I preached on the famous words in John 3:16 this morning. It was a guest service that the church had been building up to with a period of prayer and fasting. There were people standing at the back because all 400 seats had been taken. It was one of those great mornings, where the Pastor Richard Green turned to me in the second song and said: “We’ve run out of chairs”. So the “God Loves You” message seemed to go well, and 10 people responded for salvation in the first appeal, and a further 3 to a second.

One woman came up to me at the end and gave me a hug, without even saying hello! This doesn’t happen very often! It turned out her husband had just become a Christian 5 minutes earlier. They have been together for 15 years. These kind of stories are a huge encouragement to me. Brickhill is a Baptist church that can trace its roots all the way back to John Bunyan, and they go to two morning services next month. I really enjoyed being with them again. It’s many years since I was last there.

Tomorrow I will be driving over to Chorleywood to have lunch with my friend J John. John rang me in the summer of 1996, a phone call that God used to change my life. As a result of that phone call, I gave up my career as a sports journalist and went into church paid work as a church paid evangelist. He has been a provocation and an inspiration to me ever since. He’s someone who is absolutely bound to tell me the truth, so I will get in the car with a mixture of excitement and trepidation! J John has also been incredibly generous to my wife Julia, inviting her onto a women’s retreat, which was hugely beneficial to Julia, so we both owe John and his wife Killy a huge debt.

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