A decade in training…

Twenty first of June two thousand and eight. Six months of gruelling work, spiritual growth, preaching, teaching, counselling, team work and much more had concluded my YWAM journey in the beautiful city of Jerusalem, Israel. On this day we stood praying for a local pastor in the canteen of our hotel. My eyes closed and hands lifted, God began to speak to me in a way I had never heard Him before. In the past I have had pictures or short words from God, but never an intense moving vision, like the one He gave me during prayer. It seemed to happen like a dream, although I was awake; it seemed to run over minuets, although it must have been moments. Like a flash, God imparted this vision into my spirit.

I saw myself on this very high ledge, standing behind a wall that came to my waist. This ledge surrounded a massive canyon below and in it was a city which I knew was Jerusalem. I was peering down, over the ledge into the canyon watching what was happening. To my right and to my left stood thousands of people also watching the scene below. Surrounding the city were huge craters, however I could see that none had actually hit any part of the city. Although I felt a fear and insecurity about what I was watching, God impressed on me that the scene below had a quiet confidence. These craters had been made from falling stars, some were grown over with grass and others were fresh. I sensed that the grown over craters were old wounds and the fresh ones were new ones that the city seemed to be in pain about. I sensed that the falling stars were coming from behind us, over our heads and striking the ground around the city. I did not actually see any of these falling stars, but I sensed they were coming at any moment. In this vision I felt fear about these falling stars. Those standing to my right and left seemed ignorant of what was going on. I sensed that, even though I was confused and fearful, that I somehow knew more about what was happening than those beside me did. They were whispering to one another, but constantly looking between the scene below and watching what my reaction was going to be. As the impending arrival of more falling stars increased, in a split second I decided to duck down below the wall on my ridge and not continue to watch the city below; if I didn’t see it happening I didn’t have to deal with it. As I did this, like two waves on either side of me, the people began ducking below the wall as well. Here felt like a ‘safe’ place, a place I felt I knew well, but deep down I knew I had made the wrong decision.

The day after God gave me this vision, I read:

Joel 3:14-17

“there are huge numbers of people in the valley of decision, because the Lord’s Day of judging is near in the valley of Decision. The sun and the moon will become dark, and the stars will stop shining. The lord will roar like a lion from Jerusalem; His loud voice will thunder from that city, and the sky and the earth will shake. But the lord will be a safe place for His people, a strong place of safety for the people of Israel. Then you will know that I, the Lord your God, live on my holy mount Zion. Jerusalem will be a holy place, and strangers will never even go through it again.”

Having never read this scripture before, I instantly knew God was confirming everything I had seen in my vision. Being assured it was from Him I continued to pray that God would show me the meaning of what I saw. A month later I came to Isaiah, and again God began backing up the vision He had given me through scripture (again the very first time I had ever read these verses)

Isaiah 21:7b

 “…let him be alert, fully alert”

Isaiah 32:17-20

 “the fruit of righteousness will be peace, the effect of righteousness will be quietness and confidence forever. My people will live in peaceful dwelling places, in secure homes, in undisturbed places of rest, though hail flattens the forest and the city is levelled completely. How blessed you will be, sowing your seed by every stream, and letting your cattle and donkeys range free.”

Isaiah 33:17

“your eyes will see the King in his beauty, and view a land that stretches afar.”

Isaiah 34:1-4

 “come near you nations and listen; pay attention you peoples. Let the earth hear and all that is in it! The Lord is angry with all nations; his wrath is upon all their armies. He will totally destroy them, he will give them over to slaughter. Their slain will be thrown out, their dead bodies will send up a stench; the mountains will be soaked with their blood. All the stars of the heavens will be dissolved and the sky rolled up like a scroll; all the starry hosts will fall like withered leaves from the vine, like shrivelled figs from the fig-tree”

Shaking, shaking…

Eleven years later I can still see this whole vision in my mind’s eye. I can still sense the feelings I had and see every detail. I know this was from God. I still did not know the vision’s meaning and, having just discovered a deeper relationship with Him in two thousand and eight, I naïvely thought God simply wanted me to keep an eye on the news and what was happening with Jerusalem by following events regarding the city. Without a shadow of doubt, I knew this vision was one for the end of age, for the second coming. I knew from the bible, Jerusalem was where Jesus would return, so perhaps God wanted me to be a watchman by physically watching the city of God. However, as the years went by I became discouraged. I lost all interest and knew I hadn’t found the real meaning of the vision. I resigned to the fact I had missed my calling with regards to what God was trying to tell me and God would no longer use it or even me for what He had planned on that day in Jerusalem.

Shortly after coming home God laid a message on my heart to preach to my church; the Lord is shaking His church. This came from the scripture:

Hebrews 12:25-28

“Be sure you listen to the One who is speaking to you. The Jews did not obey when God’s Law was given to them on earth. They did not go free. They were punished. We will be punished more if we do not listen to God as He speaks from heaven.  On Mount Sinai, God’s voice shook the earth. But now He has promised, saying, “Once more I will shake the earth and the heavens.” When God says, “Once more,” He means He will take away everything of this world what can be shaken so the things that cannot be shaken will be left.  Since we have received a holy nation that cannot be moved, let us be thankful. Let us please God and worship Him with honour and fear.  For our God is a fire that destroys everything.”

