Just back from some lonely hills

Just got back from a week in the UK in gorgeous Cumbria, visiting the school with H and picking up B at the end of term. Stayed in a cottage in the fells where George Fox stayed in the late 1600's, and which was used as a meeting place for early Quakers. Have read some of George Fox's journal recently. Incredible reading. We could have written it; what he says is so like what the Lord has shown us about church. Just goes to show that what the Holy Spirit shows people in any age is always up to date and always the same truth.

From the letters of George Fox

"Everyone in your measure

wait upon God, who is the true shepherd, and leads his flock into the green pastures, and fresh springs he opens daily; this you will see and experience. And mind that which is pure in one another, which joins you together; for nothing will join, or make fit, but what is pure; nor unite, nor build but what is pure. Therefore in every particular, fear God; for whatsoever you build of yourselves will not stand, but will tumble down again; although it be as gold, or silver, or brass, or iron, the strength of all these things, which is above the pure in you, will come to nothing, and this will not unite with the pure. Therefore wait everyone in the measure which God has given you; and none of you be hearers only, but doers of the word. And so, walk in the truth, and be you all servants to it, and it will lead you out of the world. The world would have the truth to serve them to talk of, to trade with, and to contend with; these are the wells without water, these are the trees without fruit. But they who dwell in the spirit of the Lord, which is pure, which joins together, and unites and builds up all in one spirit, see all these things, and are separated from them. So if you live in the spirit, and walk in it, you will not fulfil the lusts of the flesh, which will lead into uncleanness, and into adultery, and into that which despises dignity, which defiles the flesh, and goes from the pure. Therefore the pure faith is to be contended for; and those who were sanctified by God the Father, did contend for it, and were preserved by it in Christ Jesus. Therefore wait upon God for the living bread, that never fades away; which he that eats of, lives forever. So God Almighty bless you, and keep you in the measure of his gift, faithful to himself!