God encounters

God Encounters ~ Part Two: The Sky and the Ocean

/ Anne (Grace is my Superhero) / 3 Comments

It has been a difficult season for me, being sandwiched between the needs of my children and my mom.  I feel so busy, so responsible, and so drained that it is almost suffocating.

Yet, all this is pushing me deeper into God.  I am asking for strength and for wisdom.  I am asking for His love to flow through me when I am empty.  I am listening for His voice.  He has answered me with the most beautiful string of encounters with His presence.

                One – The Wind

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One February night I was having a quiet time in my room.  I turned on some “Bethel Without Words” and just sat in the music.  I felt God’s presence.  It was like a wind blowing through me and around me.  I was reminded of my childhood, when I used to climb the maple tree in my front yard.  I loved to climb as high as I could, until the branches got thin enough to sway gently in the wind.  I felt a breathless exhilaration.  I felt peace and joy.  I felt the wind.

                “That was me,” I heard God whisper.  “The wind was my presence.  I have always been with you, even before you knew me.”

The presence of God was so sweet.  It blew away my fears and left me feeling refreshed and new and loved.  I practiced trying to find this “Wind of His Presence” during the course of my day; when I was stressed about all I had to do, when I was worried that I wasn’t enough, when I felt my frustration rise and my sanity shaken.  I would close my eyes and feel the wind softly rock me back and forth, like a mother rocking her baby.  I was safe and loved, and this reality was where I wanted to live every hour of every day.

                Two – The Heartbeat of Love

About two weeks later I was enjoying worship at my church on a Sunday morning.  It is so easy to connect with the presence of God in that place.  I felt the wind again.  Then it began to pulse through me like a heartbeat.  I began to awaken to the truth that this love was also pulsing through everything everywhere…All THE TIME!  The universe was founded and built by His love.  It is operating and expanding by His love still.  This love is alive and active like the wind blowing, like a river flowing, like blood being pumped through every cell.

This was challenging my current world view.  I had seen the world as a very cold and hard place much of the time, full of dangers and toxins that I had to protect my children from.  Many scenes that flashed through my mind were not pretty; broken down cities full of corruption, once beautiful wilds polluted and dying, great mountains of decaying garbage inhabited by sick and hopeless humanity.   Yet God was telling me that His love was pulsing through all of this.  Scenes of great evil, people experiencing unspeakable horrors at the hands of other people, also flashed through my mind.

“There is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still…”

I knew that Corrie ten Boom had said this after living through a concentration camp, but now God was telling me that it was really true.  HIS LOVE IS EVERYWHERE!  Of course there is a lot in this world that IS NOT love, that IS NOT part of God’s original plan.

But His love is still there, bigger and stronger.  If only we could be aware of it.  If others have found His love in the depths of darkness, certainly I could find it in every circumstance of my life.  If His love can bring redemption from the worst of the worst, certainly He can do the same in my slightly messed up life!  When I began to look at the trials as potential miracles, my burdens began to turn to wonder.

              Three – The Eagles and the Wind

Eagle silhouette in Kachemac Bay where many birds can be seen

In the following weeks, I practiced feeling God’s heartbeat of love pulsing all around me and in me.  I imagined it flowing thought everything I looked at.  I imagined it touching everything I thought about.  Many times I would feel the wind of His presence, so full of love.

At the same time, I found myself searching the sky for eagles.  I know that there probably aren’t many eagles around here, but I was eager to see any bird of prey.  God speaks to me so often through nature, and right then I had an obsession with eagles.  It started when I wrote the article,  A Cure for the Negativity that is All Around , in which I told about a vision I had about 12 years ago.  I saw a nest full of baby eagles on the side of a rocky cliff.

God said, “You are eagles and you are to raise your children like eagles.”

Eagles play a huge part in the visions that Rick Joyner tells about in the Final Quest Series.  The eagles seemed to represent the prophets, flying high enough to see clearly what others cannot see.  They instruct, encourage, and warn the other believers.  They bring refreshing winds of healing when they flap their great wings.  They set believers free when they devour the snakes of shame. They carried many scars from the battles they had fought with courage. The Final Quest books have impacted me deeply.  I have read them many times and felt challenged and uplifted each time.  A small, timid voice inside my heart would say, “Perhaps I am meant to be an eagle.”  My mind would quickly dismiss the silly thought…until I remembered that vision.

