Pastoral Letter - Gratitude

PASTORAL LETTER TWENTY

GRATITUDE

Dear Fellow Salvationists,

I greet you each one in the sacred Name of Jesus. His Name is without equal. Only under his Name can salvation for our souls be found. Let our hearts leap upward with gratitude.

As I write to you, London is going through a mid-summer heat-wave - or at least a heat-wave by London standards! We are grateful for every comfort in this sophisticated western city, yet we remain mindful that not every Salvationist has such things. I thank God for the Army world that shares more and more regularly, more and more effectively, as a global family. We remember constantly our Lord's teaching that we should carry one another's burdens. We are partners in a holy mission and must be watchful of each other's needs.

I hear many prayers in all kinds of places and settings. You also hear them where you are. I am moved by the prayers I hear being offered by my fellow Salvationists. God is helping us to be more and more a prayerful Army. At the heart of prayer is thanksgiving. We come before our Heavenly Father in a spirit of humble gratitude. Philippians 4:6 teaches us to come to God in prayer with a grateful heart. As we pray, we must offer thanks more than offering requests. The Holy Spirit helps us as we pray and in this way we can get the balance right.

'Thank you' is a phrase on every Salvationist's lips, many times each day. We affirm one another in this way and at the same time we honour the God we all adore and obey. When we know how to thank God, we will also know how to thank our fellow believers. Similar courtesy can and should be offered to the unbeliever so that others see the courtesy of Christ in us.

Luke's Gospel (in chapter 17) tells us about the ten lepers healed by Jesus. Only one healed leper went back to Jesus to express gratitude for his healing. One in ten! Only a tenth! Just 10%! It is difficult to understand why the other nine offered no gratitude. It costs very little to say 'thank you'. I am asking God to make us more and more a grateful Army, an Army that constantly gives thanks for every help and blessing.

You will know the Old Testament account of Hannah and her longing for a child (see 1 Samuel 1:9-28). She offered a sacrifice of thanksgiving to God for her son, Samuel. He became a great man of God.

In 1 Corinthians 15:57 the Apostle Paul declares gratitude to God for spiritual victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. We join Paul in that burst of thanksgiving. Try to read the words for yourself and perhaps say them aloud as you read. You can say 'me' instead of 'us' and in that way make the verse very personal. It is a verse that you could include in your prayers every day. What a great way to begin and end a prayer.

As I end this Pastoral Letter I offer deep gratitude to God for your faithfulness. I thank God foryou! You are my comrade, my sister or my brother in Christ. God bless and keep you in all things.

May you know the Lord's loving touch today.

I commend you to his matchless grace.

Sincerely in him,

Shaw Clifton
General

General's Pastoral Letter - Counting

PASTORAL LETTER NINETEEN

COUNTING

Dear Fellow Salvationists,

This 19th Pastoral Letter comes to each of you with warmest good wishes and greetings in the Lord Jesus Christ.

As I prepare this letter in an upstairs room in my home in London, England, I look out to see the green and blossoming evidence of late spring. The trees are suddenly abundant in leaf. The sky is lighter and the days grow longer. We discern the hand of God in nature once again and we are filled with gratitude.

Readers in the southern hemisphere are in autumn, waiting for the darker nights and colder temperatures of winter to arrive. The seasons march on with seemingly inexorable pace. We feel our smallness, our creatureliness, and we sense too the overarching mind of the Creator in it all.

Little wonder then that we can burst into song to declare: ‘How great Thou art!’ We offer praise amid the awe. We bring to God our smallness, ready for him to help us rise in Christ to all the fullness of what we can be.

It is God’s plan that each one of us should be all we can be. You matter, you count. Tell yourself out loud: ‘I matter! I count in the eyes of Almighty God!’

Now suddenly my mind is racing off in another direction as I see the word ‘count’ appear in my script. The Bible tells us that even the number of hairs upon our heads has been counted and is known to God in Heaven. This is a powerful reminder of God’s intimate knowledge of us. I find it enormously comforting, but many find the thought menacing. Not everyone wants a Creator God who interacts with us. Instead they seek freedom to wander, licence to please themselves, falsely supposing this to be freedom.

