Wow  this months kinda slipped away from me a bit as far as bloggin is concerned!  Oh  well God has been really showin me some stuff so i thought i’d write about it…

…Last week in Fireschool Pastor Tim was talkin to us about Fasting, and I have to admit it wasnt a subject I was particularly passionate about but after the session I went into the House of Prayer to ask god to actually put a desire in my heart for fasting and I lay on the floor and simply prayed, as I lay there I felt God say to me that fasting was simply to substitute the things of this world for the things of the spiritual world. 

So to go without food and seek God is to look for the food that Jesus spoke about after he’d been talking with the samaritan woman at the well and he turned to his disciples and said ‘I have food you know nothing about’ the food he was refering to was doing the will of the Father.  And to fast and lie on the floor to seek God as David did is to leave behind doing things in the natural and trying to sort everything my way (although there is a time for doing things) and to say God “I need you to do this, in my own strength i can achieve nothing”.  All of sudden through this simple revelation but at a heart level, I found in me a desire to fast and I thought well of course I want to lay aside the things of this world and seek the things of God, thats one of the reasons I’m on the fireschool in the first place.  I love it when something can seem so dry to you, but when God breathes on it, it becomes really amazing. 

As predictable as it is in the New Year I’ve not stopped hearing people talk about new beginnings.  Usually I’m somewhat sceptical about these resolutions and hopes that things are going to change.  Not this year though.  This year its all different.  The reason is that I can actually feel the difference already.  Its a difference in the spiritual atmosphere. Sound strange, unbelievable even?  You know when you feel like someone is looking at you and you turn around to find someone staring at you?  You know the feeling when its Christmas time and you’ve finally got into the holidays away from work, that tingly, excited feeling. The one that goes as soon as Christmas is over and now all you see is gloomy, cold, wetness. You know that feeling when you snuggle into a cosy bed at the end of a tiring day and you know you’re safe and warm.  Well I have a feeling, a feeling just as real as all of these but its a feeling I’ve never had before about any New Year ever.  I wonder whats going to happen?

I JUST WANT TO SHARE WITH YOU A POEM GOD PUT ON MY HEART FOR THIS YEAR, IT READS      

TWO THOUSAND AND EIGHT IS GOING TO BE GREAT

GOD IS HOLDING OUT A PLATE AS WE WAIT

AND AS WE HEAR AND AS WE YIELD

GOD LEADS US TO THAT OPEN FIELD

AND WE CAN BE SURE AND NEVER DOUBT

OUR GOD IS GREAT AND HE’S WORKING IT OUT

Yesterday at Durham, Pastor Tim talked about passion for God and glorifying Him in your life. One thing that really challenged me was something he mentioned about living for a cause instead of for God. It didn’t actually hit me until this morning to be completely honest but as I was walking down the street I just suddenly realised that where I had presumed that I was sold out for God, in actual fact, I was not. I was living to see this nation changed which in itself is not a bad thing but it had taken my focus off of God and loving Him and glorifying His name and put it onto God changing the UK. In a way, that had taken God’s place.

As with all issues of the heart, I was absolutely gutted to realise that I was actually way off the mark (this seems to happen more often than I would like). However, One thing that is great is that God has been gracious to me once again and has revealed this so I was able to repent and to ask that He would help me to put Him first and to help me develop an all consuming desire for Him and to really love and get to know Him and to give me His desires for this nation as opposed to me getting all depressed and angry about the state we’re in and becoming despondent and wanting to give up and drawing away from God.

God seems to continuously be showing me His love through every thing that He says to me or every thing that I realise about Him, even in this instance, I can see the fact that He really cares about me because I am ME and is not angry or disappointed but lovingly shows me where I go wrong.

I just praise you Daddy because you amaze me continuously!

I had a dream that I was in a building, a few floors up. I looked out the window and saw a very dark storm cloud coming. It was really intense but quite small in area. I felt that if I stayed in the building I would be safe. Suddenly, I was outside and I had in my hand this weird kind of thing a bit like an umbrella, but instead of it covering me, it caused me to lift off the ground so that I began to fly. I could see the dark storm clouds ahead of me in the distance and they were moving closer. People on the ground were warning me to come down because they thought I would get hurt, and then thay ran in the other direction, but the cloud didn’t bother me so I flew straight towards it, knowing that at some point me and the storm would meet.

As I prayed about this dream, the Lord gave me some scriptures:

‘Oh that we might know the Lord! Let us press on to know Him. He will respond to us as surely as the arrival of dawn or the coming of rains in early spring’ (Hos 6:3)

‘Even the wilderness and desert will be glad in those days. The wasteland will rejoice and blossom with spring crocuses. Yes there will be an abundance of flowers and singing and joy! The deserts will become as green as the mountains of Lebanon, as lovely as Mount Carmel or the plain of Sharon. There the Lord will display His glory, the splendor of our God.’ (Is 35:1-2)

The Holy Spirit was telling me that He is sending the spring/latter rains. We forget that for rain to come, there must be some dark clouds. In my dream the clouds did not symbolize trials and suffering, but the deep, dark Presence of God - the kind that puts the fear of God in you. ‘He opened the heavens and came down; dark storm clouds were beneath His feet. Mounted on a mighty angelic being, He flew, soaring on the wings of the wind. He shrouded Himself in darkness, veiling His approach with dark rain clouds’ (Ps 18:9-11). If we want, we can stay in the safety of a building and we will see Him pass by, and remain in our desert lands untouched by the rains. But God was telling me, not only to come outside, but to actively pursue the storm clouds in prayer. ‘Ask the Lord for rain in the Spring, for He makes the storm clouds. And He will send showers of rain so every field becomes a lush pasture’ (Zech 10:1). To people with their feet (and their minds) on the ground it looks like crazyness to fly into the storm where God is. I mean, anything could happen; you could even die. Thats why they all ran. But we are spiritual people and we know that the only thing thats going to die when we meet that storm is our sin and our flesh. Then every one of our hearts will get soaked by His spring rains and become like lush pasture. I’ve seen the cloud in the distance and its time to pray it in.