Saturday, January 26, 2008

Pleasure Boat or Lifeboat?


Today on Grafton Street the Word of God was proclaimed publicly by way of preaching tract distribution and one on one witnessing. The team was assembled by a series of text messages and mobile phone calls. The organization was simple and lightweight but the message was not! Some listened with interest many ignored and failed to stop. Why I ask myself is there such indifference to a message that will be remembered for eternity either in Hell with regret or Heaven with thankfulness? I often think the spiritual climate needs to change as does the passion and unction of the preachers as does the comfortable arrogant attitudes of many. May God give us grace to make the message of the cross more urgent and vivid and cause the true state of peoples hearts top be expose before a holy and loving God who seeks repentance.

A German brother who joined us today told us after that in Austria there are now more Muslims than Protestants. Immediately I said to him that that was probably because the Muslims are getting out there while the church sleeps. For a fab video on the topic of the complacent church acting as a pleasure boat and not a lifeboat! Cut and paste the following address in your web browser address window http://www.fullflamemovie.com/screening-room-sea.htm Be blessed by Jesus and be a blessing for Jesus. Ant

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Africa blesses Ireland


God spoke to a brother in Ghana, Africa to come to Ireland, a country he knew nothing of and today I can testify as I laboured for Jesus with this dear brother that God had again prepared a good work (Ephesians 2:10) when we prayed with a science student from UCD who humbled himself before the King of Kings, asked forgiveness and invited Jesus to lead and guide for the rest of his days.

I dearly love evangelism and learning from Jesus as I go. "You can't trust a book written by men" they say of the BIble very often. My answer is "If God is God surely if He wants to get a message to us He is well able to do so" . All scripture is God breathed...but the traditions of man are not trustworthy, indeed Jesus said "You nullify the word of God for the sake of your traditions!" . I know these truths can be learned in a church or classroom setting but they become more vivid when the Spirit of God whispers them to your ear on the street when you need them.

Photo is of Leonidas my street preaching friend who was with us in Galway a few months ago. He is now back in Burundi. Pray for him that he will get work and that God will bless his evangelism ministry. Ant

Friday, January 04, 2008

Chasing Humanism out of the Church


Certain messages have deeply impacted me and it is with great delight I can recommend and offer this message by Paris Reidhead. Simply go to the "MP3 Audio Downloads" on the left and click on the message. To download to computer or iTunes right click (PC) or Ctrl + click (Mac) on the MP3 tab. Paris Reidhead himself wrote about how this message came to be as follows:
 
In over fifty years of Bible teaching and preaching "Ten Shekels and a Shirt" is the only message that I feel constrained to explain how it came to be preached.
During a Bethany Fellowship Summer Conference in the mid sixties I was preparing to speak at the Tuesday morning Bible hour. Upon returning to my room after breakfast to meditate and pray about the message for that morning hour, I felt strangely impressed that I could not deliver the message that had been prepared for the session. Instead, I felt that there was some other message that was needed which I was to bring.
After prayer, the message that came to mind was one on which I had begun preparation for the ministry at the church in New York City of which I was pastor at that time. My notes were not with me, but were in a file folder in my study. An empty envelope was on the desk in my room, on the back of which I wrote the scripture texts to be used and one or two ideas that came to mind. With the envelope in my Bible marking Judges, Chapter 17, and my self utterly cast upon the Lord, I went to the auditorium where between four and five hundred people waited to hear from the Lord through me.
I remember praying, "This morning I am utterly cast upon You because I am not really prepared." In my heart I seemed to hear His response, "Well is that so bad, already" (being from New York City it was given in an idiom I would understand.)
I delivered the message and gave an invitation. Shortly the altar across the front of the auditorium was filled with broken people seeking God.
The summer conference was soon over and I returned to New York City and the ministry there.
About ten years later, one of the Bethany Fellowship staff was in Washington, D.C., where we had moved and from where we still minister. His word was, "Paris, I want to tell you that God has repeatedly used your message "Ten Shekels and a Shirt" in my life".
I didn't really know to what he referred, for I had never preached that message again. The substance of it occurs in other messages, but the exact message itself was preached only that once.
A week or two later Harry Conn from Rockford, Illinois was in Washington. He invited me to have dinner with him. In the course of the meal he said, "I buy that message of yours 'Ten Shekels and a Shirt' by the dozen to give to people. God is really using it in lives". My response was that if you have a copy, I would like to have it sent to me so that I can find out what it is I have said. In a few days the cassette arrived.
Since I don't have a tape player in my office, I put the tape into the Sony dictating machine on my desk and listened through the little playback on the hand-held microphone. The element of distance in terms of time, and the distorted sound through the miniature speaker, let me listen to the message with no real awareness of who was speaking. From time to time I felt like exclaiming, "That's right! I wish I had said that!" Then it dawned on me that it was I.... no, not really. I realized that on a Tuesday morning during a summer conference, God had been able to get His message across because of my utter and complete helplessness.
Be sure of this, I take no credit for anything and everything that is good and a blessing from the message. In the past sixteen years several thousands of taped copies of this message have been sold and many more thousands of copies have been made from the ones purchased.
I have never preached this message again, nor will I. This message has not been transcribed and printed, nor will it ever be. Here is the message just as the Lord, Who chose to use Balaam's donkey, was also able to use another who was utterly dependent upon Him.
Paris Reidhead