I just returned from one-week away at a Father Heart “A” School in Taupo led by James and Denise Jordan and their team of other lovely mothers and fathers. I feel born again, again. I want to invite you into the transformation…

Sometimes we don’t know that we’ve had a cloud hanging over us all our lives, until that cloud is removed and we come into the full blown beams of the burning sun. Until the sun is revealed, we think that life is cloudy. Who knew?! The cloud is the vapourous veil to the true reality. The sun is the true reality.

Who knew?!

Who knew that life was sunny?! I thought that clouds were like cement — a cold, hard reality. Who knew that clouds are actually a misty vapour, that dissipate when the atmosphere and climate changes. Atmosphere change. Poof. Clouds gone. But the sun never changes. It just shines and shines — continually. Do you know that the sun has never stopped shining? WE just come under a cloud, so we think the sun is gone. WE just move away from it as we move with the revolving globe, so we think the sun is gone. But the sun never moves. The sun never changes. It just shines and shines and shines and shines. The SUN is the true reality; clouds are not. Who knew that clouds are so flimsy that they are blown away by invisible air that we call wind. They are OVERPOWERED BY AIR!

Who knew?!

Who knew what SUBSTANTIAL SUBSTANCE was really contained in the rays of the sun? Who knew that the PEACE of God was supposed to actually FEEL GOOD and that the HOPE that comes from His Spirit, who is OUR COMFORTER, was supposed to actually FEEL COMFORTING!

I feel like I’ve been dooped for most of my life, under this dark cloud, but thank God, I’ve been brought into His glorious light!

I have run from comfort, shunning it as evil, not knowing that our GOOD GOD is called the GOD OF ALL COMFORT, and that ALL COMFORT comes from HIM. Comfort is not evil. It is good!

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” (2 Cor 1:3-4)

To be comfortable is the ability to be comforted. Comfort-able.

For some reason, I had thought that I was supposed to feel perpetually restless. I thought I was supposed to always feel like I was in danger, as if it somehow made me more radical. ‘Woo, look at HER. She lives such a dangerous, radical life for God. And whoa, she’s single, going around solo all the time. She’s so radical.’ No, I was no radical. I was a lonely, isolated, cloudy loner, living under the deception of Satan, the most restless wanderer on this earth!

I had thought I was supposed to feel like a solo sojourner through this wild and dangerous world. I had NO IDEA that I was supposed to actually FEEL the COMFORT of the Father’s love filling my HEART, which permeates my MIND, embraces my EMOTIONS, and seeps out into my BODY. I thought I was supposed to feel like a stranger and an outsider in this world. I had no idea that I was supposed to feel AT HOME and AT REST in this world because this is my Father’s HOME. His RESTING PLACE. His DWELLING PLACE. I didn’t know that my internal world was supposed to FEEL RESTFUL. I didn’t know that my heart could abide in rest, like a soft pillow to lay my weary head upon and receive comfort. I thought my heart was supposed to feel so strong and resilient and driven. I never knew….

I had no idea that I was allowed to REST, that I was supposed to REST. I have spoken to countless groups about how God gives rest and God created a day of rest to bless us, but I didn’t know that you could actually experience that rest, and FEEL rested.

I didn’t know that rest could actually be a FEELING.

I knew I was supposed to stop my outward activity, but I could never escape that inner frantic rush and restless drivenness, always under this debilitating PRESSURE inside me. Paralyzing burdens that got heavier and heavier with each passing year. Every year not accomplishing all the lists of “shoulds” and “musts”. Always falling short. Always missing out. Always behind. Always disappointing myself. All my failed expectations of myself heaping up endless condemnation upon my heart.

Whoa. I’m allowed to rest.

I had no idea!

I had no idea!

I had no idea!

One of the most radical things that was prayed over me last week was this:
“Father, would you give Alison the courage to relax”. What?!?! Courage to relax?!?! What about courage to forge on into dangerous territory with might and power, to labour for the Lord and win the battle against the enemy?!?! What?!?! Courage to RELAX?!?!

