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10 Reflections after Listening to Heidi Baker

By Anita Mathias

 

Heidi_Baker

Heidi Baker (credit)

Heidi Baker is, I believe, the closest to the heart of Jesus of any living Christian. Christianity Today wrote a rapturous cover story on her.

I heard her in Birmingham, and here are my notes, reflections and resolutions.

1) “Always, always, always, say YES.”

Heidi: “I got so yielded that I didn’t have much more to say than “Yes, yes, yes.

“The world has yet to see what God will do with a man fully consecrated to him.’ Dwight Moody famously said.

How do we get fully surrendered? We just start, one tiny step at a time. And because it is just one step at a time, one minute at a time, it is an easy yoke. The hardest part is setting your feet in the right direction!

2) After reading about “the multiplication anointing” in Mark Batterson’s “Circle Maker,” I have been praying for it on my writing, business, and other endeavours.

Well, Heidi is in the business of multiplication anointings, and has to be, since she’s committed to feed 12,000 orphans.

She explains it: You surrender your lunch, your everything to God, and he uses it feed a great crowd “as much as they wanted.”

In the surrender, in living in the river, comes the power to have your resources of time, talent, energy, and money multiplied.

Heidi  says she’s become cleverer. “God took my mind and enlarged it. I can do things now which I could never have imagined. I have the mind of Christ.”   SQ, our spiritual intelligence quotient, she said, unlike IQ, grows with time.

3) “It all depends on how you look at things,” a phrase she repeated like a jazz motif. She had many tales of shipwrecks, and beatings and stonings, of when things went disastrously, dangerously, heart-breakingly wrong, but once she decided to praise God, and look at the bright side of things, they worked out. Not as she wanted them to, or prayed they would, but worked out.

She has had numerous opportunities to become a grouchy old missionary, but decided to choose joy, decided to choose to be happy.

4) “It doesn’t matter if people don’t like you, if God likes you!”

I find the thought so liberating. Not everyone will like me, and I am not to bother about that, as long as God likes me!

“Stick to your message. Four years down the line those people who opposed you will hug you!”

Another theme she riffed on, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition.” However, as you behave like children of God without fault,” you will “shine among them like stars in the sky” (Phil 2:8).

5) “When God shows up, people start showing up.”

Heidi: “When God shows up, everything shifts, expands and grows.”

As a blogger, it is my goal to grow my blog primarily by going deeper into Christ, and so it is good to know that “when God shows up, people start showing up.”

6) Growth Happens Outside the Comfort Zone

Heidi: “I don’t mind being stretched. I believe stretching is good.”

(I too am learning to force myself out of the comfort zone, into the growth zone.)

7) Love Looks like Something

Heidi spoke of Helena whose grandmother asked her brothers to stone her to death after her leg was amputated after a house fire; she was now useless. Helena escaped, and selling her body to keep alive, starting at the age of ten.

After Heidi took her in, and kept saying “love looks like something,” Helena decided to go back and tell them about the love of Jesus. Heidi said, “Never! That is the most dysfunctional family I know of.”

Helena said, “But you said, “Love looks like something.”

What a beautifully simple guide to relationships with our family and friends: “Love looks like something.” It is practical; you can see it.

8) Physical Fitness The work she does in Mozambique would be physically impossible if she were not supremely physically fit. She spoke of  running; swimming; snorkeling; lifting weights in her bedroom.

I decided to privilege my physical life (strength and fitness) below my spiritual life, but above my intellectual life. I will try to fit in some walking and stretching, even if I write less. But ironically, of course, I will not write less if I make time to exercise; I will write more. As Jonathan Fields says, “if we make the time to exercise, it makes us so much more productive and leads to such improved creativity, cognitive function, and mood that the time we need for doing it will open up and then some–making us so much happier and better at the art of creation, to boot.”

9) She is learning to appreciate the diversity of all the streams in the body of Christ, both the super-campy and the chosen-frozen dying on their feet.

The body of Christ will have the same diversity as creation, and we should learn to enjoy each of its streams.

10) “We can have as much of God as we want to have if we continually say, “Yes, yes, yes”

 

 

 

Filed Under: In Which I celebrate Church History and Great Christians, In which I surrender all Tagged With: Absolute Surrender, Heidi Baker, love looks like something, Physical Fitness, the importance of being stretched, the multiplication anointing

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My Books

Wandering Between Two Worlds: Essays on Faith and Art

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Francesco, Artist of Florence: The Man Who Gave Too Much

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The Story of Dirk Willems

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Premier Digital Awards 2015 - Finalist - Blogger of the year
Runner Up Christian Media Awards 2014 - Tweeter of the year

Recent Posts

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  • A Mind of Life and Peace in the Middle of a Global Pandemic
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  • On Loving That Which Love You Back
  • “An Autobiography in Five Chapters” and Avoiding Habitual Holes  
  • Shining Faith in Action: Dirk Willems on the Ice
  • The Story of Dirk Willems: The Man who Died to Save His Enemy

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What I’m Reading

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
Barak Obama

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H Is for Hawk
Helen MacDonald

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Tiny Habits
B. J. Fogg

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The Regeneration Trilogy
Pat Barker

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anita.mathias

Writer, Blogger, Reader, Mum. Christian. Instaing Oxford, travel, gardens and healthy meals. Oxford English alum. Writing memoir. Lives in Oxford, UK

