Category Archives: Ministry

The Grey Rain-Curtain

Insights, Others' stuff, Worship, Personal, Ministry, Testimony
This entry is part 9 of 38 in the series Fiona

This is another ‘spontaneous’ post; one written and then published straight away, like the one I did on what would have been Fiona’s and my wedding anniversary.

I don’t normally ‘do’ calendar festivals; I don’t particularly think of any day as being ‘special’, whether Christmas, Easter, my birthday… but sometimes these ‘recognised’ festivals do get me thinking along the lines of the things they are trying to ‘celebrate’ on those days. Which, when you think about it, is probably a fair part of the idea.

So, today is Easter Sunday, and I have just got back from Church where, as often happens there, I was completely lost in worship. We’d just finished a song, and David, the saxophonist, just continued to play a haunting little riff… and within a few seconds, the congregation were singing in the Spirit, a beautiful sound of blended, harmonised voices, with what could be heard as discordant counterpoints and undercurrents but because of the dynamics (relative volumes) they did not clash but enhanced the whole song. Quite the most beautiful Spirit singing I have heard in a long time, and only really possible with a largeish congregation because of the way the harmonies worked.*

Actually that’s not entirely relevant for today’s article, except that this article is about Easter Sunday. The day where Christians all over the world celebrate that Jesus of Nazareth, having been dead for a couple of days**, is resurrected. He came back to life; not just the same life as He had before He died, but risen to an entirely new kind of life, thus modelling our own resurrections at the ‘end of the age’.

Death had been beaten. Up until then, death was seen as The End. There were a number of ideas floating around like some sort of afterlife, but up until then, nobody had come back again after having been dead for that long. Isaiah 25:7-8 says:

“On this mountain He will destroy
the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
the sheet that covers all nations;
He will swallow up death forever”

…and this idea is covered again and again in the Bible. The promise that death would no longer be the terror and threat that, up until the Resurrection of Jesus, it had been.

1Cor15:55 says:

“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”

This is Good News! It means that Death is not the end. I have had close acquaintance with death and its effects, over the last six months since my wife Fiona died. And I have to tell you that death no longer holds any terror, any fear, for me. This is, and has been, my personal experience. Because I know, because God has shown me, that death is not the end. He has shown me what Fiona has now. And I have seen an amazing woman of God face death with utter calm, peace and serenity – because of what she knew to be true – that again death is not the end.

God showed me lots of really deep things of the Spirit last night (I was in the bath, actually!), one of which was that Death is no longer the worst thing that can happen. He showed me that while at the same time pointing to the last six months, where I have lived in a certainty (not simply a denial of the facts!) that there is a life beyond the grave; Fiona is there, and she is safe in Jesus’s company. I cannot even begin to tell you what an incredible source of comfort and reassurance that is. This knowledge is, quite literally, a Life Changer.

I’ve always had a great passion for the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien; I have posted before on themes related to his work. Now, the following quotation is indeed from the last of the three epic Lord of the Rings movies ‘The Return of the King’; however, these actual lines were not written by Tolkien himself, but by the scriptwriters for the movie. The scene is in the beleaguered city of Minas Tirith, where the forces of Mordor are about to break down the last gate and destroy everyone within. Gandalf and the hobbit Pippin are awaiting their fate as the gate begins to splinter:

“Pippin: I didn’t think it would end this way.

Gandalf: End? No, the journey doesn’t end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.

Pippin: What? Gandalf? See what?

Gandalf: White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.

Pippin: Well, that isn’t so bad.

Gandalf: No. No, it isn’t.”

– From the movie ‘Lord of the Rings – The Return of the King’

As I said, the quotation was from the movie, but the inspiration was actually from Tolkien himself. In this first quote, the hobbit Frodo is dreaming in the house of Tom Bombadil, early on in their adventure:

“That night they heard no noises. But either in his dreams or out of them, he could not tell which, Frodo heard a sweet singing running in his mind; a song that seemed to come like a pale light behind a grey rain-curtain, and growing stronger to turn the veil all to glass and silver, until at last it was rolled back, and a far green country opened before him under a swift sunrise.”

– ‘The Fellowship of the Ring‘, Book I, Chapter 8: “Fog on the Barrow-Downs”

This is mentioned again at the end of The Return of the King, when Frodo departs on the Elven-ship:

“[T]he ship went out into the High Sea and passed on into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.“

– ‘The Return of the King’, Book VI, Chapter 9: “The Grey Havens” [emphasis mine]

One of the main reasons why Fiona wanted the Annie Lennox song ‘Into the West’ played at her memorial service was because she saw herself as fulfilling that promise; she would be going ‘Into the West’, with her Jesus. What an awesome thought.

