Jesus, the Head of the Church — Derek Prince

You don't often see me without Ruth. We are going to make... Wait a minute. I've got to switch this thing on. Can you do that for me? Okay. We're going to make a proclamation taken from Psalm 71. I think it begins at verse 9, the New King James Version.

But at Ruth's request, we've slightly changed some of the words. Because David said, now that I'm old and grey-headed. And Ruth says you're not grey-headed. He's not old either. So we just changed a little bit there, but the last verse is David's vision.

And it's our vision too, and I trust it's yours. I can't remember how we start now. But I will hope continually, and will praise you yet more and more. My mouth shall tell of your righteousness and your salvation all the day.

For I do not know their limits. I will go in the strength of the Lord God. I will make mention of your righteousness, of yours only. O God, you have taught me from my youth. And to this day, I declare your wondrous works.

Now also, when I become old and grey-headed, O God, do not forsake me until I declare your strength to this generation, your power to everyone who is to come. Amen. Now there's a couple here that I don't know named Stuart who have done something very wonderful.

They've adopted a little baby. And because I was preaching about that yesterday, they've asked that I will pray over the baby. So if you will, wherever you are, bring the baby immediately at the close of this service down to the front.

It'll be my privilege to pray over him. You will recall that yesterday I spoke about two serious errors of the church which must be corrected, I believe, before we can fulfill the theme of this conference, which is to come into the fullness of God's purpose.

The error that I spoke about yesterday afternoon was that the cross has been displaced from the center. And I spoke about three main effects of the cross. First of all, it's the only basis of God's provision for us.

We have no other basis on which we can come to God but the cross. Secondly, it's the basis of Satan's total defeat. Through the cross Jesus has administered to Satan a total, eternal, irreversible defeat.

And if we ever get engaged in spiritual warfare on any other basis but the victory that Jesus has won, we will be in trouble. And then I spoke about the third, this is what I dealt with yesterday afternoon, the third aspect of the cross which to my way of thinking is largely ignored today, to the great loss of the church and to the great detriment of the ministry, the work of the cross in me.

I spoke about the problem of the Galatian church. They had been bewitched and as a result the cross had been obscured. Paul said to them, Who has bewitched you before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed, crucified among them?

Wherever the cross is obscured, witchcraft is at work. Then I also pointed out to you that in Galatians we have the remedy, a five-fold deliverance. Now I used to be a trainer of teachers and one of the principles in teaching is nothing has been taught until something has been learned.

So I did a lot of talking but I don't know whether anything was learned. So we're going to check. How many of you were here yesterday afternoon? All right, I'm going to check you now. I want somebody to tell me what was the first deliverance from?

Tell me. This present evil age. The second was from the law. That's right. There's some real students here. The third was from self. Okay. The fourth was from the flesh. The fifth was from the world. All right, something has been learned.

Praise God for that. Now I want to deal briefly this morning with what I believe to be the second serious error. I think I did mention it, that Christ has been displaced from His headship over the church.

And I believe these two errors between them account for almost all the major problems in the church today. It will not take me, I hope, too long to bring this message, and I believe it's very suited to the communion.

Because I trust at the end we'll be able in this communion to acknowledge Jesus once more as what He is, the head over all things to the church which is His body. I want to read a few passages from the writings of Paul about this theme of the headship of Christ.

Very briefly. Ephesians chapter 1 verses 22 and 23. I'm putting in the names. God put all things under Christ's feet and gave Him to be head over all things to the church which is His body. So God has given, not imposed, please note, but given Jesus as head over all things to the church.

Not over some things, but over all things. The church has only one head. At the close of this age prophecy depicts a number of abnormal creatures emerging on the scene of history with many heads. I think any creature with many heads is something that Satan has brought forth.

I don't believe God ever intended any creature to have more than one head. Certainly the church has only one head. And He is head over all things to the church which is His body. There's a difference, you see, because the Scripture says God put all things under His feet.

But He is the head over all things to His body. We're not under His feet. We are joined to the head. There's a great difference. Then in Ephesians 4, I'm speaking about culmination of the church. I'm going to start in the middle of a sentence, verse 14.

That we should no longer be children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the trickery of men and the cunning craftiness by which they lie in wait to deceive. I think that was really the burden that our brother had.

