Familiar surroundings make us feel safe and comfortable. We like the security of the world that we know and believe we can trust – even though there may be much more exciting places to live, work and play in. It’s amazing how often people are just content to enjoy living in the same old familiar surroundings that they’ve known all their life – even when they have all the resources at their fingertips to make radical and positive changes to their lives.

Equally, I find it surprising sometimes, when trying to help people face the real issues in their lives, to find that often they have known the Lord for many years but have not allowed the supposedly abundant life they now have to change their way of living! They are still in bondage to the same old temptations and the same old behaviours. What they were familiar with in their unredeemed life has continued to be the furniture with which they are still comfortable.

Yes, they are looking forward to the joys of Heaven, but they have rarely experienced the blessings from Heaven on earth – in spite of the new law of the Spirit that God has written in the heart of every believer. This new law gives us authority over the law of sin and death which tries to drag us back into the attitudes and activities of Satan’s Kingdom. Satan does his best to blind us to the fact that we can use our free will to walk free of his chains, using the higher authority that we now have in our lives – if only we would use our free will to let the Spirit of God transform us from the inside out many of the problems which beset believers on a day to day basis would simply fall away.

Those who are in Christ Jesus are freed from the curse of sin – they don’t need to remain sitting in the jail of Satan’s making oblivious to the fact that the chains that formerly held them there are broken. Jesus – the Lion of Judah – has broken the chains. Now is the time for His people to start living in the reality of their new found freedom.

Prayer: Thank You Jesus, that you have broken the chains of bondage for all those who have trusted in You. Help me, Lord, to live in the reality of that freedom, now and for the rest of my life. In Jesus’s Name. Amen.

Click Here to read Peter Horrobin`s blog

Click here to find out more about a FREE TRIAL of Ellel 365

I knew God had called me into such a ministry, but I confess that I was getting downhearted. The years were passing and no doors had opened. I was already over forty and supposedly by then, on the downhill path towards being put out to grass! I had lots of questions for God, but no answers. Perhaps I was now too old for God to use and I’d missed the boat – whatever God’s boat might have looked like!

I’d read in the Christian press about John Wimber coming from the USA to Sheffield for a conference on healing. I decided to go and spend four days concentrating on whatever the Lord had to say to me through the teaching and ministry. I was in complete agreement with all that John Wimber picked out from the Scriptures about both healing and deliverance. My heart was beating in rhythm with what was in the Word of God, but I knew that something had to happen to kick-start the vision that had burned within me by then for fifteen years.

At times during that amazing conference I felt as though I was the only person there. I was aware of crowds of people in one sense, but at the same time I was oblivious to their presence. God had got my attention. I’m not sure whether I was wrestling with God or God was wrestling with me. I knew there were deep issues being tackled, largely associated with what the cost and the consequences would be of being totally unconditional with God.

It’s so easy to say ‘Yes, Lord’, without too much thought about what those two words really mean. But now the inner wrestling was going deep into the inner recesses of my soul – touching depths that I didn’t even know were there and facing challenges in the spirit that I knew one day I would have to face in the flesh. I felt so inadequate, unsuited and unprepared but at the same time I was straining at the leash desperate to get going.  But God was showing me that if He had let the leash go too soon, I would have gone out like a greyhound on a track to try and build God’s Kingdom my way instead of His!

There is a breaking that leads to wholeness and destiny. And deep inside me there was a breaking of my own will taking place as one by one I placed every area of my life into God’s hands, decided to trust Him unconditionally with the consequences and agreed to follow Him wherever the journey would take me.

On the last night of the conference I was extraordinarily aware of the presence of God during the worship. It was irrelevant to me what anyone else was experiencing. I felt as though I was being pinned to that back wall of Sheffield City Hall by the presence, the power and overwhelmingly by the love of God. It was as if a series of three huge waves came rolling in to cover me and across the top of the first wave was written, in huge letters, the word ACCEPTED.

At that moment I didn’t just know God’s forgiveness as a theological proposition, it was pervading my whole being, And realising that there was nothing that God hadn’t forgiven, meant that I could unconditionally believe that He really loved me – every single bit of me. The acceptance I felt at that moment was totally life transforming.

