I was present at the birth of both of my daughters.  It was of course an amazing experience and far more exhilarating then the gas and air that I sampled earlier in the labours. (Just checking it was safe of course, much like Nehemiah and the King’s wine).

When both of them were born, I gave them a cuddle within minutes of their birth.  Both occasions were profound moments. I heard a still small voice that I knew to be from the Lord. I had a distinct sense from God that He was telling me that they were in effect on loan to me. My job was to raise them and to show them Jesus through the conduct of my life and by sharing with them the things that we saw God doing in our lives.

Now, don’t get me wrong. The kids have heard us row as well as seen us make up.  They’ve seen me get it wrong and they’ve heard me apologise to them. I’ve prayed with them and at times neglected to do so because I’ve been away or taken my eye off the ball. I’ve shared the stories of what Jesus has done in my life and heard them beg me to tell them another story…only to go for chunks of time when I have let it slip. In other words I am doing my best but I get it wrong plenty of times. One thing I have done is pray for them frequently and for a variety of things, including any future husbands they might meet. (I’ve been praying for that since before they were born!)

As part of our commitment to our kids development spiritually, Karen and I started to lead the Sunday school group they are part of.  (As an aside I really do believe we need more men leading kids work so I’m putting my time where my mouth is).

During one time of preparation for Sunday my eldest sat and read the Bible with Karen. For some reason, this gripped my daughter and she took it upon herself (she is 13) to read a page of the Bible every night from Genesis until she finished it. I tried to show her that there might be a more interesting way to do it (worried of course about lists of skin diseases and laws in Leviticus being a bit boring etc) but she’s a single-minded kinda kid and she wouldn’t hear any of it.

Several nights ago Karen find her quietly lying on her bed with tears running down her cheeks.  She had just met Jesus despite only reaching Exodus.

The word of God has power to change lives.

My eldest daughter has always been a character: a free thinker, artistic, willing to challenge and not one for the status quo. Turns out Jesus was well able to work with that, despite my at times, prayers of angst.

I share this to encourage you blokes; Keep praying, keep modelling Jesus, keep your heads, spend time with your kids, let them see you being men of God, take your share in the responsibility you have for pointing beyond yourself to Jesus and remember, despite your fragility and weakness, God is sovereign and your kids are precious to him too.

Nuts, a basically pornographic magazine has seen its circulation fall by 22.5%.  Zoo has fallen by 32.1% and FHM by 19.2%.

How well do we listen to what God is saying to us, through His word, prayer or other people. So let us consider how we approach the Bible. Is it something we do prayerfully?

By approaching the Bible prayerfully we are saying to ourselves and God that we are giving Him our attention and wish to stay closely connected to Him, instead of the approach that often occurs when we rush in with so much on our minds that we are not able to focus on our Lord.

It is good to remember that when we ask God to speak through His word, it is not that He is reluctant to talk to us but that we have to take hold of His willingness to talk to us.
Once we have lowered our barriers we will find that He is willing to and has a great desire to bring alive His word to us.

The problem still is not that God doesn’t want to speak to us, but that we don’t listen well.

Let us consider that if we take a minute to pray before opening our bibles, we are telling God that we are ready for Him to speak to us and we are ready to listen.

This will be a discipline that has to put into practice; the need to pause and pray before we read God`s word.

It will be good to hear your experiences on this subject and also hear your practice so that we can encourage each other as we walk and share together, as a Band of Brothers, how God has spoken to us.

Every Blessing

As you may know, I have two daughters Emily and Annie. When Karen was pregnant we spent months thinking about what we would call them – obviously there were a few names we had to avoid with Beech as a surname! (Please don’t email in with suggestions such as “Sandy”!)

Jesus’ parents didn’t have to spend any time deciding on his name as an angel told them to call him Jesus (Matthew 1 v 21). Actually, in the bible, Jesus has over a hundred different names or titles! The one I like best, and the one that we sing about a lot at this time of year in carols, is a name he was given over 700 years before he was born. The prophet Isaiah said he would be called “Immanuel” (Isaiah 6 v 8).

