Let me say this as clearly as I can today, Jesus is alive and it has changed everything!
Early on this day, years and years ago, Mary was on her way to the tomb where Jesus had been laid, lifeless. She had with her spices and the things she needed to prepare Jesus’ body for burial and say her final goodbyes.
When she got there she found the stone had been rolled away and only the grave clothes remained in the tomb.

On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.
Luke 24v1-2

What struck me about this, and to be honest made me think about how I live my Christian life, is that Mary expected nothing different, just what she knew, what she could see and what she had experienced.
This is normal and totally understandable, but it isn’t how God works. He does the impossible; he works in the unimaginable and he reveals the limits of our understanding.
It wasn’t just Mary who couldn’t see this at first, the disciples struggled with it too. These men who had followed Jesus were downcast, feeling utterly miserable and grieving for him. They couldn’t see, couldn’t even hope that what Jesus had told them would happen had actually taken place.
What’s this got to do with you and me today? Well, I’ve seen the unexpected, I’ve seen God rebuild destroyed families. I’ve seen the most beaten lives born again. I’ve seen grace and love poured out in valleys of despair and chaos. I’ve also been in those valleys myself and I’ve seen and experienced the impossible, the hope and unity through brokenness that only Jesus can bring.
Jesus is alive and he has changed everything! We can be made new men and women free from sin, guilt and shame. In short, we can be restored. Peace and hope are available to us.
Approach Jesus today and expect the unexpected, be ready for the impossible, believe that this is what he does. Let me leave you with this from the Apostle Paul, his life was a perfect example that in God, nothing is impossible!

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen
Ephesians 3:20-21

Image Credit: Ashim D’Silva

“Be strong. Take courage. Don’t be intimidated. Don’t give them a second thought because God, your God, is striding ahead of you. He’s right there with you. He won’t let you down; he won’t leave you.”
Deuteronomy 31:6

I was at a social event recently with Carl, the President of CVM. We had a good time chatting over a tandoori chicken samosa and Carl mentioned something to me about 10 seconds of courage.
A colonel in the British Army had said to him that what they have seen in battle situations is that just ‘10 seconds of courage’ will initiate a persons ability to enter combat, I was fascinated with this.
Have you ever been in that situation where you want to speak about Jesus to someone but you’re stuck for words? Have you been with a friend and after they have finished talking about some difficulty they are facing think ‘oh I could offer to pray’ but you’re stuck for words? I am sure there are countless scenarios and situations that are common with us fellas here but I want to suggest that this idea of ‘10 seconds of courage’ may help.
A mate of mine was chatting to me after we had been playing darts, about life, health and the struggles he was going through. I felt the need to offer to pray. I had offered before but he had declined, so I was anxious. I thought about this ‘10 seconds of courage’ and went for it …. he declined, again. Not how you thought this was going to end was it!
The point is this was never about success being measured in whether or not he let me pray, or if God healed him or did some sort of other miracle in that moment, it was about me being obedient and asking anyway. So it was a success.
Thankfully that story doesn’t end there and subsequently we shared some really deep stuff together about our lives and how we both felt God saw us. It was a really powerful moment and just 10 seconds of courage had initiated it.
As you embrace this ‘10 seconds of courage’, it might not end or go how you think it will, it may be a mess and you’ve stepped out to share Jesus and feel like a clown. Be encouraged, you stepped out! Measure success from that place not the expectation that you’ve just converted the next Billy Graham.
10 Seconds of courage will get you into the fight, into the battle.

Image Credit: Patrick Hendry

So if I’m honest, I’m not the most romantic bloke in the world. It’s not outside of my skillset but it just doesn’t happen naturally at times, so Valentines’ day can be a bit stressful.
I had a look at the history of Valentines’ day, and was surprised to see that Valentine was a Christian martyr paying the ultimate price for love. It is suggested that Bishop Valentine in around 250 AD was secretly conducting marriages even though Emperor Claudius II had told the Bishops not to during wartime. For obvious reasons Claudius was unhappy and had Valentine imprisoned and executed. Even though Valentines name is still remembered his act of self-sacrifice has been long forgotten.
Why am I writing this short and concise history lesson? Well I think that celebrating love is so important and whilst we can lose ourselves trying to pick a card for Valentines’ day, what we are trying to do is celebrate love.
The bible has an incredible section in it where Jesus is talking to his mates about love and he says this: ‘Love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down ones life for his friends.’ John 15:12-13
Now, by including this sort of verse here we have basically removed all the romanticised, chocolate bunnies and heart shaped cards – sorry about that. But this is important because Bishop Valentines’ love wasn’t about chocolate bunnies and cards it was about loving, serving and caring for people. This love cost him his life.
What I want to suggest is that if you have a ‘valentine’ and share your heart shaped card with them, also consider the day and the history behind it and the on-going way you want to share your love. You might think I’ve taken this too far, but let me ask you a question: is it OK to say we love one person but hate another? Is it OK to show love in our actions to one person but actively destroy and criticise someone else? Is it OK to send chocolates and heart shaped cards to the one we love but join the ridicule and cutting banter of someone in the work place?
Valentines’ day is a day to show love, but it is just a day, one day. I believe the love Jesus calls us to show is a lifestyle, a rhythm of love that influences your actions and reactions everyday. As men who love profoundly, we are called to let that love impact the core of who we are as followers of Jesus.
So as you celebrate love, yeah, eat the chocolates like no ones watching – go for it, but also remember Bishop Valentine and his act of love. Then top that by considering the act of love shown to us by Jesus, you are no longer called servants but friends says Jesus, love has changed everything!

