Category Archives: Personal

Wonderful miracle testimony from Sunday night’s meeting at the lovely Bolney Village Chapel, West Sussex – my friend Simon Allaby is the Pastor there – had the privilege of praying for a lady who’d had sight problems for years and some surgeries, with peripheral vision only and could only see in monochrome… here’s what Si’s just written to me:

Saw ****** (haven’t asked if it’s ok to use her name!) last night – up until Sunday she had very poor vision in her left eye which was blurry and monochrome. When she woke up on Monday morning she opened her eye and could see in colour! She was very excited and expectant for more healing. Praise God.

The eye with peripheral vision she can now see in colour with! She went for the checkup (at the hospital) on Tuesday but didn’t say how that had gone – she was so excited about being able to see colour again!

God’s so good at this stuff, isn’t he?? Why do we doubt, or think he won’t use us or do it for us? Someone(!) once said ‘You’ll lay your hands on the sick and they will get well’ – the same person said ‘You’ll do the things I have been doing and greater things you’ll do because I’m going to the Father’. Wonder who that could have been, and if he was just teasing us…? Samuel Lamb (Lin Xiangao in Cantonese, who sadly – for us – went to be with Jesus in 2013), who many will know of as I mention him a lot, and who – as the English speaker in a group of 5 pastors, answered my question to the five -‘What do you say to people who aren’t healed?’ with what I’ve used as the title of the blog. ‘That situation never arises – it’s not possible for God not to answer prayer, or keep his promises!’. It changed my life…. and changed my ‘theology’, my understanding of ‘no matter what promises God has made it is yes and amen in Christ Jesus’, and made me realise it was nothing to do with faith, it was to do with unbelief. I’d always believed – until then – that the ‘enemy’ of faith was fear. It isn’t. It’s unbelief. Unbelief cancels faith out – the wonderful (late, sadly) John Paul Jackson spoke about it: if you have a church of 100, and 50 have faith, and 50 have unbelief, then you have a church with nothing. Unbelief knocks faith on the head – that’s how powerful it is – but is that ever taught (unless by John Paul, or people like the Chinese)?

I’m probably as excited for the lady in Bolney as she is for herself!! And it means that faith lives in that church in greater measure than unbelief does – so bless you, Simon, keep preaching the truth mate!

I’ll be eternally grateful to God that I had the chance to spend many days in China in the 1980s, and sit with Pastors like Samuel Lamb, Brother Yun, Wang Ming Dao (he passed away just a couple of years after meeting him – Wang Mingdao (July 25, 1900 – July 28, 1991) was an independent Chinese Protestant pastor and evangelist imprisoned for his faith by the Chinese government from 1955 until 1980. He has been called the “Dean of the House Churches – imprisoned for 25 years, Samuel was 22 years incarcerated). No wonder they saw miracles! They paid the price… Samuel had been given a big Bible by Billy Graham (I think) and often, when my ‘western unbelief’ surfaced – which it did often – he’d hold it right by my face (I thought at times he was going to clout me with it!), and say, Paul. if it’s in here, it’s going to happen!’ – I’ve done my utmost to believe that and live that for the past 33 years since I met him. ‘We never have a prayer not answered – and we pray every day that God will bless the west with the precious gift of persecution!’.

Perhaps a question that blew me away almost as much with its answer – ‘In your evangelism meetings, Samuel, you have on average 500 not-yet-Christians in your meeting and 500 belieers. How many not-yet-Christians would you expect to see saved on average each week?’. ‘On the night – 450, and the other 50 by Saturday’ was his matter-of-fact answer. I would have been delirious then, in the UK, to see 10%, perhaps more realistically 5% or even 1%. ‘What’s your problem?’ he asked me. My problem???!!!! 100% salvation, that was my problem! ‘Jesus said, “IF I be lifted up, I will draw ALL men to me”. That means ALL men – now what’s your problem?’. Life-changing days for a growing-in-faith yet still unbelieving English preacher….

I haven’t been persecuted like the Chinese pastors are: but certainly faced some extreme opposition and circumstances since then – mostly from ‘fellow saints’!

No, Sprog isn’t an acronym…. this is a follow on from yesterday’s post, and highlights the tragedy of life in poverty-stricken countries. One day, in Mozambique, a young dad turned up carrying his four-day-old son. His wife had died giving birth to the baby, and dad knew that the only hope was to get the baby to Maforga Christian Mission, where my friend Tim worked, and where I was based while I was in Mozambique. I know for some of you that these sorts of situations are not unusual when you’ve been missionaries – but dad had no access to – or money for – milk powder for his son, and no water. He also lived a two-day walk from the Mission, so he set off when the baby was two days old to walk there after burying his wife. He walked non-stop for 48 hours: on arrival the nurses did everything they could to save the baby’s life, who miraculously when dad arrived was still alive. I was out – at a meeting I think, in Beira with Tim – and when we got back to the Mission, the little boy was dead.

