DAVIDSECCOMBE.COM has had a time of lying fallow. Recently, and very kindly, Belinda of Small Blue Dog updated the front page with news that The Gospel of the Kingdom was finally in print and paid for. Thanks go to the many crowd-funders, who made it possible, whom I have enrolled as “shareholders” of Whitefield Publications. My hope is that The Gospel of the Kingdom may not be a one-off, but the first of other books and publications of help to God’s people.
A word about myself, my silence, and my prospects! In April 2016 I began having intense trigeminal nerve pains, which turned out to be caused by a large brain tumour . This was a regrowth of an acoustic neuroma removed thirty years ago. It was benign and very slow growing. Because I had already lost the hearing on my right side there were no symptoms of the regrowth until the tumour started pressing on my central brain stem, causing the neuralgia pains. The growth was removed on 6th June by Professor Marcus Atlas and his team. It was a good 6-7 hours in the doing, better than the 11 hours it took back in 1987. Surgical technique has improved! The removal was successful, but the inevitable trauma to the 5th and 7th cranial nerves has left the right side of my face without feeling or muscular control. It is like coming home from the dentist and waiting for the local anaesthetic to wear off – only it has been like that for 3 months! Professor Atlas is confident, however, that muscles will start to work anytime after 6 months. For the time being I do not look exactly like my home page picture!
King Hezekiah wrote these words of his life-threatening illness: “Lord, by such things men live; and my spirit finds life in them too.” (Isaiah 38) We do not control much of our life; it is given to us by God. His people know that the good and the bad flow equally from his loving care. He is building a new world and suffering is entailed. What matters is that we honour him by trusting him and playing our part well as we look to his hand for the future.
The night before last (30 August) The Gospel of the Kingdom was launched in Perth. Ninety people attended and I had the joy of nswering a number of questions posed me by Rory Shiner, the minister of Providence Church. I have often said to people (and to myself): “A person can only do what God gives to them to do.” I was grateful that I could speak to a crowd and be understood, and have prayed that I may yet be restored to preach God’s Word regularly. But if not … there is always the website!
There is a lot that I would like to write or edit and put up on the website. I ask myself whether I will have the stamina to do it. God will decide. But as these things find their answer I have the joy of three grandchildren and another two on the way, a wife who has been my nurse and brought me such joy, and four children, each of them walking with the Lord Jesus. What more could a man want? My immediate task is to prepare for a team of visitors from GWC. They will arrive in Perth next week, head for Sydney, where Lorraine and I will join them, and then back to Perth for a series of meetings before returning to South Africa. After that I want to get a booklet on Christian Family available for this site.
I have much to thank God for – not least for preserving me in my family to this day. With a plebiscite on the same-sex marriage early in the new year Christianity may be in the spotlight and Bible-believing churches under attack. God grant us the wisdom and courage to speak well.