This Sunday is the second Sunday of Advent and we’re lighting the candle of “Peace.” The Vankevich family will light the Advent wreath this week. This year our Advent preaching series is entitled “Advent Hope” and the Rev. John Chu will be our preacher. Rev. John is preaching from the Gospel of Luke and his sermon is entitled “Advent Hope: Jesus, Our Consolation And Redemption.”
So come, join us as we worship the triune God together. Here’s the announcement:
Church @ Church this Sunday—the 7th December at 10:00am
In case you missed it, you can find last week’s service (First Sunday of Advent)HERE.
Important Details:
This Sunday 7th December after the service is our annual Christmas Party lunch. So plan to join us. (Remember that we have no heating or cooling facilities until our repairs are complete.) Everyone is welcome.
Ladies’ Refresh Prayer 10:30am next Tuesday. All ladies welcome.
Weekly Men’s Fellowship. An informal gathering for men. 9:30am Wednesdays at Bean-Around-The-Word coffee shop, White Rock (corner of Johnston Road and Thrift Avenue White Rock). Contact Mike Inch for details. All men welcome.
All Saints Prayer and Bible Study 7:00pm every Thursday. Cathie Bolan will lead us in our study of the Apostle John’s first Epistle. Everyone welcome
The Advent Series for this year is entitled: “Advent Hope. ” Each week we will have a guest preacher.
Sunday 21st December: “9 Lessons and Carols” Please stay for hot apple juice and mince pies after the service. Everyone welcome.
Christmas Eve 24th December Family Candlelight service at 7:00pm. Everyone welcome.
Christmas Day 25th December Family Service at 10:00am. Everyone welcome.
If you have any further questions, or need help in any way, don’t hesitate to contact me.
See you this Sunday.
Thank you Church.
Stay vigilant and prayerful.
Love each other deeply and keep Jesus at the very centre of everything you do.
Why do we light five candles at Advent? It is about Jesus the Light of the world who breaks into our darkness. God’s first action in Genesis 1:3 was to say: “Let there be light. 1 John 1:5 says: “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all”. In John 8:12 and 9:5, Jesus said: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” That’s what Advent is all about.
Despite what Carl Jung suggested, God does have not a dark side, ala Luke Skywalker in Star War. John 1:5 reminds us that “Jesus the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
Isaiah 66, being the last chapter, is very similar to the last book of Revelation. Many people are not aware how eschatological and apocalyptic that Advent really is. Advent is not just about remembering Jesus first coming in a manger, but also preparing for his second coming. Both Advents are about light breaking into our darkness. As Isaiah 9:2 puts it, “the people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness, a light has dawned.” Isaiah 60:1-2 says: “Arise, shine for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you, even in the midst of gross darkness. Have you noticed that the darkness these days is getting much grosser?
2 Corinthians 11:14 says that Satan comes as an angel of light offering counterfeit enlightenment. Jesus brings the true enlightenment in a very dark and lost world. As Isaiah 42:6 and 49:6 tell us, Jesus the Jewish messiah is also the Light to all the Gentile Nations. You don’t need to do yoga to get Jesus’ enlightenment. What you need to do, as Bishop Peter often reminds us, is to surrender our wills.
My late mother Lorna, who used to sit in this second pew, suffered during the winter from SADS, Seasonal Affective Disorder. Is anyone else affected by the lack of sunlight in the winter? Mom was drawn to the Light in the midst of darkness. That is why we flew as a family to Hawaii in December 1971, right before my Jesus movement conversion. Hawaii was indeed a Paradise of Amazing light. The only problem is that I brought my personal darkness with me. When I was born again in a day, I was filled with heavenly light that has never left me in the past 53 years. One Day at a Time. Jesus in Matthew 5:14 calls us the Light of the World. In John 12:36, Jesus said: “Believe in the light while you have the light, so that you may become children of light.” Paul in Ephesians 5:8-9 and 1 Thessalonians 5:5 similarly calls us Children of Light.
One thing that brightened up my mother during the winter was looking at vibrant, colourful paintings. My mother was an amateur painter who took lessons from Bob Hickling, whose arms were paralyzed from polio so he painted with his mouth. My mom loved not only Van Gogh but also Monet, the French father of Impressionism which focused on light, form, and nature. Monet did not use chiaroscuro like Rembrandt, who painted sharp almost three-dimensional contrasts between light and dark. Instead, Monet used extra colour to create effects of light, shadow and depth, giving momentary impressions (hence impressionism). Monet painted the impression of brilliant light by putting contrasting vibrant colors, such as blue and orange, right next to each other. Instead of creating shadows with dark paint, he would create blue and green shadows through which light broke through.
My mother’s love for paintings is now rubbing off on me at age 71. How many of you have or had parents who loved paintings? How many of you have picked up your parent’s love of paintings? How many of you love to actually paint? Both Monet & Van Gogh loved painting sunflowers. (Show painting) His revolutionary method of painting in the outdoors was called plein air. Monet famously said, “To see, we must forget the name of the things we are looking at.”
Some see Monet as the world’s most famous painter. Has any one been to seen Monet’s famous Japanese-inspired garden and pond in Giverny, France? It’s visited by over one half million people annually. Born in 1840, Claude Monet was passionate about light in his flower paintings. In the early 1890s, he painted Rouen Cathedral first in morning light, then midday light, and then gray weather, showing his deep fascination with the effects of light. What however would light be without colour? Monet said: • Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.
Monet struggled with depression, poverty, illness, and discouragement. He became so despondent over his lack of sales that in 1868, he attempted suicide by trying to drown himself in the Seine River. Troubled by cataracts, Monet sometimes was so frustrated with his paintings that he destroyed as many as 500 of his own 2500 paintings. He would burn, cut or kick them into oblivion, ripping them to shreds.He once wrote that “age has worn me out. My life has been nothing but a failure, and all that’s left for me to do is to destroy my paintings before I disappear.”
Yet, one of his paintings has since sold for 110 million dollars.
Hitler as a failed painter stole many of Monet’s paintings from Jewish art collectors. In October 2024, after 86 years, the FBI returned Monet’s Bord de Mer painting to the granddaughters of a Jewish couple who fled Vienna in 1938. His fellow impressionists Degas, Renoir, and Cézanne were all antisemitic. Claude Monet however rejected French antisemitism by supporting Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer unjustly accused of treason and imprisoned.
That is why the nation of Israel loves Monet. The Israel Museum in Jerusalem houses several of his paintings. The Tel Aviv Museum of Art holds Monet’s Water Lily Pond. There are around 130,000 painters in Israel. The most famous Israeli painter was Marc Chagall.
Monet had a God-given ability to see light and colour, helping others to see God’s creation in a whole new way. Similarly, through Advent, Jesus removed our spiritual cataracts so that we can see with Kingdom eyes spiritual light and colour, helping others to see God’s new creation in a whole new way. As Hank Williams sang, ‘I saw the Light. I saw the Light. No more in darkness. No more in night.’ That is what Advent is all about.
In Isaiah 66 1, the Lord says:
“Heaven is my throne,
and the earth is my footstool.
Where is the house you will build for me?
Where will my resting place be?
God is the Father of lights. As James 1:17 puts it, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” The house that God dwells in is full of unimaginable heavenly light. Do I hear an Amen?
2 Has not my hand made all these things,
and so they came into being?”
declares the Lord.
“These are the ones I look on with favor:
those who are humble and contrite in spirit,
and who tremble at my word.
Vs 2 tells us that in order to dwell in God’s heavenly house, we need to humble ourselves with contrition and tremble at His Word? How many of you tremble at God’s Word? It is so easy to become blasé and distracted. God wants us to repent of all lukewarmness to His Word and recover our first love for Jesus and the Bible.
3 But whoever sacrifices a bull
is like one who kills a person,
and whoever offers a lamb
is like one who breaks a dog’s neck;
whoever makes a grain offering
is like one who presents pig’s blood,
and whoever burns memorial incense
is like one who worships an idol.
They have chosen their own ways,
and they delight in their abominations;
Vs 2 & 3 tells us that choosing our own ways, delighting in abominations, it never ends well. As E Stanley Jones said in his book The Way, there are essentially two choices in life: God’s way or not the way. Not the way, doing it our own way, always ends in darkness. Idolatry is all about choosing the darkness. Revival is about choosing to turn from darkness back to the true Advent Light, Jesus.
4 so I also will choose harsh treatment for them
and will bring on them what they dread.
For when I called, no one answered,
when I spoke, no one listened.
They did evil in my sight
and chose what displeases me.”
Revival is about realizing that our way doesn’t work. Vs. 4 tells us that idols don’t answer or listen when we call. Doing what displeases Jesus is always a lose-lose. IF we want Advent revival, we must choose what pleases Jesus, the Light of the World.
5 Hear the word of the Lord,
you who tremble at his word:
“Your own people who hate you,
and exclude you because of my name, have said,
‘Let the Lord be glorified,
that we may see your joy!’
Yet they will be put to shame.
Vs 5 reminds us that when you choose the Advent Light, not everyone will be happy about this. They may hate you and exclude you because of your love for Jesus the Light of Advent.
6 Hear that uproar from the city,
hear that noise from the temple!
It is the sound of the Lord
repaying his enemies all they deserve.
Vs. 6 tells us that there is no escaping the sound of Light that God releases into our life. We reap as we sow. As the Creeds remind us, Jesus the Lord of Advent Light will indeed return to judge the living and the dead.
7 “Before she goes into labor,
she gives birth;
before the pains come upon her,
she delivers a son.
Vs. 7 teaches that breakthrough always require labour pains. Advent is a season of labour pains, as we are preparing for the Light of the Christ Child. How many of you as mothers had a completely pain-free delivery? How many mothers have ever suffered or worried about your children post-birth? How old does one’s children need to before you stop being tempted to worry about them? Let me ask you: What is God trying to birth in your life, your family, your work? What is God birthing right now in Israel and secondarily in our nation of Canada?
October 7th, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, has changed Israel forever. The electric fence failed them. Many Israelis are turning to the Lord in a way that they never did before. Has anyone noticed that technology, no matter how impressive, is not our saviour. It will let us down.
Vs 8 says: Who has ever heard of such things?
Who has ever seen things like this?
Can a country be born in a day
or a nation be brought forth in a moment?
Yet no sooner is Zion in labor
than she gives birth to her children.
Advent represents desert and waiting times for the Light of Christ. Israel, since 1948, has turned a barren desert into one of the greatest fruit-exporting country on earth, just like the Old Testament prophesied. They export over 800 million dollars of fruit per year, especially dates, figs, pineapples, avocados, oranges, and mangoes. They have also planted 250 million trees throughout Israel.
God has kept his covenant promises to the ancient Jewish people. Isaiah 11: 12 says, “He will raise a banner for the nations and gather the exiles of Israel; He will assemble the scattered people of Judah from the four quarters of the earth.”
In Ezekiel 11:17, “the Sovereign Lord says: I will gather you from the nations and bring you back from the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you back the land of Israel again.’”
Prophetically speaking, the rebirth of the Nation of Israel on May 14th 1948 is “The Time Clock of the Nations.” Many are realizing that this single miracle of Israel, “born in one day,” is the biggest and most prominent sign of the coming return of the Messiah to Jerusalem!
British Bible teacher Lance Lambert says: “No other nation in the history of mankind has twice been uprooted from its land, scattered to the ends of the earth and then brought back again to that same territory. Israel has twice lost its statehood and its national sovereignty, twice had its capital destroyed, its towns and cities razed to the ground, its people deported and dispersed, and then twice had it all restored again. No other nation or ethnic group has been scattered to the four corners of the earth, and yet survived as an easily identifiable and recognizable group.” This is a miracle.
The first exile took place under Babylonian rule in 587 BC. As for the second great exile, Roman forces serving under the Roman commander Titus destroyed and dismantled Jerusalem in August AD 70, exactly as Jesus had prophesied 37 years earlier. The Romans killed 600,000 Jewish residents and deported 300,000 more to locations scattered around the Empire. Sixty-five years later in 135 AD, the forces of Roman Emperor Hadrian crushed the last Jewish uprising, led by Bar Kokhba at Masada.
Hadrian’s hatred for the Jews burned so brightly that he changed Jerusalem’s name to his own name and declared it “a Roman city forever which no Jew could enter under pain of death.” He built a temple to Jupiter on the site of the former Jewish Temple. Then he renamed the land “Palestine.”
In Vs 9, God says: Do I bring to the moment of birth and not give delivery? Do I close up the womb when I bring to delivery?” says your God.
Many Canadians are wondering these days: Is there hope for Canada? Things seem pretty dark. Will Canada survive against all odds? Can a nation like Canada be born again in day? Will a revival of divine light sweep through our dark land? The existence of Israel, just like the existence of Canada, is miraculous. Humanly speaking, neither Israel nor Canada should have come into existence, or continued to exist. Yet God keeps breaking his advent light into both Canada and Israel. I don’t believe that God has given up on either Canada or Israel.
I see both Canada and Israel as like turkeys. Wild turkeys are amazingly good fliers, considering their substantial bodies. They reach treetops in seconds to escape predators. Once airborne, they can fly at 55 miles per hour! Domesticated turkeys, however, have lost this ability. The question for us Canadians is ‘will we be a wild turkey or a tame turkey?’ Can Canada learn, by waiting on the Lord, to fly like an eagle or at least like a wild turkey? How many of us here today want to be a wild turkey for Jesus? John A Macdonald our first prime minister was a wild turkey for Jesus.
