Category: Faith

Christian Media, Christian Radio, Christianity, Evangelism, Faith, Forgiveness, Hope, Miracles

God is the God of the impossible

Posted on by David L'Herroux

Early one Friday morning over five years ago, our Company Secretary came to see me. ‘David, we have a problem,’ he said.  ‘Our cashflow is bad. We need half a million pounds.’

When you are responsible for a large organisation, this is never good news to hear. Coming from a commercial background, I knew it was quite common to operate a business out of an overdraft, but I did not feel this was the answer for UCB. I did not know what the solution was, but firstly,  I knew that we needed to pray.

When facing unexpected news, it is easy to get caught up in meetings and discussions, but at that moment, I wanted to be alone so that I could ask God for His answer. I took out my Bible and felt God prompt me to read Jeremiah 17. My eyes fell initially to Jeremiah 17:7-8.

‘But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.’

As I read this, I felt encouraged especially that we were to ‘have no worries in a year of drought’, but in my heart, I still didn’t feel fully peaceful. I felt God prompt me to read Jeremiah 17 again, but this time I needed to read the whole chapter. I have to admit that verses  4 to 6 shocked me – they were curses about goods being plundered and lives being destroyed!

I remember praying: ‘God, ‘I do not understand. First you gave us a promise and a blessing and now I am reading about a curse? What are you saying to us?’

However, as I read it again, Jeremiah 17, verse 6 suddenly came alive to me;

This is what the Lord says: ‘Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from the Lord.’

I felt this was our answer! I knew I had a decision to make. Where should we take our strength from? Should we rely on an overdraft which came from ‘mere flesh’, or could we find the courage to trust God, believe His promise, and see what He would do?

I gathered all the UCB staff together for a time of prayer. I remember we stood in a circle in our Hanchurch building, all holding hands, and we prayed and asked God for a miracle. I told the team that I believed God wanted us to trust Him. I later wrote to our Board of Trustees and asked if they would support us in this decision, and they all agreed. Those were difficult months, but we believed God had given us a clear promise from His Word – His divine instruction manual.

That was at Easter time, and we had to wait until nearly October before we began to see the financial breakthrough in our circumstances. However, we did not ever need to use that overdraft, and we give God all the glory for seeing UCB through a very difficult time.

There have been many other challenging times since then, but prayer remains an essential everyday part of what we do. I do not believe we can function properly as a ministry unless we purposefully choose to spend time in God’s presence. It’s in His presence that (combined with His Word) we can find answers to the problems that we all face.   In God’s presence, we are able to talk openly and honestly with our Father. We can tell Him our problems, our fears and frustrations. It’s in that place that we can truly find our peace.

We continue to believe that God is the God of the impossible and He will never let us down.

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Christian Media, Christian Radio, Christianity, Faith, Forgiveness, Healing, Hope, Miracles, Spiritual healing

When trouble comes, will you stay the course?

Posted on by David L'Herroux

I am very pleased to hand the blog over to my friend Bruno Kondabéka this week. Bruno and his wife Joanne are great friends of our family and are also the pastors of Chichester Family Church.

Some years ago, their son (who was then 7 years old) was struck by a terrible illness, but God did something remarkable.

It’s an incredible story of God’s power at work. Bruno will share what happened next.

Bruno writes…

My wife Joanne and I have three boys, and as pastors of a church in Chichester, our lives are often busy. About two years ago, I was preaching a sermon series on the issue of suffering. I remember asking our church, ‘When trouble comes, will you stay the course?’ We didn’t know then that soon ‘trouble’ would visit our home and put our family to the test.

It began without any warning, when one day our youngest son Samuel started to feel unwell. He had a slight fever but didn’t seem too ill, so we gave him Calpol, and he stayed home from school for a few days to recover.

Five days later, Samuel started to get visibly worse: his temperature went up, and he was complaining that his head and neck were hurting, so we rang NHS Direct who advised we take him to the emergency doctor. On Sunday, the hospital checked him over, but they felt satisfied that it was probably a virus and in time it would pass. However, by the middle of the week, Samuel was still not any better, so we took him to our GP, and that’s when things became very worrying. Samuel was very agitated that day, which was not like his usual cooperative self, and he seemed to be in pain and was very confused. The GP rang the paediatric unit at the hospital, and the consultant suggested we take him straight there.

We were greeted at the hospital by the consultant and his team, and we started to realise that this was maybe very serious indeed. Again Samuel was very agitated and confused. He had become light sensitive, so he was sedated in order to calm him down so that he could be examined and given a CT scan.

After the scan, our son’s condition deteriorated rapidly. He was finding it hard to wake up, his heart beat was erratic, and he was not responsive to anything we said to him. The results of his CT scan were passed onto the specialists in Southampton Hospital, and because they were concerned with what they saw, they arranged for Samuel to be transferred by ambulance to the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit in Southampton. To stabilise him, he was put in a drug induced coma, and he was quickly taken to Intensive Care.

