Monday, January 3, 2011

This year past, and 2011!

Every year of our lives God intends for us to be an absolutely incredible year with Him - loving and being loved by Him, building relationships, stepping out in faith, going deeper into His heart and growing in everything He has for us! 2010 for me felt significantly like it was going to be just a year of deeper intimacy with the Lord than I had ever known and more freedom than I had ever known.

Well 2010 definitely turned out like that! 

I had started reading about revival and renewal in 2004, during my break times in the college library. It was there that I first read about Rodney Howard-Browne, Toronto and Rolland and Heidi Baker. I remember being so hungry and really wanting more of the Holy Spirit, and also thinking about visiting Mozambique one day.

In Malaysia, January 2010 while visiting my parents, God spoke to me that I was His lily. I googled lilies and one thing that stood out to me was that some lilies take up to 5 or 6 years underground before they start to show. God reminded me of that time in 2004 when I had really started to hunger for my life to be more of a representation of heaven on earth, and more intimacy with Him.

I got back to Australia and found out that Rodney Howard-Browne was coming to speak at my church that March! That was incredible and on the Tuesday night after he spoke I was at a creative team discipleship for my church, and one of the things Jesus showed me was himself in a Tarzan-ish costume. It was so funny! I'm asked him what he was doing looking like that?! (by the way he's fun with me. I work with children so he often shows me stuff in cartoon or related to kids or in a way that only a kid's mind could understand or would find funny). So he says to me that my life with Him is just going to be this whole huge adventure. He said "this is the life I want you to live. A pioneering, adventurous life with Me!" Because my Jesus is NEVER BORING! It will always be FUN, and FUNNY! It will be a journey into the unknown at times, scary at times, definitely mind-blowing, beyond and far exceedingly over and above all my highest hopes, dreams and expectations. But most of all it will be fun. And it's all for love! The most amazing, powerful, abundant, undoing, overcoming force in the world! His love. 

I then saw Him as a caped man on a white horse and he held me against His chest, which was a white bright chest. And we kept stopping and ministering to/healing the ones, and then swinging them up on the horse with us. More and more precious ones joining in the adventure!
The day after this vision I flew up to Queensland to a conference with Rolland and Heidi Baker. They had an Iris stand set up which I avoided the whole time. I knew God would get me to Go if I looked at it. Well God got me anyway. I ended up going to the Iris Harvest School of Missions from October to December 2010 where God took hold of me and wrecked me for the nations. He wrecked me for the least of these. There was one significant session where I laid down every dream He had ever given me or I had desired myself and I saw them float away. I had the sense that there was no past, no future, only NOW and it was the NOW that mattered. “My future is a blank canvas ready for You to paint on”.

It was after this during the launch of our 24/7 prayer week, as laid-down Mozambican pastors were praying for all of us international students that He gave me the Abraham call to GO, complete with a picture of a green pedestrian light, except the little man was running instead of walking.

Throughout the rest of the school God revealed to me personally more and more exactly what that meant. He also confirmed the call to the nations through different people, most of which knew nothing of what God had been speaking to me. Further to that, I visited a church on Christmas Day in Australia which I had never been to before, filled with people I had never met, and one of the ladies confirmed this from the front by pointing me out and saying I had a call to nations - just another expression of love from my Father - when I didn't need it but He knew it would bless me :)

It was during my time in Mozambique that I also met Jesse, Tanya and baby Zoe – long-term missionaries with Iris who I first met as leaders of my team’s weekend outreach into the bush. (You can see their blog at http://kingsquestministries.blogspot.com )

2011
I feel like Jesus has asked me to go with this family to reach the lost and love on the least of these in a few different Asian nations. This will take place in the months of March to May. We will be visiting existing people already there, serving with them, ministering to the local poor and broken, and also reaching out to unreached villages, and loving on them. We will also be visiting Australia to work with people there and reach out to the local indigenous people.

In September I will be again travelling with this family as part of a group of other people who have felt the Lord speak to their hearts about South America. We have felt His heart for the most down and out, lost, forgotten people and it is to see them transformed by the LOVE and FIRE of God. His heart is to see them gathered in from the darkness and brought into the light of His kingdom! We will be leaving from California in the first couple weeks of September, travelling all the way through Central America and down into South America - going through as many of the countries as we can and targeting especially those unreached tribes and people groups who have never heard the name of Jesus before. We will also be connecting with local YWAM bases and other churches and believers who are based in these countries permanently - they will be the ones who will disciple and train long term. We will also be ministering to the poor and broken in the larger cities that we travel through. We estimate this trip to take as long as or around a year. We will be travelling by 4x4 and RVs and some people will be involved for parts of the trip, some for the whole trip. This trip will be documented as much as we can on an online blog which will be updated regularly, and will be found on the Iris Ministries website: www.irismin.com

We hope that through this others can join with us in praying and interceding for the whole of Central and South America to saturated with God's love and power, seeing lives changed, restored and set free!

I love you all and would really appreciate your prayers as I step out in following where He leads! It is all about His heart :)

Pray for more intimacy with the Lord - we always need more of Him! Pray for all of those involved in the trip that we would hear clearly from God about where and when He wants us to go, and how He wants us to prepare. HIS wisdom, strategies and strength :) Pray for provision and favour for the journey. More love, more joy, more peace!!


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You are Needed and WANTED!

He is all we need, and we need each other. We need our family with us. Every one is important. Every individual is needed. 'The church is not the same without your gift'. We are all needed and wanted because there is no one else who can bring what you bring. Who can love like you love. Who can be who you are. Who has the exact same passion and unique ministry that you do. We are all different, all unique, yet all bound together. No matter if I don't even know you! The body of Christ includes the local body, and the body all over the world. What you do here is impacting someone, some way over the other side of the world. Yes it's true! Maybe not in the immediate, but as they say, a butterfly flapping it's wings here can cause a tornado on the other side of the world. Don't underestimate yourself and what God has gifted you with. Do not underestimate the power of your prayers.

1 comment:

  1. So exciting!!! We will all carry His glory to the darkest places of the world together.

    ReplyDelete