Everything in me resisted the whole idea of RELAXING! (like it was somehow blasphemous and demonic!) I was freaking out inside and in protest! Duh… everyone else could see it — this girl is wound up in anxiety and needs to relax!

Then it hit me – like a soft pillow. Wow, I really do need courage to relax. I am terrified of relaxing. I need more courage to relax, than I need to be all strong and radical.

Like a pillow, the Spirit of God came to lay my weary head down. I had permission from God to relax. I was allowed to rest. No wait, I was commanded to rest. One of the first commands God gave to mankind, was to rest. How did I miss this all my life?!

“Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

This is the good news! This is the gospel! There is a rest for the people of God.

To describe what happened this past week, simply put, I’d call it ONE WEEK-LONG SIGH OF RELIEF. Sometimes we have no idea that we’ve been holding our breath all our lives, until we let our breath out and SIGH. Sometimes we just have no idea how heavy a burden we’ve been carrying on our shoulders, until it is lifted off of us.

We have no idea… until our eyes are opened.

They say that “Love does not transform until it is felt.” This is so true. Someone can TELL you truth all your life, and it doesn’t change a thing in your life, until it finally bypasses your mind, and dives into the deep crevices of your heart, so much so that it is FELT. Then, the lightbulb goes on in your heart, and you are changed.

All my life I have lived in anxiety and worry, like an obsessive mental racehorse running the never-ending marathon race of anxiety. A loop that never stops. I was never diagnosed as abnormal because I was just following the example of my family, the example of all the people I’ve lived around, and the example of the whole world. All my life I have lived with a fear of the future, a fear of getting old, a fear of dying, a fear of the bad guy just around the corner, a fear of the unknown. I have been crippled by dread. And then crippled by regret, thinking that everything I’d done or not done in the past, was somehow contributing to the impending DOOM that was just around the corner. The future, to me, was bleak, dark, horrible, hard and hopeless. I believed that everything gets worse and worse, and life gets harder and harder. It’s like I had been wincing my whole life, just waiting for the smack down. You could have named me Dismal Forebodings. I was Anxiety Girl to the max. The superhero of mental and emotional torture.

Well, no longer. I’ve been renamed.

All I can say is that God has delivered me from these dismal forebodings of the future. And He has renamed me Joyful Anticipations. I am so excited about the future! I am giggling randomly throughout the day, and as I lay there in my bed before I go to sleep. Giggling and chuckling. I have this felt hope and this felt anticipation like a little kid who can’t wait for the next day to come.

God has filled my heart with bright hope for tomorrow. I am filled with hope for the future.

I have been born again into excitement for what’s ahead.

God has been playing the biggest joke on me, and I can’t stop laughing! Jehovah Sneaky, thou hast tricked me!

I thought it was all supposed to be so horrible! I thought that hope was the biggest risk in the world. I didn’t know that hope is the most safe, secure and certain reality. Hope is like the burning sun that just shines and shines and shines. It’s not like a cloud that blows away the moment the climate changes.

It’s like I had laid my life down at His feet, willing to die for Him, certain that the sword of pain would slice me to the core, as I bore the cross for the rest of my life. And suddenly, my Heavenly Father gathers me in His arms, lifts my downturned face and beckons me to look out the window. He opens the shades, and reveals to me this wide and spacious field, a glorious and splendid garden of delight. And He looks back to me and locks His gaze with mine and says, “You will laugh at the days to come.” (Prov 31:25).

Oh how funny and kind the Lord is! He is so hilariously kind. So excessively kind and indulgent in His love. He is over-the-top in His GOODNESS.

“Those who sow in tears, will reap with songs of joy! He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy!” (Psalm 126:5-6a)

So there, you have it! My week, in a nut-shell. And that was just ONE of a beautiful ABUNDANCE of revelations that I received from my Heavenly Father last week. As I said, He was over-the-top in His goodness. He gives good gifts.

