David Hathaway No 88 Summer 2018
David Hathaway, Geneva, February 2018 I want to see God at work! I want to see the bigger miracles that Jesus said we would see. When I was in a communist prison, not knowing when I would ever get out, and remember, I had no Bible, what challenged me was remembering Paul and Silas in prison. Paul was the greatest evangelist in those days. They prayed, and God sent an earthquake. It shook the prison, broke the iron chains and broke open the doors! That was 2000 years ago. I know we all say, ‘Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever’. But I don’t quite believe that, I believe God gets more powerful every day! Only it’s not that He gets more powerful, it’s our understanding of Him that should get greater the longer we live in Him! So, in the communist prison, I began to pray, “Look Father, if You could work a miracle so big that You could literally break iron chains” – remember, Paul and Silas were chained to the guards – “O God, if You could work that kind of a miracle, surely You can do a bigger miracle today?!! You can set me free!” Of course, that’s what God did! But the greater miracle was that I wasn’t just set free, God sent the British Prime Minister to rescue me! What I want is not just a repeat of what’s in the Bible, I want to see the bigger miracles. I believe we can! But we’ve got to put our faith in God to the test! When I think of what God has done in my life in just the last two years it is powerful... But I’m not just looking at what God has done in the past, I’m looking at what God is going to do in the future – still greater miracles! I want to bring three scriptures. In Exodus 3:7 God appeared to Moses in a burning bush and this is what He said, “I have seen the affliction of My people in Egypt, I have heard their cry, I know their sorrows – and I AM come down to deliver!” God sees and knows our afflictions and He says, “I’m not just in Heaven, I am come down to deliver!” If God said that 4000 years ago, how much more is He saying it today! “I am HERE!” The Presence of God is with us! Constantly. God is here to deliver us! And He will deliver us, whatever is troubling us. From sickness, from financial problems, every kind of problem. The second scripture is in 1 Corinthians
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4:19-20. Apostle Paul, writing to the Church says, “I will come to you shortly, and I will know, not the speech of them which are puffed up, but the POWER. For the Kingdom of God is not in words, but in POWER!” The Word of God is not just in writing, it’s in the POWER of God to fulfil His Promises. And my third scripture is Numbers 23:19-20. You remember how Balak hired Balaam to curse Israel. Three times Balaam refused to curse. The third time, God spoke through Balaam, who said, “How can I curse those whom God has blessed? – God isn’t a man who can lie. God keeps His Word, He does what He says!” The POWER of our God is not in the theory or the theology, it’s in ACTION! As an evangelist, this is what I am determined to see: GOD AT WORK! God moving, God changing things, God changing people. Many years ago, working in Siberia just after the fall of communism, I was allowed to speak in a prison camp. We had just one hour. While the worship group were singing, the Commanding Officer was talking to me, “I’m a communist, an atheist, how can your God change these men?!! This is maximum security, these are the worst kind of criminals. In front of you are 200 serial murderers, 400 serious sex offenders, and 800 other criminals of every sort, 1400 men. I have a gun and I beat them. How can your talking to these men change them?!!” I knew it was pointless just ‘talking’ to those men, the Holy Spirit had to come. I said to them, “I spent a year in a communist prison just like this. But I know something you don’t know, I know how to get out!” All the men came forward and by now the prison officer was holding onto my arm! I said, “If we overcome the guards and I let you out, the evil spirits in you, that drove you to commit those crimes, will go out with you, and because you have no money, no food, no work and no home, within three months 80 percent of you will be back inside the prison. That’s statistics. God has to change your life!” And I preached Christ with the POWER to change the men. I only had 30 minutes. I preached the simple Gospel of the God who so loved the world that He sent His Son to take the punishment of every single one, rapist, murderer, whoever you may be – Christ
died to deliver you! I prayed with them. All 1400 men knelt on the ground. Even the officers prayed. Then I had to leave. It was a year before I could get back. The Commanding Officer threw open the gates, “After you left, all the men changed!” I spoke to the prisoners, “After you left, all the officers changed!” Not only were they having prayer meetings and Bible studies, but out of that prison we now know, 140 of those men, that’s one in ten, became evangelists, pastors and missionaries! God changed them! The Kingdom of God is not just the words, it’s the ACTION! GOD AT WORK! I could tell you so many stories like this – phenomenal demonstrations of the POWER of God! This is what motivates me! But it doesn’t come easy. Yes, everybody can be an evangelist, everybody should preach the Gospel, everybody should be leading other people to Christ! But if you really want to see the POWER of God, there’s a price to pay. I was saved when I was 8, baptised in water when I was 12, baptised in the Holy Spirit when I was 13, preaching in the street and in the church – but when I was 15, I was with a group of young people by the seafront in England and God began to speak to me. I had to leave the group, because God was saying, “David, I want you to serve Me, I want you to give Me EVERYTHING. Your eyes, your ears, your mouth, your feet, your family, your money – EVERYTHING!” It was a big battle for a 15-year-old. I thought I had already given Him enough, but eventually I gave in, “Lord, I give You EVERYTHING.” I was on holiday, staying with Christian friends. When I went to bed that night I said, “Now Lord, I have given You everything…” I was dreaming, “Next day is Sunday, the pastor will call me and I’m going to preach...” I was thinking of all the things I could do... Next morning I was the first downstairs, so excited, “This is the beginning of my new life...” But the first thing I saw was a row of dirty shoes. I hated cleaning shoes, I still do. And God said, “I called you to serve Me, clean all these shoes!” So the first job I had to do for God was cleaning shoes. I cleaned them as if Jesus Himself was coming down from Heaven to wear them! That was how I began. We begin at
