"A Wounded Spirit who can bear?"

asks the Book of Proverbs (18,14).

That's a rhetorical question, and the answer, -by the look of things, is "no one, -neither the person who's been wounded, nor their kith, kin or neighbours."
A wounded spirit is ultimately extremely self-destructive. It makes for completely unreasonable reactions to the most innocent of overtures: outbursts of anger, tantrums, self-pity and so-on.
The good news is: it can be healed:

1 The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,
because the LORD has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,

(quote from NIV; Biblegateway.com)

Serbia, allow Me to give you the future

When the Lord interrupted my wedding plans and asked me to allow Him to set the agenda, it was a lesson with a wider application. As I have told before, the wedding became more creative, more enjoyable, more memorable more enriching than the event we planned for ourselves. Yet it was not unlike it either! It was more a case of being all we had wished for and more, because the Lord is so much more positive than anything we can be when we stand alone.

So with Serbia and so with us all: keep an open mind, be ready for the creatively unexpected:
"Allow Me to give you the future

I want you to have"

Hear the Lord in this, and you surely will not regret it!

"All roads lead to where we stand"

Corrie ten Boom, the author of "The Hiding place" hid Jews from their Nazi persecutors during the war. She was arrrested and sent to concentration-camp. Commenting on her life experiences she said that the events of your past are a preparation for your future.
The relevance of the past is the wisdom it gives for the future. All your past has brought you to where you are now, but it is over; you owe it nothing. The road ahead is your true business, and the agenda belongs to God.

It's all about You, Jesus
And all this is for You
For Your glory and Your fame
It's not about me
As if You should do things my way
You alone are God and I surrender
To Your ways

(Paul Oakley 1995)

"No, - I will not!" (buy you a Mercedes Benz)

Janis Joplin called her song "Mercedes-Benz" a "profound social comment on America", although I'm sure the cap fits a lot more places than just the US of A. Another commentator(Ern Baxter)said:
"Imagine if you could see all the things people pray for: all the deep freezes, television sets, bicycles and so on floating down from heaven each night as people say their bedside prayers. That's not what prayer is about, -- we've turned Him into Santa Claus; that's who!"

God set the agenda, not us. To pray effectively you need to learn what God is like, grasp His heart, and ask for things that please Him. Sometimes, (not always,) this can be the reason why we get instant answers to our prayers; other times we have to persist. This has a two-fold effect: it trains us up in patience, and it sorts out the desires that have their origin in the Spirit of God who is prompting us to pray and sifts away the things we have come up with ourself.
As I have said earlier, its an on-going process, but that doesn't mean that God's will is something negative for us, not in the long-run, at least. For example, when I was planning my own wedding, I budgeted on a shoe-string. Then the Lord interrupted me (quite unexpectedly, as usual,) and said: "Allow Me to give you the wedding I want you to have!" My whole perspective changed, (and my wife is very grateful that it did). More than that, our wedding was happy, bountiful, joyous and positive in a way I could never have devised out of my own resources; -truly a day to remember.
So what God wants for us, is normally better than anything we can wish for ourselves, but it may not seem so at the time. What is good to know is that if I get it wrong, God is going to veto my requests. -What exactly am I going to do with a Mercedes-Benz anyway?

What have I prayed for Serbia recently?
1) That there would be a big enough turn-out for the Constitutional elections to decide the matter one way or another.
2) That there be a proper turn out for the January elections, so that whoever won would truly have a mandate, and not just win by default.
3) That Serbia will have a true Statesman for a leader.

As to Kosovo, - that God dispenses true justice, and a resolution that serves Serbia's true interests (what ever they may be).

God is NOT Santa Claus!

That time I was so concerned about South Africa, one of the things I did one day was to pray:

“LORD, what do you want me to pray for South Africa?”

--“That Vorster will resign,” came the reply.

What! Did I really hear that, or was it just my imagination?

So I prayed that Prime Minister Vorster would resign.

The next day Vorster resigned, and was replaced by Piet Botha.

