My Story: Phases of Spirituality?
God the embracer: As a child I was wrapped in the prayers of a grandmother of faith. And a mother and father’s love. Perhaps that is why the world was full of His surrounding love. And the intense curiosity about everything – the wonderment – that’s the beginning of the search for he infinite. Even back then I recall the presence of the Holy Spirit, as a little boy, he showed me the inner man of those tall people, their sins, their futures.
The Logic of the Ethical Personality of the Universe: For my 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th birthdays, I asked for a Bible and was given a New Testament and eventually a big complete Bible. The only problem is that it was written during the time of King James, so much remained a mystery. But in it, I found truth and the presence of God.
The Voice of God: At 13, there came a great struggle of the soul. For how was one to know if it were true, if God himself were true, and if he were true, would I follow him with a whole heart? I read – this was before the internet destroyed the habitual discipline of reading in the populace. I found Frank Morrison’s, Who Moved the Stone? That anchored my certainty as to the truth of the resurrection, one of the best-established facts in history, with multiple witnesses and multiple documentary evidence. Then Josh McDowell’s apologetics on the authority of the scriptures were matched by books- the Story of the Bible was one – that showed their underlying historical veracity based on archeology. Thus, the classic Christian and evangelical commitment to the truth of the scriptures is foundational to all. That was not fundamentalism, with its misinterpretation that every little detail of the scriptures must be true, based on Jesus affirmation that not one jot or tittle of the core ten commandments would pass away, then they come up with many literalist views of poetry and the earlier oral myth framework of Genesis 1-12, which is true truth, but as with all oral traditions, is stylized over many centuries, so not all details fit with concepts of truth in modern historiography or literalist fundamentalism, but they do lays out the whole basis of revealed truth in theology.
What was more significant was the Power of the Book—its insights, the presence of the Holy Spirit in reading, and, over the years, its power to speak, break bondages, and confront darkness.
At 14, I began to hang out with the bikie gang at school, discovering how to love them into our youth group. At 15, I began to gather the unlovely people for lunch, then started my first Christian fellowship. One day, we were doing a Bible study on the seats at school, and my classmates gathered and began to debate, ” You don’t believe the Bible, do you?” So I began to preach. The crowd grew, so I climbed on the seat and began to preach some more. The meaning of life is walking in his shoes, obeying his primary command, and declaring the Good News of Freedom!
The God who Sees: I faced my first prophetic moments as the leader of our youth group, encouraged my friends to join the dances in the city hall in Dunedin. I had watched the Presbyterian churches emptied that year into the dances then into immorality – it was the season of the Beatles and free love – and out of the church. Dunedin Presbyterians never recovered, to this day. I stood up and prophesied that if they followed this way, they too would be out of the church. This came true. A year later the immorality of the leader of this group was made public. That prophetic life has kept coming as he wills. Speaking against sin, seeing inside leaders, challenging institutional evils. Not an easy gift. But also the delight of calling armies of love into being, prophesying battles for the soul of places. Calling leaders forth. One does not choose the term prophet about oneself. But others know the impact on their lives. This comes from God, not man. Living out the prophetic is what I did in Manila slums – living incarnationally, bringing about transformation poorly, writing it down. That written, lived-out prophetic book has called many hundreds to begin ministries in the slums. The prophet as an author.
I read hundreds of missionary biographies as a teen, about five a week. I found them on the top shelf of Dunedin’s public library. Barely read. Just for me. My missiology was derived from the stories. They birthed faith. Faith in the reality of revival, of the Holy Spirit transforming people. Study at Fuller later confirmed what I had learned. A God who speaks in power and that power multiplies to hundreds at a time. I have seen that again and again, in the Navigator movement in New Zealand, among the Middle class in Manila, in Manila slums, among tribal people, the Ibanag, through discipling a professor… The revival in New Zealand, the falling of the Holy Spirit on groups, lead to writing The Spirit of Christ and the Postmodern City where I analyze the impact of revival on a nation.
This leads to strategizing and academics, working in parallel with these human gifts, but divine words possess tremendous power compared to those solid conceptual processes. The Life-giving God: Evangelism expanded under the Navigator training at the University. I visited people daily to share the gospel, created small groups grappling with reality, meaning, and the traumas of growing up, and found the mystery of God in the midst. I am living, alive, life.
The ministry of intercession: The God who Acts as we Ask. I learned to pray without ceasing at school as I studied maths. Multitasking. To this day, there is the underlying rhythm of prayer as I am about my work. I read Andrew Murray, With Christ in the School of Prayer, nearly daily for ten years. Intercession became central, beginning with asking for work every spare day of my university life, to eventually asking for the breaking of bondage on the city of Kolkata, which leaders there testify to. Intensity in prayer at times is so critical. Lynton Brocklehurst and I prayed by a fireplae in a student flat for two months for cities and nations – for movements of thousands, for a million. I cannot count as that would be a means of control, but I can say I believe the Lord has answered what we asked, despite my follies.