Tag Archives: wait on the Lord

Christian Life, Walking in the Spirit

Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength

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Have you not known?
Have you not heard?
The everlasting God, the LORD,
The Creator of the ends of the earth,
Neither faints nor is weary.
His understanding is unsearchable.

He gives power to the weak,
And to those who have no might He increases strength.

Even the youths shall faint and be weary,
And the young men shall utterly fall,

But those who wait on the LORD
Shall renew their strength;
They shall mount up with wings like eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint.

(Isaiah 40: 28-31)

I have always seen “waiting on the Lord” in the context of extended time frames: waiting for the Holy Spirit to show up in a worship service; waiting for an answer to prayer; waiting days or weeks for a word from God before making a decision. In addition, I have never thought deeply about running and not growing weary, or walking and not growing faint, although in my advancing years I certainly look longingly at those verses and hope they will apply to my physical state. Mounting on wings like eagles has been a  metaphor for growth, increase, victory, in fact any undefined superior state that can be attained under God’s blessing: the verse has never had a very practical application for me, just a rather undefined sense of promise that I can’t say I have often known to materialise outside of some worship services where “rising up” to a higher level of worship in the Spirit has been the goal. I have never applied the scripture to short term, immediate contexts.

Until today. When I was a child, my mother used to say to me “Bobby, you’re always rushing.“ (A word to the wise: if you know me, please do not call me Bobby!) It’s a character trait I’ve battled with (or maybe so much not battled as be driven by…) all my life. I’m a “fast adopter“ when it comes to decision-making; I tend to try to do things quickly so I can finish them rather than aim for thoroughness ; I seem to miss significant details on the few occasions when I’m trying to think things through, and – probably most importantly – I tend to say the first thing that comes into my head in conversation without really checking if it’s coming from a positive or a negative place. This is at age 74, after more than 40 years of being a Christian, when I really should know better. Not much about me seems to have slowed down except my body.

But this morning I saw these verses differently. It was in an all too familiar context, where I had gone into something without giving it sufficient forethought, when I realised that “waiting on the Lord“ can also mean waiting for as short a time as a few seconds for my flesh to die and “the wisdom from above” to rule my thinking before responding to words or circumstances. And then I saw the rest of the scripture. Mounting on Eagles wings takes me into the heavenly places where my new man is seated in Christ, where I can draw on all I have been given in the Spirit. When I do this, I renew my strength in the Lord. I can “walk worthy of my calling” (Eph 4:1) and “not grow weary of doing good.“ (Galatians 6:9). I can “run with perseverance to race marked out for us,“ not growing faint, but “fixing my eyes on Jesus the author and finisher of my faith.“ (Hebrews 12:1–2)

When we “mount up with wings like eagles” we take our place in the Spirit, in the Lord who “neither faints nor is weary.” We don’t grow faint or weary because He doesn’t, and we are in Him. Out of His unsearchable understanding comes the wisdom we need, “the wisdom from above,” which is “ first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. (James 3:17). In our weakness we are strong. (2 Cor 12:10)

Verse 30 says this:
“Even the youths shall faint and be weary,
And the young men shall utterly fall…”

I have always seen this verse as a dramatic contrast with the favourable consequences of waiting on the lord in the rather woolly sense that I have always understood it, but now I understand it more as a contrast between walking ( or running) after the flesh, which always leads to failure, and walking in the Spirit. “Waiting on the Lord” becomes taking the time to step  into the Spirit  – or as Graham Cooke calls it, to “step back into the Lord” – to receive all that there is for our situation from where we are seated in Christ in heavenly places. Yes, we need to wait for Him in our meetings if we want to see the power of God move and His Presence fall. Yes, we need to wait in faith for Him to answer our prayers. But, and just as importantly, we need to wait for Him in the dynamic of our daily walk with God if we want to walk after the Spirit and not after the flesh.

In the light of this, the urgency of psalm 27:14 takes on a new meaning:

“Wait on the LORD;
Be of good courage,
And He shall strengthen your heart;
Wait, I say, on the LORD!”

Let’s do it. It appears to be a recommended route to victory in Christ.

