If we live we live for the Lord, and if we die we die for the Lord

In loving memory of my mother Jean who died on 3rd July 2009. The following is the homily I preached at her funeral

The words from Romans “The life and death of each one of us has its influence on others, if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die we die for the Lord...” seem very appropriate for Jean's funeral.

Jean our mother, sister, grandma, great grandma and friend.

To know Jean was to know someone who had inherited a very strong Christian faith from her father. She did her best to put that faith into action. She wasn't a saint by any means but what she did understand was that at the heart of the Christian gospel is the overwhelming transforming power of love. To simply love other people has an influence. The kind of love a Christian has (they call it agape) simply does invite a response.

This isn't the eulogy – we will come to that later. I just want to try and explain what motivated my mother to be the person she was. If I understand correctly ( and I think I do) her life's motivation came from knowing her father Harold Wesley Bardwell and knowing Jesus.

They say faith is caught not taught. She caught her faith from her father. And I think that she would want me to explain (briefly) about Faith Hope and Love.

St Paul famously said “to have faith is to be sure of the things we hope for, to be certain of the things that we cannot see.”

Faith is not a step into the dark. It is a step into the light. From the faith giving moment we go forward, shakily at first, like a child taking first steps. But the amazing thing is the more we walk in faith the more steady we become and the more we experience God's love and the certainty that there is a God who cares about us. It is something that you have to do for yourself before you can be truly convinced about the truth of what I am saying. She was always supporting people in their faith. In quite a discreet and kind way. Always willing to chat about the difficult subjects and very sure Jean's certainty was that there is life after death.

She chose today's gospel and pretty much all the hymns we are singing. She wanted you to hear those words from Jesus “ I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me will live, even though they die; and those who live and believe in me will never die.”

Jean had quite a few experiences that made her convinced that there was a life after death. That when she died her life would change but not end. We talked about it a lot over the last few months. When it came to it she was ready to die and unshakeable in her faith. We can take consolation in that. She believed what Jesus said about the resurrection. I share that faith with her. Her great joy would be in you sharing it too.

She wouldn't want us to be especially sad at her passing and would want us to be glad for her in our tears. And she would want us to know love and to give and receive it today.

May your hearts be at peace. May you find consolation in your grief. May you find hope in the resurrection today as we celebrate the Life and love of Jean Frances Cockshutt.

Be Careful how you think

What does today hold for you? What has gone on for you or what is about to happen? Whatever our belief system it is important to know which way is up on any particular day. If we wander around like a loon in a haze, or interfering in things, and never settling down to do something we will just be static noise on the soundtrack of history. Just how do we make the best of our lives? How do we do being "me" the best way that we can?

Consider this advice from the book of proverbs...

Be careful how you think; your life is shaped by your thoughts. Never say anything that isn't true. Have nothing to do with lies and misleading words. Look straight ahead with honest confidence; don't hang your head in shame. Plan carefully what you do, and whatever you do will turn out right. Avoid evil and walk straight ahead. Don't go one step off the right way. Proverbs 4:23-27 GNT

Oh! To be a person with the passion of "honest confidence" who is living and loving in the freedom of the Holy Spirit. That is my dream.  This passage is about being someone with discernment, someone who can grow into the things of God. 

As St Paul puts it we have the choice between the two paths in our life. The choice between Good and Evil. When it says "Be careful how you think; your life is shaped by your thoughts" - The inkling or precursor of Good or Evil comes from our thoughts. What we think we so easily end up doing.  This is why we need an understanding of God's law of love in our hearts. When we choose love we choose good and our lives are enriched. If we choose to do the opposite our lives are impoverished.

Our actions have a cause and effect on other people. Very few of our actions are totally neutral. But that shouldn't scare us. But it should make us want to seize God's creative power for the positive. The power to bless and not to curse. The joy of compassionate tender hearted love in our loves.

So dear reader! Seize this day be wise in the use of your time. Try to be able to recognise when it is God's given time to act. Look for moments when it is time to bless! Even if it is time to bless a complete stranger. Or time to bless our spouse or friend or relative. Bless doen't just mean words or prayers it means, actions and listenings. Taking part in the ordinary and somehow converting it into special moments.The bible has two words for time

• Chronos = the time that we have to spend, elapsed time so to speak 
• Kairos = special God chosen moments time of blessing, times of Grace that come when we co-author them with God, when we co-operate with him and cease to struggle!

When we don't have thinking in our life we have Chaos = life jumbled up and messy

God does pardon our errors and loves us in spite of them. We are given the chance to redeem our past. I am living proof of that. An unfinished work of a person being redeemed. Seeking the positive.