Here then, I re-present the life-memories video that my daughter made for her Mum’s memorial service, with that song in it. This is the life of a great woman of God, whose confidence in her Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was unshakeable, that He would carry her through the grey rain-curtain and on ‘into the West’:

No, as Gandalf said, “the journey does not end here”. The ‘shroud that covers all nations’ (Is 25:7-8) has been destroyed. Our physical death in this world is simply the transition from our present life into the even greater, fuller, and more complete Life, beyond the veil of death – beyond the grey rain-curtain, if you will – and into the light, love, power and glory of Heaven. The ‘white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise’. How can one fear Death when you realise this sort of thing – despite being quoted from a fantasy story – is real, that it’s true?

I claim that it’s true. How can I prove this? I can’t do it empirically. I can’t, except to give my personal testimony as to what I have seen, what God has showed me. I do hope it comes across as a transferable idea, that is, that you as the reader can derive some benefit from it. I know it’s difficult when it’s someone else’s story, but hopefully the testimony of someone who has been through this fire, and seen all the things I have seen, will help you in some way if you are struggling with the loss of a loved one, or indeed with life itself. Let me encourage you that the promise of the Kingdom of God is not, in fact, primarily concerned with the ‘afterlife’ – though of course it does indeed concern that closely – but also and especially it concerns bringing the power and life of that Country into our present world.

You see, when Jesus said, “Your Kingdom come; Your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven”, (Mt 6:10) He meant it. And He demonstrated it; by performing all the miracles He did, He demonstrated that in fact the power of the Kingdom can indeed be brought into this life, and our lives can be lived in the knowledge and exercise of that power. Because the fear of Death has been defeated by Jesus’s Resurrection.

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is something that has been transmitted down the ages as something that is true. Granted, that of itself doesn’t make it true, but there is also the testimony of countless Christian witnesses down the centuries, all of whom have claimed that in fact Jesus Christ is alive and living within their hearts by His Spirit. The presence of the Holy Spirit within them, and their real consciousness of His presence, convinces these people (including myself) that this incredibly weird, far-fetched and too-good-to-be-true tale is, in fact, completely true. (And when you hear spontaneous, supernatural singing like that which we had in Church this morning, that just adds to the convincing evidence for me).

Just think about it like this: the one greatest fear, the most powerful natural force in history, the one thing that most humans spend their entire lives in fear of – Death – is no longer the power that it was. Its power – its ability to damage, to take away, to destroy forever – has been taken away because Death is no longer the end. Jesus said, ‘The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy; I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.‘ (Jn 10:10 KJV)

Living in the truth of that awesome fact – instead of fear of Death, Life More Abundantly – absolutely has to be one of the greatest keys to receiving the ‘Peace of God that transcends [goes beyond] understanding’ (Phil 4:7). This stuff is true; it is real, and I have lived it.

Peace to you.

The header image for this post is Gandalf and Pippin’s dialogue transliterated into the Elvish script known as the ‘Tengwar‘, as developed by J. R. R. Tolkien for his extensive development of the languages of Middle-Earth. You wouldn’t have seen this in the movies, although they were a beautifully detailed (and in my opinion accurate) representation of Tolkien’s fictitious world. There is so much richness in the Tolkien books; a whole world invented by the genius of that one man.

*For a good example of this kind of singing, take a look at this video from about 4:44 onwards.

**Most Christians think of Jesus as rising from the dead after three days. I have a problem with that description of the time gap: Died Friday, rose from the dead Sunday. No way that’s three days…there are a number of different ideas about that timescale which I won’t explore here, but suffice to say He’d been dead longer than a mere half an hour, which is the longest kind of time where we have records of people whom we thought were dead but actually they ‘recovered’. Drowning victims, that kind of thing. He really was proper dead and He was resurrected. Wow.

Here We Are/Have Your Way

Insights, Worship, Personal, Ministry, Music

Three years ago, I came back into worship leading, as my ‘Dark Night of the Soul‘ ended. At that time, we led worship at a local Christian conference/retreat centre, Brunel Manor, and we sang the song ‘Have Your Way’. A song that declares complete trust in God to have His way in our lives, to let Him in and let Him have control. This is the life of the Spirit; a life walking in the Spirit.

When I wrote the piece linked to above (here is it again), I declared complete trust and faith in God to handle the healing of my gorgeous wife Fiona, who at the time was fighting inoperable pancreatic cancer. And yet Fiona died of that illness, but even then I believe that this was her healing. I won’t go into detail on this here, but have written at length on my thoughts on that matter in my series ‘Fiona‘ on this blog. Take a look.

