celebrations all over

Fresh manifestations from the Lord

By Charles H. Spurgeon

"No matter what level of spiritual maturity we are on, we need renewed appearances, fresh manifestations, and new visitations from on high.

While it is right to thank God for the past and look back with joy to His visits to you in your early days as a believer, I encourage you to seek God for special visitations of His presence."

I am meeting "Just Five Old Men," Saturday, October 10, for a concert in Olympia to support our PFCEastern Washington and Oregon Missions trip the first weekend in November. I'll be presenting the Prisoners for Christ ministry and our missions tour. On the way, I'll be sharing with a brother who is mired in a "slough of despond," as John Bunyan calls it.

Guest teaching has kept me busy in the Auburn School District. I even had kindergartners for an hour on Friday. That was a big stretch...yes... but is was good. I am scheduled for virtually every day in October and some in November.

Faithful ministry continues at the Norm Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent where precautionary and active steps are being taken to prepare for a flooding condition now being thoroughly reported in the media. I saw the blueprints for a wall to be constructed around the RJC.

As part of the RJC work, I am president of the Chaplaincy Advisory Group that meets monthly. We just enjoyed a wonderful appreciation dinner with nearly 100 guests at the Valley View Christian Church. We were presented steps at the RJC surrounding the flood preparations. It was a fantastic night. I was especially pleased because Vivian, one of our godly officers, joined

us!

Recently, I enjoyed fellowship with Jerry Corelli and Jim Dixon in Tacoma as we considered future PFC concerts, shared our life stories, and started our friendship.

At church, we celebrated our first official Sunday with our new senior or lead

pastor, John Nagel and his wife Becky. Here, our "Loud and Clear" worship band is playing and our son Andy is ripping on the drums in the back left corner.

Back to "fresh manifestations" from Spurgeon--

I do not mean to minimize our daily walk in the light of His countenance, but consider that though the ocean has its high tides twice every day, yet it also has its spring tides. The sun shines whether we see it or not, even through our winter's fog, and yet it has its summer brightness.

If we walk with God constantly, there are special seasons when He opens the very secret of His heart to us and manifests Himself to us - not only as He does not to the world but also as He does not at all times to His own favored ones. Not every day in a palace is a banqueting day, and not all days with God are so clear and glorious as certain special sabbaths of the soul in which the Lord unveils His glory. Happy are we if we have once beheld His face, but happier still if He comes to us again in the fullness of favor.

I commend you to be seeking God's second appearances. We should be crying to God most pleadingly that He would speak to us a second time. We do not need a reconversion, as some assert. If the Lord has kept us steadfast in His fear, we are already possessors of what some call the higher life. This we are privileged to enjoy from the first hour of our spiritual life.

We do not need to be converted again, but we do need the windows of heaven to be opened again and again over our heads. We need the Holy Spirit to be given again as at Pentecost and that we should renew our youth like the eagles, to run without weariness and walk without fainting. May the Lord fulfill to His people His blessing upon Solomon! 'That the Lord appeared to Solomon the second time, as he had appeared unto him at Gibeon.'"

Essential Points in Prayer, “The Power of Prayer in a Believer's Life,” ed. Robert Hall, Emerald Books.