Samuel

After further tests, we were told Samuel had Meningoencephalitis – a very rare and potentially deadly infection on the brain, caused by mycoplasma (a cross between a virus and bacteria) which causes the brain to swell. As parents, our hearts were broken, and the tears flowed as we watched what was happening to our little boy, but we did what we could to hold on to God and to trust Him to take us through this.

I remembered that just a short time previously, I had asked our church family if they were able to ‘stay the course’ when suffering came, and now we were facing that exact situation ourselves. We felt all the emotions you could expect – we wept and we worried, but we were also encouraged by remembering words spoken over Samuel’s life when he was dedicated as a baby by our friend, Pastor Brian Downward, from Bournemouth. The words at that time were that God had a purpose for his life, and it was a good purpose. He was to be a man of God.

I was also aware that our friends in Angers, France, were holding a week of mission at their church. I lived in France for some years, and the church there had helped to sponsor me in my theology studies in South Africa. I had a phone call from David L’Herroux, who told us that the church wanted to pray for Samuel. David felt it was important that the church prayed together during one of their services, and so that night at 8.30pm at the hospital in Southampton, we connected by phone with the church in France (as David paused in the middle of his preach). We laid hands on Samuel as David prayed, and then because we were in the ICU and couldn’t make too much noise, I went outside the ward and continued to pray (with my arm outstretched toward my son’s bed), while the church prayed that God would heal Samuel. That day had been particularly hard as we watched the nurses struggling to get Samuel to wake up out of the coma – they were not succeeding. So, we were encouraged by this prayer and support, and it gave us courage to believe for a miracle.

I walked back to the ward and we continued to sit beside Samuel’s bed, and literally just 30 minutes later, we had the biggest surprise of our lives when Samuel just opened his eyes. He had been unconscious for 3 days. The nurses rushed to see him and confirmed he was conscious – they removed his breathing tube, and from that moment, he started to make a full recovery.

Samuel2

The next day, he was moved from the ICU, and 14 days later, he was discharged from the hospital. The neurosurgeon who had worked with Samuel took us to one side and said that although she was amazed at his recovery, we should also expect the worst, as there could be long term damage.

But just over two weeks later, Samuel was back at school part-time, and the following week, he went back to school full time. He will soon be celebrating his tenth birthday and has suffered no ill effects whatsoever.

Samuel3

We thank God every day for the amazing miracle he gave us for our son.

Family

David concludes…

Bruno’s story is a wonderful reminder to us that God is very much at work in the world around us. At UCB, I encourage the team to keep being expectant and believing for the impossible. We live in a world which is bound by fear, but I believe God wants to set us free in every area of our lives.  I trust Bruno’s story has encouraged you to believe for more. We serve a mighty God!

 

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Christian Media, Christian Radio, Christianity, Faith, Miracles

If God has given you a dream, don’t give up on it

Posted on by David L'Herroux

I have recently been asked how I came to UCB. Where did this journey begin?

I want to share with you a few thoughts about the power of having a God-given dream. If God has given you a dream, do not give up on it.

I first came to the UK in 1973. I was a rebellious young man, running from the Christian upbringing I had been given. I wanted to strike out on my own, but it didn’t take long before I realised that I missed the precious atmosphere of God’s presence in my life. I went to visit my brother who was attending the Assemblies of God conference in Minehead. I had not planned to go to the actual conference – just to meet up with my brother – but I stayed for the meetings, and I had a powerful encounter with the Holy Spirit which changed my life.

After that experience, I put myself before God and asked Him, ‘What do you want to do with me? What do you want to do with my life?’ I felt God encourage me to believe for the impossible, and He put a dream in my heart of going all the way to the Boardroom. At that time I was a janitor, so I did not see how this was possible, but I began to seek God’s Word.

I believe God gave me insight into the verse in Genesis 1:28, where God said to Adam: ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.’ For years, we have read this as a command to have children and populate the earth, but I believe this is also a command to be creative and fruitful in whatever we turn our hands to. By reading God’s Word, I began to develop business principles to live by, and over time, God allowed me to become very fruitful.

I started out as a janitor working for a national retail chain, and before too long, I became a warehouse manager, moving to store manager, until eventually (after 23 years), I became the Head of their national discount chain. God had truly fulfilled His promise to me to take me to the Boardroom. It wasn’t because I wanted the ‘position’ or the power. It was because I believed that God wanted me to be fruitful in what I did. However, I had to learn some painful lessons along the way.

In 1988, the business was going very well, and my wife and I had a good life, when very suddenly, we lost our 13-month-old son, Jamie. Our lives were devastated, and we cried out to God for answers, trying to understand what God’s purpose was. However, in years to come, God gave me a very powerful burden for the children and youth of the world. I had seen my own son die, and I couldn’t bear to see the young generation spiritually dead and eventually leaving this world not knowing Jesus as their personal saviour and friend.