Knowing God, Pursuing Love, Walking in the Spirit

Yes and No: Life and death in the power of the tongue.

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Jesus said: “By your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” (Matt 12:27), and Proverbs 18:21 reminds us that “Life and death are in power of the tongue.” Every  time we open our mouths we release life or we release death.  Paul wrote the following to the Corinthians:

“The things I plan, do I plan according to the flesh, that with me there should be yes, yes, and no, no? As God is faithful, our word to you was not yes and no. For the son of God, Jesus Christ – who was preached among you by me Sylvanus and Timothy- was not yes and no, but in him was yes . For all the promises of God in him are yes, and in him amen, to the glory of God through us.“ (2 Cor 1: 17-20)

In Christ there is only Yes
“In Him was yes.” There are no negatives in Jesus. He only spoke words of Life. There are negatives in the flesh – “yes, yes, and no, no” – but in Christ there is only “Yes.” In the realm of the Spirit, where all the promises of God are ours and where we are called to live, there is only Yes and Amen, and for every yes and amen God receives the glory. Whatever context Paul was referring to here when he talks about his plans, the statement he makes is absolute and so I think we can rightly apply it to our own lives. In Christ there is only Yes. Does this mean that we say yes to every request or agree with every suggestion made by others? Of course not. But it does mean at the least that we remain affirming of the people whose requests or suggestions we refuse; at the most it means that what looks like a “no” to our flesh is actually a massive “yes” in the Spirit; and always it presents an opportunity to release something of the promises of God into the circumstances where we find ourselves.

So how do I move from the flesh, with its yes yes and no no, to the spirit of Jesus Christ and the life affirming faithfulness of God that is always Yes?

The answer begins with a question. When we read the account of the woman with the issue of blood in Luke (Luke 8: 43-48) we see Jesus on a mission, pressed by the thronging crowds, to raise to life the dead daughter of one of the local rulers of the synagogue. Here indeed was one of the “lost sheep of the house of Israel“ coming to worship him in faith. Surely nothing could be more important than to demonstrate the sovereignty of the Son of Man to one of the religious hierarchy? But a woman in need touched his cloak, He put aside his urgent agenda, and He stopped to asked the question “Who touched me?”

We know what follows. Power had gone out of him. The Holy Spirit was responding to the woman’s need as she came to him in  faith.

The dynamic of the miraculous
This was the moment of choice. The disciples saw only the agenda of the flesh, which was to say no in response to the pressing crowds; but the Spirit had a different agenda, which was to respond with a life affirming Yes to the sick woman’s need. Jesus ignored the pressing of the flesh and the negativity of His disciples to stop and see where the Holy Spirit was flowing.

We see the same contrast at work when Jesus fed the multitudes. Faced with His compassion for the 4,000, the disciples only saw the impossibility of feeding them:  “Where could we get enough bread in the wilderness to fill such a great multitude?” (Matt 15:33), whereas Jesus saw the limitless resources of Heaven and “commanded the crowds to sit down.” The flesh said No, the Spirit said Yes. The blind, the deaf, the lame, the demon-possessed – yes, yes, yes, yes.

This dynamic of the miraculous is available to us in the details of our everyday lives, where we can choose to release life or death into every situation that we face. We may not be ministering healing on every street corner and in every conversation, but if we pay attention to the exhortation of James to be “quick to hear, slow to speak,” (James 1:19) we never know when those opportunities might arise, our eyes can be open to avenues that only the Holy Spirit can reveal, and even our objections and refusals can be clothed in Grace.

To walk after the Spirit and not after the flesh we need to silence the “No!” that rises up when the negative voices are clamouring in our ears and circumstances are pushing us along their road, and we must be open to the touch of need and  ready to stop to ask the question that will connect us to where Jesus is saying yes.

(See also “Pursuing Love” for more around the story of the woman with the issue of blood).

