Before Jesus died, worship was offered to God in the Temple in Jerusalem. In the Temple there was a section called the ‘Most Holy Place’. We read in the Bible that this is where God’s Presence was on the earth. There was no lamp in this place because God’s Presence was its light. It was separated from the rest of the Temple by a veil – a six inch thick piece of fabric that was about thirty feet tall. Only the High Priest was allowed to go beyond the veil on one day of the year. So access to God’s Presence was restricted to a special perso at a specific time.

Before we proceed I must explain what it means that God’s Presence was there; surely God is everywhere? We learn from the Bible that there are different dimensions of God’s presence. We know that He is omnipresent, so He is in fact everywhere. “Where can I flee from your presence,” says David in Psalm 139. But then we also understand that the Holy Spirit lives in the hearts of believers. In a sense God is in everyone’s heart, due to His omnipresence, but there is another level of His presence to which all believers are party. This is known as the ‘indwelling’ of the Holy Spirit. The moment one is born again (when we receive forgiveness and salvation) the Holy Spirit takes up residence in one’s heart. And there is yet another level of His presence. Jesus declares in Luke 4, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor…” I like to put it this way: the Holy Spirit lives in every believer, but He comes upon us at times to aid in a specific task. This is a greater level of His presence. But there is yet another level of His Presence, and I shall denote this with a capital letter. This is when Jesus makes His Presence manifest in a specific place to His people. The Bible is filled from beginning to end with men and women who encountered this manifest Presence of King Jesus and were radically changed as a result.

So back to the Temple. When Jesus died on the cross the Temple veil was torn in two from top to bottom. This is because due to His sacrifice every believer now has access to His Presence at any time. Jesus did not die just to give you a ticket to heaven. He died to give you eternal life, and that starts now. We will go to heaven when we die and this is called the ‘Blessed Hope’. But it is not the Blessed Escape. The ultimate call on our lives is to live in the manifest Presence of Almighty God, in blissful and growing intimacy with Christ. This requires an experience. Because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, whether we have believed for fifteen minutes or fifty years, we can encounter the Presence of God. This is what true relationship with God looks like. This is why Jesus died.

How do we experience His Presence?

It will take all of eternity for us to explore all of the deep riches of a life saturated with the Presence of God. I cannot begin to do justice to this subject because I am at the beginning of my personal journey into His Presence. But I have learned one of the keys – worship. Worship opens our hearts like nothing else to encounter the Presence of the Lord. Worship is about more than just singing, it is about devoting our lives to Him. However, music is a powerful tool to help us engage with the Holy Spirit. There is an entire book in the Bible dedicated to worship songs. If you are serious about learning to worship and experiencing His Presence I suggest you read some of the Psalms every day.

I will list below some worship bands and songs that are very powerful for those who are new to the Christian life. All of these can be found on YouTube, and most can be found on Spotify. In learning to worship I suggest familiarising yourself with these songs and singing to God on your own. Whether or not you are in tune does not matter – God loves your voice! Singing on your own may feel unnatural at first, but as the Holy Spirit manifests His Presence to us we lose all self-consciousness. A good goal would be to worship for ten to fifteen minutes a day. Tell God you love Him, share your heart, thank Him for what Jesus has done and ask Him to let you feel His Presence and His love. Ask Him to dwell in your heart and change you. Before long you will be completely addicted to His Presence!

Hillsong

Mighty to Save
This is Our God
I will Exalt You
At the Cross
Saviour King
The Stand

Chris Tomlin

How Great is Our God
Amazing Grace
Everlasting God

Jesus Culture

How He Loves
Happy Day
All I Need is You
Fire Fall Down
Where You Go I Go
Revelation Song
Come Away

The best place to start is usually The Beginning. So in this section I will give an overview of the Gospel. ‘Gospel’ just means ‘Good News’. I will attempt to make this both full and concise. Before we can develop a relationship with Jesus it is important that we have at least a basic understanding of who He is, what He did, and why this is important.