Over time, God brought me into contact with the wonderful organisation OneHope, and eventually He led me out of the retail industry to work full time as a missionary with OneHope. Those were challenging times, but God was so faithful to our family.

I served in that capacity for five years, and then through a mutual friend, I was invited to a meeting at UCB. During my time in retail, the Welsh singer Bryn Yemm had sung in many of our stores. He was also a friend of UCB and had said to members of the leadership team at UCB, ‘You need to meet this French guy’. I was initially invited to share my testimony on air, and I had the opportunity to have coffee with Ian Mackie, the founder and at the time Chief Executive of UCB. Over a long period of many prayerful conversations with Ian Mackie, I eventually joined UCB, initially as a Trustee and then as Ministry Director. We were later able to merge OneHope UK into UCB.

And then in 2010, after many faithful years serving as the Chief Executive, Ian Mackie took on additional responsibilities with UCB International. This eventually led me to take on the role of Chief Executive.

There have been difficult times in our ministry journey, but God has been faithful to the dream He gave me in 1973. If God has given you a dream, be faithful to His Word and don’t give up.

 

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Christian Media, Christian Radio, Christianity, Evangelism, Faith, Forgiveness, Healing, Hope, Miracles, Spiritual healing

Faith is like a muscle – it has to be exercised

Posted on by David L'Herroux

Last week, I shared some stories of the incredible miracles which have been happening at my brother’s church in France. We felt that God started to move in the church about two years ago during our first missions week. A lady came asking for prayer for pain in her hips, which was caused by deformed bones. She was completely healed, and this opened up a door for God to do more.

Over the last two years, we have heard many more incredible testimonies: a man healed of complete deafness, a woman healed of paralysis in her leg, another lady who had severe pain and even discharged herself from hospital for an hour to come to the service. She was completely set free and later declared free of disease. Others have been restored from tumours, depression, restless leg syndrome, chronic insomnia, and addictions. There are so many stories I could share, and in the future, I hope that some of these people will write guest blogs and tell you their stories themselves. There is so much to thank God for!

I have been asked a question which is close to many people’s hearts – why are some people healed and others not? I do not have all the answers, but I can share from my own experience what I believe is true. I wrote last week about the need for expectancy and how we should approach God believing that He will do something.

Here is an illustration: if one of us was sick, we would go to the doctor for a check-up. Often, we will not know the doctor, but we will take their advice, and when they give us a prescription for medication, we will then take that to a chemist. At every stage, we usually trust the doctor we do not know, we trust the chemist we do not know, and we trust the pills, even when we do not understand how they work. But when it comes to trusting God, we often struggle, and we question if He is capable of giving us what we ask. We have no trouble believing that He could die for us, save us, and give us eternal life, but we do struggle to believe that He could do the miraculous.

I believe that faith is a muscle, and just like any other muscle in our bodies, if we do not use it, it will eventually become weak and useless. As believers, we are children of God’s kingdom, and just like being a citizen of the United Kingdom, we have certain citizenship rights. If something was wrong in our country, we would have the right to take a petition to 10 Downing Street, and in the same way, we can take our petitions to God.

As citizens of God’s kingdom, we have a constitution (God’s Word), and we can stand on that and petition God to do what no one else can do. Just as with politics, we don’t always see answers right away, but we should keep standing on God’s Word, believing His promises, and asking Him to bring about a miracle. God’s Word is the instruction manual for life. If you or I bought a new mobile phone, we would go home and start reading the instructions to make sure that we got the best use from the phone. If we pay that much care and attention to our phones, how much more attention should we give to our lives? God’s Word is the instruction manual – without understanding it, our lives do not work properly.

Now it is true to say that not every one gets healed, but I believe that God is sovereign, and we are not here to dictate to Him how He should do things, but to be obedient to His Word. However, I have also seen great things happen when a person didn’t get healed.

Last year, a lady came to a meeting during the mission in France. That very day, she gave her life to Christ and asked us to pray that she would be healed from terminal cancer. We prayed for her, but sadly just five days later, she died.   When the church went to visit her family (they were not Christians), her husband said that in the days before she passed away, he had never seen his wife so happy and peaceful since he had known her.

He said: she spent her final days praising her Jesus, and she left this world in total peace, knowing that she would soon see Him face to face. So although she did not see physical healing in this life, she was healed when she stood before Jesus and was given a new body, free of disease. There is no sickness or ill-health or cancer in Heaven. Praise God!

If you are trusting God to heal or set you free, can I encourage you to persevere? Stand on His word, trust Him, and practice exercising your faith muscle. Whatever happens, you can be sure of one thing: your life will be changed for the better. I have never met a person who wasn’t changed by spending time with God. Follow God’s instructions and wait to see what He can do in your life.

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