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the bottom. And the key is listening to Him! Obedience. Only this has led to where I am today. I want to encourage you. In December I visited the Redeemed Christian Church of God in Nigeria. I had heard about the vast numbers. Can you imagine, the size of the auditorium on the first two nights was 1km wide and 2km long! It was full! For the last 2 nights we moved to the new auditorium – 9km square! Countless numbers, several millions. They were using not only the big auditorium, but the small one as well!!! You can’t count the people! I was absolutely amazed at what God can do, in a country which is quite a poor country... There is NO limit to what God can do! I haven’t reached the top level in my ministry yet. As far as God moves, He wants me to climb higher still. Some years ago I remember going to Switzerland with my wife and two of my daughters. We set out to climb the mountains. You start with the cable car, and then you walk. I said to one of my daughters, “We’ll reach the top!” But every time we thought we had reached the top, there was another peak higher. So we climbed higher and higher. But we never reached the top! It’s such a spiritual lesson! However high you get, however far you go with God, there is always somewhere higher. You never reach the top. I’ll never reach the top! Where is the top? It’s up in Heaven! We will never reach the ultimate height until we get into the Kingdom of God! As a boy I had a dream: Jesus was coming and I was getting nearer and nearer to Him and I just appeared in Heaven. In our spiritual experience, you just get higher and higher and higher. Then God says to you what He said to Enoch – He just took him – because God said to him, “You’re so far from earth, it’s nearer for
you to come into Heaven than to go back home!” You can never reach the limit of what God can do! Every time I see a miracle I think, the next one has to be bigger! I’m ambitious, I want more of God! Three summers ago I was preaching at the annual Vietnamese Summer Camp in Germany. The girls in the choir were singing, “I want to see Jesus”! They weren’t just singing with their mouths, but with their hearts. After I left there to go to my prayer mountain in Austria, I was saying, “I want to see You!” Nobody has seen the Face of God. Moses got the closest. When he was on Mount Sinai and God gave him the tablets, Moses saw the finger of God writing! On the mountain I was saying, “O God, I know I cannot see Your Face, but I want to see Your Hand!” The Hand of God, it’s His miracles! I was 10,000 feet up on the Zugspitze. It’s the highest mountain in Germany, it spans Germany and Austria. That day, it was covered with thick cloud, you couldn’t see anything. I hadn’t gone up for the view, I had gone to meet with God. I was so consumed with this praying, I was saying, “I want to see You, I want to see Your Hand at work! O God, if You will show me Your Hand, open the cloud for a moment so that I can see blue sky.” God was so real, that at that moment, a hole appeared in the cloud and I could see the blue sky. Since that day I have seen some phenomenal miracles. Why? Because I wanted to see God at work! To see the Hand of God. How many of you have this relationship with God that you want to see His Hand? – In your life, in your ministry? – God at work! If you do, God will do the impossible things! God can do things no man can do! The evidence of God is in the miracu-
lous, in the things no man can do. Someone has said, the ONLY evidence of God is in the miraculous. What other evidence of God’s existence do we have? You say, we’ve got the Bible. But most people don’t believe the Bible. I know you do, but the evidence that God exists is in the miraculous, when we see God at work! Jesus said, “Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father – because of the works that I do!” When I had the throat cancer in 1964, I had no treatment. I wanted a miracle. For three months I prayed. But the miracle was that the cancer did not disappear; the doctors, who were ready to operate, when they looked, said, “Who did it? Somebody has cut it out with a knife!” That was the Hand of God! I’m trying to show you, YOU are God’s evidence to the world. If the world cannot see Jesus today and cannot see the Father, the world should see Jesus in YOU! The Kingdom of God is not in word, but in POWER, in action, in the miracles God does In YOUR life! God at work in YOU. At the beginning of this year, God told me to make a phenomenal sacrifice – literally to sacrifice EVERYTHING I have and lay it on the altar. Then He will work a phenomenal miracle! Since I was 15 years old I have a relationship with God where He asks me to lay everything on the altar of sacrifice. Several times in my life I have been back to that same place to renew the vow I made aged 15. I was back there again at the end of last year, in October, to say “Thank You, the best thing I have ever done is when I gave You everything! Now here You are, take everything again.” God has taken everything I’ve got at this moment. I gave it to Him. He said, “Trust Me, I will repay you.” He will work a phenomenal miracle, and when He does, I will tell you.
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David Hathaway, Norway, February 2018
I NEED
God to speak to me and I NEED to be able to listen. Just after the collapse of the Soviet Union I took 400 people with me to evangelise Siberia for three months – we preached from one side to the other! Siberia is the end of the earth! It was one of the biggest miracles in my life. Nothing worked in Russia in those days, and the projected cost of the campaign was £2 million, and that was 25 years ago! We didn’t have any money! We had less than zero in the bank! My spiritual advisors told me NOT to do it. Can you imagine the responsibility I had? It was one of the biggest tests of my faith!!! I remember the battle we had! Slowly the money came in to buy the tickets to go, but no money for the expenses out there! The people coming with me complained, “These are one-way tickets! Where are the return tickets?!!” I daren’t tell them I had no money to bring them home, I told them, “Jesus said, ‘Go into all the world, begin In Jerusalem and Judea, then go to the ends of the earth...’ – That’s Siberia! Jesus said ‘Go!’ – He never said ‘Come back!’” Was that a test of my faith!!! But what happened in Siberia was the foundation of everything that has happened in Russia since (read my book ‘Why Siberia?’, and the whole story of my many years of ministry in Russia in my biography).
