Essex Prayerwalk

Before the Smoke...

2011-09-06T13:27:00.000+01:00

Sobered by the London riots, we gave up our day along the Lea Valley to drive and prayerwalk around Havering both morning and evening. It was worth it. On Tuesday night, 9th August 2011, all was quiet. In fact, our Borough Commander reassured local people that our young people are worth praising! What an encouragement!

Nevertheless, there is an underlying malaise on our land - fatherlessness - that needs love poured in to break it. Many parts of East London, including our own, are orphan-hearted and abandoned. How God wants them to experience his Father's heart and live in their true identity as sons and daughters! Love poured in is the first step towards healing. But what does this actually mean? What is Father's plan?

An orphan is a 'fatherless child'. A heart that is orphaned is 'profoundly ruptured' from the love of a father. Even as Christians, we are all in this condition until we experience God as our Abba - our Daddy. Preaching from this passage"I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you." (Jn 14.18) Charles Spurgeon spoke about the pain at the core of the orphan heart:

"The orphan has a sharp sorrow springing out of the death (absence) of his parent, namely that he is left alone. He cannot (now) make appeals to the wisdom of the parent who could direct him. He cannot run, (as once he did when he was weary), to climb the paternal knee. He cannot lean his aching head upon the parental bosom. "Father" he may say, but no voice gives an answer." (See http://toll-booth.net/ccel/s/spurgeon/till_he_/notorphn.htm quoted in I am your Father by Mark Stibbe.)

Mark goes on to say that "the primal wound that lies at the core of the orphan heart condition is separation from a father's love", either gradually or suddenly. He says "when a breach occurs like this it is like a tiny, invisible fault in one of the systems in a commercial aircraft...growing until it becomes a massive problem."

We walked into that fault, that fracture, as we walked towards Tottenham Hale and the River Thames. We felt it, we experienced it, we nursed it like a wound. We felt it as a splinter in the land, pushing deep, causing infection and needing to be healed.

Mark identifies deep and toxic shame as something that creeps in when fathers are absent or leave..."and only our Heavenly Father's love can fill the father-shaped void in the human soul." An orphan heart leads to insecurity, fear, anxiety, mistrust, addictions... The list goes on and these profound flaws are outworked in bloodlettings of violence and pain. The 'if onlys' of negative belief come to torture and dishonour us if we don't know who we are. Mark says this "I have come to the conclusion that...only a father can give honour to his children."

We know the truth - or do we? How deeply do we know that we're "sons and daughters of a loving Father". How much do we rest in the revelation of being "greatly loved"? How often do we live by the truth "I am ,therefore I do" and not the lie, "I do, therefore I am"?

Our experience is that it's a rolling increasing love revelation that infuses our hearts, swelling them with increasing understanding of identity, weakening our bodies with love. The experience is addictive. Read Teresa of Avila's description of receiving this love from God:

Beside me on the left appeared an angel in bodily form . . . He was not tall but short, and very beautiful; and his face was so aflame that he appeared to be one of the highest ranks of angels, who seem to be all on fire . . . In his hands I saw a great golden spear, and at the iron tip there appeared to be a point of fire. This he plunged into my heart several times so that it penetrated my entrails. When he pulled it out I felt that he took them with it, and left me utterly consumed by the great love of God. The pain was so severe that it made me utter several moans. The sweetness caused by this intense pain is so extreme that one can not possibly wish it to cease, nor is one’s soul content with anything but God. This is not a physical but a spiritual pain, though the body has some share in it — even a considerable share. (from Teresa of Avila, Autobiography, Chapter 29)

Such is the Father's love for us - a great love that consumes and is sweet beyond imagining...once touched by this, our orphan heart starts to be healed and we can share love with others. Below is a video interview by Martin Scott...part of the answer can be found among people like this...those who love despite counting the cost...

Interview with Paula Coates from Martin Scott on Vimeo.

Life after Harpenden?

2011-06-06T15:31:00.115+01:00

Ann, Linda, Sarah and I enjoying the Thursday sunshine towards the end of our walk. However, our Wednesday had proved to be something of a battle, both personally and locationally...arriving in Hertford, our intended destination, to drop one of the cars, it took almost two hours to find a long-stay parking space with a lot of to-ing and fro-ing in between. Separation, suitable change and finding each other again were all problems we had to contend with. By the time we started walking we were exhausted! LOL!

On reflection, it seemed as if Hertford didn't want what we were carrying...maybe rightly! Our peace had fled, we were frazzled and for the first time ever, my feet didn't want to walk, they wanted to be up somewhere, resting! Not a good start. But God was faithful as we prayed for help - our words were for us to find each other and for Holy Spirit to find a resting place - he answered...more about that later!

We persisted knowing Papa God would equip us to do what we had to do. Leaving the side of the river was hard - the river had permission to flow through private land but we didn't so we tramped into Welwyn Garden City's sub-urban housing towards the hospital and The Commons. After leaving the hard pavements we turned the wrong way and had to retrace our steps to find the path alongside the A414. Finally, however, we turned onto the bridlepath called Chain Walk which took us all the way to Hertford - bliss!

A long and winding road...

It was warm but we had a relaxed walk alongside daisy-filled hedgerows and under beautiful trees, stopping for water every now and then. Walking the full eight miles and arriving in Hertford to find a secret garden just for us in a pub called The Black Horse was wonderful. Even more exciting, as we wound our way around the Hertford ring road, we found, sitting in the gateway to the town, right beside the Castle, a Kingdom work called Future + Hope.

That night we stayed with Sarah in her beautiful house in Wheathampstead. A delicious meal followed by Britain's Got Talent and great conversation with her husband, Tim, made it a relaxed evening. The next morning I awoke to the rooster at six o'clock followed by a run down the garden with Sarah to let the chickens out...my idea of heaven!

Through the Window

Breakfast with homemade marmalade and boiled eggs was followed by an extended time of soaking in his presence. During this time with the Lord, he highlighted a contention in Hertford between control and intimacy. Linda felt God was calling people across the river at "Heart-ford", away from control into the place of deep intimacy. As we walked Havering, Ann had had a vision of a huge man writhing in mud, struggling to get free. This time she saw many little men released by his freedom. Is this the church getting free and releasing others? She also felt God was speaking to Hertford out of Isaiah 52.1-8:

1 Awake, awake, Zion, clothe yourself with strength!
Put on your garments of splendor,
Jerusalem, the holy city.
The uncircumcised and defiled will not enter you again.
2 Shake off your dust; rise up, sit enthroned, Jerusalem.
Free yourself from the chains on your neck,
Daughter Zion, now a captive.