I was just recovering from this wonderful experience when a second wave came in and covered my soul. Across the tops of the wave were spread the letters of the word RESTORED. It seemed as though in all the areas of my life where I had known God’s acceptance and forgiveness, he was now healing and restoring my soul. New strength came into my being as I realised that the restoration of God was equipping me for whatever lay ahead.

I had no idea what would happen next. I was relaxing in the presence of God – the joy of His love was filling my spirit and my soul – when the third wave came rolling in and to my enormous surprise written across the top of the wave was the word COMMISSIONED. Deep down I knew exactly what this word meant. It was as if in a moment of time, years of preparation were coming to a head and that whatever it was that God was calling me to Himself to do, was about to begin.

A commissioning marks the beginning of something new. On the day a new ship for the Royal Navy is commissioned, the years of building and preparation are over, and it enters service. I had no idea what commissioning would mean for me, but as the impact of those thee waves subsided, I knew that a new phase of my life was beginning and that I was entering service.

Shortly after that God opened the doors for the work, that became known as Ellel Ministries, to begin at Ellel Grange. It was as if at that conference God had fired a starting gun over my life. It was a time that I can’t forget, for what God did then is part of who I am today. This is the first time I have ever put an account of what happened to me at that conference in Sheffield into print.

Since then we have been enormously privileged to conduct many similar conferences through Ellel Ministries. The first one, The Battle Belongs to the Lord, was a life-changing event for many hundreds of people. It seems as though when we take time out to really seek God, and listen to His voice in a focussed and concentrated way, that He rejoices to hear the cries of our heart and answer our prayers.

Right now we are in the thick of preparing for the next Ellel Conference at Blackpool, God of the Breakthrough at the end of March. I know that in these very testing and difficult days there are many people looking to God for a personal breakthrough in their lives, their circumstances, their local church and even in the life of their nation. I have a deep sense that this is going to be one of those conferences of which, in years to come, people will say, “God changed my life at Blackpool in 2012.” For me it was Sheffield in 1985.

Yes, I am a little older now, but I’m still young enough in spirit to be looking forward to Blackpool with eager anticipation – like a child, dreaming of something very special that lies ahead, but not fully aware yet of all that’s going to happen! I’m wondering what starting guns God is going to be firing over the lives of those who are present, as they seek His face and come before Him in faith and expectation. I’m ready and waiting!

You can find out more about the conference at www.godofthebreakthrough.org

Grandson A was so excited to receive the deeds of his farm and he immediately went out and spent all his money on the very best animals he could find and set out to make his fortune on the farm.

Grandson B, however, spent the whole of his first year of ownership of his farm repairing the buildings and, especially, mending the fences and rebuilding the broken down walls. By the time he’d finished all this work, he only had a small amount of his money left, with which he bought a small flock of sheep.

Meanwhile, Grandson A was having a lot of problems. He placed his prize cattle in the field in front of his farm but, to his horror, found that they were all gone in the morning. As animals will do, they had soon found the holes in the walls and fences and by the time morning came, they were scattered all over the place. And, sadly, one of them had got onto the main road and caused an accident in which the animal was killed, and as a result of which a child lay seriously injured in hospital. It wasn’t long before legal papers arrived which made it very clear that the farmer was responsible for the accident by not having had his fences in good order. Not only did he lose the animal that had died, but another person’s life was terribly scarred. Eventually he had to sell all the rest of the animals, and the farm to pay the damages.

Grandson A had first thought that Grandson B was wasting his opportunity by spending so much time on mending the offences and repairing the walls. But now he realised that his own failure to spend time and money on this had eventually brought disaster upon himself and he was left with nothing.

Grandson B, however, had taken time to protect his small flock of sheep. They soon multiplied and year on year his farm became more and more successful. Everyone came to see how he had made the farm so profitable and he told everyone who came the most important principle he had learned – mend the fences, keep the boundaries secure and the flock will be safe.

Two young men became Christians from very similar backgrounds. Both had been into many things in their former lives. But they joined different churches.

Christian A’s church was so excited that such a worldly young man had found the Saviour, that they soon had him doing all sorts of things right away. He was a great musician and he gave his testimony everywhere. He was paraded around like a trophy and became quite a star in his church circles. But beneath the surface there were problems. Pride became a real issue and the more publicity he was given, the bigger the problem became! He had come from living quite an immoral lifestyle – the boundaries of his life were quite disordered – and because nothing had been done to mend the fences of his broken down life, he was soon found to be straying into fields that Christians shouldn’t be entering. Before long his testimony was quite discredited and he left the church –he’d tried Christianity, it hadn’t changed anything and he finished up throwing himself headlong into his former way of life.