In this post, I am showcasing two of Don Moen’s* lovely songs: ‘Here We Are‘, leading into ‘Have Your Way‘. The idea is to demonstrate that worshipping God, drawing near to Him and entering into His presence, and being conscious of His nearness, naturally leads into an expression of trust. So, in ‘Here We Are‘, we worship God and tell Him how much we trust Him. In ‘Have Your Way‘, we put that trust into practical expression by inviting Him into our lives and our situations, however bad those situations may be. Sometimes things work out as we’d hoped (healing, whatever), and sometimes not – as in our case. But still, God is good, and God is worth trusting. It would be great if you can enter in to these songs and let God in, to do the things He’s longing to do with you. Because it will be good!

Here we are, lifting our hands to You
Here we are, giving You thanks for all You do
And as we praise, and worship Your holy Name
You are here, dwelling within our praise

For every answered prayer
For always being there
For love that hears us when we call
For arms that lift us when we call
Oh you have always been right beside us
Leading us all along the way
We’ve made it through because of You

For days we cannot see
For all that’s yet to be
For trials we may have to face
When we’ll be leaning on Your grace
It will be Your strength that saves us
Your love that makes us strong
And through it all, we’ll sing this song

Have Your way, have Your way
Holy Spirit, fill our hearts and have Your way
As we wait, as we pray
Speak Your Word into our hearts, and have Your way.

One of the really clever things you can do, when embedding a video from YouTube in a blog page like this, is to highlight a portion of the video for people to watch. This is what I have done here, in that you will see that these two songs are simply a small section of the whole video which is actually nearly an hour and a quarter in length. This means that if you would like to view the entire video, you can do that simply by clicking the beginning of the red track indicator at the bottom of the video. Or you can skip to any part of the video by clicking somewhere on the red track indicator.

*Don Moen is the chap in the header picture

Praise the Lord!

Others' stuff, Personal, Ministry, Music

Now this really is a song from my youth. Ok, I was 20, but still…

In the early 80’s, there was a Christian singer called Dave Pope, who did a cover of a song, in 1981, called ‘Praise the Lord’, by Michael Hudson and Brown Bannister. We loved it (although I never could work out the chords so that we could perform it ourselves! Worked them out last week, though, now being a much more experienced musician). Then we heard the song again at Festival 84 (a bit like the Dales Bible Week) at Staffordshire County Showground, this time performed by the Mohabir Sisters.

For years, I have tried to find a recording of that song. Have you ever tried to find a song called ‘Praise the Lord’? Can you imagine how many hits you get for that phrase on Google?

And then, only this week, one of my friends shared a YouTube link on Facebook, of a Christian artist (bearing the unlikely and quite possibly made-up name of ‘Chris Christian’*), singing the very song I have been looking for all these years. Somehow I had never thought to look on YouTube… and I found several renditions of it, two of which I have included below, including the Chris Christian version.

But I also went and looked for the Dave Pope version too, and, like I did for ‘Emmanuel‘, I found a vinyl record of Dave’s album from right back there in 1981, and I have made an mp3 copy of the song.

And here it is:


When you’re up against a struggle, that shatters all your dreams
When your hopes have been cruelly crushed by Satan’s manifested schemes
When you feel the urge within you to submit to earthly fear
Don’t let the faith you’re standing on seem to disappear.

Praise the Lord, He can work through those who praise Him
Praise the Lord, for our God inhabits praise
Praise the Lord, for the chains that seek to bind you
Serve only to remind you, that they fall powerless behind you
When you praise Him.

Now Satan is a liar, and he wants to make us think
That we are paupers when he knows himself we are children of the King
So lift that mighty shield of faith for the battle must be won
We know that Jesus Christ is risen so the work’s already done.

Praise the Lord, He can work through those who praise Him
Praise the Lord, for our God inhabits praise
Praise the Lord, for the chains that seek to bind you
Serve only to remind you, that they fall powerless behind you
When you praise Him.

Praise the Lord, God can work through those who praise Him
Praise the Lord, for our God inhabits praise
Praise the Lord, for the chains that seek to bind you
Serve only to remind you, they fall powerless behind you
When you praise Him, praise Him, praise Him, praise Him….

When you praise Him.
When you praise…….. the Lord.

Wonderful! As I have said in other posts, worship and praise really put a believer’s life and circumstances into their proper perspective. Praising God in the midst of any circumstances, good or bad, brings His power and presence into the situation in a way that nothing else does. Yes, I know it sounds like some sort of talisman or magic spell. But its not; what is happening is that you are bringing a consciousness, or awareness, of God’s Presence into your circumstances. You remind yourself (not God; He already knows!) that He is with you and He will never leave or forsake you (Dt 31:6; Heb 13:5). And that puts an entirely different slant on things – entirely different.

