Here I am, sitting opposite the beach on
the Sunshine Coast and as I do, I choose to be fully aware of how very blessed
I am. The last couple of days I have
been on my own, except for the gentle presence of the Holy Spirit. Peter is in the Solomon Islands preaching the
Good News and I have taken the moment to stop and be! The first day I settled in at a coffee shop
and decides to do like the scripture and remember the goodness of God to me. As I began to write I actually amazed myself
at how many season I have enjoyed (mostly) in just 5 decades. The people I have loved and the amazing
experiences God has granted to me. I
have enjoyed times of mothering and holidaying, ministry, ecstasy and grief,
rare and holy friendships and deep rejection.
In my writings were travels to distant lands, seen the power of God work
phenomena and cried bucket-loads of tears in a vain attempt to see a
miracle. The plans of God being
outworked are more readily seen in retrospect and there are things that make
perfect sense to me that I bumbled through in real time. It teaches me to just trust … walk
confidently forward knowing who holds the future. There are other times that no matter how much
time passes, they just do not get any clearer.
One testimony to this is the mandate to ‘Call
up 10000 Warriors’. When God spoke to
me, a spirit voice that picked up the words of Judges 4:9 so profoundly that I
answered audibly and almost instantly knew what to do. I thought at first this campaign would be a
‘one off’ and after the 52 days of prayer, I presumed I would go back to my
ordinary life pastoring GNC. As the call
went out, other cities heard the mandate that we are ambassadors of Heaven and
Jesus Himself invited us to pray, ‘On earth as it is in Heaven’, which was a
great joy to me to see the people of God across this nation rise up and release
the Light of the Gospel. However, God
had recently given me a 3 year promise and I slowly realized that these ideas
were related and after the initial campaign I knew I had to march on. Each of these years, I walked the perimeter
of my city in prayer, called any willing residents to pray for 10 minutes daily
during the annual campaign, at the end of which, we held a city-wide prayer
meeting. I would go an pray on the steps
of churches, with pastors in their offices and in my room. What a wonderful time, and there are too many
divine moments to recount here but in May of 2012 exactly 3 years from that ‘moment’,
my city, Logan had a solid Christian legacy set in place on which the purposes
of God can alight. We prayed
relentlessly for Peace, Prosperity and the Power of God to rule in Logan, which
is now outstripping other cities in economics, 9% economic growth as compared
to 3% statewide. Contrary to media
reports, Logan is not the troubled spot they like to report and in fact, the
community spirit here is enviable, despite being more multi-cultured than
almost anywhere else in this country. People
have been positioned and reinstated in places of influence and power through
circumstances that required the intervention of a Supernatural God to make
happen. The Church in this city has
rallied over and over again and is preparing the way continually for the glory
of the Lord to come in. I thank God for
allowing me, 10000 and many others to be a part of what He is establishing,
here in our nation. Praise His beautiful
name.
I now feel released from the specifics of
this assignment and now see my role as one who, ‘calls up the warrior spirit in
every believer’ and to this end have developed a ‘School of the Warrior’, which
is 10 weeks of equipping, teaching and releasing the power of God in you the
believer. Our first School begins in the
second week of October. Also we have
begun a conference called Say So, which is held in June/July each year. Its purpose is to equip the Body to pray,
Your Kingdom Come, based on the inherent power that we carry as sons and
daughter together of the King of Heaven.
When you put your hand up to Follow Jesus,
it is really Him choosing you, not because you are clever but because He is
able to keep you and loves to invite you into the wonder of His abundant life.
I always say to people, if you want to do
something really radical, PRAY. The
reason I call it radical is because hardly anyone actually does it. I still encourage you to pray daily for
anything and everything that God prompts you to but for what it is worth, it
has been a great tool to set aside 10 minutes each and every day to
specifically pray for His Kingdom to come to the ever increasing circles of our
homes, churches, communities, cities and then to the great nation.
I welcome you into this new season and like
the Lord said to Joshua, follow closely, stay in my Presence, because this is
not familiar territory.
Josh 3:3
“When you see the ark of the covenant of
the Lord your God, and the Levitical priests carrying it, you are to move out
from your positions and follow it. Then
you will know which way to go, since you have never been this way before.”
Talk again soon, Julie