Christian B’s church, however, rejoiced in the fact that he had become a Christian, but immediately set about the task of making this new Christian into a disciple. They spent time with him, looking at the areas of his life where the moral boundaries had been breached in the past and where there were real issues that needed healing. They prayed with him through the issues that caused him problems and little by little the areas of weaknesses were dealt with and he became strong. For quite a while the church leaders were content to see him slowly but surely become established in his faith as a member of the congregation. But before too long it became obvious that he had some very real gifts that God could use and he was carefully released into using his gifts and became a very effective and valuable member of the fellowship. Years later, when he became a Pastor himself, and would share his testimony with his congregation, he would always say that those years of ‘doing nothing’ in the church, except learning to be a disciple were the most important part of his Christian story. Without them, he said, he would have soon gone back to the world he had come from through the gaps in the fences of his life.

All the above is a parable which filled my mind yesterday morning as I looked out of my bedroom window and saw a flock of sheep in a well-kept field.

The Lord’s voice was unmistakeable, “Spend time helping people to mend the fences and maintain the boundaries of their lives and you will be building leaders who will be able to lead the Church in times of temptation and testing. If you fail to do this the enemy of souls will have little difficulty in plundering the flock.”

There was a quiet soberness in my heart as I travelled into Ellel Grange, knowing that God had just spoken deep into my spirit to remind me of what the great commission is all about – “Go into all the world and MAKE DISCIPLES.”

As a child I always took great comfort from the words of my Dad. I was always totally secure because I knew that my Dad was in charge of everything pertaining to my life. I knew that I was safe in the home, and that Mum and Dad together would always honour their promises to us as children. Home was a safe place because I could trust them. What Dad planned always happened.

Obviously, ‘my world’ at that time was only a tiny portion of the world that God had made and I was only one of billions of people that made up God’s huge family. But because of the security that had been built into my life by my parents it was an easy step for me to understand that God really did have the whole world in His hands and that I could trust what He says in His word.

World events of the past twelve months have shaken all the nations. As the financial structures through which the nations govern the world collapse, fear and insecurity have disturbed the peace of many. The world seems to be changing shape at an ever-increasing rate and in the midst of confusion, the sense of imminent danger, even disaster, is never far away. In such circumstances is there anyone we can trust? Does anyone know what they’re doing?!

The world has gone through tough times before – on many occasions. When you read Scripture you see that there is a golden thread of the purposes of God being fulfilled that is woven into the fabric of every book of the Bible. And when you read history you see how in all seasons God has been slowly working out His purposes on the pages of man’s story. And as our Scripture assures us – what God has planned, He will fulfil. The purposes of God will always stand like immoveable rocks – we can trust Him. And to be more specific, it is only He who can be trusted. Knowing that He is in charge is the ultimate comfort for the believer. No matter what is happening around us, we are secure in Him, both for time and for eternity.

Prayer: Thank You, Lord, that You are in charge of Planet Earth! I’m so glad that whatever happens I can trust you at all times and in all circumstances. Help me, Lord, not to be afraid, but to trust in Your unfailing love as your plans and purposes are fulfilled. In Jesus’s Name, Amen.

Click Here to read Peter Horrobin`s blog

Click here to find out more about a FREE TRIAL of Ellel 365

No doubt there will be a full enquiry into the cause of the disaster and we will learn exactly what happened last night, when the ship was sailing in what should have been the safest of waters and in the calmest of weathers.

Almost exactly 25 years ago, on the 6^th March 1987, the Herald of Free Enterprise sank just outside Zeebrugge harbour. This ship was a large roll-on roll-off car ferry. It had crossed the North Sea many hundreds of times and had already made four crossings on that day between Belgium and the UK.

When disaster struck 193 people lost their lives. The tragedy of this tragedy is that it was totally avoidable. It was not an accident. The ship set sail with the bow doors open and as the ship hit the open sea, water flooded the car decks. The ship took a heavy list to one side as vehicles began to move and then the whole ship capsized in just 30 feet of water.

