In which I chase the wild goose of the Holy Spirit | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

God Saw the Light was Good, but He Left Darkness Too

In the beginning…

God’s first recorded words in the Bible are “Let there be light.” And there was light. And God saw that the light was good. (Genesis 1:4)

But he left darkness too.

And so it shall ever be. On June 21, we have 16 hours 41 minutes of light in Oxford, England. But we also have 7 hours 19 minutes of darkness. On December 22, however, we have 16 hours 18 minutes of darkness, but we still have 7 hours 42 minutes of daylight.

Some darkness on the sunniest day; some sunshine on the darkest day.

And so it always is, throughout our lives.

John drapes himself on us, heart flooded with love. On the other side, there’s Judas, serpent-heart despite his kiss. But eleven apostles out of twelve proved true. That is life too, and life is good.

* * *

Me, I am still living in summer, tasting the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. I am healthy enough; my family is healthy. My children are doing well, academically, socially and spiritually, and are happy. We are paying our bills to date. I am enjoying my work. I am happy. I am happy.

But I am also allowing myself to slow down, and feel the sadness that God left in the beginning.

It has been an intense month. Jake, our eleven year old border collie, had a vast growth in his abdomen, and inoperable tumours in his liver which makes it uncomfortable to eat. So he stopped. How dreadful to watch a dog waste away. Finally, he could no longer walk, and we put him to sleep yesterday. The vet said it was definitely the right thing to do.

I have been feeling tired, and my blood work showed severe anaemia. So I had a colonoscopy, which showed a polyp. I am hoping for minimal surgery…but I must walk on the waters,, holding Jesus’ hand through that.

We have lost our wonderful cleaner, which has thrown us. He helped with everything—housesitting, chauffeuring kids, picking up purchases, garden work, painting, car cleaning, whatever needed to be done. An almost irreplaceable Man Friday.

Financially, we are still recovering from the burglary in February, of our car and electronics etc. We were underinsured, and so we have to put our nose to the grindstone to replace what we had to “borrow” from savings (earmarked for other bills) so as to replace the stolen things.

Love’s like a hurricane, and I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy, as John Mark Macmillan writes.

Couldn’t God have prevented all these griefs and hassles? I think, crossly.

* * *

In the Old Testament Book of Job, Job lost everything– children, wealth, health and the respect of his friends.

“Does it please you to oppress me?” he asks God (Job 10:3).

His friends insist that Job must have secretly sinned to deserve so much suffering, that he was under the Almighty’s curse—our intuitive (though unspoken) response to other people’s suffering

But Job insists he is guilty of no spectacular secret sin, “Let the Almighty answer me,” he demands (Job 31:35).

And God does. In the infuriating way only the Almighty can get away with, he answers Job in a series of questions.

“Who laid the earth’s cornerstone

While the morning stars sang together

And all the angels shouted for joy?

“Have you entered the storehouses of the snow?”

“Can you bind the beautiful Pleaides?

Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons?

Do you give his horse his strength

Who at the blast of the trumpets snorts, “Aha.”

God has put together this vast cosmos of sea and stars and snow, of lightning and lions and leviathans, ostriches, ospreys and eagles. Job, a very minor character in the complex epic of the universe, does not have the perspective to contend with him, God suggests.

God exists on another plane altogether, able to see the end from the beginning, to contain all things in his mind, to see the whole complex canvas of human existence at a single glance, and the glorious end of each contorted plot twist in our lives. While Job sees but one page, God sees the entire plot.

“Woe to those who quarrel with their Maker,
Does the clay say to the potter,
‘What are you making?’ the prophet Isaiah writes.

God is God. He chooses the plot of our lives, chooses the role we are to play in the cosmic drama. It is our task to play it well.

Job repents of his turbulent questions.

“Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,

things too wonderful for me to know.

My ears had heard of you,

But now my eyes have seen you.

Therefore I repent.”

And Job’s acceptance turns things around. “The Lord made him prosperous again, and gave him twice as much as he had before.” (Job 42:10)

* * *

Darkness, trouble, hassle is a fact of life, seven hours of darkness in our brightest day. “In this world, you will have trouble,” were among Jesus’s last words, though he goes on to say, “But be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.”

When God created a pristine world that he could have shaped any way, he deliberately left a bit of darkness too.

Why?

For the same reason a story-teller leaves a bit of darkness in his stories perhaps. It forces the story to a better, more beautiful, more interesting conclusion. Cinderella had to sleep among the cinders; Sleeping Beauty had to prick her thumb on the spindle; the shard of ice had to enter Kay’s heart for us to have a story.

Artists instinctively know that they must frame brightness with darkness. Possibly God like Van Gogh found as much beauty in a starry night as a sunrise.

Winter strengthens the root systems of trees, sending them delving deep for nourishment. Without it, bulbs would not burst into blossom. Eternal summer can take a toll on mental health; in Greenland suicides are more common in summer. Seasonal Affective Disorder strikes in the summer as well as in winter.

If we had eternal daylight, eternal summer, unblemished happiness, we would not value them quite as much. A period of just-enough makes us appreciate how money can cushion and enrich life; a period of loneliness makes friendship precious; a period of failure sweetens success.

***

God left darkness and winter as facts of life. So what do we do when life does not go the way we want it to?

We fling up our hands and accept it, light as well as darkness, good as well as evil, trusting the one who sends both, light that shines in winter, the selah of darkness in summer.

* * *

We accept it, with thankfulness that our world with all its darkness is still under God’s protection.

The world tilts towards good as it tilts towards the sun.

Because, as we are told in the second line of Genesis, while all the world was darkness, the spirit of God still hovered over the water.

And so we have hope.

I am in a situation of chaos, stress and high emotion, and over me the Spirit hovers.

My dog is dying, and I am overwhelmed with sadness watching him, and over me the spirit hovers.