John A Macdonald was a Moses figure who saw the promised land from sea to sea, that Canada might be born in a day.
Every time we spent a ten-dollar bill from 1971 to 2018, we came face-to-face with Sir John A Macdonald. In 2018, starting with Victoria, eight of Macdonald’s ten statues across Canada have been vandalized and removed by ‘cancel culture, though the one in Ontario’s Queen’s Park was recently returned. In the name of ‘tolerance’, inclusiveness, and diversity, John A.’ statues have been ‘beheaded’, excluded, and defamed. Three public schools have recently removed his name. Many youth have never even heard his name.
Could you imagine Americans removing their 100+ Washington statues and renaming the State and District/DC of Washington? Do we really want, in the words of a former Prime Minister, to be a post-national state with no core identity? Canada’s actual history is now at stake.
Though a complicated man with many flaws, Macdonald was the most famous of all Canadian leaders. Some of his tragic mistakes were the hanging of Louis Riel, the creation of native residential schools, and the 1885 Electoral Franchise Act which removed the right of Chinese people to vote. We must honestly admit John A.’s unfortunate weaknesses while not losing sight of his great accomplishments.
Born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1815, he moved at age 15 to the land of his dreams with his family. Like Don Quixote, John A. dreamed the impossible dream that miraculously came true, a nation from sea to sea (Psalm 72:8). Against all the odds, Canada was birthed on July 1st 1867 and still exists, despite cries from some Quebecers and Albertans to separate. God keep pouring out his light on Canada, far more than we deserve or imagine.
Without Sir John A. Macdonald, BC would have been lost forever from joining Canada. BC would have become the 51st state, physically connecting to Alaska. Many American leaders publicly stated that it was BC and indeed Canada’s manifest destiny to join the United States. The vast majority of early BC settlers were Americans drawn from San Francisco by the 1858 Gold Rush. They certainly were not Eastern Canadians from Ontario. John A’s promise of the Canadian Pacific Railway won over the hearts and mind of ambivalent BCers. The American miners also liked the law and order of Governor James Douglas and Judge Matthew Begbie, protecting them from being robbed like in the American wild west.
After the tragic death of his invalid first wife Isabella, John A. married Agnes Bernard. They met on Dec 8th 1866 while both were sauntering down Bond Street in London. By Christmas, they were engaged. They wed six weeks later, at St. George’s Anglican Church in Hanover Square. This was definitely light breaking into John A’ painfully dark family situation.
Agnes spoke French better than her husband, a real asset in bilingual Canada. He now had a loving wife who worked tirelessly on his behalf –inviting Conservative MPS to his place for dinner rather than get drunk with them in the bars.
As a devout Anglican Christian, Agnes had a significant impact on her husband’s life, causing him to stop drinking and start attending church. John A was deeply impressed by the Beatitudes, and made a practice of reading his bible every night before bedtime. Another MP called Agnes ‘Macdonald’s good angel.’ Biographer E.B. Biggar suggests that Agnes may have extended his life by two decades, saving both his liver and his life. This again was Advent Light breaking into alcoholic darkness.
In 1888, during six weeks of Hunter-Crossley revival meetings in Ottawa, Prime Minister Macdonald had a deep encounter with Jesus Christ. John Hunter and Hugh Crossley were the Canadian Billy Grahams, leading two hundred and fifty thousand Canadians and Americans to Christ. As one journalist put it, “When the well-known form of the Honorable Prime Minister arose in the centre of the church, many strong men bowed their heads and wept for joy.” After dining at the prime minister’s home several days later, Rev John Hunter confirmed that “Sir John is a changed man.” Wherever Hunter and Crossley went in Canada, the bars became empty and the churches became full. How many Canadians know this amazing story of Divine light breaking into a politician’s soul? It is not easy for politicians to be saved with all the pressures they are under.
May the example of John A. and Agnes give us the will to love, live and forgive as a nation. May Albertans and Quebecers realize that we all truly need each other in this grand impossible dream of Canada. May God keep our land glorious and free, in Jesus’ name.
And finally, can we as God’s people, and you personally be born, be born again, in a day? Can Advent light break into our lives this very day? Can people who come from difficult family backgrounds really change? Can people who struggle with alcohol or drug addiction really be born in a day? Is change really possible? Can Jesus really change your heart, your family, one day at a time?
How many of you today are willing to change, to embrace God’s marvellous light, to be born again, to surrender your will to Jesus one day at a time? How many are willing to say no to darkness and yes to Jesus our Advent Light? How many want to walk in the Advent light as Jesus is in the light? Let us pray.
As you may know, Bishop Peter and I were converted during the Jesus movement. Peter was a real hippy, an Australian flower child. I was a wanna-be, influenced like many teenagers by that Haight-Asbury culture. You may remember the two-finger symbol of the hippie movement, the peace sign. In Christian Ashram movement, we have the three-finger symbol, meaning Jesus is Lord! Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords!
How many of you have ever watched the blockbuster movies Jesus Christ Superstar or Godspell? We loved seeing Jesus portrayed asa flower power hippie. You may not know that Stephen Swartz, who wrote the Godspell music and lyrics, was Jewish. Talking about Jesus for many Jewish people is very edgy. It may feel to some like eating pork or secretly viewing pornography. But during the Jesus Movement, many Jews discovered the Flower Power Jesus, and became filled with the Holy Spirit, the Ruach Ha Kodesh. There are now over a million Jewish people worldwide who have accepted Jesus, Yeshua, even in Israel, where there are flourishing messianic synagogues. Messianic testimonies done in Hebrew and English are now being secretly watched on YouTube by millions of Israelis. This has never happened before. As the bible says in Romans 11:26, one day All Israel will be saved. The veil will be removed. The unthinkable will become thinkable. When I meet a Jewish person who loves Jesus, this gives me hope even for Anglicans that God will remove the veil. That is what he did for me as an Anglican in the Jesus movement.
Flowers have become popular for Jewish people through their time in Holland, the flower capital of the world. After the Holocaust which killed 75% of the Dutch Jews (think Corrie Ten Boom’s Hiding Place movie), some Dutch Jews relocated in Israel. The nation of Israel now exports 1.5 billion flower stems particularly to Europe in the winter, bringing two hundred million dollars per year. God is literally making the deserts of Israel bloom since Israel was reborn in 1948. Isaiah 35:1-2 comments: “The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.” Israel has even discovered how to pipe desalinated Mediterranean water into the Sea of Galilee so that the flowers will keep blooming. How many today want your deserts to bloom?
Today I am preaching about God’s healing flower power. You may have to forgive me, but my sermon will be more flowery than usual. In my forty-five years of sermons, I have never preached about flowers.
I will be using flowers today as a metaphor for the healing power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not literally fire, rain, wind, or a dove, but those are accurate metaphors of how the Holy Spirit acts in our lives. How many have ever thought of the Holy Spirit metaphorically as like a flower? God gives the blessing of the Holy Spirit before we even ask. All we need to do is accept the gift, the bouquet by faith with thanksgiving. The famous painter Monet said: ““I must have flowers, always, and always.”
How many of you, by the way, have any Dutch heritage? Did you know that the Netherland’s #1 export is flowers? As the flower capital of the world with its massive greenhouses, it produces 50% of the world’s flowers. Have any of you, by the way, ever been to the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival in LaConner, Washington State? It is like a little Holland, attracting almost half a million people who spend up to 83 million dollars each year on tulips. Talk about flower power!
The term ‘flower power’ came from Beatnik poet Allen Ginsberg in 1965, who advocated putting flowers in Berkley California to the rifle barrels of the military police during antiwar Vietnam rallies. They also gave flowers to the Hell’s Angels who really hated the hippies. In May 1967, Abbie Hoffman, founder of the Yippies and author of Steal This Book, organized a flower brigade in New York City, saying “The cry of flower power echoes through the land. We hall not wilt. Let a thousand flowers bloom. “
Flower power reached its peak during the 1967 Summer of Love in San Francisco when hippies like Bishop Peter became known as flower children, wearing flowers in their hair, like in the Godspell movie. How many of you remember the hit song by the Mamas & the Papas where they sang: “”If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair?” Bishop Peter, did you ever wear clothes embroidered with flowers? When the Beatles embrace the flower power message in their albums and their 1968 Yellow Submarine movie, it spread quickly, even to Perth Australia.
As Larry Norman said, the Beatles sang ‘All You Need is Love’, but then they broke up. The world’s ’love and peace’ flower power sounds good but it doesn’t really work.
Today I want to honour all those here from the Semiahmoo South Surrey Coalition who peacefully and lovingly said no to hard drug housing in our local neighbourhood. You proved that grassroots ‘flower power’ can make a real difference in the face of powerful, impersonal bureaucracies. Thank you again.
Today is our annual All Saints’ healing service. What does bring healing and recovery is not free government hard drugs but rather the power of the Holy Spirit as mentioned in Ephesians 5:18 “Don’t be drunk with wine (or stoned) which leads to dissipation but instead be filled with the Holy Spirit.” Any one who has received Jesus has the Holy Spirit living within them, but we can easily quench, grieve, resist, and vex the Holy Spirit through our unwillingness to surrender our wills.
The term ‘power’ in the New Testament is usually short-hand for the power of the Holy Spirit. Think of the resurrected Jesus in Acts 1:8 saying “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you..” Think of Jesus before his ascension in Luke 24, saying “Wait in Jerusalem until the power from on high comes upon you.” Bill W. in AA’s 12 Steps referred again and again to ‘powerless’ vs power coming through letting go and surrender. Bill W.’s higher power was the Holy Spirit after he was led to Christ by the Anglican pastor Sam Shoemaker. If you want to have ‘flower power’ healing today, you need to surrender to and receive the power of the Holy Spirit.
To quote Song of Solomon 2:1, you need Jesus the lily of the valley, the rose of Sharon in your heart. You may not ever have thought of Jesus as a flower, metaphorically speaking. 😉
Have you ever been to a funeral or celebration of life where there are no flowers? Flowers often symbolize death and endings. Flowers help us grieve and heal. Flowers are strongly connected with key transitions, births, graduations, weddings and funerals, what is sometimes called hatched, matched and dispatched. At such events, flowers are often sovereignly, even unexpectedly given to us, even before we ask. That is how God’s healing flower power works, before we even ask. Today God may answer your prayer before you even ask.
The Kingdom of God is all about the already/not yet, the future breaking into the present, every time we pray for healing for the sick. Healing is like God giving you a bouquet of flowers. Healing is part of our Kingdom inheritance. God is the healer, Jehovah Rapha. We are the receivers. An inheritance is only as good as your willingness to receive it by faith with thanksgiving. John 1:12 talks about those who receive Jesus and his unshakable Kingdom. If you refuse the flowers God is offering you today, it won’t do you any good.
IN vs 17, God says: See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.
Revelation 21:1 quotes Isaiah 65 vs 17 saying “Then I saw ‘a new heaven and a new earth’ for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.’ This is not the same old, same old. The Hebrew word here for ‘new’ is Hadassah, meaning renewal and restoration. Some of you may remember the world-famous Hadassah Jewish bazaars which raised money for the poor in Israel.
Vs 17 is telling us that our world and minds will be so renewed by God that our often traumatic memories will no longer haunt us. They won’t even come to mind. This is God’s healing flower power. How many of you would like Jesus to heal a painful memory today? You can come up at the end of this sermon and get a breakthrough.
Let me ask you: Do you think that there be flowers in the new heavens and new earth? Can you imagine life without flowers? Will there be flowers in hell? Only plastic ones 😉
Why do so many women love flowers so much? The women in our walking group told me that it is about the colour, the beauty, the smell and the touch.
Let me ask the women a question: do you prefer cut flowers or live flowers in pots or gardens. What is one of your most meaningful, memorable experience of receiving a flower?
You may have been through some real hard patches in your life. Do I hear any Amens? The desert times in your past does not determine your future blooming. Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy.
As God’s new creation, we are no longer prisoners of our past; rather as Zechariah 9:12 puts it, we are prisoners of hope. God’s destiny for us that that we blossom into greater and greater Christlikeness. Jesus is the ultimate ‘flower child’ in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Many of us struggle with negativity. Some of us as half-empty cup people tend to focus more on the thorns and weeds than the flowers. Some people could be given an entire field of roses and see only the thorns.
A friend in our last church resented someone else for being healed of cancer because they hadn’t had their own healing yet. Are you willing to celebrate the flowers of someone else’s healing while you are still experiencing the thorns, weeds, and sickness in your own life? Can you give God your bitterness today and receive his healing flower power?
We all need God’s Kingdom flower power. Song of Solomon 2:12 states, “Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land.” Would you like some flowers, some blessings, to appear in your life in this healing service?
Where does your prayer life need to blossom, to bloom, to flourish? Blossom, bloom, and Flourish, by the way, literally mean to flower. Do you need more healing to spring forth in your life ? CS Lewis said: “Think of yourself just as a seed patiently wintering in the earth, waiting to come up a flower in the Gardener’s good time, up into the real world, the real waking.”
How many of you are gardeners? John 15:1 says that my Father’s the gardener, I often say that during doorknocking when I meet someone working on their flowers. Let me ask you: Those of you who love gardening, how often do you water your flowers? What hydrates your soul and makes you flourish? What kind of fertilizer do you need to be healthy? What kinds of weeds need to be removed from your spiritual garden?