Once I’d recovered from the shock, I naturally felt very encouraged. But let’s get a few things into perspective now: It’s hardly the case that I was the only one praying for South Africa at the time, and probably not even the only one praying for that particular thing. Nor did I receive some kind of “3 wishes” guaranteed to alter the cou

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Getting my Act Together

If God has good things in store for the Serbs, why tell me, a Brit living in a completely different part of Europe and having no previous special interest in Serbia? The Serbs need to know it, not me!
Surprisingly enough, in time I found several good reasons! To mention some:

1. Because I asked
2. Because somebody has to believe in Serbia, if Serbs themselves cannot
3. Because I have some experience
   
4. Because I can intercede (=pray) for Serbia

I will now explain these points. I cannot avoid religious considerations when I do. So if, honourable reader you are not religious, please bear with me: there may be method in my madness; maybe something to profit by all the same.

• "Because I asked"
  

does not imply that nobody else has asked. I see indications that others have too, but not much information on what they have to say. e.g. Stig

• Because somebody has to believe in Serbia, if Serbs cannot do it for themselves.

I say this because Serbian sources seem dominated by a deep lack of self- confidence. It emerges as either a paralysing cynicism or a pseudo optimism; the one cannot quite believe in or be glad about positive signs ("there must be a catch somewhere"); the other assertively defends Serbian symbols, Serbian rights, and argues Serbia's potential, but it often has a hollow ring to it, as if the bloggers and commentators are not quite convinced; as if they are flying in the face of experience and avoiding the uncomfortable. In short an optimism born of defensiveness rather than security.
(These are, of course, purely subjective impressions).
However, there truly is hope for Serbia, I have seen it and I am glad I have, because after reading some of the comments. and following blog "flames" between intransigent Albanian and Serb bloggers it sometimes feels easiest to be a pessimist.

But, in the words of "Les Miserables":

Can you hear the people sing
Singing the song of angry men?
It is the music of the people who won't be slaves again
When the beating of your heart
Matches the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

Visions apart, I detect a people who feel that they have been duped in the past, and have no intention of being duped again. I detect a people with a healthy potential for self-irony, and often bleakly aware of past failings. I read a new Constitution that may have many limitations (-that can be changed if the will is present-) but many laudable guarantees also. I see an economy with major growth potential , and a people coming out of isolation slowly in a world that has already forgotten last week's headlines. (Anti-Serb feeling there may be, but it is not as prevalent as Serbian people seem to imagine).

• Because I have experience.

Serbia is not top of the agenda for the people round me and until recently few knew of or understood my concern, which wilted for lack of response. However that is not good enough reason to drop the matter: They have their job to do. I have mine.

Just like when I was young and it raised eyebrows when I took an interest in vikings. What was there to know about vikings except that they were savage plunderers? (A great deal, in fact, and now the English have grown to understand why, and are even proud of their Scandinavian roots.) In the end this interest took me to Norway, and I have no reason to regret it or believe I was wrong.

Later I became interested in the situation of South Africa. I met white South-Africans who were nothing like their media stereotype, anything but racists, but sometimes not aware enough of the true consequences of their Government's policies.
In the following years I prayed for that country off and on and discovered that a number of others were doing it too. As we prayed, we saw some very specific answers in the midst of an apparantly doomed situation.

• Because I can pray for Serbia

I am amazed how slow I have been grasping this! Despite my experience from praying for South-Africa, the penny never truly dropped until I began to trawl the blogs and internet sources seriously. Having begun, I also see a number of similarities between Serbia and Norway, which (hopefully) helps to give my prayers more pertinance. Now that I am getting my act together at last, I try to be more consistent regular and systematic than I was last time round.

“Put some 3-D into your 2-D vision!”