Praise the Lord!

Here are two of the YouTube videos of this song that I found. Nice arrangements with slight changes to the lyrics.

First up, the Chris Christian version, posted by someone who can’t spell ‘Christian’:

And finally, a version by the ‘Imperials’. Possibly pre-Star Wars; not certain 😉

*Chris, If by some chance you come to read this, I’m only joking 😉

But you’ve got to admit…..

Song of Incense

Others' stuff, Personal, Ministry, Music
This entry is part 7 of 38 in the series Fiona

It’s four months today since my precious wife Fiona died, and I wanted to share another post about her and the grieving process, again from a different slant.

While looking for a picture of our first home, I came across the picture above. It shows Fiona with our dogs, Jasper and Katie, and our son David, in July 1987. David was about seven weeks old in this picture – he’d been born six weeks prematurely – and he’s now a big strapping lad who will be 30 in June. How time flies…and so does David; he’s a Pilot too 🙂

This is a picture of a beautiful 21-year old Fiona in our first house in July 1985, giving the scrounging dogs a treat…

But the reason I was wanting pictures of our first home is because I remember God’s provision for us – in those days, and ever after – and I wanted to testify to that provision. He set up everything for us in order for us to get married, He set up everything for our house, my job, everything. Soon after David was born, as I said, six weeks prematurely, he caught a deadly illness from another child in the Baby Unit. This illness had a 50% fatality rate, and for the majority of survivors, they would have to have a colostomy. But David made a full recovery. Our next house purchase was also a series of one Divine Intervention after another. And that has been our testimony for our whole married lives together.

So how can I doubt that, even with losing Fiona, God will continue to provide for my family and I? All along, He’s been right there, provided what we needed, healed us and lifted us up.

Praise the Lord, my soul;
all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
“Praise the Lord, my soul,
  and forget not all his benefits—
 who forgives all your sins
 and heals all your diseases,
 who redeems your life from the pit
 and crowns you with love and compassion,
who satisfies your desires with good things
 so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s”. ( – Psalm 103:1-5)

And this has been true for us for our entire married lives together. The healing? Fiona died of cancer; how can that be a healing? Well, as I said in another post, I have never known an illness so resistant to healing prayer. And I have seen people healed by prayer; I have been healed myself – actually without prayer; God intervened sovereignly and decisively – so what happened? What went wrong? Well, I can only conclude that it was simply Fiona’s time. She always believed that each person has a time to ‘go’; her favourite Psalm was the 139th, and in Ps 139:16 it says that, “All the days ordained for me were written in your book, before one of them came to be”. Fiona believed that. And a couple of years before she died, I had a definite vision of her healed – but on the other side of the ‘veil’, although I only realised the significance of that after she died. (Sometimes the abstract nature of visions makes them unclear as to their full meaning). So in a very real sense, although she died, I believe that she is indeed healed, and whole, and walking with Jesus in paradise (Lk 23:43). And remembering these times, looking at these photos, are a lovely reminder of the amazing times and adventures we had together: the places we went; the things we did; the dangers we shared; the joys and the horrors. This is a healthy thing to do, to remember the life we had together, and it helps the grieving process. It helps here to remember the Dr. Seuss quote: “Don’t cry because it’s over; smile because it happened”. Although of course it’s a bit of both, to be sure!

Most of you will know that Fiona and I had a strong ministry in leading worship. And it is no coincidence that we considered our entire lives to be built on the foundation of worship. What’s that got to do with our first home? Well, as we were preparing our house to move into it, in late 1983 and just before we were married, we did the whole thing to the backdrop of worship. We had my ghetto-blaster playing worship tapes all the time, and we worshipped along with the music. One of the primary worship tapes we had at that time was one called ‘Call to War’ by David and Dale Garratt of ‘Scripture in Song’, and the songs on that tape always reminded us, and still remind me, of those days when we were getting our house ready. Like, for example, our first meal in the house together, when we ate Pot Noodles sitting on a pile of ripped-up carpet in the bathroom of our new house. So, here’s the song that gives this blog post its title: Song of Incense. This is a lovely worship song that, to me, epitomises that tape and those days. Here it is:

Let our praise to You be as incense
Let our praise to You be as pillars of Your throne
Let our praise to You be as incense
As we come before You and worship You alone

As we see You in Your splendour
As we gaze upon Your Majesty
As we join the hosts of angels
And proclaim together Your holiness

Holy, Holy Holy,
Holy is the Lord*

What I’m saying is that you can’t do better than to build your life on an appreciation of God – which is what worship is – and to involve Him in everything. Even though Fiona died, still I know that a) she’s healed and whole, and b) I’ll see her again. God has revealed this to me personally and there is no way I can lose that vision. Doctrines and theologies will come and go, but once Father God has revealed something to a believer, they don’t forget His words. And all this is because we lived together a life of worship: closeness to God and declaring His merits. I can recommend no better way of living.

