poor knees!!) – and because of its location (about 20 minutes from London) – at a rent that made my eyes water – 3 times the rent I’d been paying in Ireland – God does have a great sense of humour! God made me aware early on that it wasn’t it a long term stay – thankfully – for all sorts of reasons, that he’d taken me there for a purpose which I’m thrilled to say has been fulfilled
to being promised about a third of the rent difference by a ‘friend’ – the same promise every month for the 6 months I was there – and then to be told ‘You need to learn to live by faith’… hmm! He’s a guy in his forties and I’ve been living by faith for 40 years.! If I’m honest, it was hugely dishonouring and insulting! God’s wonderful though – he came up trumps every month so I didn’t have to even delay the rent 🙂
wondering where I’d go after Gravesend (isn’t that just an awful name for a town? – I used to think that when I was a boy listening to the football results when they’d announce the ‘Southern League’ scores!)- there were a few places that seemed to be on the horizon (I DID wonder if one would be Colombia, but not this time!). Thinking it would be one place, then God hi-jacking my plans (!) and bringing me here to Wales – there are so many prophecies about Wales right now, and so much expectation, it’s exciting to be here to be a part of what God is going to do.
renting a house through Air BnB for the next 3 weeks that is owned by the neighbours – extreme new agers, with books titled ‘Healing by Magic’ and similar – probably more occultists than new-agers!
Most of my home is stored in a friend’s garage: and the stuff I asked the removal men to bring here for the next month or months, they mostly didn’t – including most of my clothes! If you hear on the news of a naked limping overweight walking round Wales, it might well be me….
Then not really knowing where I’ll be staying/living after that – but I’ve been here before, and God’s always kept his promise from 40 years ago: ‘Trust me for your home, security, and income’.

So, despite the spiritual battle that was the last location, I’m really excited to be in THIS spiritual battle for a nation that has revival history – astonishing history – and the promise from God through countless people that Wales is on his agenda again….

A lovely friend from South London sent me this verse a couple of days ago – Job 36:16:

He is wooing you from the jaws of distress to a spacious place free from restriction, to the comfort of your table laden with choice food.

That is a wonderful encouragement and blessing!

Now to let these knees recover from 36 stairs for 6 months, and there’ll be no stopping me again….