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I NEED God to speak to me now, because I NEED to know today, where I am going tomorrow! How would I know where to go if God doesn’t tell me? How do we get anywhere without satellite navigation? But my satellite navigation is ‘up there’! I have to get my instructions from Him. But you have to have faith to do what He says! I have always asked for the gift of faith. It’s the one gift you can never say that you actually have it, because the only evidence of the gift of faith is in its operation, when it becomes substance and evidence. Faith is not an intellectual gift, it MUST become fact, reality. Hebrews 11:1. Do I have the gift of faith? I don’t know, but I keep asking, all the time, give me more, and more – because faith is ONLY faith when it’s converted into reality! I think I’ve spent my whole life trying to find out what faith is! I’m still wondering even at my age, what is my job in life? Why was I born? What am I doing? Why am I here? I think the whole purpose of my life is to find out what faith is! I remember, from my earliest days I had a real experience with God. I’m quite envious of my young self! My first experience was not the Baptism of the Holy Spirit when I was 13, but when I was only 6 or 7, in my father’s church, it was absolutely full, I was standing there – and the Holy Spirit came down! I had no idea what this was, something just swept through me! And I never forget my favourite verse when I was a teenager, ‘O God, Thou art my God, early will I seek Thee. In a dry and thirsty land where there is no water, I will seek for You!’ Psalm 63. These are the two earliest memories I have. Even today, nothing touches me more than when that same Holy Spirit sweeps over me and I remember when I was only 6 or 7... And the older I get, the more I am reminded of that verse which was so precious to me in my teenage years, ‘O God, Thou art my God, early will I seek Thee. My flesh longs for You in that desert place, in the loneliness, my whole body cries
out as if for water’ – longing to see You Jesus! I’m searching, seeking... My life is an experiment... …Without faith it is impossible to please God. Because he who comes to God must believe that He is and is the rewarder of all those that search for Him! Hebrews 11:6. That’s faith. But the trouble with me is, I’m an extremist! I always want to push things to the extreme! And when it comes to faith, I don’t want ordinary faith, I want an experimental faith that’s always pushing the barriers! I see one miracle – I want to see a bigger one! And after that, a bigger one! It’s an experimental thing. I’m in the process of this at the moment, I’ve pushed the barriers a little bit further, I’ve committed myself – only God can actually rescue me now! I can’t even tell you right now what I’ve gone and done! I’ve put everything I have on the line! When my Board of Trustees ask me why, I can only say, God told me to do it! The hardest thing in my life is to convince people that God actually talks to me. I try to understand myself, why and how He does it! Fifty times, a hundred times, when it was impossible in Siberia, I would simply pray and God would tell me exactly what to do, and He did it! We took 17 crusade cities across four time zones, there never was a way to travel between the cities, no flights, no roads – but God always made the way! That’s how we lived for three months! Read the book, ‘Why Siberia?’!!! You see, every time, when I prayed, I had to do what God said! It wasn’t just the thousands of healings, it was the practical things, the way God would tell me, step by step, what to do next, how to do it... God never failed! In my life, when God has told me to do something, He has never ever failed me. There is something so much deeper in this ‘faith message’. In Malachi 3, God says, ‘You have robbed Me – in tithes and offerings.’ And then God says,
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‘Why don’t you TEST Me?’ – What a challenge this is to me!!! Can you understand, God is saying to me, ‘TEST Me! PROVE Me! PROVE what I can do! If you honour Me, I will pour you out such a blessing, that you haven’t got room to contain it!’ So if I want blessing from God, if I want power from God, if I want this gift called ‘faith’ – I have to put God to the test! It’s no use saying, ‘I have faith’ – don’t even bother to ask God for faith unless you are prepared to step out!!! God says TEST! All I have done all my life – I’m not talking about the evangelism, healing the sick – all I have been doing is TESTING God, to see how far we can go! Every time there is one miracle, push Him a bit more, a bit more... God is showing me something. You know, Jacob wrestled with God – Genesis 32. But by the end of the night, neither side could win. God had to touch Jacob, make him lame – only that ended the fight. But God said this to Jacob – He doesn’t say it to anyone else in the Bible – ‘As a prince you have power with God and prevailed.’ KJV. Now I understand what my life is about! My life is simply an experiment. When you look at me, you don’t see the end-product – I’m an experiment! I’m pushing, pushing all the time – to see how far God will let me go! But if you look a few pages back in your Bible, you find Jacob there, in Genesis 28. What’s he doing? He’s running away from his brother Esau. Exhausted, he dreams and sees a ladder set up on the earth, the top reaching into Heaven, the Angels of God ascending and descending on it. God showed me something: in a sense, He was offering Jacob a way into the Kingdom! Why didn’t Jacob, in his dream, take his eyes off the Angels and put his feet on the ladder?!! Suddenly I understood, if you want power with God, that power begins at the bottom of the ladder!
