SPIN LIKE THE WIND-the blog of Nigel James.

Our grandson Henry

Even better yesterday, I visited James and Tiffany and cuddled little Henry for the first time. I had been speaking about him each night to the Third Day audiences whilst doing the World Vision talk, and as publicly stated I prayed the words of Luke 2.52 over him, believing he would grow up in the way Jesus did.. in wisdom, and in stature, and in favor with God, and in favor with man.

A piece of Contemporary Christian music history.

Back in the early 1980's I bought a cassette tape of a band called Mylon LeFevre and Broken Heart. Unknown to me, these guys were CCM pioneers and were to become legends. In 1995 I met Peter Furler of the Newsboys and subsequently toured with them for while before working with Third Day for the last 13 years. Yesterday evening, at SpiritFest in the Texas Rangers stadium near Dallas, Peter and Mylon joined Third Day on stage for a rousing version of a Mylon hit 'Gospel Ship'. One of those events when I can say..."I was there".

St. Stephen's school centre, KIbera

In the St. Stephen's school centre at the heart of Kibera, one of the largest slum dwellings in Africa.

Emmanuel and I

Ignite Liberia National Director Rev. Emmanuel Jonah and I in Nairobi

In Kenya

Visiting Nairobi with team from City Temple and have invited Rev. Emmanuel Jonah from Ignite Liberia to join us as we minister in a school in the Kibera slum. Time for Emmanuel and I to plan for the next few years of Ignite in Liberia too.

WHAT COULD CHURCHES IN WALES LEARN FROM CHURCHES IN THE USA?

I wrote this recent blog for www.waleswide.org when I was on the road with Third Day recently:

Being based in Wales but travelling in and out of the USA for the last 15 years has given me an interesting perspective on church.  One of the questions I get asked on both sides of the Atlantic is 'what's the spiritual temperature like in Wales/USA?' - as if I'm the one person who can judge that!  Touring widely in the USA has shown me the best and the worst of Christ's church on earth, but rather than focus on the negative I want to share 3 traits of the church in the USA that I believe we could learn from in Wales.

1. The church in the USA has a positive 'can do' attitude.

Someone once said to me that the difference between Christians in the UK and the USA was this... in the UK we say 'without Him we can do nothing' emphasising the 'nothing', but in the USA they say 'I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me' with the emphasis on 'all things'.  If churches in Wales are to be planted, repositioned for ministry, grow and be strengthened then we must be more positive in our thinking, more creative in our outreach, and more confident in the power of God.  We must break the hold of discouragement and despondency over the church across Wales, and also the negative thinking and lack of vision that it breeds.

2. The church in the USA understands the priority of mission.

Whenever I'm in a church in America I try to chat with the missions pastor - the very fact the church has such a person shows how they take mission seriously.  It's a common conversation for me to hear that churches have a thought out programme to reach their local community, to make a difference in their state and country, and to go out to all nations.  The Lord is calling an increasing number of churches in the US to see Wales as a place to commit long-term mission resources to.  Many churches are willing to mobilise people, prayer, energy, focus and finance into reaching the mission fields God has placed on their hearts.  If you have been to any Waleswide meetings over the last year or so you will have heard our cry that Wales is again a mission field.  Lost people don't become found, nations aren't reached for Christ, without existing churches and church leaders being prepared, confidently and in faith, to count the cost.

3. The church in the USA is trying hard to be known for loving arms reaching out rather than a single finger of judgment pointing accusingly.

It hurts me so much when I speak to strangers in an airport, or on a plane, or in a hotel lobby, and their perception of Christians is that we are the people who are 'against' everything or 'protest' at this or that.  The majority of Christian leaders and their churches in the USA, without compromising Gospel truth at all, are attempting to genuinely reach out with the Good News message of Jesus and show His love, His compassion, His grace, and His mercy.