How to do this? Well, you might have heard people in churches speaking of a ‘lifestyle of worship’. In other words, it’s not just something you ‘do’ on a Sunday; it’s something that pervades your entire life every day of the week. As St. Paul says in Romans 12:1: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship”. It’s easy to start this. Just begin to praise and thank God for everything, in every situation, no matter what happens, and before you know it, it will become a habit that will sustain you for your whole life. Worship can be singing, just chatting with God, whispering to Him, dance, even basket-making or whatever your hobby is. And in this way you build up a consciousness of the presence of God in your life that you simply can’t get rid of; not that you’d try of course. This is why so many Christians appear to go around bubbling with an inexpressible, and inexplicable, joy and radiance. These are the worshippers; these are those close to God, hearing His heart, and you will find them in all denominations and also in places of no denomination. And aside from the habit-forming worship lifestyle, worship is also tremendous fun.

So, this day, determine to offer up your own personal ‘Song of Incense’ to God. Start with this song if you like, then look in my ‘Worship’ category here in my blog for more songs to get you started.

This is my secret for how I have kept so upbeat during this time of terrible tragedy. It’s all based on a closeness to God through the habit of worship. In some ways, ‘The thing I feared the most has happened to me’ (Job 3:25); the very worst thing that could happen has happened – I have lost my lovely, irreplaceable, precious wife. But still you see me ‘filled with an inexpressible joy’ (1Pet1:8), and let me tell you it’s not a ‘front’ as someone once suggested it might be! I am a Yorkshireman and, with me, what you see is what you get! Worship forms the centre of my life; I would not be ‘me’ without it. I know it might sound all airy-fairy and up in the air, but worship brings the reality of God into everyday life like nothing else. I heartily recommend it.

*For musical nerds, this song requires some explanation. Its exotic-sounding ‘unorthodox’ chord structure sounds the way it does because it is played mainly on the dominant chord instead of the tonic, that is, the song is written in the key of A♭, but it begins with, and is generally played, using the chord E♭. It’s a similar principle to the chord structure used in Kari Jobe’s ‘Revelation Song‘. This is all fine except when some dork who doesn’t understand how that works comes along and transposes it into ‘D’ for guitars, then they have to put in lots of ‘accidentals’ like C major and whatever. I once saw that in a Christian songbook, much to my chagrin. For starters, you should leave a song in the key in which it is written, unless there’s a potential problem with the congregation’s vocal range, which there isn’t in this case. Most instances of changing the original key are done because it makes it easier for lazy musicians to play in a key they can manage, rather than learning how to play in any key (some keys are more difficult than others). A song is written in the key it’s in because it sounds right in that key, and that shouldn’t be changed without a really good reason! A simple capo-1 ‘G’ notation would have worked…

Jesus, Name Above All Names

Others' stuff, Worship, Ministry, Music

This is one of my favourite songs from my early years as a Christian – Jesus, Name Above All Names.

I sometimes think that many people, even in the Church, underestimate the importance of Jesus. He’s not only the ‘Author and Finisher of our faith’ (Heb 12:2 (KJV)), but also that ‘From Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things’ (Rom 11:36); “For by him all things were created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible…” (Col 1:16) and “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” (Jn 1:3). Jesus is the Name before which every knee shall bow (Phil 2:10). His Name is the Name to which all authority has been given, in heaven and Earth (Mat 28:12) Jesus is absolutely central, in all of history, in the Church, in absloutely everything. “He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy”. (Col 1:18).

I could go on. I could go on declaring the majesty, the holiness, the power and the glory of Jesus…but I will instead pass you over to Terry MacAlmon, worship leader extraordinaire, to lead this lovely song declaring Jesus – Name Above All Names. Sing it in the light of what I have written here today about Jesus, the One Whose Name is indeed above every other name, and in the light of what you know in your heart to be true.

Let your praise be to Him as incense today. Lift up your hands and worship Him!

Jesus, Name above all names
Beautiful Saviour, glorious Lord
Emmanuel, God is with us
Blessed Redeemer, Living Word

If you’re wondering why Terry refers to God’s power moving all over the Netherlands, it’s because this video was taken at a worship conference in the Netherlands in 2010.