Get your feet on the rung! God is there! When He sees that you are climbing, He will meet with you! The Power is not us, it’s not who or what we are, the Power is God! But we’ve got to get on that ladder, start climbing – because only God can meet with you and give you the desire of your heart. Only God! Not men! Not yourself. It’s that experience with God. BEFORE Jacob could meet with God and wrestle with Him, (he was fighting for his life), this only came AFTER he’d already had an experience with God! Moses also had a very powerful experience. He saw a burning bush, not exceptional in the desert, but this bush was not destroyed. Moses stopped and looked and God spoke to him. But don’t just stop and look, walk into the fire! Too often our problem is that we’re looking from the outside, we can see the Fire, we can see the Power, we can see the Blessing of God. But the challenge is, don’t just stand there – walk into the Fire! You will get burned, yes, but that’s what God wants. He laid down His life for you. The pathway to God is sacrifice! Romans 12 burned itself into my heart in my teenage years: surrender your life as a sacrifice – because sacrifice is only ‘reasonable’ service! Paul is saying here, if somebody repairs your house, you pay them, it’s a job, you’ve done nothing. And God is saying: If you lay your whole life on the altar and sacrifice everything in service, you’ve done nothing! You owe it to Him, you have only done what is reasonable. Your whole life should be ‘reasonable service’, sacrifice. But there’s more, we’ve got to reach the regions beyond! Oh, I’m a dreamer, a visionary. It makes me hard to live with! I see in the distance, I see the Glory. I spend half my time thinking about the Kingdom when Jesus will be here and we will rule with Him, I’m looking beyond... I’m only 85, I’m only at the beginning of my life, my life is going to last more than a thousand years! What’s 85?!! I’m only in my
infancy! In my experience with God, I’m only at the beginning, I’m looking for the next miracle, what God is going to do next! I’m pushing the barriers! That’s what we should do, forgetting those things which are behind, press forward towards the next prize – Philippians 3. I want to forget the miracles of the past, I’m living in my future. The sinner has to forget his past, but Christian, don’t live in your past! The older I get, the more I look to my future! I’m looking forward, not back at the past. I want God to hear and answer... ...And He always does! We MUST experiment! Faith is not a dream, it’s reality. Push out the barriers. The reason I do it is to understand how big God is. We’re discovering how big the Universe is. How big is it? It’s as big as your telescope! The bigger the telescope, the more you see! How big is God? My God is not the God of my childhood, He’s expanding so fast, I can’t keep up with Him! I have to keep going on and on and on until I find WHO HE IS! I want to SEE JESUS! We’ve got to expand and expand our faith! God can never fail, He can never be defeated. And when we stand on the Authority of the Word of God, we can never be defeated. Let’s get into the battle! Let’s experiment! Father, send the Holy Spirit. Lord, we want to walk into the Fire – because YOU are in the Fire, You ARE the Fire. Lord, put that ladder in front of us like You did with Jacob. We’re going to start and climb that ladder! Why? Because we want Power with You. Now! Power to defeat the enemy and win the lost for Jesus! O God of Power, come upon us, open our eyes, help us experiment! Help us push the barriers back! In Jesus’ Name! Amen!
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In March David was invited to speak to Ukrainian Jews by Boris Grishenko, rabbi and pastor of the largest Messianic congregation in Europe. Boris chose to hold this special event between two significant Jewish festivals – Purim (when God delivered the Jewish people from physical annihilation at the hands of Haman and the Persian Empire), and Passover (when God delivered them out of slavery in Egypt). But greater than these, the greatest deliverance, Boris said, David Hathaway, to unbelievers, Ukraine March 2018 It was a KGB officer from Ukraine who arrested me in 1972 for bringing Bibles, two tonnes at a time, into the communist countries. In the prison, my best friend was a murderer, and without his help, because I didn’t speak the language, the guards would have been beating me all day long. I shared a cell with drug addicts, with every kind of criminal… I lived with them day and night. And living with them, I learnt to look at them completely differently. I saw what God could do with them… …When God looks at YOU, He doesn’t condemn you for the past, He sees the potential – He sees what He can do with your life! Only God can turn murderers into evangelists, drug addicts into pastors – only God! My God doesn’t just heal the sick, He breaks the curse that the devil has put on your life. He forgives every sin. In that moment when you give your life to Christ, the past is gone, you are born into a NEW life! You are free from all the failure, from all the mistakes, all the sin of the past! God gives you a COMPLETELY NEW LIFE. Jesus says, you become ‘born again’! Nobody can come up to you and accuse you, you
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is when the people are delivered spiritually out of sin and brought into the Kingdom of God through faith in Jesus, their Jewish Messiah, Yeshua! That’s why this outreach was held between Purim and Passover! Many responded to the call for salvation and many were miraculously healed in answer to prayer. This was very significant because of David’s powerful ministry in Israel.
are set totally free, you have a whole new life! It’s a much bigger miracle than healing the sick! God has such an intimate knowledge of you! I don’t know anything about you. But the Bible tells us that God knows who you are, your name, where you live, your family – even the hairs on your head are numbered! Nothing is hidden from God, the Bible says everything is recorded. Today, on the Internet, nothing that is put there can be destroyed, that’s how they can catch people out through their phone calls and text messages and social media sites… God knows better than the Internet everything about you, even the secrets of your heart, the things that you can’t tell your husband or your wife, everything you young people don’t tell your parents! But it’s not to punish you, God loves you! God IS love, God created love; the love that you have, God gave you! In my communist prison I learnt to love YOU – and I came to understand Jesus, that He SO loved YOU, in your sin, that He gave His life for you! God loves the sinner MORE than the saint – because that’s why He came – to
save the sinner, to save YOU! So much so, Jesus told a simple story: A farmer has 100 sheep. At night, because of the foxes and the wolves, he puts them in the sheepfold. But when he counts them, there’s one missing. He leaves the 99 and goes out. Why? To look for the one that is lost, the missing one. That’s exactly what God is doing today, He’s not looking for the safe ones, the good ones, the Christian already in the fold… God sent His Son into the world to find the one that’s outside! To look for YOU! God does not want you to come to Him out of fear. He doesn’t want to compel you to come. He wants you to come of your own freewill, your own choice. From the moment you were born, God has been looking and waiting for YOU: “Child of God, come home! Come back to your Father!” He is our Father! I want you to know the love that I’ve found, and the eternal life that I have. The Bible says that when we receive Christ, we receive eternal life NOW! Every one of you who will receive Christ will go to Heaven and we will be together with Him forever. Your decision makes the difference. Don’t turn your back on God’s love.