Now that I know there are people are reading this blog it makes more sense to keep going.
So far I have explained my original reasons, idiosyncratic though they may seem, for caring about Serbia and the people there.
The problem in 1999, though, was how to communicate this to the Serbs themselves! How could I say “There are good things awaiting you!” in the middle of a depressing dispiriting military defeat without being written off as completely crazy, -or worse still- getting exploited by extremist opinion to underpin some chauvinist position. I found no real solution to this.
In any case, if God has good things in store for the Serbs, why tell me, a Brit living in a completely different part of Europe and having no previous special interest in Serbia? The Serbs need to know it, not me!
So for the most part I simply kept quiet, tried finding out a bit on the internet, perked up when Serbia came on the news, prayed occasionally, and got on with my already busy life.
However, if I met someone who might know something about Serbia, I asked them about it. One person had been taken round Belgrade and been shown various NATO targets. “I sensed a deep resentment in the people who showed me” he said.
But the most useful comment was made more recently: “Your vision ties in with what others have said. Go to Serbia! Talk to people there; hear what they have to say; put some 3-D into your 2-D vision!”
Spurred on by this I began looking into things again, and though I still have not found a chance to visit Serbia, but at least tried visiting by proxy: reading books, following the comments made on various web-sites, and trying to get a picture of Serbian moods, concerns, fears, hopes and aspirations.
B92 s web-page in English (http://www.b92.net/eng) where there are some who even blog in English, has been a particularly useful starting-point. There are also a number of other web-pages in English, for example (www.srbija.sr.gov.yu/) and many others. My vision is not exactly 3-D yet, but thanks to internet it is less 2-D than it was.
It also introduced me to blogging, (still in its infancy 7 years ago) and solved the other problem: how I can tell Serbs the good news:
“God loves you, and has a wonderful plan for you!”

God does not have to find me blameless before He can love me

I once asked my mother if people in Britain during the war heard about the concentration camps and the genocide the Nazis perpetrated.

"Yes" she said, "but we thought it was just propaganda invented by our own government."

Not every German was a Nazi, or committed atrocities even if we have to admit some were good at looking the other way. So if it was hard for the British during the Second World War, to imagine that these horrors really were happening, how much harder for the German people? Who is willing to accept that their countrymen, their husbands, their sons or brothers at the front are perpetrating acts that are the stuff of nightmares until confronted with hard, -almost unbearable- evidence?

And just as the whole guilt issue for Germany was far more subtle and intricate than their one-sided Post-War image, -so also with Serbia, in fact probably even more so. Without incontravertable evidence, why should any Serb assume at the outset that their countrymen have massacred civilians? This of course will be compounded by the one-sidedness of Western European news media (-obvious to a Serb, but not to an outsider-).

So what is the reality?

Reality is the way God sees things: the background causes, the individual decisions, the deliberately caused, and the unintentionally caused evils, the manipulation, the complicity and the innocence; -All!

So how does God distribute the blame?

-Justly: to each according to his own works!

I am responsible for what I perpetrate, what I condone, what I deliberately ignore and for my own wrong attitudes. The guilt is mine, whatever the circumstances giving rise to it. The wrongdoing of others does not absolve me, whatever the provocation! They will have to face what they have done, I will have to face what I have done! In this sense "each must bear their own burden".

But the good news is this: God does not love me because He finds me blameless; He Loves me even though I am not! As long as I do not hide from my complicity, God is prepared do have dealings with me, and He himself has paid the price for my wrongdoing.

There is a condition that goes with this: I cannot expect Him to forgive me, unless I accept that He will forgive others, and except I am willing to do likewise.

That is not the same as denying, ignoring, condoning or underplaying the seriousness of what may have been done against me, or pretending the pain I may have suffered was not as bad as it was, or has magically disappeared. Nor does it mean that crimes should go unpunished. Forgiveness means to be willing want God to treat my enemies with the same generosity He has treated me with, and to be prepared myself to be as generous.

It was heart-wrenching to hear

of Serbs abroad saying during the Kosovo crisis: "Now we know what it felt like to be a German right after the Second World War".
It must make you feel really helpless to be blamed for something you never condoned never committed and have never been consulted on. A handful of politicians and their henchmen plus unscrupulous manipulation with the facts leave you the object of blind uninformed prejudice: --ugly, objectionable, and sticky as tar.