I want my anaemia to go and that polyp to be benign, and over me the spirit hovers.

Life will bring me light and goodness and joy, but if it presents challenges, I know this for sure: Over me the spirit hovers, always hovers.

* * *

And so I can face the future. And so I can smile.

Because as Gerard Manley Hopkins says,

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out
It gathers to a greatness,

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; Bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell:

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Ah the Spirit’s warm breast, his bright wings. So much love surrounding us, whether we feel it or not.

And so as John Mark Macmillan continues,

Then all of a sudden,
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory

And I realize just how beautiful you are and how great your affections are for me.

And I really do believe, what Paul wrote to the Romans: In all things God works for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28) Because he is super-duper powerful and creative, and so he can. Because he is good, and so he will.

And so I say with Julian of Norwich, “All will be well, all will be well, all manner of things will be well,” because the Holy Spirit broods over us, strengthening us, filling us with joy. He swoops down in light and joy, but something has his “dark descending” as Gerard Manley Hopkins puts it, continuing, surprisingly, ‘And most is merciful then.”

~~~~

Tweetables—

God saw that light was good, but he left the darkness too. Why? From @anitamathias1

Couldn’t God have prevented all these griefs and hassles? I think, crossly. From @anitamathias1

Suffering can force a story to a better, more beautiful, more interesting conclusion. From @anitamathias1

Possibly God, like Van Gogh, found as much beauty in a starry night as a sunrise. From @anitamathias1

Over to you

Have you seen the light shine in the darkness?

Have you experienced the brooding comfort of the Holy Spirit in the midst of the darkness?

This post is kindly sponsored by How to up your health game.

In which I am Surprised by “Prophetic Words” (from the Glasgow Prophetic Centre at David’s Tent Worship Festival)

By Anita Mathias

People from the Glasgow Prophetic Centre were offering “prophetic words” at David’s Tent: An Adventure in Worship, a 72 hour worship festival I went to in August. I signed up for a 15 minute slot.

I am “prophetic” with a very small p. Prophecy, as Paul writes, is a spiritual gift, a little-understood one, though not one to be lightly dismissed, lest we miss surprising blessings. In my case (small p, remember) I often have an accurate intuitive knowledge of what is going to happen in my own life, or the lives of people I care about. It’s a love-gift: providing a little extra time to prepare for adversity, as well as a certainty and reassurance about astonishing and unlikely things that are going to happen. This “prophetic” knowledge, in my case, allows for a lot less worry and a lot more carefreeness.

However, if I took my small measure of supernatural prophetic gifting as the norm, I would be foolish indeed. There are people with great prophetic gifts. Though I don’t understand exactly how these work, they are, again, love gifts, a way for God to tell people something they would never have guessed on their own. They are words of encouragement, edification, and sometimes, warning.

For instance, Patricia Bootsma of the Toronto Airport Fellowship on a visit to Oxford, saw me, asked me if I had daughters, and said she had a word for my older daughter: Satan had brought things against her, but that she would overcome and become a leader in God’s kingdom. The prophecy filled Zoe with confidence. She hadn’t done well in her mocks, but excelled in her year 12 exams, getting 100% in RE, and an offer from Cambridge University in 2013, (though she reapplied to Oxford University in 2014, and is going there next month).

However, Emma Stark of the Glasgow Prophetic Centre had a prophecy not for Zoe, but for me.

It was the absolutely most startling experience I’ve had in many years of chasing the wild goose of the Holy Spirit. My most astonishing experience of the prophetic.

Emma asked my first name, that is all. She instantly started speaking, “seeing” things, things astonishing in their accuracy.

I turned my iPhone on, and recorded the session: 12 minutes. Here’s my transcription.

“Satan has demanded to sift you for a season, but he didn’t realise that he was actually asking for a promotion because you have been found as someone who can be trusted through the previous season.

And the Lord says, “I am about to promote you like you have never been promoted before. I am about you to lift you up into a place because you have been found as someone who can be trusted through the previous season.

And the Lord does not say this to everybody, but he says it to you. “Daughter, in the testing and in the hard places, you have been found trustworthy. I trust you. I trust you. I trust you.”

It’s time to stop cursing yourself for decisions taken in the past. I forgive you and I let you off the hook. It’s time to let these things go, for I do not view them as you view them.

I do not view you as the Sarah who laughs when the angels come. I speak of you as the Sarah of the New Testament. I speak of you as of my faithful ones, and I speak of you as one of my righteous ones. I speak of you as one of my ones of integrity.

And in the mighty name of Jesus, (with hands on my back) I forcibly extract every toxic dart that was thrown into your back, and that criticised you and criticised your reputation, and all the toxicity that came into your flesh and even brought ill-health and insomnia, I utterly break that in the name of Jesus.

(Interestingly, on all except for a handful nights since then, I have slept soundly.)

(Then, placing hands on head) I speak alignment to your sleep patterns. I speak rest to your night. I speak alertness to your day. And I hear the Spirit of the Lord say, “Daughter, you will not even know yourself for I am coming in the night, and I am coming in the day, and I am re-aligning your cycles and your patterns and the Lord says to you, “Daughter there was a day where there was energy and joy and that day is coming back again. And there was a day when there was joy, and that day is coming back again.” And the Lord says, “There was a day when you rose and s. And you found a hop, skip and jump in your step, and that day is coming back to you.

“Daughter, this season is coming to an end, and it will not be like this. And daughter, you will not even recognise yourself in the coming days.”

And the Spirit says “Oh mighty mother, here I am going to give you spiritual children to steward, for I trust you as a mother to the many.”

* * *

And the Lord says, “I have even anointed your voice to speak, and I have even anointed you as a gifted communicator.