With joyful anticipations,
Alison

“‘Not called!’ did you say? ‘Not heard the call,’ I think you should say. Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father’s house and bid their brothers and sisters and servants and masters not to come there. Then look Christ in the face — whose mercy you have professed to obey — and tell Him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish His mercy to the world. — William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army

“I believe that in each generation God has called enough men and women to evangelize all the yet unreached tribes of the earth. No, it is not God who does not call. It is man who will not respond!” — Isobel Kuhn, missionary to China and Thailand in the early 1900’s

“God isn’t looking for people of great faith, but for individuals ready to follow Him… God uses men who are weak and feeble enough to lean on Him.” — Hudson Taylor, missionary to China in the mid to late 1800’s

“To know the will of God, we need an open Bible and an open map.” — William Carey, pioneer missionary to India

“Don’t wonder whether you have a call to go. ‘Have you had a distinct call from Christ to stay at home?’” – George Wilson

“The command has been to ‘go,’ but we have stayed — in body, gifts, prayer and influence. He has asked us to be witnesses unto the uttermost parts of the earth … but 99% of Christians have kept puttering around in the homeland.” — Robert Savage, Latin American Mission

“God is pursuing with omnipotent passion a worldwide purpose of gathering joyful worshipers for Himself from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. He has an inexhaustible enthusiasm for the supremacy of His name among the nations. Therefore, let us bring our affections into line with His, and, for the sake of His name, let us renounce the quest for worldly comforts and join His global purpose.” — John Piper

“Tell the students to give up their small ambitions and come eastward to preach the gospel of Christ.” — Francis Xavier, missionary to India, the Philippines, and Japan in the 1500’s

“I have but one candle of life to burn, and I would rather burn it out in a land filled with darkness than in a land flooded with light” — John Keith Falconer

“Some wish to live within the sound of a chapel bell; I wish to run a rescue mission within a yard of hell.” — C.T. Studd

“No one has the right to hear the gospel twice, while there remains someone who has not heard it once.” — Oswald J. Smith

“The gospel is only good news if it gets there in time” — Carl F. H. Henry

“Someone asked, ‘Will the heathen who have never heard the Gospel be saved?’It is more a question with me whether we — who have the Gospel and fail to give it to those who have not — can be saved.” — C.H. Spurgeon

“Any church that is not seriously involved in helping fulfill the Great Commission has forfeited its biblical right to exist.” — Oswald J. Smith

“The mark of a great church is not its seating capacity, but its sending capacity.” — Mike Stachura

“This generation of Christians is responsible for this generation of souls on the earth!” — Keith Green, musician and singer and evangelist in the 1980’s, killed in a plane crash in the prime of his life

“He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose” — Jim Elliot, missionary martyr who lost his life in the late 1950′s trying to reach the Auca Indians of Ecuador

“People who do not know the Lord ask why in the world we waste our lives as missionaries. They forget that they too are expending their lives … and when the bubble has burst, they will have nothing of eternal significance to show for the years they have wasted.” — Nate Saint, missionary martyr with Jim Elliot in Ecuador

“I never made a sacrifice. Of this we ought not to talk when we remember the great sacrifice which he made who left His Father’s throne on high to give Himself for us.” – David Livingstone, 1813-1873, missionary to Africa

“If a commission by an earthly king is considered a honour, how can a commission by a Heavenly King be considered a sacrifice?” — David Livingstone

“If God calls you to be a missionary, don’t stoop to be a king.” — Jordan Grooms (variations of this also credited to G. K. Chesterson, Thomas Carlyle and Charles Haddon Spurgeon)

“The reason some folks don’t believe in missions is that the brand of religion they have isn’t worth propagating.” — Unknown

When James Calvert went out as a missionary in the 1800’s to the cannibals of the Fiji Islands, the ship captain tried to turn him back, saying, “You will lose your life and the lives of those with you if you go among such savages.” To that, Calvert replied, “We died before we came here.”

