Stealing My Joy

This has happened before - it seems to be the devil's new style to try to bring me down. He tries something new every now and again and if it seems to frustrate and annoy me and put me off my game then he thinks he has succeeded. The ultimate aim is trying to get me to give up full time ministry - throw my hands up in the air and proclaim I am not strong enough to deal with this anymore. I am failing. I am unsuccessful and no one really cares anyway. That would be me feeling sorry for myself and running from my calling. Unfortunately God has embedded this calling like a tattoo in my spirit and I will not be truly happy unless I am following in his will - which he knows will fulfill all the desires of my heart. I look back and see the countless adventures and moments of pure wonder and astonishment at the kisses He has showered out for me along the way.

The funny thing is that I am learning the wiles of the evil one and am prepared in my mind for great trials and I have made a maxim for my life - "I will not get offended by what man or God may do to me - I will remain faithful to the end". Note to self: add "what the devil may do to me" in my little proverb. Preparing my heart is another story. This will require much prayer and emotional strength.

Let me tell you the story:
When I was leaving Jamaica I was soooo filled with joy seeing what God had accomplished in the hearts of those we ministered to with the prayer room and I was in awe to see how it worked out so amazingly well. I got dropped off at the airport by my wonderful new adopted family at 10.30am to fly out. The flight was delayed, finally we made it to Kingston only to wait there for hours and then go back to Montego Bay! So at 10.30pm I was sitting on the plane looking out to the gorgeous mountains wishing I had spent the last 12 hours at the beach! All up I was waiting over 15 hours to go on a one hour flight - I arrived at my destination at 2am. Other passengers were so upset!

I had ample time to think and read and pray while waiting for that long and it occured to me that the devil was trying to distract me from worshipping. He was trying to steal my joy. He was trying to steal the glory that God deserved - the joy in my heart rising like fragrant incence to him. I realised that if I got upset and frustrated I would have spent those 15 hours feeling sorry for myself and thinking about my own discomfort. It wasn't really that bad afterall! I was just sitting around. I intentionally focussed on praying and sending up joyful feelings, reminiscing about the children that had drawn their prayers all over the floor, the thousands of prayers that covered the room, the beautiful girl who spent so much time in the room that she came to me and said 'I want to build prayer rooms too', the young boy who loved helping me like a little Samuel and never wanted to leave the prayer room, the pastors that wanted to take this idea back to their churches to help other people spend hours praying and loving it. I kept the happy feelings going and I felt happier too.

Just recently I finished two childrens prayer rooms. The devil tried it again. By using some kids to trash the rooms. It was dark and they were unsupervised. It hurt me that someone would misuse such a sacred space but they were young and probably didn't realise that God spends time there too - maybe its like his holiday vacation house??? No one has ever done this before so it hurt my feelings - maybe its because these rooms are like my art - installation art - three dimensional story telling - and it takes us so long to put them together - they are unique original and never the same twice. Sometimes I think its like giving birth - but I don't really know that for sure.... so I treat the rooms with as much love as a baby with lots of nurture and care. But then they damaged some of my special art which was sad. But these things can all be fixed...

Then they stole the money that was my 'love' offering from the church. This is my only source of income. Maybe it wasn't very much anyway. But I have to live off that money. To make it worse this was the first 'love' offering I had ever asked for in a church (I had finally got up enough courage). So I didn't feel very 'loved'. Then I started to feel sad. I felt a bit like I was punched in the stomach - and I leave tomorrow so I felt like that was a terrible goodbye when I spent the last six weeks ministering in this community. Then I started to feel like giving up. Then I realised the devil was at it again so I cried out and begged God not to let the devil take my joy.

So I checked my email and this is what I read: (From Teenhopeline sent today)

Psalm 51. 14-17 Save me from bloodguilt, O God, the God who saves me, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness.
O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.
You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

Then there was this poem that spoke to my heart......

