God’s Got This

Oh my, Oh my, Oh my. How amazingly awesome and great is our God. This weekend has been one thing after another of things happening that puts on display how God cares for us, and even in those moments where we are trusting but we aren’t necessarily prayer focussed.

It all started on Friday when my friend had gone to see the dolphins. We have a very popular place a 20 minute drive from where we live where you can see dolphins in the wild. They do come often but it really is luck of the draw if you manage to catch sight of them whilst there. When I received a message to say that they aren’t for showing themselves I replied something along the lines of, “I command thee dolphins to show your face and do some leaps.” Shortly after I received a video of the dolphins that had since shown up and done some leaps and played in the water. My friend was over the moon as having lived in the area her whole life had never seen them before and here they were playing and leaping.

There is power in the words we speak, life and death is in the power of the tongue (Proverbs 18:21) and in Matthew 21:21 we are told to speak to the mountain and see it move. In my opinion, we can be too slow to speak out. We can be praying and petitioning God for something, whilst he’s sitting there perplexed wondering when we will figure out we have the power of the Holy Spirit alive on the inside of us. We have the authority to speak to the enemy and see him flee. We have the authority to speak life and see situations change. We can speak healing and see it happen. Not because we are anything special at all, but because the one we follow is alive on the inside of us. God choose to co-labour with us and work through us. When we rely on His power at work through us amazing things happen.

God knows what people need and even those people who may not have a close relationship with God, he is faithful and loves them and shows them he cares in the ways that would matter most to them. God also wants to give us our hearts desires. I can sometimes get caught with thinking I can pray for the things I need, but if it’s a want then I shouldn’t pray for that. Because I know God will take care of my needs, but what if I don’t need something but I desire it. God cares about the tiniest details. I don’t believe we can pray and say Lord, I want a top of the range Audi and enough money in the bank to have an extravagant holiday. I’m not sure that is something that God would honour – if it is not something that will honour him. But, when a friend really needs something that would touch her heart, make her happy, then I believe God wants to do that for us. I believe God brought the dolphins that day. I believe he cares that much to touch the hearts of people. I believe he desires a relationship with us. He’s not authoritarian, he’s a loving Father who wants to give good gifts to his children. We need to learn how to receive and receive in a way that honours God.

Fast forward a few days to Sunday and I received a Word from God. This came along with a story. I’m not going to share what this Word or story is just now – until I’ve seen the completion and breakthrough from it. However, through someone else being obedient in passing on what they heard God say to me, I now know how to go about releasing all the trauma that has been holding me back and keeping me weighed down. God has given me an answer to prayer through someone else. That someone has no idea beyond the encouragement it offered what their story meant, and how God spoke to what I needed through that. They were obedient. I believe we all need to think less about what God may ask us to share, or how that may be received or what may come after. I believe God asks us to be obedient and the rest is for Him to work out. After all we are merely vessels for God to work through. All the glory belongs to Him in all the breakthroughs, yet his desire is to co-labour with us. I pray for a heart that listens and obeys.

Recently I have been concerned – although not worried, just figuring out a way forward. Because my son has reached 18 and will be doing a HNC at college we will lose part of our Universal Credits. And so I have been wondering about what is best to do. Logistically it makes no sense for me to work away from home, due to extra childcare and travel costs for the hours I am able to work it wouldn’t be worthwhile. I haven’t spent too much time praying or petitioning God about this, but I have spoken out that I trust that we will have our needs covered. I am confident in this. Many years ago my husband had a word from God to leave the job he was in. He had no job to go to and I was also not working at the time. But he was obedient and left his job. We had no idea where the money would come from and yet every month we made the rent payment and had enough food to eat. So I was sure that even though I did not know how I knew we would be covered. I tossed around ideas and then Sunday I was offered a job. No interview required, it would cover what we will lose in Universal Credits and is all totally God and how he works. I am still designing our church website and that will be paid work but this is aside from that and more permanent. And yet again, God has come through for me and ensured that we will be taken care of. I give him all the praise.

