An Amazing Time at British “New Wine Conference 2008″!

Hey there!

I wanted to share more with you about how great my week in England was. I went over there to lead worship for the week long worship event called New Wine. Its the event that birthed Soul Survivor – SS originally began as the youth meeting at New Wine many years ago and gradually grew into its own youth conference and youth movement, producing worship leaders Matt Redman, Tim Hughes and others. So New Wine has been a very influential conference over the last decades, and it was a real blessing to be part of the team!

As you know, Joy Argow my Aussie friend came with me, and she and I had such a blast. God really met us both in the meetings, and we also loved drinking real British tea, and laughing at good old British humor!

Here are some photos from the trip! Above is a shot of me and my excellent UK musicians from the event – most of us had never met before we arrived at the conference for rehearsals, so they did an amazing job of learning my songs and going with the flow. I’m so glad to have made such great new friends!

Joy and all our gear, getting off the Heathrow Train at Paddington Station!

Classic british food – pie and chips! (not a low carb option!!)

Main stage worship session…

“ACTION!”… New Wine filmed an informal interview with me one afternoon…

This is the Vicar of my home church in the UK, Chris Pemberton, then one of the couples who ran my youth group at his church when I was 13-18yrs old. Alistair on the right is the guy who first encouraged me to start leading worship…he was there the first time I ever led and can testify that I was VERY nervous! It was great to see them all again!

This is me and my Dad. My parents came to the conference as my UK visit was literally zooming into the first night of the event, then flying straight out after the final session. So they came to the conference and hung out with me each day. One of the venues was holding a ‘hat party’ as a fun after hours activity, hence my Dad’s viking hat!

This was the brochure/poster for the event – “KIngdom Come” was the theme and I certainly felt like God’s kingdom was powerfully present at the conference… some of the meetings felt like heaven was invading earth, as we sang our hearts out in worship. In several ministry times we prayed for the sick and saw people truly experience healing in body and heart.. so I came away feeling like I’d seen God’s kingdom breaking in, and longing to see more of that over the coming weeks and years!

Right now I’m at Estes Park, and having a great time at GMA in the Rockies – an event run by the Gospel Music Association. Photos and Blog to follow from here!

On the subject of the Kingdom of God, lets have a theological chat here – as we love to do! “Why do you think some people get healed when we pray, and others don’t? Why do we sometimes see God’s kingdom break in with victory, and other times it feels like heaven is silent? Can we expect the fullness of God’s kingdom here on earth, or is that something we can only see in heaven, or when Jesus returns again?”

Love,

Vicky

Tags: matt redman, New Wine 2008, new wine worship, shepton mallet, soul survivor, tim hughes, vicky beeching

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 5th, 2008 at 22:14 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Leon

By the way, Todd Bentley has this amazing teaching on his podcast called 'the seven signs of the kingdom'. He talks about what is the kingdom and how to recognise the kingdom of God.

Check it out here!

ps. Yes, I know todd has some personal problems right now, but the teaching is very very good. I hope you'll be blessed by listening to it.

Oshea Davis

How much in part has the rest of God's Kingdom come, or to what degree are the effects of God saving us are we to expect to receive on earth?

Consider this thought:

This is important know! People will think God has failed them when they were promised this "victorious kingdom life" heralded to them and then they do not get it. In the pursuit to be relevant many teachers in the church have done the reverse and made themselves extremely irrelevant. If a teacher's goal was to help people live a better life by being more connected to the true source of life, Jesus Christ, then they have self-defeated themselves from the start. It is self-defeating to preach ignorantly or wrongly saying parts of God's kingdom have come in full when they have not. At this point a person will think a particular part of God's kingdom has come in full (physical healing, full family reconciling etc...) and pray believing God will help them. When God does not answer their prayer, then they will believe God failed them. This can cause great harm to a person's faith.

To see More: http://www.osheadavis.com/content/view/120/1/

ben

mmmm.... pie and chips.......

Jumping jack kangaroo

Awsome. Looks like you had a lovely time x

oshea davis

. "What part of the Kingdom of God has come in full? There is much rampant confusion throughout the church concerning what it means that God’s Kingdom has come. Particularly the confusion lies in how much and in what ways has God’s Kingdom come. Many untaught or false teachers use the phrase kingdom of God to force in all kinds of ideas, particularly their selfless ideas because their belly is their god. Therefore, to usher in clarity on this topic let me say, up front, that the one part of God’s kingdom that has come in full is: the gospel. The rest of God’s kingdom has only come in part or not at all."