3 For this is what the LORD says: You were sold for nothing,
and without money you will be redeemed.”

4 For this is what the Sovereign LORD says:
“At first my people went down to Egypt to live; lately, Assyria has oppressed them.

5 “And now what do I have here?” declares the LORD.
“For my people have been taken away for nothing, and those who rule them mock,"
declares the LORD. “And all day long my name is constantly blasphemed.

6 Therefore my people will know my name; therefore in that day they will know
that it is I who foretold it. Yes, it is I.”

7 How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news,
who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion,
“Your God reigns!”

8 Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices; together they shout for joy.
When the LORD returns to Zion, they will see it with their own eyes

Hertford is where the English church was first divided into Roman-style dioceses so what happens there could manifest hierarchy and organisation to a national level. The following explains why.

Hertford was where the first national church synod in 673 was held after the Synod of Whitby. It was led by Archbishop Theodore of Tarsus who created a network of dioceses in the Roman style. This is what happened...it is well known that in 663, a council was called to settle the Celtic/Roman church dispute - the Synod of Whitby. The Whitby Synod decided in favour of the Roman way of doing things. Soon after, the Archbishop of Canterbury died, and the English elected a successor, Wighard, and sent him to Rome to be consecrated by the Pope. Wighard died in Rome before he could be consecrated, and the Pope (Vitalian) took it upon himself to choose a man to fill the vacancy. He consecrated Theodore of Tarsus (the native city of the Apostle Paul), a learned monk (not a priest) from the East then living in Rome, who was 65 years old. However, although a surprising choice, Theodore was (as Bede put it in his Ecclesiastical History) "the first archbishop whom all the English obeyed."

Having made a tour of his charge, Theodore filled the vacant bishoprics and, ten years after Whitby, in 672/3, presided over the first council of the entire English Church at Hertford. He established definite territorial boundaries for the various dioceses and founded new ones. He found the Church of England an unorganized missionary body and left it a fully ordered province of the universal Church. The body of canon law drawn up under his supervision,and his structure of dioceses and parishes, survived the turmoil of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and are substantially intact today. (Paraphrased from http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/250.html)

As our call is for deep intimacy with Jesus and into our destiny as sons and daughters of the Father we were not surprised at Hertford's resistance. While we prayed, Sarah had a vision of a fear-filled foot soldier stationed at the castle. Our mandate was to go there and tell him that the war has been won (by Jesus) and he can go home to his wife and family and enjoy the fruits of his labours. We felt the soldier represented the church in the town and we were to say that "the voice of Love has taken away Fear."

Praying at the high flint wall of Hertford Castle

Approaching Hertford with more confidence on Thursday, we went first to see if we could connect with Future + Hope. Lo and behold, the door opened, revealing Mark Wood, the founder, with his delightful volunteer, Amy Pearson. Positioned strategically in the gateway close beside the Castle, Mark founded Future + Hope to "Help people in crisis gain hope and a future" (http://www.future-hope.org.uk/). He is ably supported by others including Amy Pearson. Thank you, Amy, for taking time to allow us to pray with you and for you. You're so inspiring to be around!

Inside Future + Hope

Our next stop was Hertford Castle where we found a high flint wall on which we felt our soldier was stationed so we released him gently in the Spirit and he went home. Praying about the establishment of the Roman ways that had so crushed the indigenous worship of these isles was amazing.

Leaving what had been a centre of our focus for some time and turning south towards London proved interesting as we detected a different feel to the land - a heaviness had lessened and we felt that Hertford would no longer dam any flow the Lord wanted to release down the Lea Valley.

Lea Valley Regional Park near Ware, Herts

We were now on our way down to the Lea Valley Park Londoners know so well - through Stanstead Abbots, Amwell and towards Broxbourne.

The Lea Navigation towards Ware

Our way was clear and flat as we meandered slowly towards St Margaret's opposite Stanstead Abbots - our final stop for this part of the Lea Valley Walk.

The level crossing at St Margaret's

A Lea Valley continuum...

2011-05-31T17:18:00.001+01:00

Five of us met at Harpenden yesterday to continue walking the Lea Valley towards Hertford - the next stage. Sarah Holloway from Wheathampstead joined Gerry, Linda, Ann and myself as we soaked in his powerful presence before setting off.

The Holy Spirit spoke to us of repression and blankets, moth holes and purses.

Walking, our conversation turned to the new things Father is doing with his people and how we might pull his imagined future more into the present by our walking. Is it even possible to touch what he plans? Our hearts enlarged with faith as the warm ruach of Aslan comes again - blown through and on to the people of God in our time.

In a time of exilic-like difficulty, as Jesus' ekklesia begins to recognise her identity as the intended Bride, Sarah and her husband, have, like Jeremiah, sown into the poorest soil, both financially and emotionally. We too sowed and for Jeremiah's reasons. We liberally sowed the glory dust he's given us, pouring out all we have to rip up the gridlines of domination long laid down in this land. We're walking the fracture of the Danelaw that has divided our nation but within that fracture are to be found the burning jewels of his kingdom...in the midst of death we are in life!

We admitted ourselves perplexed at the God-blindness in our nation. But then I read words like this...

"...it was a delight therefore to meet two believers there, one a Pakistani, who spoke the language of those who are not overwhelmed by the odds which appear to be stacked against them but are awed by the incredible opportunities that sit on their doorstep. These are the people that gateway places need..."

Great prophetic imagination is required not to be overwhelmed...to see our time as an opportunity to change ancient mindsets and demonstrate love to the loveless. But God!

In this unbelieving generation (where have I heard that before?) time seems to have to accelerate to keep up with God's kingdom which must be taken by force (Matthew 11). The wild ones, secure in God's love, give us hope. Talking of the prophetic voices of artists and poets, like Tracey Emin, generally vilified by the church, who articulate a deep lament, opening a door to reality as we grieve, we recognise we're still in that pre-exilic season where grief has to happen.

But we rejoice as we walk our beautiful land - here a Hertfordshire path.

Which is real? Is the true reality the unseen that is so close...the rush of hope that comes as God draws back the curtain between and we come into where he dwells. Aaah, the dazzling dark beauty cloud of his presence and glory. Henry Vaughn said this:

There is in God (some say)
A deep, but dazzling darkness; as men here
Say it is late and dusky, because they
See not all clear;
O for that night! where I in him
Might live invisible and dim.

Here, by the River Lea...Sarah, Jane and Ann.

We've been embracing the darkness of his embers, gathering up the wildfire and throwing his dazzling glory dust wherever we've walked.

