I asked God to make my handicapped child whole.
God said “No”. “His spirit is whole, his body is only temporary”.

I asked God to grant me patience.
God said “No”. “Patience is a by product of tribulations, it isn’t granted, it is learned”.

I asked God to give me happiness.
God said “No”. “I give you blessings; happiness is up to you”.

I asked God to spare me pain.
God said “No”. “Suffering draws you apart from worldly cares and brings you closer to me”.

I asked God to make my spirit grow.
God said “No”. “You must grow on your own! But I will prune you to make you fruitful”.

I asked God for all things that I might enjoy life.
God said “No”. “I will give you life, so that you may enjoy all things”.

I asked God to help me love others as much as He loves me.
God said “Aaah, finally you have the idea”.

(From Lyn, Ann’s American friend)

A vision for David (his son on heroin, at present in rehab).

“Dear David,

Within God, the cord becomes stronger and whiter, for all to see that it shall not be broken until the time of God’s own choosing, then with a gentle sleep you pass from mortality to immortality. Until that day, let no unclean thing or addiction break the cord. Be assured in strength.”

“I hope this – what I have written down – will be an inspiration to whoever has an ear to Listen.” Trevor Dobson.

“The spirit will quicken your imagination and create a concern in your heart from which you cannot escape. When this happens it is almost certain that you are being guided. No matter how dark the situation and no matter how gloomy the outlook, it is always right to see God.

“The Christian (spiritual) life is not a fight ending in eternal rest. The ‘Rest’ begins now. When you become a Christian you enter the same kind of rest that God is enjoying. He sees the beginning and the end and is disturbed by nothing in-between. He knows that all will end in victory.

“Drop your anchor into the depths of his be-assuring revelation, and rest in His rest.

“Be sure he knows everything we feel, because Christ has worn our flesh.

“As Christ’s life and love flow like a stream through us to others we experience more of his abundant life for ourselves.

“Prayer . . . . makes us spiritually fit. . . .

“The Holy Spirit is ours to keep. Power is available to you at every second and every minute of every day.

“When trouble comes, a redeeming process begins in the heart, and in the mind, a process which is designed to instil God’s peace into every part of our being.

“It will leave us with a deposit of moral and spiritual inoculation against everything that happens in the future, so we should welcome our hurts. They may hurt deeply at the time, but they save us from greater hurts in the future.

“There are two ways of speaking the truth; you can simply speak the bare, harsh truth, or speak the truth in Christ which is much motivated by love, that honours Christ’s character and name.

“The problems we face can be tools in His hands to polish and refine, so ourselves will shine in the likeness of His Son.

“Another way to become more like Him, is to soak our minds in the world of God (saturation and concentration).

“Worry and fear has a way of drawing trouble towards it, just like iron is drawn towards a magnet.

“God’s grace can forgive, cleanse and renew the worst of sinners and make them fit for the service of God…(empowerment).

“All God requires is your consent and co-operation.

“Revival begins in the most unlikely places. He comes to a certain place or person not because they are holy, but to make them holy.

“God will always equip us, who regard the beast as an evil influence and fail to see him as an evil intelligence. The Bible shows him as one who opposes, deceives, persecutes, blasphemes and tempts. . . of a destructive and aggressive personality.

“God seldom uses anyone as a warrior until he puts that person through the test of suffering and adversity. Jesus began his ministry in the wilderness of temptation.

“When we get hurt, our natural and sinful reaction is to hurt the person who hurts us. Christ’s attitude, however, is to transfer the whole matter into God’s hands. This was how Jesus was able to allow himself to feel hurt, without allowing the hurt to develop into a root of bitterness. In facing criticism, we must remember that some criticism is just and necessary, if so, we must listen and profit from it.

“Our critics may be the very hammers of God moulding us into shape.

“Joy is a mark of spiritual maturity and comes about in proportion to how deeply we relate to God and Christ.

“When we get rid of inner conflicts and wrong attitudes to life, we will almost automatically burst into joy. Joy comes in, only to flow out, and in the flowing it is increased.

“The mystery of love would never have been understood, had not Jesus come to show it to us.

“May we learn to love and accept people who need Jesus and to know that Jesus loves them.

“Cultivate an eye that finds God in ordinary things.

“Do not focus so much on what may lie ahead that you miss what God is doing in your ordinary moments.

“Realise that you are awakening, and ask God to help you adjust to this.

“Remember, you are not just a body, but body, mind and spirit and if you are to develop as a “whole” being – all these three need to awaken together.

“For God dwells alone with each one of us, no longer doubt that He is near, and does speak to us in the silence of our hearts.

“Remember God wants us back even more than we could possibly want to be back. In truth God can scarcely bear to be without us.

“No, it is not yours to open buds in blossom. Try shaking it, strike it, it is beyond your power to make it blossom; your touch spoils it. You tear its petals to pieces but no colours appear and no perfume comes out. It is not for you to open the bud into blossom. He who can open the bud does it simply. At God’s breath the flower spreads its wings and flutters in the wind; colours flash out like diamonds. The perfume betrays a sweet secret. He who can open the bud does it so simply, when the time is right.

“When Jesus asked Peter “do you love me?” He added nothing else. What He said was enough. Do you love me? Can you allow my love to touch you in your weakness, set you free and empower you there?