We know that legalism and the judgmental message it sends out has been one of the 'church killers' in Wales over the years, and so one of the challenges is to be Good News in word and deed - reaching out to the poor, the marginalised, the broken, the hurting, as many churches across Wales are already doing, but to also be able to articulate why we are so doing, and in whose name we are ministering.  The cynicism about 'church' can truly be banished across Wales if we simply show people Jesus rather than an outdated institution that operates with few Christlike characteristics.

Don't get me wrong!  I don't think America is the answer to all our problems... far from it.  Yet I do believe we can learn some things from what the Lord is accomplishing through His church in the USA

 

New Sermon Selection.

Just got around to posting a selection of recent sermons-all preached by me at City Temple church Cardiff over the last few months or so.

here are 3:  scroll down to bottom right of this blog to find the titles, click on them to listen.

CAN WE FIX IT? YES WE CAN?  - part of our series on the book of Nehemiah, this one focuses on the symbolic significance of rebuilding the different gates in the city walls of Jerusalem.

WORD AND SPIRIT-the absolute need to experience both the power and the truth of God. Being a people of Word and Spirit.

A FRIEND CALLED GRACE-part of our recent series called Outrageous Grace, this reminds us that Grace is our friend, and focuses on the thieves either side of Jesus on the Cross 

TOWARDS THE END OF THE MIRACLE TOUR..BUT NOT THE MIRACLES.

So with this tour being the ‘Miracle Tour’ of the ‘Miracle’ album, we have been using the word ‘miracle’ in our prayer times more than ever. Our heartfelt desire has been to see the Lord God Almighty who performed miracles throughout the Bible meet with his people in a miraculous way today.

                Often times our pre-concert prayer has focused on the desperate needs of fans who may have passed us a note or sent us an email- children with cancer, husbands about to abandon their wives, families still grieving from the loss of a loved one. We may never know the results of all of our prayers, but nevertheless we have prayed consistently for miraculous intervention.

              One of the most powerful moments in the concert is when Mac encourages the audience to raise their hand in the air if they need a miracle from the Lord. Most night I am sitting somewhere in that audience and am humbled as I see many, many hand go up. A few nights ago, sitting alongside Mac on our tour bus after the show, he leaned over to me and showed me a tweet he had received that simply said “In the concert last week you asked us to raise our hands if we needed a miracle-today I received my miracle.”

             Equally powerful is the moment when Mac invites the audience to be willing to be used by the Lord as a miracle in someone else’s life. Hands shoot up all over the auditorium. In all my years of ministry I am still overcome when I see a life surrendered to God’s plans and purposes.

             World Vision child sponsorships have been consistently high throughout the tour-if you have sponsored a child then on behalf of Third Day, World Vision, and the child, a big THANKYOU.  You are being a miracle.

             Similarly, our VIP reception silent auction for the Gateway School on the Come Together compound in India has raised plentiful finances- to all who bid successfully and to all whose bids were not successful- THANKYOU for your willingness to give generously. You too are being a miracle.

             Of course, it’s one thing to talk about miracles, but it’s another thing to experience them. I’ve seen a young  man raised from the dead in India, I’ve prayed and seen a young woman’s withered arm be restored, and both in India and in my home church in Cardiff, Wales I have seen other miraculous healings and have been used by the Lord even to cast out demons from troubled people.

          Praying for the miraculous takes some faith! The gospels remind us that there were some towns and villages in which Jesus ability to perform miracles and signs and wonders was limited because of the lack of faith of the people. Praise God that his miraculous intervention doesn’t depend on how great our prayers our, or how positive our thinking is. It needs us to forget about any of our own inadequacies, uncertainties, fears, and simply focus our faith on the Lord Jesus. Even then we can’t expect God to turn up and simply ‘perform’ at our request. Time and again, Jesus was moved to the miraculous because of his love and compassion for people who were hurting, broken, sick, mentally tormented or in bondage. So our main motivations to see the miraculous must be firstly for the glory of God and secondly out of love and compassion for people.