Our acknowledgement of what is real breaks open and draws us beyond the veil to revelation of what God can do.

More on the Gateway

2010-11-30T16:48:00.010Z

Have already blogged on the start of the walk around Havering but here is more on how we walked…

In 2 Kings 3.27 the Israelites try to take a gateway. They fail. Why? Because the eldest son of the king they’re besieging is sacrificed by his father over the gateway. What a price for a father to pay to keep the city and what a demonstration of the power involved in blood sacrifice.

The gateway to the city controls entry and departure, allows trade and is a place of authority (legality). Our gateway, the London Borough Havering, sits in the east gate of London and the west gate of one of the eastern-most counties of England. While walking Essex we knew we had to walk the gateway eventually. Havering isn’t the only gateway of course but it's the one we live in. Linda had seen a vision of Essex on fire with the backdraft blowing into London through our gateway. She painted it for us.

We asked God to show us what he saw over Havering - we wanted to see as Ezekiel ‘saw’ when he was lifted up over Israel. Our Father showed us some of his strategy and took us on a whistle-stop tour through Ezekiel’s book, highlighting verses as we went. It’s too much to write here in full but as walkers, we carried this strategy with us.

The walkers are to be a sign of a people on pilgrimage (Ezek 11.16-18). If we are a sign, some of us may have to live this out in our own lives.
The days have gone by and some visions have come to nothing but the promise of God still stands (Ezek 12.21 & vs 27 & 28).
Have we been up to the ‘breaks in the walls’ to repair them for the sake of the house? (Ez 13.5) Or have we participated in the breaks?
The ‘elders’ came and sat down in front of Ezekiel (the people of God) to enquire of the Lord. How do we handle this? (Ez 14.3)
Ezekiel’s wife dies as a sign (Ezek 24). If we carry the grief of the death of a bride, how much more we’ll understand God’s heart for his people’s idolatry.
The King of Tyre set himself up as a god (vs2), being compared in likeness to Lucifer (vs14-17). Who or what does this represent in our borough? (Ez 28.1-2)
Will the walking watchmen be listened to? (Ez 33)
We need to contend for the release of the true shepherd, Jesus, to rescue, pasture and tend his sheep himself. (Ez 34) So, is this a question about how to ‘do church’?
Will the ‘dry bones’ live again in the breath of the Spirit? (Ez 37) Can we believe they will? Where is the Spirit moving and where is he not? We carry the Spirit of God within us – on what should we be breathing life?
We identify the bodies, bury the dead and set up markers by walking the borders 3 times and then the land will be cleansed – firstly, under the radar, identifying and mapping the land; secondly, for repentance and cleansing; thirdly, to worship and praise as a people. (Ez 39.12, 14 & 16)
Ezekiel was taken to a city on a high mountain where he saw a being measuring the dimensions of some buildings (40.2) which turned out to be the rebuilt Jerusalem and the Temple – and the glory returned through the East Gate and filled the temple (43.1-5).
After the glory of God entered the east gate it was shut, because the Lord God came through it and only the prince could sit there (44.3). We want the prince to sit and inhabit this east gate. (Ezek 44.15).
A river will flow from heaven and come through the spiritual portal if the gate is opened in praise and worship. We can choose whether to be in this river or not – it will become deep enough to swim in and there will be fruitfulness on its banks (Ez 47)
The boundaries will be set by the Lord for the people groups of the Kingdom and we can allot it as our inheritance. (Ez 47.15-23)
The people of God will guard and hold the gates (Ez 48.30-35) and the name of the city will be ‘The Lord is There’.

We were overwhelmed.

2010-06-02T17:07:00.003+01:00

It has not been entirely easy, walking the gateway.

The gate itself seems to have been covered with a thick shroud of cobwebs, rust and rotting wood. It seems to have been shut for a while...what was it the King of the Dead said in Lord of the Rings "The way is shut"? We haven't walked the path of death but we have seen it here.

This morning, before going out to walk, the Lord sent revelation about a man...the Body of Christ?...groaning in agony, clutching his hands to his belly as liquid clay swirled around him. We believe it spoke of man (as formed clay among the liquid clay of creation) with a belly (where Holy Spirit is located) groaning as he gives birth to something new.

In Romans 8.29, it says that Jesus was the firstborn among many brethren. We are his brothers and sons to the Father. That 'Body of Christ' that was born of the Spirit is groaning and writhing again as the Father gives birth to something new. As his body, we express the one who indwells us - Jesus.

We don't know where this walk will take us as part of the people of God in this area...but we are excited to be part of what God is doing.

Into the Gateway

2009-12-10T20:41:00.005Z

Havering sits on the land between London and Essex. In 1965, the government saw fit to move the boundaries, depleting Essex and enhancing London by creating Greater London. Havering was included in that. So, here we sit, a "swing door" between city and country. As God has shown us by revelation, the enemy seeks to control what comes in and goes out.

So, we walk - a few of God's people walking the land, under the radar, like Joshua and Caleb, spying out where there are grapes and where the giants are. We walk in joy, carrying Christ in us, our hope of glory and in humility, not seeking to build for ourselves but for his kingdom in our area. That joy is our strength...

The depth of feeling we carry is all the greater as we all hail from here - it is our land. We are encouraged by a word from a visiting prophet -

'There is a birthright for each people group in this land - a geographical birthright'

which lines up with the scripture of Acts 17.26 that God placed people in the land so they would seek him and find him. We carry the people of this borough - with their hopes and fears - in our hearts as we walk the land.

Let's carry his heavy glory around the gateway.

More walking...

2009-12-10T13:59:00.001Z

The excitement of more walking approaches...I'll keep you posted!

The Dripping Man...

2009-10-19T20:34:00.018+01:00

While we prayerwalked the northern border of Essex, Linda was driving for us and this is what God showed her as she drove...

"I saw Jesus standing on the border between Essex and Suffolk. He was enormous, and had His arms outstretched and was dripping, dripping with oil. And then he was handing out bags with what looked like gold in them and I asked what they were and saw that they were provision from heaven. Then He started to hand out spectacles because He wants to bring new revelation and we need to see." He told me "There has been a lot of occult seeing in Essex but there was going to come a new seeing for His people and for the church."

Then I saw the county being washed with living water - this was just like when a window cleaner washes a window and wipes it with his rubber tool - a sort of wave of water comes down and so this wave of living water will wash down over Essex.

Then, an hour or so later, Jane and I were in the prayer room at a church in Haverhill and there was a loud bang which we tried to ignore. It was the window cleaner putting up his ladder! In this prayer room, there were three small windows in a line and God said to me 'revelation about Father, Son and Holy Spirit for Essex'. We laughed 'cos it was so ridiculous that the window cleaner turned up just at that moment!