I have posted this full article at my site:
http://www.osheadavis.com/content/view/120/1/

oshea davis

The only part of the Kingdom of God that has come in full now is: "the gospel of Jesus Christ."

Othter parts have come in part such as healing and yet other parts have come in at all such as the new creation of everything.

I will post a more detail expliantion of this on might sight today, Lord willing.

Sincerely Yours: Oshea Davis (www.osheadavis.com)

Leon

There is an amazing story in Luke 18. It talks about contending until you get what you need. We are in a microwave culture "I want it here, and I want it now". I tend to give up pretty fast. We need to learn to keep pressing in for what we need.

One of the other reasons is because a lot of 'ordinary' christians in church have got the 1cor12 gift of healing, but never use it/ train it/develope it.

The verse from luke:(http://www.biblija.net/biblija.cgi?Bible=Bible&m=luke+18%3A1-8&id32=1&pos=0&set=3&l=en)

By the way, many dutchies here! You know, you ain't much if you ain't ...

Blessings from Holland!

Leon

R

(This started as just random questions I was gonna ask you, but it seems this kinda relates to the question at the end of your blog entry. So I'm gonna tie it all in to my response.)

Vicky,

Do u watch the 'Harry Potter' movies? Or read the books? I tried reading the books, but the pacing seems to get slower and slower. So I'm just gonna follow the series with the movies.

The last one (Order of the Phoenix) was cool because it reminded me of that scripture, "Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away" (2 Tim. 3.5). Of course this only works if you view 'HP' as an allegory. Plug in the elements.

I think a huge contributing factor to not seeing the in-breaking of the Kingdom is unbelief. Especially rampant in the industrialized nations. "Jesus marveled at their unbelief. And could not do many miracles there."

Yet, we have to keep in mind as well His sovereign purpose to use "evil" for good. (Like Joseph going to the pit. Daniel in the lion's den. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fire. And hello! Jesus on the cross!)

I believe that the kingdom can be realized in the community of believers to a degree much greater than we have seen previously. Talk about Paul and Silas worshiping God in prison! And I believe that we can greatly influence the world and expand the kingdom. We are commanded to do so. (The ten servants with varying talents deposited to their care.) Yet at the same time, until the Prince of Peace - Jesus Himself returns - we watch for His coming, our "blessed hope."

Blessings to you, Vicky! It is exciting to see the kingdom advancing strong in Great Britain. May that fire spread throughout the world!

Praise Jesus!

Jonathan Paul

Got a few minutes to reply while I'm waiting for an oil change... Lots of good thoughts here already. What a great group!

I love the “action!” shot. Your dad's hat is great too! Where's yours? :o)

That's so exciting that the conference went so well. I'm praying that the same happens next week at one I'll be helping with in Michigan.

You like to ask tough questions! This is obviously another huge can o' worms, but here's a couple of my thoughts.

I think it's interesting that the Bible never talks about someone who needed healing and came to Jesus and wasn't healed. This seems to be in line with thinking that it must always be God's will to heal us. However, I know of cases where the bright young kid with cancer dies... even though many people are praying for a miraculous recovery. This is hard... to go through as well as hard to understand.

I know people who see miraculous healings regularly for those they pray for but who also don't always receive immediate healing for their own injuries or sickness. I think it may be going to far to say that if we don't receive healing immediately (or even at all) that there must be something we're not doing right.

On the other hand, I think we can learn and grow and become more effective in almost any area of ministry, and this includes praying for healing. I know of people who see healing miracles regularly in their ministry, and they got to this point by making a serious study of the life of Jesus, and trying to understand and emulate the way He lived His life. Dr. Roger Sapp comes to mind as a really great guy who is one the the most Christ-like people I've met, and I know he began to see significantly more healings in his ministry after spending a couple of years of intentional study of the life of Christ.

As to the more general question of God's kingdom come to earth... that's another good one. I believe God gave dominion over the earth to man, and this is probably the main reason that so many things here are so messed up. There are lots of examples of where things would be better on earth if we took hold of the dominion we've been given instead of sitting back and wondering how God could let things get to be so bad.

So, since we've been given dominion, let's go change the world that God gave us! We should be praying “Your kingdom come,” but let's *do* something about it too while we're at it! :o)

Ian

I enjoyed the worship at New Wine this year. Vicky you certainly have a wounderful gift to bring Gods people into his presence. As to why some people get healed on earth and others don't seem to, well only God knows Deut 29 29
Our commission is to bring people into the Kingdom and salvation, wholeness and rightousness in the Lord.

