Welcome

Welcome – and ‘well come’ – whether for the first or the many-ith time, it is a joy to have you visit, and a delight to share something of the riches of life in Christ with you. Here you will find many hundreds of posts on a wide variety of themes written to nurture our walk with the Lord, and to develop our understanding of the spiritual impact we can exercise for the Lord – along with hundreds of beautiful songs and glorious pieces of music that we have recorded with highly gifted musicians. Some will bring deep comfort, while others will hopefully open up fresh avenues of thought and prayer.

Do make good use of the Search button to track down topics you are particularly interested in. I pray that the Ruach Spirit of God will breathe on you as you do so. He is the One who brings to life all that is of God in us, by the power and the gentleness of His Spirit – and to Him be all the glory!

How this ministry emerged and evolved

In 2026 it will be the 50th anniversary of dedicating my life to the Lord Jesus Christ. It has been an adventure from the moment that He first revealed Himself to me half-way through my second year at Oxford. When I was approaching the end of my degree course, I sensed the Lord telling me not to apply for any jobs, but to wait on Him to show me the way ahead. Just before my final exams, the Vicar and leadership team of the church I was attending, St Clements, invited me to come onto the staff in an evangelistic capacity. It was a fruitful three years, and a wonderful opportunity to work both in the parish and with students at both universities in Oxford.

At the same time, the Lord was lighting up passage after passage in the Scriptures, both to me and to the group of students I knew best, particularly the writings of the prophets. This soon developed into a strong burden to pray for national and international matters, and to rouse and rally the Church toward a deeper commitment to prayer and intercession – especially in the light of what God was revealing about the state of the Church and nation. From the moment that I came to the Lord Jesus I understood something of just how much He longs that others should know Him too – and to be willing to pray about the things that keep people from Him.

On the basis that intercession has been a major part of the Lord Jesus’s ministry since the Resurrection, as well as during His time on Earth, it is so important for the Body of Christ to apply Paul’s call to pray for those in authority in a heartfelt rather than just a ‘formal’ way (1 Tim. 2:1-8; Heb. 7:25, Rom. 8:34) After all, pretty well every time we are in touch with other believers we share matters that are ‘prayer-worthy’ – but is it not all too often the case that our conversation remains at a conversational level, rather than taking things a step further and actually committing matters to the Lord? It is when we seek His face that He moves most! Praying with friends is particularly precious, because we know and trust each other, and can pray freely from the heart. May we be ever on the lookout to do just that!

Chester and beyond

When the Lord sent me to Chester in late 1980, as an elder and lay reader in a lively Anglican church, I was again concerned to harness the strength of believers being together to make corporate prayer a priority. I taught widely on these matters, and, together with Russ Howell, the pastor of Hoole Baptist church, encouraged the leaders from four of the main churches in the city to meet regularly together. For many years this proved a dynamic initiative, as we met together as a joint leadership team, organising regular celebration evenings in the city, as well as regular prayer meetings for it.

Ever since being invited to minister at the annual conference of the Musicians’ Christian Fellowship in 1981, where Richard Williamson was doing a sterling work amongst classical musicians, I have been privileged to develop the vision of integrating music into the heart of my ministry. Foundational to this was my understanding of the important role that music can play not just for pleasure and entertainment but in making the Lord Jesus known, and in helping us to go deeper with Him.

It has been a consistent joy and privilege to work closely with fine professional musicians, who love to use their gifts not only to lead worship and to develop musical skills in others, but to explore how worship and intercession can interact in powerful ways together, as opposed to separating out worship, teaching and prayer as separate ‘slots’ in a meeting. As we make room for Him, the Lord loves it when musicians with creativity and life-giving energy blend and integrate Word and Spirit in life-giving ways. It is a wonderfully imaginative and joyous way to bless the Lord and one another, as well as to pray for the people, situations and nations that we are concerned about.

The burden the Lord had given me for the nations found expression in setting up a ministry that was called Message for our Times, (MFOT) in which worship and intercession for things we sensed were on God’s heart would occupy a central place, alongside more regular ministry. For twenty years, I led week-long conferences, mainly in Malvern in Worcestershire, but in numerous other venues too, which brought much personal blessing to people, as well as enabling people to engage in passionate intercession for the nations. By integrating this beautiful blend of teaching, music, worship and fervent intercession we endeavoured to make these public meetings as free-flowing and participatory as possible.

