Category: Inspiration
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Appearing in a Lady’s Dream, and then in Real Life!
Yesterday we joined GLO’s newest partner UCE for an outreach event in the bush at a place called Bugendana. It was wild! These guys have been running for a decade on a shoestring budget without any external support, relying on their own sacrificial contributions. Recently we committed to backing them, as their track record was…
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10 Top Lessons from 20 Years in Burundi…
TED/MAP talk in North Carolina at New Wineskins Conference Hello, my name is Simon Guillebaud. I’ve recently completed 20 years working in Burundi, a conflict zone in Central Africa, and one of the most beautiful but broken countries on the planet. That’ll do on introduction, time is short. This TED/MAP talk is just 15 minutes…
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Worrying about a lot of $£%@!
The Gospel according to Hollywood sometimes nails it. In the film City Slickers, starring Billy Crystal and the late Jack Palance, they are riding slowly across the range on horseback, discussing life and love. Palance plays a wily cowpoke, while Crystal is a tenderfoot from Los Angeles who has paid for a two-week dude ranch…
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Cumulative Little Steps…
On the back of last week’s Phone-Call/Email from God, I got this brilliant response from a friend, which I wanted to share with you: I know friends who read your emails and they are hungry for more of God. However, there is a passiveness in the ‘waiting for the phone call’. They are paralysed by…
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A Phone Call/Blog from God!
A phone call changed the trajectory of my life. Many of you know the story already.* And this weekend, we hung out with a man (pictured above, Lizzie and I, with Ted and Lorraine) for whom likewise a phone call rocked his world and gave it a remarkable trajectory. I want to share his story because…
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Big Opportunities…For You?
What do you know about Slovenia? I knew virtually nothing until we went there this last week. And yesterday I got to preach at the biggest evangelical church in the country, which you’re probably thinking is a few thousand people strong. But no, it was maybe 130 people, because there are only about 500 evangelicals…
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The Marriage of the Year – Move Over Harry and Meghan!
In January, I shared with you ‘a fairy tale come true for the ugliest duckling in Burundi’. Well, on Saturday, he got married to his babe, Floride! Nobody, NOBODY, could ever have believed this was possible, from being the ugliest disfigured reject in Burundi twenty one years ago. God is amazing! In 1997, he had…
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A Day in the Life… Being a Disciplined Discipling Disciple
I often get asked: “What does a day in Burundi look like for you?” And it’s difficult to answer because my days include a huge range of activities; but at this stage of life, this is the framework I’m trying to implement. What my work actually entails is beyond the scope of this blog. I’m…
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Prayerful and Alert…
Until you know that life is war, you cannot know what prayer is for… Here’s a sermon you can listen to here from a few Sundays ago in St Mary’s Maidenhead’s series on Spiritual Warfare. My text was Ephesians 6:18-20. Some meaty quotes from the talk include: “Probably the number one reason why prayer malfunctions in the hands…
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Forcing God into a Good Bargain…
Yesterday two men tried to force their way into our home, pretending to be from the water company. In an unconnected incident an hour later, a man was shot dead 50m away. That is my context… “God, you can do anything to me, just take care of my kids, then you’ve got yourself a deal.”…
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What Do You Want To Leave Behind?
You’re not going to take anything with you, so what are you investing in now? Will it last? ‘Anything which isn’t eternal is eternally out-of-date’ (C.S.Lewis). Here are some challenges from the life of Granny Guillebaud…
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I’m Giving Up, my Race is Over…
How many times have you fallen? For me, well, I’ve lost count. And now with all that’s going on in Burundi, I’m just not sure I can keep on getting back up. So that’s where this poem comes in… (‘The Race’, by D.H.Groberg)
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Get Ready, Live Ready!
This article recently appeared here for the Evangelical Alliance. Once I was preaching near the Congolese border. My sermon text was Matthew 25 – the parable of the ten maidservants. Those ten all had a role to play at the wedding, but five of them didn’t have enough oil in their lamps. It’s a…