"I will not keep silent because of Zion, and I will not keep still because of Jerusalem, until her righteousness shines like a bright light and her salvation, like a flaming torch." (Isaiah 62:1)
When Elizabeth came into my life last Dec, I really had no idea about the life & weight she carried for me. It was my response to the Lord’s gentle nudging from within that had me get her from the local nursery, but little did I know that a journey of sorts had just begun.
Over the months, I saw her go from a beautiful, bright red-leaved plant to a dry, dull green-leaved survivor that honestly, was quite discouraging.
Presenting Elizabeth!
After a 3-week battle where I shifted her in and fought for her, I knew I had to let her go.
So I prayed for her, committed her to the Lord and sowed her as a seed in the ground before finally bidding her adieu.
Friend, how often do we hit a curveball like this in life, and then think it’s all over when it’s actually only a new beginning?
Had I simply dumped Elizabeth on the pavement, it would have been a different story. But committing her to the Lord as a seed buried in the ground has fetched me a completely different result.
A few weeks later, I began to notice the entire landscape & geography of my living space shift. The Lord had been working within me, through me and also on my behalf in a way that has served to release a most beautiful, diverse and buoyant plant family in my life!
These folks initiated the release 💚My first succulent planter 🪴Except that it’s a snail 🐌 🙃 Yes he is! 🌴In a capsule 🙂
All this to say that should you have lost any thing/person dear and precious to you, then take heart. All is not lost.
As surely as I grieve with you, I also simultaneously encourage you to sow the thing/person as a seed in the ground, for Jesus is faithful to receive your seed, honor it and multiply it. In the kingdom of God, what is dead and buried is often used to raise a harvest of righteousness and bring in newness of life that could never have been anticipated.
For me, it looks like a brand new plant family springing up to life in the wake of one seed – Elizabeth – that was an unwitting sacrifice. For you, it can look completely different. But what we do have in common is the perfectly righteous God we serve who can and who does use all things for our good and his great glory!
“It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.”
Today I saw a very timely documentary called – Hearts and hands by Sean Feucht. Based on their very recent missions trip to Iraq, I was deeply touched to see how the love of Jesus Christ goes forth into all the nations and shines a light where darkness seems to have had the final word.
To see how our Messiah has a way to connect to some of the most forgotten and neglected people groups in a way that is deeply personal, moved me today to the point of tears.
So honestly, I am just chiming in here to encourage you to please check this hour long film. (I am attaching link below!) Let the rich life experience, a beautifully heart-warming panorama of love, faith & courage expand your view of the balcony, because as long as there is breath, there is Hope.
In the weeks leading upto this season, I have had the Lord connect to me at precisely 00:00 in the night. This encounter was initiated each night for three consecutive days in a row as I was in worship. I prayed for revelation, friends; and the Lord finally took me to the Cinderella story on the third night.
Awe struck at the King of glory speaking through not just the pages of Scripture, but even a fairy tale; I couldn’t possibly have kept this secret to myself. So here I am, spilling the beans.
What are You saying, Lord?
I found myself seeking Him. Obviously, I was both amused and curious.
The Lord soon after started showing me different aspects of the Cinderella story through Heaven’s perspective. And what has really been etched out in me as a result is the stunning revelation that the Church has crossed over into ‘The Cinderella Hour.’
The midnight hour.
What do I mean?
Let me give this a fair shot, friends.
The Transition and Transformation
Going over the Cinderella story, I realised that it was precisely at the midnight hour -the stroke of midnight – that she was compelled to leave behind the pretense and the facade of the counterfeit reality where she had morphed from the cinders’ girl that she really was into a beautiful princess to appear attractive to the Prince at the city ball. It was a reality that was fake because it was not her true reality.
Evaluating the sense of purification and refinement that the Church as the family of God has been going through, I knew the Lord had me onto something.
We dig. We discover.
So as I dove into the revelation that the Lord was leading me into, what dawned on me was the truth of our own journey of growth and metamorphosis in the seasons past.
What we have had to navigate our way through in the past 18 months or so has been anything but a cake walk. On the contrary, it has felt more like a steep incline, with dangers and toils strategically placed for us on every nook and cranny.
