Mike Oliver's Messages

It's a dreary grey and wet day where I live. Too many of these and you start thinking life is dull and if dull goes on too long, you wonder if the sun will ever shine again. Winter can depress the spirit. Belshazzar's Feast - by Rembrandt   Over the centuries worship has become dreary grey and less hopeful's find ways to be at peace with God within the gloom of lacklustre spirituality. Faith can become a pilgrimage of suffering-in-silence, theologians finding ways to accept this season with grace rather than fighting for promises of the kingdom at hand. Jesus gave us the right to the kingdom in all its glory by his blood. Adam and Eve abandoned God's perfection for Satan's distortion and so too those in the church who wait without expectation. But God plants a seed in us just like Jesus was planted in Mary. The seed is the potential of the manifestation of Christ in the form of...

In the last twenty years or so communication has leapt from snail mail to instant messaging, from home phone to cell phone, from print newspaper and magazines to news and weather apps.  Why a woman the other day went downstairs during an internet outage and talked to her family.  A boy had to be txt from the kitchen to get him to the dinner table and commonly the guys don't chat much over smoko because they're on Facebook or playing with apps.  Kids are plugged-in to their sounds just walking to school and just the other day I laughed to see a granddad connected with earphones.  The radio used to beam music laced with talk and adverts but now the cell phone plays chat free add free songs of our own selected genre via the internet in the top pocket of the overalls.  There's freedom to chose but no freedom from interruption. I feel like a minority to be content with the still small voice, the thoughts of my hea...

Kingdom of God is in the Holy Spirit so the Holy Spirit needs to be in you. This means that you need to turn from worldly actions and become a home to Christ. When you invite Jesus Christ into your life you need to wait a while upon Him until you feel an anointing come from above.  You will know the anointing when it comes because feels like warm oil coming down in waves, it's tangible and truly loving.  You may be unable to stand and/or receive feelings somewhat like electricity passing through your body.  A sign of this actually in you can be the ability to speak in an unusual language which is a means of prayer.  If you are having trouble find a person of faith who can help by passing the anointing on to you. Doubt and confusion are your worst enemies.  We have discovered a need to repeatedly cleanse our home after years of struggles in the Spirit of Christ.  We need to keep up a vigil against intruding i...

It's been a while since my last post.  For two years now we have been on the bench, watching the game of Church being played out in front of us.  At college tutors spoke about the old church passing but no one knew what the new one would look like.  It's been a long slow congealing of all that we've known to be true but lacked the belief and courage to take the field once again amongst it all.  Now the two teams have never before seemed so clearly "old wine and new wine."   Pastor Yonggi Cho, the Korean leader of the largest church in the world, was saved and is saving thousands on the basis that Jesus healed him and continues to heal others on a daily basis as per the Gospel record.  Pastor Cho says the same as the Apostle Paul that God is the same yesterday, today and forever.  This is his experience and Jesus challenges him to grow the church bigger and bigger with the women leading a ever increasin...