The long, long wait is now over. Life is about to change dramatically. Throughout this 2 year trial I kept a journal. Here are some snippets from it (some names have been withheld):
July 28th 2011 - The last day at Bible Week, a man I have never met before or seen since game me a prophetic word. 6 words. “God will sort out your situation”. The start of a long, long journey.
I felt a lot like Elijah being fed by the ravens in a time of famine. At work there was so little to do, some days I would just sit at my desk for 8 hours without anything to do. It was psychologically very hard on me. Especially knowing I would have to come back the next day and do it all again. This went on for months and months.
October 1st 2011 - I had been seriously wondering if I should get another job, maybe move, I just didn’t know how long I could take this lack of work. The Lord spoke very clearly to me through my daily reading of the word:
Jeremiah 42 v10-12- If you will remain in this land, then I will build you up and not pull you down, and I will plant you and not pull you up; for I will relent and comfort and ease Myself concerning the evil that [in chastisement] I have done to you [and I will substitute mercy and loving-kindness for judgment]. Be not afraid of the king of Babylon, of whom you are fearful [with the profound and reverent dread inspired by deity]; be not afraid of him, says the Lord, for [he is a mere man, while I am the all-wise, all-powerful, and ever-present God] I [the Lord] am with you to save you and to deliver you from his hand. And I will grant mercy to you, that he may have mercy on you and permit you to remain in your own land.
To me this was the word to stay. I couldn’t even look for a job. Others around me were very busy looking but I had no peace to do it.
A few months after this I started to wonder if I should start doing something again, but in a conversation with (name withheld) he clearly spoke the word of God to me about Rahab. A woman who was possibly in the worst position there was, living in a wall that was going to come down. Having to stay in that room while around her was the sound of panic and fear and destruction. So I kept staying.
May 25th 2012 - I read in Revelation 10v6 “There will be no more delay”. I went to work and there was an announcement that the plant is closing.
May 27th 2012 - (name withheld) said “God causes things to happen to show his glory in our lives”
May 28th 2012 - I started reading Psalms. I want to be a praiser in this time. As Roger Aubrey says “Have the attitude of gratitude”.
The same day I was walking to the gatehouse speaking in tongues. The Holy Spirit asked me what I would like to do. I have no idea, I want life but don’t know where to find it. I asked the Holy Spirit to choose.
June 1-3rd 2012 - School Of The Word Weekend. (name withheld) & (name withheld) gave me the same word about clay jars being broken so oil could flow. Arne Skagen told Nicky & me it was a new season for us.
June 9th 2012 - Psalm 21v4 “He asked you for life, and you gave it to him”. This is my prayer, please Lord, give me life.
June 10th 2012 - I told (name withheld) about the situation & she is praying for green pastures for us.
June 11th 2012 - Reading ‘The Elijah People’ I decided to grow up, be mature in my mind & thinking. Take Gods word at face value & believe him.
June 16th 2012 - Started taking Keri Jones’s advice to read the word aloud (I have done so ever since this date), it makes a huge difference.
July 18th 2012 - The Lord told me to watch my vocabulary, stop being a moaner, stop presuming bad things.
Bible Week 2012 - A lady read Isaiah 35 followed by David Shutt prophesying ‘Now is not the time to give up. Don’t let your wonderings become your wanderings. God will do what he promised. Hold your head up, keep going’ I shouted out ‘I believe you God, I trust you’. Keri asked we go up for prayer on the final night for equipping in this next season, we were not supposed to be prophesied over but Mick Walford gave me this word ‘I will be blessed spiritually but I would also be blessed in the natural with what I put my hands to, at work, at home. I would do very well with natural things & it would be a testimony & win people to the Lord. Remember I would be also blessed spiritually but the natural would come alive’
August 1st 2012 - (name withheld) prophesied I would soar on eagles wings.
August 7th 2012 - I read Psalm 112. I don’t believe it’s going to happen for me. I will read it again later.
August 9th 2012 - Psalm 115v14 May the lord MAKE you increase.
August 24th 2012 - I just feel like crying after all the meetings at work trying to save the plant. I am remembering the word to me Psalm 24v14 ‘Wait for the Lord, be strong & take heart & wait for the Lord’ 1Peter3v14 ‘Do not fear what they fear, do not be frightened’.
August 28th 2012 - Ardagh rejected all offers and moved to close the plant.
August 29th 2012 - I felt God ask me what I want to happen, so I have asked for 3 things: 1- A job that has life. 2- Not to be unemployed, to go from job to job. 3- A redundancy payment to make me debt free. That night at house group (name withheld) prophesied I was under a shower of blessing, a shower soaking my head, running down my shoulders covering me. He then said I should tell the group what I want to happen so we could agree & stand with me in prayer, so I told them the 3 things and we all agreed.
September 24th 2012 - I feel like I am dyeing like I have nothing to offer. I think God is doing this to me to be yielded to the Spirit. It’s a chore to keep going. It feels pointless. I came home & prayed with Nicky & Nathan. I spoke in tongues and felt I needed to be lifted up, to see things from where the Lord is. I re-read this journal in the evening to remind me what he has done.
October 21st 2012 - (name withheld) gave a word at church ‘God knows, God cares’. I have felt so insignificant, there are so many more important things that need to be prayed for, I felt I should be passed over, overlooked. But God knows & God cares.
October 27th 2012 - 2 Peter 1v21 ‘Carried along by the Holy Spirit’. God asked me ‘Do I believe I am being born along by the Spirit?, if Yes, what does that mean, if no, what does that mean?
November 30th 2012 - I didn’t get a job as Graphic Designer at Hoovers. I feel very heavy hearted, but the first thing I did was to praise God.
