But I am wondering if now is the time to finish my “weekly column”, especially as my last blog series has been “I love my church”, which seems like a good place to end, so perhaps this blog should have been titled “I love my church…  blog readers!”  So thank you if you’ve been a regular blog followers, I appreciate your commitment and comments over the years. (and a special thanks to my number one fan – my mum!)  I’m not saying I am definitely killing off the blog- especially if I was overwhelmed by dozens of disappointed readers  hint hint!! (oh,  my ego and pride  needs to be fed  -which can be done via enquiries@stmungos.org!!!).  But seriously, as we come up to Easter we are reminded that there can be resurrection as well as death, so maybe this blog might just be ‘on a break.’

It’s also I feel that the St Mungos Facebook page is going to become a more important medium to keep people up to date with church activities and fresh news, and I intend to communicate regularly through that (you can check-in on that via the button at the bottom of the St Mungos website homepage).   Yes I know that Facebook is a declining force, but I’ve always been a ‘very late  adopter’, I have just discovered ‘myspace’ and ‘Ask Jeeves’, and twitter and snapchat  and instagram are far too cutting edge for me.  So I will put  down my quill  and finish this weblog for the last time, so “farewell”  good reader or is it just “au revoir”?

Sunday just  cannot  happen without a huge mobilisation.  On an average Sunday I will go down to our early morning traditional service in our church building.  Normally by the time I get there the organist has already opened up and is being joined by choir members to practice the hymns.  Whoever is on the welcome rota for that day will be getting out the hymn books and service books, while another volunteer is preparing the communion table and yet another couple are probably getting the tea and coffee ready for after the service.  In a  congregation that actually averages less than 20 people that means virtually everybody is volunteering at some point in some way on some rota every month if not every week!  But when that service is finished, and everyone goes to get their coffee and chat there will already be volunteers from our youth team waiting outside to rush into the sanctuary to  sort out the small building for the youth invasion.  Certainly it means moving the chairs to one side, and once a month when all the youth are in for their own youth service every chair is taken  out and huge amounts of musical equipment and other important “stuff” comes in.

I normally head straight for the 10:30am  service at Balerno High School, and by  10am  the building is already buzzing with all the teams having  arrived much earlier  to  prepare and sort out equipment.  I will walk into the school concourse which will already have a huge stage and 300 – 400 chairs put out by the chair team who came in much earlier and have headed off for their breakfast, to be replaced by the tech team and the musicians as they set up and practice.  Others are already at the back preparing the teas and coffees.

I always try to get round to see the 0-12 age group volunteer teams in their different rooms.  They will have come much earlier to get all the material out of the various storage cupboards and to set up the different rooms.  A quick walk down to the school cafe where all the tables and chairs have been moved aside, and  the floor covered with games and activities, all   to create a safe and welcoming space for the nursery age children.  Then into the drama theatre with their own mini tech team  setting up the screens and the video projector, while others are getting their section of floor prepared  for group activities for the P1-3 kids.  Then a longer walk down to the gym where the P4-7 will be gathering for godly Mayhem. Yet more tech equipment, screens and projectors being placed as the teams are sorting out their material.

Just this month my route has had  to change due to school renovations so ‘Little Wonders’ the wonderful crèche,  has moved to a new venue, but the same  large number of team preparing  for an influx of babies and toddlers.  Back to the concourse, a quick hello to the pioneers team getting the Bubble machine  and other multi sensory, multi coloured  worship aids ready.  They too have also just moved room, to somewhere more suitable for our additional needs children and teenagers.  By now the welcome team is in  place, the musicians are  finishing off their practice and people are arriving, some totally oblivious to the huge amount of volunteer work that has been going on for many hours to allow this church service and all the other groups to be functioning.  But at the end of the morning  everything has to be cleared up, the kids  groups teams will have to pack  all their mountain of resources and equipment away, trundling heavy boxes back into storage around the school, while others start to reconfigure the chairs in the concourse for the smaller and different style of evening service.