Our God is a counting God. We see this in Jesus who spoke about a flock of sheep numbering 100, but one was lost thus reducing the flock to only 99. The shepherd would not rest until the lost one had been found. That lost one is you. It is also me. We are ‘Sheep Number 100’! How good that we have a God who can count and who searches tirelessly for us when we go missing. This divine attribute is ever before us when we do the sacredly routine work of counting how many folk are in a worship meeting, or how many have used the Mercy Seat, or how many names appear on the soldiers’ roll and other rolls.

If our Creator is by nature a God who counts, then we in turn must expect also to be like him. We can count our blessings, we can count the days he has allotted to us and give thanks for each one of them.

God stands alongside us as we count. He knows how many Army soldiers and junior soldiers there are in the world, and how many there are in your local corps. He knows the number of Army officers in the world and the number of cadets in our training colleges. He loves to see these numbers grow. He knows too that we are at work now in 121 countries of the world. Best of all he knows personally and in detail every individual soldier, junior soldier, officer and cadet. He knows those who are his.

We bask in this knowledge.

Commissioner Helen Clifton joins me in greeting each of you in the precious Name of Jesus.

Please continue to pray for us.

I commend each one of you to the grace of Christ.

Sincerely in him,

Shaw Clifton

General

They shall come from the east, they shall come from the west

They shall come from the east, they shall come from the west,

And sit down in the Kingdom of God;

Both the rich and the poor, the despised, the distressed,

They'll sit down in the Kingdom of God.

And none will ask what they have been

Provided that their robes are clean;

They shall come from the east, they shall come from the west,

And sit down in the Kingdom of God.

2.
They shall come from the east,
they shall come from the west,
And sit down in the Kingdom of God;
To be met by their Father and welcomed and blessed,
And sit down in the Kingdom of God.
The black, the white, the dark, the fair,
Your color will not matter there;
They shall come from the east,
they shall come from the west,
And sit down in the Kingdom of God.

3.
They shall come from the east,
they shall come from the west,
And sit down in the Kingdom of God;
Out of great tribulation to triumph and rest
They'll sit down in the Kingdom of God.
From every tribe and every race,
All men as brothers shall embrace;
They shall come from the east,
they shall come from the west.
And sit down in the Kingdom of God.

Gowans/Larson

[From The Salvation Army Musical 'Blood of The Lamb']

Oh Lord, do it again - bring the harvest - we want to see revival!!

Please Father!

"People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God."

Luke 13:29

NASA PROVES THE BIBLE IS TRUE

What do ya think about this;

For all you scientists out there and for all the students who have had
a hard time convincing these people regarding the truth of the Bible -
here's something that illustrates God's awesome creation and shows He is
still in control.

Did you know that NASA's space programmes are busy proving that what has
been called 'myth' in the Bible is true? Mr. Harold Hill, President of
the Curtis engine Company in Baltimore , and a consultant in the space
programmes, relates the following incident:

"One of the most amazing things that God has for us today happened
recently to our astronauts and space scientists at Green Belt, Maryland .
They were checking out the positions of the sun, moon and planets out in
space where they would be 100, and 1000 years from now. We have to know
this as we do not want a satellite to collide with any of these in its orbits.

We have to lay out the orbits in terms of the life of the satellite and
where the planets will be so the whole project will not bog down.

Computer measurements and data were run back and forth over the
centuries when suddenly it came to a halt, displaying a red signal,
which meant that either there was something wrong with the information
fed into it, or with the results as compared to the standards. They
called in the service department to check it out, and the technicians
asked what was wrong.

The scientists had discovered that somewhere in space in elapsed time a
day was missing.. Nobody seemed able to come up with a solution to the
problem.

Finally one of the team, a Christian, said: "You know, when I was still
in Sunday school, they spoke about the sun standing still."

While his colleagues didn't believe him, they did not have an answer
either, so they said: "Show us."

He got a Bible and opened it at the book of Joshua where they found a
pretty ridiculous statement for any one with 'common sense'. There they
read about the Lord saying to Joshua: "Fear them not, I have delivered
them into thy hand; there shall not be a man of them stand before thee."
(Joshua 10:8).

Joshua was concerned because the enemy had surrounded him, and if
darkness fell, they would overpower him. So Joshua asked the Lord to
make the sun stand still! That's right - "And the sun stood still and
the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their
enemies. Is this not written in the book of Ja'-sher? So the sun stood
still in the midst of heaven and hastened not to go down about a whole
day." (Joshua 10:13).

