"Those who dance look quite insane to those who can't hear the music."
Kris Valloten- Bethel
So I had scheduled to write about this photo that I took in the Algarve and explain why February 20th is a significant milestone on my calendar. But then on February 21st Billy Graham died and I couldn't ignore this equally important milestone. So I will return to the story behind this photo later on in this post and hopefully the quote above will also be explained.
I think there are seasons when God says ... 'OK, it's time now. Bring them home.' I remember when Mother Theresa died within weeks of Princess Diana. Both huge public personalities, both a tiny marker of what was going on behind the scenes in the grander scale of eternity.
In 2016 we had Terry Wogan, David Bowie, Alan Rickman all die within a few weeks of each other. They were followed by George Michael at the end of the year. Huge personalities who went home with a multitude of others that were known only to their friends and family and the One who knew them better than they knew themselves. Only the public figures hit the headlines, but we all know the personal mark of losing friends and family in these 'home gatherings.' At the end of 2016 I lost a precious friend and mentor.His funeral was incredibly peaceful, happy and a celebration of a life lived wisely and well.
I was sitting in Watts Gallery tea shop on Tuesday this week, drinking tea and eating cake with a friend as he shared about the 3 funerals he was attending in the same number of weeks and feeling that everyone seems to be dropping like flies. As we sat drinking tea and eating cake I said "... well you know we must be in the season. Just you wait, there will be some huge public figure who goes soon." And within 24 hours I heard the news of Billy Graham's death.
He was 99 years old and everyone who knew him had only good things to say about him. His was a very happy death. He said it himself ... " My home is in Heaven. I'm just traveling through this world ." He had completed his course, run his race and gone home to spectacular applause from all of us here on earth and everyone waiting in heaven.
When I heard about Billy Graham passing I wasn't surprised, infact I was pretty excited. I knew we had reached another turning point. Just like I cried when the news came through of the change in the leadership of Zimbabwe. So I danced when I heard about the death of Billy Graham. The dominoes started falling in Southern Africa, first President Mugabe in Zimbabwe, then President Zuma in South Africa. This next set of dominoes has now begun to fall. Hence Jesus words ... 'let him who has ears to hear, HEAR ' Matthew 11:15
.... and the quote above ... 'those who dance look quite insane to those who can't hear the music.'
What am I talking about? The life of an intercessor. History really does belong to the intercessors.
Which leads me back to the photograph I took about 3 years ago on a hot summers day on the southern most tip of Portugal. I didn't realise that I was looking out over ... " the place the Romans quite simply thought was the end of the world. Here their maps ran out and their empire marched relentlessly into the endless sea. " I didn't realise I was standing within a few hundred metres of the spot where a young scruffy backpacker and his friend had set up a fire, pitching their tent on the spectacular cliffs of Cape St Vincent ... "on the most south - westerly point of Europe, far from the lights of any city and beneath a canopy of unusually bright stars. "
Quotes from the book Red Moon Rising written by Pete Greig/Dave Roberts.
For me this photograph was just about the atmospheric shot. The cliffs, the succulents. The mysterious mist. The beauty of the place. It wasn't until I reread Pete's book recently that the penny dropped and I realised where I had been standing.
So why all the excitement about this place, why the drama? Well you will have to read the book for the full story, but here is more copied directly from the book in Pete's words ...
" I only sensed something unfathomably sad and special about the place.... I had climbed quietly out of the tent, leaving Nick gently snoring. A breathtaking sight had greeted me: the vast, glowering ocean glimmering under a shimmering eternity of stars. It was like being lost in the branches of some colossal Christmas tree.
To the south of me the next great landmass was Africa. To the west it was America. But I turned and with my back to the ocean imagined Europe, rolling away from my feet 10,000 miles. From where I stood, the continent began with a handful of rocks and a small green tent, but beyond that I could imagine Portugal and Spain, France, Switzerland, Italy and Germany eventually becoming Russia, China and the Indian sub-continent.
Visualising nation after nation I raised my hands and began to pray out loud for each by name. And that was when it happened. First my scalp began to tingle and an electric current pulsed down my spine, again and again, physically shaking my body. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before, and it was years before the spiritual excitement associated with the Toronto Blessing would appear to plug millions into the mains. I could hear a buzzing, clicking sound overhead, as if an electric pylon was short - circuiting, and I seriously wondered if I was about to get fried. As these strange sensations continued I received a vision. My eyes were open, but I could 'see' with absolute clarity before me the different countries laid out like an atlas and from each one a faceless army of young people was rising out of the page, crowds of them in every nation awaiting orders. "
Now I don't want to quote too much more of the book, please buy it and read it for ourself. I only want to remind myself what God said on that night in that particular spot and what has happened subsequently
because the vision has truly come to pass.