Luke 5:17 says of Jesus: “the power of the Lord was with him to heal.”
Metaphorically, we might say that Jesus healed people with flower power, the power of the Holy Spirit:
Luke 5:30 says: “Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my garments?’”
“The whole crowd was trying to touch him, because power was coming out from him and healing them all.”
Acts 10:37-38says that “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power and how he went about doing good and healing all who were under the tyranny of the devil, because God was with him.”
The Bible also compares us to flowers. Has anyone ever told you to bloom where you are planted, a good message for restless church-hoppers? Psalm 103:15-16 states, “The life of mortals is like grass, they flourish like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more“. 1 Peter 1:24, quoting Isaiah 40: 6-8, says, “For all flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall“
Jesus in Luke 12:27 said “Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.”
Each of you are more beautiful than wild flowers. One of the beautiful flowers are sunflowers, would you agree? Sunflowers are symbols of God’s flower power, of his healing light.
How many of you have ever enjoyed eating sunflower seeds? They’re native to the Americas, as far back as 3000 BCE, when they were developed for food, medicine, dye, and oil. The Cherokee utilized an infusion of sunflower leaves to treat kidneys while the Dakota brought it out to sooth “chest pain and pulmonary troubles.” God wants to use his sunflower power to bring healing today to your heart.
It was the Spanish who brought Sunflowers back to Europe. Then they were brought to Russia by the Russian royalty. Sunflower seed oil was somehow not banned during Lent, unlike the other oils the Russian Orthodox Church banned its patrons from consuming. As a result, by the 19th century, Russia was planting two million acres of sunflowers every year.
Did you know that the Sunflower is Ukraine’s national flower? Canadian Mennonites who used to live in Ukraine, grow massive fields of sunflowers. Sunflower seeds are the Mennonite favorite snack, instead of drinking beer.
The sunflower tracks the sun, following it wherever it goes. God wants us to be devoted loyal sunflowers that consistently turns our eyes and hearts towards the Son of God, Jesus our messiah.
My younger sister and my late Mother Lorna, who was one of the founding pioneers at All Saints, loved gardening, especially their Sunflowers. Sunflowers aren’t just beautiful. Their roots absorb heavy metals and toxic radiation from the soil, in a process called phytoremediation. Sunflowers are symbols of healing and cleansing. Millions of sunflowers have been effectively used in cleansing the soil around the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the Japanese Fuchoshima nuclear disaster, absorbing sezium and strontium from the ground. What kind of toxicities and emotional poisons do you want Jesus our sunflower to remove from your soil today?
If anyone understood flower power, it was Vincent Van Gogh. He loved to paint sunflowers as a symbol of God’s glory. He said, “If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.” The Japanese love Van Gogh. On March 30, 1987, Japanese insurance magnate Yasuo Goto paid the equivalent of US$39,921,750 for van Gogh’s Still Life: Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers at auction at Christie’s London, at the time a record-setting amount for a work of art. Over a billion dollars has been spent purchasing paintings by Van Gogh; yet, he chose to live in poverty to reach the very poor for Christ.
As a pastor’s son, Van Gogh worked as an evangelist in a miserably poor mining district in Belgium. There, he gave away everything to the poor miners, and soon looked dirt poor. His church officials fired him for this indiscretion. He strongly identified with the suffering servant of Isaiah 53. He said, “Christ lived as an artist, greater than other artists. Jesus made living, human beings.” Picasso would call Van Gogh “the father of us all”, seeing him as his main inspiration,
Of his 900 paintings, Van Gogh sold only a few. He sadly took his own life at age 37, seeing himself as a failure as a painter. After he died, friends brought sunflowers with them to his funeral.
Many people don’t realize that as a pastor’s son, he evangelized people through his colourful yellow paintings. He loved the colour yellow so much that he even nibbled on yellow paint. Don’t try this at home. The lead and cadmium poisoning may have been why he cut off his ear.
A painting for Van Gogh is a sort of a gospel.
Vs 20 tells us that when God’s flower power breaks in, people are generally healthier and live longer, even till 100 years old. Have you noticed how drugs, alcohol, and smoking prematurely age us and shorten our lives? How many of you would like God, as Psalm 103:5 says, to renew your youth today like an eagle? How many want God to renew your strength, so that you will soar on wings like eagles, that you will run and not grow weary, that you will walk and not be faint? Jesus will cause our lives to flower when we surrender our will to Him.
In Vs. 24, God says: “Before they call, I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear.”
This is a classic Eugene Peterson verse; God heals sovereignly before we even call, while we are still speaking. God is offering his healing flowers to us. We don’t have to twist God’s arm to heal us. God’s will is to heal us. All of us as believers will one day be promoted to glory, the ultimate healing.
Who today want a healing touch from God’s flower power? Let us pray.
I recently read in a newspaper article by Saman Dara that Metro Vancouver’s largest haunt DreadWorlds would be opening in Langley, a 14,000-square-foot scare experience.
Adrian and Christine Holloway both grew up in what they call “haunt families,” where October meant turning the yard into elaborate walk-through attractions.
“When we got together, we turned her parents’ entire yard into a graveyard,” Adrian said with a grin. “We dug up the front yard, put graves in there, and we had people popping out of holes.”
DreadWorlds is described as a full-on production, created with the scale of a movie set and the heart of a family gathering.
“We’re homegrown Langley people,” Adrian said. “We believe in our community, and we want to give back.”
Halloween is cleverly being repackaged here as a safe, family-friendly, community-oriented activity by good homegrown people who just want to give back to their community.
Spoiler alert for our Bishop Peter and Jenny: Dreadworlds was forced to close after a court injunction from a former investor blocked access to its Langley site. Thank God!
This morning, I am preaching about ‘pursuing our own imaginations at Halloween.’ Have you noticed how many young people, most of whom have never been to church or Sunday School, are fascinated with the supernatural, the good, the bad and the ugly? I was not aware that our BC Public School system devotes an entire week to what they call Halloween Spirit Week.
What is it about Halloween that draws our imaginations towards sitting among the graves and spending our nights keeping secret vigil? One of our favorite TV shows in the late 1960s was Dark Shadows which became ABC’s highest-rated daytime series. Its hero was the 175-year-old vampire Barnabas Collins in search of fresh blood and his lost love Josette, while risking his life to nobly save his family from danger. The show would go on to feature ghosts, werewolves, zombies, man-made monsters, witches, and warlocks. No wonder I became spiritually deadened as a teenager.
Why are so many people drawn towards haunted houses? To haunt literally means to indwell. What would you prefer to indwell you on Oct 31st? Why are graves and dead bodies so fascinating at Halloween? Did you know that the month of October is now known as the horror movie month? The 1978 Halloween slasher movie which focuses on the killing of babysitters is still very popular. Psalm 73:7 says “From their callous hearts comes iniquity; their evil imaginations have no limits.” With the internet and AI, our evil imaginations indeed have no limits when it comes to horror movies getting darker and darker. Interestingly enough, watching of gangster movies does not increase during Halloween unless it is connected with the supernatural, as in the Halloween movie Innocent Blood where a female vampire falls in love with a tough mobster. Have any of you ever renounced an obsession with horror movies? You may want to think about it.
Have you noticed that the darkness of Halloween never really gets any momentum until things literally turn dark? Police statistics show that violent crime, property theft, sexual assault, and murder all peak during night time. What is it about physical darkness that brings out the worse in many people? Evil thrives when people feel hidden in their sin and destruction. 87% of drunken driving DUIs) occur at night. Would it surprise you to learn that property crimes likeburglary, vandalism, see significant increases on Halloween?
Similarly, vehicle thefts increase, especially in the week surrounding Halloween. Alcohol consumption goes up 30% at Halloween, which includes significant binge drinking, impaired driving, and ER admissions. Drug use also spikes particularly among college students taking part in multiple so-called Halloweekend parties. What is it about Halloween that it so often brings out greater violence mayhem, requiring a much stronger police presence?
Modern-day hardcore Halloween sometimes reminds me of the time of Noah’s flood in Genesis 6:5 when “God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually”. Aren’t you glad we don’t live in those days any more?
Did you know that over 11 billion dollars was spent last year in North America on Halloween paraphernalia, especially costumes? The local Dollar stores must be making a ‘killing’ on Halloween with huge aisles of Halloween paraphernalia. You may have heard of Spirit Halloween which has pop-up stores in 1,450 locations, pulling in $650 million a year in North America.
Interestingly enough, the favourite children’s Halloween costumes are Spiderman and princesses. As there are now many dress-up Halloween Spirit days in the Public School system, I have recommended for decades to avoid dressing up as ghosts, demons and witches.
The favorite adult Halloween costumes nowadays are witches, vampires and ghosts. Why is modern-day Halloween becoming bigger, scarier, sexier, and more extravagant? Why are many adults going deeper into the so-called darker side of Halloween than the children? What do you think may be going on?
Ephesians 5:11 teaches “Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them.” Why are we so attracted to darkness? What if we chose instead to expose the darkness?
Perhaps Halloween taps into our society’s taboos around death. We live in a culture where half the people in BC completely avoid having funerals or even celebrations of life. Even those doing celebrations of life, whatever that might mean, often completely avoid mentioning God, Jesus Christ, heaven and hell, and even sometimes death itself. Our culture is radically death-avoiding, and simultaneously death-obsessed. I was amazed by the thousands of skulls for sale in a local Dollar store, 90% of it made in China. Ironically most of China does not celebrate Halloween but they make a killing off it.
Halloween is a death celebration. Almost all of the smiling Halloween characters are dead or half-dead. In contrast, valuing life is very deep in Judaism and its offspring Christianity. Because all humans are made in God’s image, we have inherent worth that must be protected from conception until natural death. But our increasingly secular BC and Canadian culture is redefining our humanity and worth as dependent on our being wanted and useful to society. Those who are defined as unwanted and useless are increasingly being redefined as expendable, and even encouraged by government officials to terminate themselves through MAID.
Deuteronomy 18:9-13 says, “When you come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you … one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For all who do these things are an abomination to the Lord.”
Why do so many people during Halloween dabble if only a joke in the very things that Deuteronomy 18 warns us against? Many people don’t realize that the Bible forbids our communicating with the dead. Particularly troubling is the rise in Ouija board and Tarot card reading being used as ‘so-called’ Halloween party games.
In vs. 1. God say: “ I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me; I was found by those who did not seek me. To a nation that did not call on my name, I said, ‘Here am I, here am I.’
In Vs 1, God seeks those who are not looking for Him. Let me ask you: Who is the nation that did not call on Him? Israel? Canada? The answer is yes, as Simeon prayed that Jesus would be a light to the nations and for glory to the people of Israel. Romans 3:10 states that no one is seeking God. The miracle is God finds us when we are running from him, even at Halloween.
In Vs 1, God says Hineni, Hineni. This is a Double emphasis of Here I am, Here I am. (KJV: Behold me. Behold me.) God is ready to be found. His arms are outstretched to us. But we are a rebellious people who follow their own devices, our own ways, refusing to surrender our own wills. (KJV their own thoughts)
In vs 2., God says: “ All day long I have held out my hands to an obstinate people, who walk in ways not good, pursuing their own imaginations”
Vs 2 is quoted by Paul in Romans 10:21 ‘But concerning Israel he says, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.”
Obstinate means to: stubbornlyrefusing to change one’s opinion or chosen course of action, despite attempts to persuade one to do so. (Persist). Bishop Peter, you have been warning people about Halloween for many years. Has anyone stubbornly refused to hear your caution to them?
Romans 1:21 tells us that “they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.” Looking back, have you ever seen your imagination becoming vain? Satan hates the area of creativity and imagination. Creativity comes from our being made in God the Creator’s image. Satan either wants to kill our imagination or poison it with darkness, bitterness, and self-hatred especially at Halloween.
Idols in Spanish are called imagenes. Imaginary images easily become idols or substitutes for God. John Calvin said that our hearts are perpetual idol factories. Leanne Payne said that we have a way of becoming (in a sense) what we set our eyes upon. You become what you imagine. Job in Chapter 3:25 said: “For the thing I greatly feared has come upon me, and what I dreaded has happened to me.” Leanne Payne further commented, “An unhealthy fantasy life is a killer. It destroys. It wars against and annihilates the true imagination–that which can intuit the real and is therefore creative.” The internet encourages many to isolate from actual human contact, living instead in fantasy and illusion. How’s your fantasy life these days? You don’t need to answer that one.
Halloween appeals to our wounded imagination. 2 Corinthians 10:5 calls us to ‘demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.’ Is there any part of your imagination that needs to bow the knee to Jesus Christ? Are there any mental and spiritual strongholds, any pretensions that you want to tear down this Halloween? Our modern internet culture encourages pretending in front of other people. Sometimes our pretensions set themselves up against the very knowledge of God.
In Vs 3, God speaks about— a people who continually provoke me to my very face, offering sacrifices in gardens and burning incense on altars of brick;
Have you ever provoked God to his very face? Is the occultism and darkness of Halloween provoking God to his face?
Vs 4 speaks of those: who sit among the graves and spend their nights keeping secret vigil;
Vs 4 reminds me a lot of how some adults love to do Halloween at least in their imagination, sitting among graves and spend the night in the tombs. Have you noticed how much gravestone and tomb paraphernalia is brought out at Halloween?
Vs. 8 comments: This is what the Lord says: “As when juice is still found in a cluster of grapes and people say, ‘Don’t destroy it, there is still a blessing in it,’ so will I do in behalf of my servants; I will not destroy them all.
