Bill Johnson | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

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

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

In Which All Our Faith is Patchy, But Even That is Potent

By Anita Mathias

My eighteen-year old daughter, Zoe, is at the School of Ministry at Catch the Fire, Toronto.

She and the other School of Ministry students ministered at the same Catch the Fire conference as John Arnott and Heidi Baker. They were told to pray boldly, that everyone gets to play, that everyone was equal before God.

However, she said, when John Arnott, a stocky matter-of-fact Canadian, stands before someone, hold out his hand, and declares, “Fire,” they fall down, “slain in the spirit.” However, when the 18-year olds hold out their hands and say “Fire,”—well, it’s not the same!

I laughed.

It is a problem in the spiritual life, isn’t it?

* * *

Why are some people’s prayers answered, and not others? Why are we healed when some pray, but not when others pray? Why do you know the prayer will be answered when you hear by a certain timbre in a woman’s voice that she has entered the throne room –but when another prays, you think, “Aw, sound nice”?

The pray-ers life has something to do with it. “For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.” 1 Peter 3:12. Wilfully persisting in sin creates a massive barrier between us and God.

But it also comes down to faith. Arnott has no doubt the Holy Spirit will come on request. He is sure the Fire wants to dwell within us, and he prays fervently, and it comes. Bill Johnson has no doubt God will heal, and so he does when Bill prays.

Last year, I heard Isabel Allum riff on all the lost objects which miraculously turned up as she prayed for them—contact lenses, medicine, satnavs, diamond earrings. She has no doubt they will be found, and God arranges this.

I am reading Mark Batterson’s The Circle Maker. Mark believes that God will give him horrendously expensive properties in Washington D.C. (where land goes for $14 million an acre) and God does–through a combination of donations, sheer chutzpah, persistence, and the wild success of Mark’s books, a significant portion of which he donates to the Church.

Heidi Baker tells stories of the dead being raised, of an orphanage gift of used stuffed dogs (feared in Africa) being changed to beads at her prayer, of the dead being raised to life, the blind seeing, the deaf hearing. She knows God, she has no doubt that God will step down to help us on request, and so he does.

* * *

The way to form a new habit is to take a goal (lose a pound a week, wake a hour earlier, read a book a week, write a thousand words a day) and divide it to its smallest measurable increment (250 words a day, wake 5 minutes early, read 5 pages a day, lose half a pound a week) and go from there.

In prayer, however, the opposite is true. Pray as big as you dare believe. Write down your dreams. If you desire to see what you’ve written doubled (and you may not!!), then pray that. Daily or weekly, pray through your lists of prayer-dreams. And take steps of faith in accordance with them.

Praying to lose weight? Eat more veggies. Praying to finish your book? Write first thing in the morning. Praying to become organized? Get rid of one thing a day. Praying to wake early? Well…do so.

* * *

We tend to see God’s hand in the areas in which we have the greatest faith that surely he will act. I have seen his miracles and deliverances in my finances most often, because, most of the time, I have an expectant faith that he will help me.

I have begun to pray with faith in creative areas, for God to give me books and for the first time in my life, am experiencing an anointing in writing. You know, when “the right words in the right order” come quickly and easily, as if from a power beyond myself.

After reading The Circle Maker, I have created prayer lists–a page for each of the 30+ areas or people I am praying for–and am praying through every dream, worry or ambition in my life. I am seeing things shift, expand, change at an accelerated rate. Small changes, but so many changes, coincidences and God-incidences, in so many areas, that I can hardly believe it! My faith is growing.

According to your faith be it done to you. Perhaps that’s why we see answers and miracles in one area in which we can see the kind face of Jesus as we pray, and know he will answer our prayers, and, yet remain stuck in another, in which we have less faith that he will help us.

Prayer is truly the greatest force in the world. I have long believed it intellectually. I am now gradually believing it with all my heart.

Listening to Isabel Allum in London. Chasing the Wild Goose of the Holy Spirit. Part II

By Anita Mathias

For most of my adult life, I’ve been guided by this thought of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Why go to drink from other men’s wells, when you can stay home, and be in touch with the internal ocean.”So I avoid listening to speakers on the importance of reading the Bible, of loving your spouse or kids, or praying, or worshipping, or writing daily, or reading poetry daily—preferring to go off and get on with it.

* * *

But yet, there is a time for learn, and a time to be inspired.

When we lived in Williamsburg, Virginia, I worked before a large picture window facing our backyard. Giant iridescent dragonflies flitted around our pond. Monarch butterflies fluttered in their mating dance. Ruby-throated hummingbirds came to our feeders. There were brilliant cardinals and cheeky blue jays.

And I, nose in book, was often oblivious to this world humming with life and colour. Until I looked up.

* * *

So too, spiritually, I can plod. Not in distress, but not on the heights. Not unhappy, but not filled to overflowing with the joy of the Lord either.