The astronauts and scientists said: "There is the missing day!"

They checked the computers going back into the time it was written and
found it, but it was not close enough. The elapsed time that was missing
back in Joshua's day was 23 hours and 20 minutes - not a whole day.
They read the Bible again and there it was: "about (approximately) a day."
These little words in the Bible were important, but they were still in
trouble, because another 40 minutes were still unaccounted for, and this
could mean trouble 1000 years from now. Forty minutes had to be found
because it can be multiplied many times over in orbits. As the Christian
employee thought about it, he remembered somewhere in the Bible which
said the sun went backwards. The scientists told him he was out of his
mind, but once again they opened the Book and read these words in 2
Kings. Hezekiah, on his deathbed, was visited by the prophet, Isaiah,
who told him he was not going to die. Hezekiah asked for some sign as
proof. Isaiah said: "Shall the sun go forward ten degrees, or go back
ten degrees?"

And Hezekiah answered: "It is a light thing for the shadow to go down
ten degrees; nay, but let the shadow return backwards ten degrees."

And Isaiah the prophet cried unto the Lord, and He brought the shadow
ten degrees backward, by which it had gone down in the dial of Ahaz."
(2 Kings 20:9 -11).

Ten degrees is exactly 40 minutes! Twenty-three hours and twenty
minutes in Joshua, plus 40 minutes in 2 Kings accounted for the missing
day in the universe!

Isn't this amazing? Our God is rubbing their noses in His Truth!

Forward this to as many people who would think this is equally
astounding.

Pastoral Letter - Unity

PASTORAL LETTER EIGHTEEN

UNITY

Dear Fellow Salvationists,

This eighteenth Letter comes to you with warmest greetings in the Lord Jesus Christ. You are constantly in my prayers. Prayer unites us before the Throne of Grace. We are bonded in prayer. Please continue to pray for me - for wisdom and for constant guidance from Almighty God.

My wife and I, ably supported by my Private Secretary, Major Richard Gaudion, have recently made visits to the Congo (Brazzaville) Territory and to the USA National Headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. What contrasting locations! Yet we met in each place the same spirit of Salvationism and the same ardour for the Gospel that marks the Army in every corner of the globe. These two visits reinforced our awareness of the unity of God's Army.

In Brazzaville I was blessed to enrol 190 new Junior Soldiers, and the next day 185 Senior Soldiers - every child and adult in full uniform. The children and the adults made the same sacred promises and entered into the same holy covenants that are such a strong and unifying factor for Salvationists everywhere. The Territorial Commander, Commissioner Mfon Akpan, invited me to sign personally every single Promise Card and Soldier's Covenant. What a marvellous privilege to see the names appended to these God-blessed commitments. Many thousands attended the meetings to encourage the new Junior and Senior Soldiers.

Endless miles away, just a few weeks later, we encountered the same spirit of Salvationism as we met the officers and employees of National Headquarters in the USA. What a contrast from Brazzaville in terms of affluence, as once more we visited the richest nation on earth. Yet the Army spirit is the same. The goals are the same - the souls and needs of others! The commitment is the same - to serve in the Name of Jesus regardless of self!

How moving it has been, how inspirational, to witness our unity in the Army's global response to the Haiti earthquake and shortly thereafter to the quake in Chile. The instant, godly response has been wonderful, resulting in personnel, money, and equipment from across the globe in answer to the plight of the victims. Again, God is blessing and deepening our unity in Christ and in our callings to be Salvationists in a hurting world.

Unity pleases God. The Scriptures make this clear. In John 17 we read our Lord's passionate prayer that his committed followers would not allow discord to divide them. In Romans 12:5 Paul reminds us that 'in Christ we who are many form one body.' So let us each work for unity, especially in our local corps. A united corps is a growing corps. A united corps is an attractive, and attracting, corps.

Our English language Song Book has words that express our unity in Christ. Song 660 speaks of our hearts being bonded 'in Christian love', of the sharing of 'mutual burdens', and of our being 'joined in heart'. Song 573 offers an eloquent reminder of the role and place of the Mercy Seat in symbolising our oneness. It mentions (verse 3) our being gathered 'around one common Mercy Seat'. We are equal, we are one, we are united in our need of grace as we kneel at the feet of Christ.

