Thursday, September 14, 2006

Meditations from the Beach!

Having a fantastic time away here. God has been incredibly gracious with the most gorgeous weather and the most amazing sunsets I have ever seen in my life!

I have had plenty of time to transcribe too and am well into the fourth (of 5) message from "The King and His Army" by Dr Ern Baxter. It is such an incredibly important message for our day. I remember when I initially announced that this was the series of messages I was going to transcribe from the Lakes Bible Week 1975, someone rightly asked whether those messages were for "that day" and they are now irrelevant as the Charismatic Movement is not beginning to flourish. Ern Baxter dealt with that issue in depth in the 3rd Message that I have just finished - "A Time of Transition", so I hope that will become clear when I make it available.

I have also had plenty of time to read a lot. I brought a handful of my old Newfrontiers magazines from the past and have been really enjoying revisiting the outstanding material in them. I was struck by this quote by Terry Virgo from the Newfrontiers magazine - August/October 2002. He wrote in his Firstline:

"It has been my longing that the conference (the Brighton Leadership Conference just past) would welcome the Spirit and honour the Word. Why is it that we are so rarely privilidged to experience at the same time the manifestation of the Holy Spirit´s power and true respect for the Word of God? How sad that we so often have to put up with a lack of one or the other. Here was a glorious exception and it gave me appetite to know more! ... I feel like Nehemiah who said, "We are about a great work". He added, "The God of heaven will give us success, therefore we His servants will arise and build!".

I wonder if that lament still holds true today? It is incredible to me that time has flown by so quickly since the Together on a Mission Conference that we have just so enjoyed! The CD - "Praise is Rising!" - is coming out shortly and available here! Don´t miss it! I can´t wait to revisit the powerful times of worship that we enjoyed! But I think I can safely say that I have never seen the Word and Spirit come together so powerfully than at that conference. The outstanding ministry of Rob Rufus - imparting the Holy Spirit to us, combined with careful reverence for the Word of God from men like Terry, Dave Holden, Dave Devenish and of course Wayne Grudem. We are indeed about a great work! Let´s arise and build wherever we are!

2 comments:

Gavin White said...

Have a great holiday Dan....not too much blogging though, enjoy the hols and all the wonderful sunsets!

Dan Bowen said...

Thanks Gavin! No I promise no blogging. It´s been an interesting week though. At the weekend I was mid-transcribing when I got a shooting pain in my hand that I diagnosed as being repetitive strain injury! I realised I had been transcribing rather non stop. Most annoyed I haven´t been able to write anything till today which is Thursday. The pain then went on to become a trapped nerve in my left arm (my writing arm) and so I´ve been unable to do anything other than read and walk and pray!! The pain killers here didn´t seem to be touching it either so this morning about 5am I remembered Jul´s most recent blog about Terry Virgo praying for healing so I decided to lay hands on myself and pray for healing.

Well if Terry Virgo can not give up then so can I!!

It is now almost six o clock so 12 hours later and no pain!! Hallelujah!! The lesson that I learnt from this experience is a gentle reminder from the Lord that a relationship with Him is about what HE can do for me NOT what I can do for HIM!! I stand corrected!