A message from the National Director 

Dear leaders

A Happy New Year to you all. Blwyddyn Newydd Dda!

Once again it was my privilege to meet many of you during 2014 – thank you for your support,

encouragement and prayers.

It is now over fifteen years since I took up my post as National Director of Evangelical Alliance Wales and articulated the vision and mission God has given us:

Uniting for mission to proclaim and demonstrate the Gospel across Wales by:

·          Engaging with the National Assembly and Media through a united voice of Evangelicals

·          Enabling the evangelisation of individuals

·          Enabling the transformation of communities

What’s been happening? …

I’d like to take this opportunity to update you with some of the ways in which God is

answering prayer in fulfilling this mission:

·         Jim and I have been representing the evangelical constituency on the

‘Faith Communities Forum’ since 2005. This is a twice-yearly meeting of the First Minister with the representatives of the main religions in Wales and affords an opportunity to raise important issues with politicians.

·         Through Jim, Evangelical Alliance Wales also provides the Secretariat for the Assembly’s

‘Cross Party Group on Faith’ chaired by Darren Millar AM.

·         Media opportunities have continued with invitations to participate in Radio interviews as

well as writing for some of the national newspapers and issuing press releases.

·         The National Prayer Breakfast of Wales along with Evangelical Alliance Wales

presented a facsimile of the William Morgan Bible in Welsh to the Assembly

which was received by the Presiding Officer and will be on permanent display in the Pier Head building in Cardiff Bay:

Elfed, Watcyn James, Dame Rosemary Butler AM and William Graham AM

·         In preparation for the Assembly Elections in 2016 Evangelical Alliance Wales and Gweini have produced a

manifesto in consultation with over 300 Christian leaders across the nation to be presented to each of the main political parties.

We have continued to develop strategic coalitions with organisations, denominations, networks and churches across Wales that help extend the Kingdom of God in our nation www.eauk.org/wales  …

(Evangelical Alliance Wales working with Care, Tearfund,

Cornerstone Church, Housing Justice, CAP, Hope, Care for the Family and Prospects) www.gweini.org.uk

Cymru Institute for Contemporary Christianity (Evangelical Alliance Wales working with the Bible Society

in Wales and the South Wales Baptist College) www.cicconline.org.uk

Canon Holmes of India who years ago said to most people God is an inference, not a reality. He is a deduction from evidence which they consider adequate, but he remains personally unknown to the individual.  He must be they say therefore we believe he is. 

Tozer  :The bible is a self-evident fact that men can know God with at least the same degree of immediacy as they know any other person or thing that comes within the field of experience.

(extract from Pursuit of God by Tozer)

Fiona Bruce MP has this week laid an amendment to the Serious Crime Bill, which makes clear that abortion on the grounds of sex is illegal, and provides an opportunity for the Government to make regulations aimed at combatting the practice. If selected, it will be debated at Report Stage in a few days’ time.

Grace will disagree with our sense of Justice

Grace puts our sin into perspective

Grace looks to restore & not condemn

(EG)

Imagination is not faith. The two are not only different from, but stand in sharp opposition to each other. Imagination projects unreal images out of the mind and seeks to attach reality to them. Faith creates nothing; it simply reckons upon that which is already there. (A.W.Tozer)

Gord Skonik  works for Impact South Sudan, a Christian organisation that’s been involved in the peace and reconciliation process following the recent unrest.

Christian volunteers spend time empowering local churches and offer pastoral training. In one 3-month period, 197 pastors received training, and over 200 churches were planted.

Much of the recent violence has been based around a long history of tribal conflict in South Sudan – mainly between the Dinka and Nuer tribes. Gord and his team have seen huge transformation through the power of God’s love and forgiveness.

I then started reading the Bible and discovered how this God was so amazingly patient and kind towards people who kept doubting and insulting all his care and love for them. I realised that I was just like those people- that I had lived rejecting Christ, the living God, who longed for me to come to him.

So I accepted Jesus as my Lord and asked his Spirit to help me change and be like him.

Fouad  (born in Iraq, son of Arab Communist father)

GO magazine Jan-mar 2015

(Interserve)

One colonel from the Peshmerga, the Kurdish forced battling ISIS in Iraq, approached members of an indigenous Iraqi ministry team to ask them why they were there. He was curious about what motivated the group, putting their lives at risk to supply displaced people with food , clothing, beds medicine & Bibles.

Team members explained that they were demonstrating Christ’s love in  a tangible way, bringing love & peace & goodness to people in need.

A long conversation began about Christ and as a result the colonel bowed & prayed, asking Christ into his life.

He said, ” Today I am the happiest person-I’ve had the privilege of making this decision.

GO Magazine Jan-Mar 2015

(Interserve)

I was about ready to leave the sanctuary of a church in Vancouver, Canada, when they challenged us non-believers to accept Jesus. Right before I put my hand on the door handle, to my surprise, an audible voice called me loudly, “Philip, if you are not saved today, you will never be saved!” I was shocked and I lifted my hand and ran to the front like a little child. That was God’s voice for sure! My spiritual journey began right after that altar call in 1992 when I was 18 years and it has affected me until today.

David found faith when he was 40 years old. Although he and his two brothers had been brought up largely without religion in a family of Lithuanian Jewish heritage, David says he had been “searching for something” all his life.

“I was a typical teen growing up in the 1960s, when everybody was into gurus and meditation,” explains David. He says he then just “forgot about it” until he was making the movie Harry And The Hendersons in the US in 1986.

In the unlikely setting of a bathtub in a hotel room in Seattle, Washington, David’s search for religion began anew.

“I was in the bath, thinking about my late grandfather, with whom I had an extraordinarily close relationship,” says David, referring to his maternal grandfather, famous Fleet Street photographer Jimmy Jarche, who died in 1965 when David was 18.

“I always felt that he was with me as my spiritual guide. I felt him sitting on my shoulder. Then I thought to myself, ‘Why do I believe that and not believe in life after death?’ That got me thinking about the most famous person who they say had a life after death, Jesus.”

It led David to the New Testament of the Bible, and to Paul.

“I chose it because I knew that somebody called Paul actually existed, I knew that he wrote letters, and that they are there for everyone to see,” he added.

David read Paul’s epistle, which says that salvation is offered through faith in Jesus Christ, and had a “road to Damascus” moment when Paul’s words chimed with him.

“By the end of the letter, certainly by the end of the book, I was reading about a way of being and a way of life that I had been looking for all those years,” explains David.

Saint Paul made it clear that faith is no easy state to obtain. “When I read his letters, I saw that we both struggle with faith – it’s not an easy road no matter what religion you are,” he adds.

David joined the Church of England, but attends Christian churches of all denominations, depending on his location. He didn’t get confirmed in the church, though, until three years ago.

“Although I’m a very emotional man, I just can’t have blind faith, I have to find out for myself,” explains David. “It took me that long to say, ‘I fully commit’.”