And the Lord says, “There is something that has been stolen and lost, and no platform has opened up to you. But the spirit of the Lord says, “I am now opening up a platform for communication in your life, and you are going to be heard, you are going to be heard, you are going to be heard.

And the Lord says, “For the gift I gave you is true. The gift of communication is right, and the Lord says, “You are a woman of truth and a woman of integrity.”

(I have a stack of certificates and prizes for debating, and had done much public speaking, but not for some years.

Interestingly, out of the blue, I was invited to be interviewed by Maria Rodrigues on Premier Radio’s Woman to Woman Show on the 18^th Thursday, 20 days later. Listen here. Starts at 34.20).

* * *

(Then, just as when you are listening to God in writing, you have a first draft, and then get closer and hotter, she suddenly “saw” that I was a writer. Amazing.

She was listening to God, hearing, hearing accurately, speaking what she sensed God saying. An incredible experience to listen to. I imagine it’s as the prophets of old heard and wrote.)

So she continued, even more astonishingly,

“Daughter, I am touching your hands, for in this season, I have called you to write. I am going to bless your writing. I see you up, hidden away, and the Lord says you need to take some time to hide away and write for there is an anointing on you not just for communication that is spoken, but for communication that is written.

And the Lord says that he wants you to focus on your diary, because it needs shaking up. And there are some things that need to fall out of your diary, and there are some things that need to fall into your dairy, and the Lord says that one of the things that needs to fall into your diary is writing time and creative space. And there is a push on your diary and the Lord is being very clear with you: you are too busy; there is too much.

And the Lord says, “What you were anointed to do, communication, is being squeezed and squeezed and squeezed, and that’s why you feel in this permanent state of deep frustration. And the Lord says, “I want to take away that frustration that you have hidden deep within you, and the Lord says, ‘Bring your diary to me, and I am going to show you what you need to cut out and what you need to put in.’ There is a great permission from heaven to actually say “No.” I need to fulfil the call of God on my life, and not to plug every gap.”

And so I want you to hear from your heavenly father that He is changing the season and giving you the space to say “Actually this is important, and this is not important.”

Then Emma said, “I am going to put my hands on your hands. I take off writer’s block right now, a stuckness in the gift.

And I bless a new level of creativity in you.

And I am watching angels (if you are okay with that) open the top of your head, and they are just taking out fluff. It looks like fluff! It looks like stuck fluff in your head, wooliness, confusedness, and the Lord is releasing angels to pour glory into your brain.

And the Lord says, “No longer are you going to be in a season of confused thinking. No longer are you going to be in season of writer’s block. No longer are you going to be in a season where you don’t know how to take decisions. But the Lord says, “there was a day when you were able to think fast and take decisions and that the Lord says, “I am going to give you back the ability for fast-paced decision making and for creative thoughts to flow again.”

(I was in tears at the end of all this. Wouldn’t you be?

The moment she said “There are some things that need to fall out of your diary I knew what she meant.” I was going to a Christian activity on a weekday morning, which absorbed more than three hours of my time, but did not inspire or energize me, and, in fact, left me mentally, physically and spiritually and emotionally drained. Increasingly, my heart sunk at the thought of going. A fundamental rule of simplifying your life and managing time well is: Get out of things you dread. However, like many people who’ve moved a lot, I do not easily consider changing–homes, cities, careers, churches or small groups, but in a flash, as she spoke, I felt God release me to step out of that group, to focus on writing, and to trust him to fill the void with something far better of his choosing.

In the Old Testament God spoke through angels, asses–and prophets too. I am so glad he still does so today).

Emma continued, “And I am watching as anointing pours into your head a new colour come all over your body. And the Lord says, “I am even going to change what colours you like, and I am going to add vibrancy. I feel like colours have become stuck, even creatively. It’s actually time for a redecorating of your house because your house has got tired.” And the Lord says, “I am going to enable you financially to start to redecorate the house because the house needs it, and you need it, and more importantly, the colours that God wants to paint around about you in this season, and inside you, are completely different to what they were in the last season, because different colours mean different anointings.”

Emma was accompanied by Leah from Marketplace ministries, who said, “He’s giving you a red rose, and he’s inviting you to dance.” I see healing in deep places of your heart. All the things that are rising up for you, his hand is in that. He just wants you to hand them to him, and to invite him into those things, and really give him your heart over those matters.

He’s going to release dreams of the night and waking visions. He’s releasing a refreshing of your hopes and dreams, the desires of your heart. Your lost hopes and dreams that have been stolen from you, he is restoring those for you, he is bringing them back. So begin to notice and have hope. I break disappointment and despondency off you, and I release a new hope for you, because he’s coming with promises.

I saw a lot of flowers, a garden, with so much nurture and nourishment coming from you.”

And how great the love the Father has for us that he should provide such a specific and loving intervention through a stranger, rescuing me from a time-consuming and draining commitment that I wasn’t enjoying but hadn’t considered leaving.

That he should reassure me about my writing, and anoint me through a stranger, whom I did not even mention my writing to.

Oh how he loves me.
Love is a hurricane
I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight
Of his wind and mercy!

* * *

I have heard about Sozo Healing Ministry from Bill Johnson’s Bethel Church in Redding California, and since David’s Tent was offering 90 minutes Sozo slots, Roy and I signed up.

I brought up three worries, then sat in silence with the two prayer ministers to listen to God speak about them. God speaks through words or images. In this case, interestingly for someone as verbal as I am, He spoke in images.