I heard before I saw anyone from the Mission, and knew that they wanted me to conduct the little boy’s funeral. I just couldn’t, it was too much for me and my daughter, Katy, who was with me on that trip. So before I could be asked, I told Tim to get in the car and drive, and got out of there as quickly as I could…. what an admission to make. I’m not proud of it, believe me. We stayed out for quite some time, before going back ‘home’. They hadn’t buried the little boy, they’d waited until I got back. I felt sick, like I’d been kicked hard in the stomach, and knew I couldn’t ‘escape’ a second time.

It was made worse as dad had dug the little boy’s grave – the boy hadn’t even been named, hence ‘Sprog’ – and his body was in a shoe box, he was so small. Dad had dug the grave quite deep, and neither Tim nor I have the longest arms, so for the last few inches we had to drop the shoe box until it hit the bottom. As we did, the lid came off: I knew that God was giving me the chance to pray for him to be resurrected. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. What if it didn’t happen? What if he stayed dead? Dad had already lost his wife, and his son, and to have a ‘failed’ resurrection attempt just seemed unbearable. Sprog’s dad filled in the grave, Katy and I were both weeping….I went back to my room and told God what a failure I was, and that I could never pray for the dead again. God argued with me, and – ridiculously – I argued back, until God won….and said ‘Yes you can!’

I’d met ex-dead people in China – that story is pretty well documented and preached by me – and I knew I had to keep praying, when presented with the opportunity, to do what Jesus did, and to keep going until he did it. Sprog would be about 22 years old now. I’m so grateful that God gives us opportunity after opportunity to do what Jesus did, and doesn’t discard or admonish us when we fail, bottle it, run, hide, try to give up…. it was a few more failures after Sprog before the wonderful power of the Holy Spirit did what Jesus had told us that his Spirit would enable us to do….what has been amazing for me is that after every ‘failure’ I found my faith level RISING, not decreasing. God is so, so good, and I’m so grateful to him that this little East Ender from Stratford, London, has seen God’s amazing power when I know that I have none – three times now. Thank you, God, that all your promises are yes and amen in Christ Jesus, if only we’d believe them…..

One of the things about moving home is that you can find things you haven’t seen for a long time, things you’ve forgotten about, other things you’ll never forget but think have gone forever… last week a mass of photographs came to light, and reminded me why I love doing what I do, going where I go – even if it’s sometimes a bit stressful financially, and occasionally a bit hair-raising when certain things happen!

Back in the mid-90s, my good friend Tim Herbert gave up his job and went as a missionary to Mozambique. It was a real privilege to go and visit him a few times, and get involved in what was then – maybe still is – one of the poorest countries in the world. Even better was going out into the remote areas of the Mozambiquan bush to speak in churches, pray for people, and be blessed by the love of the people, their hospitality, kindness, and their delight at having foreigners go to where foreigners don’t often go. Some amazing things happened in each visit – including, one night, going to bed in the pitch dark, getting into bed, and finding someone already in it! – a local homeless man, who was very welcome to stay there…..but not to share it with me! Sleeping in a hammock outside, on the verandah of the mission station where Tim was based, my first time ever in hammock (I wasn’t too good at getting in it, and then getting the mosquito net to cover every square inch of it as the mossies there are lethally malarial…. it turned out that my head was under a bat’s nest, and the bat droppings started to be delivered and strained through the mosquito net, dripping steadily onto my head! I changed ends (and not just at half-time!) as I didn’t want to find I’d slept with my mouth open… I leave you to work out the rest.