Who is Jesus?

Jesus Christ is the Son of God. We believe that God is one God, but that He exists eternally as three Persons: Father God, Jesus and Holy Spirit. This concept is called the ‘Trinity’ and many men more intelligent than I have given far more detailed an account of this teaching. But it really is not much more complicated than that. C.S. Lewis gives the illustration of an egg. There is one egg, but three parts: the shell, the yolk and the white. The point for us just now is that Jesus is God.

Jesus became a man 2000 years ago. He wasn’t like in the artwork – with hair in perfect condition and a serene and aloof expression on His face. He was a real man – He felt real emotions, He got sweaty in the middle eastern sun and He even pooped. He wasn’t half God and half man like Hercules, He became fully man while also being fully God.

What did Jesus do?

“God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and He went around doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil” (Acts 10:38).

Jesus was thirty years old when He began three years of ministry. We read in the eyewitness accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John that He performed many miracles and spent His time with the rejects of society – the poor, the broken and the prostitutes and He healed the sick every time He found them.

Then He was betrayed, falsely accused and unfairly tried. He was whipped thirty-nine times – enough lashes to remove all of the flesh from His back. He was mocked and had a crown of thorns rammed into His scalp. He was so weak He could not carry His own cross up the hill, where they nailed Him to two planks of wood with large nails through His wrists and His ‘Achilles heels’. They pierced His side with a spear and left Him to suffocate.

If that were the end of the story we would not know about Him today. Many men were crucified by the Roman Empire – only one man ever came back. Death could not hold the Man-Christ! He appeared to over five hundred people and gave them the responsibility the tell the world. His disciples today have not changed the subject.

Why is all this important?

We have a problem. God created a perfect world and made mankind to reign over it, and to live in perfect communion and relationship with Him. Love is only real if it is given through choice. And with the freedom to choose a life with God comes the freedom to choose a life without Him. And we all know the story – Adam ate the forbidden fruit. Rejection of God is called ‘sin’ and it brought with it death – separation from God. And when we die, there is eternal condemnation. Sin cannot abide in the Presence of a holy God. Sin is the barrier that keeps us from an intimate relationship with the Lord. This is why sickness exists in the world today – it is a by-product of living in a ‘fallen’ world. God gave us His Law (we’ve all heard of the Ten Commandments). He did not give us the Law so that we might obey it. He gave us the Law primarily to demonstrate to us that we have failed to meet His standard. Have you ever told a lie? Have you ever been jealous? The Old Testament demonstrates with brutal clarity that sin deserves punishment. Sin deserves judgement. So the Old Testament asks one extremely important question: what are we going to do about the problem of sin?

This is why Jesus died! He took the punishment and the judgement that we deserve so that we can get what He deserves! He lived a perfect, blameless life and took the wrath of God on Himself at the cross. He died a sinner’s death and then was raised to life, triumphantly declaring that death does not have the last word; those who believe in Him will live forever! We must personally accept and relate to His sacrifice as sufficient payment for our sins.

Eternal life is not just something for heaven. It starts now! The ‘hope of glory’ starts now! When we are in sin we are described as spiritually dead. So when we place our trust in Jesus we come alive – now! We can do nothing to save ourselves, or to earn salvation. It is a free gift that comes only through the blood that Jesus shed on the cross. We must respond and believe in the Gospel – the Good News of Christ. Then we can begin a relationship with a God who,

“so loved us that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

Next we will begin to examine what this looks like in practice.

