Sometimes it’s just plain wrong…and we have to do something about it. It is wrong that a pastor serves God faithfully his whole life and then ends up with no pension, in total poverty, abandoned by his children, dying penniless and uncared for, sometimes regretting he’s given his life to the Lord’s service in the first place. And yet such a scenario is relatively common in a country where very few people get a pension. Daniel was a pastor for 36 years before retiring. He reminisces: “I taught the Word of God in schools, planted many churches and mentored many people… […]
Simon Guillebaud
Tears Falling in Your Stomach…
This morning was holy ground. I’m back out in Burundi with a team of supporters for a week of introducing them to our various wonderful partners. As I knew would happen, the team members are blown away at the calibre, integrity and commitment of these Kingdom warriors. As Justin noted, the repeated story is that almost all of them had the chance to take the easier option and leave for whichever affluent peaceful country, but they chose to stay and make a costly difference here, in beautiful but broken Burundi. Ephraim shared how he’d fled to the Congo during the […]
Choose Life in 2023!
I have exciting news! My publishers have kindly agreed for me to share the award-winning devotional Choose Life 365 for free in 2023! So I invite you to sign up for either a daily or a weekly email from me in 2023, helping you to choose faith over fear, love over legalism and gratitude over grumbling! There’s no denying that times are really tough for many of us. Personally, we’ve experienced some real sucker punches over the past couple of months in our family, so more than ever, we need to press into God and pursue Him each and every […]
A Thrill of Hope…
Look at Gloria’s glorious smile! Her life has been totally transformed. She was trafficked to the Middle East and spent ten years in prostitution. Hers was a truly hopeless and miserable life. But when she managed to escape back to Burundi, our Ephraim tracked her down and found her living in total poverty. He rescued her, trained her to be a tailor, got her a sewing machine, and now she’s able to make a living and provide for her daughter. Listen to her in this short film… Just beautiful! What I love is that with just £25/$30, we can help a […]
How is your heart?
This talk was given at my local church, St Andrew’s Community Church, as part of their sermon series on 1 Samuel. Below are a few quotes and notes from it for your perusal: Samuel Chadwick: ‘It is a wonder what God can do with a broken heart, if He gets all the pieces.’ “Until we give God our heart, we give him nothing at all.” J.C.Ryle Dmitri was a Russian factory worker imprisoned after the house church he pastored grew to 150 people. He was sent 1,000 miles away to a hardened criminal facility full of 1,500 prisoners. As far […]
Patience for the Long Haul
Lessons from James This is the final of five talks given at Lee Abbey in the summer, do take a listen or download it below. The previous four in the series were: Persevering Through Trials Walking the Talk Taming the Tongue Humility in Submission Below are some profoundly challenging stories and quotes to stir your faith and mull over: There’s a certain type of bamboo in Asia which grows to prodigious heights and at prodigious speeds – sometimes as much as 60 feet in six weeks. However, before that growth spurt, the seed lies in the dark beneath the ground […]
A Divine Encounter!
I love these stories! We get bombarded with so much bad news in general, that all the more I see it as part of our job at GLO to tell inspiring tales of overcoming. Meet Divine: She was an orphan living in Nyanza lac in the South of Burundi. She was married young to a boy who mistreated her, indeed whose family rejected her and maligned her such that she preferred to flee to the streets. She was left with no apparent options other than to sell her body to survive. That was five years ago. Just a few months […]
Humility in Submission
Lessons from James This is the fourth of five talks given at Lee Abbey in the summer, do take a listen or download it below. The previous three in the series were: Persevering Through Trials Walking the Talk Taming the Tongue Below are some funny/moving stories and anecdotes, and some juicy quotes to mull over: On a flight from Johannesburg, a middle-aged, well-off white South African lady had found herself sitting next to an African man. She called the cabin crew attendant over to complain about her seating. “What seems to be the problem Madam?” asked the attendant. “Can’t you see?” […]
Taming the Tongue
Lessons from James This is the third of five talks given at Lee Abbey in the summer, do take a listen or download it below. The previous two in the series were: Persevering Through Trials Walking the Talk An old legend tells how a man was once lost for days in a dark forest and stumbled across an imposing barn. He sought shelter inside it because of the howling winds. His eyes grew quickly accustomed to the dark, and he was amazed to discover that this barn was where the devil kept his storehouse of seeds. These were the seeds […]
Walking the Talk
Lessons from James This is the second of five talks given at Lee Abbey in the summer (first talk here). Do take a listen or download it here: Below are some notes from my talk: A vicar was too busy to help a homeless lady who was needing help, so he fobbed her off with a promise to pray for her, and then continued on his way. She wrote the following poem and gave it to a local Shelter officer: I was hungry, and you formed a humanities group to discuss my hunger.I was imprisoned, and you crept off quietly […]
Lessons from James: Persevering through Trials
James 1 This is the first of five talks given at Lee Abbey in the summer, do take a listen here: Have you had a bad day recently? Rebecca Dudley, editor of News Tribune, wrote: “Paul Johnson, 37, a mechanic from Maitland, had a day to forget last Tuesday. During the morning, he pushed his motorcycle from the patio into his living room, where he began to clean the engine with some rags and a bowl of petrol. When he finished, he sat on the motorcycle and decided to start it to make sure everything was still OK. Unfortunately, the […]
MINDBLOWING Resilience in Burundi
This is one of the most remarkable women I’ve ever met. Part of our job at GLO is to tell inspirational good news stories. Here’s Beatrice’s: She shared with such dignity as we sat with her. She was widowed ten years ago and left alone with her daughter when she was diagnosed HIV+ after endless chronic diarrhoea never getting better. She quickly lost 20kg, and initially gave up and drowned her sorrows in drinking: “The worst thing was knowing that soon I’d be dead and leave my daughter on her own.” But then her daughter gave her a present. It […]
Crazy Wild Workings in Burundi!