It's a very valid burden. There are people who are lying in wait to deceive us. They're not there by accident. They're waiting for us. I'm afraid that there are many people who are being deceived. What is the remedy?

The remedy is the next verse. But speaking the truth in love, we may grow up in all things into Him who is the head, Christ. Notice again, all things. He is the head over all things. And the purpose of God is that we may grow up into Him as our head in all things.

There's nothing left out of His headship. And the safe path, the middle road which Bob was talking about, that is growing up into Him in all things. Growing up under His headship. And then in Colossians Paul returns to this theme of the headship of Christ.

And there's one very beautiful passage here in Colossians 1, beginning in verse 15. And here Paul tells us seven things about Jesus. It's a glorious revelation. You see, Colossians I think was written to protect God's people from cults.

And if you really want to be safe from cults, you need to know Colossians, inside and out. And once you've really understood the revelation of Jesus in Colossians, you can't believe that He's just a guru or a kind of offshoot of Buddha.

It's totally incompatible with this revelation. And what interests me is there are five facts about Him in His eternal nature and two facts about His redemptive work. So there are seven altogether. Let's see if we can follow them.

Beginning in verse 15. I'll try and use my fingers. First of all for the five and then we'll go to the two. Number one, He is the image of the invisible God. You know why God doesn't permit us to make any images?

Because He has His own image and we can't improve on that. Number two, He's the firstborn over all creation. And notice He's not created, He's born. And He's over all creation. Number three is the whole of verse 16.

By Him all things were created. Or the Greek says, In Him all things were created. He is the one in whom all creation took place. The next one, the fourth, He is before all things. Not He was before all things, but He is.

Continually, eternally, existent before all things. The fifth one, In Him all things consist. He holds all things together. Those are the five eternal facts about Jesus. And then we get two that are about His redemptive work.

He is the head of the body, the church. That's the first fact, He's the head of the body, the church. Second, He's the beginning, the firstborn from the dead. That in all things He may have the first place.

So He's the head and He's the firstborn. And this always blesses me because the resurrection is compared to a birth. And in a natural human birth, the first part of the body to emerge is the head. And when the head emerges you know the body is going to follow.

And so the resurrection of Jesus as the head is the guarantee of our resurrection as His body. Now, I always enjoy these statements that are so systematic. I just want you to compare. It's really got nothing to do with my message but it's too good for you to miss it.

If you go to the beginning of Hebrews, you find seven statements there. Five are about the eternal nature of Jesus. And the last two are about His redemptive work. I don't think myself that Hebrews was written by Paul.

So here we have two independent sources of this revelation. Hebrews 1 going to verse 2, God has in these last days spoken to us by His Son. But the Greek says, in a son. The word His isn't there. You see, God had spoken through prophets.

But now we get something new. God speaks in His Son. And then He describes the Son. First of all, verse 2, He's the heir of all things. Hebrews is a forward-looking epistle. Its theme is perfection, completeness.

So rather looking back, it looks ahead. He's the heir of all things. The one in whom all things are going to find their fulfillment. Second, through Him, or in Him also, God made the world. All right, number two.

Number three, He's the brightness of the Father's glory. The Greek word means raying forth. He's the one in whom the Father's glory shines forth in its rays. Number four, He's the express image of the Father's person, or nature, or underlying substance.

The same word is used of the imprint of a seal ring in wax. So He's the perfect representation of the Father. Jesus said, He who has seen Me has seen the Father. And number five, He upholds all things.

By the Word of His power. Shall we go through that again for a moment? Number one, He's the heir of all things. Number two, through Him God made all things, made the world. Number three, He's the shining forth of the Father's glory.

Number four, He's the express image of the Father's underlying substance. And number five, He upholds all things by the Word of His power. And now we have the two redemptive aspects. Number six, when He had by Himself purged or purified our sins.

Number seven, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. I'm so impressed by the divine inspiration of Scripture. Neither the writer of Hebrews nor Paul were writing a theological treatise.

They were just writing letters. And yet the structure is absolutely, totally logical and perfect. Before I became a preacher I was, you could say, a professor of logic. And when I came to know Jesus and study the Bible, the thing that impressed me more than anything else was the perfect logic of the Bible.

Don't let anybody scare you into believing you're intellectually inferior if you believe the Bible. It's the most perfect piece of logic that's ever confronted the human race. And in a certain sense, the most perfect representation is the epistle to the Romans.