Which brings me back to my original point about February 20th being a significant milestone. What happened on that night 18 years ago ?
Well on February 20th 2000 a group of us gathered at a dirty little nightclub in Guildford called Bojangles. A red moon rose in the winter sky above the nightclub. It was to be the 'official launch' of the 24/7 prayer movement and I was present and ready for action. 'More than 400 people from all over the British Isles converged on that gloomy venue that night and, standing on its sticky beer stained floor, bits hanging off the ceiling, we began to pray and worship.'
What Pete felt in his heart to mark and launch in Guildford had in reality been set off in eternity before time began. I think God started this particular set of dominoes tumbling centuries ago ...
'In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophecy,
your young men will see visions,
your old men will dream dreams ...
The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood
before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord.
And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. ' Acts 2: 17-21
In the last 18years I've watched a new love for intercession enter my world. It is now normal to think about 24/7 prayer and read of places that are in a process of praying for 24 hours every day of the year. It is often the young people who have the energy and passion to do this. They are the army of faceless individuals receiving their orders.
I love interceding. Prayer for me is a conversation, a listening, a labour of love. A joy if you give yourself over to it. A partnership.
I pray as I walk. It is a rhythm that works for me. Walking, looking, chatting, praying. I also have a chair that catches the morning sun where I sit and chat with God. Sometimes He is quiet. Sometimes we just sit and smile at each other. He is very light hearted and kind. I write down what He says and reflect on what is unfolding around me.
Pete Greig put some flesh on the bones of his vision by writing out a full version of what he felt The Vision was actually about. You can read it in full in the book or go to the 24/7 website. But here are just a few tasters of what he wrote out on a number of pieces of paper and pinned to the wall of a 24/7 prayer room ...
I see an army.
And they are FREE from materialism.
They laugh at 9-5 little prisons.
They could eat caviar on Monday and crusts on Tuesday.
They wouldn't even notice ....
They are mobile like the wind, they belong to the nations.
They need no passport ...
They are free yet they are slaves of the hurting and dirty and dying.
This is an army that will lay down its life for the cause.
A million times a day its soldiers
choose to lose
that they might one day win
the great 'Well done' of faithful sons and daughters ....
Here come the frightened and forgotten with fire in their eyes.
They walk tall and trees applaud, skyscrapers bow, mountains are dwarfed by these children of another dimension.
Their prayers summon the hounds of heaven and invoke the ancient dream of Eden.
.... this is the longing of creation itself, the groaning of the Spirit, the very dream of God.
My tomorrow is his today.
My distant hope is his 3-D.
And my feeble, whispered, faithless prayer invokes a
thunderous, resounding, bone - shaking great 'Amen!' from countless angels, from heroes of the faith, from Christ himself. And he is the original dreamer, the ultimate winner.
Guaranteed.
As I mark this date in my diary and relook at the photo I took at Cape St Vincent, I am reminded that everything that Pete Greig wrote about registers as true for me. It has come to pass and it continues to unravel.
For me my journey in prayer continues after a couple of decades. There are moments of reward after years and years of entering the throne room and making requests. The change in Zimbabwe was a reward. The removal of Zuma was a reward. Rain in Capetown was a reward. And Billy Graham returning home was a sign to keep on going. The tide is turning. North Korea, you are next !!
Prayer is never boring. A group of sweet elderly ladies in my church meet to pray once a week over a cup of tea and maps of the world. In the not too distant past they exposed and closed down a human trafficking ring & a brothel in respectable wealthy Leatherhead, Surrey. What fun we are having behind the scenes!
As I mark the passing of Billy Graham, I am in celebration mode.
“ Someday you will read or hear that Billy Graham is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it. I shall be more alive than I am now. I will just have changed my address. I will have gone into the presence of God. ”
- Billy Graham
And as I think about intercession it feels like C S Lewis summed up my experience of it well although he was talking about death itself. He wrote in his book 'Mere Christianity' ... " nature or the real world fades away and The Presence in which you have always stood becomes palpable, immediate and unavoidable."
Which is exactly what it feels like to enter that place of prayer !