Since then, Linda has had further revelation about the three windows:

"Three levels of seeing for His church - seeing the things on earth as He does, seeing into the second heaven to know what the enemy is doing, seeing into the third heaven - the throne room of God."

And He has been saying for weeks now "You have to see the glory to be filled with the glory, you have to be filled with the glory to see the glory on the earth." Get filled up with the glory of Jesus so that you may perceive and understand and have authority to know what God is doing in these days.

(The beautiful glass images here can be found at www.itsoriginal.com - shown with permission)

Reflections from a friend

2009-10-12T19:23:00.019+01:00

Hearing the land cry out, my whole being connected with the land - this is what I am here for "every place that we put our feet..." Yes, this is true!

Seeing clearly through the smokescreen, adventure and laughter; challenge and exhaustion; learning to walk humbly with Daddy.

Such amazing beauty in the wild and remote places, seeing such redemptive potential and living the walk constantly in my spirit - I feel a curious mixture of accomplishment and bereavement now it is finished.

Feeling His pain, experiencing His joy, REAL fellowship with one another. A different level of connecting; revelation of his heart and glory in the dark places; glorious enormous skies; knowing the seasons, feeling the colours; wondering at the nature around.

The privilege of walking very ancient paths; hearing the history in your being; releasing the glory. Feeling his pleasure as we walk - like a warm smile or a squeeze of the hand. An all-enveloping blanket of love.

Being in a time of experiencing LIFE...loving my county!

2009-10-04T20:58:00.009+01:00

It’s always exciting when prophetic people chat and in the middle of what seems to be an unimportant conversation, God pings a sentence as important. So when my young but incredibly astute friend Andy said “It’s about wheels within wheels, you know,” I listened (finally). I subsequently discovered that 'within’ means “between” and “in the midst of” – in the Hebrew it is a hard word to say - “tawek” (9348).

For weeks the Lord had been talking to me about Ezekiel’s wheels being relevant to the prayerwalk around Essex. He’d been pulling me towards exploring going ‘farther up and farther in’ but I became frustrated at my lack of perception and understanding about the wheels. I could not see what he was trying to show me. I felt the two concepts were linked but could not make the connection. So, he sent me Andy!

When God pinged it for me (pinging is a bit like sonar – I get a resonating sound in my spirit that tells me to seek deeper because there’s something there) I sought him out…and he downloaded the following so quickly I could hardly keep up writing it down.

Of course, the living creatures were seraphs (sarap (Heb.) = to burn) and the plural is sarapyim (seraphim) – beings around God’s throne. The seraphim move around the earth, creating portals into heaven (they did this for Jacob in his dream if you remember) and we can call on heaven to open up. If this is true and a wheel has been walked around the borders of Essex, which was my original vision, the wheel can become a portal for God’s people to access heaven. Has he given us an open heaven over the county? (I ask because I don't want to be presumptuous.)

We cranked the wheel’s handle by walking a path from Waltham Abbey through Leaden Roding, along Stane Street (the ancient trackway and Roman road) to Braintree (Branuch’s Tree in Anglo-Saxon) and we turned the wheel with this handle. The wheel was also struck a glancing blow by Kath Garda's team. If this cranking and striking caused the wheel to move and opened up a portal, it must be occupied, held and stewarded for the kingdom of God.

As we go farther up and farther in, we’ll gain more understanding of how to occupy, hold and steward. The earthly gateways (the gateway towns such as Clacton and Harlow) become even more important to hold because from the earth there is now access to heaven. We are beginning to understand our mandate to live from the heavenly places down to earth and release the heavenly and redemptive 'Essex' down to earth. Much more needs to be revealed about this…but are we not a people hungry for this understanding?

The portal moves so it doesn’t matter any longer where the geographical centre of Essex is. This moving portal will allow us to access heaven wherever prayer is going up, wherever worship is going up (such as on 24th October in Thurrock with Godfrey Birtill (see www.transformationthurrock.com ) – the true centre for Essex is Jesus and the throne room.

The wheels are the doorway to further up and further in – they come in response to hunger and by revelation. Later the seraph came to Ezekiel and picked him up and he flew – he was taken up to see things going on in Israel. The eyes could represent what we’ll see as we appropriate and hold the ‘between’ places in heaven and see from there – the eyes were in the wheels, so we need to see from heaven to earth.

We had already seen something going on in Essex both on the earth and by revelation – the five giant chairs at Cressing Temple (photo below) next to the lake. They spoke to us of demonic council (possibly even suggesting the nephilim (Gen 6.4)) – creating a counterfeit gateway for enemy activity. The location is that of one of the most significant Knights Templar sites in the UK. This gateway must be taken, occupied and held for the Kingdom of God.

Five giant chairs at Cressing Temple 2009

In Ezekiel 10, the wheels are again called whirling wheels (Heb. = galgal vs 13 meaning ‘chariot wheels’) and Ezekiel recognises them as those he saw earlier. They seem to be the wheels of God’s chariot, confirming that they are part of a moving portal to the throne room. (Interestingly, this word galgal also doubles up to mean whirlwind!)

A confirmation of the presence of God’s throne in the whirling portal came from Daniel 7.9 where there is mention of how the throne of the Ancient of Days was flaming with fire and had wheels (galgal) which were all ablaze.

So, what now? Well, a week later in the prayer room I was praying again about the wheels as I had the same question. I drew the whirlwind in my notebook under the influence of the Holy Spirit and put Ezekiel in the picture. As I did so, I realised afresh that it was Ezekiel’s presence by the Kebar River that caused God to grace the earth with his presence – Ezekiel was in prayer and the heavens opened (Ezek 1.1 & 2) and the word of the Lord came to him.

I saw that the Lord will move his portals around the earth dependent upon where the worship and prayer is going up – we, then, in the Spirit, are the ladders of heaven as Jesus was (John 1.51). Not only can unbelievers access heaven through Christ in us (the hope of glory) but we need to learn to live in the heavenly places (Eph 2.6). As we do this, heaven breaks through and the kingdom is advanced. We can carry his great love for us and his presence wherever we go, releasing it on the earth. (I am grateful to both Justin Abraham and Jamie Galloway for giving me greater understanding of this truth.)

It is what and where we were always meant to be. Hallelujah! As Godfrey has so recently sung, in a resonance of this, “We are the people we’ve been waiting for…”

And, just so you don’t think walking Essex was not a joy – here is a photo of one of the most beautiful parts.