But there is so much more. And when you listen to speakers who have scaled higher altitudes of joy or peace or hearing God’s voice, or experiencing miracles, you feel, “Okay, girl, there’s immensity around you. Keep climbing.” And this great cloud of witnesses spurs you on.

* * *

I am chasing the wild goose of the Holy Spirit, and the best thing about this chase is: I am guaranteed to succeed. On the most sacred promise. If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” Luke 11:13.

“Everyone can play,” as John Wimber famously said. And everyone who asks for the Spirit receives. It’s a democracy. Like the great democratic marriage feast of the Lamb.

How much of the Holy Spirit will I receive? As much as I am willing to make room by daily repentance. By making time and clearing room. By inviting him to come.

Will everyone who asks receive the same amount? Nope. But that’s more or less okay with me, because I know the King, and I trust him, and know he’s fond of me.

And he will give me as much of the Spirit as I can stand at any given time and as I make room for by repentance, surrender and decluttering my heart and life to make room for him.

* * *

Healthwise, I’d had an awful week or so. A cough. Feeling feverish. Sleeping badly. Exhausted during the day.

So when I saw Isabel Allum was speaking in London, I thought, “Why not go?” I am low-spirited because I am feeling so grotty, and it will be refreshing.

And so I went.

And it was interesting enough.

* * *

A critique of the Toronto Blessing, and the Charismatic Movement is its similarity to magic. I recently chatted to a lovely new committed Christian about how she renounced the occult, including an addiction to fortune-tellers and clairvoyants, which was escalating financial problems, since she was contacting them several times a day, sometimes. Why? I asked. “The hope that something good might happen. The need to know,” she said.

And so, Isabel Allum packed out a hall, because she has a reputation as a prophetess. And what did people hope to hear? Predictions of destiny, greatness, “favour,” “plunder,” becoming famous, receiving the nations as an inheritance?

And I? As I said, I wanted to relax in the presence of God, soak in the things of God. And yes, I wasn’t averse to a prophecy. A confirmation of destiny, though I do have a good idea of what God is planning to do, and is doing in my life. He spoke to me when I was 21, on the day he unleashed my writing gift, out of the blue, and confirmed it last summer. So, I am a bit embarrassed that I wanted a prophetic word, such as was given to me for my daughter Zoe by Patricia Bootsma, but, hey, I did.

By the grace of God, however, I have had very clear direction for the rest of my life, of the path I should take, and now–all I need to do is take it, which is not the easiest thing. Steady step by step, and Paradise Lost gets written, and you reach your Promised Land. A thousand prophecies or none, it would still take obedience. It would still take work. It would still take sacrifice.

* * *

A lot of things Isabel was talking about were I guess “magical.” Stories of lost satnavs, medicines, diamond earrings, tools, appearing. She was like a jazz artist, one riff generating another.

It struck me that we each have faith for different things. For instance, I have faith in God’s financial provision. I pray with faith, and over the years, have experienced many miracles in this realm.

Bill Johnson has faith in God’s “creative miracles”—growing new limbs and new organs. And so he sees that happen. And Isabel magically retrieves lost objects.

I love the rich concept of the Kingdom, a mansion with many rooms. And it means different things to different people. Heidi and Rolland Baker’s concept of the Kingdom is probably closest to Jesus’s—the blind see, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, and the good news is preached everywhere.

But there are other aspects of the Kingdom. It is joy. It is peace. It is serenity. It is, as Ann Voskamp paraphrases Paul, being, “worried-full for nothing, thank-full for everything, prayer-full in all things.”

* * *

Isabel talked about a young girl working with her, who went to work in an organic greenhouse, and prayed in tongues all day. And the business boomed, and the plants throve, and the profits rose. The simple act of prayer brought the Kingdom into the greenhouse. I have heard the same stories come out out of Ffald-y-Brenin, once they started praying blessing on neighbouring farms and businesses.

And that too is the Kingdom. Praying through your day. Seeing God’s hand in little things (Isabel gives examples of parking spaces, and things being marked down in the grocery store just before you get to that aisle. Seeing it as God’s provision fills our life with joy.) Being thankful. Praying big prayers.

* * *

The medium is often the message. Isabel, a Costa Rican, whose Hispanic accent I often had trouble following, spoke childlikely with a continuous smile. The joy seemed real.

Ah, what prevents me living like that, praying through my day, thanking God for his goodness to me, both evident goodness and goodness I accept by faith? Rejoicing always, praying constantly, in everything giving things. Nothing stops me from trying to live like that! And so I will.

And for that inspiration, I am happy I looked up from my books, and saw a bright ruby-throated hummingbird flutter through an English May; iridescent dragonflies sweep, and monarch butterflies on their prophetic migration.

anita.mathias