Be prepared; hold on., Christian Life, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

Count to ten and wait on the Lord

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Wait on the Lord I say! (Psalm 27:14)

We often read and hear testimonies about how someone (quite often a parent praying for their children) trusts in God’s faithfulness to answer their prayers for many years before they see that answer manifest. A well-documented example is Saint Augustine, whose mother prayed for his salvation from his infancy, and yet who seemed to wander further and further off the narrow way in a dissolute lifestyle until his dramatic conversion at 31 years old.

One of the unchangeable attributes of God is His faithfulness. In the midst of his darkness Jeremiah testifies of it in Lamentations 3:22-26:

“Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed,
Because His compassions fail not

They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.

“The LORD is my portion,” says my soul,
“Therefore I hope in Him!”

The LORD is good to those who wait for Him,
To the soul who seeks Him.

It is good that one should hope and wait quietly
For the salvation of the LORD.”

 We know that God’s word will not return to Him void (Isaiah 55:11), and many of us have held onto that truth in the middle of an empty place for many years before God has filled it with what He has promised – often in a completely unexpected way. We know that “those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength…” (Isaiah 40:31) and again many of us have personal or apocryphal stories of how God’s power and provision have carried them on an impossible journey as He has answered their prayers.

But I have been thinking about waiting for much short periods of time, and in a different context. The theme I’ve come to a few times on these pages is the need to tame the tongue. I probably keep returning to it because I keep finding that I still don’t succeed in that area! But there is a very simple strategy we can use to tame our wild tongues. What’s more we have probably all seen, read, heard and even spoken of it ourselves more than once. Quite simply, it’s “count to 10 (or three or five).”

Waiting a few seconds before we open our mouths in an emotionally charged conversation is in itself good advice,  and you can find it on Wikipedia and wherever else you might look for worldly wisdom. But Christians just have to add two words – “and pray“ – to take it to another level, where we have a practical and powerful example of waiting on the Lord. Because along with the advice comes the promise, as Jeremiah says in the verses quoted above: “The LORD is good to those who wait for Him.”

The Holy Spirit doesn’t need Long if we open the door to him: He will immediately start to bring peace, transforming negatives into positives, curse into blessing. He will always be good. “Cypress trees will grow where now there are briers; myrtle trees will come up in place of thorns.” (Isaiah 55:13

Paul exhorts us to take every thought captive, (2 Cor 10:5) but  if our thoughts are running away down negative tracks, we can’t take them captive unless we stop.  When we do, that simple act of stopping and waiting on the Lord is enough to let the Kingdom Of God take seed in even the most rancid situation.

Try it. Stop, count, pray. Wait on the Lord, I say!

Living by Faith, Walking in the Spirit

There is no rush

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Hurry! You’ll miss it!
 If there is one weapon in the devil’s armoury that he uses against us on a daily basis, it is the thought that we have to hurry. We are running out of time. Quick, before the opportunity goes and the window closes! It is embedded in the core language of commerce: “Don’t miss out! Offer ends tonight!“ The thought is always there, lurking, because it’s the language of temptation: make hay while the sun shines, because it could cloud over at any moment  It’s the language of pressure, and the language of manipulation: hurry, we’ll miss the train. Hurry, I’ve got things to do. Hurry, dinner is getting cold. Hurry, Hurry, Hurry. No time to think. No time to look around. No time to just listen, no time to wait for others, no time to love, no time for the Lord.

Be anxious for nothing
I was asking the Lord if he had anything for me to bring to a meeting recently, and after a few minutes he spoke four words very clearly into my spirit: “there is no rush.” I didn’t feel led to share it at the time, as it turned out, and so it has been marinating for a while. The scripture that immediately followed was Philippians 4 vs 6-7: “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus”. If we put the two words together, the Rhema and the logos, we get this: “There is no rush. Be anxious for nothing, but in all things…etc.“

Boundless God
Various Bible passages come to mind very quickly when we consider this. At the top of the list is probably Isaiah 40 vs 31: “Those who wait upon the lord shall renew their strength…“ This is probably closely followed for many of us by the raising of Lazarus from the dead: when Jesus heard that his friend was sick he actually waited two days before he set out for Bethany (John 11:6), by which time Lazarus had already died. Or we think of Saul, who rushed to save his kingdom from the Philistines by making a sacrifice in the apparent absence of Samuel, and actually lost it as a result. (He who seeks to save his life will lose it…) There are many others, but behind them are truths that underpin all of Scripture: God is boundless, and He is love. The biggest thing that limits our capacity to love is what we cling to, because whatever we cling to creates a boundary.