2009-09-14T18:58:00.010+01:00

At last I’m able to look back without longing at the walking days – there was a blockage in my spirit that did not permit of writing. A frustration caused by the emotions of completing the walking. It was so necessary to rest and reflect at every level before starting to write and today I feel as if I could write forever – the first time since before the summer.

The emotions were unexpected in their ferocity – grief, pride, a degree of pain, a feeling of separation from team and purpose, loneliness – all these rose up to overwhelm me as we finished. They were given extra weight by the death of Andre Young from Saffron Walden on which I posted a little while ago. I could not have written a recorded account of where and how we walked at that time, I felt so sore we had been so robbed of a young life. And I do not forget yet.

In the last days of walking the county, I had many texts of encouragement and love. I and the team were touched by how friends supported us with their prayers – I know at cost to themselves sometimes. So, what have we been contending for?

Farther Up and Farther In!

Suddenly Farsight the Eagle spread his wings, soared thirty or forty feet up into the air, circled around and then alighted on the ground.
‘Kings and Queens’ he cried ‘we have all been blind. We are only beginning to see where we are…Narnia is not dead. This is Narnia.’
‘The Eagle is right’ said the Lord Digory. ‘That was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or copy of the real Narnia which has always been here and always will be here; just as our own world, England and all, is only a shadow or copy of something in Aslan’s real world. You need not mourn. All of the old Narnia that mattered has been draw into the real Narnia through the Door…’
The new one was a deeper country; every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more. The Unicorn summed it up. He cried:
‘I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it ‘till now. Come farther up, come farther in!’

(pp146-155 The Last Battle by C S Lewis)

As we contended for the completion of the vision of the wheel, it was about creating a firestorm to draw the edges of the wheel closed. And it was always about going farther up and farther in. (There is much detail not posted here that may unfold later.) Although we didn't see it until close to the end, it was always about carrying Christ in us, the hope of glory, as we searched out and tried to pull through the real county from Aslan’s real world...have we done that? We found doorways to that world as we walked but we still wait to see…we could go so much farther in.

Finally, a comment on the poem – should I, shouldn’t I? I think I will.

It was born of constant sightings of stunted windmills as we travelled the land – there were so many and although some still have sails, they no longer turn. If the purpose of prophetic poetry is to ask subversive questions of the status quo – then I do so humbly in the tradition of Jeremiah (12.1 & 4.19-22) and Gerard Manley Hopkins (Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord). I wrote mine to ask why the mill houses of Essex were no longer productive. You could not do better, if praying for the people of God in Essex, than to meditate on those verses and GMH's poem!

Windmills without wings - a sign?

2009-09-14T16:49:00.010+01:00

Windmills without wings – a sign?

Once bustling, thriving and honoured
with bread daily in the house
They whirred; grinding the harvest,
wheeling and creaking.
Stone against stone, seed against seed,
keen for hunger to be satisfied.
Sails whistled and whipped, slapping in the gusts
turning breath into power.

Now, soaring denied and clipped,
their wings no longer fly.
Instead, timid stumps, denuded,
squat low on the land,
Hunkering down, unfit for purpose, crushed.
‘No bread, no bread!’ they cry.
The storehouses empty and famine abroad.
Oh, fix your sails anew, catch the wind and
turn, turn, turn…

2009-08-13T21:55:00.004+01:00

I feel I cannot let this day pass unmarked.

Today, on the news, it was announced that a young man from Essex, Andre Young, had died in Crete while on holiday. Andre came from Saffron Walden, through which we walked and prayed this week.

Therefore, although I didn't know him, I feel a great hurt in my heart for his family, the people of Saffron Walden connected with him and for the land which nurtured him for the too few years of his life.

I find myself welling up as I write and face the truth that Andre is no longer here. Why?

I don't have answers for happenings like this but I still declare that God is a loving God who always does good things. This is the truth - it is not he who has done this.

I must remember to remember that - because sometimes it is hard.

Posting the vision

2009-08-08T13:39:00.004+01:00

Over the last few weeks, as we approached our summer walking, I felt bolder towards posting the original vision the Lord gave me for walking our county. This is because we walk to finish well, completing the race set before us, and re-engaging with the Lord will motivate and propel us on. The last few days have been a real encouragement as we reached Stansted Mountfitchet and realised we are on the last leg. We need your prayers more than ever...

Re-reading Chapter 13 of Martin Scott's incredibly prophetic book, Impacting the City, made me realise the importance of finishing well in a Sardis place (Rev 3)...on p172 Martin says "There is also an inability to complete what has begun, for Jesus says their works have not been found perfect (or completed). Like the city itself...the church had not brought to completion what they had started. Perseverance has to be developed in these places." In 2004, Martin spoke prophetically over Essex and Havering, naming them as Sardis places and I recently posted these words elsewhere. In the book, he goes on to demonstrate how, because of "the sevenfold dimension of the presence of the Spirit of God", there "can be wells of prayer and the prophetic open...for whole areas or even nations." Emerge Wales (http://www.emergewales.com/) have urged this year, of all years, that we listen to the prophets. We seek to open the wells of fullness for our region and the nation.

I believe that if Essex, and my own area of Havering, are to find fullness as 'Sardis cities of mercy' where destiny can be found, where initiation is born, where influence is created...then we must keep confronting passivity and finish well. Our focus as we walk, therefore, given the vision God gave me, is to 'close the wheel'. Now to the vision.

As I started the walk, I felt inadequate and ill-equipped for the task I was been called to and it is still from this place of trembling that I write. This is not false modesty or superficial humility. The closer I come to Jesus the more un-able I feel and yet, I know this is both the place and the time to be walking the borders of the county calling for “the wild goose, you know”! One Friday morning, early in 2008, I was asking the Lord what the walking would be about. I already knew I was to ‘walk the Essex marshes’ – two people had spoken prophetically about that. It had also been prophesied that I would ‘receive revelation in the gateways’. This day I sensed something was occurring in the spirit realm. I felt the fatness of the Spirit – filled up with silent joy and unspeakable anticipation, yet overwhelmed with awe! Symbolically, under the waters, I was gently but forcefully pushed to my knees. Was I willing? I’m not sure I had choice.

I saw Essex, the county, laid out before me in England as if looking at Google Earth. It was impressed upon me to walk the Essex borders. ‘Connect’ the gateways and gateway people on the way. Once round the borders, I should then go to the centre with 'connectors' from the other gateways, carrying ‘what God says’ from their town, to the centre. This would form a wheel frame and spokes over and in the land.