I arrive back at around 5:30pm, and yes the musicians and tech team are already hard at work.  I will head for a back room to be joined by some of our volunteer ministry team for prayer and preparation, then at 6:00pm  we open the doors and let the waiting crowd pour straight into an atmosphere of praise and worship.  Somewhere around 8.00 the service will officially finish……  but then we have to take everything down!  Worshippers become the work team!  Wires get unplugged,  sound desks and electrical equipment get boxed up, and even the electronic drum kit that is on a permanent wheeled platform gets put into its safety box and rolled off.  Chairs get  put back into classrooms,  benches moved and staging gets returned to the drama theatre. Many of those doing the clearing up -including  the tech team-and musicians have been on duty all day – wonderful servant hearted people.

I have deliberately tried not to single out any individual, but we all know there is one person who for 20 years has been the first person into the school in the morning  at 7am  and is the last one out at night sometime around 8:45pm!!  ‘B.L.’ volunteer extraordinaire, we love you!

The statistics for the vast number of people who are needed on the Sundays are staggering.    This relentless weekly project should have broken us by now, yet year in year out, decade in,  decade out, our  magnificent volunteers make it happen.  And that’s just Sunday! But Mungos is seven days a week church.  Every day there will be people serving, ministering and volunteering.  The list is endless.  There will always be cars up at the Wellness centre where volunteer counsellors and receptionists are transforming people’s lives.  The wee church building may be crowded with mums and toddlers, or hosting some kind of course or event or meeting.  Friday night is teenager night.  A host of other activities happen elsewhere across Edinburgh, from  the Care Van  to Safe Families for Children,  all needing teams to make them happen.  In the evenings people will open up their houses to host house groups, or prayer cells.  None of that can happen without servant hearted volunteers.

And Mungos is a servant- hearted church.  It’s written into our vision and values, the ‘S’ of M.U.N.G.O.S   stands  for “we believe God has called us to be a – ‘serving church :serving the Lord, serving the  community, serving one another…’.

Further we say “we value servant heartedness – a willingness to happily do anything to serve god and others, even at personal cost and sacrifice, is something we wish to see in  all involved in the church”

But it’s one thing to have it written on our vision and values sheet, it something else to living out on a daily basis, yet in St Mungos it is a daily reality.  It’s written on people’s hearts not just on our web page.  Servant-heartedness can be seen everywhere you look every day, living out  Galatians 5:13  serve one another humbly in love.  Nearly everyone who can, in all three congregations,  will be volunteering in some way some how. Many in behind the scenes ways that virtually  no one sees  or knows about.

I love, thank and honour each and every one of you, you make Mungos  happen, you are Mungo’s.  You are like the people that Deborah and Barak sang about in Judges 5:2 Message version The people volunteered with abandon,   bless God!

Over the years I feel honoured to have worked with some of the most servant hearted, hardest working and highest quality staff members that you could possibly have.  It’s inevitable over 25 years that staff have come and gone,  but  by and  large we have amazing longevity in staff positions, probably because, with  a couple of notable exceptions,  all our staff have come from within the church.   I used to joke that basically every one volunteers as much as they can, and when are they run out  of volunteer time they have to give up their well paid jobs to work for the church!  And often that is actually pretty true. I have seen person after person lay aside their career trajectory to commit themselves to make Mungos a healthy and vibrant local church.  It also means that people come on to staff already carrying the Mungos DNA.  They’ve already served, prayed and given to the church and committed themselves to the vision and values, and are at ease with the philosophy of ministry.

But of course change does occur, and right now St Mungos is in a major season of  senior staff change.  You can watch last Sunday’s announcement at http://www.stmungos.org/talks/?sermon_id=673 But we have been through changes before and we will certainly go  through changes again.  I am for ever grateful to each person who has been part of Mungo staff in the past, those who continue to be in the present, and look forward to working with new people in the future!  I often say, only half jokingly,  that my method for appointing staff is to find people much better and more skilled than me, so I can stand on their shoulders and look good. If you want to see photos of the people who are currently making me look good than go to  http://www.stmungos.org/visit-us/staff-team/  They really are an awesome team.  They have to be to put up with me.  One minute I am the grumpy old man hiding in the corner office, the next I come out into the open plan office wanting to play and have fun while they are all beavering away on their computers making the church happen.  I really thank them for their support,  tolerance and long suffering.