Ceci White

I definetely line up with the Vineyard on this issue...
We live in a kingdom of the now and the not yet.. we experience the magnificence of God's kingdom on earth but it won't come to it's fullness until the day Jesus comes back and puts all his enemies at his feet.

We should, however, pray, and pray with faith. We should fight against injustice, and listen for God's guidance.

I've got a terrible allergy to water. It's an odd and very rare disease. Why God doesn't heal me I can't tell. I still pray with faith. When people come to me and say it's because of sin or it's because a lack of faith I recognize their voice to carry hurt, not love. My Lord loves me and He can heal me any second He wants to. The rest is not necessarily for me to know, I decided to give it ALL up to follow Him and if that means to follow him in disease and in pain and in suffering, well, I don't belong to myself anymore.

Besides, my sins have been covered for. I can't imagine how punishment for those would look like, but I imagine it'd be a lot worse than any suffering we can have here on earth. Our hearts should just overflow of gratitude!

Let your kingdom come!

Meghan

My church just lost a young woman who had been battling cancer for 4 years. The cancer was found when she went in for an ultra-sound because she was pregnant. She left behind a 3 year old little boy.
We don't know why she didn't get the healing so many were praying for. I don't think you can just blame it on sin, or unbelief, God is in control, not us. And after all for a christian death is the ultimate healing. It is those of us left behind to grieve that are still hurting. God never promised us an easy life.

ben

I believe it is possible to see glimpses of the kingdom of god when we do Jesus like things. I.e serving the needy in our communities or helping a granny walk across a street or even something like being there when your friends mum has just died. Basically showing compassion... I believe when we do this stuff, a specially if it is some sort of sacrifice for us that we can see glimpses of the kingdom of heaven... Paul says that there is only a small veil covering our eyes that means we cannot see the kingdom of heaven and I think when we do the work of Jesus, he sometimes lifts the veil and gives us glimpses of his kingdom.

B

Bethany

You led worship at SOS earlier this summer... here's a story from there... my friend had this problem in her wrists. The bones were growing unevenly, and as she grew, her wrists curved out. It was very painful for her and she had to have both wrists wrapped almost all of the time. She couldn't play guitar anymore, and was hurting almost all of the time. We prayed for healing for her many, many times... but it didn't happen until Tuesday night of a major youth event! Our prayer team leader pulled her up on to stage to share her story as soon as she took the braces off and felt NO PAIN! The next day, her wrists were STRAIGHT. She could hold both wrists out in front of her straight again... and make a fist!!

We talked about it after... why did God wait to heal her wrists? Why did he wait so long? After it happened, so many of her peers at the conference came up to her and said things like, "I didn't believe God did miracles anymore, but I KNOW YOU and I know this is true because I see that your wrists aren't crooked anymore!" and, "I wouldn't have believed this story if so many people hadn't testified to the fact that your wrists were all messed up... and now they're not!!"

So we came to the conclusion that God wanted to use her healing to show those he had gathered that night that he DOES work miracles, and that people DO get healed... not just on tv after they've donated half their life savings to some televangelist!

I guess that doesn't exactly answer your question, but this is one of my favorite stories in the world to share!! (For the record, SOS was early in the summer, and my friend's wrists are STILL perfect, and she's playing guitar again!)

merel

I was at the New Wine conference in the Netherlands (fantastic, by the way). I've been chronically ill for over 10 years, I got prayed for and nothing (visible) happened. A girl who'd had pain for a couple days in her ankle got prayed for and her pain was gone.

Why God allows for me to have so much pain?
I...don't...know.
But, He knows best. I HAVE to believe that and I do.

I don't think we'll see the fullness of God's kingdom on earth. Bits and pieces, yes, but not the fullness.

Ben Pettit

Looks like fun!

How about a simple answer for your question. This verse popped in my head as I read it.

8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." John 3:8

We have to have faith that his thoughts and plans for our life and others lives are better than ANYTHING we could ever imagine. Even if that means he takes some of our most loved ones home early. On the contrary, the same holy spirit that was there with Jesus is here with us now, able to heal and restore.

Maybe we are of such little faith? Maybe our sin has separated us so much from the Lord that we don't have anointing from the Holy Spirit? Maybe we are so full of what the world excuses to be "OK", that we may never see the Kingdom? Maybe it's because 95% of Christians have never fasted which was something we are called to do. Most of us do the praying and giving part but we miss the "when you fast".

Just my two cents. <3 discussion.