I still didn’t understand how I could be an eagle in the spirit, but I wanted to find out.  So I began to search the skies for a sign.  Perhaps if I caught sight of the noble creatures (even a hawk would do!), they could teach me something.  As I drove through the country to the farm I frequent once a week, I would see large birds high the sky.  I would marvel at their freedom and wonder what they were seeing.

“How I wish I could fly up there like an eagle!  How I wish I could feel the wind as they do and see as they see!”  I thought to myself.

As I watched, I realized that they usually didn’t work hard or even flap their wings.  They simply allowed the wind to carry them.

                “The Wind of my Presence will lift you up so you can see like an eagle.  Being in my presence is the key to the vision you desire,” I heard the Spirit of God say to me.

In a split second He married my two obsessions, the wind and the eagle. I wasn’t crazy!  God was taking me on a journey that I didn’t understand, but it seemed as though He wanted me to be an eagle as much as I wanted to be one!

The scripture I received at the Women’s Encounter brought all of these encounters into focus for me.

Psalm 27:4-5 “One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: That I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life (His presence – YES!  That is what I want more than anything!), to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.

For in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling; he will hide me in the shelter of his tabernacle and set me high upon a rock.” (That’s where my baby eagles and I live!  That is where He is positioning me!)

Four – The Sky and the Ocean

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One Evening in April I was attending Women’s Prayer at my church.  The worship that night was simply a play list on a cell phone plugged into the sound system, yet I felt the Presence of the Lord so deeply.  I felt His love pulsing through me!  I felt His wind!  I imagined stretching my wings.  The beautiful wind lifted me high above the earth, above my circumstances, above the doubt and fear and anger of this world.  I could see that all was love, all was victory, all was good.

Right at that moment a song came on that I didn’t know, but the vocalist was singing about the wind of God.

“I can feel your wind blow through me.  All of me cries out for all of you!”

The words perfectly captured what was going on in my spirit. (Later the leader told me that she hadn’t picked that song and didn’t know why it had come on…but I did!)  I was soaring on the inside and feeling incredible freedom and peace.  Then I encountered the clouds in the sky.  I became the rain, falling to the earth.  I became part of the great waterfall that Hannah Hurnard talked about in Hinds’ Feet on High Places.  I was one of those happy drops of water, throwing themselves down from the High Places with thrilling abandon to be broken on the rocks below.  We continued to flow to the lowest place, down to the Valley of Humiliation to bring life and love to suffering humanity.  The water persisted in its journey until it reached the ocean.  And there I was, water in the depths of the ocean.  I could lay my life down to bring His love in the lowest place.

The wind and the rain

The Sky and the Ocean

             “This is what I am offering you.  This is the necklace from your dream.” The Father whispered.

Then I remembered necklace and my dream (God Encounters ~ Part One)!  The beautiful silver necklace with light blue jewels each inlaid with smaller dark blue gems.

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The light blue was the wind.

The dark blue was the rain.

The light blue was the Sky.

The light blue was the Ocean.

The Sky was limitless freedom and potential and vision.

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The Ocean was His Love and Peace in darkness and suffering, humility and servant-hood.

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My Father was offering me the vast expanse of the Sky and the deepest depths of the Ocean.

How could I, an imperfect mortal be worthy of such a gift?  How could I even understand such a gift?  How could I ever accept it and live in its reality?  Then the answer came.

                “You can’t work for this.  You are my daughter.  This is your inheritance.  Just accept it.”

So in my spirit that night, I accepted the gift that I could barely comprehend.  My Father, the King, placed the necklace around my neck and clasped it in the back.  It felt light.  This was no burden!  This was no heavy yoke!  This was the Sky and the Ocean…and it was mine.

 

 

 

 

Encounters with God ~ Part One: Dream Interpretation Please!

/ Anne (Grace is my Superhero) / 6 Comments

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I had an interesting dream in December, one full of symbols and a meaning I knew I needed to understand.  God was trying to talk to me, but what was He saying?

I was climbing up one of those attic staircases, the rickety kind that fold up into the ceiling when you are not using it.  I climbed up into the attic of my church.  It looked like a storage room for a museum, containing priceless treasures from all over the world.

