It’s strange how I imagined my walk long before I started. I imagined the streets and paving stones, the people and the open fields and Essex marshes set before me. My heart grew heavy with excitement and anticipation. I held the images as something private then, hugging them to me like photographs, unable to speak of them for fear of losing them. I glanced at them frequently in my mind, taking them out and running my eyes over them like parents do with a photograph when a child leaves home.
I confess now that I should have started this diary then - started it long before the actual walking. How foolish of me to think that my recording device and camera alone would be sufficient to record the feelings, pictures and impressions the Lord would provide. Impossible!
Despite feeling excited – no, thrilled – at the prospect of walking the Essex boundaries, I was overwhelmed at that time and struggled with several other ideas. Finding someone else to do it, to lead it, to plan it, was one of them. Since last year’s prophetic word (2006) about ‘walking the Essex marshes’ I had argued with the Lord about my readiness and ability, my lack of knowledge and fitness. Initially, I talked only to him and then, tentatively, put out feelers gently to some I could sense had similar DNA. Positive responses came back, encouraging words that let faith and hope rise but I knew the responsibility rested with me. No-one else would do it – no-one else had been given it and so I asked the Lord to set it up, to make it possible.
If the only two qualifications were to love Essex and love Him, I would be well qualified. I wasn’t sure this was all that would be required but the insistence to do it was there and so it started.
In my earlier posts, I was coming to grips with writing about what I’m doing and making it interesting, so they were factual and photographc. But I sensed very quickly that they were not enough. I must fully describe, if I can, what we see and feel from the Lord as we walk.
Among the most significant events to occur so far was to have the company release
d to me that I needed. My husband and son had supported my earlier efforts and I am so grateful for that. However, they both work full time so it’s impossible for them to join me forever. I knew the Lord would provide if he called and he has. Gerry S has committed to walk with me and Linda H will walk as often as she can when we are walking. Their presence makes such a difference to how I walk and we are enjoying each other’s company.
The compulsion to begin walking this year (2008) was two fold in its occurrence – the impulse was released through many prophets recognising 2008 as a year of new beginnings; something which resonated with me after two years of personal metamorphosis. There remains a part of me which no longer references what others do, so long as I fulfil what the Lord impresses upon me. If that is to wait on him, I wait; if that is to pray, I pray; if that is to walk, I walk. The certainty with which this sits in me is not driven by a need to do or achieve but to obey.
On 1st February this year, I was driven to my knees by a vision in which the Spirit revealed how and what I was walking for. I cannot describe it fully here but suffice it to say I was compelled to start – ready or not! It also partially fulfilled a prophetic word I was given in 2007. I said earlier I had imagined the walk many times. When it became a reality however, it was far deeper than I had imagined. Imagination propelled me into it but the living reality of it was profoundly fulfilling and has begun to lead me to a revelation and rejoicing in the fullness of God that I’ve never known.
The act of walking land is in itself an act of intercession. As I think about Jesus walking through Israel I think of him as the consummate and perfect intercessor – immanent as he touches land and people, yet transcendent in his God-likeness and mystery. We can walk in those footsteps and in his foot-stops. He carried love and compassion alongside the ability to challenge and confront evil. I can only hope and pray that as we walk, we become more like him.
If the act of walking is an act of intercession, we need to realise we are conducting spiritual warfare by just being there. This means that the by now well-known principles of prayer warfare must be carried through and adopted.
At the end of his book, “Impacting the City”, Martin Scott (www.3generations.eu) lays out some excellent principles for those who travel. They are worth absorbing into our spirits as we walk and they are useful for an intercessory lifestyle as well. I commend them to you.
My last comment today is about my discovery of how important prophetic imagination is to the prophetic people of God. I have been reading and dwelling much on this of late – as one who has often been accused of an over-active imagination! My response previously was to imagine(!) there was something wrong with me. That is not true. Walter Brueggeman brilliantly describes the importance of imagination to the people of God in his book “Prophetic Imagination”. If God is to speak to us, he must use our imaginations. This is not to say that all we imagine is correct – that’s why we must test and weigh prophecy, proving it ‘by its fruits’ but nevertheless the imagination remains a powerful tool in our armoury for God to use. He himself imagined and spoke out the reality of creation – what else but the mind of God could have imagined such wonderful things as life and relationship?