As I watched a documentary TV programme about the disaster, God began to speak to me of the dangers of sailing through life with the bow doors open. The crew had set sail like this on many previous occasions without consequence, but on this occasion the unthinkable happened. The Captain of the ship was responsible for setting sail with the bow doors open. The crew were responsible for not closing the doors in time. The victims who died were innocent bystanders of an avoidable drama.

We are all individually responsible for the ship of our lives. If we are sailing with the bow doors open, then nothing untoward may happen for a long time. There is little danger when the waters are smooth. Complacency and pride can make us careless in our conduct. But when the unthinkable happens it’s not only the individual who suffers, but all “the passengers” who were depending on us for their well being are in danger of becoming victims.

Those passengers include our own families, our colleagues, those who work for us and all who look to us for spiritual input and care at various levels of church life. For a Pastor or leader of a Christian ministry, the passengers include their whole congregation, staff and even the wider Body of Christ. When the disaster occurs to a high profile Christian leader the ripple effect can become a tsunami.

Many of those I have prayed with, whose lives had experienced some form of shipwreck, had been sailing through life with the bow doors of their lives wide open. For some, disaster struck by way of public exposure of immoral conduct. For others the torment of inner guilt was the root cause of personal breakdown. For yet others the circumstances of life had turned against them and when everything was laid upon the table, it was painfully evident that bow doors which had been left open years ago had never been closed.

The enemy will use anything and everything in our lives which is out of harmony with God’s covenant of blessing. The ten commandments are referred to as God’s covenant in Deut. 4:13 – they represent God’s very best for us. Unresolved sin issues always condense down to a willful choosing to ignore one or other aspect of God’s covenant of blessing.

There may be reasons in the past as to why a particular sin has remained out of control – such as abuse or various aspects of parental damage – but sin is still sin and it is far better to face the fact of it and receive healing for the cause than to wrestle on one’s own to close a bow door that has been jammed open and which seems immoveable. There are answers. If the bow doors are not closed there will come a time when disaster will strike.

There are many disasters waiting to happen in the Body of Christ – people who are shipping water privately through open bow doors. Those disasters can be avoided. All the problems a person has in this life are not automatically resolved at conversion. When we get to heaven the old man will fall away, but right now we are still wrestling with the consequences of the fall – even after we are born again. We all need healing. Conversion is but the beginning of a journey of discipleship.

It’s clear from the dramatic pictures of the holed vessel that the ship hit submerged rocks. With modern safety equipment on board, that can warn the Captain of such dangers in good enough time to change course, it’s hard to understand how such an accident could have happened. But happen it did.

The enemy loves to deceive us, in our own personal voyage of life, to sail into waters we thought were safe but which, in reality, are strewn with underwater rocks. We desperately need to have our spiritual radar switched on at all times. God has promised to lead His people when they trust in Him. How we need to keep close to Him so we can always hear even the whisper of His voice and avoid the rocks that could make shipwreck of the vessel of our lives.

There are many interesting spiritual lessons in the little greetings that Paul includes at the end of his letters. Here is one. He is adding a personal message for an individual, who is described in Paul’s letter to Philemon as a fellow-soldier.

We have no idea why Paul felt this personal message was necessary, but the most likely thing is that Archippus was a person who was good at starting things, but not so good at carrying them through to completion. If that’s the case, then he is typical of many people, even in the body of Christ, who get really excited about something new, but show little enthusiasm for persevering with what’s already on the go!

It’s exciting when God calls us into something, but it’s not so exciting when we discover that there is a considerable amount of work to be done in order to realise the potential God has opened up for us. The fruit of our calling does not appear out of the sky, delivered by an angel, like a bit of Hollywood magic! It has to be worked for through loving obedience to the One who called us into His service.

I love reading the biographies of those who did persevere in missionary service. Recently I read about Charles Cowman who founded the Oriental Missionary Society; and Wilfred Grenfell who transformed the spiritual environment of Labrador as a missionary doctor. Get hold of their stories and read them and be amazed at how much they achieved through perseverance. Our instant-fix society doesn’t like the idea of 40 years of service – that’s what it took Wilfred Grenfell to fulfil his destiny. But it’s through determined perseverance that the Kingdom of God is built.

If Paul was writing a letter to you – what would he say? Would he have a message for you like he had for Archippus?