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Stuart Blount, Director of Ministry, Elim Pentecostal Church, UK
The story of Abraham is a picture for us of pilgrimage, that is, a life on a constant journey of discovery with God. Genesis 12:1-8 tells us of the beginnings of a man who was learning how to know God and journey with Him. The Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you… I will bless you and make your name great…I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse, and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” So, Abram went as the Lord had told him… He was 75 years old before the Lord really stirred him onwards and he took with him his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot and all the possessions they had accumulated and all the people that they had acquired in Haran. And they set out for the land of Canaan and they arrived there. Abraham travelled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time, the Canaanites were in the land. The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So, he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him. From there he went on to the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east – there he built an altar to the Lord and called on the Name of the Lord. (NIV.) Abraham was a nomad. His life was a constant journey of moving from one location to another. What stands out to
me is that whenever he arrived at a particular place where he would set up home, the first thing he did was to build an altar. Whilst his servants, and probably his family, were putting up the tents and settling the animals in the enclosures, Abraham built an altar to the Lord. This action of Abraham’s stands out to me as a significant example of the lifestyle he lived and the priorities he established for his relationship with God. For Abraham worship was not singing, it was building an altar. Worship is not so much what we sing, it’s what we build with our lives. The singing and worship we do together are the overflow of what we build in our lives, the story of our journey. God wants us to build a life of worship, constantly offering ourselves to Him as a living sacrifice – this begins by building an altar. Altars are built by those who want to be near to God Long before tabernacles and temples, men and women walked with God alone. Throughout the Old Testament you see how men built altars to God at pivotal moments of their life journey. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob walked with God alone and each knew how to build an altar. Long before priests and apostles and pastors, men and women met with God alone. It wasn’t about the structures of their religion, it was about their own personal encounter with God. In Genesis 12, it was Abraham who built the altar, Abraham who established a place to encounter God. I love the great musicians and singers in our churches who seek to stir our hearts to connect with God, but no one else can draw near to God for you or me! The Bible instructs us, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.” James 4:8. No one can be blamed for our lack of connection to God. In 2017, the church in Europe celebrated 500 years since the beginning of the Reformation. That great movement in church history was not only a radical realisation that we are justified by faith alone, but also that you and I do not need a priest to draw near to God on our behalf.
We are all called to meet with God. It’s interesting to note that God doesn’t seem to ask Abraham to build an altar. Abraham chooses to do so. You see, the reality is that who we are on our own with God, is who we truly are. The vulnerability, the transparency and the openness of who I am before God is who I truly am. But the reality in our lives is that sometimes we rely on the structures of a church service, of a prayer meeting, of a worship service to meet with God. God wants to meet with YOU. Wherever you are, in your home, out walking, on your way to work, collecting your children from school, driving your car, in a traffic jam – the Lord wants to meet with you there, where you are. Altars tell us what holds the highest value in our lives. Is the desire to be close to God, to walk with God, of the highest importance in your life? As beings, we are created with the innate capacity to worship something. Everybody worships something. There are many places that people worship that we might not immediately see as places of worship. Football stadiums, shopping malls and concert venues are all places of worship. Satan is subtle and one of his strategies is to attempt to steal our worship by diverting it to lesser gods. But we were created with a need in our heart to have something of value to give ourselves to. And Abraham says, “The highest value in my life is to walk with God.” God wants you to build an altar in your life, a place where you can meet with Him. Altars are built from the broken pieces of life In Exodus 20:24-25, God instructs Moses to build an altar out of earth and stone. So, Moses gathers the simple earth and stones out of the wilderness where he was. It wasn’t glorious, just a mound of earth. It wasn’t the finely carved, gold covered altar of the tabernacle or temple. It was just rubble. Jacob placed a stone at Bethel and called it the House of God because that’s where he met with God. Altars don’t need to be glorious places, they need to be personally constructed places where I meet God in the reality of my life, here and now. The altars of the Old Testament before the tabernacle and the temple were just
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bits of wood and stone, gathered into mounds to be the place where they were going to meet with God. Altars are more normal places than we imagine. They are not material or physical places, but they are a secluded location in our soul where we know His Presence, hear His Voice and feel His Touch. God is not dazzled by what impresses us. A few years ago with my family we visited London. We did two wonderful tours at The Houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace. We saw the splendour of our nation’s capital, the architecture of our royal history. But that doesn’t dazzle God. The beauty of religious surroundings does not matter anywhere near as much to God as when we gather around the simple things of our lives to meet with Him. Gideon built an altar from the broken Asherah poles, the places of heathen worship he had torn down under God’s instruction. Elijah built an altar of stones and challenged the prophets of Baal. He dug a ditch around it and covered it in water. It was just a pile of stones, but God was there! These altars of rubble were the places where God met His people of old. They were built by people who came in desperation before God. Altars saturated in the tears of their human experience. They were not grand and glorious, but often private places of solitude before God, when nobody else was watching. Abraham follows the instructions of God and takes his son up Mount Moriah to sacrifice him – do you think that was a pleasant act of worship? He built an altar, and his son says to him, “Father, we’ve got wood for the fire, but we don’t have a sacrifice!” – Can you imagine how Abraham felt as tears welled up in his eyes? You see, the places where we meet with God are sometimes not surrounded by the beautiful melodies and harmonies of our worship services. The places where we really meet God are sometimes in