Yes I really do love my church staff!

As much as I like the little “junk room” attached to the side of our wee church building, (where I keep and put on my clerical robes or ‘Vestments’ ) I don’t quite think I can say I love it, but amazingly I can say I love working and meeting with the group of people whose role it is oversee the life of St Mungo’s church.   Different church denominations have different names for their oversight groups.  In the Church of England the exact equivalent is now usually called the parochial church council or PCC, but for some reason in Scotland the ancient name of Vestry has been kept.  While not exactly the same, many of the functions are done in other churches by the “session”, the “Elders” or the “deacons” among other names.

I now explain it as our church “board”, which oversees all the legal and financial governance responsibilities as trustees for St Mungo’s as well as giving spiritual and practical oversight.   But among church ministers there is a whole sub genre of jokes based on the fact that most ministers really don’t get on with what ever the equivalent committee to the vestry is:

For instance

“resist the devil and he will flee from you.  Resist the deacons and they will fly directly at you!”

“God so loved the world that he did not send a committee”

“A Bishop tells how we visited the church and talked to a man who had been on vestry for 40 years.  “You must have seen some changes in the church during your time here?  “Yes, I have,” replied the vestry member, “and I have  opposed every single one of them!”

It doesn’t matter your denomination stream or churchmanship ,  it does seem that the relationship between a church minister and the local church  oversight committee can often be very strained and difficult!  I remember one very well known and a high profile, successful church rector who I sometimes meet almost in the pit of despair after his “vestry meeting”.  He talked about being hit by a number of what he called “exocet missiles” during the meeting representing the level of complaint, criticism and direct personal attack he sometimes felt he took.

And I have similar conversations with my colleagues in other denominations whether in church of Scotland lamenting their Sessions, or Baptists ministers and their Elders and deacons.

So I almost feel guilty to say that I not only love my vestry members, I love our vestry meetings.  It wasn’t always so, at times during my first couple of years as the rector in St Mungo’s I did find the meetings extremely stressful.  I’d get very anxious beforehand and I would finish sometimes deeply discouraged.   I think it was a matter of people not understanding not only their real role and authority, but how Christians should treat one another even in committee meetings.  But very early on we started to work at vision and values, and the importance of unity of heart and mind in meetings, and how to disagree agreeably, and speak well of each other and be full of encouragement and support.   Also early on we brought in sung worship and extended open prayer as a major part of our evening together.  And often now not only will we intercede for the church, but we will pray personally for one another, and have time to share in mutual prayer ministry.  Basically I believe the vestry must both be a reflection of the healthy life of the church, as well as lead as a model of what healthy relationships among Christians should look like.

Now even when I know the things we’re dealing with;  decisions of extreme complexity, difficulty and importance , I know I  am going to meet with a group of friends and colleagues who will work together to find solutions.  Honouring one another and maintaining the unity is now seen as a higher priority than making a decision.  And sometimes those decisions can be tough especially when dealing with finance, and staff jobs, because Mungo’s has a very big budget much of which is committed to supporting a large staff.

Now certainly the change in the church has perhaps meant a change in the types of skills and gifts required for a vestry member in 2015 as opposed to 1988.  Not only is it now a much bigger church with a greater level of complexity, high levels of good governance are now expected of all committees that run charities. Vestry members are now charity trustees and come under a lot of scrutiny and statutory expectation.  So people have to be able to handle big budgets and large amounts of money.  Yet at the same time we’ve made sure the character of the vestry members is as important as their qualifications. People who are also serving in other areas of the church’s life, bringing not only business skills but knowledge of how our children’s work goes, or how the housegroups function, or how pastoral care is given in this congregation  as well as people who are genuine worshippers and lovers of Jesus.

The vestry members now need not only high levels of competence, but very good character,  spiritual charismas and really good chemistry together so that

working alongside each other, even if it is a long and difficult meeting can be healthy experiences.  The vestry experiences real life together, not just a matter of fulfilling our agenda, but caring and sharing together as well. We have cried and laughed together.  Because it has a rolling elected membership as well as the ex officio officers, the actual make up is constantly changing. Last month we said goodbye to two people who had completed their three years, and this month welcomed two new vestry members starting their term of office to be part of the 13 strong team.