This land-wheel is like ‘one of the wheels that carries the living creatures’ (Ezek 15). In Ezekiel 10.2 & 6, the wheel (Heb. galgal) is a whirlwind blowing up dust and chaff. I 'saw' how Essex will form a wheel for the ‘tower’ of England to assault the stronghold of Europe. How this will work, I don’t know. (More on wheels in a later post). Therefore,

I walk to fulfil the prophetic word (19.5.09) and the vision (1.2.08)
I walk to serve the body in Essex and call her into her destiny by walking the land.
I walk to learn to speak the ‘language’ of those in the gateways and those over the borders, and to take that language from the liminal places to the centre.
I walk calling for the prophetic to be in the foundations.
I walk for the KofG to ‘take and occupy’ (Matt 11.12) the gateways and the centre.
I walk to be an inspiration to the intercessors – those who are willing to stand in the gap for Essex.
I walk to emulate the peregrinati in our generation.
I walk in the footprints of him who has gone before us.

The list above has been spun out like woollen threads from the wheel as we've walked and if this stirs your heart and your spirit in these days – then pray for our land as we close the wheel. The whirling wheel of this warrior land is beginning to create dust.

This is one of the many signposts we have relied on during our journey. It signals the next stage of the Stour Valley Path.

At the start, we stood at the crossroads begging for the ancient paths – believe me, it is a good way and we have walked in it and are finding rest for our souls (Jer 6.16). We haven't walked to stir anything except through love, power and sound mind, carrying grace and mercy and by humbling ourselves. There is no name to this activity, no centre, no structure – it is under the radar, born of relationship between us and the land. We wear only what the Lord chooses to give us for the day – boots, rucksacks and Holy Spirit.

Where we are welcomed, we seek relationship; where we are not, we bless and move on. The walking itself is our intercession and we give not take. Our testimony is that Jesus has met us at every crossroads, river and path.

Threading our way through Tendring

2009-07-03T12:52:00.008+01:00

If I were to try to create a narrative thread for the Tendring peninsular, the second section of our walk, it would be one of shepherding and a change in wind direction. Shepherding was a focus after meeting Peter (see my earlier post) and various messages we received. Then, the wind started to blow some changes after Kath Garda (aka Mary Poppins) and her Lincoln team struck a powerful glancing blow on the western edge of the county in early May.

The photo (left) shows some of the Lincoln team arriving at Braughing, Hertfordshire, on the final day of the walk through Essex and beyond. What a day that was!

But I’m jumping ahead! I need to go back in time to lay down the narrative trail. At the end of February this year, as we walked towards Tollesbury, we pondered the suggestion of a need for a new shepherd and some verses from a faithful friend:

Hear the word of the Lord, O nations
Proclaim it in distant coastlands
He who scattered Israel will gather them
And will watch over his flock like a shepherd
Jer 31.10

And David shepherded them with integrity of heart
With skilful hands he led them.
Ps 78.72

We proclaimed these words aloud on the coastland at Tollesbury, calling for righteous shepherds with the spirit of David. (It was just after this we heard that a righteous man called David had been appointed to a senior position in a Tollesbury school!)

Enticed to wander along in the beauty of Old Hall Marshes, we then met Peter the shepherd. Shepherding came sharply into focus...

The Shepherd’s role?

One of the most significant sites in the whole region is St Osyth Priory, positioned on high ground overlooking Clacton. Its presence has affected the surrounding land and people for generations, for good or ill. Some of it has been very ill, but it started well - opening a door to the supernatural for the glory of God.

Founded as a nunnery by Osyth, a Saxon Christian martyr with an incredible testimony of miracles, it is a story worth the telling. Born a Christian Saxon princess in East Anglia, Osyth married Sighere, the converted King of Essex, at her father’s behest. Resurrected from drowning as a child by three days of prayer, Osyth’s life remained miraculous. In the church of St Peter and St Paul, a local historian has written that King Sighere left his wedding supper to chase a white stag. By the time he got back, Osyth had left him. Repenting, Sighere gave her the village of Cicc (Chich) to set up a nunnery. Later, during a Danish invasion in 653AD, Osyth’s life was cut short. Meeting some Danes in the woods one day, she was beheaded for refusing to worship their gods. Like many early martyrs before her, (such as Denis, Fulcian and Victorice, Nectan and Nicasius), she picked up her head and walked back to the nunnery to warn the nuns. Arriving at the door, she knocked three times and then finally, gave up her spirit. Where she fell, a spring appeared.

Sadly, the nunnery she founded was destroyed in late Saxon times and in Domesday (1086), the estate is recorded as being owned by the Bishop of London. He founded a priory in 1118 for Augustinian Canons but it was dissolved in 1539, the land being given to Thomas Cromwell. After his execution in 1540, it probably reverted to the Crown to be dispensed as King Henry VIII thought fit. The man instrumental in Cromwell’s execution was Richard Rich, Baron Rich of Leez (Leighs), whose daughter Elizabeth later married the owner of the estate, John D’Arcy – both are buried in the local Osyth church of St Peter & St Paul.

Not long after this in 1582, Brian D'Arcy was Justice of the Peace in St. Osyth. He conducted searches for witches in the village and neighbouring areas. He used the same persuasive techniques as Matthew Hopkins (infamous as the ‘Witchfinder General’). By all accounts D’Arcy was a successful witch hunter. A book in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, states it is “a true and just recorde of the enformation, examination and confession of all witches taken at St. Osees.”

Today, the priory is closed to the public and is a source of some controversy within the area, being owned by property developers and dividing opinions within the village. When we were there, it was no longer even possible to access the common land in front of the priory gatehouse.

Is this a story of the release of supernatural power, sometimes rightly or wrongly used, corrupted by greed and so-called ‘witch-hunting’, bringing division upon the land and people?

The St Osyth website makes clear the Priory’s spiritual influence:

The first Prior William de Corbeuil, became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1123. The Priory was initially well endowed, succeeding grants eventually making it one of the richest monastic houses in the country, advancing to the status of Abbey. As the Abbey buildings extended so did its estate at Chich St Osyth, which rapidly became the largest parish in Essex. In addition the Abbey held land, manors and rectories in 36 towns and villages throughout Essex and Suffolk - for instance the Church at Blythburgh, Suffolk was built by monks from St Osyth. (http://www.stosyth.gov.uk/default.asp?calltype=ourhistory)

Is perhaps Chich St Osyth a spiritual centre in Tendring? Its influence certainly stretches across the peninsular.

Photos for Pleasure

2009-06-03T19:53:00.023+01:00

One of the memorable privileges I have is of being able to record the Essex landscape as we walk...here are a few shots - the loneliness of the marshy mudflats, the beauty of the vales and the path before us...