Prayer: Lord, help me to persevere with the things that you ask me to do. I don’t want my life to be marked by many new starts but with nothing ever finished. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Click Here to read Peter Horrobin`s blog

Click here to find out more about a FREE TRIAL of Ellel 365

God knew the heart of man all too well! He had seen how even when He had shown people the right way to go, that they had often wanted to follow their own carnal nature and, as we might say today, ‘do their own thing’! No wonder God had to reinforce His directions to Joshua as they were about to enter the Promised Land by reminding them not to add to or take away from the instructions He had given them.

All too often when praying with people I have had to help them see that the problems they were now facing had arisen because at critical stages in their own pilgrimage they had tried to rewrite God’s Word and make it say what they wanted it to say! It’s so easy to close our eyes to the truth and to justify going in a direction which, in our hearts, we know to be wrong. Hindsight is a great teacher, but if we ignore the lessons that hindsight gives us, we will never have God’[s foresight to lead us into His future.

The beginning of a New Year is always a time of both challenge and opportunity. The world talks about New Year Resolutions – most of which are usually broken during the opening days of the year! I would prefer to talk about New Year Opportunities – by which I mean opportunities to discover how faithful God is to His Word, how loving He is to His children, how caring He is for those who look to Him. For lying before each one of us is a 365-day diary of opportunities to discover God afresh for ourselves, to prove His love and rejoice in everything that He has planned for our blessing.

God has promised to show us His way for our lives, but we need to do our part by choosing to walk in His ways. In Psalm 25:14 the Scripture tells us that “the Lord confides in those who fear Him.”

Prayer: Thank you Lord that You have given us Your Word and that it is a light for our feet on the pathways of life. Help me day by day to make right choices as I choose to live in the love and fear of the Lord in the year ahead. In Jesus’s Name. Amen.

Click Here to read Peter Horrobin`s blog

Click here to find out more about a FREE TRIAL of Ellel 365

Joshua was now the leader of God’s people. He had been with them throughout all their wanderings in the wilderness, and following the death of Moses he had taken up the reigns of leadership. By his own testimony he was able to say to the people, “The Lord . . . has watched over your journey through this vast desert. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you, and you have not lacked anything” (Deuteronomy 2:7).

There are seasons in life when it is right to look back and remember with thanksgiving the lessons that we have learned in the past – and the turn of the year is one of those seasons. John Wesley always used this time of the year to renew his personal covenant with the Lord, and so he led his followers to mark the end of one year and the beginning of the next with a special covenant service – a service which was both a time of confession and repentance as well as rededication and commitment, in the context of a service of Holy Communion.

Some of those lessons of life we have learned the hard way – by going our own way and discovering that when we ignore what God has said, there is a consequence. Joshua could look back and see how God’s people were disobedient forty years previously and as a result they had missed out on God’s best and lost the opportunity to enter their Promised Land at that time. But Joshua could also look back and see that even though they had been obliged to wander through the wilderness all those years, God’s hand had still been upon them. There was so much to thank God for!

So, as you look back on the past, may I encourage you to look afresh at the journey you’ve been on this past year. And if there are obvious places where you have left the path that God laid before you, let this be a time of personal confession, repentance, receiving forgiveness and rededication. Even though there may have been mistakes, as there were with His own people, Israel, God has still been there for you and now’s the time to come before Him with an open and willing heart.

God gave Israel another opportunity to enter their promised land and through Joshua He reminded them that it’s still important to keep the commands of the Lord. And so it is for us as well! God has given us His Word – let’s choose to walk in His ways and enjoy His blessings in the new year that lies ahead.

Prayer: Thank you, Lord, that even though your people sinned, you still loved them and did not leave them. Help me to remember that you are always there and that you long for us to return to you so that we may enter the promised land that you have laid before each one of us for the years ahead. In Jesus’s Name. Amen.

In recent months our national Christian leaders in the UK seem to have been very reluctant to speak out anything which remotely sounds like a Christian message, or to speak up for the Christian faith and Christian truth in the media. This has been so noticeable that powerful voices from outside the church have been expressing their surprise and disappointment.

In my last blog, for example, I reported how the Prime Minister, David Cameron, chided church leaders in Christ Church, Oxford for their lack of commitment in the public arena to what Christianity is all about. I was surprised and thrilled that he should speak out in this way.

But on Christmas Day things got even better! And it wasn’t because those churchmen had heeded what David Cameron had said, but because a certain 85-year old lady used the opportunity of her Christmas message to do what others had singularly failed to do!