“Thereafter the only power Peter had was Jesus’s love for him. He told and retold the story of his own unfaithfulness and how Jesus had touched him. When he proclaimed the Gospel of grace, he preached from his weakness, the power of God. This is what will convert us, and the people around us. If they see the love of Christ has touched us.

“The first step toward a new beginning begins with accepting where you are and exposing your poverty and emptiness to the love that is everything. Don’t try to feel anything, think anything or do anything. With all the good will in the world you cannot make anything happen. Don’t force prayer. Simply relax in the presence of God you half believe in and ask Him for His touch.

“No one can function long in a helping profession without feeling its impact.

“Home is that sacred space, external or internal where we don’t have to be afraid, where we have hospitality and love.

“To those of us that are in flight, who are afraid to turn around lest we run into ourselves, Jesus says “You have a home – I am your home – claim me as your home, you will find it to be the intimate place where I have found my home. It is right where you are, in your innermost being. In your heart.”

“We get so into ourselves, the words we speak, the plans and projects we conceive, that we become immune to the glory of creation. We barely notice the cloud passing over the moon, or the dewdrops clinging to the rose-leaf, the ice on the pond comes and goes, we take up every leaf as fast as it falls, we miss the experience of awe, reverence and wonder around us. Our world is full of God’s grace and is revealed in spirit.

“To be alive is to be broken. And to be broken is to stand in need of grace. Honesty keeps us in touch with our neediness and the truth that we are saved sinners.

“There is a beautiful honesty to those who don’t have to wear a false face and do not pretend to be anything but who they are. When a person is truly honest, it is impossible to insult them. Personally, there’s nothing to insult, their inner honesty has set them free. You must be convinced of this, trust it, nothing can separate you from the love of Christ.

“When we accept ourselves for what we are, we stop our hunger for power and the acceptance of others. We are no longer pre-occupied with being powerful or popular. We no longer fear criticism because we accept the reality of our human limitations. Simply be being true to ourselves (in Christ) brings lasting peace. We become grateful for the gift of live and we learn to love and respect ourselves. To know that God accepts me as I am is a tremendous help in becoming a better, more enlightened person.

“As we glance up in our hour of need, don’t be astonished to see the eyes of Christ open with wonder, deep with understanding, gentle with compassion, full of amazing grace, instead of universal disgrace.

“We believe in God’s grace in theory, but somehow we cannot apply it to our everyday lives. The truth is that we do not/ cannot earn God’s acceptance. Yet he gives it to us willingly, freely, no matter what we have done.

“My deepest awareness of myself is that I am loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.

“Paul writes in Ephesians: “It is by Grace that you have been saved by faith. Not by anything on your own, but by a gift from God. Not by anything you have done so that nobody can take the credit. Remember you are accepted by that which is greater than you. Do not intend anything. Just accept that you are accepted.”

“The gospel was written for the bedraggled, beat-up and burnt-out. It is for the burdened, the poor, the weak, the sinful with faults and limitations, the bent and bruised who feel their lives are a disappointment to God. It is for anyone who has grown weary and discouraged on the way.

“What a transformation we encounter when we focus on god. Time spent with God always produces results. Remember God is a God of beauty as well as a God of pure power.

“Youth is not a period of time. It is a state of mind, a result of will, a quality of the imagination, a victory of courage over timidity, a taste for adventure over the love of comfort. A man doesn’t grow old because he has lived a certain number of years. A man grows old when he deserts his ideals. Years may wrinkle his skin, but deserting his ideals wrinkles his soul. You will remain young as long as you are open to what is beautiful, good and great, receptive to nature and God. If one day you become bitter, gnawed out by despair, then may God have mercy on your old man’s soul.

“Although spiritual progress comes from God, we are the ones who carry it out. He supplies the power, but we supply the willingness. God gives grace to the humble. God guides everyone who wants to be guided.

As we allow our roots to go down deep into Christ (or me, the Earth), we begin to flower into the beautiful kind of person God intended us to be. Conscience is the capacity within us to decide what is right and what is wrong, but what it decides is largely determined by the training it has received (re the nurturing of the spirit). Some people have little or no conscience, because their parents took no trouble to train them, but others have an over-sensitive one because their parents made excessive demands. When God designed us in the beginning he made us with the awful power of choice, with the possibility that we might go astray and break our own hearts as well as His. Yet parents take the same risk when they bring a child into this world. The child may go astray and crush their lives as well as their own. But parents assume that awful risk. Why? Because they determine that they will do their best for their child and make the child’s problems their own. Before God made us, He was determined to do his best for us and to make our problems His very own (Joshua 24-15).

“It is not easy or enough to point out other people’s sins to them; they must be led to point them out for themselves, then and only then are they on the road to getting rid of them. As we live our lives on the level of faith, we have all the fullness of God to draw upon. That fullness is reviving and regenerates us, work and witness spring from infinite resources from within us. The more we give, the more we have to give. Note, not “have to” as in “must” but “have to” as in “are able to give”.

“When God designed you he made you – allowed you – to have an awful power of choice. In heroin you made a wrong choice. This vision came to me as a message to you directly; more than this - there is nothing more I can say on this situation. Love Dad.”