A version of this song which would be much more conteporary to my ‘early Christian years’ era can be found on the tape ‘Songs of Celebration‘ on my website ‘VintageWorshipTapes.com‘

With All I Am

Others' stuff, Worship, Ministry, Music

I love to bless my readers with excellent worship music, and I apologise that I haven’t put a proper worship song on my blog for some time. That’s about to change: here’s the lovely song ‘With All I Am’ (Jesus I believe in You) from Hillsong. Go and sit somewhere quiet, and let your heart fly free in God’s Grace with this lovely worship:

Into Your hand
I commit again
With All I am
For You Lord
You hold my world
In the palm of Your hand
And I am Yours forever

Chorus:

Jesus I believe in You
Jesus I belong to You
You’re the reason that I live
The reason that I sing
With all I am

I’ll walk with You
Wherever You go
Through tears and joy
I’ll trust in You
And I will live
In all of Your ways
Your promises forever

Chorus

I will worship, I will worship You
I will worship, I will worship You

Chorus

 

Where you go, I will go

Insights, Personal, Ministry, Music
This entry is part 5 of 38 in the series Fiona
“Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God”. – Ruth 1:16

Today’s post, unlike most of my posts, is a ‘spontaneous’ one. Most of the time, I write my posts in advance and schedule them to appear roughly every three days or so.

But not this one. Today would have been Fiona’s and my thirty-third wedding anniversary. (And I never once forgot, by the way!)

And so, today, it is only right that on my first anniversary without her, I acknowledge the day with something very special, deeply personal, spontaneous (I have just written it right now) and which would have meant a lot to her.

When we first met, Fiona and I used to do a lot of exploration, driving around the North of England in my little old white Mini (which we called ‘Cloud Nine’). And we used to play worship tapes through a ghetto blaster which sat on the back seat – and sing along, of course. One of the tapes we had was called ‘Emmanuel – God is With Us’, volume 5 of the ‘Songs of Fellowship’ series. And on there was a song called ‘Where you go, I will go’, which had a special significance for us. Once, before we were married, Fiona was ill in bed. I sat at her bedside and read her the lovely love story of Ruth and Boaz from the Bible, and we particularly loved the verse where Ruth says to her mother-in-law, Naomi:  “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God”. (Ruth 1:16). That song from the tape immediately became ‘our song’, and it became a symbol of our love for, and commitment to, each other.

I am absolutely sure that this next part of the story is no coincidence. For years now, I have been searching for a copy of that album, ‘Emmanuel’, that we lost so long ago. The album that contained ‘our song’.

And just this week, I have managed to find one on eBay and buy it – the vinyl record version – and so I have used the same technology that I use on my other website – VintageWorshipTapes.com – to convert the album into electronic files that I can play anywhere. I am sure the timing of this is entirely God’s work. Why this week, out of all the hundreds – yes, hundreds – of weeks I have been looking for this music, does it suddenly appear on eBay? That’s the Hand of God, right there. Thank You so much, Lord, for blessing me in this way!

“Where you go, I will go”

Today, of all days, should rightly be the day that I make this song public, in honour of my darling wife. It’s cost me a lot of tears to digitise that album, and to hear once again the tracks that remind me so much of our early days together, and also to write this piece. But it’s been healthy. It’s reminded me of the solid foundations of our relationship, and reminded me once again of all the amazing adventures we had together.

We fulfilled our promise to each other for over 34 years.

Where you go, I will go. And we did exactly that.

(Click the play button on the track to hear the song)


Where you go, I will go
Where you lodge, I will lodge
Do not ask me to turn away, for I will follow you
We’ll serve the Lord together, and praise Him day to day
For He brought us together, to love Him and serve Him always

A Crumb Of My Comfort

Insights, Personal, Ministry
This entry is part 4 of 38 in the series Fiona

I’m writing this piece because it’s two months today since I lost my wonderful wife, Fiona.

And it’s all been very strange since. In addition to having the huge adjustment to life without my soulmate and team-mate, I’d expected to have been completely overwhelmed with grief and to have been good for nothing useful at all. I’d expected it to be crippling, indeed incapacitating.

But it hasn’t been like that at all. I’ve generally coped just fine; I have accepted her loss and I am just getting on with life. And I don’t fully understand why that isn’t difficult.

As you might imagine, I must credit much of this to my Heavenly Father. David wrote, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; and He saves those who are crushed in spirit” (Ps 34:18) and I have found this to be true in my own experience. I have had such a consciousness of the Presence of God, and He seems to have released small chunks of memories for me to grieve over in kind of ‘bite-sized chunks’. I haven’t had to deal with 34 years of soul-mate relationship’s worth of grief in one big lump. It’s been much easier than I thought it would be, although still terrible of course.

I’ve called this piece, ‘A Crumb of my Comfort’. And so I want to share with you as many crumbs of comfort as I can, from the many I have received from Father. Remember, it’s my aim in life to always do what I see my Father doing (John 5:19). And the biggest comfort to me has been my absolute certainty that Fiona is in the presence of God, worshipping the One she loves.