In 1932 King George the Vth was encouraged by the BBC to use the new medium of radio to address the people of Britain and the nations of the then British Empire. His broadcast was an instant success and ever since the King or Queen’s Christmas address has been a long-standing Christmas tradition. The broadcast has always been timed for 3.00pm in the afternoon so that replete with turkey and Christmas pudding the nation can settle back to watch and listen to what the Monarch has to say. 2011 was no exception, but it was radically different from every preceding Christmas address there has ever been, although many of them have referred to God and the Christmas message in various, generally low-key, ways.

One of the most memorable was the first wartime Christmas and New Year message, delivered by King George the VIth, the father of our present Queen. In this highly significant address he made the following words from Minnie Harkins poem famous, when he quoted:

“I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year, ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’ And he replied, ‘Go into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way!”

There is no doubt that the Queen will have remembered her father speaking those words. In this year’s Christmas message she made it very clear that she had put her hand into the hand of God and that there could be no compromise about the true meaning of Christmas.

The Christmas address is traditionally always written by the Queen herself – it is one of those rare public utterances about which she does not turn to the government for advice. There is little doubt that if she had submitted her address for comment and approval it would have been politely returned to her with suggestions that her message should be more inclusive of people of other faiths and be a little more politically correct! But as the most senior member of the Church of England, it seems that God’s hand was clearly upon hers as she wrote the words that would be broadcast to the nation on Christmas Day.

In an era when the leaders of our churches in the UK seem to have lost all confidence in the Gospel, I am giving special thanks for the Queen of England who, remarkably, in her personal Christmas message to all the peoples of the 52 members of the Commonwealth of Nations, decided to give the heart of the gospel to all her peoples.

After referring to the importance of family and of God-given love that brings people together, this is what she said towards the end of her televised address. What a relief that the Head of the Church of England could give such a clear testimony to the truth of the Gospel!

“Finding hope in adversity is one of the themes of Christmas. Jesus was born into a world full of fear. The angels came to frightened shepherds with hope in their voices: ‘Fear not’, they urged, ‘we bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

‘For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Saviour who is Christ the Lord.’

Although we are capable of great acts of kindness, history teaches us that we sometimes need saving from ourselves – from our recklessness or our greed.

God sent into the world a unique person – neither a philosopher nor a general, important though they are, but a Saviour, with the power to forgive.

Forgiveness lies at the heart of the Christian faith. It can heal broken families, it can restore friendships and it can reconcile divided communities. It is in forgiveness that we feel the power of God’s love.

In the last verse of this beautiful carol, O Little Town of Bethlehem, there’s a prayer:

O Holy Child of Bethlehem,
Descend to us we pray.
Cast out our sin
And enter in.
Be born in us today.

It is my prayer that on this Christmas day we might all find room in our lives for the message of the angels and for the love of God through Christ our Lord. I wish you all a very happy Christmas.”

I doubt if we were the only ones who were choking back the tears, as in stunned amazement we realised that the Queen had just told the world that she was praying for all who listened to her, that they would find room in their lives for the message of the angels and for the love of God through Christ our Lord!

Judging by the number of people around the world who normally listen to the Queen’s Christmas message – probably as many as hundreds of millions – this broadcast could possibly go down in history as the most succinct and widely listened to Christian gospel message ever!

I found myself praying the words of the national anthem “Long to reign over us” with renewed thanksgiving for the Queen and what she had just done. The Queen is unchallenged as the most senior and most respected of all the world’s Heads of State and I believe this was an event of great spiritual significance for the nation – and not just for the UK, but for all the countries of the world. Long, indeed, may she reign.

People who profess to believe in the Christian story are supposedly irrelevant fringe freaks. Their critics are saying things like, “why should we pander to their weird beliefs by showing any respect for Jesus?” The picture is indeed black and bleak – and I’m not drawing attention to these things because I’m a depressed sort of personality who can never see the good in anything – actually, I’m the very opposite! But I am deeply concerned with truth and reality.

But before you dismiss me as a gloom-merchant, come with me to a remote corner of the angelic realms somewhere about the date we know as 4 BC. Two angels are looking at the darkness that surrounds the mess the world is in. They shake their heads in dismay, their wings hanging limply as if they hadn’t been called on to serve mankind for a very long time.