Immanuel means “God With Us”

This year there are men all over the UK who know for the first time the reality of Immanuel – that God is with them! The reason they know this is that someone told them the truth that Jesus came to save them and they believed it. Each of these decisions is a miracle and that’s what CVM exists to see happen.

Here are a couple of amazing quotes from messages we have received recently:

“My husband went to a CVM event. I knew he was different as soon as he got home. I slept next to a Christian man that night for the first time in our marriage…”





”A paramilitary guy met with Jesus after your talk in Northern Ireland. He gave everything over to Jesus that night and since then has taken his family to church every week.”

Some other words in Isaiah that have a massive impact are: “Whom shall I send and who will go for us?” (Isaiah 6 v 8). At CVM our answer to that is “send us!” The CVM team has spent this year travelling up and down the UK telling men that Jesus came to save them and we have been helping other men and churches tell their friends and contacts the same. The reason more men in the UK know Jesus as Immanuel this year is because this men’s movement, that I count you a part of, is willing to say “Send Me!” In the last 12 months, this movement has connected the message of Jesus to thousands of men all over the UK through CVM events, groups and evangelistic resources.

This Christmas would you be able to send us a gift to help us keep our small team on the road telling men about Jesus and equipping and inspiring churches, individuals and groups to do the same. Please make a off donation or set up a direct debit via JustGiving.

Thank you for supporting us. My hope and prayer for you this year is that you will know that God is with you and that you would be willing to say “Send Me!”

Happy Christmas from all of us at CVM. God bless and strengthen you!

Your brother in Christ,

Carl Beech

Stubbington, near Portsmouth, was recently CVM’s port of call for yet another fun-filled, packed out Regional Day. The night before a Regional Day, the team usually stays in a Travel Inn close by to chill out, eat food and frequent a local pub. This evening was no exception.

What followed a good meal of ribs in barbecue sauce was a nice glass of Baileys and some good friendly chatter. As Carl and I sat there on one side of the pub, parallel to us was another duo of mates. They were debating giving up smoking and suddenly we became involved in the conversation. As time went on, not only did we get an offer from one of these blokes for a drink, but ended up talking about life and the challenges brought on by the recession.

The conversation moved from politics to religion, which should rarely be brought together over a few tipples of the strong stuff. But things didn’t go the way you think they might have.

One of our newly made friends began opening up and telling Carl and I about how he was struggling to make ends meet He explained how he was having to downsize his business and make a real lifestyle change. He was finding it hard as the main breadwinner to have failed to bring in enough to keep his family in the life they were accustomed to.

He soon concluded his thoughts with: “It’s all about the money”. Carl and I simultaneously replied “No its not, it’s about family’.

We didn’t pull any punches in mentioning that we were Christians and that we ran a national men’s ministry. We carried on making our faith known and being open to the Holy Spirit as I shared my failings in business as well.

And as a man’s man, I decided to talk to him about Mary Poppins. When I was in London with my family a while back, we caught the West End show of the Disney feature film live on stage. And what jumped out for me whilst struggling to make ends meet and being in so much debt, was that I could take refuge in a scene from this show. The scene is when the father loses his job due to the children causing havoc at the bank and then realizing that they are about to lose everything. But suddenly, the reassurance of the mother comes in the middle of a particular harrowing moment. She quite boldly exclaims that: “As long as we are together, that is all that counts”.

This scene helped me through the time of uncertainty. And amazingly, it somehow hit home for the bloke in this bar who was struggling. He opened his eyes to the fact that there was more to life than money and material things.

We mentioned Jesus on numerous occasions that night and now have to leave it with God to follow it through. But hopefully, with Carl and I unashamedly making Him known with everything we do and say, we planted a seed in this chap’s heart. We now pray that something has happens because we didn’t back down from the basic stuff of Jesus. We hope that what we said, even though it included a scene from a fairytale, changes his life. Only God knows. But we do that know that Jesus loved to use stories to point people to the truth, so let’s not be afraid to do the same.