We have all as a result, found ourselves seeking and discovering God for ourselves. The sense of the pre-eminence of Christ in all things has escalated, and anything that would stand in the way has been torn down.
What sought to threaten us has time and time again, been thwarted by the intervening hand of God, and we have through it all, continued to see Him work all things together for our good and His great glory.
In a time where the sense of isolation has been pervasive, we have managed to find our sense of completion, wholeness and security in Christ only – our true home, our firm anchor and our safe refuge.
False constructs of identity imposed upon us by society, culture and the world have been demolished, thereby setting us free to enter into our truest identity as children of God.
Consequently, we have found ourselves transformed into the knowledge of what it really means to be sons and daughters of the King of glory. We have been compelled to trust Him at a whole new level, and He has not disappointed us.
Hope never will – Christ in us, the Hope of glory.
I write all this to say that what I believe the Lord is lovingly revealing is – us.
Yes.
The Revealing
I believe what God is doing is revealing His sons and daughters who having been through hell, fire and storm; have been found not only ‘still standing,’ but successfully having emerged as the ‘shining ones,’ taking on the likeness of their Father more and more, with each passing challenge.
Forgiveness, trust, surrender, humility, wisdom and love have all been tempered and forged into us and we have now hit ‘The Cinderella Hour.’
‘The Cinderella Hour’ is when we begin to truly behold and become the Lion and the Lamb. We know what the battle really is, and we fight accordingly. The Word of God informs us that we do not wrestle against flesh and blood. Our family, friends, co-workers and siblings are notour enemy. The Enemy is our enemy, and therefore we are fighting for our brethren, not against them.
If anything at all, our loved ones are our mission.
The Mission
Our mission is to reach, to love and serve, and to impact our world with the passion of Christ and the love of God. And as Children of God being made into the likeness of His image, this revelation beckons yet another question.
How did the Lord love and serve when He walked the earth in the Person of Jesus?
Like I said earlier – we dig, we discover.
Digging deeper with a shovel in hand, I unearthed some beautiful truth about how He did it. Led into the passage of Scripture where Jesus washes his disciples’ feet, I was deeply touched by the tenderness of the Lord’s compassion and the source of his motivation.
“Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.”
(John 13:3-5)
A revelation about the Truth of his identity as the Son of God whose Father had put all things under his power, and that he was returning to the realm of glory to be seated at the right hand of God, provoked but one response from Jesus –
He bent down to wash His disciples’ feet.
He washed them all, despite the knowledge that one would betray Him (Judas) and yet another would deny Him (Peter). He went the distance to show them the full extent of His love for them, and did not consider washing their feet too menial or lowly a task. Rather, I believe that Jesus saw it as His mission – to love and serve all whom He was sent to, and therefore, lead with the heart of a servant-king.
As the Sovereign King, He came as the Servant-King.
Pastor Bill Johnson says something that resonates very deeply with the sentiment hidden within this revelation,
“True significance in Christ is never tarnished by servanthood. Rather, it is revealed through servanthood.”
And somewhere I learn the same from Cinderella.
Diving into her story brought forth much gold, friends.
The Reward of the Faithful
Cinderella truly personifies a heart of servanthood during her stay with her evil step mother and step sisters. She remained submitted to the call of God on her life with a pure heart and a clean conscience.
As a result, Cinderella’s humility + obedience + endurance was richly rewarded by God who not only delivered her post the Cinderella hour, causing the Prince from the city ball to find her, locate her and marry her; but also exalted her to a position where Cinderella, on the other side of forgiveness, was instrumental in finding suitable grooms and partners for her step-sisters.
“Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”
(Matthew 23:12)
There is so much revelation here, friends. But one thing that really stood out to me was this:
The destiny of Cinderella was never thwarted because of seasons of hardship in her life. The opposite is true rather. For in the hands of God, her persecution only served as a platform for her promotion.
In fact, what the enemy meant to disqualify her became the very thing that God used to not only qualify her, but also promote her and enable her to enjoy the fruition of a hope-filled future.
How much more is that true for us then?