No matter how messed up and rebellious that we have been at Halloween, God is still waiting to bring a blessing, the juice of the vine through the power of the Holy Spirit, even during the dark season of Halloween.
Vs 1 says: “But as for you who forsake the Lord and forget my holy mountain, who spread a table for Fortune and fill bowls of mixed wine for Destiny,
Halloween and the occult cause us to forsake the Lord and forget his holy mountain. So many people in BC look to gambling and horoscopes especially during Halloween, trusting in Fortune and chance rather than God’s providence. Casinos have even created Halloween-themed gambling both in-person and online, to increase their massive revenues. At the end of the day, follow the money trail. Halloween is big business. Gambling as a $172 Billion industry in North America is destroying many marriages and families. I have personally counselled many people whose lives were being destroying by a gambling addiction. Halloween makes this worse.
Forgive us Lord when we don’t answer when you call, when we don’t listen when you speak, when we do evil in your sight and choose what displeases you, especially at Halloween.
Thank you Jesus as we surrender our wills to you as your servants, that you will turn us from hunger to feasting on the bread of life, from thirst to drinking your living water, from shame to rejoicing in your resurrection life. Thank you that Life is stronger than death, Light stronger than darkness, goodness stronger than evil, especially at Halloween. Come Holy Spirit of Life, of light, of joy, of goodness.
Thank you Father that you give us a new name in the messiah Jesus, a name that blesses and brings life, especially at Halloween. Thank you Jesus that your name is a strong tower that the righteous run into, the name above all names.
Thank you Father that in Christ Jesus we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing, that in Christ Jesus, all our past troubles will be forgotten and hidden from our eyes. God can restore our broken and distorted imagination even at Halloween.
Who today, in this dark season, wants their past troubles to be forgotten fand hidden from their eyes? Let us pray…
6. “See, it stands written before me: I will not keep silent but will pay back in full; I will pay it back into their laps—
7. both your sins and the sins of your ancestors,” says the Lord. “Because they burned sacrifices on the mountains and defied me on the hills, I will measure into their laps the full payment for their former deeds.”
9. I will bring forth descendants from Jacob, and from Judah those who will possess my mountains; my chosen people will inherit them, and there will my servants live.
11. “But as for you who forsake the Lord and forget my holy mountain, who spread a table for Fortune and fill bowls of mixed wine for Destiny,
12. I will destine you for the sword, and all of you will fall in the slaughter; for I called but you did not answer, I spoke but you did not listen. You did evil in my sight and chose what displeases me.”
13. Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: “My servants will eat, but you will go hungry; my servants will drink, but you will go thirsty; my servants will rejoice, but you will be put to shame.
15. You will leave your name for my chosen ones to use in their curses; the Sovereign Lord will put you to death, but to his servants he will give another name.
16. Whoever invokes a blessing in the land will do so by the one true God; whoever takes an oath in the land will swear by the one true God. For the past troubles will be forgotten and hidden from my eyes.”
“But you are our Father, though Abraham does not know us or Israel acknowledge us; you, Lord, are our Father, our Redeemer from of old is your name. Why, Lord, do you make us wander from your ways and harden our hearts so we do not revere you? Return for the sake of your servants, the tribes that are your inheritance. For a little while your people possessed your holy place, but now our enemies have trampled down your sanctuary. We are yours from of old; but you have not ruled over them, they have not been called by your name.”
How many of you have skeletons in your family closet? A couple of honest people 😉 95% of people have skeletons in their family closet, and the rest are … liars, as Bishop Peter Klenner often comments about our mutual brokenness.
My Great-grandfather Tom Hird was a complicated individual. He was an Albertan beekeeper who sold his booze made from honey, called mead, to the RCMP. I am not sure how that worked😉 All my Hird relatives are Albertans going back to my great grandfather Tom. Does anyone hear have any Alberta heritage? My mother was the BCer from Revelstoke whose great grandparents moved there from Regina and Toronto. My great-great grandfather Tom Allen was the senior Alderman of the City of Toronto for 18 years, which may explain some of my political interests. Albertans who often love cowboys hats, particularly during the Calgary Stampede, are sometimes seen as honorary Americans. When my wife and I go overseas, Janice is often seen as a Canadian (being more gentle), and for some reason, they often think than I am an American 😉. This is probably my Alberta heritage.
My Saskatchewan-born wife lived in Calgary for ten years. Does that make her an honorary Albertan? What do you think? Have you seen that rude cartoon saying that California should join Canada and Alberta should join the USA. I thought that it was particularly insensitive. Let me tell you something potentially shocking: I love the three ‘A’s, 1) Albertans, 2) Americans, and 3) Australians, warts and all. Say hi online to Bishop Peter & Jenny who are vacationing in Perth Australia.
I am into that outdated biblical concept of loving one’s neighbour as oneself, even with tariff uncertainty. Canadians often pride ourselves on how good-tempered and kind and gracious we are. Some of that has been stretched recently with certain political uncertainties. It is too easy to curse those who make us feel uncomfortable. What if we bless those who may curse us, returning good for even potential harm? It saddens me that many perhaps drunken Canadians, egged on by our legacy media, are now becoming ruder than some of our southern neighbours, booing people at sports games. I don’t think that this is being a true Canadian. What ever happened to Canadian politeness?
We thank God for Psalm 133 chiselled on the Peace Arch: “Brethren dwelling together in unity.” Since the inconclusive War of 1812, we had have the best relationship as neighbouring countries with our southern and actually northern neighbours (including Alaska, because we are in the middle of the USA and they barely notice). That is very unique. Countries often like to quarrel and be grumpy, sort of like families. In this fractious time, we pray for a Peace Arch in the Spirit. I like the name Peace Arch Alliance Church 😉 Jesus said ‘Blessed are those who win the trade disputes.’ Or did he say ‘Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called children of God.’ We say no, as Kingdom people, to hatred and bitterness in times of uncertainty.
Who is on the Canadian five dollar bill? Wilfred Laurier. Our seventh Canadian Prime Minister, who was our first francophone PM, brought the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Yukon into the Canadian Confederation, saying ‘Canada first, Canada last, Canada always.’ As one of our longest standing PMs, he was defeated after proposing the first free trade agreement with the USA. They falsely accused him of being unCanadian and advancing our annexation by the USA. I agree with his general sentiment as an penultimate statement, but not as a ultimate statement. Penultimate means ‘almost ultimate.’ I love our nation. For Christians, our nation is important but must come second. We are Jesus and Kingdom first, last and forever. It is far too easy for nationalism to become idolatrous if it is our ultimate value.
Great-Grandpa Tom Hird, by the way, was also a Methodist lay evangelist who preached the hot gospel. How many people know what the hot gospel is? How many have ever heard a ‘turn or burn’ sermon? In my family, we associated ‘turn or burn’ with street corner placard-wearing fanatics, predicting the imminent end of the world: ‘It’s all going to burn, brother.’ Or as they say down south, ‘It’s all go to burn, baby.’ 😉
I won’t be preaching a ‘turn or burn’ sermon today. So you can relax. Instead, I will be preaching a ‘return or burn’ sermon. Unless we return home to our Father, nothing will work right. Do I hear an amen?
Unless we return home to our Redeeming Father, we will burn with anxiety, fear, guilt, shame, and emptiness. Some of you know exactly what I am talking about because you have lived this. I lived this out before I turned to Jesus. You see, Hell is not just for life after death. Hell is for right now when we refuse to return home to our Father. Sin and selfishness is hell on earth right. Do I hear an amen? Eternal hell is just a continuation of our selfishness and alienation. Ultimately, God will let us have our own way, and if we ultimately say no to God, it is hell. It is alienation, it is darkness, it is brokenness. Whatever burning ultimately means, how literal it is, you don’t want to go there.
I used to be a sailing instructor for YMCA Camp Elphinstone with little Sabas and 25-foot sailboats. Was anyone ever in YMCA and YWCA? Before they largely forgot the ‘C’ of YMCA, the YMCA and YWCA used to be strongly Christian, being founded by Sir George Williams, the Billy Graham of the 19th Century. Everything in sailing, by the way, is about turning and returning into the wind. Do we have any sailors here? If you just go in one direction and never tack with the wind, it will not go well. The Holy Spirit is often described as like the Wind. How are you with tacking with the wind of the Holy Spirit?
Yesterday, at our Coldest Night of the Year walkathon at the White Rock promenade, a very windy wet storm blew in, turning my golf umbrella inside out SEVERAL TIMES. Only when I turned my umbrella into the wind did things go well. It felt more like the Wettest NIGHT OF THE YEAR! Thanks, by the way, for all those who supported our Peninsula People team with Kerry-Lynne Findlay who ended in the top ten fundraising teams. It is not too late to still contribute online to this worthy cause as we raise money for the local Sources Food Bank.
All of life is about which direction we turn and return. Which direction however should we turn? I would like to do a thought experiment with you. How many are willing to humour me? Please will everyone close their eyes? What does the front of the church look like in your mind? Where is the back of the church? Where is the front entrance: is it at the front or the back of the church? Is the Sunday School room in the front or the back of the church building? Would you feel comfortable if I preached the rest of my sermon from the back of the church ;? Ultimately, which way should we turn: front or back? Where is God?
Because God is invisible, it is not obvious which direction we need to turn in returning to God. We don’t even realize sometimes that we’ve turned our back on God. Where is God? Because God is omnipresent, he’s everywhere, but he is also manifest in particular ways and locations as our returning Father. When he returns, his presence is made present. God sometimes turns his face away from us in our rebellion. Historically, Christians have prayed Eastward because Jesus, in his second coming, is returning from the East. Jews pray facing Jerusalem. Muslims pray towards Mecca in Saudia Arabia.
Because God is invisible, it is complicated. You can turn your back on God and not even know it. I did that for years as a distracted teenager who golfed and skied religiously. You can turn your back on your spouse or your family, and not realize it. You can be emotionally divorced for years before you ever leave your marriage. You can be there and not there, because you’ve turned your face from your spouse emotionally.
For many people in Canada, it is unthinkable to go to church. Some feel like the sky would fall if they came into a church building. A lot of people peer through the front door glass, but would never walk in. Some walk in five or ten feet, but to come up near the altar table is ‘radioactive’ in their mind. 😉 It’s very interesting.
My Hird family has sometimes powerfully turned to God, and sometimes turned our backs on God. Does anyone else relate to this? I am so grateful that our grandchildren all go to Sunday School and church. Many Christian grandparents nowadays are forbidden by their adult children to even mention Jesus to their grandkids, but they can still be salt and light. It is not easy.
Our Hird family ultimately comes from the Yorkshire area in England. Hird either means Shepherd or in the Viking Danish version ‘bodyguard to the King’. There were many Vikings in Yorkshire. I am 6% Viking in my dna testing. Are there any Vikings or partial Vikings in our congregation?
I discovered, while writing a Light Magazine article on the famous Yorkshire man Smith Wigglesworth that Yorkshire people are known for their earthiness, gruffness, bluntness, people who say what they think without fear of the consequences. I thought ‘This is my Hird family 😉’. They are honest, sincere, and avoid pretense. That Yorkshire tendency has sometimes got me in hot water in my almost 45 years so far of ordained ministry. Many pastors are pressured into being people-pleasers who pretend as a survival strategy. Wigglesworth, through his bold healing ministry which he received through the Anglicans in All Saints Sunderland, led millions worldwide to turn back to God.
Turning and returning to God is a huge theme throughout the Bible. In Joel 2:12-13, it says: “Yet even now, declares the LORD, return to Me with all your heart, with fasting, weeping, and mourning. Rend your hearts and not your garments. Return to the LORD your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion.” Many people are afraid to return to the heavenly Father because they mistakenly think that he is as bad-tempered as their own earthly father. My great-grandpa Tom had his moods. He did not have a good relationship with his son Vic. You see, we are made for our Father. God is our Father who doesn’t change despite the circumstances. He is our immutable Redeemer. As our kinsman-redeemer, He redeems us not only from sin, but also from selfishness, hatred, resentment, revenge, despair, hypocrisy, secrecy, and all sorts of disease. I think that we Canadians suffer from hypocrisy. We pretend to be nicer than we are. And painful people, like a certain unnamed president, are bringing out some of our undealt-with emotions. Some people say ‘I don’t like to fast because it makes me bad-tempered.’ But you know, fasting doesn’t make you bad-tempered. It reveals your bad temper 😉 As AA puts it, we are as sick as our secrets. Do you have any secrets that you need to return to our redeeming Father? What if we Canadians stopped pretending so much? In the AA Big Book, Rev. Sam Shoemaker, co-founder of AA with Bill W and Dr. Bob, said that if Christians would become even half as honest as AA people, we would see revival in God’s Church. But so many people come
to church and pretend:
“How are you feeling? Oh great, I’ve got cancer. My wife left me. I was fired at work. My kids won’t speak to me. But I’m good.’