I asked prayer about a memoir that is taking rather long to finish, and saw an image of snowy-covered mountains. I remembered the words from Psalm 121, “I lift up my eyes to the mountains/where does my help come from? /My help comes from the Lord,/ The Maker of heaven and earth.”

There is help in writing it, I remembered again, from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.

I asked for prayer for my battle with health. I have lost about 24 pounds over the last two years, but still use food as a crutch—when I find it hard to settle down to writing, when stressed, tired, bored, despondent, discouraged (though far less than I used to).

I had a powerful image of living water flowing, always flowing. There is always grace to help me in my time of need. I just need to avail myself of it, go to the waterfall of grace, and ask God for help rather than turn to chocolate for the quick blood sugar boost that will make me more resilient to long hours of work, or the sadnesses of life.

(But, chocolate is pretty amazing, let it be said.)

Interestingly, I’ve asked for prayer for both these things here and here. And I have progressed in each, though am not yet “victorious.” Sometimes that is how change happens: the “victorious limp” in Brennan Manning’s phrase.

* * *

David’s Tent was a three day worship festival. In Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster suggests choosing prayer as a recreational activity. And when I need refreshment, and I am alone, or the rest of the family is busy, I often do.

At David’s Tent, worship was a recreational activity. And perhaps it is the purest recreation there is, the purest self-forgetfulness, forgetting oneself in worshipping God, three days spent worshipping God, an alabaster jar of precious time and energy and potential income smashed on Jesus’ feet. And the tent was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

* * *

There were thousands of young people worshipping God. It bodes well for the future of Britain.

The musicians were largely from America; many of the audience came from Scandinavia and Germany, Holland but mainly from the United Kingdom, England, Wales and Scotland.

Several new expressions of Christianity have spread out from England—Anglicanism, of course, Presbyterianism, Methodism, the Baptists, the Quakers, you name it.

Britain is uniquely placed for the re-evangelisation of the world. Her former colonies, America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and those in Asia and Africa view her with affection. And Europe views the hobbits from Britain with bemused affection.

Perhaps a new wave of revival will spread out again from these shores, a new wave of love, surrender, worship, and an experience of the fullness of the Spirit.

What is revival? A massive renewed love for God and enjoyment of his presence, a commitment to him that thousands experience in common.

I hear the sounds of distant thunder. I hear the sounds of coming rain. I hear revival blowing in the wind. I smell it.

Maranatha. Come, Lord Jesus!

When the Spirit Comes, Oh, You will be Unworthy

By Anita Mathias

When the Spirit comes, the one sure thing is: You will be unworthy.

You cower in the upper room, quite out of ideas and momentum, and he comes like tongues of fire, and your speech is enabled.

You stray into a Charismatic meeting aged 17, and joke about speaking in tongues–oh aren’t you suave and sophisticated?!– and at night you wake up, and, voila, you are speaking in tongues, which was the one gift you specifically asked not to receive, silly you.

And years later, a Vicar you secretly consider a Machiavellian Macbeth and cold as ice, lays his hands on your head and prays for a revelation of divine love, and oh, it comes, it comes, for keeps, and writer’s block fades, and you write fast, easily and much.

And at a Catch the Fire Conference, you look around, and second-guess and judge, oh you cold of heart and slow to believe, but you do learn soaking prayer, and your prayer life changes. And then your real life.

You arrive late at the worship service, having snapped and snarled at all who made you late—oh yes, you did!!—and you bow your head in shame…and then in worship, and you feel it, waves of mercy, waves of grace, of acceptance. You are loved. You are loved. You are the beloved. That is your new name, and new identity. You will live out of that sacred centre.

The Spirit comes at church when you’ve just fought with your husband. He comes in the watches of the night. He comes when you garden. He comes.

He comes because you need him; he comes because you ask him; He comes because you don’t ask him, but because you need him.

He comes because he is God. He comes because he is good. He comes.

Come, Holy Spirit.

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Chasing the Wild Goose of the Holy Spirit: In Praise of Retreats

By Anita Mathias

Is God more present in one place than another?Does it make sense to leave the comfort and familiarity of your daily surroundings to seek God in places—retreat centres or pilgrimage spots– “where prayer has been made valid,” in T. S. Eliot’s phrase? Where God was rumoured to have shown up in the past, or to be currently showing up?Does it make sense to go to conferences to listen to other people’s deep, life-changing experiences of God rather than stay home and experience him quietly for yourself?

For most of my life, my answer to these questions was No.

I wanted to experience God in my daily life, amid the wear and tear of marriage and parenting and housekeeping and writing and church.

I was wary of seeking mountain-top experiences which would fade once I got down to the valley simply because they often had, leaving me discouraged. Far better to experience God little by little in the valleys, and have this experience permeate my whole life.

I guess you could say I was not really hungry.

* * *

It’s the rare person who’s hungry for God while you still hope that your life can work very well, thank you, without God.

So it took a period of brokenness—of a manuscript being rejected; of having to totally lay my writing aside to found a business to pay for private school for the girls; of being purified in the crucible of marriage—for me to want to be filled to overflowing with the Holy Spirit, and his gifts of love, joy and peace more than I wanted to be a successful writer.

And this God-longing is revealing itself in my use of time.

* * *

The ancient Celtic symbol for the Holy Spirit was a wild goose.

If the wild goose did not grace your backyard, you searched for him in places where he was last rumoured to have been.

And so when I run out of energy, of love, of joy, of a steady sense of shalom and the presence of God, I am happy to take time out, to seek the wild goose of the Holy Spirit once again.

* * *

And spiritual quests, luckily, are not the quest for the Holy Grail, where you either find the Grail, or you don’t. They are not all or nothing.

