I am happy!
I have a new job as a residential counsellor working in group homes for a privately owned company called Country Haven Acres. It is more up my alley because I am working with people instead of cleaning which is isolated and non-interactive. I've been working there for 2 weeks now and am enjoying it.
I have been going to intercession regularly every Wed night for a couple months now and I love it! I was going periodically throughout the summer but because of my nannying job I couldn't always make the long drive there and back. I love the atmosphere of prayer, intercession, worship (we always worship for at least 45 min before we start praying) and I can't seem to get enough of it. So far with my new job I have been fortunate in that I haven't had to work a Wed night yet. So far the one Wed shift I did have ended at 7pm so I drove straight to church and was only 15 min late! I know it is so important for all of the generations in the church to come together in unity. Since I connect more easily with older generations but can also relate to young adults, I know am I a good person to be used to bridge the gap between the young and old. I am the only one from my generation at intercession and altogether I think 3 generations are represented there. There is such a rich inheritance and wealth of knowledge and experience in the generations that have gone before me and I don't want to miss out on any of it. I know that I also have something to bring to intercession and that all of the generations together are so much more powerful than when we are separate and categorized. The old and young need to be walking arm in arm. I think that what we want to see happen in the church body usually starts with the intercessors, so I am committed to be faithful to Wed nights. These are exciting times we are living in!
Every Sunday I sense God asking me to step out in freedom just a bit more. Since my spirit comes most alive in worship (whether it be singing with a worship team or dancing and doing warfare with flags & dance) I want to give Him all I have and let loose. I just need to show up early and arrange the chairs so that there is more room on the side I want to dance on. I don't want to have to worry about hitting people and constantly keeping my eyes open. I know that He is calling me to become even more undignified than this. He has always called me to such freedom. I just have not always chose to walk in it. I know I am a forerunner and now that I am finally in an environment where I am free to run, it is kind of like a sailor who was on land too long but finally got back to his ship.... I am getting my sea legs back, and once they are fully adjusted to what I was originally made for, walking on normal flat, unmoving land, will feel weird and unnatural. I was made for adventure. I was made to sing songs of freedom, songs of praise, to sing prophetically and unabashedly the words that God puts on my heart to proclaim. I was made to dance wild and free and full of passion. I was made to war and learn the heartbeat of my Father and listen and hear His strategies for bringing His kingdom. I know I have been in hiding most of my life, but I am coming out. He is drawing me forth. I pray and I choose never to draw back.
Relationships. Everyone knows by now that things didn't work out with one of the two reasons I moved here. I moved to Ontario for a man and his church. God took me through some testing and I came through the fire without the man, but totally sold out for his church! The split needed to happen because only when I was single again did my relationships with others in the church really start to take off. I think that people assumed that when I was in a relationship I probably didn't have much time for socializing with others so they didn't reach out as much as they did once I was single again. Also, I was not being who God has called me to be while in the relationship, and in fact, I was holding myself back in hopes for something that just wasn't happening. God taught me a lot through it and gave me some incredible insight where I otherwise would have had none if things had just continued on smoothly with no roadblocks. I have no regrets. Only thankfulness. I know that God isn't finished with me yet.
Along with that, I am blessed with other people in the church (and outside of it) who have gotten to know me and support me and are becoming family. I also have been able to come alongside people in support and prayer and love.
Along with that, I am blessed with other people in the church (and outside of it) who have gotten to know me and support me and are becoming family. I also have been able to come alongside people in support and prayer and love.
More than ever I know God strategically brought me to this specific geographical location. Nothing has happened by chance and I keep seeing His hand in so many things as He weaves my life in and out of others lives. The exciting part is that right now He is mostly weaving me IN and I can invest in relationships I'll be around to continue for years to come.
Something really cool that only confirms my calling to the nations and to go where ever my Lord sends me... Recently my family on my mom's side spent a beautiful weekend in Okanagan Falls with some of my immediate and extended family, for my grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary. I wish I could have been there but I did get skyped in during the ceremony and was moved to tears and also excited to learn more of my heritage which I was unaware of until now. I will quote a piece from my sister Rachel's blog:
"My maternal grandparents moved to Canada a week after they got married 60 years ago. A few weeks ago I had been reflecting on how they had followed in Abraham and Sarah's footsteps, leaving their people and country to go to a new land (by boat no less!) with nothing but a small trunk and a bit of loose change. They started over from scratch, built more than one home, raised a family, and continue to subsist largely from the work of their own thrifty and calloused hands. In a short ceremony we had this weekend, my grandparents stood and renewed their vows. The same church bells that rang in Daaden the day they were married, rang again in a small room overlooking an autumn lake, and my brother-in-law read the passage that Opa's pastor had read over them on their wedding day, none other than Genesis 12 "Now the Lord said to Abraham, 'Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you...and I will bless you...and make you a blessing." I had not known this had been the very passage that they set sail to, and many people are witnesses to the blessing that God has faithfully poured out to my grandparents, and through them."