Images from walks around Oxford. #beauty #oxford # Images from walks around Oxford. #beauty #oxford #walking #tranquility #naturephotography #nature
So we had a lovely holiday in the Southwest. And h So we had a lovely holiday in the Southwest. And here we are at one of the world’s most famous and easily recognisable sites.
#stonehenge #travel #england #prehistoric England #family #druids
And I’ve blogged https://anitamathias.com/2020/09/13/on-not-wasting-a-desert-experience/
So, after Paul the Apostle's lightning bolt encounter with the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus, he went into the desert, he tells us...
And there, he received revelation, visions, and had divine encounters. The same Judean desert, where Jesus fasted for forty days before starting his active ministry. Where Moses encountered God. Where David turned from a shepherd to a leader and a King, and more, a man after God’s own heart.  Where Elijah in the throes of a nervous breakdown hears God in a gentle whisper. 
England, where I live, like most of the world is going through a desert experience of continuing partial lockdowns. Covid-19 spreads through human contact and social life, and so we must refrain from those great pleasures. We are invited to the desert, a harsh place where pruning can occur, and spiritual fruitfulness.
A plague like this has not been known for a hundred years... John Piper, after his cancer diagnosis, exhorted people, “Don’t Waste Your Cancer”—since this was the experience God permitted you to have, and He can bring gold from it. Pandemics and plagues are permitted (though not willed or desired) by a Sovereign God, and he can bring life-change out of them. 
Let us not waste this unwanted, unchosen pandemic, this opportunity for silence, solitude and reflection. Let’s not squander on endless Zoom calls—or on the internet, which, if not used wisely, will only raise anxiety levels. Let’s instead accept the invitation to increased silence and reflection
Let's use the extra free time that many of us have long coveted and which has now been given us by Covid-19 restrictions to seek the face of God. To seek revelation. To pray. 
And to work on those projects of our hearts which have been smothered by noise, busyness, and the tumult of people and parties. To nurture the fragile dreams still alive in our hearts. The long-deferred duty or vocation
So, we are about eight weeks into lockdown, and I So, we are about eight weeks into lockdown, and I have totally sunk into the rhythm of it, and have got quiet, very quiet, the quietest spell of time I have had as an adult.
I like it. I will find going back to the sometimes frenetic merry-go-round of my old life rather hard. Well, I doubt I will go back to it. I will prune some activities, and generally live more intentionally and mindfully.
I have started blocking internet of my phone and laptop for longer periods of time, and that has brought a lot of internal quiet and peace.
Some of the things I have enjoyed during lockdown have been my daily long walks, and gardening. Well, and reading and working on a longer piece of work.
Here are some images from my walks.
And if you missed it, a blog about maintaining peace in the middle of the storm of a global pandemic
https://anitamathias.com/2020/05/04/a-mind-of-life-and-peace/  #walking #contemplating #beauty #oxford #pandemic
A few walks in Oxford in the time of quarantine. A few walks in Oxford in the time of quarantine.  We can maintain a mind of life and peace during this period of lockdown by being mindful of our minds, and regulating them through meditation; being mindful of our bodies and keeping them happy by exercise and yoga; and being mindful of our emotions in this uncertain time, and trusting God who remains in charge. A new blog on maintaining a mind of life and peace during lockdown https://anitamathias.com/2020/05/04/a-mind-of-life-and-peace/
In the days when one could still travel, i.e. Janu In the days when one could still travel, i.e. January 2020, which seems like another life, all four of us spent 10 days in Malta. I unplugged, and logged off social media, so here are some belated iphone photos of a day in Valetta.
Today, of course, there’s a lockdown, and the country’s leader is in intensive care.
When the world is too much with us, and the news stresses us, moving one’s body, as in yoga or walking, calms the mind. I am doing some Yoga with Adriene, and again seeing the similarities between the practice of Yoga and the practice of following Christ.
https://anitamathias.com/2020/04/06/on-yoga-and-following-jesus/
#valleta #valletamalta #travel #travelgram #uncagedbird
Images from some recent walks in Oxford. I am copi Images from some recent walks in Oxford.
I am coping with lockdown by really, really enjoying my daily 4 mile walk. By savouring the peace of wild things. By trusting that God will bring good out of this. With a bit of yoga, and weights. And by working a fair amount in my garden. And reading.
How are you doing?
#oxford #oxfordinlockdown #lockdown #walk #lockdownwalks #peace #beauty #happiness #joy #thepeaceofwildthings
Images of walks in Oxford in this time of social d Images of walks in Oxford in this time of social distancing. The first two are my own garden.  And I’ve https://anitamathias.com/2020/03/28/silver-and-gold-linings-in-the-storm-clouds-of-coronavirus/ #corona #socialdistancing #silverlinings #silence #solitude #peace
Trust: A Message of Christmas He came to earth in Trust: A Message of Christmas  He came to earth in a  splash of energy
And gentleness and humility.
That homeless baby in the barn
Would be the lynchpin on which history would ever after turn
Who would have thought it?
But perhaps those attuned to God’s way of surprises would not be surprised.
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Augustus Caesar issued a decree which brought him to Bethlehem,
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Look, I’ve designed a journal. It’s an omnibus Look, I’ve designed a journal. It’s an omnibus Gratitude journal, habit tracker, food and exercise journal, bullet journal, with time sheets, goal sheets and a Planner. Everything you’d like to track.  Here’s a post about it with ISBNs https://anitamathias.com/2019/12/23/life-changing-journalling/. Check it out. I hope you and your kids like it!
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