Cheers.

So here’s a story.

As I buttoned my shirt back up and sat down in the doctor’s chair, I caught a glimpse of something I had never seen before. My new GP had my medical history on her computer screen. It was the sort of CV you would never submit for potential employment. Entries from when I was a teenager were staring at me like the ghost of Christmas meds.

Tonsillitus made its way onto the chart quite a few times marking it’s territory as my body’s favourite defect. Memories of bizarre footballing injuries came flooding back as I saw “Infected Groin” “Broken Rib” and “Severe Chafing” glowing on the unrelenting computer monitor. Sandwiched between the more embarrassing ailments was a “sebaceous cyst” which may or may not have been caused by stress.

I was left humbled by my many imperfections as I paid a routine trip to my GP for recurring lower back pain. In a split second I was reminded that I have a history. It’s not the sort of history that Napoleon Bonaparte would have boasted about (assuming he didn’t suffer with sever chafing) but it was a history nonetheless.

And as I contemplated adopting a more sombre mood for the rest of the day, after my brief encounter with truth; the great leveller, I was reminded by something else:

For you created my inmost being;you knit me together in my mother’s womb.I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

How precious to me are your thoughts,God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand – when I awake, I am still with you.

-Psalm 139

Peace

You know what’s even more frustrating than that moment when you have a golden opportunity to share your faith and you bottle it? That moment when you take the opportunity to share your faith, start well, but fall down in your last twenty metres of track, and end up face down still holding the baton of truth, which you failed to pass on.

I literally had a bible in my hands to give him as I let him walk away.

You see, me and a couple of my mates were all taking different trains that day. Trains full of people who don’t like to talk or make eye contact, but for all we knew could have never heard the good news about Jesus. So we dared each other to be bold, to bite the awkward bullet, and to strike up conversation with those around us, with the hope of being able to share something of God’s love for them.

Dangerously, we prayed for opportunities to help us break the ice… so it shouldn’t have taken me by surprise at all that the fella I ended up sat next to was reading a book called ‘The Left Hand of God’. No excuses Miriam.

I asked him what was he reading, and as I had been reading a little red Gideon’s Bible which I’d brought on the journey with the intention of giving it away, I thought perhaps he would ask the same. He didn’t. However, we got into a big discussion about the state of the fantasy-book genre, and thanks to going out with Alex, fantasy fan, I actually had quite a lot to respond with!

I talked about Alex’s love for fantasy writing, and his job with CVM, and when the bloke complained about how his book was lacking any epic, world-changing themes, I even managed to chat about how incredible inspiration has been taken from the Bible for fantasy works… cheers Tolkien and Lewis.

And yet I sat there, still clutching my bible, not quite daring to offer my well-read companion the book of life.

I didn’t expect him to get off at the same stop, or turn and walk the other way when he did. He just said “Oh, I’m this way, nice to meet you” and he was off. And did I stop him and say I’d like him to read this book too? Did I jog after him and quickly explain I’d wanted to hand him this, just in case he was interested? No. I said “Oh ok, nice to meet you, bye” and set off the other direction. Still holding my bible.

Now don’t get me wrong, if truth be told I am grateful for the conversation I had and I trust God with any seeds of interest that may have been planted. Perhaps he is even reading this now, if he remembered CVM and googled it. It’s just hard to recognise your own weakness and timidity in an area people label as your “gift”.

The parable of the sower, in Luke chapter 8 verses 1- 11 was stuck in my head the day of the train ride. Particularly, how the farmer sowed his seed generously, despite much of it landing on soil that produced nothing in return. The point was he went for it anyway and spread as much seed as he could regardless. So that was my thought really. Go for it, regardless of the rate of return. Rather talk more of Jesus than less, no matter the reaction. If I hadn’t have gone for it, I’d have never spoken to that guy at all, even if I went home with my bible still in my hands.

