In 2003 I came into a period of time when constantly in my prayers I believed God was speaking about his desire to control and direct the life of the Church.

These are some of the things which I wrote down in this time. Where impressions originally came as a sense of God's speaking in the first person I have changed them to a third person form.

Repeatedly what comes in this way through prayer is different in style and specific content from what I would have thought to express.

I believe that what is here is in tune with biblical revelation about the depth and direction of God's desire for his Church.

 

God says, ‘Love me, love my purposes’.

 

Sometimes what God calls for in the life of the Church is like the ministry of John the Baptist except there is no river. There is a spiritual stream into which people can choose to step saying, ‘Lord, make me personally ready for what you want to bring, whatever it means’.

 

Sometimes the Church is like a garment so ripped and shredded that it is nothing like a design of God’s making.

 

God says to the Church, You can become a people so greatly blessed when you just take your hands off from holding on so tightly and instead say, ‘Lord, do as you wish, do as you please, do as you purpose’.

 

The promises that God sets before people require so little, only a yes to his doing it, only lips shaped to say Yes and not No.

 

God wants to break the power of human control in the life of the Church. People must entrust to him what is on the other side of the loss of control.

 

God wants to stress the desire to please him, even where people feel they don’t know exactly what pleases him. They are to cry, ‘Show us what is pleasing to you’. God searches people’s hearts and clears a way for himself.

 

There are a lot of people in the Church in whose hearts God finds a basic pattern of righteousness but he doesn’t find zeal. God longs for something so winning, so attractive to be presented to them that they would spontaneously say, ‘Don’t let us stay where we are in the knowledge of God. We’ve already submitted to God. Now let us strive to know him more’.

 

God engages intimately with his Church when it says to others, ‘Jesus is the Bread of Life. Without him we perish’. The Church should see itself as though surrounded by crowds of spiritually starving, emaciated people. The Church questions God: ‘How may we reach this multitude?’ God answers, ‘Not by a plan but by a passion’.

 

God calls from heaven for movements of the heart which say, ‘Yes, Lord, what you want to find in us, create in us. For you are our God and we are your people’.