This is so amazing to me because this same verse is exactly what God has done with me leaving BC to relocate to this tiny town in Ontario. It also reminds me of one of the verses He gave me back when I was 19 and heard from Him to go to STC discipleship school in Abbotsford. None of my family actually believed that I had heard from God, or even that I knew how to hear His voice. They thought I was being impulsive (because I did have a history of dreaming and making quick decisions sometimes) and foolish, wasting my only free money (from ICBC accident claim) on an unaccredited school with a spooky name ('supernatural' training centre) and that I'd be immersed with a bunch of charismatic, ungrounded super-spiritual Christians. Yet God comforted me with this "And everyone who had left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name's sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life." Matt 19:29 Another similar one He gave me was "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." Luke 14:26 I knew He was not asking me to hate my family. He was saying that sometimes the places He calls me to will be away from my family, and that I have to be obedient to His voice and His will for my life above the voices and desires of family members. Let's face it. Sometimes family might say things that go against what God has called us to do. Sometimes these things are said in blind judgement but sometimes they are said in love and a deep desire to keep family close. Sometimes it's a combination of both. I need to love and serve my Saviour and His will to the point of sometimes going against the family grain and maybe even enduring some misunderstanding or persecution from family members. The truth is, God might speak something to you but not the rest of your family. His ways are above our ways, and even though I don't always understand why and how He does things in my life, I have a deep seated understanding that I can trust Him. I have to, He is my one constant. It wouldn't be trust if I always knew the outcome or could see the future. Just because He has given me a peace that passes all understanding and has made it clear in uncountable ways as to why He brought me here, I can't expect my family to have that peace or understanding or knowledge. They aren't here. They aren't inside my heart or head or spirit. They don't know how I feel like a lost puzzle piece that finally found the puzzle (church body) I was created to fit into. It's bizarre and marvellous and glorious all at once! Since they weren't created the same way as me, even if they came and visited my church, it wouldn't feel like home to them the way it did for me from the very first time I visited it in December 2010. Yet I am comforted by the words of Jesus and I will continue to follow Him at all cost. I don't believe God brought me here with plan A or B. Just because plan A wasn't exactly what I had originally thought, it doesn't mean I start looking for plan B or C or run back to BC! Haaha. God only has plan A and if I had followed Him here while concocting a backup plan in the back of my mind thinking.. "What if..." ...I don't think He would have been too pleased and I would not have had total peace. He has made it really clear to me that when following His will, there is no backup plan, no dwelling in the past and no worrying about the future with what-ifs. There is only obedience and following on the path He is lighting up before me, sometimes only a few feet at a time. The part further ahead doesn't light up unless I keep walking forward in the section right in front of me. I dearly love and miss my blood family, especially since all the restoration that has taken place in the last few years... it made it even harder to say goodbye to them. Yet I know that in the long run we are all moving in different directions anyways and other siblings will be on other continents living and working abroad. I guess I was just the first to make a big move, but I know I won't be the last.
My spirit came home at the Dream Centre (official name New Hope Fellowship) and I'm not about to leave and be a wandering spirit again with no spiritual family! I can compare it to a little girl who was given up for adoption but raised in foster care and when she reached the age where she could search for her birthparents, she searched and searched and found them on the other side of the country. She went to them and they accepted her as part of the bigger family they had had since her. Even though she wasn't raised with their kids (her brothers and sisters), she had much of the same mannerisms and personality traits as them. Her heart had found it's home and loved her the same as the children they had raised from birth. Why on earth would an orphan raised by various foster parents, having found her biological family and fitting right in, ever go back to the foster system!?! Well I have found my bio-spiritual family if that makes sense. Going back to BC would feel like going back into the foster care system. I don't think I could bare it. On top of that it would be direct disobedience to what God was spoken to me. I don't know about you, but once I am in the will of God, I never want to leave it. It is the safest place to be!
Aside from all that, my desire to be in a constant atmosphere of worship and prayer and intercession has only grown stronger. If there is a way I could live in Burks Falls at minimal cost (or even free with a family and clean their house and do various chores in exchange for room & board), I would spend all my free time at the Dream Centre. I would love for it to be open 24/7 to the community as a place to come and receive counselling, prayer ministry, inner healing, to come and worship in whatever form (be it dance, painting, poetry, singing). I would gladly facilitate it and be the main person there 80% of the time. Maybe it would have to start by being open a few days a week, and then as more believers join in the 24/7 vision, we could have it open longer and longer. It has been a longing to go visit and possibly live at IHOP in Kansas and be an intercessor/worshipper in their 24/7 prayer room. But then I keep getting the sense that God wants to open such wells in other places around the world and why not do it right here in Muskoka? Maybe if I had people sponsor me to cover rent and food, I could quit my job and spend all my time at the church, pouring into people who come, but most of all, ministering to the Lord and letting all ministry just come naturally from the overflow of sitting in His presence.
One thing Have I asked of the LORD,
that will I seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD,
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD,
and to inquire in his temple.
If there is a way that this verse could become a reality for my life, I want to find that way. It is my heart's deepest cry and desire to be wholly His. I am convinced that God would not be calling me to such a set apart lifestyle if He is not going to help me make a way. He will make a way. Ever since I was about 13 I knew that He was calling me to be set apart. I decided when I was even younger that I would never drink alcohol and as I grew older I knew this decision was birthed out of a calling to be consecrated, holy, righteous, pure and set apart for my Lord. The same went with smoking and drugs. I was never tempted to even try any of it. I always had a deep sense of right and wrong and somehow knew what was evil and what was good. I decided to learn from other's mistakes and not make them myself. This combined with my childhood circumstances resulted in exhilarated growth in a lot of areas. Although I never strayed far or left my walk with the Lord, I know that the last 3 years of my life I have not been totally surrendered. Sure I've a firm follower of Christ. But my heart, my time, my devotion has not been fully given to the Lord and bringing His kingdom to earth. I don't want that anymore. I only want to serve the body and worship Him in the inner courts. I want to live out of the third heaven and be more earthly good. If God has made it clear that this is the geographical place He has decided to plant me, I must believe that He can do what He has done at IHOP in Muskoka and maybe something even better and richer (minus all the endtimes doctrine they teach at IHOP)! Then, once I have a firm home-base established, He can release me on trips to the nations with the blessing and covering of a church family behind me and in front!
