Spring Harvest has always held a very special place in my heart – as a young person I would travel to Skegness, to be spiritually fed and inspired, to see hundreds, if not thousands, of other people my age worshipping God. Just in case you haven’t heard of it, Spring Harvest is a Christian festival – essentially a bible week – with loads of teaching, seminars, workshops, worship, prayer, and so on. It’s for the whole family, with different streams of activities tailored for specific age ranges, and across all the sites and weeks about 20,000 people go in total. I would say that it is a large part of why I am a Christian today. So I was very excited when Spring Harvest came to Harrogate this year, and booked on it as soon as the lines opened. If I’m honest I wasn’t sure how well it would work – the whole Butlin’s thing is somehow a part of Spring Harvest. But I needn’t have worried!
The past few years have been really hard work as I’ve been training for ordination – lots of intellectual effort as we’ve studied theology together, and somewhere along the way I think that I’ve got either scared and/or cynical about emotions (and especially emotionalism). A sort of disconnect between head and heart, if you like. Of course we have to use our God-given brains, and critically assess and reflect on things… but we also need to use our God-given hearts, and love and be loved, and at times be overwhelmed and lost in (His) love.
And overwhelmed I was. My heart is lost to Jesus again, in a way that I’d lost sight of. I’ve rediscovered why I’m a Christian, let alone an ordained minister, and it is simply because of God’s love.
The key moment for me was one evening, when a big appeal was made from the front for people to become Christians. Maybe 5 or 10 people put their hands up, and my reaction (to my shame) was “Oh, that’s nice.” But 2 things happened which changed all that. The first was the speaker challenging our lukewarm reaction, by saying “If someone had just got out of a wheelchair, or if we’d seen a tumour shrink before our eyes, we’d be getting excited – but what’s happening here is a far more precious miracle, far more exciting.” The second was that, a few rows in front of me, a man of about my age put up his hand. The speaker said something about starting a new life in Jesus, and the man’s teenage daughter just leant against him, put her arms around him, and hugged him.
That was when the full weight of what was going on hit me, and I just wept. Her Dad, who had been lost, was now found. Her Dad, who could never “get” the most important thing in her life, was now a part of that. Her Dad, who had been missing out on so much, had come in from the cold and joined the party. Obviously I know nothing about that family situation (and I’m not suggesting that everything suddenly will be a bed of roses), but I’ve come across enough non-Christians husbands/fathers to know how much tension it can cause around money, time, Sundays, prayer, ethical choices, and so on. But much, much, more than this, Jesus is the most important person in my life. He gives my life meaning. Imagine not being able to share that with someone you love – and then at last person responds to God’s gentle love himself, to Jesus invitation freely given. I was seeing God’s grace in action, a life being saved, and it moved me to tears.
I was also deeply touched by some of the worship songs, in particular the Bethel song “You make me brave”. Even typing the words now is sending a shiver up my spine, and making my eyes prickle!
As your love, in wave after wave,
Crashes over me, crashes over me.
For you are for us, you are not against us
Champion of heaven you made a way for all to enter in.You make me brave.
You make me brave.
You call me out beyond the shore into the waves.
God loves us.
He loves you and he loves me.
He loves us passionately, recklessly, wantonly, extravagantly, overwhelmingly.
Jesus is calling you and me into something exciting, scary, dangerous, exhilarating, life-giving – the ride of our lives. The invitation is free, and it will cost everything. But it’s not down to us. It’s not our load to bear. Jesus has already done everything that needs doing. He makes me brave.
And do you know what else? I love Him back, recklessly and extravagantly. He is my everything.