Let the water in my eyes, pierce my heart and pierce the skies
Let the glory of your light shine all around me
Cause I need your peace and glory now
Lord my heart has forgotten how
Let it be, let it be, Lord a vessel of honor to thee

Ignite a fire in my soul,
Set my world ablaze, take control
Let my heart beat only for thee
Cause I am tired and I'm poor
And I want to need you more
God make me what you want of me

Let the water in my eyes, pierce my heart and pierce the skies
Let the glory of your light shine all around me
Cause I need your peace and glory now
Lord my heart has forgotten how
Let it be, let it be, Lord a vessel of honor to thee

Take this humble offering
This is all that I can bring
To the altar, the table for you
My heart is weak and I am frail
And I know alone Iâll fail
God this is all that I can do

Let it rain, let it pour because I need to need you more
Let me cry, let me scream, yes I need more than it seems
You are rising in my dreams you are everything to me
Let it be, let it be, Lord let it be a vessel of honor

So God is teaching me gracefully and as I prayed asking him to give me the patience, and the ability to take the focus off my hurt - take my mourning and turn it into dancing. To take my sadness and turn it into joy. And then a smile started to creep back to tingle my cheeks just like it does when I drink a beautiful aromatic cup of my favorite hot tea.

I then reached for my Bible for a word of comfort and to listen to the voice of God and he spoke to me as I opened right to this passage.

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2 Cor 4

Momentary light afflictions. These will happen again. Maybe they will get worse. But at least I'm in training for the stuff.

Praise God for this adventure. I wouldn't trade it for anything else in the whole world.

The full passage of 2 Cor 4 is incredible - for a blessing read on...

2 Corinthians 4
Treasures in Jars of Clay 1 Therefore, since through God's mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart.
2 Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God.
3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.
4 The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
5 For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake.
6 For God, who said, Let light shine out of darkness, made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all- surpassing power is from God and not from us.
8 We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair;
9 persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.
10 We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.
11 For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body.
12 So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.
13 It is written: I believed; therefore I have spoken. With that same spirit of faith we also believe and therefore speak,
14 because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence.
15 All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.
16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.
17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.
18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Blessings to you on your adventures through this world - I like to call it the Matrix! Go ahead take the red pill.

The Jamaica Experience

Going to Jamaica was an unexpected surprise. Imagine travelling to a tropical paradise and getting the opportunity to set up a beautiful prayer room! Two of my favorite things to do! But I really had limited time to prepare so I didn’t even have time to get excited! I arrived from a cold Tennessee winter to beautiful hot sunshine, blue skies and fluffy clouds and while waiting at the airport for three hours to be picked up I set my internal clock to the relaxed ‘Island Time’. I was to stay with the family of Pr Robert Vassell which was delightful, his lovely wife Judith cooked the most exquisite Jamaican food – I fell in love with yams, breadfruit, boiled bananas, potato pudding, Akee, and Surrill.

I also had fun helping Julia set up for her sister Judeque’s sweet 16th birthday party. I went with the pastor to a church high up on a mountain and watched him preach for two hours, it was so much fun. He is an incredible preacher and the audience and choir (all wearing matching hats) was getting just as excited as he was. That is how to do church!

I wondered why I was locked inside so much and was told that Jamaica was too dangerous to go for a walk! Everyday I would longingly watch the cruise ships come into the beach until one day I had the opportunity to go with a mission group from the UK to Negril Beach where the water really did feel like liquid Sunshine. I got to see some local art, culture and Rastafarians and enjoy God’s beautiful creation.

Setting up the prayer room for the West Jamaican Conference Camp Meeting was rather challenging but soon it was transformed into a simple and beautiful oasis of tranquility and peace. It had air conditioning which helped the atmosphere quite a bit! When sister Patricia Cole – a Jamaican prayer warrior from Orlando first asked me to go with her she warned me ‘take everything you need for the prayer room’. She was not joking! It was miraculous that we had everything we needed and with a little creativity we designed a beautiful room where people felt comfortable to pray and where God felt at home.