Therefore I am praying for strong unity in the Army. I am asking God to deepen still further the bonds that unite us. I am praying that there will be no spirit of strife among us. I am pleading in prayer for unity in every part, and in every place where the Trinitarian flag of God's Army - the yellow, red and blue - flutters in the breeze, whether it be Africa or America, whether it be north or south, east or west.

Thank you for your faithfulness. I thank God for you.

Here today in London, as I write, the sky is overcast, but there glows within our souls the bright sunshine of God's love! May you know and feel that same love today, moment by moment.

I commend you to the grace of Christ.

Sincerely in Him,

Shaw Clifton
General

It's all about love!

So Easter is upon us for the year 2010!

What's going to be different this year compared to previous years? Is God going to reveal something new to me about the Easter story? Just the thought of another insight to the love that Easter represents would blow me away - this whole story of what Jesus did by dying on the cross and by raising Himself again on the third day is just almost more than what I can comprehend!

God's love for us just blows my mind!

Tonight I was able to go back to the Harry Hunter Corps chapel even though I finished my placement there last week. I love this centre and what God is doing there! The Officers and the other employees there do such a great job.

Salvation is not a thing that happens like it does in the rest of the world - people don't always find themselves in a position of praying the sinners prayer and being classed as 'saved', but so many of the clients are finding Jesus and it is awesome and it's really a gradual, bit by bit salvation. Even tonight in one of the 'clients' prayers he said "God, I wanna invite You back into my life after all these years" - to me, that's a salvation story right there, but it's so hard to put down as a 'statistic' in a place like Harry's!

Testimony after testimony of people graduating, the 'clients' continually say 'I'd like to thank God' or 'you can't do this without God!'

God is doing such amazing things in these guys lives and it's amazing being a part of it and just watching His relationships grow.

I wanted to keep this short - this Easter, just take a few quiet moments alone, picture Jesus on the cross and know that it was supposed to be you - accept that truth and accept the gift of life you have right now - the breath you are taking and all the good things that surround you everyday!

It's all about LOVE!

Bless ya!

"This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn't go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person's failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him."

John 3:16-18 The Message

Spiritual Discussions

Tonight we started a Spiritual Discussions group here at Harry Hunter Centre which Scott and I were leading for tonight. It was totally voluntary and 9 guys and girls turned up which was great for a start.

We didn't have anything really planned but knew that many of the guys had questions of God and spirituality floating around in their heads, and some of these questions were disturbing and frustrating them. Scott started off with a reading then opened it up for discussion, and question after question flowed from the 'clients' of Harry's.

What a night of discussion, ranging from what does it mean to let God in, to the big questions about Heaven and Hell, but I was so pumped with these guys thinking about it and asking the big questions!

Every Wednesday night we have chapel here on the sight of the centre and last week I gave a message on us being spiritual beings in a physical world. The culture here is there is no real response opportunity given, but sometimes a few questions will be given to the Officers throughout the week if required, but I opened up the meeting for prayer and a response if anyone wanted to. No one responded, but 3 guys hung around afterwards and stayed in their seats. One of them stayed and spoke to Scott and myself for at least an hour about what God was speaking to him.

Tonight another guy was telling us that he had given up on all the God stuff, but after the message I gave last week, he really wanted to give God another go! Awesome, Hallelujah! Most of the guys here have had hard lives and bad experiences of God through the church, but hearing some of the stories from here, even just tonight was unbelievable! The Spirit was really stirring, and I felt that God really spoke through me tonight, so hopefully some of these guys really start nurturing a relationship with God, and I believe they will, in Jesus Name!

Please just take a moment to pray for all the men and women here at Harry Hunter Centre in Western Australia - there is some amazing work happening and God is really moving. I'm leading and giving the message again this Wednesday night, so please also pray for that night, I feel God is wanting to use this weeks chapel again for His glory.

God, please open up Heaven and pour out Your blessings on this place as you have been doing and change lives for the better, give hope, joy and peace to all of those that are struggling here presently. Thanks God, we love You and serve You.

In Jesus Name we ask!

If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer."

Matthew 21:22