Insipid or Demented?

May 1999.
When you are given a glimpse of the heart of God, it can feel like a heavy burden. Mercifully, most of us only pick up on a small portion at a time (which is probably just as well,) for it may become too much to carry and you need to retreat awhile into everyday life. Therefore my concern for Serbia has therefore not always been equally intense; but it has got my attention.

The baffling problem has been what to do with the burden. Good things await the Serb people, but surely they are the ones who need to know it, not me? And how can they be told from two thousand miles away by a stranger who knows little about Serbia?

Pushed by the sense of burden I consider writing to some newspaper or other, but I know nothing about Serbian news channels, and even if I did, most likely that is a waste of time. Why should anyone take it seriously? Of course I would choose the words carefully, but if muted the burden seems insipid, when "told like it is" it sounds demented, and could even end up misused in support of extreme nationalism.

I really find no solution; and in the meantime the demands of everyday life drown out the urgency.

Suspended Disbelief

Since religious assertions are not objective items but subjective persuasions, nobody should swallow them uncritically. On the other hand it it not wise to reject them out of hand, either.
In the New Testament the principles are: "believe not every spirit". Test them to see if they are of God. Only when they are proved genuine should you take them seriously.
Therefore no one should simply take my word for it that I have had some communication from the Lord, misled people with strongly held and wrongly held religious convictions are two-a-penny. In fact, you have no proof that any of this ever happened. I could be simply inflating my own feeling of self-importance.
Keep an open mind: "you shall know them by their fruits".

When the pillar of cloud moves on.

Not that I want to see Serbia lose Kosovo when I see how much it means to so many, but it is hard to see how you can hang on to it without a ruinous demand on your resources. And with so many opposed, clinging on can only bring trouble, while “tolerating the intorlerable” may win you friends.

But even more important in my view is that Kosovo will divert your attention from God’s true purposes for Serbia, and hinder you from reaping His blessing. You are too important to God for Him to wish that to happen.

Let Kosovo go with your blessing and in the end it will be to your benefit;

Let it Kosovo go with your ill-feeling and it may bring you sorrow.

God has moved on; the Pillar of Cloud has removed itself

And the time has come to strike camp and follow.

Serbia's true identity

It is often claimed that a person is "the sum of their thoughts and their actions," but this is not the whole story.

We have a past, and it explains how we got where we are now; we have a present, and that is expressed in our daily lives; and yet we have a future as well, something we will become, and if and when that potential is realized it may supercede all that has gone before.

We have a potential, -- all of us-- that God has in mind for our good. Its origin is found within His love for us, and it begins as soon as we allow Him to have His way. Beyond the horizon it stretches like an open country.

When we enter into God's paths He transforms us. The whole of our past takes on a different context. Of course it is still there behind us, but ahead is a future He longs for us to enjoy, and in comparison with that future, our History fades into insignificance.
This is true not only on a personal level, when we receive Him into our lives; it can be true of whole nations as well.

Serbia has passed a watershed in its History. From now on, things will take a different turn. The waters will all run in different direction. God will bless this people, and when He does, their sorrows will turn to joy. They have something good ahead of them, if only they could know it, something important, a new identity, because what God makes out of you makes everything you were before obsolete.

"No longer is your identity to be found on the field of Blackbirds

It is to be found in what I am going to make of you,

In what you become

When I meet with you."

If the Lord takes away Kosovo

If the Lord takes away
Kosovo from Serbia

It will not be defeat;

Not be retreat;

Nor yet rejection;

But redirection:

For the Lord takes away
And the Lord gives

So let it go with your blessing

And He will bless you for it,

While ahead lies a fresh agenda

Kind beyond our grasp;

A watershed in history has been passed,
and the future begins today.