Dear Lord, send your inspiration into my thinking. Breathe your creative power into it and use me for your kingdom. Help me to build it here on earth. Teach me gently, or even strongly (!) how to tap into your love. Amen


For Reflection:
Galatians 5:16-18 GNT "What I say is this: let the Spirit direct your lives, and you will not satisfy the desires of the human nature.  For what our human nature wants is opposed to what the Spirit wants, and what the Spirit wants is opposed to what our human nature wants. These two are enemies, and this means that you cannot do what you want to do.  If the Spirit leads you, then you are not subject to the Law."

Where you fall you can grow!

There can be moments in our life where we despair. Where life seems so bleak that we can't see the way ahead or the way through the crisis even.

In those situations we can take comfort from the following passage from the prophet Jeremiah.

The LORD said to me, “Go down to the potter's house, where I will give you my message.”  So I went there and saw the potter working at his wheel.  Whenever a piece of pottery turned out imperfect, he would take the clay and make it into something else. (Jeremiah 18 :1-4 GNT )

We know that Jeremiah thought that God is like the potter and that we are like the clay when we surrender our lives to him. When we are imperfect we can be made into something else if we surrender to God. Made into something better!

Years and years ago I had a nervous breakdown. I was in a very bleak position but went anyway to some friends to be prayed with. I think that I thought to myself that "well it can't do any harm." To my surprise I encountered a moment of grace with God and started to get better. One of my friends read the Jeremiah passage to me. After and during my recovery I cherished rereading that passage from Jerrmiah. It still means a lot to me when I hear the phrase "Go down to the potter's house"

John and I were walking in a wood yesterday and we found this massive oak tree that had fallen to the ground. It must have been ages ago that it fell because growing from the tree were all these vertical shoots of new trees coming up. See picture:

When I saw the tree lying like that horizontally, I thought here is something that has weathered disaster and is being renewed. The secret of this trees regrowth is that it is still able to draw nourishment through it's capillaries and use that nourishment to fuel growth. We can be like that tree too. Even when we have fallen in life, for whatever reason, if we can recognise that God is a source of nourishment we can turn to him and be replenished.

If we put our roots out to God we can draw strength from him. It might take time but we can become something new. In listening to God we might find that he tells us to change something in our life. Maybe to give something up that is harmful or to start doing something. For each one of us the catalyst to growth or healing might be different. But as it says in scripture "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart" - God allows  himself to be found when we look for him.

Dear Lord, I come to you today in my brokenness, help me to listen to you and draw nourishment from you. I seek only life, teach me what I need to change to find peace of mind and happiness in you. Amen

Why this blog is called "Watchman"

I think that it is time that I explained why this blog is called Watchman. It stems from a series of experiences I have had since I moved to Ipswich last summer. God has been making himself known to me in a new way. But I think the truth is that because of the new beginning in coming to Ipswich, I have started listening to him again properly. For a few years I was less attentive than I should have been. But with Ipswich being a new beginning and all, when I moved here and started going to Burlington Baptist Church it was as if God said to me - "Now Simon, I want your attention." I should also say that I moved here because it seemed that I was being called here.

So since last summer God has been reclaiming me! It seems though that at times it is almost inch by inch. Let me share with you what the Lord was saying to me in October through the words of people of faith

"Lord you've put your finger on some areas in me. Pluck them out of my heart. Encourage me, Lord, that I am not going backward -instead I am going forward with you" page 179 of Hungry for More of Jesus by David Wilkerson

and also

"Ride out your storm when the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him (Isaiah 59.19)

It seemed to me that God was saying "Simon your sin is always before you. But let that not defeat you! Let not despair overcome you! Let my grace overcome you instead strengthening you and empowering you for daily living in the power of the cross. I will Convert your heart to a heart that feels for the things that I want, I will empower you with a thirst for my love to be spread across the world. Open you to the Holy Spirit working in you and on you. I will Give you a heart that reaches out for my lost people that you may stand in the gap.

So 24th January 2012  I left the house as normal walked to the station by the river. I tend to pray as I walk. I then got the 6.14 train to London and started to listen to a mp3 of a friend preaching. What she said stirred me up. And almost audibly I felt God calling me to be a watchman for Ipswich. The Holy Spirit has since I moved to Ipswich been giving me a sense of urgency and I still don't fully understand why? But I the understanding that I got was that I am to prepare. And to prepare in obedience without worrying about the outcome.