All right, going on in Colossians now. You may have forgotten we were there, but we were. Colossians chapter 2, this is the theme of the headship of Jesus. Colossians 2, verses 18 and 19. And again, this is very much in line with the warning that our brother gave us.

Let no one defraud you of your reward, taking delight in false humility and worship of angels. Intruding into those things which he has not seen or which he has seen. Because other versions say he's somebody who's relying on his own private visions.

Vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind. Now what's the source of his problem? Stated in the next verse. Not holding fast to the head from whom all the body, nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments, grows with the increase which is from God.

Not properly connected to the head. And when you cease to be properly connected to the head you will go into error. There's only one way to stay in the truth and that is to be properly connected to Jesus.

And every member of the body has a divine right for direct access to the head. Don't rely on some other relationship. Don't rely on your relationship to a pastor. Husbands, don't rely on the fact that your wife is a believer.

Or vice versa. Every true believer has to have a direct relationship with the head. We've spoken here about problems that some of us have been through. I was talking to some brothers yesterday and I said this is a conference of those who have escaped.

I think those of us who have escaped would agree that really, in a sense, the root problem was people got detached from their personal relationship to Jesus as heir. And you just cannot afford to let that happen.

So you see how important this theme of headship is. Now I want to speak about the implications of Jesus being head over all things to the church. And I want to take a couple of other passages where Paul speaks about headship so that we can get an understanding of what headship implies in Scripture.

The first is in Ephesians 5, verses 23 and 24. Now this is good advice for all husbands. And I don't want to minimize that. But it also contains a picture of the relationship of headship. For the husband is head of the wife as also Christ is head of the church and He is the Savior of the body.

So Christ is the head of the church and in a parallel way the husband is the head of the wife. Relax wives, I'm not going to be teaching on that. But it's still true whether I teach it or not. Verse 24, Therefore just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.

So the relationship of headship on the other end implies a relationship of subjection. The wife, believe it or not, is subject to her husband and the church is subject to Jesus as head. And it says in everything.

You'll notice all these passages that we've read all emphasize in all things, in everything. There's nothing left out. And then in 1 Corinthians chapter 11 Paul again returns to this theme of headship.

And in verse 3 he gives a very comprehensive statement. But I want you to know that the head of every man or every husband and in Greek as in many other languages the same word means man and husband or woman and wife.

So you'll find there are variations in the translation because we don't have anything that exactly corresponds. Verse 3, I want you to know that the head of every man or husband is Christ, the head of woman or wife is man or husband, and the head of Christ is God.

If you string that out in the right way beginning at the top you have a descending chain of authority. God the Father is the head of Christ. Christ is the head of the husband. The husband is the head of his wife.

So that divine authority which starts in heaven in eternity descends into the home. And where that authority is overthrown the home will break up. How many of you realize that's true? You see, God has certain principles like the law of gravity which we're all familiar with.

We talk about breaking God's laws. We don't break God's laws. We can't. You can say I don't believe in gravity and jump out of a tenth floor window but gravity still gets you. And you can say I don't believe in this system of authority I'll set it aside but it'll get you.

You won't break the system. The system will break you. It's never changed. I must be careful. I'll get into that and I won't get out. Besides which, I don't know whether you ever saw this little cartoon in some Christian magazine.

I saw it years ago. It was a picture of a railway station and the apostle Paul was just arriving by train and it was in Corinth. And the women's libbers were there to meet him. They had banners that said Paul is a male chauvinist pig and things like that.

But the little thing at the bottom was Paul's comment. He said, I see you got my letter. So, enough of that. Now I want to talk about what a head does. I'm no doctor. I'm a nursing orderly class two if you want to know what my medical qualifications are.

But I'm a little bit rusty because I finished all that in 1946. I suggest to you there are four functions of a head in the human body, in the spiritual realm. Number one, the head receives input from every member.

And every member has a right to communicate directly with the head. Number two, the head makes decisions. Number three, the head initiates action, sets things in motion. And incidentally, the decisions the head makes should be in the interest of the whole body.

Let me say, you're hanging on by your fingers from a tenth floor window. And there's a man coming with one of these long ladders to rescue you. And your fingers are saying to your head, I just can't stand this pain any longer.

I want to let go. And the head says, I'm not making that decision. Because if you let go, we all go. So the head makes decisions in the interest of the whole body, not just in answer to an appeal from one particular member.