It is my hope to produce a practical resource to help new Christians to grow in intimacy with Jesus. I am going to serialise it because there are many things to say on this subject and I don’t have the time to write them all at once! So in this introductory section it would be worth stating that the Christian life centres around a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. And unfortunately there are no formulae in relationships. All I can do is to show you principles – the things that please His heart and tools that will help us to grow in our walk with Him. But it is all ultimately about knowing Christ and being known by Him. This takes time, and it is a journey. It is a voyage – something of which we have little experience in our age of inter-continental airlines and microwave meals. I will give one last metaphor which I hope will not seem too contrived. Our heart is a garden and we are inviting Jesus to cultivate it. When we first come to the Lord it is a mess. It is full of weeds and thorns and is chaotic and disordered. As we get to know Jesus we welcome Him to uproot that which does not belong and fashion the garden into a place of true beauty. This is a process and requires us to surrender even those plants of which we have grown fond. He is a gentleman and He values our hearts too much to do anything without our permission.

Let us enjoy exploring the Christian life together. I promise that this will be an intensely practical guide so I will avoid the cheesy metaphors from now on. I’ll end by saying that there is no greater pleasure than deep intimacy with our Lord and Saviour.

“All things are permissible for me, but not everything is profitable” (1 Corinthians 10:23) 

The first thing I’d like to stress is that I do not consider the casual practice of yoga and martial arts to be of itself sinful (if you disagree, please tell me why!). If the Bible is silent about a particular issue – these practices are not mentioned by name – then we must judge them by what the Bible does teach in general. Sin is always an issue of the heart, so we will proceed with the understanding that if the Holy Spirit has told you discontinue yoga then it would be sinful to disobey.

We are spiritual beings – this much should obvious to the believer. C.S. Lewis puts it best when he says that “you don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body” (Mere Christianity). But oftentimes it is easier to understand spiritual realities by thinking first about the physical realm to which we are most accustomed. The Bible is full of teaching about natural phenomena which reflect the spiritual reality of our world – consider sowing and reaping, or the likening of the Holy Spirit to wind.

So for now I will compare yoga and the martial arts to smoking. This probably would not be considered an inherently sinful activity by the majority of believers (perhaps one hundred years ago it would have been normal for Christians to smoke, like the rest of society). But because we now understand the harm that smoking causes to the body, and the sickness and addiction which result, we would consider it inappropriate for the believer. It may be a legal choice, but out of reverence for the temple of the Holy Spirit – our bodies – we choose to refrain from this activity.

So what does this have to do with yoga? Wiser men than I have strongly discouraged believers from taking part in this, because yoga (and indeed the martial arts) has its roots in the occult. At the word ‘occult’ some of you undoubtedly rolled your eyes, thinking of satanists and witches and considering me ‘super-spiritual’. Please bear with me. I take the word ‘occult’ to mean any spirituality or spiritual practice that is outside the influence of Christ. Such spirituality is invariably demonic and anti-Christ in nature. Yoga hails from India and is the meditative practices – the physical and mental disciplines – of Hinduism and Buddhism. The martial arts hail from the Far East and are combative disciplines which take the majority of their theory, philosophy and worldview from Buddhism, and to a lesser extent Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism and Shinto. I’m writing for a Christian audience so my next assertion should be uncontroversial: these are false religions which follow false gods (and the Bible says that idol-worship is demon-worship; see 1 Corinthians 10:20).

When I was younger I had some back pain and my mother taught me a stretch from yoga which really helped. It was called the cobra and involved curving your back like a snake ready to strike. It really did help the pain! But the spiritual significance of snakes is barely worth stating – they are symbolic for demons. So while I was pursuing a physical position I considered harmless, and of no deeper spirituality – I was in fact offering my body to a demonic reality. I do not want to open my life to a spirituality other than that which comes from the Holy Spirit. Not everything is profitable. The point is that as a believer in Christ I should offer my body to Him and believe Him for healing, while also honouring my physical body by treating it properly.

This is a good moment to raise a fascinating point – surely He who is in you is greater than He who is in the world (1 John 4:4), so God will protect you should you participate in this. Maybe He will. But that does not make it wise. God probably would have protected Jesus had He thrown Himself from the Temple, but our Saviour chose not to test Him.