(See  our website at http://www.stmungos.org/visit-us/church-board/ for more detail )

I just feel extraordinarily privileged to work with such an incredible group of people who give oversight for the life of St Mungo’s over many years.  Who have supported protected and coped with me for a very long time.

And I can genuinely say I love my church vestry.

The current prayer cell I am part of meets in and prays for Wester Hailes which for those unfamiliar with Edinburgh is an urban priority area on the western side of Edinburgh, but  the eastern end of our parish.  Once famous for being a sink estate of 1970 tower blocks and all their attendant problems it was immortalised in Ian Rankin’s Rebus novel Fleshmarket Close renamed  Knoxville. While still having multiple deprivation it has been extensively redeveloped and certainly isn’t the Wester Hailes of old.  And while some of that must be due to council economic investment, I also believe it’s due to the activity and prayer of Christians living, working and worshipping in the area, particularly Holy Trinity Church of Scotland, and now I hope our prayer cell is also bringing change.  I believe communities can be transformed if you start with prayer, and link it with practical action.

Of course it’s a two way action.  As I have gone down weekly to pray in Wester Hailes my heart has been changed and softened towards the community in and around that area.  I believe it is a privilege to pray for that community.  I am very grateful for my fellow “prayer warriors”,who give up an hour every Monday night to join together, listen to the lord, and then pray with persistence and power.  I find praying on my own very hard, I lose concentration and my mind wanders,  but joining with others to pray gives me the discipline and the focus  I need.  Yes at the end of a busy Monday of staff meetings – after an exhausting Sunday, the last thing I often want to do is to get in the car and head down towards Wester Hailes, but I always’ get invigorated and revived just by the act of intercession.

In the last three weeks we have prayed for a new initiative being pioneered in Scotland in  Wester Hailes called Safe Families for Children (http://www.bethany.org/main/safe-families-children%20) , then prayed in depth for the health visitors working in this challenging area, and for  one of the  primary schools situated at the heart of the community.  And over the year we pray just about for everybody and everything happening in the community, praying for protection and God’s blessing.  One of my favourite actions is when the  days get lighter and longer is to prayer walk around different areas, listening to God, interceding on behalf of the people who live and work there, and blessing the community.  Often late on  Monday afternoon, I try to  get to the gym to have a workout before prayer cell and evening meetings or pastoral visits.  But while my physical workout might be in the gym, prayer cell gives me a spiritual work out.  It stretches my prayer muscles and faith  muscles, makes me spiritually fitter and fresher.

And I can honestly say “I love my church prayer cell”.

In St Mungos we believe that – just like a bird needs two wings to fly a local church needs two sizes of meetings to be healthy; a big wing and the small wing, a gathering as a congregational size and the meeting as a small group. In one sense we try and mirror what happens in a Sunday Service to what happens in a housegroup and visa versa. Housegroup is a congregation writ small, and the Sunday congregation is housegroup made large. But of course there are some things that each can be better than the other can, but they both represent the fullness of church life, and together they are the church.

In St Mungos housegroups are seen as a vital part of the whole church, in fact in many ways I don’t consider someone has really joined St Mungos until they have become part of a housegroup. And we urge and encourage, and sometimes downright pressurise everyone who can be to be part of a housegroup. We have over 80% of our adults in housegroups with a 70% attendance rate, which anyone who understands the dynamics of a local church life will know that is incredibly high.

And I love my house group. Now of course my house group members will probably read this so I have to be very careful. To be quite frank we are a rather motley and strange bunch, but I suppose that’s a good representation of what St Mungos is, it really is a mongrel church. The congregation is full of the weird and wonderful so of course our housegroup is full of the weird and wonderful. Depending on your definition of “normal” I don’t think anyone in our group could claim to be normal (ok maybe I’m exaggerating a little perhaps one or two are, but I’ll let my group members decide who is most normal). But can you expect a group led by me, an ageing hippy who is deeply into Dr. Who, to have any sense of normality.