We had a wonderfully spectacular car crash, too – I would emphasise that I wasn’t driving! – with two well-padded ladies and a slim Pastor in the back, jammed in (fortunately!) as Tim headed up a long hill with the sun right on the brow of the hill. I did point out that there was a man standing in the middle of the road, next to his bicycle, and we were doing about 80 kilometres an hour (50 mph). We assumed he’d move. He didn’t. At the last minute, Tim jammed on the brakes and swerved – it was then we realised he’d been obscuring a very large pothole, which we hit broadside as the car swerved. We took off – literally. We ‘rolled’ over one and a half times in the air, landed on the roof, skidded, went back onto the wheels and finally stopped about 400 metres from where we’d begun to orbit! The car had been rented from a ‘well-known’ car hire company in Mutare, Zimbabwe, I knew the lady who rented it to us as I’d hired from her before, and assured her that taking a brand new Mazda 323 (3 miles on the odometer I think) into Mozambique wouldn’t present any problems for the car…. The noise from our passengers was full of shouted and screamed prayers from the ladies, the Pastor remained quite calm. As the roof had caved in somewhat, and the car had changed shape, so it was extremely difficult to get the doors open – miraculously, no one was hurt apart from one lady in the back – I think her name was Beatrice – who’d bitten her lip as she screamed, and a small cut on the Pastor’s head! When we finally got out, dozens of locals had ‘materialised’ out of the bush, watching these two white blokes begin to go and remonstrate with the cyclist. He wasn’t there. According the crowd, there’d never been a man with a bike – was it a demonic apparition to try and kill us? We’ll never know. All four wheels were pointing in different directions, the windows were ‘rather’ damaged, the roof caved in…but we had to drive it back to the mission as if we’d left it, it would have been ‘stripped’ of everything in minutes!

So we went home like a crab – sort of sideways going forward! We had to pass four police checkpoints, and prayed that they’d be distracted as we went past, as we’d have been prosecuted because the car was somewhat unroadworthy! Next day, I called Stella, at the car hire location, and said we had a slight problem as the car wasn’t driving quite as it should! I told her it didn’t fly quite as we’d expected, and that the roof, and much of the car, wasn’t quite the same shape! Bless her, she laughed, told me they’d send in a low-loader to take it away and bring another car to us!

We did thank God for his protection, but it was one of the best roller-coaster rides we’d ever had! One of the great delights is going to the churches made out of bamboo, sugar cane leaf rooves, and being blessed as people were saved and healed, with some set free from the ever-present influence of the witch doctors and voodoo. What is so humbling is the hospitality in the poverty these wonderful people live in. Vast quantities of sadza (nshima in other counties0 – a ‘pudding’ of thickened porridge made out of any number of pulverized grains. The most common form of sadza is made with white maize (corn) mealie meal, with some form of stew – mostly liquid – and sadza is so hot, but you dig into a mountain of it with your fingers, and roll it in your hands before you eat it…. In the churches, they want to give you an offering: but they have no money. So the offering is frequently sugar cane, maize cobs, tomatoes….anything they can grow. 

Men fall in love for many reasons, I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that! And women too, of course!!

Something I really struggle with is when I talk to some people about certain countries, and the traumas, problems, tragedies and so on, many of which breed corruption, that those countries have – and still do – experience, that they seem to know more about the country, having never been there, than someone who’s been there many times. I’ve recently experienced a terrible tragedy in a country that was so tragic when I first went there, so corrupt, it was unreal that Romania was actually in EUROPE – not a poverty-stricken continent the other side of the world. And this isn’t ‘Scrooge’ era: it’s less than 30 years ago, in the adult lifetime of many of us. The tragedy I’ve experienced recently is STILL all to do with poverty – poverty caused by corruption. I won’t mention any names, but I got to know a family many years back in the north of Romania (the area is a country/state – Moldova) – their daughter, 25 years old, I knew all her life, and tragically, due to poverty (I was unable to help, which I had done as and I when I could) she was evicted in from her flat in November. Her only alternative was to sleep rough (both parents had died) – shop doorways in late December/early January in Romania are freezing places (-15C in January, as low as -25C at times in February). From 1993, when she was born, she was like a ‘surrogate’ daughter, who, without help because of her medical conditions, couldn’t work, let alone complete her University studies. Like so many countries I’ve been to/go to, you can only get medical help if you pay ‘up front’. If you can’t pay, you suffer – or die. I last heard from her in January – in hospital suffering from frostbite: and then what I dreaded to hear – silence. About 3 weeks ago, I heard from two sources she had died with hypothermia. Like with the (different sort of) loss of my own children, I am heartbroken. She’ll have had no funeral: doubtless picked up by the police or garbage men and thrown onto a waste tip. Why? Because corruption and life sentenced her to it. She gave her life to Jesus over weeks – months – of What’sApp conversations with me: I’m praying that, if she’s dead (and I actually have no way of knowing definitely, or finding out – she was a ‘street’ person- she died still knowing him and believing him, and trusting in him, despite the desperate, freezing straits she found herself in.