“If we are going to wait until every possible hindrance has been removed before we do a work for the Lord, we will never attempt to do anything.” – T.J. Bach, 1881-1963, Missionary to Venezuela

“There are grave difficulties on every hand, and more are looming ahead – Therefore, we must go forward.” – William Carey, 1761-1834, missionary to India

“I am on a crusade right now to recruit martyr missionaries for the least reached people groups of the world.” – David Sitton, President of To Every Tribe (present day)

“Unless there is the element of extreme risk in our exploits for God, there is no need for faith.” – Hudson Taylor, 1832-1905, China

“Missionary life is simply a chance to die.” – Amy Carmichael, missionary to India in the late 1800’s to mid 1900’s

Dear friends and family and blog readers:

I fly out tomorrow to the South Island for a week. It may well be the last trip I make down south to the region that I first called home almost 6 years ago, back in 2006, when I found myself plunked in the middle of the Canterbury plains, bordering the Southern Alps, in a little town called Oxford working with the wonderful YWAM Oxford base. I’m a little nostalgic these days, so the return to the South Island for this next week is sweet, mixed with some bittersweet, but sweet, nonetheless.

Growing up, I was always uncomfortable with seeing people who wore “crucifixes”, the pendant form of a cross WITH Christ hanging on it. Or quite often, the crucifix was boldly up front and centre on the main wall of the auditorium of many churches (usually Catholic churches). I felt offended, to be honest, by the fact that Jesus was up there hanging on the cross. I would say to myself (and to others who were around at the time), “I hate when I see the cross with Jesus hanging lifelessly on it. Don’t people get it? Jesus is not dead. He’s alive!” and I carried this attitude that it was disgusting, depressing, and morbid to see people wearing these crucifixes or seeing them hanging on a wall in a church.

I no longer feel this way.

What changed? 

Well, I met Christ intimately ON the cross, as He lay dying upon it, and I found myself being crucified there upon that very cross WITH HIM. I met the dying Christ, and my heart has never been the same since.

I now see Christ on a cross and I weep with affection for this Man. I see this bloody tree as the place of meeting. It has become the altar of intimacy for me, in which I finally came to love the Christ, the Messiah. I died with Him there. This is where I came to love Him, at last.

Yes, Jesus Christ is no longer on the Cross. He is surely alive and seated at the right hand of the Father, on the Throne. But who can ever forget the place where you first gave your heart to the one you love? You can never forget it, and your heart will always long for this place, this meeting place. It will always hold a special place in you heart.

In another sense, He is on the cross every day of our lives. The thing with the cross is that we never leave it, this side of Heaven. We continually return, daily, to our cross, to His cross. We never leave this continual death, as we are called to continual resurrected life which is born out of death, every time.

Are we called to daily resurrection?

Well, this can only come with daily death.

With every day, there comes night. Then the morning arrives with the sun rising again upon us. Every day, without stop. The cycle of death and new life.

In reality, Christ hung on the cross once, and sin was paid for once, but in our lives, essentially, it happens every day. We die daily. So we can be borne anew, each and every day into new life, the life of Christ.

This is a bit of insight into why I now love to see Christ on the Cross, and the Crucifix is an offence that I now embrace with a whole heart.

Selah. Think upon that.

Attention, all singles!

Here’s the question:

Ever wonder why you’re still single??

Here’s the answer:

You’re single because God’s not ready to share you just yet.

Settle the question in your heart with THAT answer. It’s the truth. And it’s the ONLY answer.

You’re not single because you’re unwanted. You’re single because you are SO WANTED.