Reflecting back on the past 18 months and simultaneously preparing our hearts for what the Lord will do next is an interesting intersection indeed.
Though we may have been through more than we thought we even had the capacity to endure, we made it. God has brought us safely through. We are still standing and going farther with the Lord than we had originally aspired for. That’s Good News!
We have not come this far for nothing. Some of the greatest moves of God, I believe, are right out ahead of us. The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, and we who are the Light of the world cannot be hidden – we must be revealed.
And this is where the story gets good.
For the unveiling of Jesus Christ will never be complete without the revealing of His Sons & Daughters. It’s what it means to be the family of God and the household of God. It’s what speaks to our legitimacy as His children. It’s what happens when both, the Bridegroom and the Bride are partnering and preparing together.
Clothed in the glory-garments of righteousness and fully immersed in the consciousness of our truest identity as Sons & Daughters of the King of glory with Heaven as our home, I believe, we have been positioned to be released into the earth to effectively love and serve those that we have been called to.
For such a time as this.
P.S:
I have been writing for nearly 2 years now friends, and this has been the first Prophetic Word that the Lord has given me to share. It is not only a personal revelation for me this season and beyond, but I do believe that it carries some very weighty revelations and truths for all of us as the Body of Christ. I do hope and pray that the Holy Spirit will give you insight as you journey on and not only light up your path, but also light up your world.
For you are the Light of the world and a city on a hill cannot be hidden.
Friends, I made a journal for myself this year in April to record and remind myself of the promises that God has made concerning me and concerning those that I care about.
It is one of my absolute favorite things to dive into this journal from time-to-time to read, confess and release the power of God’s Word over my life.
Why do I do that?
Because like Mary in the Bible, the mother of Jesus, who pondered and treasured the words God had spoken about Jesus being the Saviour of the world, anointed and appointed, to take away the sin of humanity; I do believe that we too have the same privilege.
The same privilege to receive, believe and steward the Word of God so that it is the Lord’s narrative that we are intentionally choosing to partner with and eventually see made manifest in our midst.
So I felt it back then, friends.
I felt an urgency, an impulse, an unction of the Holy Spirit to make myself a journal that would allow me to organise all the wonderful, prophetic words that God has given me thus far, in one neat place. One click on Amazon got me this babe:
I think she is fearfully and wonderfully made!
Ok.
So my jouney with Jesus through this brand, new journal began. I divided it up into a couple of different sections and promptly began decreeing the Word of God over my life.
Happy to report that not only have I seen the Holy Spirit move and manifest God’s will time-after-time, but also that the Lord continues to add more and more promises to my bounty.
Pastor Bill Johnson often says that we attract what we value. The Bible puts it this way,
“For whoever has, to him more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him.”
(Matthew 13:12, NASB)
God here, I believe, is talking about the sheer value of stewarding the revelation of His Word. He guarantees, that should we commit to this process of discovering and consistently releasing the sound of His Word into the earth, it is sure to have a domino effect and reel in even more abundant revelation, simply because we show that we value the sanctity of what our Holy God has decreed.
Like rain drops filling up a bucket.
Or like the missing pieces of a jigsaw puzzle being consistently and increasingly put together by the Hand of God.
That’s what the Promises of God do.
The promises of God can be likened to the missing pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that God is putting together behind-the-scenes.
The things that most puzzle and confuse us are these ___________________________. Fill in the blanks, literally. Questions about our identity, our purpose, our destiny. Questions about our family, household and community. Questions about God’s plan for us, individually, corporately and globally.
But what if we learned to take these questions to God Himself, instead of trying to figure things out in our own limited strength, with our own limited wisdom and our own limited resources?
What if we stopped trying to simply ‘fix’ everything ourselves and dared instead to entrust our matters to The One who is sovereignly in control, confident in battle and more than capable of bringing resolution to the very things that confound us?
God truly is who He says He is, friends.
I have always, always witnessed that whenever I am challenged by a trying and impossible circumstance, God always, always shows up.
He may not do it the way I expect or would like for Him too, or even on my timeline. But I can testify that He always, always does show up and show off.