The fourth thing the head does, I believe, is give ongoing direction. If there's one key word, it's the word initiate. I believe all initiative should come from the head. Now, Paul said God, the Father, is the head of Jesus.

Turning of it the other way, Jesus is in subjection to the Father as His head. Let's look briefly at the relationship between Jesus and the Father. And I believe we'll see a perfect pattern of headship.

And I want to suggest to you that Jesus never took the initiative. It's a most striking fact. I'll only look at two or three passages, but you can read the whole account of His life. Never once did He take the initiative out of the hand of the Father.

Let's look in John 5, 19, the very verse 19 will do. Then Jesus answered and said to them, Most assuredly I say to you, The Son can do nothing of Himself or from Himself. But what He sees the Father do, for whatever the Father does, the Son also does in the same manner.

But the Son never does anything from Himself. He never initiates anything. He only receives the direction, the pattern of the Father and follows that. And then in verse 30 of the same chapter Jesus says, I can of Myself or from Myself do nothing.

Nothing. Nothing. As I hear from the Father I judge. And my judgment is righteous, because I do not seek my own will but the will of the Father who sent me. So Jesus said, I never make a judgment of Myself.

I never sum up a situation or respond to a person from Myself. I always wait to find the Father's attitude. How many of you would agree we get into a lot of trouble by making hasty decisions? And I'm one of them.

My own nature is, here's a problem, I'll tell you what to do. And it's taken me many, many years to get somewhere near the point where I don't react that way. Bob was talking about reactions. And here is one typical reaction.

Somebody comes and says, Brother Prince, I need prayer. I've got arthritis. I say, That's a demon. But I haven't heard from God, see. I may do that person great harm. It may not be a demon. It may be something quite different.

If I just stay quiet for a few moments, God would tell me. She needs to forgive her husband. Or her parents. Or whatever. Because of my background I'm used to making decisions by reason. Now, God's decisions are never unreasonable.

Never. But they're on a higher level than our reason can achieve by itself. So if you want to make right decisions, follow the pattern of Jesus. Don't ever make a decision from yourself. Always wait. And if you're rightly connected with the Head, He'll give you His decision.

And then one more passage in John 14 verse 10. Jesus speaking to His disciples. Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own authority.

This version says why it fools around with that I don't know. Because it's the same phrase, from myself. I do not speak the words from myself. They don't proceed from me. I am not the initiator. But the Father who dwells in me does His work.

If you analyze that, Jesus says every word I speak comes from the Father. Everything I do is the Father dwelling in me doing it. So you cannot find a single place anywhere that Jesus took the initiative.

That's the meaning of being under headship. Personally I believe this can revolutionize your life, your church and the church. If we could bet back to giving Jesus His headship. John Wimber came to Britain a few years ago with a message.

I wasn't present but it was reported to me. He said this is the message of Jesus. I want my church back. I think that's perfectly right. We have taken the Jesus church away from Him and He says now I want it back.

You've been fooling around with it long enough and you've made a mess. Give me back my position and I'll put things in order. Let me just give you some statements. My thesis is this, that God only completes what He begins.

If He doesn't begin something, you can't expect Him to complete it. I'll give you three Scriptures. First of all, Revelation 21, verse 6. He, that's the Lord, said to me, it is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

You know Alpha and Omega, the first and the last letter of the Greek alphabet. I am the A and the Z. I am the beginning and the end. But if He's not the A, He won't be the Z. If He's not the beginning, He won't be the end.

He's not committed to end anything that He doesn't begin. And then in Hebrews 12, verse 2. Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. The alternative reading in this Bible is the originator and perfecter of our faith.

You cannot separate them. What He originates, He will perfect. But if He doesn't originate it, don't expect Him to perfect it. And then in Philippians 1, verse 6. Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you, will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.

What can you be confident of? That if He began it, He will complete it. But if He didn't begin it, don't try to persuade Him to complete it. Ruth and I pray that regularly for our ministry. Because our ministry has taken a course we never planned and we never anticipated.

It just took off. But we're happy because we know we didn't initiate it. So we can say to God, being confident that because you began it, you'll complete it. I mean, I have total confidence in God, I have to say, at the moment concerning that.

