Sophie Leighton-Bell | Merryl Le Roux | Thandi Meets | Greg Le Roux |
Sophie Leighton-BellSometimes I stand in wonder and amazement at how God has changed my life since I submitted my life back to him soon after starting to attend OXCI in February of this year.
A couple of months ago I was reading my bible and stumbled upon Proverbs 31: 18 which spoke to me: “She tastes and sees that her gain from work ( with and for God ) is good: her lamp goes not out but it burns continually through the night (of trouble, privation or sorrow, warning away, fear, doubt and distrust) She lays her hands to the poor, yes, she reaches out her filled hands to the needed, (whether in body, mind, or spirit)”.
I looked this up in the study version and it says Proverbs has a lot to say about women. How fitting that the book ends with a picture of women of strong character, great wisdom, many skills and great compassion.
Anyway, I prayed about how God would like me to go back to work because this was a big commitment for me – by choice I hadn’t worked for over 5 years. On one Wednesday I prayed for an answer on what area God wanted me in. I believe He spoke to me and wanted me to work with children again. So after Life Group the next day, I suggested to Andy that we go to the pub for a coffee and I saw my old tutor there. I couldn’t believe it!
I believe God had placed her there for a reason. I hadn’t seen her in 6 years, even though she lives in the village next to where I live. So I prayed with Andy and then asked her how to find a job in childcare. She was really helpful and put me in touch with a local organisation that helps to recruit people...
The short version is God was with me all the time; I have a strong faith in that. He opened so many doors for me... I phoned a nursery and they said to come and have a look around the next day! So I did and they offered me a trial day which went really well. The morning after, I was offered a position as bank staff which will hopefully be 1-2 days a week.
Going back to work after so long is a massive step for me, but I know with God’s help I can do it. He wouldn’t have opened so many doors so fast if it hadn’t been in His will. I am eternally grateful and praise Him upon high. But I still feel nervous!!
Inheritance
Colossians 1:27b
‘Christ in you, the hope of glory’
Colossians 2: 9 – 10
‘For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority.’
We explored these scriptures in our Life Group a few weeks ago and it was incredible, some of the personal revelations that came out of meditating on them and allowing God to unpack some truths into our hearts.
To begin to conceive the inheritance that we have as sons and daughters of the most High God is overwhelming and so difficult to grasp with our human intellect. But, the more I read the Word, the more promises I see jam-packed in every page. There are so many nuggets that are just waiting to be unpacked. They only require hearts that are hungry to know the truth of what God has for us.
Come on a journey with me and catch with me, a glimpse of Heaven – let me paint a picture…
I stop for a moment … and take a peek into Heaven’s realm. There, sits the King, seated on a great throne. He is high and lifted up and His train fills the temple. He is clothed in white and His face shines so brightly, the glory of His beauty emanates from Him like the sun reflecting off a mighty sea – so bright that you cannot look at it.
There are angelic hosts, millions, surrounding the throne. Their worship is so loud; it is like thunderous applause – overwhelmingly deafening, but incredibly worshipful all at the same time. An atmosphere you cannot stand in, but are compelled to bow and fall face down before this awesome God. They cannot contain their awe and love and praise of the Almighty One.
The atmosphere is filled with love, deep and saturating, tangibly warm and embracing. There is freedom and abandonment as the Lamb of God is worshipped and adored. It is a place of absolute surrender to Him, a place of wholeness, a place of love and joy and total acceptance. A place where sin is not found, where there is no negative, no hurt, no tears, no pain.
The energy of the Godhead, the anointing, the compassion, the power, the intense love of all people – is ours to carry and share with a broken and lost world.
The fullness of our God, His power, His love and anointing, His energy – reside within me because Jesus Christ lives in me, and I have been given fullness in Christ.
Christ in me compels me to carry His presence – His power – His love. Anything less denies who He is and denies the world around me an encounter with the God of the universe. I need to share the spoils of Heaven with a lost world.
We need to be asking continually for the Spirit of wisdom and revelation so that we may know Him better. That the eyes of our heart may be enlightened in order that we may know the hope to which He has called us, and His incomparably great power for us who believe. Ephesians 1: 17 – 19
May I encourage each of us to meditate on the promises of our inheritance as children of the living God and may they be revealed by the Holy Spirit as life to the way we view our walk with Jesus. May we go from glory to glory, never standing still – but pressing on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of us. Philippians 3:12b
During the first bank holiday weekend of May, I had some moments that made me feel a bit closer to God that I would like to share.
The first was during the day when I was walking our dog. My two housemates were away for the weekend and I had to take care of the dog and cats. The two of us, me and Zulu, went out the back and had a lovely walk through the field adjacent to our back garden. The field was covered in yellow flowering rapeseed and it looked like liquid sunshine. I don’t really have an explanation, but it made me feel very happy and made me laugh out loud. With the dark blue sky as background, everything just looked so lovely and reminded me that God gives us these beautiful things to make us happy.