They are like treasure hunts in which one might pick up one gleaming golden feather one time, or a fistful of them the next, or bits of delicate down. And each of these makes your life more beautiful.

And finally, you chance upon the shimmering wild goose itself

* * *

Healing comes layer by layer. Revelation and clarity and guidance come layer by layer.

The Holy Spirit like water floods the soul of the seeker, sometimes in a trickle, sometimes a stream, sometimes a mighty flood.

I like the way the ancient Israelites constructed a cairn of stones to remember significant spiritual encounters.

* * *

Here are some of my cairns:

Learning soaking prayer at a Catch the Fire Conference with John Arnott, and somehow catching a deep awareness of the Father’s love for me, through the week-long conference, and through the practice of soaking prayer they taught. Receiving healing from adrenal fatigue at a healing prayer session. Receiving partial healing from emotional eating at Cwmbran and Harnhill Retreat Centre. Beginning to radically change my diet after a visit to His Place, Saarland, Germany, a holistic Christian retreat centre.

* * *

If you feel stuck in your personal life, or goals, or relationships, or feel the need of physical or emotional or mental healing, or would like to experience more of the presence of God who is energy and joy and peace, I would highly recommend going away for a retreat, personal or guided, or a conference with speakers with an attested track record of fruitfulness and integrity (I find Bill Johnson, John and Carol Arnott, and Heidi Baker worth listening to.)

Why go away to experience God when God is everywhere?

1 God honours the humility it takes to inconvenience ourselves to seek him.

Namaan the Syrian has leprosy. His slave girl tells him about the prophet, Elisha in Samaria who can heal, and off he goes pompously with chariots and horses and silver and gold and clothing to be healed.

But Elisha merely send him word to bathe seven times in the Jordan.

Namaan is furious: “Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?”

His servants tell him, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!”

So Naaman bathes in the Jordan, and is cleansed.

Sometimes, God heals us in response to our own prayers, and, sometimes, in response to other people’s prayers. Both happen in Scripture— the second far more frequently. Who knows why? I think God honours the humility it takes to ask for prayer.

It also ensures that we cannot position ourselves as some sort of super-prayer-warrior who can cure all our own diseases and ailments, physical, mental and spiritual by our own prayers.

2 We hear God better when we set aside time to do so.

Mark Batterson in The Circle Maker: Praying Circles Around Your Biggest Dreams and Greatest Fears has a formula

Change of pace + change of place=Revelation.

Come on, be realistic. Home can be a talking-to-do list of duties and distractions. And there’s the phone, and mobile phones, and the internet. A good retreat centre will infuriate you by cutting wifi, thereby ensuring that you hear God rather more than you bargained for!!

If we struggle with making time and space and silence for God in our daily life—but feel the need for clarity, peace, blessing, healing, guidance—it makes sense to go away and seek these things.

3 God honours the sacrifice of money, time, convenience and career advancement that we make in seeking him.

4 Going away to seek God has been built into Judeo-Christianity from the very earliest days when the Jews went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem three times a year. A kind of holy-day, exercise, community and God all thrown in.

5 It is generally so worth it.

I was talking to a woman who had spent thousands of pounds last year on a forthnight in the Bahamas, and came back with no more peace or joy than she had before.

Then she went on a weekend retreat at Waverly Abbey, and came back glowing, couldn’t stop talking about it, felt spiritually full and somehow different.

I love travel—it energizes me. However, etymologically, the English word travel is derived from travail: trouble, sorrow, suffering, hassle. It’s not always a spiritual experience for me (though it often is).

A silent retreat however clears my mind of all my whirling thoughts and worries, gives me clarity, and fills me again with the spirit of Jesus. It’s a great investment of time.

* * *

Bird watchers are amazing. All they want to do is to see the bird—the kingfisher, the toucan, the macaw or the albatross and the penguins which I saw in New Zealand.

And I want to similarly seek the wild goose of the Holy Spirit until I have all of him, and he has all of me, and says, “Okay child, I have seen your heart. I will make you my dwelling place. I will come and fill you, and you will be my Anita, and I will be your God.”

In Which I Have Never Been Instantly Healed, But Have Always Been Healed

By Anita Mathias

I have never witnessed a verified physical healing. Never spoken to anyone who had experienced one themselves, following prayer.

And I have never experienced an instantaneous physical or emotional healing as someone prayed for me.

However, I have never yet NOT been at least partially healed of anything I have gone up front to be prayed for.

* * *

Bill Johnson spoke at New Wine 2008 about the miraculous physical healings he’d witness and “performed.” And so, though I had at that point been blessed with good physical health–no chronic illness, hospitalizations, surgeries, broken bones, and normal cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar etc.–I joined the throngs, for perfect physical health is rare, and if there was power going forth, well, I wanted to be part of it.

I went forward for a bothersome niggle—itchy ears with fluid drainage, which were irritating and occasionally got painfully infected, so much so that I couldn’t go to parties or sleep well. And a sweet Californian lovingly placed her hands on my ears and prayed. And I thought I would surely be healed—but, alas, I was not.

Three years later though, on reading Rick Warren’s Daniel Plan, then online, I read that itchy ears, with fluid drainage are a symptom of food toxicity—and can be eliminated by eliminating sugar and white flour. I did. And after 12 years of irritation, pain, doctor visits, meds for ear aches—bingo, healed. (Though it flares up with sugar and wheat, alas).

An answer to my prayer?

Yes, I do believe so.

* * *

In 2008, I was on Prozac. My life felt hard. I had an experience of emotional and spiritual abuse in a charismatic Anglican church, which then had a toxic culture.

Unconsciously numbing myself, I worked obsessively at a family business which wasn’t captivating (though it enabled my husband to retire from being a Maths Professor, and run our home two years later).