These were some of the darkest years in history. 500 years had passed since the last of God’s real prophets had told the world that one day the “sun of righteousness would rise with healing in its wings” (Malachi 4:2). Since then generation after generation had ignored the God of their fathers. And what was left of the religious leaders were so legalistic that no ordinary person could ever be good enough for God.  Immorality, violence, rebellion, apostasy, idolatry and a return to the old pagan gods had become the way of the people. Life was literally hell on earth.

The angels were dismayed at what they saw and without actually questioning God’s wisdom, they did get pretty close to thinking that if God didn’t act soon, it would just be too late! But just as they were about to enter another round of angelic gloominess, there was an almighty stirring of the spiritual atmosphere. The sense of spiritual authority being exercised and the sound of Gabriel’s wings in action were unmistakeable. Something was happening and they watched from their perch on the edge of Heaven’s ramparts as Gabriel swooped down from heaven’s glory towards a remote village in northern Israel. The angels had to consult their gazetteer to identify it as Nazareth.

Why would the great Archangel Gabriel be visiting Nazareth? “Why not Jerusalem?” they asked? They watched in awed suspension as Gabriel made himself presentable to human-kind and stood before a young unmarried woman, Mary by name, and gave her a message (Luke 1:30-35) from the throne-room of Heaven, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favour with God. You will be with child and give birth to a Son, and you are to give him the name of Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most high. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, his kingdom will never end.”

“How will this be” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.”

And so it was that it was at the end of a season of great darkness that Jesus, our Saviour and Messiah came into the world. And so it will be again that at the end of another period of great darkness that this same Messiah and Saviour will come again. It will be, says Scripture, as it was in the days of Noah (Luke 17:26-30) when the Son of Man is revealed once again as the King of the Kingdom that has no end. Today all moral boundaries are systematically being removed from the societies of the world – the days of Noah are upon us once again. Rebellion and apostasy, heresy and atheistic humanism are climbing on the throne provided for them by the god of this world. And I just have a suspicion that our two angels are sitting on those same ramparts of Heaven with a profound sense of déjà vu – and are saying we’ve been here before!

The incredible good news for those who are in Christ is that as the darkness gets darker so the day of His coming gets nearer. There’s an old hymn my father used to sing as he contemplated the coming again of his Lord. He sang it with a certainty in his eyes and his voice that knew the days are hastening on when all the world will see the coming glory of the King – and for those who know Him – what an incredible moment that is going to be! At that moment the darkness around us will be irrelevant.

There’s a light upon the mountains,
And the day is at the spring,
When our eyes shall see the beauty
And the glory of the King:
Weary was our heart with waiting,
And the night watch seemed so long,
But His triumph day is breaking
And we hail it with a song.

In the fading of the starlight
We may see the coming morn;
And the lights of men are paling
In the splendours of the dawn;
For the eastern skies are glowing
As with light of hidden fire,
And the hearts of men are stirring
With the throbs of deep desire.

There’s a hush of expectation
And a quiet in the air
And the breath of God is moving
In the fervent breath of prayer;
For the suffering, dying Jesus
Is the Christ upon the throne,
And the travail of our spirit
Is the travail of His own.

He is breaking down the barriers,
He is casting up the way;
He is calling for His angels
To build up the gates of day:
But His angels here are human,
Not the shining hosts above;
For the drum beats of His army
Are the heartbeats of our love.

Hark! we hear a distant music
And it comes with fuller swell;
’Tis the triumph song of Jesus,
Of our King, Immanuel!
Go ye forth with joy to meet Him!
And, my soul, be swift to bring
All thy sweetest and thy dearest
For the triumph of our King! (adapted from word by Henry Burton)

So, as we contemplate the babe of Bethlehem this Christmas season, remember those two angels that sit in a corner of my imagination, and keep your ear attuned to the distant music as it comes with fuller swell, ‘tis the triumph song of Jesus, Of our King, Immanuel. I am not afraid of the darkness, because the Light is coming.

I pray you will have a wonderful Christmas, even in the midst of the world’s darkness, as you celebrate the One who came two thousand years ago and look forward with great joy, in the midst of the darkness, to the One who is coming again. May the joy of knowing Him be truly yours and may He be with you every step of the way, whatever 2012 holds for you in the year ahead.