Over the months before Fiona died, I had several personal worship experiences where I felt like I was participating in what you might call the ‘Worship of Heaven’. For this purpose, Holy Spirit used especially some of the worship songs of Terry MacAlmon, which I have featured on my blog in the past*. For those months, the Spirit was using these, and others of Terry’s songs, to impress upon me, “Look, this is what Fiona is going to, only better!” And over the months, that knowledge and experience has soaked into my very being and it has become a part of me – in greater measure than I have previously had, even as a worship leader. In some ways, I feel like I am still worshipping with Fiona. Within an hour of Fiona’s passing, I had a vivid and almost indescribable vision of her worshipping in the Presence of God, and felt the Spirit saying to me, “There. This is what I meant”. Since worship is such an integral part of my life, and since my experience of God is an almost constant, exciting and energising Presence right in the centre of my heart, what better way for the Spirit to encourage me regarding where Fiona is now?

And because of this, my grief is mixed with an indescribable, bubbling joy, that, through the tears, is a constant reminder of God’s Presence both with me and with Fiona. It’s all very odd; in some ways I feel as if she’s not really gone, but then I also realise that if I am worshipping in the Throne Room in my spirit, then in some indescribable** way I am also worshipping with Fiona, who is doing the same thing. My heart is full of thankfulness and joy and praise and worship and there isn’t a thing I can do to stop it – not that I would try! The whole thing is quite surreal! I know it’s a bit of a cliche but I really do know that she has indeed ‘gone to a better place’ and that she is full of joy there. And so it is difficult to be too upset; I know that the girl that I love is out of pain, in the Presence of her Jesus, and completely, utterly safe, whole and full of joy, in ways that are far beyond anything we can imagine.

Don’t get me wrong on the worship thing by the way; I don’t believe that the entire experience of Heaven is confined to just one big worship meeting. I’m sure it’s not; I’m sure that attendance at that great gathering is optional, and on a come-and-go as you like basis, and there’s definitely more to worship than just singing songs. But I do believe that Fiona walks closely with her Saviour and He has His arm around her (I’ve seen that too). The Glory she experiences is beyond anything that can be experienced in our mortal bodies, but I know for a fact that, despite our bodies’ limitations, we too can experience the Power and Presence of God. I know this because I have so experienced Him, and do so on a regular basis. I rest in the presence of God, knowing that everything is in His hands. The Spirit gave me a verse the other day, which describes my position well; it’s Psalm 116:7 – “Return unto thy rest, O my soul; for the LORD hath dealt bountifully with thee” (Ps 116:7 KJV) or in modern English, “Be at rest once more, O my soul, for the Lord has been good to you”. And, again, this has been true in my personal experience***.

Despite this being published on Christmas Day, I wasn’t going to mention Christmas. Bah humbug. But there’s a contextual reason for it: at Christmas, we celebrate the unbelievable phenomenon called ‘Immanuel’, which means ‘God With Us’, just like I am claiming happens to me.

God Himself, the Creator of everything, right here and walking and living amongst us.

Two thousand years ago, it was of course Jesus Who walked among us – literally walked among us – as a human being (Jn 1:14). Nowadays He is still with us, because He promised us that He would send His Holy Spirit, to be with us for ever (Jn 14:16 KJV). And this is how we know that we belong to Him; why I can claim that He is real in me: Ephesians 1: 13-14 says, “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory“, and 2Cor1:21-22, “Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come“. I literally feel the Holy Spirit within my heart; that’s how I know. And He also said, I will be with you always, until the end of time (Mt 28:20). Note that it’s not that the Bible says it, so I believe it; its the other way round: I feel Him in my heart, and subsequently to that, I find from the Bible and from talking with fellow believers that others too have felt that Presence****.

And this is what is meant by Immanuel – ‘God With Us’. Again, this has been true in my experience. And that’s how I know; that’s why my faith gives me such assurance, reassurance, comfort and hope.

Let me finish with, would you believe, a verse from a Christmas carol (despite my not planning on doing anything Christmas here, but such is the Spirit’s leading…) O Little Town of Bethlehem. So many people simply sing these carols year upon year without really knowing what they are about, but this verse captures the idea of Immanuel beautifully:

How silently, how silently
The wondrous Gift is given
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of His Heaven
No ear can hear His coming, but in this world of sin
Where meek souls will receive Him, still the dear Christ enters in

And all of those are the crumbs I offer you, taken from the vast comfort I have been given. I sincerely hope they bless and encourage you 🙂

*The blog posts are these:

I Came to Worship You

Blessing and Honor

Holy Are You Lord

You Deserve the Glory

When Words Are Not Enough

[Edit: My Glory and the Lifter of My Head]

 **I think that’s the third or fourth time I have used the word ‘indescribable’. But it’s the correct word to use; I am trying to describe things here that are right out on the edge of what it is possible to decribe with language. Maybe only my Spirit-language is capable of describing this sort of stuff…

***This verse was used on Fiona’s gravestone

****And so it kind-of validates the experience – not that I need it validating; it’s real enough to me – but it a) explains what it is, and b) tells me I’m not alone in feeling like this.