But I think we do have fun! We do have a lot of laughter, and a lot of cake. We have awesome worship (thanks CM) and lousy discussions – led by me! The women in the group take prayer very seriously, the men in the group have a quick chat, a brief prayer and then back to the cake. I’m not saying it’s all fun, we do have tears and tantrums – again mainly from me. We share life together, and sometimes life isn’t easy.  As an introvert sometimes the last thing I need after a long and difficult Tuesday, is to have our house invaded by other people, and probably after a long day the last thing they want to do is to drive through the snow to housegroup. But we come due to our commitment and responsibility to one another, but I think we rarely leave without feeling lifted and blessed, especially by the cake.

For those reading this from other churches who don’t know how our rather peculiar groups function you can find out by going to our website where there is a video of me explaining the Mungos version of small groups.

Of course groups can only be healthy if everyone in them works hard at making it healthy. If we come with the attitude of giving not getting,on bringing a blessing, of bringing a contribution, desiring to love one another. To intentionally leave our grumps, gripes, negativity and critical spirit in the car can create a great experience for others. I have recently been thinking how Ephesians 4 can act as a guideline to how we behave in a housegroup.

4 ²⁹ Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. ³⁰ And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. ³¹ Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. ³² Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

And I feel very blessed to be part of a housegroup that thinks and acts that way.

I also watch how the group cares for one another. Mind you they have to, we did warn them when we set the group up because I’m not a natural pastor, if they want any care they better look after each other, but they really do! And I appreciate how much they look after and support Sue and myself. They have prayed and pastored us during difficult personal times. As well as blessing us overwhelmingly and generously. For our 30^th wedding anniversary last year they clubbed together to give us a meal and a night at a wonderful top class Central Edinburgh hotel. And last June was a “really big” birthday for Sue, and without her knowing the whole group conspired to turn up on what she thought was an ordinary housegroup night and created a ‘turquoisetastic’ party. Knowing Sue loves the colour turquoise they came and redecorated the house in turquoise, they hung decorations, they put out a turquoise themed table, provided a feast, and gave Sue lots of turquoise link

ed presents to unwrap! What a wonderful night, we felt really blessed and loved. Thanks housegroup! I love my house group! What are you going to do to make your housegroup even more lovable and wonderful!

Unfortunately I dread to think how they are really going to be used if my house group is anything to go by. Last night they came up with such alternative uses as – reserve hair band, emergency tourniquet, and useful catapult!! Their only half useful idea was the suggestion that if people found bands too big to stay on people’s wrists (oh yes I soon got complaints that people weren’t given a choice of sizes!!) you could put them over your foot and use them as an ankle bracelet!

But if it gets people in the church talking about the possibility that one can actually say “I love my church” then they have fulfilled their job. For many of us the concept of all loving our church might be new, strange, alien, or even difficult.  In fact in next Sunday’s talk I might attempt to start to deal with the pastoral issue of what happens when people genuinely feel they cannot say, “I love my church.” But for me the bottom line is that Jesus loves his church, not just the worldwide church spread throughout all time and eternity but the church as expressed in a local congregation.

Ephesians 5 talks about Christ loving the church as the husband loves his wife, and that the church is his bride who he loves dearly.

Ephesians 5 25-26 Message version.

I’m still surprised that after 100 years of the Pentecostal movement, 50 years of a charismatic movement in the traditional churches, 25 years since Toronto, 20 years of the Alpha course

that I still  find Christians who think this spiritual gift is somehow either controversial, wrong, not for today   or not for them.  To me it’s always been a normal part of my Christian devotional life.

Soon after I became the Christian as a teenager, I realized I was missing something in my Christian Life that all the Christians who surrounded me in our young people’s movement seemed to have, and I didn’t, a power, an anointing, a joy in worship and desire to witness. Someone explained to me that  they had  been filled  and baptised in the holy spirit, but up to that point I hadn’t.  So I arrange to spend an evening with two senior Anglican ladies  who ironically  acted as spiritual  oversight to our rather counter culture group.

They simply explained to me what being filled with the Holy Spirit for the first time was, and how they would lay hands upon me and  ask the holy spirit to come up on be in a very real and powerful way.  They also explained that  I might start to speak in tongues, speak in a prayer language that I have never learnt, and these words wouldn’t be coming from my mind but  coming out of my mouth as the holy spirit enabled me ( see Acts 2:4 ;10:46; 19:6).  They  also explained that many people start to speak in tongues and then stop straight away because they start to doubt its real.

