Hills and Plateaus

Hills and Plateaus

After reading the latest TSM blog I feel provoked and I am sure I am not the only student from last year’s course that is feeling the same. Its not that I haven’t been pursuing living this naturally supernatural life that we learned so much about and which was modeled so well to us, in fact its been an amazing journey since TSM but like all journeys there have definitely been hills and plateaus.

Plateaus sound better than valleys don’t they but I’m not sure they are. They can be deceptively comfortable. When you are in a valley you know you are but when you are on a plateau you can get so used to it that it’s easy to forget you haven’t seen any hills or mountains for a while

Take yesterday for example. I had just spoken to a group of Mums in the morning about being intentional in raising their children to live a supernatural life and challenged them to take some risks with their children.

Two hours later I was shopping in town and was shocked as I realised how much I had plateaued in stepping out and speaking to people on the street and offering to pray for them. It hadn’t happened over night but subtly and gradually. I felt disappointed that not long ago there had been such joy and expectancy in my heart whereas now it felt distant and a bit out of reach. I then weakly prayed that if God wanted me to share his love or bless someone that I would.

I wish I could write how I was obedient but instead I lost courage…again, even though God clearly put someone in my path. I turned a corner of a street and found I was walking behind a woman who was walking slowly and tentatively with one crutch and carrying a heavy bag.

You know the conversations you have with yourself in those moments… “She will think I am some mad woman accosting her and talking about God and what if she doesn’t want prayer anyway”. As I walked past her and went on my way I felt massively disappointed at the fear of man that was crippling me.

Later I was in a prophetic/worship gathering. It was so good to be in God’s presence, which felt almost tangible, and I felt so free and so full of joy. This freedom and joy, is though, I thought what Jesus wants us to take to the lost and the broken and the hurting.

This morning I spent time with Jesus asking his forgiveness and realising that when I walked past that lady it was like I was walking past Jesus himself (Matt 25:40) What was at stake… my reputation? What was the worst that could have happened… that I might have been shunned or rejected? What did Jesus suffer and endure for us? He was despised and rejected. All so that we might have this life, this freedom, this joy. I was nailed in that moment.

One thing I heard last year was that when we mess up God still thinks we are amazing and loves us the same. That his love for us doesn’t depend on what we do for him i.e. ‘from approval rather than for approval’. To keep it real…I’m still learning to live that way.

One thing I do know is that God has called me to be a pioneer and not a settler and pioneers don’t stay long on the plateaus.

Who are you listening to?

How regularly do you remind yourself of prophetic promises God has spoken?

I did today and was so encouraged especially when I realised that I am actually living in some of the promises right now!

Remembering what God has said reminds us of who we really are.

When God created us, it says in Psalm 139, all our days were ordained for us before any of them came to be. God planned our destiny before we were even born.

I love how even the bad stuff that has happened to us is still part of our redemptive story and his greater purposes. How God’s unwavering steadfast love has remained with us from the very beginning. His steadfast love NEVER ceases

Recently I have had times, often in the night when arrows of discouragement and doubt have come my way and I have had to fight for the truth. The enemy knows where we are vulnerable.

Often I find it happens after I have stepped out and been courageous or God has used me in some way. Peter warns us in 1 Peter 5:8… to be alert and on the look out because the enemy prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to destroy.

We know the devil is liar and has been from the very beginning.

He still uses the same ploy that he used when he sowed seeds of doubt in Eve’s mind in the Garden of Eden. Did God really say?

His plan is to get us to doubt his goodness and to believe he is withholding good from us.

But…The Lord is a sun and a shield. He bestows favour and honour and no good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly in him.

Replacing the lies of the enemy, however subtle, with the truth of what God says about us needs to become a choice and a habit.

His steadfast love never ceases and is new every morning.

Why don’t you find promises God has spoken over you and re read them today and declare them out loud?

Reminding ourselves of what God has said in his word or of prophetic promises he has spoken to us encourages and strengthens us and calls out our destiny and identity in Christ and God never lies!

Our faith brings God pleasure

Without Faith it’s impossible to please him (Hebrews 11:6)

I wonder how you read this verse? Do you read it, as “I don’t have much faith, so its impossible for me to please him “or do you read it as” even though my faith is as small as a mustard seed it brings him pleasure”?