This one (left) is of Flatford Mill pond in Dedham Vale.

Below centre here are some mudflats looking just like basking hippos...

Ewes and lambs from Old Hall Marshes,
north of Tollesbury - sadly weak and under-developed.

Left is the sea wall around the north east of Mersea Island, showing the oyster beds...still used.

The photo below right is the northern coast of the River Blackwater,

courtesy of Google Earth, a patchwork quilt of fields and edges.

A path across a wheatfield turns out to be the majestic Essex Way - a national treasure indeed - but not always easy to spot!

The photos below are all of the River Stour, as it wends its way through Dedham Vale, the painting ground of John Constable (and a few others!)

Being there to take these pictures was wonderful - I hope you enjoy them.

In his footprint?

2009-05-06T14:47:00.007+01:00

What does it mean to walk in his footprint? I found a couple of images that helped me visualise footprints – then thought about a lion’s footprints – I remembered how I felt him padding through Narnia for the first time, over 40 years ago. “He’s on the move!” the beavers said, excited. I’m excited – he is on the move!

Recently, I walked the sea wall alone – a rare occurrence - but I was content to sense the presence of the Lion alongside me. When as a man, he walked dusty mud-packed roads in Palestine, he would have stirred the dust with his sandals – dust that he’d once used to form a human being.

I wowed my way through that – had he reached down into Essex dust, this very dirt, to get his handful? Or had he called individual specks from across the cosmos and the garden – space he’d created – gleaning from each valley and mountain, each volcano and lake, each glacier and forest, to shape and form Adam? Had some of that dust been drawn from the very earth I was walking?

In the garden, were there a few grains of what we now call Essex? Was it somewhere he walked in the cool of the day with his companions? Did the land rejoice, feel ‘fit for purpose’ with his feet upon it as the very mud of Israel must have rejoiced when he walked there?

If that’s true, then we do indeed walk in his footprint.

Beyond Tollesbury

2009-04-09T20:59:00.012+01:00

Beyond Tollesbury is the North Sea...but for us, following the coastline we faced short green grass on the sea wall and reed fronds waving softly in the flood gully at our feet. And sheep. Today we faced a squared walk along the edge of the Blackwater and along the exit path from the village to Old Hall Marsh. Our two teams of two set off into the dull and misty morning and it was as we approached our second sea wall, that Linda and I saw him.

A tall man walking the sea wall with a crook in his hand, he looked about 65 years old. The sheep trotted quietly before him as he uttered his 'Gaa arn' of encouragement. We stood to one side as the sheep slipped down towards us, hesitating in the centre of the path at the sight of us. 'Gaa arn' came again and they passed us as far from us as they could, ewes and lambs leaping over each other to get out of our way. He walked quietly past us as we complimented him on his sheep and said what a pleasure it was to see them. I said "You must enjoy them very much?" "Yes," he replied, smiling,"very much!"

We walked on to meet Gerry and Ann but when we returned, we found him standing at a pen near the farmer's field. It was as if he was waiting for us. I said "Hello again" and he turned and smiled. We commented on how appealing the lambs looked with their mothers in the pen but instead of agreeing, he expessed anxiety about how poorly they were developing and told us that for four day old lambs, they were sickly and weak. We were stunned. I asked him his name and he said it was Peter. He was clearly worried about the animals and, when we offered to pray for him and the problem, was grateful and relieved. We missed an opportunity to pray for him then and there but we prayed as we walked on, quite disturbed by his concern.

We felt he was a sign - I had received a couple of texts when we walked here in February about this land needing a new shepherd - it seemed his appearance could be linked to that. Even tho' that was true, we didn't want to lose the personal sense of connection we felt with Peter and so prayed for him over the next two days. We'd like to go back and find him but time has passed...

As we considered him as a sign, we wondered about the church and its shepherd in this place. His love and concern for the baby lambs which were sickly and underdeveloped seemed symbolic of believers in the church in our land - the more we pondered, the more we found ourselves praying for the church and its foundations here.

Lord, help us to grow into maturity with love, manifesting the fullness of the kingdom of God as we go about our daily business.

Towards the Wick at Tollesbury

2009-02-21T21:32:00.012Z

The influence of Mill Beach stayed with us during January as we, as a team, pondered the significance of Gerry’s physical reaction to the land. It felt a confirmation of the Lord’s words about this second section “It’s going to be a battle” but in preparing our hearts to seek the Lord, I felt the Lord add “…but it’ll be worth it!” I held on to that as we resolved to spend time praying together before we walked again. Meeting for several hours on Friday 13th to pray, his powerful yet sanctifying presence filled the room as we sought to consecrate ourselves before him. In Ezekiel 39, the Lord talks about cleansing the land three times - always a sign of emphasis - we definitely didn't want to carry anything that was not of him onto this land if it was going to be a battle.

On Monday 16th February, the three of us set out again from the Mill Beach Hotel, positioned on the north side of the Blackwater, along the tarmac of the sea wall past the huge caravan park. Leaving Maldon and its surrounds behind, the rather large Osea Island loomed mistily as we rounded the zigzag of the river coastline. In the photo below, the tide is in but as we walked, we saw the booms of the car-wide causeway across to the island – inhabited and farmed – and later, several cars crossed it, as you’ll see when I get home to post the pictures. On our left, Goldhanger village peeked over the horizon as we tramped the now-grassy sea wall, passing several walkers and bikers on this half-term Monday.

This coastline looks as if it has been cut out of cardboard when viewed from a satellite image, neatly edged to fit into a jigsaw without the additional pieces. The Google Earth pictures are spectacular!

Completing our first objective, we leapfrogged in cars and set ourselves to complete the section beyond Goldhanger. As the three of us walked together we sang ‘How Great is our God’ and wondered at the winter barrenness. We were pleased to see sheep grazing, returned to the marshes as they originally were over a hundred years ago – their presence tied into a text and verse (from two separate people) that highlighted the importance of shepherding. We managed five and a half miles and came off the sea wall pleased to have achieved so much on a first day, with little warm-up after five weeks other than stretching!

Tuesday started with a text from Gerry at 7.19 am to say she would not make it to walk with us as she was dealing with some issues at home. Between that time and 10 am, I was on and off the phone to her and Linda as we prayed and got increasingly 'stressed' about the day’s walking. This left Linda and I feeling rather overwhelmed; it was compounded by other events - a sad phone call to her and sudden changes in transport arrangements for me. However, by the time we arrived at Tollesbury, we had calmed down and were aware of the Lord’s peace around us and so felt to push on as much as we could.