As they prayed for me and I felt the joy of the spirit well up inside me I started to praise God and I suddenly found myself speaking out funny words that just bubbled out my mouth, at which point I of course stopped, thinking this sounds daft and I must be making it up.  Opening my eyes which had been firmly shut at that point I saw the two ladies just smiling benignly at me, as if to say we told you so!  So  I put all my intellectual doubts about this stream of sounds that seemed to just come out when I verbalised, and just open my mouth and continued to speak.  And have done ever since.

And that was my first experience of using a prayer language as an act of  praise and worship.  And because virtually  everyone in  Christian circles I met in also spoke in tongues I assumed that this was absolutely normal.  Which of course it should be!  And right through my Christian Life I have  found by prayer language a wonderful help when I am praying,  primarily  in my private devotional life.  There are times when I want to just worship God and it’s as if  I run out of English words yet I can  you speak out these heavenly  words.

So  most of my time I use it to express my love and devotion and intimacy to the lord in prayer. As I tell him I love him with my mind I expressed that love speaking in tongues.  Or in times of Praise  I believe I’m extolling  the goodness and greatness of the Lord.  But it’s more than just the praise language or a love language.  I find it really useful when I am praying for people, without knowing the full situation I can pray in tongues at the same time knowing (because it’s a holy spirit inspired prayer) that I am therefore praying in the will of God.

Again at other times of intercession time  when I am  praying for a  very difficult situation, perhaps about some kind of spiritual battle,  then prayer language seems to come out with real authority as I use it in spiritual warfare.  I’ve found speaking in tongues very beneficial.  Which makes it even more amazing  that on occasions I have taken it for granted and even let it fall into disuse!   Sometimes my intellect gets in away on I think  what good is speaking sounds I don’t understand – though I once felt God say to me – how dare I suggest that any of his gifts would be of no value.

Sometimes I just get lazy and I stop doing it especially if I don’t particularly feel anything as I do it. But I have learnt time and time again there is an important and valuable spiritual discipline of speaking in tongues every day.  I don’t always feel the value of speaking in tongues, but I do believe it will always be a valuable!

The awesome Jackie Pullinger in a classic book about her mission work among the drug addicts in Hong Kong (called Chasing the Dragon) speaks a lot about the power of speaking in tongues to change people’s lives. And she suggests  that people should speak in tongues for at least 15 minutes every day!  I think she’s right to see it as the spiritual discipline.

And that’s something I’d try to do, to speak in tongues for a few minutes each day, and it’s so much easier  while walking the dog, though I try to do it a long way from anybody who can see or hear  me!   You don’t have to vocalise, you can speak in tongues quietly to yourself, when driving a car or sitting on a bus, but it so much better to do it out loud!

Now some of you read this blog may have once spoken in tongues, but just stopped due to apathy or indifference, or perhaps negative people putting doubt in your mind about its authenticity and reality.  But I strongly encourage you to get back into the routine of praying in tongues every day, both for praise and petition.

There will be others who as yet haven’t spoken in tongues but would like to.  My personal experience is that most,( though not all) Spirit filled Christians can use a prayer language if they want to.  Ironically the leader of the revival I got converted in, an old Scots man from the slums of Edinburgh, for some reason never receive the gift of tongues while virtually everyone of the young people who he brought  to the Lord did -including his wife and children!  I don’t understand why that was, I just know there are a few people who have really sought the gift but haven’t received it yet, but that doesn’t change the fact that the vast majority of people I know who asked the lord for a prayer language do get it.  I believe it is normative.  In fact I think it’s a basic gift that often opens the doors to other spiritual gifts to function properly.

I haven’t got time in a blog to go into detail about receiving the gift.  Suffice to say while  you can receive it  your own, it is often much easier to get a mature Christian who already speaks in tongues to pray for you and with you. Because they can tell you how they started, laying hands upon you pray for you to be filled with a Spirit and to receive a pray language. They can then speak in tongues out loud  themselves, to give you what I call “covering fire” and then affirm that  what you’re saying  is a genuine pray language.