Stinking thinking
An old friend and pastor who is now with the Lord used to talk about our “stinking thinking.” We all have our examples of stinking thinking. Anne and I were out for lunch the other day and the waitress came to take away the plates we had finished with. One of them still had some tasty morsels on it which I thought I would still enjoy, so I told her to leave it on the table. I didn’t enjoy it particularly, and it just put on calories which I didn’t need and which aren’t good for me. I had grabbed what the world was offering because it was about to be taken away. Stinking thinking. God’s thinking says “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights.” (James 1: 17) As we know from Psalm 23, He sets His table before us in the presence of our enemies, so there is no rush to grab at what the world gives. How often we can let our appetites become our boundaries.

The Great Victory
 When Jesus was about to go to the cross, He said “the ruler of this world is coming, but he has nothing in me.” (John 14:30) He could lay down His life because He clung to nothing in the world, not even His own flesh: He just clung to His Father. Because He was free of every limitation, He could give the Spirit without limit. He overcame every boundary on our behalf so that we can enter into His boundlessness. He won the war against the world single-handed, so that we could receive His peace. This was the great victory of the Son of Man.

So there is no rush. We do not need to make hasty decisions that rely on our own understanding, without first seeking the peace that surpasses all understanding; and we do not need to grab the world’s opportunities before they are taken away. We have all the time in the world.

Be prepared; hold on., Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

The Bus Stop

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A prophetic word of encouragement

When we wait at a bus stop, we know that a bus will be coming, although we don’t always know when. The other night, I felt the Lord just say “bus stop” to me. I believe this is His word to us:

“You are at a bus stop, waiting for my bus to arrive. Nothing happens at a bus stop, the surroundings aren’t particularly exciting or beautiful, and it could be that you are standing on your own. You may be cold and wet, but you stay at the bus stop because you know the bus will be coming. You aren’t hoping that it might come; you know that it will come, so you stay where you are in full expectation of its arrival. And however cold and wet you are, however tired you might feel because you have been standing there for a long time, you know that the bus is coming, and when it arrives it will be warm and dry and you will be able to sit down. You don’t need to walk any further, because the bus will take you on to your destination.

My bus is on the way. The revival that you have been praying for is on its way. Don’t worry about your ticket: it is booked. And when the bus arrives you will find it full of people who are on the same journey, although they have come from different places. You will know some of them; some you will remember from a while back, and others will be strangers. But you will all share the joy and excitement of the journey, and soon you will all be friends. You may wonder where the bus is going because it will be taking you to places that you didn’t expect, but don’t worry because I will be driving the bus myself. There will be other stops to pick up more people, but don’t be tempted to get off before I say we have arrived. The tempter will try and draw you away, saying “This is your stop,” but it will be a lie, because when we arrive at the destination I have planned for you, everybody will leave the bus as one, perfect in one.

So carry on praying and waiting. Don’t give up or be drawn away. The bus is coming.”

Discipleship and witness, Holiness: You shall be perfect, Living by Faith, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

Entering the Land (teaching)

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(Adapted from my new book, “Two Seconds to Midnight,” scheduled for publication in the Spring.)

Many of us believe that a season of harvest is coming soon, and that it will be greater than anything that the church has yet experienced; that we are about to enter a “promised land” of revival. We read about God’s people entering the Promised Land in the book of Joshua, and the principles that we see there speak to us today. If we pick up the story at the beginning of Joshua 5, we can find four main points: the men were circumcised; they celebrated Passover; they ate unleavened bread; Joshua worshipped the Lord and took his instructions from Him.