Father, Hear Me Calling

Insights, Others' stuff, Ministry, Music

Sometimes there’s nothing like simply taking the time out to just go and sit in God’s Presence. Maybe in your spare bedroom; maybe just in your head while travelling to work on the bus. But however you do it, know that He delights in your being there and He delights to spend time with you.

Here’s a lovely song by Don Francisco, expressing the tenderness and love that is found in God’s Presence: Father Hear Me Calling

Deep within the silence, Father hear me calling
Open to your son and lift me to Your Throne above
Lord I need to hear You, feel Your Spirit near me
Feel Your arms around me, rest inside your Love

There’s nothing on this earth can fill this thirst and longing
No-one else can satisfy the need within my soul
Come and fill my heart again with all the love that’s in You
Let me see Your Glory; let it cleanse and make me whole

There beside the river let my spirit wander
With my Friend and Saviour, to hear the Voice I love
Drinking sweet still waters
Lying in green pastures
While Your gentle Spirit rests upon me like a dove

There’s nothing on this earth can fill this thirst and longing
No-one else can satisfy the need within my soul
Come and fill my heart again with all the love that’s in You
Let me see Your Glory; let it cleanse and make me whole

(Instrumental)

There beside the river let my spirit wander
With my Friend and Saviour, to hear the Voice I love
Drinking sweet still waters
Lying in green pastures
While Your gentle Spirit rests upon me like a dove

Deep within the silence, Father hear me calling
Open to your child and lift me to Your Throne above
Lord I need to hear You, feel Your Spirit near me
Feel Your arms around me, rest inside your Love

Let me feel Your arms around me, rest inside your Love

 

– (Music and lyrics by Don Francisco, used here with his permission)

Lovely Worship Medley

Worship, Personal, Ministry, Music

cloudscape over devon

This small but powerful worship medley is absolutely gorgeous. Fiona and I used to sing the first song, ‘You Alone are Holy’, as a duet. ‘We Exalt You’, however, although one of my favourite ‘uplifting’ songs, never quite caught on as well as I’d have liked – but I share it with you today in the hope that you too will find it uplifting.


You Alone are Holy

Can you hear Creation yearning
Longing to worship His Name?
Together in all adoration
I join them to proclaim

Can you hear the angels singing
In the Presence of the King
My heart cries out to be with them
As I fall on my knees and sing

For You alone are holy
You are worthy to be praised
You alone are holy
I offer up myself to You
For it’s the least that I can do for You

To live my life in Your Presence
To hide in the wings of Your grace
To drink from Your fountain of mercy
I hunger and seek Your Face

For You alone are holy
You are worthy to be praised
You alone are holy
I offer up myself to You
For it’s the least that I can do

For You alone are holy
You are worthy to be praised
You alone are holy
I offer up myself to You
I offer up myself to You
I offer up myself to You
For it’s the least that I can do for You

You Alone

You are the Peace that guards my heart
My Help in time of need
You are the Hope that leads me on
And brings me to my knees

For there I find You waiting
And there I find release
So with all my heart I’ll worship
And unto You I’ll sing

For You alone deserve all glory
For You alone deserve all praise
Father we worship and adore You
Father we long to see Your Face

For You alone deserve all glory
For You alone deserve all praise
Father, we love You
And we worship You this day

We Exalt You

We exalt You, we exalt You
We exalt You, Exalted King on high
We exalt You, we exalt You
We exalt You, Exalted King on high

We are called of You
Gathered from all nations
Called as priests to You
To demonstrate Your praise

We exalt You, we exalt You
We exalt You, Exalted King on high
We exalt You, we exalt You
We exalt You, Exalted King on high

We are living stones
Formed by Your own righteous Hand
Joined in unity
To celebrate Your Love

We exalt You, we exalt You
We exalt You, Exalted King on high
We exalt You, we exalt You
We exalt You, Exalted King on high

We exalt You, we exalt You
We exalt You, Exalted King on high

Header Image: Cloudscape over Devon; a view above the clouds at about 7,000ft on a crystal-clear day.  Seeing a view like this evokes real worship of the sheer magnificence of God as seen in His Creation.