A Beautiful Chain of Events

17th May

Back in May, I was feeling very dejected, and miserable. Over the last couple of years, I have felt clear instruction from the Lord to speak out what He has been showing me – so, I wrote the book He inspired me to write, and I created a website; the manuscript is lying on a shelf, I don’t know how to get it published, and very few people look at the website. The only place where I share with a decent number of people is on a dream forum which is not mine. I was in a very dark place, wondering if I heard from God at all, fear clutching my heart that maybe I did not know his voice, after all, and I had been horribly deceived and just wasted my time doing these things. I felt I had failed in everything – and I desperately wanted to please Him by obeying Him. I know our works don’t earn us his free gift of salvation, but I think we all feel that we want to reach out to people for Him, we want to please him, because we love him. I told Jesus I felt like my life was just a pile of rubble. After a couple of weeks of crying out in prayer with no response, I decided to stop speaking, stop sharing, and just be quiet. The only thing that spoke to me during this time was from Isaiah – “though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the waters of affliction, your Teacher will not hide his face anymore, and your eyes will see the face of your Teacher. And your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, ‘this is the way, walk in it’, when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left.” I held to that as a promise as I stumbled through the darkness.

Even my Bible readings were difficult – I read Daniel, talking about two anointed ones. The second one, I knew, was Jesus. I wondered who the first one was. I thought I might find the answer in Ezra. I flicked through Ezra and read about how, when the foundations of the temple were laid with rubble, some of the people wept, because Haggai said the glory of the second temple was supposed to surpass the glory of the first. It didn’t mean that much to me, and I couldn’t find the answer to my question. I pushed my Bible aside, feeling even more dejected, turned to my downloaded youtube videos, and let them roll.

The first video was Stephen Ben Nun quoting the passage from Isaiah that had been so on my mind – ‘thought the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the waters of affliction…’ Next up was Carter Conlan (this particular video had been downloaded for months, but somehow I hadn’t got round to watching it till now) – he was saying he had a word from the Lord that he believed was for someone – and he referred to the exact passage in Ezra which I had just read, talking about the foundations of the temple being laid with rubble. He said there are people right now who feel like their lives are worthless rubble, but just remember, Jesus taught in that very temple, with its foundations of rubble, and in the same way, the Lord will come into our temples, laid on rubble, and our tears will turn to joy. I sat quietly wondering if that was the biggest coincidence I’d ever witnessed, or was God speaking to me? A couple of hours later, I got a message from my cousin (I live in Africa, she lives in Europe). She said she could sense there was something wrong and asked what it was. I told her I felt like a failure, because God was not blessing the things I thought he had told me to do. She answered wisely that she would pray about it. The next morning, she sent me another message. “I prayed for you, and God gave me this vision. I saw a little wooden house, and I saw you outside it, chopping and chopping wood, to renovate this house. Then I fell asleep and had this dream: You were inside the little house, and it was light and bright inside, but you were worried that all was not well. I went out with the servant to check, and we came back and told you all was fine. The servant symbolises the Holy Spirit, and the house and renovations are your ‘ministry’ from the Lord. All is well, don’t worry.” I found this message from her encouraging, and it also confirmed the message from Carter Conlan, because it was also about building and renovating. That evening, I put on my videos again, and this time Joanie Stahl came on, with a teaching about “Jesus in your house”.

I think it is quite amazing that after I told Jesus in my prayer that I felt like a pile of rubble, I then received 4 messages about houses and renovations and Jesus being in them, within 48 hours of my prayer. Isn't God just wonderful to encourage and comfort us?