Circumcision
When they had all crossed the Jordan and set up camp at Gilgal, the Lord commanded Joshua to make flint knives and circumcise all the men of Israel: all those old enough to bear arms had died in the wilderness, and the new generation had not been circumcised with the sign of their covenant relationship with God. When this had been accomplished, God said to the Israelites through Moses: “This day I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.” (Jos 5:9) The reproach of Egypt was the yoke of slavery that they had been under: now, through this act of consecration to the Lord, this yoke was broken.

Under the new covenant, we, the Church, are that new generation, born not of the flesh and the will of man, but of the Spirit of God (John 1:13). Each one of us is a new creation. There is a Land of Promise waiting which the “faithless and perverse generation” of the flesh cannot enter. but there will be another Jericho facing us as we come up against the godless systems of the world.

Paul reminds us (Romans 2: 29) that  “he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter.” To face the end-time Jericho we will need hearts that are totally open and yielded to the Lord. It’s easy to gloss over the use of the word “heart” in this sort of context. But if, in biblical terminology, the heart is the seat of the emotions, this is exactly what must be yielded to the Lord. It is so often our unyielded emotions that cause damage and disunity, and consequently defeat; whereas it is the unity that commands the blessing, as we well know. Only with “circumcised hearts” can we be free of all that ties us into the old, binding us to the yoke of slavery to sin, and be free to take the yoke of Jesus and rise up in the spirit.

Passover
The second heading is Passover. There is only one way to be yoked to Jesus Christ, and that is under the power of His blood. I believe that the Church needs a restored understanding of the power of the blood, and especially of the truth that “the life is in the blood.” Whenever we take communion as Jesus commanded us to do “in remembrance of Him,” we reaffirm not only the covering of the blood and all that it means in terms of forgiveness of sin and shelter from its consequences, but we affirm also the life of the Spirit that courses through it in our renewed hearts.
After Passover comes Pentecost. Our preparation for an end-time outpouring has to be a season of Passover. Many Christians the world over have felt that coronavirus lockdown has been, and still is, a taste of that season, shut off from the world and reaching out for the protection of the blood of the Lamb. We know that many Christians, sadly, have not survived the virus; but we also know that there are many testimonies of genuine divine healing that were granted through the power of the Blood.

Unleavened bread
The deeper significance of unleavened bread has always been a bit of a mystery to me. I’ve always felt that there is more to it than it being a reminder of leaving Egypt without having time for the bread to rise. Jesus talked about the “leaven of the pharisees,” for example, when He was warning the disciples to keep away from their deceptive doctrines; and it is a positive symbol in the parable of the leaven, which is probably (I haven’t done a word-count) the shortest parable in the New Testament. So what might be the symbolism in its Old Testament usage?

Just the other day the Holy Spirit gave me my personal revelation. This may not be the same for you, and I’m not saying it is what He has breathed into the scriptural significance of unleavened bread for everyone to receive, but the following is what He gave me. A negative reaction to something was rising up in my soul. The Lord said to me: “That thing rising up in you is leaven. Get rid of it.” Having “circumcised our hearts” we need to keep them soft.  Paul writes: “For we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread.” (1 Cor 10:17). To move forward into our Promised Land we need to deal with any leaven in our souls that causes us to rise up emotionally and undo the work of the cross in our lives. The children of Israel “ate of the produce of the land on the day after the Passover, unleavened bread and parched grain, on the very same day.”  The grain of our land consists of the seeds of truth sown into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, and these are what we must feed on as we advance. We cannot arise in the spirit if we let negative emotions rise up in our souls: the best way to keep unleavened our corner of  the “one bread” that we are part of, is to make sure that we are feeding on the truth.

Worship in Holiness
And so, with hearts soft and sensitive to God, covered in and fully grasping the power of the blood of Jesus, and feeding on the living truth of His Word instead of the leaven of our emotions as our spirits are filled with His, we come into the Holy Ground where the Commander of the Lord’s Army is standing, and we worship Him. In this place, we can say, like Joshua, “What does my Lord say to His servant?” (Jos 5:14). And His commands to us will be of the same order as His words to Joshua: first, respond to His Holiness (Take off your shoes), and only then move in to defeat the enemy.

Be prepared; hold on., Discipleship and witness, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

Are You a Believer?