Anyone who has been depressed will recognise the vicious circle, which makes me tearful to even think of it. The horror, the horror. My house became cluttered and messy, and I didn’t have the energy to get it together. I wasn’t exercising, and was comfort eating—quick and easy—and rapidly gained weight.

My memoir proposal had been turned down by an agent in 2006, and I got bogged down in revisions, and had lost deep soul-confidence that the book I was writing would be published. I had lost faith, hope and love!

I was suppressing my writing and creativity which were so much a part of me that they were me. Each thing says one thing and the same, what I do is me, for that I came, as Gerard Manley Hopkins put it.

Hello, Prozac my old friend.

I believe in anti-depressants as a step-stool to get out of vicious circles and deep pits. And equally importantly, I believe we should seek cognitive help and continue seeking till we have found adequate help, spiritual help if that is sufficient, and psychotherapy if it isn’t. I have used both professional and non-professional help, spiritual counselling, friendships and psychotherapy, and benefitted from both, equally.

Anyway, the same sweet Californian told me that she had been depressed, and then was healed, like that–she snapped her fingers– and prayed I too would be healed like that–snap.

Well, how would I know that I was healed, except by going off my anti-depressants? Which I knew one is never supposed to do, cold turkey, but which I did. My brain and emotions now limped like a snail in fog. I was dead inside, dead to all but making money, which I mechanically made, made, made.

The church, which had been so toxic and poisonous for me, had a speaker on depression at a women’s breakfast. Who is depressed? she asked, and scores of hands flew up, some among them the women who had been the nastiest to me. (Wounded people wound—and so, we MUST find help for our woundedness.) I went up for prayer, told the story of going off meds and deeper creative and emotional sadness. Yeah, that whole period was my “great sadness” in the evocative phrase from “The Shack.” Talked to her, decided to go back to Prozac.

Eventually, my self-confidence returned. I became over-confident, confrontational, out-spoken, a bit aggressive, perhaps. But I am nice and sweet, really! I realized that the depression had lifted, and I was now on serotonin overload. And I wanted a few friends left at the end! I tapered off completely–for good I hope. Farewell, Prozac my old friend. Farewell, depression.

That prayer at New Wine was answered—a year later.

* * *

(Which brings me to perhaps the only instantaneous healing I’ve received, though I didn’t realize it at the time. The day I began blogging, April 11^th, 2010, I went forward for prayer for adrenal fatigue and exhaustion at a healing service at that charismatic church and the rector laid his hands on my head, and prayed for a revelation of divine love, and I felt something go through my brain, electricity, honey, and I was healed from the adrenal fatigue which had plagued me for years, and could write for hours, longer than ever, ever before. This happy state of affairs has continued. Without that, I might not have been able to muster the considerable and consistent energy it takes to blog successfully.)

* * *

Two more stories. I had a really painful shoulder last autumn, and asked for healing at a Revival Alliance Conference. A group gathered around me, English, as well as West Indian Brits, who sung over me in the most beautiful melodic tones that reduced me to tears, and then asked with absolute faith, “It’s better, isn’t it?”

I assented. Who would have had the heart not to?

But it wasn’t.

I resumed yoga. Yoga increases mobility a micro-millimetre or so each consistent session.

And that shoulder pain? All gone!

* * *

Last story. Until last year, like a child, I had resorted to chocolate, cookies, crisps, or take-away when a family member stressed me, or my writing didn’t go well, or I was bored or sad or stressed-out or happy or wanted to celebrate. It had become the way I dealt with emotion. And, of course, I steadily gained weight

I went up to request healing in the emotionally charged atmosphere of the Cwmbran Revival. And I heard Jesus say, “Honey, you are in charge of what you put into your mouth. Honey, don’t. Honey, rise, take up your pallet and walk.”

The healing continues. Wounds are healed when exposed to the air and light. So it is with emotional stuff. Name it, analyse it. Sit with the pain, don’t numb it. That’s how healing comes.

Have I been totally healed since that day?

Not completely.

But I am certainly on the journey, breaking the bad habit of emotional eating through many means of grace: prayer, reading, talking to friends and a spiritual director, and strategy.

When I want to eat something sweet or salty but am not physically hungry, I put my timer on for an increasing amount of time, before I do. Generally, the urge passes.

I interrogate my heart, “Oh silly heart, why do you want chocolate? To raise your blood sugar and get your heart beating faster? Will a walk do it? Will prayer for the comfort of the Holy Spirit do it?” That works sometimes.

And sometimes, I have chocolate!

* * *

If anyone is in Christ, she is a new creation. But when Roy and I recommitted our lives to Christ, in our twenties, we struggled with our weaknesses and unhelpful habits, as we still do—(but less so, and many, many have been overcome). However, the new life was within us, growing, growing, stronger and stronger, colonising us, possessing us, gradually changing us.

And that is the way healing works sometimes. God is good and he answers prayer—gradually, sometimes. I have been healed of four of the things I went up in the eager throngs to request prayer for. The last, emotional and comfort eating, I am in the process of being healed of.

* * *

About five months ago, I had surgery for colon cancer, which was perhaps my only instantaneous healing. My physical strength was diminishing day by day, and, more scarily, my concentration, my emotional strength, my sleep, everything. And then I had surgery, and my strength has been steadily increasing over the last five months, as measured by the distance and speed of my walks.

But one day, when I am hundred perhaps, I may request healing for a dodgy heart, and Jesus may smile and say, “No, child. Not this time. It’s time!”

And while I sleep, my heart too shall sleep—forever.

And then, as now, He will be what He has been all my life, the times I have perceived it, and the times I have not—good.

* * *

Have you experienced physical or mental healing following prayer? Tell me your story!

On a Double Portion of the Anointing, and a Secret History with the Lord

By Anita Mathias

When Elijah was about to be taken up to heaven, he asks his acolyte Elisha, “What can I do for you?”