And so, I return to the start, thinking and praying into how God uses imagination to fire and motivate us to fulfil his works in obedience.
I confess now that I should have started this diary then - started it long before the actual walking. How foolish of me to think that my recording device and camera alone would be sufficient to record the feelings, pictures and impressions the Lord would provide. Impossible!
Despite feeling excited – no, thrilled – at the prospect of walking the Essex boundaries, I was overwhelmed at that time and struggled with several other ideas. Finding someone else to do it, to lead it, to plan it, was one of them. Since last year’s prophetic word (2006) about ‘walking the Essex marshes’ I had argued with the Lord about my readiness and ability, my lack of knowledge and fitness. Initially, I talked only to him and then, tentatively, put out feelers gently to some I could sense had similar DNA. Positive responses came back, encouraging words that let faith and hope rise but I knew the responsibility rested with me. No-one else would do it – no-one else had been given it and so I asked the Lord to set it up, to make it possible.
If the only two qualifications were to love Essex and love Him, I would be well qualified. I wasn’t sure this was all that would be required but the insistence to do it was there and so it started.
In my earlier posts, I was coming to grips with writing about what I’m doing and making it interesting, so they were factual and photographc. But I sensed very quickly that they were not enough. I must fully describe, if I can, what we see and feel from the Lord as we walk.
Among the most significant events to occur so far was to have the company release
d to me that I needed. My husband and son had supported my earlier efforts and I am so grateful for that. However, they both work full time so it’s impossible for them to join me forever. I knew the Lord would provide if he called and he has. Gerry S has committed to walk with me and Linda H will walk as often as she can when we are walking. Their presence makes such a difference to how I walk and we are enjoying each other’s company.The compulsion to begin walking this year (2008) was two fold in its occurrence – the impulse was released through many prophets recognising 2008 as a year of new beginnings; something which resonated with me after two years of personal metamorphosis. There remains a part of me which no longer references what others do, so long as I fulfil what the Lord impresses upon me. If that is to wait on him, I wait; if that is to pray, I pray; if that is to walk, I walk. The certainty with which this sits in me is not driven by a need to do or achieve but to obey.
On 1st February this year, I was driven to my knees by a vision in which the Spirit revealed how and what I was walking for. I cannot describe it fully here but suffice it to say I was compelled to start – ready or not! It also partially fulfilled a prophetic word I was given in 2007. I said earlier I had imagined the walk many times. When it became a reality however, it was far deeper than I had imagined. Imagination propelled me into it but the living reality of it was profoundly fulfilling and has begun to lead me to a revelation and rejoicing in the fullness of God that I’ve never known.
The act of walking land is in itself an act of intercession. As I think about Jesus walking through Israel I think of him as the consummate and perfect intercessor – immanent as he touches land and people, yet transcendent in his God-likeness and mystery. We can walk in those footsteps and in his foot-stops. He carried love and compassion alongside the ability to challenge and confront evil. I can only hope and pray that as we walk, we become more like him.
If the act of walking is an act of intercession, we need to realise we are conducting spiritual warfare by just being there. This means that the by now well-known principles of prayer warfare must be carried through and adopted.
At the end of his book, “Impacting the City”, Martin Scott (www.3generations.eu) lays out some excellent principles for those who travel. They are worth absorbing into our spirits as we walk and they are useful for an intercessory lifestyle as well. I commend them to you.
My last comment today is about my discovery of how important prophetic imagination is to the prophetic people of God. I have been reading and dwelling much on this of late – as one who has often been accused of an over-active imagination! My response previously was to imagine(!) there was something wrong with me. That is not true. Walter Brueggeman brilliantly describes the importance of imagination to the people of God in his book “Prophetic Imagination”. If God is to speak to us, he must use our imaginations. This is not to say that all we imagine is correct – that’s why we must test and weigh prophecy, proving it ‘by its fruits’ but nevertheless the imagination remains a powerful tool in our armoury for God to use. He himself imagined and spoke out the reality of creation – what else but the mind of God could have imagined such wonderful things as life and relationship?
And so, I return to the start, thinking and praying into how God uses imagination to fire and motivate us to fulfil his works in obedience.
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