The second was the Sunday night – it was full moon and I ended up sitting outside in the early hours of the morning just enjoying the beauty and the stillness. It was a special time that I was just spending with God, talking to Him about everything that was on my heart.
These moments were hard to try and put into words, but at the prayer meeting the following Tuesday Greg shared a thought about a song we were singing that made so much sense.
‘The joy of the Lord is our strength’, it was like reinforcing what I had experienced over the weekend. His beautiful gifts made me content and that made me feel stronger in Him and when we are close to God life just makes more sense.
The week after this weekend, my mom passed away, on Thursday 7 May at 13:05 in the afternoon. Although I am heartbroken, God has given me peace and He has placed many loving people around me to support me through this time.
I know that His will has been done and I know that my mom is home. He is carrying me through and without His love I would be nowhere.
Keep your eyes on Him and He will not let you down! He truly is the raft in the stormy sea! Stay in Him and you will be safe.
A small step of faith goes a long, long way…
I recently attended a conference at which my company was exhibiting. At the beginning of the week I had prayed to the Lord, as I do on most days, that He would give me opportunity to reach out to people and to glorify His wonderful name. By the second day of the conference, I became aware of one of the other exhibitors who was limping around painfully. I felt the Lord impress on my heart that I needed to pray for this young lady. This didn’t happen immediately as there were several opportunities that I didn’t take.
On the third day of the conference, I felt more convicted that the Lord wanted me to pray for this young lady. An opportunity arose and I went over to her exhibition stand and asked if I could have a word with her. Moving away from the other people at the exhibition stand, I said to her that I could see that she was in pain and that I felt that God wanted me to pray for her for healing. I then asked her if she was a Christian. She responded that she sometimes went to church. I then proceeded to tell her that I was going to pray for healing and that the pain would go. It was a very short prayer as I did not feel that I wanted to bring attention to her. I also didn’t feel that the Lord would bring healing based on my lengthy supplication. After saying two or three sentences I asked her how she was feeling. She was quite overwhelmed and said that the pain was considerably reduced. I then prayed for her again and I asked her to walk on the leg to see how she was feeling. She responded that the pain had dissipated, but that she was still feeling a little uncomfortable.
The smile on her face was evidence of the fact that God had done something in her life. In the day I happened to see her once or twice. I noted that her limping was substantially less and at one time was pleased to see her jumping on a balloon trying to pop it.
The next day, being the last day of the conference, I asked her how things were going. She said that there was still a little bit of pain, but the real testimony came in the fact that she was able to share her experience to a number of other people at the event who were non-believers and she also mentioned the fact to her parents who were believers.
This encounter showed me two things: firstly that God does use our prayer of faith and secondly that he uses our small steps of obedience to impact other people’s lives and through their testimony can reach out to others that we may not have an opportunity to meet.
VISION
While praying, lifting baby Ryan Gordon’s situation before God, I saw a vision. It was as if I was in a huge hospital room, with rows of beds (incubators) on either side, separated by a passage. One end of the room seemed open on one side, as light was visibly coming through from the one end. I was standing on the opposite end of the room facing forward.
A man came into the room and walked through the passage, walking towards me. He was full of age and well built. He wore a suit the jacket of which was open. His appearance represented a father figure to me, even better, a daddy. As I watched him come through it seemed as if He was walking past Ryan’s bed. It seemed I was able to draw His attention to the bed He should have been stopping at. So I sort of indicated to Him “its that one daddy”... He had been walking through rather quickly, but on my indication He slowed down, turned around slightly towards Ryan’s bed. He lifted His hand towards the incubator and then turned back, continuing His walk out of the room, but this time around He looked at me wearing a soft, loving and a reassuring smile ( as if He was saying, “there you have it then...”). He came towards me and then disappeared.
As soon He had lifted His hand towards the bed, I sensed that ...He had done something about Ryan’s condition. He has healed/touched him .But it bothered me that when he did eventually slow down to pay attention to Ryan, He didn’t stop to spend time around his bed, instead He only slowed down. But then this came to heart during this time of prayer that those things that seem like mountains/deep valleys/Goliath’s to us are certainly not like that to Him. He can handle them with even less than a flick of His finger. I was also reminded of how the bible tells us about how Jesus handled the storm in Mat. He had told His disciples “let us go over to the other side”. So when the storm arose and His disciples panicked ( got worked up/ got excited), like I have been in the past few months over Ryan’s situation, with all the calmness in the world, the bible tells us Jesus only stood up and said “Peace be still”.
The other gospels don’t even mention how He did it, they only mention that He rebuked the storm, like it didn’t matter how He did it. So the fact that He didn’t stop at Ryan’s bed, it doesn’t mean He didn’t understand the graveness of the situation and that He wasn’t aware of how anxious we all are about this. It is because it takes nothing from Him to handle any situation however big or small.
So I was quite reassured that “my daddy” had done what I had been asking Him to do over the last few months, which was to heal precious Ryan.
Carol Hlela on baby Ryan Gordon 17.05.09
Copyright Oxford Church International 2008
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