There are a multitude of ways to exercise and stretch apart from yoga, and it is possible to learn how to defend oneself apart from the martial arts. Indeed, meditation is an essential part of the Christian life. But we do not meditate under the influence of false gods and a demonic paradigm. We meditate on the Word of the Living God. While eastern meditation such as yoga seeks to empty the mind, we seek instead to fill it with His Word until we think differently. If we want to feel ‘balanced’ and ‘centred’ (trendy New Age terms associated with eastern meditation) we should perhaps spend some time in the Presence of the King of Glory who longs to fill our lives with love, joy and peace. Amen!

I recently emailed her to show my support for her ideas and to tell her my own experiences of the state education system. I have reproduced my email below:

Dear Ms Birbalsingh

I have been following your blog for several months and I have been greatly encouraged by your insights regarding the education system in our country. I am from Dundee and I was educated at my local state secondary school. I left school in 2008 and I am now studying at St Andrews University. I am greatly privileged to have wonderful parents from a lower middle-class background. They work very hard and make extraordinary sacrifices so that we can live in the best suburb of the city, for the purpose of gaining access to this school, which is undoubtedly one of the best in the region.

However, even in this ‘leafy suburb’ school, which finds itself with better exam results than elsewhere in the city, many of the problems you have identified with the liberal education establishment are clearly present. Discipline and uniform are not enforced. The behaviour of some pupils would shock even the most disinterested of parents. I am alarmed by the increasing emphasis on vocational and ‘soft’ subjects. You have identified the ‘trendy’ notion of sitting in groups and discussing topics rather than being taught. I can aver that as this became more popular as my school career progressed, the amount I learned in later years decreased in inverse proportion.

The emphasis in every class was on passing exams rather than mastering a subject and learning to think. An example of this is my study of English. For our Higher English course the class studied ‘Othello’ and I thoroughly enjoyed learning about this extraordinary play. I therefore took Advanced Higher English, and I was surprised to find myself studying the same play again. The reason given for this was that we already knew it well and so it would be easier to write about it. One would have thought a school has some form of responsibility to provide a broad knowledge of English literature. You will be shocked to discover that we studied no poetry at all for our final two years of English study. This is because it was not a requirement to do so for the qualification, and it was therefore not considered to have any value.

I will give you one final example which I feel perfectly illustrates all that you have been saying about our broken education system. I have always been very interested in politics so I took ‘Modern Studies’ throughout my school career. I believe there is an equivalent English qualification in Politics. The left-liberal bias you have spoken of is nowhere clearer than in the way we were taught this course, although it is only some three years later that I have realised this. Some of the curriculum’s dogma included: social and economic inequalities are the fault of ‘society’ and can only be remedied by state intervention; trades unions are always good; Thatcher is wicked; Thatcher destroyed variously the mining communities, the shipyards, and the entire working class; Thatcherism can be blamed for every identifiable problem in UK, and especially Scottish, society; the Tories exist to blight the lives of the poor; the Middle Class obsession with choice tramples on those who cannot stand up for themselves; Communism was a good idea in principle but worked poorly in practice; Castro’s Cuba is a perfect example of a ‘moral’ society; Sweden’s welfare state, and education and prison systems are to be emulated; the American Republicans are right-wing (i.e. nasty and boorish); and the EU is a sensible way to make our country more prosperous. We were encouraged to finish essays about inequality with the triumphant statement: “in this way the UK will be a more egalitarian society”. Hence the premise of our argument was that egalitarianism is desirable. However, we were never given any balanced explanation or evaluation of this political theory. The doctrine of the curriculum was that that egalitarianism equals equality, which equals a ‘good’ society.

Interestingly, from a Scottish point of view, I had honestly never met a sole who thought Margaret Thatcher was not morally equivalent to the antichrist until about eighteen months ago. I exaggerate not. To suggest so in polite society has actually lost me friends. I recently ‘came out’ to my parents. Not that I am a homosexual, but a conservative! The left-liberal socialist agenda is so deeply ingrained North-of-the-Border that to liberate schools here will probably be even more of an uphill struggle than the one you face in the English inner cities.