God is not ready to share me just yet. While at the altar the other night, I received EYE-OPENING revelation to the past 10 years of singleness (well, truly, my entire life so far). The revelation was that God has shut the doors to marriage and relationships with the opposite sex because He has valiantly and relentlessly pursued me and is jealous for me and He didn’t want any swine to steal my attention, my heart! He didn’t want me to throw my pearls to swine. (Note: not all men are swine, but in truth, some are!) In God’s pleasure, He has sought me out, so I would be wholly devoted to Him – and He doesn’t want to share me. Who’s to know if this is permanent or just an extended season? Who’s to know if He will one day share me with an earthly husband? But it’s about time I stopped taking my love life in my hands, and begin to truly, truly, truly TRUST the heart and intentions and timing and choices of my Heavenly Father, who truly knows best. It’s not because God hates me, that I’m single. It’s because He LOVES me so much, that I’m single.

It’s about time we flip the tables on our skewed PERSPECTIVE on how we view our singleness. We have often just thought that we are single because we are unwanted by a man. But the truth is that we are single because we are SO WANTED BY GOD. He is keeping us from marriage in this season because He wants us so much. He wants our whole heart. All our attention.

So, rather than see your singleness as a proof of your being unlovable, unwanted and worthy of rejection, see your singleness as proof that you are…

…SO LOVED

…SO WANTED

…SO WORTHY OF BEING CHOSEN BY THE GOD OF THE UNIVERSE!

He has set His seal of Love upon your heart, and He has sealed off the door to other men in this season. He has thwarted the purposes of swine who have tried to come and take His pearl of great price away from Him.

You ain’t single because you are unwanted. You are single because you are SO WANTED.

You are single because God isn’t ready to share you just yet.

Think upon that. Chew on that. Digest this revelation and let it FILL YOU and seep into every corner of your hungry, hungry heart. Let this truth FILL YOU with dignity and honour, knowing that, because you are chosen, you have been set apart in this season for God.

He loves you so much.

Truly, you are so loved.

“Celibacy is a vacancy for God. To be a celibate means to be empty for God, to be free and open for God’s presence, to be available for God’s service.” (Henri Nouwen, Thomas Aquinas)

If you are single, you are called as a celibate. To be celibate is to leave a vacancy for God. To be empty for God, open for His presence to fill you.

If I am a single believer in Christ, I am consecrated (set apart) as a celibate for my First Love, for God alone, unless the Lord leads otherwise in a new season.

Jesus was single. Jesus was a celibate. Jesus had a vacancy (an emptiness) within Him reserved for God alone. Even with this vacancy, this emptiness, Jesus was a fully-realized man. He wasn’t a half-realized man. He wasn’t a half-fulfilled man. He was fully fulfilled as a human, and as a man.

And so it is with us, also. 

Contemplate this for a moment. Take some time and go for a walk, or think about it wherever you are right now.

If you are single, you are a fully-realized, fully-fulfilled human being, AND woman or man. We are not above our Master, our Beloved, who also walked out His entire life on earth AS A SINGLE MAN who died at a young age, IN HIS PRIME.

Yet, Jesus fulfilled everything He was called to do. He was not jipped. He was not a disgruntled, ripped-off, discontented man who complained to the Father that he was not being given what He was entitled to in order to fully live the life He was meant to live. Jesus did not feel that He had to postpone His “real life” until His “partner” or “spouse” came. He went forward, in joy and serene acceptance, and did not see His singleness as an obstacle to be removed, but saw it as the path in which the Lord’s will would be fulfilled on earth.

And He did fulfill God’s will, without a spouse. Without children. Yet His life is the most fruitful one in all the universe.

To be single, to be celibate, to be a man or woman who never partakes in sexual union, does not make you less of a woman or a man. If it were so, we would have reason to say that Jesus was only half a man…

…but He was the most alive Man this world has ever seen. And we will never see another as real, as fruitful, as fulfilled as this Man, whom we adore and willingly lay down all of our agendas for, to pick up this high calling, this privileged position as a single, as a celibate for our Beloved.

Selah. Ponder that.