The room was set out as a journey through the Sanctuary. We had the laver where people washed their hands and asked God to give them clean hands and a pure heart, the candles where they invited the Holy Spirit and his fruit and gifts into their lives, and at the incense station watched the smoke of the incense rise to heaven and learned how God loves the fragrant prayers of his people. The Altar had special paper where they wrote down their prayers and placed them in the water and it disappeared to represent that God remembers our sins no more. There were some other stations that encouraged turning our Temple (churches) into Houses of Prayer. At the ‘Listening to God’ station you could take a moment to wait on God – I took little 8 year old Hakim through the prayer room and I asked him if we could spend a minute closing our eyes and listening to God and that just like Samuel God will speak to you. After a little while I asked Hakim if he had heard anything and he said “Yes, I saw God’s hand reaching down and he took mine.” Hakim spent a lot of time in the prayer room as did a lot of other children. There was a place on the ground where they could draw their prayers to Jesus. At the ‘Big Decisions’ station people could ask God the questions they had and ask for direction by tracing their footprint and writing their prayers inside it. The floor was covered in just a few days.

Another station was on ‘Identity’ and as they read Psalms 139 and looked in the mirror they could think about how God has a plan and destiny for them and how much he loves them in fact God is thinking about them every minute of every day even while they are sleeping! They could put their unique fingerprint in the journal and write a letter to God. This book was filled up very quickly.

There was a station on how Jesus was the Bread broken for us. The cross was filled with hearts as people nailed their hearts in love and commitment to Jesus. Their was a Bowl of Intercession which was filled to overflowing with hundreds of prayers reminding us that we hold each other up in prayer and how much our community needs prayer. Before you entered into the Most Holy Place there was a torn veil in the shape of a heart that you passed through – to show that the veil was not separating you from God any longer – that you now had free access to the heart of the Father. Inside was the Throne Room. Three beautiful colored glass lamps glowed to represent the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Inside this room you could make a crown out of silver foil and leave it as a gift of worship to God to honor him as the angels do in Revelation crying out “Worthy, Worthy is the Lord God Almighty.” Rev 4.11 says “The four and twenty elders fall down before him that sat on the throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.”

The prayer room was open all day and all night 24 hours a day – the beautiful music and the lighting made it a very special place in the midst of a busy Campmeeting. Often there were lines of people waiting to get into the room. It became very popular.

One day for my morning devotional God gave me a very strange text in Numbers that caused me to ponder. 35:33 " 'Do not pollute the land where you are. Bloodshed pollutes the land, and atonement cannot be made for the land on which blood has been shed… Do not defile the land where you live and where I dwell…

Later that day a man was shot a few hundred meters up the road from the prayer room. The blood covered the street. He was left there for quite a while and the traffic was diverted around him. I understood God to be telling me that because of this and other violent acts this land was tragically being cursed. There is a lot of darkness in this land.

So in the prayer room I put up these texts so people could cry out for God to heal their land so God would draw near. Satan can no longer hold this nation captive to evil.
2 Chron 7.13 "… if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place. I have chosen and consecrated this temple so that my Name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will always be there.” This text is so powerful and teaches us how we need to humble ourselves, turn and pray and God will be gracious to us with his blessings. What a generous and loving God.

Several people begged for the prayer room to remain that way all the time. I would love to see more permanent prayer rooms in churches and communities around the world so people could spend time in the presence of God whenever they needed.

Some comments left at the prayer room:

“It as change my life and I pray and hope to remain this way. God is good.”

“Keep up the good work this is indeed like taking a trip to the courts of heaven.”

“In order for one to be revived you must experience the presents of God, how to do that? Visit the prayer room.”

“I love it very much.”

‘It was a wonderful experience further taught how wonderful our God is and how often we fail him.”

“It was an amazing experience for which I am grateful.”

“It was wonderful. It has really changed my life.”

“It was a wonderful and great experience. May God bless you all continually.”