If these issues resonate even in a school with such good exam results as the one I attended I can only begin to imagine the problems in schools situated in less affluent areas. I wish you every success as you battle for the intellectual freedom and academic rigour that our schools so desperately need.

Yours sincerely,

Colin Jamieson

Q. What is the chief end of man?
A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

Enjoying Our God, by Rolland Baker
]]> http://colinjamieson.wordpress.com/2010/05/20/enjoying-our-god/feed/ 0 Easyyoke http://colinjamieson.wordpress.com/2010/04/21/the-simple-christian-life/ http://colinjamieson.wordpress.com/2010/04/21/the-simple-christian-life/#comments Wed, 21 Apr 2010 16:45:39 +0000 colinjamieson http://colinjamieson.wordpress.com/?p=184 ]]>

The first thing I want to say is that you asked a philosophical question relating to the concept of ‘deism’ – an unknown deity who may or may not have created the universe. While it may not be satisfactory to you, I’m going to give a theological response based on my experience of the God of the Hebrews, Yahweh, whom I believe to be the one true Living God, who sent His only Son Jesus Christ to take away the sins of the world. This is revealed in the Scriptures, which I believe to be (in the original text) the inerrant, authoritative Word of God. The difference between the unknown god you described and the God I am telling you about is in the knowing. I can say without a hint of arrogance or exaggeration that I KNOW God. He is a God who will reveal Himself to anyone who is seeking. He speaks to me and I encounter His Presence EVERY time I meet with Him. This probably offends your intellectual mind, but it is the truth. For someone to tell me that He doesn’t exist is actually more ridiculous to me than someone telling me that my flatmate, Darren, doesn’t exist. And I know God far better than I know Darren. He is real and His reality can be experienced by any who want to know Him. We can argue intellectuals all we want, but it is a real relationship with a powerful God that transforms people’s lives.

Best to start at the beginning. God created a perfect world. And He made mankind to be His people. But for whatever reason He wanted a people who would worship Him out of choice, not automatons. He could have made robots if He wanted, but He didn’t, because He wanted true love and true relationship. God is not a micromanager. He even gave angels the choice, and one third of them rejected Him, becoming the devil and all of his demons (Revelation 12:4). Because angels were not the focus of His creation, but mankind (men were made in His image), God created a place called hell in which to destroy all of evil (Matthew 24:41). But He allowed the process to continue whereby evil existed, to see what men would choose. He gave us two trees in the garden – one of which we could not eat from. You know the story – Adam and Eve ate the fruit and in so doing they became corrupted. They left agreement with God (which brought goodness, love, peace, provision) and came into agreement with the devil, and men took on the devil’s twisted nature. This is called sin. God is perfect and demands perfection, but because of one man’s rejection of God, all men who are descended from him are born with the devil’s sinful nature and are therefore what the Bible calls “objects of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3). But it gets worse. Because God had placed the whole of His creation under man’s authority (which was an incredible privilege!), when Adam entered into agreement with the devil, creation came under satan’s authority (Luke 4:6). And along came famine, drought, suffering, sicknesses, pain, hurricanes, tornadoes and poverty. But worst of all, because of God’s perfect nature and mankind’s imperfect nature, mankind became separated from God. This is because holiness cannot meet with sin and if men had stayed in the Presence of God then men would instantly have died. There are various examples of this in the Bible, such as Acts 5 and 2 Samuel 6.

So the story is looking bleak. God now had a choice – does He call off the whole creation idea, or does He enter into a plan to save it. Trust me when I say that God hates sickness. But He can’t destroy sickness without removing the devil from his legal place of authority over creation. This is because God is just and is faithful to what He has said. As I said, God made a place called hell for all of the fallen angels, but if He sent the devil to hell then due to His justice, He would have to send all people there too, because they have the same evil nature as the devil. What to do?