Earlier this summer, I asked for prayers for our huge team of evangelists during their two-week summer outreach campaign, and the results and stories are in. As promised, here’s what happened. First, the stats: We sent out 850 evangelists across the country for two weeks.They worked alongside 47 churches in their respective areas. 13,831 people chose to give their lives to Christ.16,474 people who had drifted in their faith renewed their commitment. Amazing! And there were other stories of marriages being restored, suicidal attempts thwarted or abandoned, community reconciliation and more. So here are a few of the many stories – all I can say is ‘Wow!’ […]
Preparing for Dark Times – FearLESS and HopeFUL Resilience…
We are entering a dark period of history, and we need to be ready for it. I fear we are far from ready. Are you ready? Am I? “God did not give us a spirit of fear.” (2 Timothy 1:7) I believe it is absolutely critical for believers in the risen Jesus Christ to embrace and live out this verse. We live by faith, not fear. Or at least that is how we are meant to live. But my observation in lockdown was that many believers were as susceptible to fear as anyone else, absorbing endless fear-inducing messages and being […]
Spiritual Heart Surgery
A Selfish Heart – 1 Samuel 2:11-36 If you want to listen to last Sunday’s sermon, it was in my local church. The second in the series on Spiritual Heart Surgery, my given title was- ‘A Selfish Heart’, and the text was 1 Samuel 2:11-36. It’s not a passage I would have chosen to speak from, which makes it all the fun to dig into an unfamiliar text and find some real gold. I hope you enjoy it!
Hope for the Desperate in Burundi…
Meet my youngest, Josiah, as he shares with me in this short video on a desperate need right now in Burundi. Economically, Burundi has never been worse, even in the war years. There’s virtually no fuel, food prices are exploding, and the nation is back to being both the poorest and the hungriest country in the world (according to the World Bank). One of our staff recently commented that Bujumbura was ‘like a ghost town’. And yet, I’m so encouraged (and challenged) by how our faithful partners model such joy amid crisis, holding on to the Saviour and reaching out […]
Squeezed to the Wall in Burundi…
What oozes out of you when you are squeezed? Let me explain. A favourite quote of mine is by Smith Wigglesworth: “Be filled with the Spirit – that is, be soaked with the Spirit. Be so soaked that every thread in the fabric of your life will have received the requisite rule of the Spirit – and then, when you are misused and squeezed to the wall, all that will ooze out of you will be the nature of Christ.” Suffice to say, Burundians, already living in the world’s poorest and hungriest nation*, are being squeezed to the wall right […]
Life Built on Rock!
Matthew 7:24-29 Watch, listen to or download this sermon I gave last Sunday. Some notes and cool quotes from the sermon: Most of us have been educated way beyond the level of our obedience. It’s not about being biblically literate but biblically obedient… Is your life built on rock? Not feelings… “Believe God’s Word and power more than you believe your own feelings and experiences. Your Rock is Christ, and it is not the Rock which ebbs and flows, but your sea.” (Samuel Rutherford) “The waters are raging and the winds are blowing but I have no fear for I […]
Beautiful Healing Testimonies from Burundi!
Last Sunday night, we had an evening meal with GLO Partner United Christians for Evangelism (UCE). They are a superb outfit doing incredible things on minimal funds, which is what I find so utterly inspiring. When I was last out here in October, we had done an outreach in Gatamba in Karuzi Province, which had been a real adventure and very fruitful – some of you might remember the demon-possessed lady Teresa who had thrown both her shoes at me from the crowd who was then prayed for, set free, and helped to make a fresh go of life having […]
A Stunning Invitation
So I’ve been in the USA preaching this week, and felt led to this passage, which is not what a visiting speaker would usually choose if he wanted to get invited back! What a passage! Just 9 verses, which include one of the worst and one of the best five verses in the whole Bible (which has 31,102 in total). I started with a few questions to reflect on, but you’ll need to listen to it to get the full impact: Listen to the audio or download here: “So I want to start with a question, a crucial question: What […]