Returning to the Lord is even used to describe Tithing our first 10% in Malachi 3:8-10. Have you ever imagined that returning to God might involve returning your pocket book to God? All things come of thee o Lord and of thine own have we given thee. I had never heard of tithing as an Anglican until I was walking in a Baptist church and saw a poster that said ‘10%’. I said: ‘What’s that?’ They said: ‘It’s how much you should give to God.’ I said: ‘Great idea. When I become financially secure, I will one day.’ Was I tapping into my inner Scottish desire for financial stability? Nine years later in 1981, when I lost my voice (spasmodic dysphonia) and income for eighteen months, It decided to put God to the test and give him my first 10%. 10% of nothing, I could afford. The Lord met our needs for that year. I had a wife and first child. When God restored my throat through prayer and surgery, I started as an assistant priest at St. Matthew’s Abbotsford with a real salary. I thought that I can’t stop tithing now. So I never stopped. How many might want to put God to the test today and see him open the floodgates of heaven? For some people, that is unthinkable. Those raised in state churches like Anglican, Catholic or Lutheran churches are notorious for not being super-generous in our giving, because the state looked after us. It takes the wind of the Holy Spirit to turn us around to biblical generosity.
The good news is that turning and returning goes in two directions: us to God and God to us. Isaiah 63 teaches that God is a returning Father. As Arnold Ballantyne texted me this week, God the Father is our inheritance, even when people turn away, ultimately God is our Redeemer. God’s desire is for us to revere Him. God the Father wants us to inhabit his holy place and not let His enemies be victorious. We belong to God. He calls us by name.
Acts 7:39 tells us that “Our fathers refused to obey God. Instead they rejected him and in their hearts turned back to Egypt.” All of life is about which direction we turn: either back to the slavery of Egypt or forward to freedom in God’s Promised Land. Even as Christians we can slip into going back to Egypt. Have you ever gone back to Egypt? It doesn’t satisfy, does it? Has God ever said to you: “About Turn.”? How did you respond?
How many watched Godspell where they sang “Turn back o Man, forswear thy foolish ways.”? Our messianic Jewish friend Marty Shub who did our last two seder suppers, has the fascinating last name ‘Shub’ or Shuv, which is Hebrew for turning, repenting, and returning. His ministry is called Return Ministries. Returning for Jewish people is both physical and spiritual. Since 1948, 3.3 million Jews have physically returned to Israel in what is called Aliyah, going up to Jerusalem. There have always been Jews in Israel, but most were sent into exile by the Romans, who renamed Israel as Palestine, in an effort to antisemitically obliterate their memory.
There are 381 occurrences in the bible of the word ‘turn’ and 499 occurrences of the word ‘return’, all of which we will be looking at for the next eight hours together. 😉 In Acts 3:19, Peter says, “Repent, then, and turn back, so that your sins may be wiped away, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.” How many of you want times of refreshing? Does Canada need this?
2 Chronicles 7:14 says that if we turn from our wicked ways, God will heal our land. I was converted in the Jesus revolution in which millions of young people turned back to Jesus. The word Revolution literally means to turn or roll full circle. How many today are willing to spiritually revolve back to Jesus?
Lamentations 3:40 says: “Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord.”
Acts 7:42 tells us: “But God turned away and gave them over to the worship of the heavenly bodies. (Astrology/ age of Aquarius)” Our Hird family dabbled in many new age practices, like horoscopes. The New Age is the way of idolatry and confusion. God turns away when we choose the identical twins of idolatry and idolatry, so prevalent in BC.
Jesus, in Matthew 18:3, said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change (KJV be converted, straphate, turn), and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of Heaven.” Only children can turn. Adults suffer from stiff necks until we get child-like necks.
In Acts 28:18, Paul recalls what God said in his turning/shuving/conversion: “I am sending you to the nations to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those sanctified by faith in Me.”
Whatever you turn toward is what you turn into. Whatever you gaze on, you become. That is why pornography is so deadly. You become what swallows you. In the Christ child, you become more childlike and less childish. Only children can enter the Kingdom. Have you noticed how childish much of political discussion is becoming. What if we actually sat down and listened carefully to those with whom we may disagree? What if we stopped demonizing people with other political opinions?
God, in Zechariah 1:3, said “Therefore tell the people: This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Return to me,’ declares the Lord Almighty, ‘and I will return to you,’ says the Lord Almighty.” God the returning Father is calling us to return back home to Him. Where have you turned your back on God? Where do you need to seek his face? Are you willing to return back home? Are you willing to give up your idols? Are you willing to make Jesus your only hope? Let’s close in singing ‘Turn your eyes on Jesus’.
-a article in the December-January 2025 Light Magazine
(Healing Pioneers Series)
In 1932, when the healing ministry was neglected in many churches, Rev. Dr. John & Ethel Gayner Banks birthed an interdenominational healing ministry at St Luke’s Church in San Diego called the Fellowship of St. Luke. From that fellowship was formed The International Order of St Luke the Physician (OSL), incorporated initially in the state of California in 1935, and later in North America in 1953. OSL helped ordinary people realize that the healing ministry is not just for snake-handlers and religious fanatics. John Banks commented: “People are very scared of the healing ministry. They’re scared that nothing might happen, and they’re scared that something might happen.”
In the twentieth century, people became more aware of God’s healing power that is available to all people, not only through medicine but also through healing prayer. Earlier healing ministries in which John Banks had participated had been specifically Anglican/Episcopal. Dr. William De Orteaga commented that “Anglicans and Episcopalians have been among the most pioneering, persistent, and innovative leaders of the renewed Christian healing ministry of the last century and a half.” Many Anglicans however were unaware that there are twenty-two pages in the Book of Common Prayer on the healing ministry. All the Anglican healing ministries emphasize the close relationship between medicine and healing prayer. In 1914, the Society of the Nazarene was first sponsored by William Temple, who later became Archbishop of Canterbury. In 1926, the Society of the Nazarene was officially approved and endorsed by the Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops as the healing organization of the Anglican Communion.
In the USA in 1920, Rev. Henry Wilson and John Gayner Banks established an American Branch of the Society of the Nazarene. Banks had moved from England as a layman to obtain a doctorate in therapeutic psychology at the University of Missouri. Wilson encouraged Banks to be ordained. After the death however of Wilson in 1929, the Society of the Nazarene withered away. Wilson’s family did not even allow the Banks to continue to use the Nazarene name.
While conducting a healing mission in California, John Gayner Banks met Ethel Tulloch, a top postal union leader. The economic panic of 1907 caused banks to collapsed, resulting in great unemployment. Ethel couldn’t find work, until she taught herself to type and do stenography, making herself invaluable for the post office. In 1908, the San Diego Post Office had no eight-hour day, pension plan, overtime, or sick leave. Ethel recalled, “These were the jungle days of the post office.” In January 1919, she was appointed fifth vice president of the National Federation of Post Office Clerks, the first woman to hold office. The Labor Leader (Sept. 1919) called Ethel a “live wire” and “one of the strongest workers for the cause in the country.” As a gifted writer, Ethel personally replied to complaints to the San Diego Postal Office: “She probably met more people…than any other person in the city. She was known for her courtesy in the treatment of the public.” Ethel commented:
Seventy-five percent of the friction and trouble in the world occurs because of misunderstanding — and so I consider it a favor when anyone, instead of harboring resentment or bitterness, asks for an explanation.
Because of her standing up for workers rights, Ethel was unfairly targeted by the Postmaster General Albert Burleson as a communist agitator. She almost lost her job and was put under severe scrutiny. The stress and exhaustion of this thankless 90-hours per week job left her ‘brain weary’. A specialist diagnosed her as having an incurable fatal illness. She suffered from incessant images of “pain… pain… pain. Pain and death…. Where could I hide from them?”
One sleepless night, Ethel dreamed about the opening lyrics to Rock of Ages: ‘From Thy side, a healing flood.’ She saw the Rock of Ages with Living water spilling like a healing flood through the Rock. She cried: “‘Lord help me’… from the bottom of my troubled heart.” Ethel then had a vision of Jesus in white robes bidding her to receive Holy Communion. His eyes glowed with such “yearning and tenderness and compassion.” Two hands stretched toward her from the light “with a loving welcome — and there were nail prints.” Jesus invited her to the altar. “I knew he was pleading ‘come unto me.’” Ethel realized: “Could not my sick body be made clean of disease by his body if he dwelt in me and I in him?” Her faithful obedience resulted in a miraculous healing of her body, mind, and emotions.
After reading Ethel’s Come from Away pamphlet about her healing, John Banks appointed her as convenor for the Southern California Chapter of the Society of the Nazarene. John and Ethel were married a year later in 1929 at Calvary Church, New York City by Dr. Samuel Shoemaker, one of the co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now John Banks was no longer a widower. While on their honeymoon, they visited all the healing homes in England and America, dreaming of drawing them all together into a world healing fellowship.
The Anglican Lambeth Conference of 1930 recommended the restoration of the Sacrament of Healing, or Holy Unction, after prayer and preparation, and where moral and intellectual difficulties exist, confession as well. Lambeth also suggested for complete restoration, that prayer for healing be followed by the Sacrament of Holy Communion, which is also a sacrament of healing.
Ethel Tulloch Banks’ original two-page newsletter grew in 1937 to become the OSL Sharing Magazine, the oldest continuously published Christian healing journal in North America. Ethel as a gifted writer and theologian did much of John’s writing, so that some of what appeared under John Gayner Bank’s name was in fact her work. The Banks’ strong emphasis on Jesus and the sacraments gave an alternative to sick people who were otherwise tempted to get ‘healing’ through the very popular Christian Science and the New Age/Thought movements.
Ethel conducted Monday prayer meetings for forty years, beginning each session with the question: “Has anyone been a witness to faith?” The Banks were convinced that Christ’s power to heal to-day is just as great as it was when He walked on earth. One of Dr. Banks sayings was, “A little faith brings little results; greater faith, greater results; and marvelous faith, marvelous results.”
OSL is committed to
Promoting the restoration of the Apostolic practice of healing as taught and demonstrated by Jesus Christ;
promoting a sound pastoral and counseling ministry;
promoting the practice of holding healing services in every church;
developing local chapters to promote healing missions, workshops and prayer groups in their area.
OSL believes that
God uses many agencies for healing: some are spiritual such as prayer, love, faith, anointing with oil, and the laying on of hands;
some are medical such as medicine, surgery, and psychology.
These agencies should be supportive of one another.
God’s desire for us is wholeness and health.
Christian healing is accomplished through faith in Christ and through subjecting one’s entire life to the scrutiny and counsel of God.
Jesus Christ is alive today and still possesses all power on earth as in Heaven.
We pray that John & Ethel Banks and the OSL might inspire us all to recover the healing ministry of St. Luke the Physician: “Almighty God, who inspired your servant St. Luke the Physician to set out in the Gospel the love and healing power of Your son. Make obvious in Your Church the love and power for the healing of our bodies and souls, to the praise and glory of Your Name, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.”
Vs. 1 Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you!
I will never forget at age 17 going to the Led Zeppelin concert in Dec 1971 with my Jewish friends from India. My original favorite rock band was the Animals, followed by my next favorite band Led Zeppelin. I was hoping that the heavens would open, so to speak, at this concert, and I would have this amazing experience. Instead it was just ordinary. The disappointing ordinariness of this concert tempted me to almost dropping acid in search of this ultimate experience. Fortunately, my Scottish side protected me from my foolishness. There was no way I was going to be overcharged $4 for LSD. A month later, God ripped open the heavens and gave me the ultimate experience that changed my life for ever. I had a Damascus Road conversion to Jesus Christ that brought inner healing and significance to a very lost soul. I was born again, and never have recovered from this.
The term ‘Oh’, as in Oh that you would rend the heavens, is used 207 times in the bible to express a range of emotions including surprise, anger, disappointment, or joy. Just think of the song ‘Oh Susannah’ or the expressions ‘Oh Boy!’ or ‘Oh no!’ Sometimes we become dead to this phrase, or use it without meaning such as OMG.
The word ‘rend’, by the way, can be translated ‘break down the door and come and rescue us.’ Do you ever wish that God would appear on earth, just show up, break down the door, so to speak, and make things right? There are many rending of the heavens in the Old Testament like the burning bush with Moses in the desert, the fire coming down on Mount Carmel with Elijah and the receiving of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai with Moses. The ultimate rending of the heavens was with Jesus being born at Bethlehem and the Holy Spirit poured out on Jesus at his baptism. For us his Church, we were birthed with a great rending of the heavens on the Day of Pentecost. Times of revival and renewal are wonderful times of the rending of the heavens. Each Sunday in the liturgy, we often say Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again, the final rending of the heavens. Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus.
Does God ever feel abstract or meaningless to you? How many have ever read or seen HG Wells’ book The Invisible Man? Sometimes God feels like the invisible man. Are you willing to forgive God for being invisible most of the time? God’s invisibility easily tempts us to seek idols, because idols are visible. Jesus is God’s solution to the problem of invisibility.
Isaiah was longing for God’s presence. Are you longing right now for the things of God? What is your passion, your longing? Do you have a passion to know Jesus better? James 4:8 says, if you draw near to God, he will draw near to you.
The Christian Ashram retreat was founded by E. Stanley Jones in 1930, 94 years ago. In this retreat, which I lead in BC, we always start with the time of the open heart. In the early days, the Open-Heart time could last for up to four hours of people sharing about three questions: Why did I come? What do I want? What do I need? Just for a brief moment, not for the next four hours, I am inviting you to share why you came to All Saints today. Secondly, what do you want from God at this healing service? Thirdly, what do you actually need today?
Vs. 2 As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil, come down to make your name known to your enemies and cause the nations to quake before you!