The answer is one which you have heard a hundred times before. He sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, to die and rise again. I don’t have time to go into the exact reasons, but for there to be reconciliation between men and God, there needed to be blood. Jesus lived a perfect life to the standard which we cannot meet, and He died our death and went into hell so that there could be reconciliation. Now anyone who believes in His sacrifice can be reconciled to God. The cross of Jesus healed every sickness and destroyed the curse of poverty, for all who will believe. When one believes in Jesus, He becomes “born again” (John 3:3), he receives a new nature – God’s nature, and can encounter His Presence. When Jesus died, He restored mankind to his place of authority – every believer now has regained his position of authority under the lordship of Christ (Matthew 28:18-20). It says in 1 John 3:8 that Jesus came “to destroy the works of the devil”. Then when Jesus left, He said “as the Father sent Me, so I send you” (John 20:21) and so that is the role of the church – to destroy the works of evil from the face of the earth. Which is why we have authority to heal sicknesses, to drive out demons, to raise the dead, calm storms, move mountains, forbid earthquakes etc. etc. etc.

Jesus said He will not return until the gospel has been preached to every tribe and every tongue. There are many unreached people groups and so this will probably not be for at the very least some 40 years from now. When He does return, all of evil (as described above) will be condemned forever. Everyone who does not believe in Jesus will be destroyed also because they have the same evil nature as the devil. There is a Day when sickness and poverty will be completely removed, but God is waiting until He has a Bride for His Son from every tribe and every tongue. Meanwhile it is the Body of believers who have all authority to proclaim the goodness of God, freeing people from bondage to enemy. That is what it means to be ‘redeemed’. Consider redeeming a slave – that means to buy a slave and set them free. Jesus paid the price to set us free.

I hope I’ve explained adequately the reason why sickness and suffering continue. It was not God’s plan for evil to happen. But He allows the process to continue where we live in a sin-filled world where things happen because of evil. His goodness to us is that Jesus Christ died so that we can be redeemed. God could have snapped His fingers and these things would have been destroyed instantly, but if He did that He would have denied His Son the chance to have a Bride.

I’ll say to you what I’ve said to many others: this is not something that you can afford to be wrong about. The Bible freely admits that if our message is not true “we are the most to be pitied” (1 Corinthians 15:19). But if it is true (and it worth paying any price to find out) then it demands a response from us. Consider the impact that this gospel has had on our world: our culture, laws, ethics and society have all been so influenced by the teachings contained in that Book. If you arrive at the conclusion that it is not true, then you actually owe it to humanity to spend your life convincing people of this. But if it is true (as I know it to be) then you owe it to humanity to spend your life telling people the good news.

God is in a good mood! I want to be a good steward of the things that we’ve seen and done this week so it seemed like a good idea to write out the full story for everyone to see. All the glory goes to Jesus – it is Him who heals. He does these things because He loves us and He is always good.

Every afternoon this week we did what is called a ‘Treasure Hunt’. The Treasures we were looking for are people. What we do is we pray together and we listen to God for direction on where to go and people to speak to about Him. Then we write out ‘clues’ on a ‘Treasure Map’ and head out into town. Clues can be a location, a sickness that needs to be healed, someone’s appearance or dress or anything else that the Holy Spirit speaks. Then we go out and God arranges our steps as we look for the Treasure.