My message was this:

Faith in the Shaking!

God is shaking us to find out what we’re made of. Jesus said we needed to lose our lives in order to find them. Our lives are made up of many parts and so often Christians are only willing to ‘lose’ certain parts to Christ. This is not His command. He didn’t ask for parts He asked for our entire life, that means every part; plans, desires, family, responsibilities, habits, sins, feelings, what tomorrow brings and yesterday took. Every part. When we do this we are giving to God all the ‘shakeable’ areas of our lives, all the parts that the author of Hebrews called ‘created things.’ When we give them to God they become ‘unshakeable’ because through all things God will remain. So through all shaking life might go through, those parts that we have given to God will not be shaken and removed, but remain for His glory. If we are holding onto parts of our lives and do not give them up to God, they will be shaken. What we need to think about is, through the shaking, will our holding onto a part of our life cause us to unravel? Will it cause a gap between us and God or our complete submitted heart to Him?

Faith is our greatest asset and prayer our most powerful weapon

Are we heavenly stable or earthly shakeable?

Again I was approached to give this same word in January two thousand and sixteen

It is time to wake up…

A few months ago God reminded me of my vision about Jerusalem. It began to play on my thoughts and I often found myself thinking about it and what the meaning could be. Had I missed my opportunity? Had I missed what God wanted me to do when He gave me that vision? If I had then why couldn’t I stop thinking about it and praying for God to show me what it was He wanted to say through the vision.

Saturday the nineteenth of January two thousand and nineteen, we had our early morning prayer walk praying for Stourport on Severn. God had already started to tell us He was doing a new thing this year; watch this space. That morning God brought me to:

2 chronicles 7:14-15

^“ if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.  Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place.”

God’s church, the body of Christ, are the people who are called by God’s name. We are the ones who need to humble ourselves, seek God’s face and when we do we will be used in God’s Revival of this land! What startled me about this scripture are the ‘wicked ways’ God asks His people to turn from. This I didn’t quite understand until God gave me my next revelation…

Sunday morning on the twentieth of January two thousand and nineteen I felt God stirring up a word in me. I felt God wanted to give His church in this nation a message, but I didn’t find a moment to present it. During the corporate fast on Tuesday the twenty second of January two thousand and nineteen, I felt God stirring my spirit again and pressing me to write something down following the word He began to bring on Sunday morning. He gave me this:

It is time to wake up. It is time to get serious with your faith. You have a purpose but if you are found sleeping you will miss your opportunity for the kingdom. Do not be so easily distracted by the fruit of this world. Do not have your mind only half on Me but fully on Me. Wake up, it is time to wake up. I want you with me. I want you serious about our relationship. I made you, I know you, I want to use you. Wake up and get serious

Whilst I was writing this, a message came through on my phone which was lying next to me (as it always is). Instantly and habitually, I grabbed it to look at what the message was. I felt God reprimand me, that this is what He was talking about! I am here in the middle of getting a prophetic word from God and I get distracted by a message on my phone! So I put it on silent and turned it face down so I could not see the screen. But this was not enough! At that moment my daughter Raiah came into the room, she leant on the bed, looked up at me and all she asked was ‘mom, is your phone switched off?’ then she ran out the room again. This was such a very random thing for her to ask, and again I felt God showing me what He was talking about. It should be off! We have to switch the world off and wholehearted focus on God. We need to get serious about His word and living by it. I then switched my phone off and instantly I actually felt a disconnection with the world, I felt a peace, almost like a break or sigh from my spirit.

I believe this exercise with my phone in the middle of God trying to speak to me is symbolic of what He is trying to say to the church, to His body in this nation. We need to switch off the world and focus on Him. We need to stop compromising our faith, making excuses for our bad habits and being too fearful to live out our faith to the world. We ARE in the end days, it is being prophesied all over by different Godly people. We have to wake up and start living out our faith with conviction, or else we are going to miss the purpose God has for us. He chose to put us on earth for such a time as this, not any other decade or era, but for now. He has given us what it takes to face what is to come; revival! We need to get serious with God, or else we will miss the opportunity and purpose He has for us for His kingdom.

It all falls into place…

Wednesday the twenty third of January two thousand and nineteen, with all the other words that I had, in a second God unveiled my eyes to the meaning of the vision He gave me more than a decade earlier. Here is it broken down:

City of Jerusalem - Jerusalem is called the City of God in the bible where Jesus will come back to, God’s chosen city and I felt that in my vision the city represented God. In my vision we were all peering down watching the city of Jerusalem, we had our eyes on God. He was the centre of everything.

Me - Because I had more knowledge than the people around me of what was happening, I feel that I represented the church. I didn’t fully know what was going to happen but I seemed to have an understanding of the events and what was coming that the others did not.