                One of my pastors met me at the top of the stairs.  She had a smile on her face as she offered me a beautiful silver necklace.  It looked like it had belonged to royalty.  It had many large, silver bangles hanging from it, each one inlaid with a light blue rectangle with a dark blue circle in the center.  I hardly noticed the necklace, so it is a wonder that I can remember what it looked like at all. 

                I politely told my pastor, “No thank you.”  I really didn’t even consider accepting such a gift.  I was never one to wear large pieces of jewelry, and I just didn’t think it would suite me.  Plus I had my eye on something I thought was much more important and exciting.  Down the hall was an Egyptian Mummy.  As I child I had been fascinated with mummies, getting every book that the library had about the topic and pouring over the pages again and again.  I used to dream of becoming an archeologist and traveling to far-away places and uncovering untold treasures.

This mummy was encased in a very plain, clay sarcophagus.  It was apparent that I had already spent many painstaking hours chipping away at the clay to reveal the mummy underneath. I was excited about the significant discovery I was going to make, uncovering pieces of history that had not yet been revealed.  So far I had only uncovered the feet and the lower portion of the legs, dark and shriveled with age.  I was eager to return to my work.

Unfortunately I had left the sarcophagus in the walkway of the attic, and other people were coming and going.  I knew I had made a horrible mistake as some people brushed up against the mummy’s legs and feet.  I watched in horror as the fragile legs simply disintegrated into dust and blew away.  I felt devastated.

I pondered this dream for the next few days and here is what I think it means.  The mummy symbolizes human significance, the approval of men, the history books written here on earth.  Ever since childhood I have been intrigued by the work of men that can endure long enough for future generations to marvel and wonder.  Even now it is a deep need of mine to live a life that makes an impact and leaves a mark on the people of this earth.  However, if my focus is on achieving significance that is recognized by men, it will be like working carefully and diligently to reveal a mummy.  Anything can destroy that mummy.  It will not endure.

I immediately thought of my work to become a writer.  I long to be a writer.  I tell myself that my writing is mostly for myself, to document all the amazing things that God has done in my life.  Every time I type out a story, God’s goodness becomes more real to me.  Every time I read over something I had written years ago, I am overcome with the Goodness of God that I had forgotten but now remember again because I took the time to write it down!  I tell myself and others that my writing is mostly for my children, to give them a written history of what God has done in our family.  These things that I tell myself and others are very true.

Yet, my Big Dream (my Big Hairy Audacious Goal) is that my writing will go all over the world, impacting lives.  I want to be like the writers whose words have become a part of me and who have shaped the person that I am.  Many of them have died, yet their words live on, still rippling through time, shaping the generations.

I also want to be a writer who makes money from my writing.  It seems to me that the only way a writer can really make money and influence lots of people is to become known by the masses, to write a best seller, to have her name mentioned in households everywhere, or to have a blog article go viral.  I can’t imagine how this would happen to me, but it is still a dream.  I feel like every time I sit down and write something, however small and insignificant it may seem, I am that much closer to achieving that goal.  But is my work like chipping away at a mummy?

I think God is trying to keep me on track.  When I connect my dreams with the image of that mummy, I shudder with a cold chill.  That is not what I want!  I do not want to spend my life working for something cold and lifeless that most certainly will be blown away by any small wind of criticism, changing times, or fickle public opinion.  If this is my focus, I will most certainly fail.  I can only write something of significance if it comes from my relationship with God and is written to please Him.

Next my thoughts turn back to the necklace that I had so flippantly passed by.  That must be the treasure that God has for me, the goal of my life.  What exactly is that necklace supposed to represent?  Silver with light blue and deep blue.  A necklace fit for a queen.

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I am certain that the necklace represents the presence of God.  How could I pass up such a beautiful gift in favor of a mummy?  I have begun to evaluate my days with this test – am I going after the necklace or the mummy today?

Many times I think that His presence is my goal, but I get so distracted by getting things done.  Many times I think that all I need is His approval but find myself straining to gain the approval of others.  Many times I feel so discouraged by how little progress I make on anything measurable during the course of my day.  But it is the immeasurable things that really matter in this life.  I am determined not to miss those things!  This takes exercising my faith and spiritual eyes, because those things are invisible and so easy to pass by.  But in the light of eternity, they will grace me with the identity that will last forever…the Bride of the King.

In the months following this dream, I have had several encounters with God.  He began to slowly and gently reveal more about His presence and the treasure of this necklace…more about that in my coming articles; Encounters with God Part 2 and 3.