the broken issues of our lives. And there’s tears. And we can’t even speak or explain what we’re feeling. But we KNOW, God is WITH US. We are so blessed to come together Sunday by Sunday and worship God with others who love Him. But you know where you will really meet God? – On your own. In your kitchen, in your bedroom, on the street, anywhere. It doesn’t have to be in a building that has been sanctified for such a purpose. What God is looking for is not a beautiful location but an honest heart. Remember the prostitute who comes to Jesus when He’s at the meal with Simon the Pharisee? She comes up behind Jesus, she’s crying so much her tears are dropping onto His feet. Before anybody can stop her, she drops to her knees and provocatively unfurls her hair and dries His feet with her flowing locks – and there’s this moment of worship when she takes what she used in her regular trade, perfume in a little alabaster vessel that hung around her neck, and pours it over Jesus’ feet. The brokenness of her life poured out at the feet of Jesus! Sometimes real worship is painful. It’s the pouring out of all of our difficult experiences before God. Life is not simple, it is complex and challenging. You may be going through all sorts of things, but I want to say to you, build an altar with it, with the rubble of your life. Altars are temporary and they need to be built elsewhere In Genesis 12:7-8, the Bible tells us that Abraham built an altar THERE to the Lord. But from there he went on to Bethel, and THERE he built an altar to the Lord. At every stage of his journey, Abraham built an altar. I’ve walked with the Lord most of my life. I was born into a Christian family, I gave my life to Jesus when I was nine and made a passionate recommitment of my life to
Christ when I was sixteen. There have been many ‘THERES’ on my journey, no fame in my story, only a journey of places where God has met with me – moments of pain and of celebration, moments alone, in my car, at home, or moments when I’ve just had to draw away from the hustle and bustle and pour out my heart and meet with Him alone. Abraham never got beyond building altars. Every place he established himself, THERE he built an altar. Worship is not a place, it’s the posture of our heart before God. You may not be able to produce the music and the sounds of Sunday morning, but you can worship. It doesn’t have to be 10, 15 or 40 minutes of song or prayer – it can be just a moment. It can be in silence. It can be in the privacy of your heart as you travel on public transport. It can be a cry or a sigh. That’s the beauty of having the Spirit living within us, He is able to lead us to meet God. When was the last time you were on your own before God? When was the last time you built an altar of surrender? It isn’t sufficient for us to lean just on public moments of worship together. There can be a sense of decorum to maintain, or a fear of expressing the real depths of our heart that can hold us back from really responding to God. We need the freedom to encounter God and respond to Him when we meet with Him alone. Because worship is about consecration, it’s about how we live our lives. Maybe you’re experiencing real difficulties. Maybe there’s some private rubble in your soul. That’s my struggle with God, to realise what an imperfect man I am inside. But I know, I can gather those broken things from my life and come before Him in my heart, even kneel physically before Him and say, “God, I come to this place, to meet You at this altar that is made from the rubble of my life.”
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The world has never needed the Church more than it does today. But what kind of Church (and I don’t mean Denomination here) should be at the heart of the world in which we live? What kind of Church can impact our society? Remember the Church is you and me, individual men and women saved by grace. And yes, we can approve each other, but what counts is the Church that pleases God. The Church that will impact the world is the one God approves of! – John 5:44. Psalm 15 asks, ‘Who may enter into Your Tabernacle, who shall dwell in Your Holy Hill?’ Whoever asks this remembers that the Lord Himself, seeing Angels in rebellion, casts them out of His Presence. Remember, Angels who truly worship God, cover their faces and fall on their knees. Men and women who seek the Holy Face of the God of Israel must ask, ‘Who may enter into Your Holy Tabernacle?’ Most people don’t ask this question, most people just think we’ll all go the Heaven. But we won’t! Christ Himself was the only one who could enter God’s Holy Presence! He proved it by His sinless life. One day the Church too will be in God’s Presence – a Church which not only looks outwardly like a Church, but whose inner heart is transformed! Only such a Church can impact our world. The Bible tells us, God does not look at the outward appearance, but at the heart; and each one of us is called to be an open letter, written by Christ, that can read by all men – 2 Cor 3:3. The life that you live will impact the world, your life will attract people to Christ or repel them. Doctrines and denominations mean nothing. You need only one thing, to be recognised by the Only One who is able to approve of us, the Only One who can
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sanctify us, the Only One who can transform us. God looks at your heart, not at your outward appearance. There is only one Church that can be at the heart of the world – it’s the one that will be taken away to meet Him! Too often the Church is preoccupied with its outward appearance, how to attract the world to it. But the more Church tries to look like the world, the more she turns away from the One she is supposed to please. The Only One who can save is Him. We are called to be the light and salt of the world – but to be this, our hearts have to be transformed, changed! We can be overpreoccupied with outward things, the quality of our music and singing, our welcome team… Sometimes we even turn to marketing agencies for their expertise. But the only Church that can attract people is the one where Christ dwells in the heart of the Church. In my own church a man gave his testimony who had lived on the streets for 15 years. One year before, we had a week of prayer and fasting, not perhaps the best time for such a man to come and join us – but he did! And the Presence of God fell on him. He repented there and then, he became a new man, set free from cocaine and heroin in an instant – all his addictions to which he was a slave, gone! His testimony has been proved and tested over time. It’s not enough to say, “Today I’m set free!” You have to be able to say one year later, ten years later, “I’m free!” The Church that would reach the heart of the world must be a Church whose heart is changed and brings the Presence of God. This Church is made up of each one of us, a living stone making up the Church where you are. Let us test and see what is in our heart!