At its simplest it is just asking God to fill you with the holy spirit and then yield your mouth to him. But that can be hard for some of us, especially if we over intellectualise it  because virtually everything we say until that point has been in control of our brain-  we think something and then say it,  but  speaking in tongues actually seems to bypass the brain as the holy spirit puts  words almost directly into our mouths. Often I say to people they have  got to vocalise first by saying some simple sounds and then let those words start to flow as you focus your mind on loving Jesus , and as you deliberately vocalise sounds they will  gradually form a language that you have never learnt or heard.

And we know we can trust God because it says in Matt 7:11 how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him

But I just find speaking in tongues is a great help to my prayer life, the more I use my prayer language the  more the rest of my prayer life improves.  And  walking the dog gives me a great chance to speak in tongues every day!

Let me finish with some advice and encouragement from the Apostle Paul from 1Corinthians 14.  It’s amazing that in the chapter where he is actually trying to correct over focus and misuse of speaking in tongues, particularly in church services, he still clearly thinks it’s very important especially in ones  private prayer life .  He still thinks it’s important enough for him to say –

1Cor 14 (NLT)

⁴ A person who speaks in tongues is strengthened personally,

⁵ I wish you could all speak in tongues,

¹⁸ I thank God that I speak in tongues more than any of you

This mini series of blogs isn’t for people who have really got their prayer life sorted out, bless you if that’s you, well done for getting the spiritual discipline of prayer under control.

This is for people, and I confess I am one of those, who constantly have to wrestle to keep their personal devotional life, active and alive.  I’m not intending to come up with some quick fix, or amazing answer you haven’t heard before, just some tried and tested methods that I continue to use to restore and renew my personal prayer life.  And  reading and using prayers in the Bible is one of the those.

For instance if I feel I need a good kick when it comes to intercession, particularly praying for my nation and for the church, I’ll go back to a couple of incredible intercessory prayers in the old testament, both coming out of time when Israel was in exile.  If you want to see someone praying with passion for the nation and for God’s people then read Daniel’s prayer in Daniel chapter 9: 4 -19.  It’s full of confession and repentance on behalf of the nation. It is gutsy, and desperate, and is authentic.  And then 70 years later Nehemiah was part of the answer to Daniel’s prayer.  Nehemiah chapter 1: 5- 11 shows how he too has the same desire to take God seriously and cry out for God’s people.  But what I like about Nehemiah is he didn’t just pray long prayers of intercession he also reminds us of the importance of brief emergency prayers – the “oh God oh  God oh  God help help help” prayer I am so fond of –in Neh 2 :4 we have an example of that ‘arrow prayer’  “the King said to me, what is it you want?  Then I prayed to the God of heaven, and answered the King…

The book of Psalms, isn’t just the church’s original Hymn Book but also its original Prayer Book.   And in it you can find prayers not just for every occasion but for every mood.  Perhaps because of my melancholic nature I particularly identify with the prayers of  desperation and  dryness such as Psalm 42 and Psalm 43, but I also love the prayers of thanksgiving and joy such as Ps103.  There is room for both lamentation and exultation in our prayers.  Reading a Psalm every day is a very simple way of kick starting your daily devotional time.

Some of the best prayers to pray if we get stuck and can’t think of how to frame our thoughts and prayers, especially praying for the church  are  those of the Apostle Paul.  Almost every one of his letters will contain some prayer he is praying for the church and people,  and you can just read them out and make them your own.  A good place to start is Ephesians 1: 15 – 23 and 3:14  – 21.

Of course of the greatest teacher  on prayer is Jesus himself.  And you’ll never get better than just praying out the  so called “Lord’s prayer” (Matt 5:9) every day –though I think it’s better to call it the ‘disciple’s prayer’.  But actually if you want to hear how Jesus prays and use it as a model for your own prayers then John 17 is the single longest prayer of Jesus we have, in fact it’s the longest prayer in a whole New Testament.

If you want to go deeper into how Bible characters pray then John White’s classic book ‘People in Prayer’ (I think is now called ‘Daring to Draw Near’) is still the best when it comes to being inspired by Bible people  who pray!  As well as those already mentioned he  has chapters on Abraham, Jacob, Moses,  Hannah and Job.