Provided we don't mess it up. Provided we don't take the initiative out of His hands and start to do something clever ourselves. We've done some clever things on the advice of clever people. And they were disasters.

Financially, we were going down the tube at about $25 ,000 a month on good advice. Then we did something silly. We decided to stop selling things and start giving them away. On whose advice? God's advice.

After that the whole thing changed. I honestly can say I am frightened of starting anything of myself. I'm not so sure I'm always successful, but my sincere aim is to let God initiate everything. Because I really have confidence.

If He initiates it, He'll see it through. Now, let's make that a little bit personal. I'm not going to embarrass anybody, I'm not going to ask anybody to put their hand up. I just want to ask you some questions.

I want you to think about it. How much has God really initiated? First of all, in your individual life. Are you doing things that God initiated? See, that's exactly what Bob was saying last night. Don't let somebody tell you what to do unless they have authority to do that.

Find out what God has for you to do. God is really, He's original. He never does the same thing exactly twice. They tell me that no two snowflakes are ever alike. God never makes anyone a carbon copy of somebody else.

Don't model yourself on your favorite preacher or whoever it may be. Let God initiate. So I want to ask you that question again. Stop and think for a moment. Think over the things you're involved in in the moment.

Did God really initiate them? Are you just doing things out of habit or because somebody told you to or because everybody else does it that way? Secondly, how much has God really initiated in your home, husbands?

How much has God initiated? How much that goes on in your home is the result of God's initiative? You've probably heard the story about the man who said, When my wife and I got married twenty-two years ago we agreed that I would make the major decisions and she would make the minor decisions.

Up till now we've never had any major decisions. But now, most important of all, this is where I'm really going, how much has God initiated in the church at this time? How much that the church is doing is really the result of God's initiative.

In your own church, wherever you come from. But beyond that, in the whole church of Jesus Christ in the United States, is God taking the initiative? Or are we doing something else? Let me just suggest a few common hindrances.

First of all, habit. We always do things because we've always done it that way. Years ago I was a student at Eaton College, which you know is that sort of snobbish, ritzy boarding school, just the other side of the Thames from Windsor Castle.

A stranger arrived, an American. This was before World War II. People didn't cross the Atlantic so freely in those days. Americans, I mean I just met one or two in my life. And he said, can you imagine it?

He said, say, why do the students roll their pants? Well, I mean to say, we don't call trousers pants, you understand? Pants are the things we wear under our trousers. Well, what was the answer? I mean in those days everybody had turn-ups of their trousers.

Why did the students roll their pants? The answer is because the students always had rolled their pants. Why do you need any other reason? In England, if it's not been going on for two hundred years, it's an upstart.

It's like the United States. All right, pass that by. But frankly, a habit is not a bad thing. If we didn't do some things by habit, I mean our minds would just... I don't think when I turn on the ignition key in the car I do it by habit.

The movements that I make with the gear shift and all that, they're all habit. And it's a good habit, provided you start right. Some people started with bad habits and they never checked them. But a lot of things we do by habit we shouldn't be doing.

Habit enshrined in the church is called tradition. And I think you'll agree that one of the things Jesus had the most trouble with was tradition. Now I'm not saying all traditions are bad, but we need to check.

The fact that we've been doing it that way for the past fifty years is not a good reason for going on doing it. Let's check and see what the results have been. And then another serious problem is fear.

Fear of man. Fear of the unfamiliar. Well, we've always done it this way. I wouldn't know how to do it another way. Fear of being dependent. If we move out of this I've got no rules to go by. I'll have to depend on God.

What a crisis. Frankly, we don't like to be dependent, most of us. And then I'd just like to close with this thought. I think I've mentioned, I don't know why, but when I start to think about Kenya my mind always goes back there because it was a very important and valuable part of my life.

And I loved the people of Kenya. And I'm proud of Kenya. I don't have time to tell you. But in 1960 a group of us met and prayed for the future of Kenya. And we prayed a prayer that is still being answered today.

Kenya is different from almost every other new nation on the African continent. And I am so proud to think that that came out of prayer prayed in 1960. If you want the story it's in a book of mine called Shaving History Through Prayer and Fasting.

I received a letter from a student, the one that had the vision that told us what Satan was trying to do to Kenya. Just about one year ago, sweetheart, wasn't it? And he enclosed newspaper cuttings from the secular newspapers celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of Kenya's statehood.