Thousands of people to my right and to my left - all the other people represented the none-Christians of the world watching my reaction in ignorance to what was happening in the scene below. They knew it was something big and important, but didn’t understand what. But they were constantly watching me and mimicking my reactions to the scene we were looking at

Huge craters – I really feel the craters represent a number of things. The craters, old and new represents all the old prophesies that have been fulfilled and those to be fulfilled. They represent revivals that have gone and those to come. They represented the wars on the church and the wars to come. I feel they represent everything the church should be taking seriously about what surrounds our faith and God. I feel they represented the personal things we have worked through and the things God still wants us to work through. I feel they represent the knowledge we have about God and our faith that we should be sharing with the world around us. Instead of being scared and hiding away in my vision, I should have been explaining to those around me what was happening. I could see they were mimicking my every move, so one word to the left and right of what would happen would have continued down the line of people and they would have also been knowledgeable of the events

The city’s quiet confidence – God’s security in His plan of what was to come. It is the state I should have been in, more Christ-like. It says in Isaiah 32 (see above) that the effect of righteousness is quietness and confidence. Our righteousness should create in us a quietness and confidence in our faith and not a state where we fear to live it out fully! A state of luke-warm

The high ledge with the wall that ran waist high - I feel that space on the ledge, behind the wall is the ‘safe’ space in the world that the church has created for ourselves. The place we know, the place we have become comfortable in, but it is that place we are not fully submitting ourselves to what is to come and watching God’s kingdom. It is the luke-warm Christian place. It is the place where we give ourselves excuses for how we act and live in the world. It is the hidden place where we don’t wish to offend or cause ripples. It is the comfortable hole the church has created within the world, where we are still near to God (He’s only over the ledge), but we are not immersed in Him and living, wholeheartedly by His word.

I felt fear – fear to step out of the comfortable place the church has created for itself. Fear to be forward and loud about our faith. Fear to rock the boat

The falling stars were coming from behind us- I really believe this is a new, bigger, more miraculous revival that will usher in the end of the world. I really sense it is coming and instead of being afraid of it, we need to keep watching so we can be a part of it! I fell this revival is the final harvest, the final revival before Jesus comes again.

I decided to duck down below the wall on my ridge but deep down I knew I had made the wrong decision – we must not hide away from what God is doing or we will miss it! We will miss His purposes, His calling and His kingdom. We will miss the revival, the miracles, the conversions, the prophesies! We need to keep our eyes on God, keep watching Him and get out of our safe place!

So in conclusion…

              I truly believe that we are on the brink of the biggest, most powerful revival this world has ever seen, and that this will proceed the end of age. The final harvest. The rapture, the tribulation and the second coming.

The vision God gave me was very Armageddon, no doubt about that! And the symbolism of it, I feel He wants His church to wake up and stop ‘playing’ church. Even we Pentecostal, spirit-filled, tongue speaking, healing seeing, prophesy professing Christians have been luke-warm. God’s Spirit has moved through the decades and we’ve seen isolated revivals across the world. However, He wants an even bigger move and if His church does not get serious about what He is saying, we will miss it and many, many, many non-believers will miss it too. They will be looking to US for explanation. I feel that the size of this final revival and people turning to Christ will correlate to how serious His church are willing to become, the humility we show and turning from our ‘wicked ways’ (the safe place we have created in the world).

God is calling His church to turn from her luke-warmness or we will miss what He wants to do, we will miss our purpose. Unfortunately, we categorise sin. I feel all Christians understand dealing with the ‘big’ sins like swearing, stealing or drinking. But I feel God wants us to start looking deep into our hearts and start dealing with the ‘little’ sins we subconsciously deem ok like, white lies, gossiping, compromising, criticism.

This is the ‘safe place’ the church has created in the world where we do not wish to offend or rock the boat and I know this is what God wants to say to us. These are the things we do and make excuses for. I truly believe that as a church we need to read God’s word and live by every letter in it! We need to start living by the conviction of the Spirit and be totally spirit-filled. We need to do this because revival is coming and we HAVE to be ready to guide those who don’t understand through it. I really believe that our seriousness of the word of God will correlate to how many souls are saved before the rapture. That is why we are here. We are the light. If we are dim only a few people will see it. We have to live as brightly as we can. We have to strive with all our might to absorb as much of God as we can and not just the habitual church life we are leading on a Sunday morning or Tuesday evening. This is an exciting time in the history of the world and God has chosen US as his vessels to carry in a new age. We HAVE a purpose and we need to wake up and seek God with all of ourselves to carry out that purpose. Jesus was the lord of miracles, prophesy, healing, love, purity, wisdom and so much more. Therefore Jesus living in us means we can tap into all of these by His Spirit, but we are not because we are luke-warm and we feel safe in the place we have created in the world. Every one of us can tap into these!

We are at a crosswords and we need to choose which way we are to go. We start living like Christ in every possible way we know we can, or we stay in our ‘safe place’ where we don’t rock the boat or stand out in the crowd.  Revival IS coming, God is doing a new thing with His church, we need to make sure we don’t miss it. That we are Christ-like and ready! What an exciting time we are living in. Please Father, help us to wake up!