She wasn’t an unusual case: street sleeping is endemic in Romania, of course a country a full member of the EU since 2011 (and part member since 2007) receiving massive grants from the EU, much of it going straight into businessmen’s and politicians pockets. People told me it couldn’t happen – it DIDN’T happen in Romania, it was ok now it was in the EU. People who I asked, ‘How many times have you been there in the past few years?’ – none: ‘how many times did you go after the revolution?’ – none: ‘how many times before the revolution?’ – none. Yet they know all about Romania, this isn’t a boast, just a fact, but I’ve been there 129 times, know it pretty well. Today, I had a delivery driver from Amazon call. I recognised his accent – but rather than just ‘assuming’ he was Romanian, asked him where he was from. ‘Romania’, he replied, ‘about 90% of Amazon’s drivers are from Romania’ he told me. No money there. Poverty. Corruption. He came from Cluj, too – one of the loveliest cities in the country: I’ve been there many times – University city, and a massive student population. I told him I loved his country, but quite understood why he had to leave, and was he delighted we had a ‘connection’ – Cluj, and his son’s name is Paul.

It was over Christmas – in fact from 16th December into the new year – 1989/90, that Romania suffered its terrible revolution. Thousands perished – but small fry compared to the number who’ve died from poverty despite being in the wonderful EU – it seems to me to have no ‘follow up’ on where their grants go :(. I spent Christmas in tears in 1989, and wept when cameras went in for the first time from ‘outside’ and into the orphanages. Romania before the revolution had ‘scared’ me, I’ll be honest – the Securitate, the most brutal and vicious of all the Eastern European police forces, followed you everywhere with their long black coats, their black hats, and cameras with long zoom lenses. But as I watched on TV Christmas 1989,I knew I had to go back: God got a hold of my spirit and my emotions as I wept, and within about 4 weeks, was there with a 38 ton, 17 ton, 13 ton, and 3 7.5 ton trucks (you could – maybe still can – drive one of those on a car licence, and I had to drive and take whatever we could collect. The trucks were rammed with goods – about 90 tons in the 6 trucks.

Within a day or two, I knew I had to go to an orphanage, yet everything in me screamed not to, as I dreaded what I was going to see. Room after room, cots end to end, side to side, filling every centimetre of the rooms, ‘normal’ size cots but with 4 children in each, sitting in excrement and urine. Concrete ‘pens’ where the most disabled were kept, 24/7, naked, covered in excrement and urine, naked, in – that day – temperatures of -30C, and they were hosed down once every now and again with ice cold water.

I fell in love. I think I did in front of the TV if I’m honest, but seeing these children – and there are still instituions like them there today – and thousands of kids living in the under-street heating and sewage ducts. What made me fall in love with this country? Well, I’ve realised in the past 40 years that some people hate countries, others love them: but even when you love them, you can hate them, too, for what they do to people, especially children. I fell in love because the first boy I saw was this one –

no legs, no hands, immovable arms, a missing eye, and blind in the other eye. I asked through a translator, of one the ‘workers’, what his name was, how old – no name, no idea how old: I asked what had happened to him to make him the way he was. ‘His mother tried to abort him with a knitting needle, severed his legs, wrecked his arms and hands, and removed an eye….. ‘how often do you pick them up and hug them?’ I asked. ‘What? Why? Never,’ came the reply. So I did, hugged him – and he laughed. I exploded with tears I didn’t know I could produce – and I fell in love with a country that to many is so corrupt they won’t go there, to others – who’ve never been but ‘know it well’ and a country still despised by many. I was covered in s**t and urine but I didn’t care – he needed loving. As do many in that sad, sad country. I took my whole family there many times over those early years – and my kids – who I adore even though I haven’t seen them in a very long time – loved playing with the Romanian kids. It really blessed me to see it. 128 visits later, and I still love the country, but hate it because it can kill a lovely 25 year old girl, amongst thousands over the years.

Don’t believe the cots were end to end, side to side?

Why do men fall in love? How? With the girl of your dreams, it’s easy. With a nation – and images like these – it’s not love you can generate, but love that, I believe, only God can give if we’re willing to receive it. 29 years on, I’m sitting here in tears, at 2 am, crying my eyes out over a country I love dearly, and over a young woman who I loved like a daughter who it seems is now dead. Can we do anything? Yes, we can. We can ask God for his love, compassion, freedom from the fear of ‘catching diseases’ (many people won’t go to some countries I’ve asked them to go to with me in case they catch something). ‘If any man wants to save his life, he’ll lose it: but whoever is willing to lose his life for my sake, he will find it’. Jesus said it – 5 times in 4 gospels.