This morning I was reading from 2 Kings: 4 and I was struck by how Elisha lived from a place of faith all the time so that what he said or did came from a certainty that God was good. He looked through the eyes of faith. Elisha must have brought God much pleasure.

When the widow came to him desperate because her husband was dead and the ‘bailiffs’ were about to take her two sons who were all she had, Elisha asked her what she had in the house.

She looked at what she had… and despaired

He looked at what she had, however small… and saw it being multiplied!

When the Shunammite’s son lay dead Elisha believed God and raised him from the dead and when the pot of stew was deadly Elisha took flour and in faith purified it.

Faith must be more than words, it must be realised through our imagination and then acted upon. When the widow told Elisha she just had one jar of oil, he saw many jars of oil. She did as he said and gathered as many jars as she could and started filling them. It’s interesting that the oil stopped flowing when the jars ran out. If there had been more jars, would there have been more provision?

What is our level of expectation?

The question needs to be not how big is your faith but how big is your God?

The oil was enough to pay for the widow’s debts and enough to live on. Whatever we have we can still ask for more so we have enough to give away.

20 years ago, God called us as a family of 5 to go and serve a church in South Africa for 18 months and it required faith. Faith for someone to rent our house to, faith for the airfare, faith to live out there…

When we got there we soon realised that my husband’s work as a decorator was not required as much because people preferred to pay a lower wage to black decorators. This meant he only occasionally had work.

There were days I looked into a nearly empty fridge wondering how to feed 5 of us. Often I went to the supermarket to see what I could get with what I had and somehow we were never hungry. Either because carrier bags arrived on our doorstep or because God multiplied what I had to make it enough.

When it was our daughter’s birthday I wanted it to be special for her. I had made a card, made a cake and invited a few of her friends but couldn’t afford an outing or a present. In faith I rang the video store to hire a video for the party even though I knew I didn’t have the money. Shortly after putting the phone down there was a knock at the door and a friend’s child said “my mum told me to give you this” Into my hand she placed an envelope in which was the exact amount of the hire of the video. She told me later she had been driving past and felt God say to stop, empty out all she had in her purse and to give it to me!

Another time our ‘jar of oil’ was some bottle lids that could be taken to a store in return for a small amount of cash. It was our morning to help serve tea & coffee at church and to provide the milk. We didn’t have money to buy any milk but didn’t want to make it known until the last minute. I was helping to lead worship that morning and someone brought a word of knowledge in the worship time that there were people in the meeting who didn’t have what they needed and challenged the congregation to give an offering as an act of worship. I felt embarrassed knowing that God might be speaking about us. It’s humbling to be in a season of receiving. By the time we had left church that Sunday, a term’s school fees had been paid, the boot of our car had been filled with vegetables, we’d been invited out to lunch and later that afternoon someone brought us a box of food that even contained smoked salmon, something we didn’t need but God blessed us with anyway.

God wants to develop our faith and faith takes us out of our comfort zone. When we step out of the boat we step into the supernatural realm. That may be trusting him to meet your needs or the needs of others or it may be praying for the sick or sharing the gospel in the street. However small your faith it attracts God and brings him pleasure. The more we expect of God who is good all the time, the more our faith will grow… and without faith it is impossible to please him.

Changing the Atmosphere

I’m sitting in Costas. One of my favourite places to be where surrounded by strangers I feel like I’m with family, I can’t explain it but know that God has given me a love for the people I haven’t met before, who come and go there.

I’ve just spent two hours drinking coffee with a good friend who is hungry to see more of God, to know him more and to see the impossible become possible.

As we shared our dreams, our prayers, the things God has put on our hearts, the time went so quickly and I think we both felt the richness of the presence of God with us and on us.

I believe we affect the atmosphere around us as we share testimony and talk about the greatness of God

Just after my friend left, a lady came in and sat at the table next to me and started engaging in conversation with me. It seemed completely out of the blue and she told me three stories of how three complete strangers had recently shown her generosity either by paying for her when she had forgotten her purse, by returning some expensive sunglasses at great distance and cost to themselves and someone who found a ten pound note she had dropped and returned it to her. Her point was that there are more kind and honest people about than we think.

Why did she feel to share those encouraging stories with me? I’m not sure but I wonder if it was something to do with the atmosphere having been changed around where she was sitting.