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“I also asked about the ten horns on the fourth beast’s head and the little horn that came up afterward and destroyed three of the other horns. This horn had seemed greater than the others, and it had human eyes and a mouth that was boasting arrogantly. As I watched, this horn was waging war against God’s holy people and was defeating them, until the Ancient One—the Most High—came and judged in favor of his holy people. Then the time arrived for the holy people to take over the kingdom.” (Daniel 7: 20-22 NLT)

Are you a believer? Do you believe that the Lord made the Heavens and the Earth? Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who died for your sins, was resurrected on the third day, is seated at the right hand of God and will return one day, possibly quite soon, to judge both the living and the dead? Do you believe that Man was created in the image of God and did not evolve from lizards? Do you believe that unborn children should not be murdered? That you and I were designed to have a lifelong relationship with a member of the opposite sex? And do you support a political party that, in the main at least, upholds these values?

If you do, you are in good company: you are in “the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven.” (Heb 12:23) We belong, not because we know better, but because we believe.

But when you speak of these things that you believe, are you mocked and vilified? Are you made to feel at times that you are simple-minded, ignorant and foolish when you even think them; that it really is time that you woke (pun intended) up to reality? If this is you, remember that “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age,  against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” (Eph 6:12) The voice that seeks to make you feel ashamed of what you believe is not the voice of the secular media, it’s not even the voice of the editor of that left-wing journal that claims to speak for freedom; it comes straight from the mouth of the prince of the power of the air whose servants they are, who “boasts arrogantly” against the Most High God and wages war against His people. The more arrogant the voice, the closer it comes to judgement.

And if you are a brother of sister in the USA right now, be encouraged, Child of God, for the Most High will, in His time, judge in favour of His holy people.

“See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they don’t know him.” (1 John 3:1)

Discipleship and witness, Walking in the Spirit

Soaring like Eagles

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“But those who trust in the LORD will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint.” Isaiah 40 v 31

We need to understand the eagle to get a more complete picture of what the Lord is saying through this passage.

The eagle is the fastest animal created, soaring at speeds of 140 miles per hour and in excess of 200 miles per hour when it spots prey. It also flies at a height of between 23000 feet to 36000 feet, sometimes for days without a single flap of its wings, and even can fly through a hurricane. Eagles actually love the challenge of a storm . When other birds will try to flee, the eagle will fly into it, using the wind of the storm to rise higher in a matter of seconds, just  soaring  unaltered from its path but at a greater height. The eagle’s wings are so aerodynamic that air flows over them causing very little turbulence. I believe that as we wait upon the lord He prunes and trims our wings to be more aerodynamic, so that we may soar on the thermals and fly into the storms when they come.

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.” (John 15 v1-8)

Eagles are very efficient birds, which is how God wants us to be:  soaring on his thermals in the Spirit. So just like He prunes us to make us fruitful, the Lord will also prune and trim our wings to be ever more aerodynamic, soaring and remaining steady through the storms of life. Another amazing fact about the eagle that if it loses a feather either on one side – on land or soaring – it instantly loses the same feather on the other side to keep it in balance. I believe when the Holy Spirit prunes us He does the same thing, keeping us balanced so we can continue soaring with Him.

Eagles are famous for their vision: we talk about having “eagle eyes.” The eagle flies well above the ground so it can one see what is going on. What we are called to do as a church and as members of His body is to wait on the Lord so we can soar above the troubles of life, even flying into the storms, appearing almost motionless as we keep an eye out for anyone caught in the enemy’s snare on the ground.  When we see someone in trouble we can dive down to rescue them as quickly as possible, carrying them with us up to the safety of the skies to be restored by the Lord .

Thanks and credits

Here I wish to give credit to Adele and Phoebe for letting me take picture of Phoebe having her feet being washed for the cover and chapter 1 pictures.

Thank you to Graham Russell for taking the photograph of Pete their dog.

A big thank you to Bob  Hext for mentoring me and  for reviewing materials that I have written and am writing.

All thanks and Praise goes to the Our Lord for gifting me and  guiding me.