Vs. 2 talks about God coming like fire, a powerful symbol of the Holy Spirit. How many of you have ever had a fireplace? How many currently have a fireplace? Santa in the old days used to deliver presents through the fireplace. It has been a lot more challenging more him for so many homes lacking chimneys and fireplaces. You may or may not be aware that Janice and I are currently working on a book on E. Stanley Jones: Fire in God’s Fireplace. There is a lot of counterfeit wildfire out there that just burns people up, and leaves communities burnt out and burnt over. Revival and renewal can easily be imitated and manufactured in the flesh. All Saint’s is a wonderful fireplace. All Saints is so healthy, such an amazing gift in a time of great confusion and distraction. To be healthy, it really helps to be in a healthy Christian community. Being a Spirit-filled healthy community, as Bishop Peter often reminds us, is about surrendering our will. As the Lord’s Prayer puts it, Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done. The church is God’s family. Healthy children need healthy families.
Vs. 3 For when you did awesome things that we did not expect, you came down, and the mountains trembled before you.
Vs. 3 talks about trembling. Paul, who was deeply immersed in the book of Isaiah, alludes simultaneously in 1 Corinthians 2:9 to Isaiah 64:4, Isaiah 52:15, and Isaiah 65:17.
However, as it is written: “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived”— the things God has prepared for those who love him.”
Can you imagine how will one day change when it begins to tremble at God’s presence? In Isaiah 66:2, it speaks of the humble and contrite in heart trembling at God’s Word. Have you ever trembled at God ‘s Word or at his presence? We as Canadians need to recover a holy fear of the Lord, the beginning of wisdom. Healing comes through our recovering a sense of God’s awesomeness. Even more than a beautiful Crescent Beach sunset, God’s presence can be very healing and calming.
Vs 4 Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.
Vs. 4 says that waiting is key to healing. One of my favorite bible verses in Isaiah 41:31 “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles.“ Waiting is never easy, particularly when you are a child waiting for Christmas. I will never forget when my grandmother showed us where my parents were hiding all our presents.
I served at age 5 as a shepherd in our Kindergarten Christmas Pageant. Sadly I got lost and waited to be found. But they never did find me. I secretly think that because of my lost shepherd incident, that I missed my potential career as a famous Hollywood actor. There might have been a Hollywood agent waiting in the kindergarten audience to discover their next child Hollywood actor. Speaking of child actors, I had the privilege of interviewing 12-year old Ollie Herdman for the Light Magazine. The Herdmans (or to be politically correct, the Herdpersons) were the worst family ever in the entire world, yet they wanted to be part of what became the Greatest Christmas Pageant Ever. We laughed and cried at that movie with three of our grandkids. How many of you have seen this amazing Christmas movie yet?
It is remarkable how God acts and heals those who actively wait for Him. The Bible again and again challenges us, as in Psalm 27:14, Psalm 40:1, and Psalm 130:5-6, to wait for the Lord Healing is a waiting game. Our refusal to wait is often a refusal to heal. One of my greatest weakness is when in my impatient impetuosity, I refuse to wait. I am not willing. I want my healing right now. True love waits. Waiting heals and transforms us. How many of us are grateful for how God miraculously gave us this building in Crescent Beach? So am I, but I in my Hird impatience didn’t like how long it took to receive the recent Crescent Beach miracle. How many are believing that God will come through in enabling up to get the repairs done on the building? What if this latest miracle takes longer than I impatiently want it to? Are you ever tempted to use fear and guilt to get your own way, rather than wait patiently on the Lord? Never say yes to people who try to manipulate you through shame and telling you that the sky will fall.
God acts for those who wait. You may have heard the phrase ‘Good things come to those who wait.’ Do you need healing today? Is healing worth waiting for? Have you ever received a healing that took time? Have you ever received a partial healing that developed into a fuller healing later, like the blind man Jesus prayed for who initially saw people looking like trees. Jesus’ second touch gave him the full healing. Do any of you today need a second touch from Jesus?
God’s delays are not always God saying ‘no’. Sometimes God says ‘slow’ or ‘grow’ before he says ‘go’. I hate being on waiting lists. I really don’t look forward going to emergency wards nowadays, like at Surrey Memorial with its 20-hour wait. But waiting can be deeply healing as we surrender to the Healing Father. Don’t be afraid of healing tears as you wait. Which direction are you facing as you wait for things to happen? Grumpy waiting can look like picking up your marbles and leaving. Turning itself is deeply healing depending on the direction that we are turning. Many atheists nowadays are obsessed with the god that they don’t believe in. They have turned their face away from not only God but also painful situations that they don’t want to deal with. What is it that we can’t face in our lives? Biblical waiting is all about turning and returning to the healing Father. What if we turned our face openly to the Potter of our souls?
Roberto Escamilla in his book Prisoners of Hope said: “One of the most beautiful stories E. Stanley Jones told (repeatedly) was about the little girl who came to church with a broken doll in her hands… She was crying because her doll was broken. She asked the pastor perhaps the most meaningful question anyone could ever ask: ‘Is this the place where they heal broken hearts? Roberto said: “If I only had one sermon to preach, it would be about broken hearts. If I had only one song to sing, it would be ‘There is a balm in Gilead’ to make the wounded whole. If I had but one story to tell, it would be about the little girl and the broken doll. And if I had only one thing to say and one sermon to preach, I would preach about the One who has the power to heal broken hearts. Because that is a universal need. Somewhere along the way, your heart is bound to be broken. Psalm 147:3-4 ‘He heals the broken-hearted…He determines the number of stars.’…
As Roberto put it, one of the church’s primary responsibilities is to heal broken hearts, broken lives, and broken bodies; to heal and repair brokenness, all kinds of brokenness. The church is the hospital for sinners with spiritual needs, for all kinds of brokenness…The church is the place where we must always answer categorically, ‘Yes, this is the place where we specialize in healing brokenness -all kinds of brokenness!’ Is there a way, said Roberto, to help men and women with broken lives, broken health, broken homes, broken dreams, and broken hopes? Is there One who can heal brokenness when everything is broken? Is there One who can help us put it together again – help us get it all together? It is our mission as Christians to reach out and offer sustaining love to all persons with broken hearts.
Vs. 5 You come to the help of those who gladly do right, who remember your ways; But when we continued to sin against them, you were angry. How then can we be saved?
In vs. 5, Isaiah asks a very good question: How can we be saved? Many people in BC have become so secularized and emotionally cut off that they don’t even think that they need saving. If we don’t understand the human condition, we will not get our need for a saviour. As Bishop Peter often says, 95% of people are broken. The rest are liars. Broken people need a saviour, need a potter who can mend the broken parts. In BC and Canada, we need far more than just political salvation. Even a needed change in government is not enough to fix BC and Canada. We need Jesus. His Hebrew and Greek name Yeshua/Jesus means salvation. Vs. 5 teaches that a key to God turning up is our remembering God’s ways. Many of us suffer from spiritual amnesia.
Vs. 6 All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.
Vs 6 is the Romans 3:23 of the Old Testament: All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Sin is just another word for our selfishness and rebellion. At the middle of the word ‘sin’ is the letter ‘I’. Our self-centeredness has the ability to destroy the best things in our lives. I can make us sick. The most selfish are often the most self-righteous. Our self righteousness is a huge block to self-surrender and healing. We are reluctant to acknowledge humanity is fundamentally flawed and sinful from birth. I used to believe that education would solve all problems. Many still believe that science and technology will solve all problems. A few naive people still believe that more government will solve all life’s problems.
Vs. 7 No one calls on your name or strives to lay hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us and have given us over to our sins.
Vs. 7 talks about our unwillingness to listen to advice, even from God. One of my scariest moments as a teenager was when my mother was so frustrated with me that she would say: “Go ahead, do whatever you want.” I knew then that I was really in trouble when my mother was ready to give me up to my selfishness. The heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart. If you really want the kosher cure, you have to understand the Jeremiah 17:9 reality. Our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked. Who can understand them?
One of the areas where I have deceived myself is sometimes confusing my impatient impulsiveness with being led by the Holy Spirit. When I let impatience lead me, it is more likely in the flesh than in the Spirit. Proverbs 14:29 says that whoever is patient has great understanding. My family default coming from a long line of blacksmiths and master mechanics is to get the job done. As someone who has been ordained for 44 years, God and people have tested my patience many times. What have I regretted since I was ordained in 1980? Those times when I impatiently rushed in where angels feared to tred. I have a pioneering anointing. It is deep in those who formed the Anglican Mission.
Business entrepreneurs like my late father are vulnerable to this temptation of impatiently doing things in the flesh, in their own wilfulness, of not surrendering their will to the healing Father. My dad so much disliked waiting for elevators that he moved from the second floor to the first floor at the Peninsula senior’s residence. My mother, who really heard from God, often held my dad back from his impatience. She would say ‘Ted, Ted’ in short staccato, and my dad would often calm down and think before acting impatiently. Sometimes Mom would say ‘Oh Ted’ to redirect his impatience. 😉
I was reminded this week that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, ….patience. True love is willing to wait patiently. True joy is willing to wait joyfully. True peace is willing to wait peacefully. I discover this week that I still need to keep growing in this area. My belt buckle symbolizes the testing of my patient waiting this week. While about to doorknock in Langley, my belt buckle disconnected. I grabbed some red ducktape to temporarily hold my belt together. There were no belt buckle clothing shops open at 9am near our campaign office on Fraser Highway. Someone said that there was a Walmart somewhere in Langley. But I didn’t have time or a real sense of direction. My GPS sent me three miles away from the correct doorknocking destination. My patience was really being tested. Guess where GPS sent me to: Walmart where I grabbed a new belt. Thank God for GPS being led by the Holy Spirit, and helping me grow in patient waiting.
Dr Gary Chapman in his book Five Languages of Apology said that the first language is ‘I’m sorry’ which taps into regret. In my family, we never said that we were sorry until I came to meet Jesus. Self-righteous people very rarely sincerely say that they are sorry. They hardly ever admit that they are wrong. Is it easy to admit that our righteous acts are like filthy rags?
My impatience at times have caused my relationships to shrivel up like a leaf and like the wind carry me away. Have you ever noticed that you can’t really control other people? They don’t like it and it doesn’t work. When I impatiently try to fix and control other people, say like my wife, she doesn’t always appreciate it. 😉
Vs. 8 Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.
Vs. 8 talks about God being a potter. in High School, I took a ceramics course, even creating my own toilet bowl ceramic. Have you ever thought of God as a ceramics coach? God loves healing cracked pots. We have a professional Crescent Beach potter in our walking group who sells his pottery every summer in Newfoundland. Were any of your dads into making pottery? The Fatherhood of God revealed in the Old Testament, and magnified by Jesus in the New Testament, is such good news in the midst of our sinfulness and brokenness. Cracked pots bring the best light.
Vs 9 Do not be angry beyond measure, Lord; do not remember our sins forever. Oh, look on us, we pray, for we are all your people.
Vs. 9 ask God to have amnesia about our sins. How many of you would like God to forget your sins? In Isaiah 43:25, God says “I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.” In Jeremiah 31:34, and quoted in Hebrews 8:12 and 10:17, God says, “I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” As Corrie Ten Boom put it, God casts our sins into the ocean and then puts up a fishing sign. That is what the cross accomplishes. Without the cross, there is no lasting forgiveness. Forgiveness brings healing.
10 Your sacred cities have become a wasteland; even Zion is a wasteland, Jerusalem a desolation. 11 Our holy and glorious temple, where our ancestors praised you, has been burned with fire, and all that we treasured lies in ruins.
Vs. 10 and 11 speaks about the plight of Jerusalem on Mount Zion. When the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem, the Jews were devastated. Everything that they trusted in had been destroyed. Sometimes life can feel like everything is ruined. Many of us feel that we no longer recognize the Canada that we grew up in. Everything seems broken. Much of Canada feels like a emotional wasteland with inflation, violent crime and rampant drug usage. In such difficult times, what do we trust in? Might Jesus bring healing to our broken land of Canada? As 2 Chronicles 7:14 puts it, If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and I will forgive their sin and I will heal their land. Does Canada need healing?
12 After all this, Lord, will you hold yourself back? Will you keep silent and punish us beyond measure?
Vs. 12 cries out to God to fix us crackpots. God is worth waiting for. His forgiveness is deeply healing. Can anyone tell us about the health benefits of sin and selfishness? It’s just not good for us in either body, mind or spirit. Turning and returning to our healing Father is always the healthiest thing that we can do
God knows you by name. That is deeply healing. Jesus remembers you. Jesus will never forget you. You are unforgettable. You are beloved. He gave everything for you on the cross. He held back nothing for you. Your healing is in his shed blood on the cross. He loves you with an everlasting love. He will never change his mind. Let our hearts come alive together. It is impossible to underestimate the hardness of our hearts, but Jesus can give us hearts of flesh. Do you want a soft heart today? Would you like Jesus to heal your heart? Let us pray…
Sermon: ‘Engraved on Jesus’ Hands (Isaiah 49:13-26)
By Rev. Dr. Ed Hird, All Saints Community Church, Crescent Beach
How many of you have ever visited England? We have been there four times. While initially visiting England, we noticed that their underground subways have a rather strange sign: Mind the Gap. They are warning people not to fall into the gap between the train and the platform. All of us have spiritual and emotional gaps in our lives.
Bishop Peter, in a recent sermon, talked about the eighteen inches between our head and our heart being the greatest gap in the universe. There is often a gap between what we cognitively believe and what we experience in our hearts. Bishop Peter works hard to help us be more self-aware of these gaps. Dr JI Packer said: ”True religion claims the affections as well as the head: It is heart-work.”