And Elisha, with simple and ambitious faith, asks “Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit,” (2 Kings 2:9).

And so he does.

For the asking, so to say. For the asking took faith, which pleases God.

* * *

This story has sanctified ambition in charismatic circles. People ask successful Christian leaders, Heidi Baker, say, or John Arnott, to pray that they receive a double portion of their anointing (not realising that Elisha’s anointing was received in the context of discipleship: living with, watching, imitating). My daughter, Zoe, recently gave me Consumed by Love, by Oxfordshire native, Duncan Smith who describes how he desperately coveted “a double portion” of the anointing of Reinhard Bonnke (who generously prayed that he would receive it!).

* * *

What is the anointing? R. T. Kendall describes it, “the anointing is when our gift functions easily. It comes with ease. It seems natural. No working it up is needed. If one has to work it up, one has probably gone outside one’s anointing.

I experience the anointing when blog posts flow easily, and are written quickly almost as if dictated. When I open up a chapter of scripture, and “see” enough in it for three blog posts, and assume that everyone else sees the same riches, but then realise as I lead a Bible study on the topic, that this is not the case.

* * *

And this prayer to receive a double portion of other people’s anointing….?

If the prayer is frivolous, born out of a desire to be more famous, or receive more attention and adulation, God might not answer it—perhaps to protect his sheep from someone with such seriously flawed motives for wanting a platform.

But if you ask for a double portion of a mentor’s anointing with the innocent-heartedness of the child who wants to be famous, or you want fame so as to be a blessing, or as a means to doing your work in the world—well…

Jesus was playful, and encourages a playful spirit in the Christian life. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it. John 14.14 And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. John 14:13.

So perhaps it is not ridiculous to ask for a double portion of the spirit of Christian writers and bloggers I admire.

* * *

Bill Johnson is one of my favourite living Christian speaker and writer. He is sensible, reasonable, left-brained–and filled with faith. He opens my eyes to the realities of the spiritual realm, and the power of prayer and makes me excited about them. We just have to read the Gospels–and Jesus’s reiterated statement that all things are possible for them who believe–to realise that, because of our unbelief, we can remain children, spiritually, playing in the sand, while the mighty ocean roars around us

When I read Bill’s many books or hear him speak, I yearn for more of God. I yearn to know God as he does. I yearn for the spiritual experience he has had.

Apparently, I am not alone in being impressed.

I heard Bill say that people frequently come up to him and ask him to pray that they receive “a double portion of his anointing.”

Which seems an awfully cheeky thing to ask someone to pray for—essentially, “Please pray that I become twice as famous and successful as you are!!”

And Bill laughs and says, “Yes, God might give you a double portion of my anointing, but what you can never have is my secret history with the Lord.”

Ah, a secret history with the Lord of Hosts, the most democratic of gifts, open to everyone, and more important than any anointing, for without it, we would not be able to bear the weight of the gifts God gives us!

My secret history with God—it sweetens my life, it fills it with hope, it offers me guidance, it gives me strength to endure: both reverses, and perhaps even an anointing!!

Anointing, which makes our work quick and easy, is a gift that’s fine to pray for! But great “anointings” are given to the few. A secret history with the Lord, however, is open to each of us, and that is a gift we have the responsibility (which will eventually become a joy) to cultivate.

Dreaming with God on Amazon.com

Dreaming with God: Secrets to Redesigning Your World Through God’s Creative Flow on Amazon.co.uk

My Experience of The Baptism in the Holy Spirit and of Speaking in Tongues

By Anita Mathias

So here I am, stressed and anxious. Or happy, at peace and joyful.

And almost without realizing it, I find myself praying. In tongues.

* * *

How do I find myself in Oxford, England, in the 21^st century, praying in tongues, this ancient First Century gift vividly described in The Acts of the Apostles?

Well, 30ish years ago, when I was 17, I was visiting my grandmother in Mangalore, a pretty Catholic seacoast town on the west coast of India, where my family was “from.”

And there was a visiting Spanish priest called Marcellino Iragui who was running a Charismatic retreat.

It was a little like the Alpha course. We went through forgiveness, repentance, renouncing occult involvement, and on the last evening, the priest prayed for the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Well, I gulped it all up; I drank it all in. Not so my father, who was amused, sceptical, bored—he was 63 and there was no way he was going to take up any new enthusiasms. He flatly refused to take me to the Charismatic Crusade for another day.

* * *

And so I asked a friend who knew the priest to introduce me, and asked him for the Baptism in the Holy Spirit there and then.

(I have an instinctive distaste for rules–Anita Antinomian, my friend Paul called me–and it amuses me that even in this most holy encounter, I sought to jump the queue, and do it my way.)

“Is she hungry?” he asked my friend, Joyce Fernandes, who later became a nun at Mother Teresa’s convent. “ Oh yes!” she assured him, having no idea at all. (Indian women can be very nice!)

And so we went through the theory: forgiveness, gifts of the spirit, fruits of the spirit, and then he laid his hands on me, and prayed for the Baptism of the Spirit, having me repeat the prayers after them after him. He asked for all sorts of wonderful gifts—prophecy, healing, miracles, wisdom, knowledge. All this I was game for.

When he came to, “And Lord, please give me the gift of tongues,” I interrupted him.

“I don’t want that,” I said. “It would be too embarrassing. My family would tease me.”

“You can’t pick and choose among the gifts of God,” he said sternly.

And so we prayed. I felt nothing. I was both disappointed– a bit “Oh well, it would have been exciting had it worked,”–and relieved.

I re-joined my father. “So are you now a Charismatic?” he said, amused by the whole business. “Have you the gift of tongues?”

“No,” I said.

We returned to my grandmother’s. “Do you have the gift of tongues?” everyone asked.

“No,” I said, with complete truthfulness.

* * *

Well, I spoke too soon. I woke that night with rushing, gushing joy, a river that felt like it would burst my heart. It was overwhelming: joy so ecstatic, so seismic, it was akin to pain.

