Get over yourself!

That seems to be God current refrain to me… “Alastair, got over yourself and worship Me!”……

Then does this happen? Well………

• When I think the sound in the main auditorium is too quiet (note: it is never too loud!)
• When I think the worship is to “us” focused and not Him focused
• When the sound generated by the band is awful and the singing sounds like two cats getting strangled while singing the descant fro ding dong merrily on high
• When the worship is not bouncy when I want to bounce and bouncy when I want to reflect
• When I think I am going to die from heat exhaustion due to the temperature in the auditorium
• When another weird “song in the spirit” that sounds suspiciously like Bette Midler is sung during the worship time, why are all spiritual songs done in a country / folks way? Why can’t we have some in good old ska or punk….
• When we have had a line of weird whacked out non connecting ‘prophecies’ and have only been able to worship Him for 5 minutes so far…
• When I am asked to drum slower/ quieter / with more sensitivity (whatever that is)
• When the speaker looses me in the first ten leaps around his dodgy (poor translation) of the bible
• When a contribution is brought that lasts 20 minutes has twelve tangents and five “and another thing”
• When OPK’s (other peoples kids) won’t sit down / join in / are making too much noise / stop playing with toys / disturbing my kids or eat all the post meeting biscuits
• When people are moping around  and glum faced when we could be worshiping Jesus
• When someone spends 15 minutes praying, due to extended pauses when you think they have finished but as your about to pray they start up again
• When one the kids accidently manages to pour their entire water bottle over their sibling who then accidently manages to smash their fist into the others nose….
• When I see one of the charismaniacs heading for the guests….
• When someone complains that we should not show the type of film on film nights that I want to show
• When the worship leaders says “Go and find someone you don’t know and say hello to them and give them a hug”
• when the speaker mentions multiple people you have never heard of multiple times in the sermon
• when someone thinks it’s great to put naff pictures behind the words on the screen
• when the church has the audacity to say the coffee is coffee when in fact it is instant slurry.

See I have a lot of hang ups, I never said I was perfect, I am not fully sanctified but at least God keeps me turning back to him.

These external things get in the way of me and God, as I allow them to annoy me and become my focus. This is so not the way I want to be. I want to be focused on God when it is time to worship him together. I need to get over myself in these areas, they are not important, not really, and God is so worthy of all my attention not just when we gather but also the rest of the time.

So God feel free to keep breaking in and telling me to get over myself, I appreciate your help!

But my question to you dear reader is this.

“In what areas does God want you to get over yourself?”

Basecamp Video’s uploaded

Basecamp was a weekend training conference for those who felt called to church plant. Hosted and lead by New Frontiers it included excellent teaching, council and fellowship. The videos of the training have just been uploaded you can view them here:-  http://www.vimeo.com/album/72147

We had an excellent time on the weekend (click on basecamp in the cloud to the right to see my thoughts on it) and I hope these video are a help to all those who were not there.

Begone yea foul fiend! or How I had a Spirit cast out of me and had my “Baptism in the Spirit”

As a church we are moving into a new year looking at what it is to be filled, full and living in the Power of the Holy Spirit, I thought I would share what happened to me at my “Baptism in the Spirit”.

I was saved in the January of 1990 and was told to go forward to receive “Baptism in the Spirit” at our church. So for weeks I went forward and while others were falling down or speaking in tongues or jumping up and down nothing happened to me. Gradually however over time I started to get pictures and prophecies for people and started to hesitantly speak in tongues. I knew these were of God as there was no way I was going to stand there and spout gobbledegook in public! But there was not the big Shazzam, big BANG, the Screamingabdabs, the falling over like Del Boy Trotter, the shake-rattle-and-rolls that I was expecting or that others were expecting for me. I felt like a second class citizen, how come all those people where having a massive time with God and I was not. So annoying!

Then the Toronto thingy came and there were people rolling on the floor, roaring like lions, laughing like drunkards, falling over, stumbling, smiling, praising, shouting… and even though I was prayed for at every meeting… zip, nada, nothing, zero, not even a twinge, oh I was sorely tempted to fake it but I didn’t!

This went on for nearly 5 years after I was saved, then one night at a meeting in our church in Newcastle, during the whole “Toronto thingy”,  the Spirit fell on me in a powerful way, did I fall to the ground no, did I start to shout in tongues and prophecy wonderful prophecies no, did I start to roar like a lion  no, did I jump up and down like the jumping Jews of Jerusalem from Blackadder  no, did I roll on the floor laughing no! Darn it!

The Spirit came and cast an evil spirit out of me instead, so as they were all having a bless up I went mental. To be specific, a spirit of hatred was removed by force from me. It was a strange experience, there was my body being flung around, I remember it trying to head butt our elder at the time but as I was bent over and crooked I could only head butt his chest, chairs were flung, my father in law who is short but built like a brick refuse outhouse pinned me to the floor by sitting on my chest as I spoke in a horrid voice that shocked and scared Mrs Beatthedrum.

While all this was going on where was I the real me? I was in a bubble somewhere, with Jesus, he was holding me, telling me that he loved me, comforting me, encouraging me, strengthening me.  This was my first real close personal experience of the Holy Spirit and first overwhelming time with Jesus. It was amazing, it was serene, it was peaceful, it was full of love.

You know God had been waiting for the right time to remove that spirit and give me that experience of him. It had been there for years gnawing away at me, making me react badly and doing evil things to people. He knew that I was not strong enough to start with, that I needed to grow and mature in him before it was removed.

What was the effect, it was amazing, my life changed yet again, conversion had been a major first step but a huge chain had been destroyed and removed from me. I found a new prayer langue in tongues, started to prophecy in such a way as I had not experienced before , I found a peace without parallel and a deep joy that was and is unshakable, a joy that even when the black Dog of depression was on me never really went or goes away .

Whoop Whoop Praise God for He is great and His timing is Perfect!