When the Bible speaks about the ‘heart’, it doesn’t mean the heart which is a muscle in your body. You can have a heart transplant, but this doesn’t change your character, who you are… Biblical thought sees you as a ‘whole’ made up of your body, mind and soul. The Bible says you should love the Lord with all your heart and with all your soul and your strength. It’s speaking of the whole of your human dimension – your character, your will, your thoughts, your speech. So let’s examine our hearts… Let’s carry out a health check. When you go to your doctor, whatever the problem may seem to be, the first thing he does is listen to your heart. Why? Your heart may be sick without you knowing it. The other day one of my son’s colleagues, a fit man, went to see the doctor. He discovered this man had a serious heart problem! He had to go to hospital straightaway! A sick heart brings grave complications – shortness of breath, fatigue, bad circulation, high blood pressure. It’s the same with a sick spiritual heart. Your joy, your zeal in service, your love of your neighbour can be quenched; bad circulation of your thoughts, tension in your relationships! When your heart is sick, people around you know it, your Christian witness suffers because of what you say and do. So we must come before God and let Him check us, we have to be tested and tried. You cannot argue with God’s diagnosis! The Prophet Jeremiah says the heart is ‘deceitful above all things and desperately wicked – who can know it?’ Have you never been surprised at yourself? Astonished by the thoughts you have? Shocked, all of a sudden, by your own behaviour? Have you never wept at
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Pastor Samuel Peterschmitt from Open Door Church Mulhouse To all the churches in Geneva, February 2018
what you discover? Thoughts, attitudes deep in your heart of which you are ashamed? King David cried out, “Create in me a new, a clean heart!” What lies in the bottom of your heart comes out under pressure. If you go to the cardiologist, he will put you on a bicycle, it’s a stress test – because it is under stress that the heart will show its weakness. In the same way God allows us to go through trials to reveal what’s at the bottom of our hearts. Pressure reveals what we are – and makes us aware of what really needs to change. Under pressure, Abraham had a surprising reaction in regard to Sarah. They were in Egypt. Realising his wife was very beautiful, afraid they would kill him to have her, he found he was prepared to distance himself from his wife and break faith with her by saying, “She’s not my wife, she’s my sister!” It was a half-truth, since she was his half-sister! Ladies, how would you have reacted?!! Under threat and under menace, he denied his wife! Remember, Abraham is the father of our faith!!! Could you imagine he would have stooped so low? Yet it was a reaction in his heart. Recently I had a call from a country where there’s a wave of persecution. The man on the end of the phone said to me, “Do you know what hurts the most? When the police raided us, out of fear, some of our closest partners suddenly distanced themselves from us. People we were close to. People we prayed with and worshipped with. But suddenly when fear is at the door, ah, I don’t know you anymore…” Brothers, sisters, friends, under pressure we show who we really are! Do you think that King David ever thought that under the pressure of temptation, he would do what he did? David, the hero of Israel, who conquered a giant and was himself conquered by a naked woman? Do you think David ever imagined he could come up with such a Machiavellian plan as the one he came up with? He got Bathsheba’s husband to come back from the frontline, hoping he would sleep with her. But Uriah, a man of honour, refused to sleep with his wife whilst his men were on the battlefield. Could you imagine that David would think he could get Uriah killed by putting him at the heart of the battle? One of his best soldiers? The human heart is wicked, deceitful above all
things! That’s why David cried, “O God, create in me a new and clean heart!” The Church today needs to cry the same, “O God, create in me a pure heart!” Create! New! Not just fix my heart. Change my heart of stone and make a heart of flesh, a soft heart. Give me a transplant! David’s prayer was, “O God, don’t cast me away from Your Presence, or take Your Holy Spirit from me!” – Psalm 51:11. David knew, the only thing that could make him pleasant to God was the Holy Spirit in him. His cry was prophetic, because he knew Jesus would come and say, we must be born again, born of God – and He would create in us a new, clean heart. It’s not enough to try and conform to rules and regulations. We need the Spirit of God in us. We need to be able to repent, to be changed. We need to be men and women who have a relationship with God because He LOVES us. There is a big difference between doing things because you love, and doing things because you HAVE to. Husbands, are you faithful to your wife because you love her, or because you are not allowed to be unfaithful to her? The difference is fundamental to the relationship! When you love the Lord out of a new and changed heart, you will obey Him – out of LOVE! And people will see it! People who are simply religious are like plastic flowers, there’s no life in them, a bee cannot make honey out of plastic!
There can be terrible things in our hearts. We all blame Peter for denying Jesus, but if that had been us, under the same pressure, which one of us wouldn’t have done the same? Peter, who said even if others turned their back on Jesus, he would not!!! He was sincere, he meant it. He had no idea that from somewhere deep inside him, all of a sudden, he would say, “I don’t know Him!” In front of a mirror with no one beside us, we are not jealous. But put someone next to you and feelings start to arise. How many rivalries have destroyed church unity?!! Admit it! It’s because of our hearts. How do we react when another church is blessed, when your neighbour is blessed? Look at King Saul. When he heard about the crowd singing David’s praises, he was annoyed, the next thing will be the kingship for David… From that moment on, Saul wanted to destroy him! But supposing Saul had said of David, “There’s something in this man that I need to bless the Kingdom with, let’s unite, let’s work together!” Then Saul’s life and the destiny of Israel would have been changed. It’s our hearts that are the biggest problem for the Church today! The world is dying. It needs a Church after God’s own Heart, a Church not preoccupied with its outward appearance, but with the inner heart. Your heart should be an open letter, written by Christ, for all world to read.
In 2015 one pastor invited David Hathaway to speak to pastors and leaders in Geneva, to tell of the impact of the unity he was seeing in evangelism in East Europe. But how could the churches in Geneva implement David’s challenge? Not only the vast denominational divide, but the language divide – French, German, Spanish, Italian, other languages – it was not possible… One man put his whole passion into driving the vision forward, so that in 2016, 2017 and now in 2018 over 50 churches, two and a half thousand Christians, many languages and cultures, have met together in the Palexpo Centre, Geneva for the whole day! In 2018 we were witnesses of this miracle!