I shared God’s heart for the nation in many other ways in the retreats and conferences I was invited to minister at, including many joint churches from various denominations, often with the worship group Wellspring – but also at events for specific professions, including the Probation Service, Midwives, Lawyers Christian Fellowship, and the Musicians Christian Fellowship. God is so concerned for every aspect of our lives and careers!

It was a special joy to minister to the joint churches and to groups of classical musicians in Dresden and other cities in Germany shortly after the Berlin Wall came down, as well as to organise several other nationwide initiatives, include Britain and Ireland United in prayer (2000) and Fight for this Nation (2001) both operating out of UCB, (United Christian Broadcasting) and involving dozens of prayer movements and churches, as well as week-long initiatives such as Fire from the North (Shetland 2005) and Fire from the Isles (Jersey 2008).

Even whilst I was travelling, speaking, teaching and praying, however, I knew that I was also being called to spend considerable time with the Lord, and to develop a contemplative ‘strand’ to complement (rather than to compete with) the evangelical and the charismatic. I sought to share the blessings and benefits of this intimacy with God with others by making space for people to wait on the Lord in retreat, and to go deeper in their relationship with the Lord, as well as teaching on such subjects as listening to the Lord.

The Lord was also making it clear to me that although He had anointed me as a preacher, my main ministry was to write. I now devote much of my time here in Malvern to writing insights and reflections to guide the Body of Christ in wider prayer through spiritual insights and points for prayer. Whilst some of these are purely spiritual reflections, others take the form of ‘journalism from a scriptural perspective’. These play an important educational and balancing role in providing a source of sound information in a world of disinformation, where overemphasis on certain matters has unfortunately affected all too many parts of the worldwide church.

This website is the shop window for Ruach Breath of Life Ministries. It is a set apart place where you are invited to come apart to seek the living God, our Father through His Son, Jesus Christ. I pray you will encounter Him as you enter and explore, and that you will find here things that refresh, nourish and inspire you.

Behind many of the episodes I have hinted at it this overview – the call to Chester, the miracle that was required to free me from a previous appointment to be able to minister at the Musicians’ Christian Fellowship, from which so many connections and blessings flowed – and then later to enable spending an extended sojourn in Shetland, lie wonderful stories of the Lord’s leading. I have shared many of these in various books that are freely available in attractive format on the website www.ruachministries.co.uk. As you explore and make good use of the READ section, you will find many gems there!

I would encourage you to immerse yourself, too, in the Lord’s presence with the numerous Sound Clouds, where you will find much music, teaching, and prayer, as well as specific albums and series that you will find under the LISTEN button, as well as in the play lists by anointed singer-song writers such as Linda Louisa and Carol Sampson. May these rich offerings play their part in blessing and furthering your walk with Him.

Robert Weston,
Malvern 2025

Reflection

It gives the Lord Jesus great pleasure when He sees us seeking Him with all our hearts. Much of my ministry has been devoted to leading believers into ‘wider’ prayer for national as well as personal issues, and for discerning trends and trajectories that the Lord would have us take up in prayer – but most of us instinctively find praying for big issues daunting!

A good way to approach such wider prayer is to start by praying for someone we know personally and then going wider from there. For instance, if you are concerned for education, or wanting to pray for health and hospitals: we all know people who go to school, whether as children or as teachers, just as we know people who either work in hospitals or who are attending one as a patient. From praying for the one, we can expand the circle and pray for the whole of the establishment they are involved in, and then for those in the region and so on, thereby moving from ankle deep, to knee deep to ‘swimming’ in prayer for that particular topic.

Similarly, when it comes to keeping our hearts clear and free in the Lord, why not go round the ‘circles of our life to see if we are holding ‘aught against any’ and need to forgive or to seek forgiveness? Whether circles of our immediate family, or our church family, or our neighbours, or our colleagues at work – it is always a blessing to bless others, and it keeps the Spirit flowing freely through us.

Statement of Faith: please click here.

Photo by Sally Mowbray