Imagine a scenario, friend where you find yourself in what appears to be a snow-covered wasteland. For as far as your eyes can see, the land looks completely barren and desolate. You are fully geared up for a trek, equipped for the harsh conditions in front of you. Donning a long, furry overcoat to keep you warm and gum boots to help you plough through; you are good to go.
Yet, you can’t.
You feel lost for direction.
Now imagine the same scenario through the lens of the pilot of a chopper overhead. He can see that if you only take a few steps forward, turn right and walk for about a mile, you will be warmly greeted by a kind and hospitable old, godly couple who even have a guest room to spare, warmly lit with an inviting fireplace and a steaming cup of hot chocolate milk.
The pilot of this chopper overhead has insight into things that are obscure to you because he has a higher vantage point.
Yet, you do have the option of connecting to him through your cell phone device. You can choose to pull it out from your pocket, press the right buttons and connect!
One call away.
That’s how I believe it works with God too. He has insight into the road and the route ahead that will be instrumental in paving the best way forward, but we have to be willing to connect to Him using the cell phone device called the Word of God.
For the Word of God is our GPS to help navigate life.
“Jesus answered, ‘It is written: Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'”
(Matthew 4:4)
Spending time in the Word and receiving His insight into the plans and purposes that He has for us is precisely how we trek through the snow-laden terrain of the broken pieces and parts of our lives.
All we are tempted to see and believe in the moment though, is that one piece of the jigsaw puzzlethat we find ourselves in the midst of. But God knows the whole picture!
And believe me, its a good one that He’s painting.
Things may look unanswered and incomplete to us in the natural, but we can take heart because we serve a supernatural kind of God.
“With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
(Matthew 19:26)
The God who knows the end from the beginning, already has the answers and the redemptive solutions our lives need. He reveals these hidden plans and purposes of His heart through a revelation of His Word by the Holy Spirit.
What He does require in the process is for us to put down the bricks of humility, vulnerability and complete dependency on The One who is perfectly faithful and absolutely trustworthy. The assurance of His Perfection is the fuel that empowers us to bring the broken pieces of our lives to Him so that He can begin to do what only and only He can do.
“Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the LORD Almighty.”
(Zechariah 4:6)
The promise friends, on the other side of our obedience is, that God will raise up a wall with the modest bricks that we have put down so beautically and monumentally that it will not only leave us astonished, but even those that we care about.
The truth is that God is the Architect of our lives, friends. As He has taken the complete charge of bringing about the complete restoration of our lives, I like to call this a process of ‘re-membering,’ i.e, rearranging, reassembling and realigning the different parts and pieces of our lives into the Grand Masterpiece that He has in His heart and mind concerning us.
So as He ‘re-members’ the different parts and pieces of my life, I find it incredibly helpful to in turn, ‘remember’ the truth of that which He has spoken and decreed.
☆ The Book of Rememberance ☆
It can be a file, a folder, a journal, a diary because the goal is to have a place to document and rehearse Truth.
Friend, for the Lord to ‘re-member’ our lives, we must remember what He says.
The devil is a liar, and in the absence of Truth, it is easy to believe what the world says. It is easy to believe what the media says, the government, or even our family and friends. Therefore, I find it so vital to be intentional about my time in God’s Word so that I can literally dwell in the Truth that He has spoken over me, letting His narrative shape and frame my reality, and not a lesser word.
So simply put, The Book of Rememberance is a space friends, where we get to put down God’s dream for our lives, and through the power of a loving partnership together, watch Him make it a reality.
Activation: Friend, I would like to invite you to ponder some questions with the Lord in your own, unique miracle-in-the-making story. Letting God come into every dark and obscure crook, cranny and crevice of our lives is key to a lifestyle of ongoing holistic healing and good success.
I’ve learnt this much, and I know its true.
Any part of our life that is kept from the Lord will become an open door for the enemy.
While there may be areas of your life that you perhaps don’t feel comfortable addressing with the Lord yet, I encourage you to start opening up bit-by-bit to the Goodness of God. He is good, He does good, and He works all things together for good.
