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 seven operations on his body, some lasting 8-10 hours, and was in a coma for four days. His body couldn’t take any more, and the surgeon said maybe a decade later more work could be done. In 2011 and 2012, we flew him to Kenya, […]
Category: Inspiration
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 sharing this with you in the hope that something might strike you, encourage you, challenge you, or help you. Our lives are all different – we have different balls we’re juggling in the air – and we might be at different life stages in different […]
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 of believers is that we try to turn a wartime walkie-talkie into a domestic intercom. Until you know that life is war, you cannot know what prayer is for… But what have millions of Christians done? We have stopped believing that we are in a […]
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.” That’s how I try to bargain with God. Others try to bargain with God over money, sex, free time, possessions. But does God bargain with us?
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 ‘Anything which isn’t eternal is eternally out-of-date’ (C.S.Lewis).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…
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)
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 straightforward story, and it doesn’t need much explaining. My three points were simply, i) Jesus is coming, ii) nobody knows when, iii) but are you ready? Some responded to my appeal at the end, others didn’t. In any case, two days later I was driving […]