Do we just ignore these things as though they never happened Worse still, that they still ARE happening? For God’s sake, for Jesus’s sake – NO! For the sake of the Kingdom? NO! This isn’t some far-flung country (though it does seem to have similar despotic leaders – though the President, which is really a ‘name-only’ title, is, I undertand a Lutheran Christian (Klaus Iohannis). It’s the Prime Minister who really runs the country, and the previous incumbents have been not the most honest (choosing words carefully!).

There are some great churches in Romania – even better perhaps under the persecution of the evil President Ceaucescu, as churches thrive under persecution (maybe we do as Christians, too) – and need our help, they need encouragement, love, grace, finance, and so much more. I remember saying to a group of five pastors in Guanzhou, China – what will it take for the church in the west to see happen what God is doing in revival power here in China? Their answer was unanimous, having just answered another of my questions with ‘We never have a prayer not answered’ – ‘they said, ‘We pray every day for the precious gift of persecution for the western churches’….

Is God asking you to go and love Romania? Or somewhere else humanly unlovely to us with a western mindset?

   I do want to add that this has nothing at all to do with me falling in love other than with the poor, desperate, people unable to help themselves, in nations that make even the poorest here look rich – if only because of the National Health Service….

No, nobody’s grown an extra leg, or anything quite so exciting as being raised from the dead, but- BUT – for much of my life I’ve battled with something obvious to everyone who knows me,,, WEIGHT! Over the years I’ve tried every sort of diet imaginable – from, in the 80’s, the ‘F’ plan (Fibre Diet) – in 6 weeks I put ON a pound (0.5 kg) 🙁 : Then I tried the Cambridge Diet, that awful ‘drinks only’ thing, where I lost 56 pounds (25 kg) in 4 months, As soon as I stopped the diet, I put on 70 pounds (31 kg) back on in ultra-quick time, not because I ate a lot, I just ate…. even when I’ve fasted – and I’ve done a few, some 40 day fasts: a friend and I used to fast together (fasting IS Biblical so it’s not aimed at losing weight) but my friend would lose 15 kg, and I’d put on a couple….

Then, as regular blog readers know, last year was an unusual year for me in that I couldn’t walk really for 10 months, often not even to the kitchen room my living room. I honestly thought that no activity and sitting down extensively (like 90% of the day apart from the odd foray out to preach if I had help, or to the doctors or the pharmacy – living the high life, huh??!!) I’d put on masses of weight. But as I couldn’t get to the kitchen much, I didn’t eat – unless my lovely ex-next door neighbours, John & Lisa, in Bangor, Northern Ireland, cooked Sunday lunch for me (which they did most Sundays). My stomach must have shrunk drastically, as I can’t eat much now even though I can walk again….

….and here’s the big confession (might not surprise some of you!) I was in 44-inch waist (112 cms) trousers…. when I moved into my new flat, when my scales appeared from under Vesuvius (my second bedroom eruption) I thought they were wrong, so courtesy of Amazon I bought some new ones…. and realised I needed 42….then 40….then 38….. and now 36 inch (91 cm) waist trousers. And I’ve lost 6 stones in weight (38 kilos)! I can’t remember a time when I was on 36/91 waist trousers! And today in shifting the mountain, I found my suit (yes, I DO have a suit – 2 in fact, and a blazer I haven’t been able to wear for years!) – and they’re sort of too big for me, but I can get away with it!! But I’m heading for 34 inch trousers…. (86 cms), and no longer 3 or 4 XL shirts – just 2XL or even XL depending on where I buy them and what brand they are!

So thank you, God!! That’s a great help to my knees in the long term….and God IS in the process of healing them, as I can walk where I couldn’t last year. So if you want to follow my ‘diet’, go and see an orthopaedic consultant and get him to wreck at least one leg so you can’t walk, and after 10 months get someone to pray for you….!!!!

Don’t forget next Sunday evening – Bolney Village Chapel, 6.30 pm…. Top Street, Bolney, West Sussex RH17 5PP – https://www.bolneyvillagechapel.co.uk/ – pastored by my really great friend Simon Allaby. I’ll be there, so will Simon, so will some friends from my church in Gravesend, and more importantly, so will God and the Holy Spirit! This is Simon…

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Top+St,+Bolney,+Haywards+Heath/@50.9972509,-0.2028438,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x487592bbee79cf91:0x9aa52c1f8e8e7d53!8m2!3d50.9972475!4d-0.2006551

and this is the church!