I just find reading out and praying out Bible prayers a great way to stimulate my prayer life

And anyone who knows me well can probably guess my favourite Bible prayer and one I pray  for myself and for Mungo’s regularly

Ephesians 3 ¹⁴ For this reason I kneel before the Father, ¹⁵ from whom every family

But there are other ways of motivating oneself to refresh and renew a jaded prayer life.  One that has helped me throughout to my Christian Life is reading a book about prayer.  In fact looking at my bookshelf I can see the history of my prayer life, all the  different books that motivated me, stimulated me, helped me and encouraged me.   Here are a few that helped me with my devotional life, I am not talking about my  ‘specialist’ prayer  books such as how to become  ‘super- intercessor’, or a  ‘spiritual warrior’  but the books about my personal  prayer life  as an ordinary struggler!

These are some  books I found helpful over my Christian life  that gave me structures and tools to actually get around to praying!  Looking at my shelf I see I still have what was perhaps my first book on  prayer, given to me by someone at my grammar school who I had helped lead to Jesus.  Even in the 1970s it was seen as a classic, any from that era might well remember O. Hallesby’s book simple called Prayer.   I think while I was at theology college, some charity sent every ordinand a free book called “the hour that  changes the world”,  by Dick Eastman, while some of my fellow students just binned it, not just because it was American, but they were aghast at its ultra structured systematic approach.  But it was that systematic approach that once again helped me restructure my prayer life, breaking an hour up  into –praise; waiting; confession; scripture praying; watching; intercession; petition; thanksgiving; singing; meditation; listening; and finishing once again with praise.  A book explained each of these acts of prayer, and gave plenty of examples from both scripture and church history.

When I first came to St Mungos and realised I need to reboot my prayer life I somehow came across ‘Learning the joy of prayer’ by Larry Lea.  This too was another practical structure, but in this case used the Lord’s prayer as inspiration/ basis including promises, priorities, provision, people, power, and praise, and I photocopied the  little Lord’s prayer guide  at the back and carried it around with me!!  For me it looks as if what I need is  help to push a life into some kind of structure, whether that’s the structure of a methodical approach, or the structure of a regular event – such as walking the dog!

The other book that  more recently gave me a really good kick when I needed it was Bill Hybel’s modern classic ‘Too busy not to pray’.  I would certainly recommend that to any of us who don’t find prayer easy and find ourselves thinking we haven’t got time read it.

This book was both practical and down to earth- just what I need.

Some people just find prayer easy, they have all wonderful “quiet times”, just can’t wait to be involved in intercession.  Well this blog isn’t for them, this blog is for those of us over the years still finding prayer difficult (except for the crisis prayer O god, oh god, oh god, help, help, help– one of my most frequent prayers). Knowing how hard prayer has always been for me, I have tried to have the discipline of reading one  book on prayer every year, some have been more memorable than others and some more helpful than others, but all of them have in some way at sometime kept me praying.

I’ve learned to avoid of books on prayer that make me feel worse about my prayer life, or send me on a guilt trip. Normally they are written by people with a spiritual gifts of prayer or intercession, who accidently  do the classic thing of “gift imposition”, when something that you find  easy because you have a spiritual gift for it,  you think that means that everyone else can have the same freedom as you do, in this case people who assume that everyone can intercede 6 hours a day, or  live in the third heaven communing  constantly in the heavenly realm. I want a book that will encourage and motivate an ordinary Christian like me who struggles with his devotional prayer life.

So  I  recommend you find a book  on prayer and read it to stimulate you –  much to my surprise I found all the books I mentioned are still available on Amazon (and similar outlets) in some form or another so you could try one of those, especially the Bill Hybel’s one,  or ask someone in your housegroup what they’ve read recently that is helpful and then actually pray!   The Christmas holidays might be a great chance to read a book on prayer that will set you up for the New Year.

And buying a book is a lot cheaper than buying a dog!

1 Peter 3:12  (NLT)¹² The eyes of the Lord watch over those who do right,     and his ears are open to their prayers.