Steve Cuss said that some of us are honest about the gaps; some pretend that we have no gaps. But only a very few don’t experience a gap at all. In Steve Cuss’s new book Expectation Gaps, he helps us more intentionally mind the gaps in our spiritual lives.
Three common Expectation Gaps identified by Steve Cuss
I believe that God loves me but I don’t always feel it.
I believe that God is with me but I don’t always see it.
I believe that I would be further ahead in my Christian life by now.
In the poem Aurora Leigh, Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote: “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God: But only he who sees, takes off his shoes, The rest sits round it, and pluck blackberries.” Seeing God is often about knowing how and where to look. There are so many signs of God’s beauty all around us that we easily miss in our small, self-absorbed lives. I will never forget when, shortly after my conversion in Grade 12, I noticed the light of God shining through our backyard tree. For five years, I never noticed that burning bush, that sacred tree, but my eyes had opened.
When has God felt closest to you? Would anyone like to share?
When have you seen God at work in your life? Would anyone like to share?
When have you seen God at work in creation? Would anyone like to share?
Have any of us ever felt that we should be further ahead in our Christian life by now?
Steve Cuss commented that sometimes he forgets that God is with him and instead he depends completely on himself. In those moments, he feels like everything is on his shoulders. Can anyone else relate? Do I hear an Amen? With provincial and federal elections coming up, I thank God that the government is on Jesus’ shoulders.
Isaiah 49:13 tells us: ”Shout for joy, you heavens; rejoice, you earth; burst into song, you mountains! For the Lord comforts his people and will have compassion on his afflicted ones.”
How many of you have ever met a Methodist? They are almost an extinct species in Canada. All of my paternal ancestors were Methodists until 1925, when my father converted to the newly formed United Church at the age of one years old. Does any one else have any ancestors who were either Methodists or part of the United Church? Methodists back in those days were often known as Shouting Methodists. My complicated blacksmith great grandfather Tom, who bootlegged to the RCMP, was a Methodist lay preacher. He was remembered by relatives as preaching the hot gospel. Methodists loved to shout for joy and burst into song. Singing, thanks to Charles Wesley, was foundational in the Methodist experience.
After this overflowing of shouting and singing in vs. 13, vs. 14 starts with a but. “But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me.””
Have you ever been tempted to believe that God has forsaken and forgotten you? It is a deeply painful thing when we believe that we are all alone and forgotten. CH Spurgeon said that God keeps his promise a thousand times, and yet the next trial makes us doubt Him.
What has helped you fight back against this lie from the devil that God has forgotten you? Does anyone want to share?
Sometimes when struggling with acute anxiety, depression or a dark night of the soul, it can feel very difficult to pray or read the Bible. This can leave good Christians with a lot of false guilt and shame. I have learned to let people in psychiatric facilities that it is normal and okay to find it difficult to pray or read the Bible. That doesn’t mean that they are bad Christians.
It is so easy to get stuck in our family’s default ways of coping. Sometimes we are our own worst enemy. It is too easy in our Christian life to be stuck on the treadmill of false expectations, of would-ofs, should-ofs, could-ofs, if-only. Steve Cuss insightfully said: “Once I get off the treadmill, I can remember the Lord.” What if we got off the expectation gap treadmill and stopped beating ourselves up? What if we chose to be as kind to ourselves as we are to others? Part of healthy self awareness is to be aware that we are loved even in our brokenness. Do you show the love of neighbour to yourself, loving your neighbour as you love yourself? It really doesn’t work to try to love your neighbour as you hate yourself.
Many kind Christians secretly curse themselves as stupid, ugly, and useless. A lot of this comes from the broken tapes of our childhood and teenage wounds. How overreaching is your inner critic? If someone compliments you, can you receive it, or do you just reject it? One of Satan’s names in Revelation 12:10 is accuser of the brothers and sisters. He does it day and night. What if we stopped agreeing with the devil’s accusation? What if we started overcoming him by the blood of the lamb, the word of our testimony, and because we loved our life not unto death.
In Isaiah 49:15, God says: ““Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!”
Has anyone every forgotten their umbrella? Has anyone forgotten their wallet or purse? How about your keys? Has anyone forgotten where they parked the car? Has anyone ever forgotten their children? 😉 How long did it take you to find them? I am reminded of how anxious Mother Mary and Joseph were when they lost Jesus at age 12 in Jerusalem. God however never forgets any one. Isaiah 43:25, Jeremiah 31:34, and Hebrews 8:13 teaches that God forgets your sins through the cross and can’t even remember them. He will never, however, forget your name. You are not just a SIN number to God. He called you by name while you were still in your mother’s womb. Psalm 139:14 tells us that each of us are fearfully and wonderfully made. As the poster says, God doesn’t make any junk.
What did Jesus quote from Psalm 22 while hanging on the cross? My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani! Jesus on the cross chose to be god-forsaken so that we might never be forsaken again. God will never forget you. Could your mother ever forget you? In one of our Winston Churchill High School 40th anniversary booklets, several men flippantly answered the question ‘Do you have any children’ by writing ‘None that I know of’. I have never heard a women say that. Mothers still remember all their children, including those who were miscarried, or aborted. Unlike doctors, surgical nurses in secular hospitals are forced to do abortions.
Some of my nurse friends felt no grief until they met Jesus. Their consciences came alive. One who wanted but couldn’t have children, switched to a catholic hospital to avoid doing more abortions. It is so wonderful that Jesus can bring healing and forgiveness to those who regret their abortions. While tragic, abortion is not the unforgivable sin. Our prayer teams can really help. I’ve even prayed once with a man who regretted his involvement in an abortion. That doesn’t happen often.
So can a woman forget her baby? It is possible but highly unusual if that happen. Moms, how many of you have forgotten about your children? How often do you think about them? Do you ever lose sleep over them? What helps you surrender them to Jesus? Even if they have rejected and cut you off for a season, you can’t forget them. Neither will God forget you. Psalm 27:10 powerfully reminds people that though our father and mother forsake us, the Lord will receive us. That is very good news.
His covenant with you cannot be broken. By night and by day, Jesus is always thinking of you. His eye is always upon you. God never ceases to remember you. He is not too busy for you. He does all things well. You are his beloved, the darling of His heart.
Jesus in Isaiah 49:16 says: See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me.” The New American Standard Version calls the verb ‘inscribed’. Have any one here ever cut yourself with a knife? Did you have to go to hospital? My grandfather master mechanic/blacksmith chopped off half of two fingers. You are not just tattooed on Jesus’ hands. You are carved there. That is why the resurrected Jesus’ wounds were never removed. You are included in his wounds, in the broken body of the Messiah.
As a young child in Sunday School, I loved the song ‘he’s got the whole world in his hands.’ I never realized as a child however that his hands still have holes in them. Even his mighty resurrection didn’t remove his wounds. Acts 11:21 said says that the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned to the Lord. God’s wounded hands are mighty to save. When the Bible says that Jesus sits on the right hand of the Father, this is the power of God in action to bring healing, salvation and deliverance. You may remember the prayer of Jabez in 1 Chronicles 4:10 ‘Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your Hand would be with me, and that you would keep me from the evil, that I may not cause pain!’ How many wants God’s wounded hand to be with you?
John 10:29 gives us wonderfully good news that no one can pluck you from his scarred hands. With his wounded hands, he fights for you. No one can really love without being wounded. Have you noticed? When young men went to war, mothers would write the names of their sons on their hands, so they would always be thinking about you. In WWW1, mothers would keep a photo of their son always with them.
CH Spurgeon called vs 16 ‘this inestimably precious text’ ‘a precious drop of honey’. He said ‘People speak about the seven wonders of the world. Being carved on the palm of his hands is a wonder in the seventh heavens.’ Revelation 13:8 mysteriously tells us that Jesus the Lamb of God was slain from the foundation of the world.
The very nature of love is sacrificial giving. Loving mothers are radically sacrificial. I have seen that in my mother and also in my dear wife Janice. 1 Corinthians 5:7 tells us that Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed for us. All the sacrifices in the Bible point to the ultimate sacrificial love of Jesus nailed to the cross. Dr John Stott memorably said that if it were not for the cross of Christ embracing our suffering, he would have become an atheist. Only the wounded hands of Jesus make sense of senseless suffering.
I will never forget the altar call in Uganda when dozens of couples came forward to get married. Getting married is not easy in Uganda as you have to pay for the bride’s dowry with a number of cows. One man with his partner and baby told me that while he wanted to get married, he didn’t know if he was ready for that much responsibility. He seemed pretty involved to me. 😉 Many men think that marriage will kill them. It actually statistically gives them a longer and more satisfying life. Many men also fear having children, that they can’t afford it. I did. Marriage and parenting are all about sacrificial love. So is grandparenting. Do I hear an amen? How many of you as grandparents have wounded hands with your grandchildren’s names carved on them?
In vs 17, God observes: “Your children hasten back, and those who laid you waste depart from you.”
One of the greatest moments in one’s life is family reconciliation particularly with one’s adult children. Another great moment is when toxic people depart from your world, so that you can feel safe again. Think of the yearning of many Israelis to have their hostage children freed from the Hamas tunnels after seven months of their being in captivity. Jesus has carved the names of those hostage children on his hands.
In vs 18, we are encouraged: “Lift up your eyes and look around; all your children gather and come to you. As surely as I live,” declares the Lord, “you will wear them all as ornaments; you will put them on, like a bride.”
As mentioned last Sunday, God wants all of our children, physically and spiritually, to come back home and be restored to the Holy Trinity. God is family. There is nothing sweeter than home sweet home, both spiritually and physically. God sees all of us, both married and single, as precious wedding ornaments. How many of us were raised with Susan Warner’s Sunday School hymn?:
Jesus bids me shine like a pure, clear light; like a little candle, shining in the light; in this world of darkness, so let us shine; you in your small corner and I in mine.”
Through Jesus’ wounded hands, light shines through into our small corners. Susan Warner asked her sister Anna to write the classic children’s hymn Jesus loves me. Their parents had lost most of their wealth in the 1847 financial crash when 40% of the New York banks collapsed. The two sisters never married and so had to survive by writing music. Their songs were so popular in their Bible studies with the West Point military cadets that the sisters were honoured after their deaths by being buried in the West Point Cemetery.
Isaiah 49:19-21 speaks of God replacing the bereavement and barrenness in our lives with his abundance:
““Though you were ruined and made desolate and your land laid waste, now you will be too small for your people, and those who devoured you will be far away. The children born during your bereavement will yet say in your hearing, ‘This place is too small for us; give us more space to live in.’ Then you will say in your heart, ‘Who bore me these? I was bereaved and barren; I was exiled and rejected. Who brought these up? I was left all alone, but these—where have they come from?’ ””
Some anticipate that tens of millions will return to the land of Israel in coming days. It may feel like the place is too small. You can imagine how excited that Israelis are when new babies are born after the destruction of October 7th.
In a culture of death, of abortion, drugs and MAID, what a blessing it is when people choose life, family and home. All Saints, as mentioned by Janice Inch last week, is a place of safety, welcome and homecoming. All of us are welcomed home by the wounded hands of Jesus.
God in Isaiah 49:22-23 speaks of bringing his people home, saying: “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: “See, I will beckon to the nations, I will lift up my banner to the peoples; they will bring your sons in their arms and carry your daughters on their hips. Kings will be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers. They will bow down before you with their faces to the ground; they will lick the dust at your feet. Then you will know that I am the Lord; those who hope in me will not be disappointed.””
God will not disappoint his chosen people the Jewish people as he is calling them to do Aliyah and return home to their homeland of Israel. None of us who turn to Yeshua/Jesus the Jewish messiah will be disappointed. He is the hope for both Israel and the nations as they are grafted into the olive tree. He has both Israel and the nations in his wounded hands.
Isaiah 49:24-26 says that God will contend with those who contend with you. God fights for Israel and for us as we return home:
“Can plunder be taken from warriors, or captives be rescued from the fierce? But this is what the Lord says: “Yes, captives will be taken from warriors, and plunder retrieved from the fierce; I will contend with those who contend with you, and your children I will save. I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh; they will be drunk on their own blood, as with wine. Then all mankind will know that I, the Lord, am your Savior, your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.””
As God protects and restores Israel, this is a great witness to the nations that they too need to return to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, revealed in his son Jesus/Yeshua our messiah. God has carved Israel on the palm of his hand. By faith in Jesus the Messiah, we gentiles are also carved on the palm of his hand. He will never leave us. He will never forsake. He will never abandon us.
Let us pray. Dear Jesus, thank you for what you did on the cross for us. Thank you for forgiveness. Thank you for healing. Thank you for including us. We are not forgotten. We are not abandoned, in your name. Amen.
What if most of the people in your family died from incurable illnesses?
Born in St Mary’s in Ontario in 1870, John G. Lake moved with his family to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan in 1886. Eight of his siblings died, despite the best care from medical doctors. This family tragedy inspired Lake to seek the healing power of Jesus Christ.
After Lake was healed in Chicago from a digestive disease, his whole family went from chronic sickness to supernatural health. His invalid brother got up and walked after healing prayer, his hemorrhaging sister was healed, his mother was restored at the brink of death, and his wife was cured from tuberculosis.
Upon being filled with the Holy Spirit in 1907, Lake said, “My nature became so sensitized that I could lay hands on any man or woman and tell what organ was diseased, and to what extent.” Rev. Audrey Mabley of Eternally Yours TV describes John G. Lake, a fellow Canadian, as the greatest man of faith for healing that perhaps has ever lived.