On Tuesday afternoon I was with James and Blair. As we were walking through the town the first person we noticed was a crazy guy in the street. You know the type – twitching and yelling into thin air. We half-jokingly considered speaking to him, seeing he was “severely demon possessed” (see Matthew 15:22 NKJV). Among the guys we have a ‘no papping it’ culture, where we will refuse to back down if we suggest speaking to someone. So we doubled back and approached the man. We’ll call him Jonny. We spoke to him about God’s love and goodness and about how He forgives sin. He couldn’t stand still because he was twitching so badly and he couldn’t look us in the eyes. One eye looked left and the other right (I didn’t even think this was biologically possible!). We offered to pray for him, and he said we could. The moment we put our hand on his shoulder he started ‘manifesting’ (which is when the demons get freaked out by the power of God and start to affect a person physically). He went up on his toes, his chest came out, his head went back, and he moved like a snake. We have had some experience of this kind of manifestation before, so we weren’t intimidated. We just spoke authoritatively to the demons in the NAME OF JESUS and commanded the manifestations to stop. We broke their power over Jonny and told the voices he was hearing to be quiet. He settled down, made eye contact (his eyes were normal and focussed) and his face actually changed in appearance. God spoke to me and I asked the man if he had back pain and he said he did. This was on one of our Treasure Maps! We prayed for Jonny’s back and he said it felt a little better so we prayed again and he said it was totally better! Praise God. Jonny was now in his right mind, the twitching having completely stopped! He gave me a huge hug and shook all of our hands and with a shaking voice he thanked us! God had so impacted his life! He wasn’t ready to make a commitment to the Lord, but he went away free from the oppression and with a sound mind. Imagine if you knew him, how shocked you would be to see him so transformed!

Later on Tuesday afternoon I was speaking to a bunch of kids from Glenrothes. They all were about 15. I asked them if they had any pain or needed healing and one of them had a hockey injury on the back of his leg (injury on the back of the leg was a clue!). We prayed for him and he started moving it and said the pain had all gone! All his friends were mocking him so he wasn’t open to hear the full gospel, but I suggested they all go to church in Glenrothes and he said (quite sincerely) that he would! Praise God!

On Thursday I was with Daniel, Yazzmine and Judy and we felt very strongly that we should go to the Wellgate. On the ground floor we noticed a lady with a cane. So we approached her and explained about God’s love and goodness and asked if we could pray for her. She said she had a degenerative condition where her muscles were wasting away. So we prayed and the Presence of God really came and the lady said she could feel His love. We asked her to do something she couldn’t do before, so she went on one leg and talked about how “freaky” and “scary” it was, because she “can’t” (sic) do that! Praise God! She then started walking without her cane, astonished that she was able!

We were celebrating this and her mother, who was with us the whole time, asked us to pray for her too. She had cancer in her liver and her lungs, and had been on chemo but the doctors told her she was dying. She had so much faith to be healed, having just seen her daughter healed, so we prayed and again the Presence of God really touched all of us. The lady was crying and said she felt chills going up her back and peace in her heart for the first ever time! We told the cancer to leave in the Name of Jesus and then asked her to do something she couldn’t do. She took a deep breath and was astonished because she had never been able to breathe so freely or without pain! Yeah God! Both of these precious ladies became Christians there and then, and they’ll be along at church tomorrow! She is going to go back to her doctor to have the healing confirmed and will be able to tell us. You should have seen the grins on their faces as they knew without a shadow of a doubt that God had turned up in their lives! They are His Treasures!

We went upstairs in the Wellgate and came across another two Treasures. One of our clues (which we had been looking out for) was ‘pink hair’. We saw a couple in their thirties come out of the New Age store, which we also knew we were to go into. The girl had pink hair. So we spoke to them and explained the Treasure Hunt, and showed them the map. We asked the guy if he had any of the conditions on our map, and he had a sore shoulder and a sore back! He injured his shoulder about a year ago and also had a degenerative condition which meant his spinal column was becoming thinner. They were astonished that our God had sent us to them! They had tried to heal him using martial arts, but it hadn’t worked. So we explained that our God is much bigger than their spiritual healing and would be able to heal him. We commanded healing in the Name of Jesus and to their surprise, he regained motion in his shoulder and the pain left his back! They left amazed that God was real and could do what the New Age had failed to do, and said they would check out coming to church! Praise God!

God actually did so much more this week, and there were too many healings to report them all. I’ve just written down some of the more dramatic encounters we had and ones which I was actually there to witness. Jesus Christ is AMAZING!

YEAH GOD!