Image Credit: Mayur Gala

I heard this story the other day and I really like it, (I hope it is what actually happened!!), it goes like this:

In 1910, William Booth the founder of the Salvation Army, was coming towards the end of his earthly life. It was Christmas Eve, and it was to be Booths last.
General Booth was set to give an address at the opening of the Salvation Armies’ annual convention. As it turned out he was not well enough to do it in person, so a suggestion was made that he could write a message to be sent via telegram and that could be read out aloud to the people gathering at the convention.
The message was written by General Booth, and given to the moderator to stand and read to the thousands of expectant delegates. The telegram was opened, and inside was just one word, one message:
Others!
Signed General Booth.

Now I don’t know about you, but I think that is amazing. The Gospel message we have is made up of this incredible DNA, ‘others’. Jesus modeled this, taught this and lived it and then put the icing on the cake by instructing us to all go and do likewise.
‘Share the good news, tell the world about me’ says Jesus, because this is the way, this is it!
This Christmas we should take time to reflect on this, because it is a massive challenge. Refugees, the sick, the hungry, the tired, the outcast, the lonely, they are all there; many on our doorsteps and in our towns. Of course they have been there all year not just suddenly appeared at Christmas. But sometimes we need to stop, look around us and actually see others, and very often Christmas is one of the best times to remind us to do that.
Why? Because perhaps we remember Jesus more than ever at this time of year, the time when Gods plan which had been laid in the foundations of time was finally revealed to the world. A baby upon whose shoulders the salvation of all mankind would rest. Jesus accomplished the greatest work of all and set in motion the greatest command of all, ‘love one another’. Love one another.
‘Others’ was General Booths final message to the world, ‘others’.
Have a fantastic Christmas, see you in 2017!
Image Credit: Aaron Burden

You may be aware that it was recently ‘International men’s day’, and this year the focus was on raising awareness of the high levels of suicide amongst men – CVM fully supported this initiative and wrote a few articles and and even conducted a radio interview or two! I was sitting in bed the other night reading the news and noticed that we now have a record number of prison suicides in the UK since records of this began in 1978.
I started to read into this stuff a bit more and got in touch with the Howard League for Penal Reform, (who conducted the research) because I wanted to know how many of these suicides were men.
Obviously we’ve got more men in prison so we are going to expect to see more men than women in this equation but it still hits hard when you look at the numbers.

In 2015 there were 89 self-inflicted deaths in Prison, 84 of those were men, and in 2016 of the 102 self-inflicted deaths in 2016, 92 were men.

One of the fundamental things my Christian faith has instilled in me is,I think, core to understanding some of this. Hope. In the prisons I have been in (visiting of course), both in the UK and in Latin America there has been an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. Now of course I am not currently working in prisons, and this is based on what I have experienced in the past, but one of the counter moves I think we have as a Christian community is hope. We speak it, live it and even when we need a large portion of it ourselves we embrace it.
It is so easy for us to talk about hope in a Christian sense without the hopeless situation where it is forged and honed. I was reminded of King David’s hope as he found himself in some deep and desperate valleys of despair.
The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
Psalm 23
Hope is part of the plan, it’s an anchor that bites in deep when everything else seems to be pulling away. Letters of hope, words of encouragements, visits and intentionality. Imagine a men’s group that decide to visit men in prison with the chaplaincy team, just intentional about being a source of hope, writing and not forgetting. As a church we can think outside of what we know and do at the moment, and as agents of hope, we can see lives rescued and men discover Jesus, the true meaning of hope.
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Image Credit: Kalle K