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Katie Morris The battle shoes of peace are for wearing in times of war! Put them on before you start – or you will slip and fall! Paul commanded us to have our feet shod with the ‘preparation’ of the Gospel of Peace - Ephesians 6:15. Ideally, put them on FIRST, BEFORE engaging in spiritual warfare. Put them on BEFORE going into battle, BEFORE you gird yourself with the armour and weaponry that will save your life and destroy your foe. Put them on whilst you can still bend down and humble yourself under God’s mighty Hand. Then He will lift you up and make you stand firm – 1 Peter 5:6-9.
The Roman soldier had the best shoes ever yet designed for war. The soles were spiked with metal studs so that whatever the terrain, he could not slip or slide. They also strengthened his ankles so that he could stand on rough ground under pressure and under blows. They were good for walking forward in – and very hard to walk backwards in retreat. Until the beginning of this year I had never paid much attention to these ‘battle’ shoes of the Gospel of Peace. Of course I have thought a great deal about the belt of Truth, the helmet of Salvation, the shield of Faith, the sword of the Spirit... I use those. But well, I’m not the evangelist, David is... Only in the heat of a spiritual battle myself this year, did I suddenly I realise, these battle shoes of the Gospel of Peace are for me! Without them, I will not stand, I will fall. Jesus is my Peace, and He can make even my enemies to live at peace with me. I need these shoes. How do I put them on? Peter found out the hard way. At the Last Supper, Jesus told him, “Satan has asked to have you, you will deny Me, but I have prayed for you that your faith will not fail...” In the garden of Gethsemane, it was a comfort for Jesus I’m sure to have his three closest disciples near Him, but actually He fought His battle with Satan alone. To His three disciples the battle instructions were, “Stay here, watch and pray that YOU don’t enter into temptation!” All three were so overwhelmed with dread, they fell asleep... They couldn’t and didn’t pray. They weren’t
ready for what was to happen next. So now Judas comes to betray Jesus, with a kiss and a detachment of armed soldiers... And Peter, who had been so exhausted in the garden, hadn’t prayed... He’s in such high tension, he totally loses every last vestige of peace he might have had and strikes one of the men with a sword – and cuts off his ear! Well you can understand him perhaps, this was his beloved Jesus who was being arrested by a mob come with swords and clubs… But you will never overcome evil with evil, even if your evil seems right to you – 1 Peter 3:9. The man Peter struck was Malchus, a servant of the High Priest. Now in the High Priest’s Palace, a relative of Malchus recognises Peter. Peter is filled with a terrible fear – retribution is coming his way... He swears he does not even know that man Jesus... The cock crows… Peter went outside and wept bitterly. What he did in the garden led him to deny Jesus in the palace! We will jump over the very precious restoration of Peter. But Peter learned a lot that night... All 5 chapters of his first letter address this issue, how to react when the fiery test comes... And it DOES COME. 1 Peter 1:6-7. Whatever the test that may come, Peter should have watched and prayed, and so should you and I. At home, at work, in ministry, in the world, we should never render evil for evil, or railing with railing, but, as Peter says, with blessing – because to this we are called so that we may receive blessing! 1 Peter 3:9. Peter came so close to suffering in the High Priest’s Palace for what he had done, that he disassociated himself from Jesus, “I’m not His disciple! I wasn’t there! I don’t know Him!” Peter writes to us, there is no blessing, ever, for doing wrong! 1 Peter 2:20a. In the same High Priest’s Palace, Peter was the witness of Christ’s own example, who being reviled, reviled not, when He suffered, He threatened not, but committed Himself to Him who alone judges righteously. Christ in the Judgement Hall must be our example, not Peter in the garden! 1 Peter 2:21-24. I think we DO know when our spirit is will-
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ing, but our flesh is weak and we’re in danger. So we DO know when we should be watching and praying and not falling asleep! Peter wasn’t wearing his battle shoes of peace on the night of Christ’s betrayal. He hadn’t prayed, he was unprepared and too weak to suffer patiently with Christ, too weak to let God do things His way… But Peter learned. In his last days he was strong enough to suffer with and die for Christ, exactly as Jesus had foretold, that one day he would stretch out his own arms and let them take him where he did not want to go. John 21:18-19. Our stumbling block is not other people, nor our circumstances, they can’t make us fall, it’s our own flesh responding in the flesh way. That’s what makes us fall. If you have given the devil a foothold in your life, if you have slipped from the safe place we have in the Rock of our Salvation, weep and wail before God’s altar like Peter did – confess your fault to Him, seek restoration – and He will give it! Moses said, if you become corrupt in any way, and if because of that, you enter into trials and temptations (like Peter did), and you are in distress, IF – from where you now find yourself – IF you will seek the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul – you WILL find Him. He is merciful, He will not abandon you or destroy you – you WILL be found by Him. Deuteronomy 4:25-31. And it WILL go well with you! Deuteronomy 4:40. You WILL win your battle. In the day of evil and testing – which surely comes – let God’s Will be done His Way, and HE WILL DELIVER YOU. Vengeance is Mine says the Lord. Let HIM roll out the Judgements and Decisions... You, put on those battle shoes of peace which will save you! Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. Romans 12:19-21.
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Available on Kindle and in Paperback British Evangelist David Hathaway is known as a living legend and a hero of faith in the former Communist Countries and amongst Russian-speaking peoples, especially amongst the Russian-speaking Jews in Israel – sadly he is not so well known in the West. This is his life story. Why do we call David ‘a man after God’s Own Heart’? This book will show you what has driven him since his earliest years – and still drives him today. We trust that this biography will not just excite you, but inspire you to follow Jesus in the same spirit: “I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, for it is the Gospel which is the POWER of God unto salvation to ALL who will BELIEVE.” Katie Morris
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