         Will God always do the miraculous? Not necessarily!  I remember leading a mission team to India exactly one year after I had prayed and seen a young man come back to life. The team had heard this story and were ready to see more of the miraculous. One night we prayed for a blind man-our prayers were heartfelt, powerful, fervent, and went on for sometime. The man didn’t get his sight back, and the team were devastated; in fact they asked me if the problem was their own lack of faith. So I know what it’s like to pray and see the miraculous and I know what it’s like to pray and not see any evidence of a miracle. That’s fine-it reminds me of God’s sovereignty. This reminds me of the friends of Daniel when they are about to be thrown into the fiery furnace:

 Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”

        This is exactly my thinking! I pray and believe that God can do and will do miracles, but even if he doesn’t I’m not going to stop loving Him and worshipping Him!  So I encourage you to be bold in your prayers and to raise your levels of faith-but never get to the place where you think you can get on-demand signs and wonders from God.

       By the way, if you have a story of a miracle at one of our recent concerts then we’d love to be encouraged by hearing about it!

 

The MIRACLE tour begins.

It’s the second weekend of the Third Day ‘Miracle’ tour-6 concerts gone and nearly 40 more still to come. Already we have begun to realise that by naming the album and the tour ‘Miracle’ the bar has been set high! There is an expectation that this truly will be a miracle tour-onstage, for the audience, backstage, in the dressing room, on the tour bus.

For devotions with the band I am mostly going to be focusing on Paul’s 2nd letter to the Corinthians, and for Sunday tour devotional time we will be looking at some of the miracles of Jesus. In the first chapter of 2 Corinthians Paul writes these words:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. 2Cor. 1:3-4

Sharing this passage in our devotions tonight, I reflected on the characteristics of God that Paul highlights when he designates God as the Father of all compassion and as the God of all comfort. I was reminded too that whenever Jesus healed people His motivation was compassion for that person and a desire to bring them comfort.

Paul further reminds us that once we have been comforted by God in our troubles, that immediately qualifies us to bring His comfort to bear in the lives of others. I believe we will be living testimony on this tour to the truth of these verses.

Already we have begun to receive prayer requests from people in desperate need of the Lord’s compassion, comfort and healing: people who need a miracle. We have prayed for a young married couple with a one year-old daughter suffering from leukaemia, a young man with cancer of the liver and kidney, and an older lady in the advance stages of cancer.

We have heard tell of a prison inmate listening to local Christian radio and requesting Third Day’s ‘I need a miracle’ and asking listeners to pray for a miracle to save his marriage.

Each night Tai and I spend a few moments on stage encouraging members of the audience to be the miracle in the life of a child the poorest nations of the world by entering into World Vision’s child sponsorship programme, and we see on average more than 60 children sponsored each night.

I have also been auctioning artwork from the Gateway School in India in the VIP meet n’ greet before the show. This tour we have elephant collages created by some of the Gateway school children, and each night we have been amazed at the generosity of fans. All the proceeds goes to the upkeep of the school and the education of the 400 plus children.

What is clear is that our faith levels are rising, we are being bolder in our prayers and we are believing that God is truly a miracle working God! For our tour devotion last Sunday I shared the story of the miraculous catch of fish from early in John’s gospel, and explained that although the miracle happened out in deep water- that place of complete abandonment and surrender to God and to the flow of the Holy Spirit- that first of all Jesus asked John to push out a little way. The biggest miracles sometimes start with the smallest steps. Yet you can’t stay in the shallows forever, you have to push onto the deep.

Will you pray that on this tour we really discover the thrill and the abandonment of the deep and of the miraculous.

VIDEO HIGHLIGHTS OF MACEDONIA MISSION.

The first week of 2013 was spent with Oasis Church in Stip, Macedonia, along with a team from City Temple Cardiff, helping to celebrate Christmas. The Macedonian Christmas, being Orthodox, is on 6-7th January, and we used the time to reach out to the poor and needy. This included a Christmas Day gift service-giving biscuits, chocolate and savoury items to children and their parents.