So you might have seen that as well as this being ‘Movember,’ Saturday is International Men’s Day, a day that has been set up to recognise and explore the concerns and challenges that men face. This year the specific focus is; Stop Male Suicide.
I am sure there will be some who think that International Men’s Day is just trying to do the old ‘if they have a day we want one too’ idea. But the point is that having a day to recognise issues facing men and a day to recognise the issues facing women is fantastic. To make this even more exciting, this week the House of Commons have met to talk about the issues facing men and International Men’s Day.
For over a decade CVM have been speaking about the issues facing men and in particular men in church, and have been supporting the church to respond with a long-term evangelistic strategy. We have seen thousands of men respond, lives dramatically transformed and taken from the very point of despair to an abundant new life. Part of the work of CVM has been to emphasise the importance of enabling the right conditions for men to be real, honest, open and share with other men what life is really like. The embarrassment of a dodgy prostrate, a marriage failure or redundancy that brought in the black clouds of depression.
This stuff is real, and what we have seen is that as we enable men to build friendships, to share their faith and lives whilst doing stuff they actually want to do (like eating, sport or burning stuff, did I miss anything?) men will talk, share and deal with things.
We have been building relationships with mental health experts to help produce resources later in 2017. These will help and equip our network of 500 men’s groups to support and signpost men who need to connect with the mental health charities that are available, but just don’t have the fight to get to that point themselves. The challenge is that the UK Christian church can be an incredibly positive force at the centre of this stuff, supporting, sign posting, loving and caring for broken men, lonely men, and men that just need to be part of a band of brothers to get moving again and get back in the fight.
For me, this is part of sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ, this is rolling up our sleeves and being willing to not just invite a bloke to church one Sunday, but journey right through the chaos, and invest in a long term plan to see a culture shifting amount of men discover real life in Jesus!

So I discovered on YouTube recently this bloke, Willard Wiggins.
Wiggins makes pieces of artwork that are inside the eye of a needle, stuff so small that he works with a microscope to work his art.
To give you an idea, Wiggins once made an elephant sculpture from a grain of sand, and the tail on the elephant was a strand of floating dust he plucked from the air.
He paints his masterpieces with a single hair, plucked from a houseflies back! How incredible is that? I have trouble even seeing the words on my laptop let alone using a flies hair to paint with.
Well, maybe the best bit in this little story is that recently, Wiggins sold his life works to a collector for $20 million dollars. Doesn’t sound so weird anymore.
The point is here, I think that in the busyness we are in our are creating around ourselves we can miss the small stuff that can actually make a huge difference in our lives.
Elijah in the Bible was on the run after defeating the prophets of Baal. (An amazing story and if you haven’t read it go and have a look in 1 Kings 18:20-40)
So Elijah is threatened after this, and runs and he is feeling lost and needing some encouragement in the battle he was in. God calls him out of the cave to stand on the side of the mountain as God’s presence passes by.
A great wind ripped the rocks of the mountain, but nothing, then a huge earthquake rattle the stone beneath his feet, nothing. Then a fire broke but still nothing. Then the bible says Elijah heard a gentle wind, like a whisper and it was there he found the presence of God almighty pass by.
If you had shown me Wiggins’ artwork, and put a needle in front of me I wouldn’t of even looked twice. Too small, to subtle, something that tiny can hold the masters work. Surely?
In your busyness, created or self inflicted, what does this still, small voice like a whisper look like to you? Have you heard it? Would you hear it?
Setting aside time to be still and quiet, with no distraction, no music, no agenda, and just come before God almighty on his terms, to allow space to tune yourself to his voice is all that is needed. Mighty men have conquered kingdoms and overthrown great powers, by finding the smallest of voices, smallest of moments with the greatest of all.

GETTING THE GEAR AND MAKING THIS SOCIAL
When I started my Ironman training the first thing I did was get the right gear I needed: trainers, shorts and spent hours looking at bikes. (Didn’t buy one don’t panic!) Before I had even started to train my swim, ride or run I was online looking at the right stuff I needed to compete.
CVM have spent more than a decade building up the right gear for you to grow in your faith, to build a passion and heart for the gospel and to forge a desire to reach the lost blokes around us.
We have a network of men’s groups that will put fuel on the fire and get stuff really moving. We have seen guys meet Jesus through the resources, the men’s groups and events all over the UK. We know that this stuff works, and getting the right resources, gear and standing with a band of brothers is essential. BUT!
The gear, resources and strategy without the heart and conviction to do something for the kingdom of God will be useless. You need to give a stuff about the blokes you know who don’t know Jesus, and that it bothers you that these fellas are skipping into hell without a voice calling them from that path. Otherwise it’s a bit like me shopping for trainers when I don’t even want to go running.
I’m sorry if that sounds harsh, actually, no I’m not sorry at all. The reality is we need to care, we need to reach our mates with the good news that Jesus is alive. I remember hearing our Scottish Director, Stephen, telling me his testimony over a cheeky Chinese meal. He said ‘all these Christian fellas would talk to me about the weather, football, cars but never tell me about Jesus!’
We have got the best news guys, our saviour is alive! Here at CVM we want to resource you, tool you up for the fight and plug you into a group of guys that have caught the evangelism virus and are sneezing over everyone. (sorry, awful illustration!)
Our heart is that you stand with us, build that heart for the lost men around you and commit to being part of the team reaching out. We can do it, we can see the culture shifting, with the amount of men saved in the UK impacting this country incredibly. We can see families gospel, communities, towns and villages impacted with the Gospel and set ablaze with Jesus people.
Don’t do what I did with the Ironman! Count the cost, get fuelled up, be transformed and with the right gear, together we can see a million men introduced to Jesus!
Image Credit: Martin Kníže