December 19th 2012 - Sometimes at work, when I am on my own, I feel a wave of despair wash over me. I think it best not to struggle, just let it go by.
January 4th 2013 - Strange time this morning in my prayer time. I felt completely still. I didn’t pray a thing, just knelt quietly before him in silence.
January 7th 2013 - I felt a voice saying ‘Things will start to change when you start to fast’, so I fast tomorrow. (I can’t say this was definitely God, but it was good enough for me to do something).
January 11th 2013 - 3 day fast finished.
January 16th 2013 - My monitor broke costing me about £100, I had another job refusal (I would end up having 40 around Merthyr) & some hard days at work. I feel like the last of my breath is going & all I have left are sighs. Please Lord - Do something soon.
February 1st 2013 - 3 day fast is finished. (name withheld) got a job I had been asked to apply for. I had told her about it as it was where her sister worked as an accountant and she had worked there before. An old friend gave me over £1000, because when he was a teenager I had given him some money to take his girlfriend out for some chips.
February 5th 2013 - Nicky and I talked about what we have both heard from God & how we are going to proceed. We both believe God won’t let us go through a door that is a curse to us.
February 8th 2013 - Nicky was offered an interview only to be told it was a mistake. Tears & thanksgiving.
February 12th 2013 - While in Norwich I read 1Sam 25v35 ‘Go home in peace, I have heard your words & granted your request.
February 18th 2013 - Today I was offered a 3 month extension to my contract to assist Norwich.
February 28th 2013 - Fasting.
March 6th 2013 - Turned down at another interview for such a simple graphics job. I keep praying if it’s not right, God would close doors and open the right one. I really need God to open up the right door.
March 7th 2013 - Fasting again today. I don’t really pray much at all in these times. It’s like the fast is the prayer and I hope God hears.
March 20th 2013 - Fasting today.
March 27th 2013 - Applied for a job at Glaxo in County Durham. I don’t really know what I am doing, this is the first time I have searched and applied for a job that is my particular software skill. I have kept applying for jobs in the Merthyr area but got nowhere, this is the first one I have applied for outside the area.
March 28th 2013 - I told (name withheld) my boss about the application. It just so happens his brother (name withheld) works there and has forwarded my CV to the HR dept. They asked for some updated info, & I have managed to update my application with 1 day to go.
April 4th 2013 - Every breath is like a prayer. I breath in & my heart whispers ‘Lord’, I breath out & my heart whispers ‘Please’.
April 9th 2013 - Nicky & I prayed we would hear about the Glaxo job.
April 10th 2013 - Fasting. Got home today and had an e-mail inviting me to the Glaxo interview.
April 14th 2013 - (name withheld) prophesied a big carpet is being rolled out for us, not all at once. There are big things for us, big plans and big places for us to go to.
April 16th 2013 - Fasting today until dinner.
April 22nd 2013 - Fasting today. I am praying god would stop this dead if it is not him. A part of me wonders ‘Am I really going to do this?’
April 28th 2013 - Nehamiah 2v4 ‘What is it you want?’. I had read the same question weeks ago in 2 Chronicles 1v7 ‘Ask me for whatever you want me to give you’ & the exact same question weeks before that in 1 Kings 3v5. So I went over my list with God of what I wanted.
May 5th 2013 - (name withheld) gave a prophetic word ‘The stone is rolled away, you are living in the third day’ it was like God saying to me, what was holding things back is now gone.
May 7th 2013 - Fasting today.
May 8th 2013 - Fasted this morning. At 11 I had a call offering me the job.
T Austin Sparks book ‘Daily open Windows’ was a very big encouragement throughout the last months. Sometimes shedding light where it needed to go.
Here is an excerpt:
Light Through Suffering
Rev 21:23 — “And the city hath no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine upon it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the lamp thereof is the Lamb”
Light is not a mental thing: that is to say, it is not just a matter of having a store of mental knowledge. That is not light. It is possible to have an enormous amount of doctrine and truth and never be luminaries, that is, never register impact upon darkness. Real light is experimental: that is to say, it is the fruit of experience, the experience of suffering.
How have you children of God come to know what you do know of the Lord, that real kind of knowledge of the Lord which is so precious to us, which means so much and which makes you in that measure of value to others? It is through suffering, it is through the difficult way the Lord has led you, it is through the work of the Cross that He has wrought in you. “The Lamb is the lamp” — suffering leading to knowledge, to light, to understanding. It is the only way. These people at the end will be in the good of a great and wonderful revelation which has come by their fellowship with Christ in His sufferings. It is very true. It may not be too comforting from one standpoint, but it is true; and it ought to help us to realise this: that the Lord, in the way in which He is dealing with us, in the sufferings which He allows to come upon us, is really seeking our education, that we may have a knowledge of Himself which can only come that way, and which is a peculiar kind of knowledge of tremendous value to us and through us to others. We do not learn in any other way. It is the Lamb, always the Lamb-principle, the way of suffering and sacrifice and self-emptying, that brings us into the knowledge of the Lord. “The Lamb is the lamp thereof”; and, just as it is deeper death unto fuller life, so it may often be deeper darkness unto fuller light.
The Lord seems to lead us in a way where we are less and less able naturally to understand Him. He gets us altogether out of our natural capacity, beyond our capacity for interpreting His ways. We just do not know what the Lord is doing, or why He is doing what He is doing; yet it is the way by which we come to a very real kind of inward knowledge of Himself. It may not be capable of explanation in words to anybody, but we know, somehow or other we know, and that is a mighty thing, a mighty power of knowledge. It is light through the Cross.