This morning we had to take my 8 year old daughter to a dental clinic at the local hospital. This was a referral from our dentist who I believe had mentioned extraction and a filling in her adult tooth. My daughter is very sensitive around dentists, she has not had great experiences before and so is quite reserved. We had prepared her as much as possible for this appointment. It was possible they were going to give her Gas and Air and hopefully avoid a General Anaesthetic being needed. Honestly I hadn’t put much prayer into this either (I know, terrible I am). We were nervous, we had prepared our daughter for eventualities as much as possible but did not know what we would be met with as this was somewhere we had never been before.

We arrived and the dental nurse was immediately set to put our daughter at ease. My husband chatted through our concerns first and I have to say the dentist and dental nurse were absolutely amazing. Whilst the dentist chatted through the situation with us, the dental nurse set about introducing our daughter to all the equipment that was being used. The dental nurse even had a ride on the dentist chair – which our daughter operated up and down. They made a Dobble hand out of one of the blue gloves and our daughter drew a face on it. This is the kind of thing I would be doing as a Hospital Play Specialist when I was training and it was so amazing to see. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a dental nurse interact with my child in this way ever before. As it turned out our daughter did not need an extraction, she had 2 very small cavities but the dentist was able to fill one today. No gas and air was needed, no needles. They explained to our daughter at every step of the way. The dental nurse had already introduced her to all the equipment so nothing was a surprise and she knew what everything had been used for. The dentist was very complimentary about our daughter and how she handled the whole experience. We were able to leave them with blessings and compliment them on how smooth they had made the whole process. Our daughter had a dance workshop to attend tonight as she absolutely loves dance and was going to miss not going during the summer holidays. However, after getting in the car she said that her favourite part of today was going to the dentist. She did come out with stickers, her Dobble hand, a little tooth case for her next baby tooth that comes out, some toothpaste and a toothbrush. It’s a shame that this isn’t the normal experience of every child attending a dentist. My husband told the dentist on our way out that we are people of faith and that they have really been a blessing in how they handled the whole situation for us, they listened to our concerns and previous experiences. Isn’t it amazing how God was in that. He knew way ahead of us that everything would be okay, that he had the right people in the right place at the right time for us. All we need to do is trust God and know everything will work out.

Recently I’ve taken to always checking with God for wisdom in every thought that I remember to. I’ve struggled with anxieties for a long time and recently I’ve definitely felt a switch. Regulating my Vagus Nerve has been a large part of that. There have been times I have had a thought and rather than starting to spiral I’ve checked in with God and asked for wisdom. Usually it is something like, is this pain, or this rash, or this mole something I need to get checked out or am I good. Sometimes straight away I get an answer and sometimes it takes a while and then I get a knowing. It also stops the worrying and spiralling. I find myself being more and more conscious of what God says about what I’m going through or the situation and asking for wisdom.

What I’ve learnt and am still learning is that all we have to do is ask. We already have everything we need in Jesus. We already have the authority to speak to the mountain and tell it to move. We already have the ability to hear from God directly. Reading our bibles is great, studying the Word, fellowship with other believers, but what really really changes me forever is the relationship and time spent with God. To think that the creator of the whole world, the one who flung stars into space, would speak to someone and say, “hey, let Kaz know this.” to invite me into a deeper relationship with him because he desires for me to know him more and deeper and for me to receive everything he has already paid for through Jesus. That’s so touching it makes me well up.

So much healing is occurring in me currently and I am in awe of what God is doing. I will end with a vision I had before we moved up to Scotland from Bolton. We had been praying into moving, we had been job hunting and searching houses. I believe from the time we really set our hearts on moving to actually getting here was around 18 months. We never gave up, we persevered and we know all the ways in which God made it possible for us and how he worked everything together for us. During this time I had a vision. In that vision I had shackles around my ankles and wrists with chains, but as I crossed over the border from England to Scotland those chains fell off and I found freedom. As someone who had a traumatic childhood this vision and the reality of seeing it in the natural is multi-faceted. There has been a lot of healing occurring, especially over the last 18 months, but what I am feeling now is an acceleration. I feel it in the spirit, not just in my own life but also in what is happening around us. God has been moving people to the Highlands of Scotland over the last 20 years and I can see and believe that there are particular people with particular callings that are being brought together and connected. That there will be an acceleration of growth from what is to what will be. I’m not sure what that all entails and a lot of it is an excitement in the spirit but I know that God is preparing me for something much greater and I’m sure he is doing that for all of you who are disciples of Jesus also.