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A few times when I was at the gym training for the half Ironman, I would be on the treadmill and just give up. I would be running well, and be on around 45 minutes, slight knee pain, bit of discomfort but ok, then I would just literally stop running, switch off the machine and go home.
After thinking it through I realized I was actually losing the mental, mind battle that you need to train for the long haul.
I would start this inner Q and A in my head whilst running through the boredom. ‘Why am I doing this? This is enough, I have run far enough today, I need to get to work, quick shower and I can go home, it’s nearly lunch time, was that my phone ringing?’
Once that Q and A had started the inevitable happened and I just stopped, it was so powerful that all the work getting to gym, all the food I had eaten for that training session, the time and energy spent just getting this couple of hours to train was wasted. Weird, or is it?
A section in the bible I love is this:

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is–his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
Romans 12:2

I think that when we give ourselves over to Jesus, to his plans, his power and his will, even our minds can be transformed. When you get pitched a curved ball in life where does your mind go? When the wheels come off and the toys have all been thrown from the pram where has your mind gone? Sounds silly but even when we don’t get things our own way or in our preferred timing, when our favorite team loses or we suffer some sort of defeat, where does your mind go?
‘That’s it! I can’t do it anymore.. I have had enough’ (That’s where mine can go.) How about when you try something, you step out and stick your head up and friendly fire knocks you back? You take criticism and ridicule for being that bloke who tried something. Then where does your mind go?
I think that this transforming of our minds is gradual but so vital in forging gospel men, a new kind of man who can take defeat and get up again. A new kind of man who can lift his head and know that the field he fights in, the strength he has and the identity he carries is more than his own. When our minds are transformed to be like that of our saviour we take on a new way of thinking, a new way of being us. When that happens we are able to begin to test and see what Gods will is! Instead of our mind folding inwards and imploding, we can see beyond and get a glimpse of the bigger picture being formed.
Image Credit: Martin Kníže

Another essential part of training for a triathlon, that I had helpfully ignored was the need to give the body the right fuel and at the right times.
If I am honest this came to a head after I had been eating a huge dinner at 8:30pm followed by a glass of wine to wash it down and a slice of chocolate fudge cake. (The one with a moist chocolate centre)
I sat there, feeling ill with horrendous heart burn having planned to go running on a 6 mile hilly course the next morning at 6am. Yeah, it didn’t happen, instead I popped a couple of Rennies.
Getting the right fuel in when training for stuff like this is so important, physical instructors at the gym are always talking about winning the war in the kitchen before you get onto the treadmill.
Let me be really honest here, whenever I talk to a Christian bloke who is struggling or has hit a wall in his life or some form of temptation, I will always get the same response to this question: ‘Tell me about your prayer life and when and how you read and study the bible?’ The response is this, ‘er…yeah struggling with prayer actually,’ or ‘yeah I haven’t picked up my bible in a long time.’ The apostle Paul talks about being ready to ‘devote ourselves to prayer!’ Now that’s serious stuff! Colossians 4:2
Your personal life and intimacy with God is the fuel and it is essential to being able to run this race, cover some serious ground and see stuff happen.
Think of it this way. If I had a seed and wanted to plant that seed to help it grow I would do a few things. I would prepare the ground, ensure that it was in a spot to get a load of sun, plant the seed and ten keep it watered.
Think about how you fuel the seed of faith that has been planted in your life or that you are sowing into the lives of others. (It is important to say that God makes these grow, that’s what He does) but our part is to ensure it is being given the right stuff!
When we struggle with temptation, or to pray or read the bibles the challenge is to have a look at the fuel we are putting in. Many times when I have done this in my own life and with others, what we have found is instead of feeding the seed with prayer, the bible and honest living with other Christians, the seeds getting a cocktail of compromise, secret sin and zero prayer and bible time. Yet we are still surprised that our faith is struggling!!!
Get the right fuel in, get yourself alongside some Christian fellas with undefended hearts, pray and read God’s word and your faith will be fuelled beyond belief!
Image Credit: Martin Kníže