Beograd

Sunday the 11th of April 1999
The burden from Easter Day lies so heavy upon me that I wish I could be in Belgrade now; --there where the people are suffering under NATO's hammering. A futile wish, of course; what use would a crazy foreigner be to the Serbs at a time like this? I find myself longing to tell them they are cared for, they are loved.
And where was God during the NATO bombing?
Right there where the bombs were falling
Suffering with the people.

"There was once a people, feared and hated

and despised the length and breadth of Europe. They were called the vikings, -the modern day Norwegians. But God took that people, changed them, and made them a blessing to the other peoples of the world.
And there is another people, at present (april 1999) feared, hated and despised throughout Europe: the Serbs. But God wishes to take them, transform them, bless them and make them a blessing.
--What God has done with you Norwegians, can He not also do with the Serbs?

Shutting the stable door

Wednesday the 7th of April 1999.
My views of Serbia and of Serbs has been shaken to its foundation, and the sensation will not go away.
NATO has resumed the bombing. Our church holds a prayer-meeting about the Kosovo Crisis. The invitation to share prayer requests is given, but telling about my experience earlier that week doesn't quite seem to fit in. I hold back, but regret it afterwards, and tell the pastor after the meeting is over. He asks me to email the information to him, which I do, but the frustration of not speaking about things still hangs over me...

How Typical of God!

5th of April 1999
Was it real? or do I have an over-active imagination?
And yet my impressions from yesterday hang heavy upon me, and feel especially frustrating as I could not pass on the message straightaway (although I accept the wisdom of that decision).
I have had this kind of conviction come over me before. That doesn't give me a carte blanche to say what ever I feel like, though, and both the speaker and the hearer have a responsibility to check out the truth of a Word. What criteria am I to test this Word by?
Well, nothing seems unbiblical: that God loves the Serbs, I can see from the Bible; that God does not want the death of any, I know (-and it will be literal death once the bombs start falling again!) And I know God wishes to bless people everywhere.

But as I think of my Easter experience three things strike me especially as making this, "prophecy" ring true. (Let's call it that, even if it does sound pretentious.)

1. the unexpectedness. It was completely contrary to the current public opinion and definitely not something I felt already. On the contrary, given all that negative press and the continual stigmatization of the Serbs, I was more inclined to approve of the NATO reaction if anything!
2. the experience left me with a completely new sense of love, concern and identification with the Serbs and their plight. I felt like I was vibrating in harmony with heart of our Lord.
3. the positive content of the message:
   

Mankind wants punishment,
God longs to forgive;
Mankind uses force to solve things,
God prefers a change of heart.
Man stoops to bombing, war, destruction and hate,
God stoops to bless.

--How typical of God!

"But if that is to happen, then something will have to change...?"

4th of April 1999. NATO has agreed to a pause in its bombing of Serbia over Easter. What can I do, but pray: "What about the Serbs, Lord?" And like a bombshell an answer, unexpected both in shape and message, comes to me. I sense the Lord's longing to bless that people, to heal and help them. Bombs from the sky are the last thing He wishes for. Rather, He wishes to see them turning to Himself, finding comfort and renewal.

"But if that is to happen, then something will have to change...?" Again I sense something: I see a wave of sorrowful despair sweeping over Serbians; repentance, as they find how they have been made the alibi for things they would never have wished to happen. Then the scene changed. Something best described as like sunshine coming out from behind the clouds shining over the landscape. People changed; hearts melted; a blessing passed over the land and they were transformed. And then the blessing spread outwards, reaching the countries around them.

While this was going on, our congregation was being told how God intended to bless the Norwegians, and make them a blessing to the rest of the world. --The Norwegians, a blessing! The people once feared and hated up and down Europe, now a vehicle of God's blessing?

And the Lord gives me these words:

Behold, I show you a great wonder this day:

The Norwegians, --a people once feared, hated and despised the length and breadth of Europe--

I have taken, and transformed and made into a blessing for all peoples.

And I show you another great wonder this day:

The Serbs, --a people feared, hated and despised

I will take and I will bring great sorrow over that people and they shall repent,

and then I shall raise up change and transform them

And they will become blessed

And a blessing to the nations around them!