I told her that I was a Christian and know that God is so generous that as his children he wants us to display his generosity to one another. She told me she was a Christian too and seemed to understand.

A few hours later I was in another café but this time with my husband who smiled at a man who passed our table. My husband’s smile led to a conversation where the man explained he would probably have to go home because he had forgotten his wallet. We offered to pay for his drink but he then remembered he’d left his wallet in the car in the car park. Today’s opportunities seemed to be all about money and being generous to a stranger.

The presence of God can be found not just in the church but in the market place too. We carry it! As the ark of God was carried and represented the presence of God, so we carry Christ… and his aroma brings the fragrance of the knowledge of him. It may be as we show kindness to someone who is struggling with lots of bags or a pram or bring physical touch or kind words and hope to someone who is upset or as we are drawn by his compassion to pray for someone. God with us and in us must bring peace, hope and healing because that is who he IS. He is generous, kind, full of mercy and truth. He brings hope to the hopeless, peace to the anxious, healing to the sick.

Dreams & Visions

Dreams and Visions

In the Bible we read that God often spoke to his servants through dreams and visions.

Up until a year ago I had only rarely had a dream that I could say confidently was from God. I had experienced two visions in my life and also been woken in the night a couple of times with a message for someone but most of the dreams I had that I actually remembered were mostly disjointed and a re-enactment of my day or after eating too much cheese!

A year ago I received a prophetic word over my life that in this next season God was going to open up a gate through dreams and visions and also that I was to believe for more of the miraculous and the supernatural. Since that time, I have begun to recognize God giving me dreams more often and I have started putting a notebook and pen beside my bed in case He wakes me up. I began noticing I was sometimes dreaming scripture, sometimes dreaming in a moving picture and sometimes I woke up with a clear sentence in my head.

One time I had a name being repeated over and over and because I was sleepy I hoped I’d remember it in the morning but then God began to show me pictures that went with the name and I knew I needed to wake up, put the light on and write it down. I am so glad I did as it was for someone who I had never met but was about to meet.

Having a dream is one thing and interpreting it is another. It’s so important to take the dream or vision we have back to God and ask him what it means, whether it is for us or for someone else and not attach our own meaning to it.

Since July and finishing TSM (Training in Supernatural Ministry) a course run by the Kings Arms church in Bedford, I was feeling equipped and ready to GO! I wondered what God had for me next. Wanting to keep in the lane God has for me to run in, I found myself thinking quite a lot about what that might be.

Some of the dreams this year have been from God telling me to be patient and to wait, others have been for the church and for a time not yet and more recently I had a dream where God showed me 5 different scenarios where I was sharing the gospel out in the market place and as a result I was late for a pre arranged church meeting. At first when I woke up and remembered the dream I wasn’t sure it was from God but later when I was spending time with Him, it became clearer and I felt he was telling me that this was what he had called me to, this was my lane, to go out and to tell others about his love for them. Not to feel I should be elsewhere, even overly busy serving in the church but that it was time to go out, releasing his kingdom and believing him for the miraculous and supernatural where people are. I knew God had given me a new passion and a confidence to speak to people and to offer to pray for them, something I didn’t have before, well not for a long time anyway.

Since having that dream, God has sent three situations across my path, all quite challenging but all invitations to go and share Jesus with someone. One was this week, to an old people’s home, to speak to a man with dementia who was asking if all that lay before him was just mere existence and then to die, another was meeting with a Muslim friend in a coffee shop where I got to talk this week about Jesus being the Son of God and then finally, today, meeting a friend who I hadn’t seen for 30 years but who had recently woken up from a dream with a picture of me in her head and who wanted to see me. Now partially sighted and also suffering with MS, I got to encourage her in her faith which she said she had never let go of and also pray for her healing.

I’d love to report that the man in the old people’s home and my Muslim friend had both become Christians, no, not yet! and that my other friend had been instantly healed. That would be wonderful?

It's actually though about listening and being obedient and on the way to the promise to keep taking steps of obedience. It’s about being available every day for the Holy Spirit to speak whether that’s through dreams, visions, and the Bible or the many and various ways he loves to talk to us.

I believe I will see people in this city of Brighton saved and healed and set free and until then I will keep running in the lane marked out for me.