~Alison

Well, I left wintery Canada a couple days ago and arrived back into New Zealand after 2 months of travel around Turkey and Canada. I was overjoyed as New Zealand’s mild summer weather and fresh air breeze greeted me as I stepped out of the airport in Auckland, and headed down to Tauranga. Ah, I love this land. I will miss it when my time to leave comes… I will be writing a more detailed update in the near future (most likely in February/March) which will share what is around the corner, on the horizon. So stay tuned for that. Until then, here’s some information about some address changes for donations you send to me.

New Mailing Address for Financial Donations:

For those of you who are a part of my Financial Partnership team (or for those of you who would like to become a partner), please take note of the changed postal mailing address for the Project Funding office for YWAM that processes tax-deductible donations for me. This really only impacts you if you decide to mail in donations (ie: cheques, money orders). You can email the funding office (email below) if you want to ask about other options for payments or visit my website Support page to see step-by-step instructions.

Project Funding Office
PO Box 57100 RPO East Hastings
Vancouver, BC
V5K 5G6
Canada

Phone: 604.436.4433
Fax: 604.436.4466
E-mail: admin@projectfunding.ca

If you need to email the Project Funding office that processes all my ministry financial support, here is their new email address: admin@projectfunding.ca

Feel free to email me at hopejoyfaith@gmail.com if you would like to personally ask me any further questions. I’ll be more than happy to help answer your questions.

God bless you and hope 2012 is treating you well so far!

Alison

O Jesus! meek and humble of heart, Hear me.
From the desire of being esteemed,
Deliver me, Jesus.

From the desire of being loved…
From the desire of being extolled …
From the desire of being honored …
From the desire of being praised …
From the desire of being preferred to others…
From the desire of being consulted …
From the desire of being approved …
From the fear of being humiliated …
From the fear of being despised…
From the fear of suffering rebukes …
From the fear of being calumniated …
From the fear of being forgotten …
From the fear of being ridiculed …
From the fear of being wronged …
From the fear of being suspected …

That others may be loved more than I,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

That others may be esteemed more than I …
That, in the opinion of the world,
others may increase and I may decrease …
That others may be chosen and I set aside …
That others may be praised and I unnoticed …
That others may be preferred to me in everything…
That others may become holier than I,
provided that I may become as holy as I should…

by G. D. Watson

If God has called you to be really like Christ in all your spirit, He will draw you into a life of crucifixion and humility and put on you such demands of obedience, that He will not allow you to follow other Christians, and in many ways He will seem to let other good people do things which He will not let you do.

Others can brag on themselves, and their work, on their success, on their writings, but the Holy Spirit will not allow you to do any such thing, and if you begin it, He will lead you into some deep mortification that will make you despise yourself and all your good works. 

The Lord will let others be honored and put forward, and keep you hid away in obscurity because He wants to produce some choice fragrant fruit for His glory, which can be produced only in the shade.

Others will be allowed to succeed in making money, but it is likely God will keep you poor because he wants you to have something far better than gold and that is a helpless dependence on Him; that He may have the privilege of supplying your needs day by day – out of an unseen treasury.

God will let others be great, but He will keep you small. He will let others do a great work for Him and get credit for it, but He will make you work and toil on without knowing how much you are doing; and then to make your work still more precious, He will let others get the credit for the work you have done, and this will make your reward ten times greater when He comes.

The Holy Spirit will put strict watch over you, with a jealous love, and will rebuke you for little words and feelings, or for wasting your time, which other Christians never seem distressed over.

So make up your mind that God is an infinite Sovereign, and has a right to do what He pleases with His own, and He will not explain to you a thousand things which may puzzle your reason in His dealing with you. He will wrap you up in a jealous love, and let other people say and do many things that you cannot do or say.

Settle it forever, that you are to deal directly with the Holy Spirit, and that He is to have the privilege of tying your tongue, or chaining your hand, or closing your eyes, in ways that others are not dealt with.

Now, when you are so possessed with the Living God that you are, in your secret heart, pleased and delighted over this particular personal, private, jealous guardianship and management of the Holy Spirit over your life, you will have found the vestibule of heaven.