Are you catching a train any time soon? Or sitting in a coffee shop for a length of time? Going for a cycle with people? Standing at the side lines of the pitch with others? I dare you to also pray for an icebreaker… look out for your own ‘The Left Hand of God’, and sow generously.

As I wandered through the colourful aisles I caught my pasty reflection in the fish counter. And then a sense of wonder came upon me catching me completely by surprise. It was one of those rare moments in my life when I suddenly felt very aware of where I was and what I was doing. I was shopping for sustenance.

I turned to the left to see groups of humans picking up random vegetables like bees dipping in and out of various flowers. One old man sniffed a red pepper before commenting to his wife: “These would go lovely with the tomatoes sweetheart”. His wife shrugged her shoulders like a cat ignoring an enthusiastic toddler. The old man returned the pepper to its family all of whom were sitting silently on the shelf. Usually I would have been mildly concerned that an old man felt it was totally fine to sniff a pepper before putting it back on the market, but not on this day.

I turned my head to the right to find a middle-aged couple approaching the supermarket wine rack. Grabbing her partner’s arm, the lady said: “I bloody told you didn’t I? The Merlot is on offer til Sunday! If we buy four now we can save two for next weekend’s BBQ at your brothers!” The man placed four bottles of red wine into his basket obediently. His eyes seemed to glaze over as soon as his lady exerted energy.

Though I had observed life on either side, I knew I had to turn around to see what was behind me. On completing my rotation I saw humans scouring the shelves for cream of chicken soup, tins of green beans and coconut milk in a can. (How degrading for a coconut it must be to have it’s life source canned like fizzy pop).

As I stood there watching life unfold in a supermarket, I couldn’t help but feel it was a morbid advert for reality. I whispered quietly: “What’s the point in all of this?” I pondered for seven seconds. I concluded that basically, we purchase food, eat food, waste food, purchase food, eat food, waste food, purchase food, eat food and so on and so forth. Please tell me there’s more than this in our tiny little lives that’s worth leaving the house for. There must be more than sniffing vegetables, bulk-buying Merlot and restocking our tins of chicken soup.

The resident fishmonger quickly snapped me out of my moment of observation with a perfectly normal question: “So what can I get for you then?” “Crabs” I answered quickly. (I don’t know if I wanted crabs but it seemed like the right seafood to order in a time of meaninglessness.)

I bundled myself through the checkout resisting the urge to ask fellow shoppers if this trip was the highlight of their week.

On my exit however, I was stopped by a man in a red uniform. He said: “Hello sir, would you like to save 50% on double glazing windows?” I lowered my head as the absurdity of life in the west was getting the better of me. “No thanks, I don’t have any windows” I replied. (I meant to say I wasn’t a homeowner, but I muddled up my words.)

Considering the absolute meaninglessness of my journey to the big shop, I wondered what we’ll say when we stand face-to-face with Jesus? The same Jesus who took the punishment for us sticking our two fingers up at God with the way we live our selfish lives? What will we say? We will tell him we sniffed the occasional pepper? Will we tell him we landed a phenomenal deal on a Merlot bulk buy? Maybe we’ll offer him a sip of our canned coconut milk?

And what will I say? That I observed the meaninglessness of life without Jesus in the eyes of those around me and refused to tell them about what it says in John 10:10? What am I actually going to say as an account for my life? Am I going to faff and fumble through printed copies of my blogs in which I used too many words to make one simple point? Will I direct Jesus to my Twitter account or my Facebook messages about talks I gave or articles I wrote in a subtle attempt to fly the flag of Willmott? What am I going to say to him who told me to deny myself at all costs?

I have no idea what I’ll say beyond the word “sorry”. But I know what I’m going to say now.

Today is Friday, August 5th. If you have never bowed your knee to the God who created you, and asked his son Jesus to forgive you, free you, and fulfil you, then today is the day you should. If you acknowledge him as the one he claims to be, he will show you what he meant in John 10:10:

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

Whoever you are, wherever you are going right now, get your priority right. The key to life in full is in the hands of Jesus Christ.

Peace.