So friend, consider asking yourself the following questions:
What has God spoken concerning me? What has He spoken concerning my health, my family and my calling?
If you feel unsure about these questions, it’s time to press in. Its time to pray and seek God to reveal His heart and mind concerning the things you care about. Its time to let go and let Him step into your life and do what He is best at – make all things new!
The wait has been long, the confusion too thick, the disappointment too great or perhaps the loss too unbearable.
Friends, I’m slowly learning to take care.
When our emotions get exhausted and our souls seem to be missing the passion we once had, it’s time to slow down. It’s time to pay attention to the longings of our inner man that needs to just surrender all manner of striving and be still.
“Be still and know that I am God.”
(Psalm 46:10)
While there are many ways to rest and refresh ourselves, I feel that committing to what is most authentic to us is the most fruitful.
While rest càn be enjoyed in the stillness and serenity of creation, it can also take the form of a date with Jesus over a cup of cappuccino at Starbucks. It can look like fixing a jigzaw puzzle in the cosy comfort of your room, or even perhaps cooking your favorite meal in the kitchen against the backdrop of some gentle, soothing strains of music.
For me though?
It has recently manifested as some daily down time with Jesus over ‘mint water.’
As I stroll into my kitchen for breakfast in the morning, there it is. Sitting pretty in a glass bottle that my mother fixes for me, it is a most beautiful reminder to intentionally carve out some time that day to sip, to abide, to be.
5 mins.
That’s all it really takes.
But the worth and value of investing that time to reconnect, reset and revitalise has been life transforming.
It sends a gentle yet firm reminder to my soul that it deserves rest and is worthy of it. It helps me to know that I am not a cog in a machine. Rather, I am a beautiful Child of God who is blessed each day to be alive, to be free and to be at rest.
Jesus loves to give rest to us, friends. He knows us by name and holds us close. But the rush of the world that we live in can and does stifle our consciousness of it. So to combat this, what do we do?
We rest.
We cease all manner of striving for some carefully chiseled out time in the day to simply reconnect with the Source of it all, to breathe and to recharge for whatever lies ahead.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against a spiritual wickedness in high places.”
In the times we find ourselves in today, people are inevitably going to disappoint us, betray us, reject us, deny us, abuse us. We will feel wronged and that life is unfair. But can we, in the midst of it all, find the fortitude within ourselves and pray for wisdom from the Heavens above, to discern that our war is NOT against each other but against the forces of darkness alone. The Bible assures us thus,
“Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written, ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says The Lord.”
We may have to bear the repurcussions of someone else’s poor choices and wrong decisions. But I urge you to never feel like a victim, rather declare the truth that you ARE a victor. You still are God’s child full of His Spirit which gives you power and authority, but most of all, the capacity to love, no matter the circumstance.
Yes.
We can choose to abide in Love, and not let someone else pay for what they never did to us. It becomes imperative to allow our wounds to heal. I believe what truly helps is to pray for those that hurt us, forgive them, release them, and continue to do as The Word instructs;
“Trust God and do good.”
Do good to your family, your friends, your community. your neighbors, your co-workers, your colleagues. Choose to let His Love permeate every broken crevice of your soul till it is so saturated with His Presence that the ones around you feed off of the overflow. Choose to volunteer with the underprivileged, choose to read a testimony to the cancer patient fighting for his life in the hospital, choose to read a bed time story to your ailing grandmother, choose to share The Good News with the prison inmate, choose to affirm Identity in the teenager you find struggling with self worth, choose to make the time to tell your parents you love them, choose to send an apology text that has been weighing on your conscience for sometime now, choose to invest honor in those that have invested in you, choose to pay that long lost friend a visit, choose to see life His way, dear friend. Suffice to say, choose Love. Every.Single.Time.
Till darkness has to back off. Chains are unshackled. Strongholds are broken. Health is restored. Life is revived.
My hope is that having chosen to sow in and through Love, you will find yourself not only more healed, whole and restored; but also reaping rewards you never deemed possible. You will have tapped into and brought forth the spiritual warrior within yourself who understands the power of choice; and having chosen well, will always emerge not bitter, but better.
SoulandSubstance27 