The problem was how to interpret what it meant to be "a watchman for Ipswich" - the weekly reflections that I put on this website are really about me trying to unpack what all that means. Some things are clearer to me now. The kind of Watchman I am to be is the one who stands at the City Gates and to be in the words of the hymn "a keeper of the light ; for the wanderers returning I must keep the watch fire burning " - one who welcomes into the Kingdom of God the lost. But a Watchman is also someone who tries to tune into the heart of God, listening to what God is saying to us, sharing it.

Please pray for this ministry of mine, and also for our joint vision that Debs and I have to establish the House of Prayer. That we may be strong, and faithful to God. That I may help people in their faith and not hinder them.

Dear Lord, renew us again with your Holy Spirit, reveal to all who read this your "loving kindness" and your abundant love for the whole of creation. Amen

Year of Grace

Back in Ipswich UK after a long journey.

Last week in my blog I wrote "I think I dare to say that we are on the verge of a tipping point of the Holy Spirit that will pour out from this land (meaning Australia) to the ends of the earth. This is something I only know in my spirit but heed this foregoing utterance of a mortal man. Said in obedience to God." - I thought in a way I had been stupid and headstrong in writing that - The following day I discovered that maybe I was not so stupid after all!

I visited Brisbane Cathedral and hung around for mass, because I like to do that sort of thing, pray and listen, I discovered that the Bishop there had written a pastoral letter to his flock declaring that Pentecost should mark a "Year of Grace" - this is an excerpt from his letter

"But the plot thickens. When God comes down to us in Jesus, we prefer to run away – saying as we do, "No thanks, I can do it by myself". We would rather die in our own way than live in God’s way. We would rather starve at the foot of the mountain than allow God to carry us to the feast on the summit. That’s the underlying attitude that becomes sin in our life. But God is not so easily put off, because Jesus, the Good Shepherd, comes looking for the run-away sheep. When he finds them, he puts them on his shoulders and carries them up the mountain where they can enjoy the restful waters and the fresh green pastures of the feast. And all of this is done out of the free and extravagant love than we call "grace", which is the very heart of the Christian life.

"This Pentecost Sunday we begin what we’re calling the Year of Grace. This will be like a time of retreat for the whole Church in Australia – a time to refocus on what really matters, a time to rediscover the heart of the Christian life. We can’t earn the almost incredible love of God; but we don’t have to. It’s given to the unworthy as a free gift. All they have to do is accept it. But that can be harder than it sounds, given our tendency to insist that we can do it all ourselves."

If a whole national church is going to pray for a year of grace It will happen! And it will pour out over other nations. Debs and I found the Holy Spirit working in Brisbane and also with the COC church at Bribie Island where we experienced an amazingly prayerful service. The same Holy Spirit working in different churches....

The full text of the pastoral letter will be found here - it is worth reading in full.

I will double post this week as I am also working on a more reflective piece.

Here is their prayer


Gracious God,
You have blessed this ancient land
with many gifts, especially its people.
We thank you for the Year of Grace,
a time to start afresh from Christ.
You invite us to contemplate the face of Jesus your Son,
that we may experience a new wave of grace,
and that the light of Christ may burn more brightly in our lives.
Attune our hearts and minds
to the presence of your Holy Spirit,
that our Church may be transformed,
our relationships be healed,
and our nation grow in compassion and justice.
With the intercession of St Mary MacKillop,
who showed us new ways of living the Gospel,
we make our prayer
through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Mary, Help of Christians, pray for us.

The Great Southland of the Holy Spirit

Before this latest trip to Australia I had never heard the expression "The great Southland of the Holy Spirit" - and then in the run up to our little time of prayer on the beach two people referred to the phrase in prayer with me.

It seems that the Latin words "Terra Australis del Espiritu Santu" was the name given to the Great South Land by Spanish explorer Pedro Fernandez de Quiros in 1606.

Translated into in English "Great South Land of the Holy Spirit" is a one of the titles for this great land mass that what we now know as the nation of Australia.

I have been praying about this and I feel God has been saying to me that Pedro Fernandez had a Word of Knowledge when he named Australia that way. Sometimes the Holy Spirit reveals to us something that we speak out and we think "where did that come from!?" - I know from the prayer that I have received here in Australia that others too have already seen a significance in the name.

I think I dare to say that we are on the verge of a tipping point of the Holy Spirit that will pour out from this land to the ends of the earth. This is something I only know in my spirit but heed this foregoing utterance of a mortal man. Said in obedience to God.

Dear Lord, we know that for you anything is possible and that the "light is stronger than the darkness" - kindle once more in us the fire of your love. Give us once again a knowledge of your great love for us. Overwhelm us with it, and give us a true understanding of your love for the whole of the world. Amen