I knelt by the side of my bed, and prayed, praising God for the beauty of the world, for Himself, for his goodness–strange, barbarous-sounding unintelligible language bursting out of me. I was praying in tongues

I prayed in tongues, and I prayed with my mind, in rapture, with emotions new to me, prayed in English and in my new spirit-language, thanking God for his incomprehensible loveliness, which I suddenly perceived. For himself

“Oh, Lord, I just praise you, I praise you, I praise you.”

* * *

And well, that language never left me. A month later, I was in Mother Teresa’s convent, as an aspirant, training to be a nun.

I asked her in a personal meeting, “Mother, what do you think about speaking in tongues?”

“One tongue is enough for a woman,” she said brusquely.

And that was that!

* * *

Well, but I still prayed in tongues; I couldn’t help it—remember that Anita Antinomian bit?–and have done so for the last 30 years.

Tense: I find myself praying in tongues. Anxious: Are we going to catch that plane?–I find myself praying in tongues.

And when my spirit soars, swells, and for no good reason I am unreasonably happy, I find myself again praying in tongues.

When I am joyful and exhilarated in my garden, or by the seashore, or on a mountain, I find myself praying in ecstatic tongues. And, more restrained but slowly coursing into peace, I pray in tongues when I am miserable

It is the greatest mood-changer, and wisdom-infuser I know. The greatest shortcut to joy.

* * *

And sadly, my spirit-tongue hasn’t changed, and, sadly, it sounds rather ugly to my years, barbaric even. It’s not Greek, or Latin, or French, languages I love. I heard a Vicar in Oxford sing in tongues once, and it sounded like Persian, something vaguely Byzantine, definitely sophisticated.

Mine, it’s a cave man tongue, heavy glottals.

And that’s just as well, for if I spoke Old French or Medieval Latin, I would have been tempted to show off about my lovely spirit language. Instead, I have kept quiet about it, and prayed quietly as God meant, no doubt, for the last thirty years.

Some people say that one’s spirit language develops as we mature. Well, I have matured spiritually (ask Roy what an angel I can be when he is impossible. Well, sometimes!), but my language has basically stayed static.

And isn’t it strange that the one gift I specifically said I didn’t want was the one gift I got? (Though, about 20 years ago, the gift of prophetic knowledge and insight began to manifest itself in me, and be recognised by others, and is now my most treasured spiritual gift.)

* * *

Rejoice always, pray constantly, in everything give thanks. How on earth is that possible?

Well, praying in tongues is one way. I pray when I go on a long walk, and flag. Or do manual work. Or in the winter when the night finds me too tired to read or write, too tired to pray coherently, but not tired enough to fall asleep.

And then the Spirit, left within my spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing my inheritance, prays in rough-hewn sounds without any words I understand, and God hears His intercession, and so I know that all will be well, all will be well, all manner of things will be well.

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Writing with the Wind of the Wild Goose of the Holy Spirit in your Wings

By Anita Mathias

Wild Geese fly in a V formation. The lead goose reduces the wind resistance; the others glide, almost effortlessly, in the currents she has created.

During a storm, the eagle waits perched on the edge of its nest for the wind to gain sufficient velocity. Once she knows the direction in which the wind is roaring, she spreads her wings wide, and effortlessly glides into the winds of the storm.

Have you ever seen hawks or eagles soar, wings outstretched, rising without a single beat of their magnificent wings, soaring, soaring? They are soaring on thermal currents—masses of air that rise when the ground rapidly warms up. Or sometimes, obstruction currents, when wind currents are deflected by mountains, cliffs or tall buildings. The resulting updraft lifts them to high altitudes at which they glide.

* * *

The Wild Goose was an emblem of the Holy Spirit in Celtic tradition.

And the eagle, in Scripture, is a symbol both of God, and God’s people.

Eagles never waste their energy flapping their enormous wings—they wait for, and then use thermal currents and obstruction currents to soar on the wings of the wind…

Flying is so much easier when we sense the direction the wind of the Holy Spirit is blowing in our lives, and in the world, and then open our wings and fly in that direction, using the energy he generates within us, and in circumstances around us.

* * *

I have been reading about “the anointing,” in R. T. Kendall’s splendid, “The Anointing.”

He writes: “The anointing is when our gift functions easily. It comes with ease. It seems natural. No working it up is needed. If one has to work it up, one has probably gone outside one’s anointing. If one goes outside one’s anointing, the result is often fatigue, that is weariness or spiritual lethargy that has been described as ‘dying inside.’”

* * *

I find that with my writing on my blog, and indeed all writing. God is speaking. Not God spoke, but God is speaking. He is by His nature continuously articulate, A. W. Tozer wrote. If I listen to what the Spirit is saying to me through the events of my life, record the mini-revelations or epiphanies given to me each day by the God who speaks continuously and is never silent, then blogging is quick, easy and delightful. And what’s more, it often speaks to people.

It’s when I write to grow my blog, wonder if I should write the topical posts that everyone else is writing, be strategic, capture the zeitgeist– that blogging feels heavy, a chore, work rather than play. Why? Because the wind of the Spirit is not helping me soar; I have to expend scarce energy with a mighty, exhausting flapping of wings.

There is a lightness to God’s work, an amused creativity—we get the impression He tossed off zebras, giraffes, toucans, morpho butterflies and orchids in a massive outburst of creativity. God was at play as these beautiful things came into being, step by step through the mighty forces of evolution. His work was deep play.

* * *

In his book, Homo Ludens, or Man the Player, the Dutch historian and cultural theorist, Johan Huizinga, suggests that culture stems from humans at play, humans playing with words, or music or paint or the sketches of mighty cathedrals.

And when I record the whispers of the spirit, write in the updraft of the wild goose of the Holy Spirit, blogging is easy, light and delightful. It has a bit of the playfulness with which I imagine God made the world. I am playing in the fields of the Lord, playing with God, thinking aloud, probably making all sorts of mistakes–but there is a fun and lightness to it all.

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