For the first nine months after being touched by the Holy Spirit, Lake could not look at a tree without it framing itself into a glory poem of praise, “Everything I said was a stream of poetry.”
Anointing in South Africa
Feeling a call from God in 1908, John G. Lake and Thomas Hezmalhalch, with their large families, boarded a ship to South Africa. Being sure that God would provide, they arrived with just the clothes on their backs and not enough money to enter the country. Waiting in line at customs, a stranger gave them enough money to pay their way into the country. The families were unexpectedly greeted in Johannesburg by Mrs. C.L. Goodenough, who offered a furnished cottage for them to stay in.
The only way that Lake could describe the anointing that fell on him while in South Africa was as ‘liquid fire’ pumping through his veins. Lake believed that the power of God is equal to every emergency. The well-known South African author Andrew Murray commented of Lake, “The man reveals more of God than any other man in Africa.” Mahatma Gandhi notably said, “Dr. Lake’s teachings will eventually be accepted by the entire world.”
So many people were healed in South Africa that Lake was brought by Arthur Ingram, the Bishop of London and Chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury, to address a Church of England conference. Bishop Ingram said of Lake’s Triune Salvation talk, “This is the greatest sermon I have ever heard, and I commend its careful study by every priest.”
Out of this South Africa healing revival was birthed the Apostolic Faith Mission in southern Africa, a movement now numbering 1.2 million people.
Sadly, on December 22, 1908, while Lake was ministering in the Kalahari Desert, his wife Jenny died from malnutrition and exhaustion. She had been feeding countless poor sick people on her front lawn, while waiting for Lake to return.
The Healing Rooms
Feeling a call to Spokane, Washington, Lake left South Africa, where he settled and married Florence Switzer, having five more children. In 1915, he began the Spokane Divine Healing Institute, later called the Healing Rooms, training up ‘healing technicians’. His instructions to them were to go to the home of a sick person and not come back until that person was healed. Some might be gone for an hour, some a day, and some for weeks. Lake commented:,“We pray until we are satisfied in our souls that the work is complete. This is where people blunder. They will pray for a day or two, and then they quit.” Having previously been a manager for a life insurance company, his extensive business experience caused many business people to be more open to the gospel. Lake commented: “If there was one thing that I wish I could do for the people of Spokane, it would be to teach them to pray.” In Spokane alone, 100,000 healings had been documented and recorded within just five years. Dr. Ruthlidge, of Washington DC, said that Rev. Lake, through the Healing Rooms, made Spokane the healthiest city in the nation.
This Spokane Blessing spread back to Lake’s Canadian homeland. A 32-year-old Canadian, William Bernard, had been suffering from curvature of the spine, since being dropped by his nurse at age three. When Bernard said that he had no faith, John G. Lake laughingly said, “I have enough faith for both of us.” After his spine was healed, two physicians certified him as fit for military service. Bernard commented, “I’ve always longed to give my service to my country of Canada.”
Lake fearlessly submitted to a series of experiments at a well-known research clinic where they watched him through x-rays & microscopes in a laboratory context as he successfully prayed for elimination of leg inflammation in a dying man. He called the Healing Rooms the most amazing adventure in the world. The Spokane Better Business Bureau investigated the healings, giving Lake and the Healing Rooms an opportunity to vindicate themselves by presenting numerous local healings with Spokane residents. Most of the cases where people were healed were ones that physicians had pronounced hopeless. One such case involved the healing of a 35-year-old woman from a 30-pound fibroid tumour in her abdomen. The tumour was completely gone after just three minutes of prayer. Lake commented of the Healing Rooms, “The lightnings of Jesus heals men by its flash; sin dissolves, disease flees when the power of God approaches.”
Thanks to Healing Rooms International Director Cal Pierce’s work in Spokane in 1999, there are now 2,961 Healing Rooms in 69 countries around the world.
According to Tiny Marais, Director for the Greater Vancouver Healing Rooms, the Healing Rooms’ teams at the recent Missions Fest Conference prayed for over 230 people, “We saw the hand of God on everyone we prayed for.” Today, John G. Lake’s life, through the Healing Rooms revival, still impacts millions of lives around the world.
About Rev. Dr. Ed & Janice Hird
Books by Rev. Dr. Ed & Janice Hird include God’s Firestarters; Blue Sky, a novel; and For Better, For Worse: Discovering the keys to a Lasting Relationship. Dr Ed’s newest award-winning book The Elisha Code is co-authored with Rev. David Kitz. Earlier books by Dr. Ed include the award-winning Battle for the Soul of Canada, and Restoring Health: Body, Mind, & Spirit.
How many Mennonite or Mennonite heritage people do you know? In the Fraser Valley alone, there are at least 24 Mennonite Churches, led by over 100 pastors. Menno Simons has birthed a remarkable Mennonite movement of around 200,000 in Canada and over two million people in at least 86 countries. There are now more African Mennonites than in all of North America.
If you attend a church, like millions of Baptist, Pentecostal, Alliance, or independent congregations that practice believer’s baptism, you can thank Menno Simons. And if you value freedom of religion and conscience, you can thank Menno Simons. Many of his ‘unusual’ ideas have become normalized in evangelical Christian culture.
You may be wondering why an Anglican priest would be writing about the ‘founder/pivotal leader’ of the Mennonites. In full disclosure, Mennonites have radically shaped so many key moments of Ed’s life that he has wondered at times if he is an honorary Mennonite. Both Ed and Janice were rebaptized as adults. During the Jesus Movement, Ed was led to Christ and rebaptized in Lake Okanagan by Len Sawatsky, who trained at the Mennonite Columbia Bible College. While serving as a priest at St. Matthew’s Abbotsford, Ed was privileged to be the first (and perhaps last) Anglican priest to speak to the student body at MEI (Mennonite Educational Institute). He has even given talks at other Christian schools on Mennonite history.
Menno Simons (1496 –1561) grew up in poverty as a peasant in Friesland, Holland. At an early age, he was enrolled in a monastic school, possibly at the Franciscan monastery in Bolsward, to prepare for the Catholic priesthood. In March 1524, at the age of 28, he was ordained at Utrecht and assigned to the parish at Pingjum, near the place of his birth. Seven years later in 1531, he became the village priest in his home parish at Witmarsum. Simons learned Latin and some Greek, but never read the Bible out of fear that it would lead him into heresy. Instead, he did a lot of cardplaying and drinking as the parish priest. He commented: “Finally I got the idea to examine the New Testament carefully.” After reading Luther’s books, Menno became known as an evangelical preacher because he began preaching from the bible. Menno Simon’s favorite bible verse was 1 Corinthians 3:11 “No one can lay any other foundation than that which is laid, Jesus Christ.” Luther never met Menno Simons and didn’t appreciate Anabaptists.
Menno’s first exposure to ‘rebaptism’ came when he heard of Sicke Snijde’s beheading following his adult baptism. The idea of believer’s baptism initially ‘seemed very strange’ to Menno as he had baptized his churchgoers only as infants.
I saw that these zealous children, though in error, willingly gave their lives and their estates for their doctrine and faith…But I myself continued in my comfortable life and acknowledged abominations simply in order that I might enjoy comfort and escape the cross of Christ.
Seeing Munster as the apocalyptic New Jerusalem, the Munsterites had embraced polygamy and forced people to be rebaptized on pain of death. This shocked Menno and so he denounced the Munsterites and embraced non-violence:
The regenerated do not go to war, nor engage in strife. They are children of peace who have beaten their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning forks.
We are called, said Menno, to be a church of peace:
True Christians do not know vengeance. They are the children of peace. Their hearts overflow with peace. Their mouths speak peace and they walk in the way of peace.
Menno was careful, thoughtful, and reflective, a welcome contrast to the more extreme Munsterite Anabaptists. When Menno Simons became an Anabaptist on January 12th 1536, he joined a movement in dangerous peril. Almost all of its initial leaders were dead, either by disease (Conrad Grebel) or execution (Felix Manz, Michael Sattler, Hans Hut, Hans Denck, Balthasar Hubmaier, Georg Blaurock, and Jakob Hutter). Melchior Hoffman who brought Anabaptism to the Netherlands was in prison. Anabaptist leaders usually died within two to three years.
The authorities conveniently lumped the Munsterites and the peaceful Anabaptists together. Baptist historian William Estep suggested that the history of Anabaptists can be divided into three periods: “before Menno, under Menno, and after Menno.” His decision to get rebaptized was very costly:
I prayed to God with sighs and tears that He would give to me, a sorrowing sinner, the gift of His grace, create within me a clean heart, and graciously through the merits of the crimson blood of Christ, He would graciously forgive my unclean walk and unprofitable life.
After Menno’s rebaptism in 1536, he became a fugitive. He spent a year in hiding, seeking God’s direction for his new ministry. During this time, he wrote Van de geestlijke verrijsenisse (“The Spiritual Resurrection”), De nieuwe creatuere (“The New Birth”), and Christelycke leringhen op den 25. Psalm (“Meditation on the Twenty-fifth Psalm”). More than forty of his writings survived.
In 1537, he was ordained by the Anabaptist leader Obbe Phiips, and married Gertrude. They had three children, two daughters and a son. Only one daughter outlived him.
Many, including Herman and Gerryt Jansz, were arrested, charged and beheaded for having taken Simons as a lodger. In 1544, Jan Claess’ head was cut off on Amsterdam’s Dam Square and stuck on a stake; his body was placed on a wheel to be eaten by animals and birds. His crimes included rebaptism by Menno and publication in Antwerp of about 600 copies of Menno’s books. In 1549, Elisabeth Dirks, was arrested on suspicion of being Menno’s wife (she wasn’t), endured imprisonment, inquisition, torture, and finally death.
Menno taught the Mennonites, in the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount, to value simplicity and avoid pride:
I voluntarily renounced all my worldly honor and reputation…and at once willingly submitted to distress and poverty, and the cross of Christ.
In 1542, the Holy Roman emperor Charles V promised 100 guilders reward ($8,100 CDN) to bring about Menno’s arrest. In 1543, the Netherlands ordered the death sentence for anyone publishing, spreading, or reading Menno Simon’s work. Pardon of all crimes, and a hundred guilders, was promised in 1544 to criminals who could deliver Menno Simons to the government. Menno’s publisher John Claus was executed that following year. Around this time, the term ‘Mennist’ or ‘Mennonite’ came into use, a phrase that Menno tried unsuccessfully to discourage. In his later years, he often used crutches, calling himself ‘the lame’. Finally in 1544, the Simons found safe refuge in a Holstein cottage near Lubeck, Germany. After his peaceful death, he was buried in 1561 in his garden. In the 1550s, from 2,000 to 4,000 Mennonites were tortured, beheaded or buried alive. The many stories of the Mennonite martyrs are recorded in the 1660 Martyrs Mirror by Thieleman J. van Braght.
Menno sought to establish a believers’ New Testament Church. His desire to separate church from state was unusual in a time of state churches. He saw the church’s identity as a spotless bride ready for her coming husband. Mennonites often speak of being in the world, but not of it.
Menno’s pacifist convictions brought great suffering to his Mennonite followers who left Holland, then Prussia, then South Russia (Ukraine), and moved to Canada in order to say no to violence. Ukrainian Mennonites were often caught between a rock and a hard place as first the communists and then the nazis tried to break down their pacifism. While Canada initially promised military exemption and private schools in the language of choice, the government reneged on their educational promise, forcing Mennonite children to attend Public English schools. Over 7,000 Mennonites moved to Mexico and Paraguay because of this betrayal by the Saskatchewan and Manitoba governments. In 1920 to 1921, Canada banned Mennonites from entering Canada because of their unCanadian pacifist views. Then again from 1929 to 1945, Mennonites were not permitted to move to Canada.
A major theme of Menno’s writings is the new birth. He was strongly Christ-centered, desiring believers to not just talk the talk, but also walk the walk as new persons. Out of Menno’s deep suffering came a conviction of caring for other hurting people:
True evangelical faith … cannot lie dormant. … It clothes the naked, it feeds the hungry, it comforts the sorrowful, it shelters the destitute, it serves those that harm it … it binds up that which is wounded … it has become all things to all people.
Menno’s compassion has inspired the MCC (Mennonite Central Committee) to help millions, particularly those who are refugees. Matthew 25:35 has been described as the ‘national anthem’ of the Mennonites: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.” Many lost people first meet Jesus through the practical caring of Mennonites. Encouraged by Menno’s example, Mennonite communities regularly show the highest level of charitable giving in Canada.
Like their founder, Mennonites tend to be independently minded people. Life for Mennonites is often like a Mennonite patchwork quilt of joy and suffering. Because Mennonites fight with words rather than weapons, they have developed a rich body of literature exploring their history and identity. They remarkably turn tragedy into comedy with very dry humour and word-play.
We thank God for Menno Simons and his caring, peaceful and generous Mennonites who have made Canada a better place to live.
Books by Rev. Dr. Ed & Janice Hird include God’s Firestarters; Blue Sky, a novel; and For Better, For Worse: Discovering the keys to a Lasting Relationship. Dr Ed’s newest award-winning book The Elisha Code is co-authored with Rev. David Kitz. Earlier books by Dr. Ed include the award-winning Battle for the Soul of Canada, and Restoring Health: Body, Mind, & Spirit.
Edhird's Blog 