And every paper said God has been good to Kenya. That's an answer to prayer. See, don't ever give up on a situation. If you find the mind of God you can change that situation by your prayers. Anyhow, when I was there we were training teachers for intermediate and primary schools.

And one of the things they had to teach was the Bible. And our aim was that they wouldn't just teach a story but they'd teach a story with a spiritual application. So we would give them specimen lessons.

This is the story, this is the application. Incidentally, this is just by the way, but later on one of our students was teaching the story of Ananias and Sapphira. And he had the spiritual application written on the blackboard.

And as I walked in I thought, well he's got the right idea but he doesn't know how to express it. Because he said, lice can kill. Anyhow, I was teaching the story of Samuel sending Saul to destroy the Amalekites.

You know, he didn't finish the job off. He spared Agag the king and the best of the sheep and the oxen and then he said to Samuel, Blessed be the Lord your God, I've obeyed the word of the Lord. And Samuel said, Well if you've obeyed the word of the Lord, what is that lowing of the oxen and bleating of the sheep that I hear?

Dead oxen and dead sheep don't bleat. Some people come to you like that and they say, I've done everything God says but you can hear the sheep and the oxen. So anyhow, Samuel said, God's got to take the kingdom away from you, etc.

Now I was teaching this story and I had the spiritual lesson in my mind. So I got up at a certain point with the chalk in my hand and I said, Now I'll tell you the spiritual application. As I walked to the blackboard, God said to me, I'll tell you the spiritual application of this story.

By the time I got to the blackboard I had it. It was very simple. Incomplete obedience is disobedience. Do you realize that? You can do 90 of what God tells you to do and say, I've obeyed God. God says, No, you're disobedient.

Incomplete obedience is disobedience. So how about you? Where are you at? God has spoken to you. How much have you done? Are there still some sheep and some oxen making a noise in the background? One thing I've observed is that we've been talking a lot about witchcraft and I've been forced to study witchcraft.

We're not going to go into the whole thing but one of the things that witchcraft does is play with you. It's like here you are, you're a man of God, you're called to serve the Lord and you're really full of zeal but there's an invisible leash attached to you held by witchcraft.

Witchcraft says, Go ahead, go on, get busy. Preach, do this, do that. But when you get a certain distance the leash is jerked and you're back. You see, witchcraft really doesn't object to you doing quite a lot provided you don't do the thing that really matters.

So how many of you this morning have got a leash attached to you? An invisible leash. And you really know what God is directing you to do. You've started off and you've been busy and you've been active but whenever you get to the point of really breaking loose and being totally committed to God that invisible leash is jerked and you're frustrated.

Is that right? I'm going to close now. I want to leave Bob plenty of time for the rest of the... But I just would like to help you. One of the things God said to me, I'll say it very briefly. I'd been traveling across Canada for a whole year preaching and at the end God said to me, I didn't call you to deliver religious lectures.

Whenever you preach on anything practical I always want you to give my people an opportunity to respond practically. And I've always tried to do that since. So I could just sit down and say, Well, I've presented what I believe to be God's message.

But I want to deal with the people who have that invisible leash. You particularly men, but not necessarily only men, you are struggling. Let me give you just one experience and I'll close. It's an illustration.

When I finished in Kenya after five years with my first wife Lydia we went back to Denmark which was her native country. We were there over Christmas. Those of you, if any of you know the Danes, when the Danes celebrate Christmas they take it seriously.

Not from a spiritual point of view but from the point of view of eating there is nothing left out. We'd been staying with Lydia's sister who ran a guest house, a hotel. And so just after Christmas, I don't know whether it was before or after the new year, I felt I've got to break loose and touch God again.

So I went out on the top of a cliff overlooking what the Danes called the West Sea and the British called the North Sea. It was a very windy day but it was not raining. I could see the sea maybe a hundred feet below and there was nothing there but seagulls.

I got into touch with the Lord and He began to speak to me, not audibly but very specifically. He said, Now you are this and this and this. You're the principal of a college. You've done this and you've done that.

He kind of cataloged my achievements, if you could call them that. Then He said, You're the member of a denomination and you have a pension scheme. And then He said, Are you satisfied or do you want to go further?

I was shocked because I was quite convinced there was no further to go. I mean, I spoke in tongues, I prayed for the sick. So what more was there? But when God said that I knew there must be something more.