Visions for Everyday Christians – James Coleman on his new book
James Coleman, the co-vicar at Silverstream Parish published a book in June of this year, ‘Visions for Everyday Christians’, and has shared some thoughts on his own experience of receiving visions and how he was inspired to tell this story.
It feels awkward writing about your own book, so to avoid too much cringe, I’ll tell you mainly about how I came to write it.
Remember, when we could travel? Well, last year Julia and I went on a sabbatical to the United States. The main point of the trip was to attend the Global Summer Intensive course in Pennsylvania, which is part of the ministry of a guy called Randy Clark. The main drawcard was that it was billed as an intensely practical Holy Spirit course. And so it proved to be.
Twice a week we were sent out to street evangelise in the neighbourhoods around Harrisburg and Mechanicsburg. And their idea of street evangelism was praying for healing or getting words of knowledge for people right there on the street. In other words, it was about demonstrating the reality of the Kingdom of God. If you’ve seen any Todd White videos that will give you an idea of what it was like. The rest of the time, there was great worship and amazing teaching from a huge variety of people, including ministry time, where the Holy Spirit did things that I had only read about and never experienced first-hand.
It was during one of the periods of extended worship that I felt God tell me to write a book for Christians on how to experience visions. To be specific, He spoke to me in a vision I was having while I worshipped.
In that intense environment, nothing seemed impossible. So full of faith but with no real idea of how to actually write a book, I started typing as soon as we arrived home. In God’s goodness, the words were just there. Over the next two months or so, it seemed like God had cleared my diary. The only thing to do was write, and so I did.
The book is all about how to have and to handle visions. It is full of stories of people experiencing visions both through history and right now. The right now stories are from ordinary everyday Christians, including people that worship at St Mary’s Silverstream.
My heart with the book is that it helps people grow in intimacy with God by expanding the channels through which we are comfortable hearing from him. You can pick up a copy at Manna Christian books or through the website www.christianvisions.co.nz
By James Coleman