Our prayerwalking friend, Kathy, from Grays had texted me a couple of key verses which I passed on to the other friends praying for us – Jeremiah 31.10: Hear the word of the Lord, O nations; proclaim it in distant coastlands; ‘He who scattered Israel will gather them and will watch over his flock like a shepherd’ and Ps 78.72 And David shepherded them with integrity of heart; with skilful hands he led them.’ Both of these were a great encouragement to me – both personally and because we later saw the sheep grazing on the land. Avril also texted that she wondered if ‘they need a new shepherd’ – this thought became clearer as we walked onto the land near Tollesbury.

Below is a Google photo of where we walked and the intimidation disappeared as soon as we were walking the land…it welcomed us! However, Linda did sense that there were false covenants on the land and we felt this may be why they needed a new shepherd - Jesus. This is something we will be praying into as we walk and over the next few weeks.

It was good to feel the land welcome us - despite a potentially nasty run-in with a local farmer – he was angry we had mistakenly walked on part of his private land – rightly so! We apologised and eventually, he forgave us as we had actually turned back, indicating, as he encouragingly informed us, "we could read!"

It turned out to be a God-directed encounter after all, because if we had continued along that path, we would have gone the wrong way. He actually showed us the correct direction.

As soon as we reached the sea wall, we felt at home, stopping for lunch on a cold concrete pillbox positioned directly opposite Bradwell Power Station, looming like a great funnelled ship on the other side of the Blackwater, before making our way towards the Fellowship Afloat Lightship moored in Tollesbury Harbour a little to the north. At the harbour, I re-acquainted myself with David Hillyer, the Director of Fellowship Afloat, whom I had met a few years earlier. I already knew David was acquainted with Steve Lowton (http://www.storiesfromthestreet.com/ ) and his wife, Kathy, with whom I had walked part of the way from Whitby to York in 2005 and in Wales in December 2007. After asking a few questions of his two rather strange mud-covered visitors, David kindly showed us around the Fellowship Afloat office and gave us a couple of leaflets!

Linda and I returned to the Lighthouse coffee shop in Tollesbury to fortify ourselves for the journey home with tea and biscuits. Our next walk may not be until the Easter holidays – only six or so weeks away!

Back on the road...December '08

2009-02-20T22:14:00.007Z

I get such a buzz out of walking with the Lord – it really is special - but there are one or two things to mention before recounting how we started Essex 2 out of Maldon – the first being the oil painting by Linda, which she gave me just before Christmas. I was so blessed by it.

The image is of a revelation she received from the Lord while we were praying in Grays. The birds are wild geese – the Celtic sign of Holy Spirit – wild and free – which are found all across the marshes of Essex. They have been honking with us most of the way around. The fire is lit around the borders and the backdraft blows into London.

Secondly, while in Dudley, we took to heart and spirit a word released by Marc Dupont (http://www.marcdupontministries.org/) over England. Interrupting the main speaker, Paul Keith Davis of White Dove Ministries (http://www.whitedoveministries.org/) Marc spoke of the Lion of England and of the incredible righteous passion he felt in the Body here.

He said that historically, the individual person had had a value here due to the Christian Celtic heritage but that since the rise of Darwinism, much of this individual value had been lost. (Did he realise, I wonder, that 2009 is both the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of publication of Origin of Species? Was he speaking into this knowing there will be much ‘Darwinism’ around this year?)

Marc went on to say that England has a key part to play and we should re-dig the wells to find Rehoboth, which means a ‘spacious or roomy place’ (Gen 26.22). This word was of great interest to me because Martin Scott (http://www.3generations.eu/) had prophesied as we crossed centuries that Romford (in Havering) was a Rehoboth place, a ‘roomy place’ (Rom-ford means ‘roomy place’). In October 2005, Martin further prophesied that ‘the well has been dug” and it was now a ‘well of fullness’ (Beer-sheba: well of sevens) with reference to the Havering area. Bring on the fullness, Lord!

Marc further said this year will be different from other years. God is opening up something in England of a new boldness, courage and pioneering spirit born from the ancient well of the Celtic peregrinati. He said the righteous heart of the lion and the artesian wells would release and manifest deposits of glory.

If there is a well of sevens in Havering, which sits in the Essex/London gateway, there is yet work to be done in calling for the water table to rise – perhaps even for the nation? Again, I cannot forget Sharon Stone’s (http://www.cieurope.org/) 2005 word about an apostolic mantle over Essex. We need to keep praying – and keep walking!

As you know, if you’ve read my earlier blogs, we have felt all along that the Lord is calling something of that Celtic spirit out as we walk the land. Lastly, my own Christian heritage is rooted with a prophetic group of people with a forerunner pioneering spirit. Yes, I was on the floor in Dudley, weeping, as Marc spoke. (I have attached what he said at the bottom, transcribed by me – please feel free to copy and paste but in its entirety and suitable acknowledgement to both Marc and Revival Fires in Dudley).

A couple of us walkers had been invited by Lion Lady Kathy Garda to walk in Wales in the ‘between’ of Christmas and New Year 2008/9 and much as we would have loved to be there, we felt a real call to walk again the flatlands of our marshes – Oh, how to describe the joy of walking the sea wall? The frozen grass struck our legs and broke like tiny stalagmites as the sun hazed onto sweet dark earth inland – it was like something out of a winter van Gogh! The brightness blurred the inland horizon, warming us, but the breeze from the sea shed cold air on our damp feet and legs and, as I squelched along in damp trainers, ducks skated on the frozen inlets. No adders at this time of year! They were all hidden below, snug in their holes waiting for spring.

Why trainers? My right hand boot had finally bruised my toe so much I couldn’t wear it, so I opted for trainers – and wet socks but as long as I kept walking…new boots now essential!

On the first day, Linda’s husband Nick had joined us as we left the small village of Steeple, on the south coast of the River Blackwater. I drove as we leapfrogged Nick and Gerry who were walking the mile or so from Stansgate Abbey Farm. Unfortunately, after Linda and I had started walking, I was so excited to be out again I completely missed the turnoff to St Peter’s Way and Linda and I walked for more than half an hour in the wrong direction before realising, sadly retracing our steps, before being collected and whisked thence to Maylandsea to the aptly-named Horny Toad cocktail bar where Gerry and Nick had been patiently supping on frothy coffee. We ate in the car and after lunch Linda, Nick and I set off around Mundon Creek towards Lawling and Brick House Farm, such a circular walk we almost met ourselves coming back! Nick was still raring to go but Linda and I were feeling a little tired and bruised, so at Brick House Farm, I called it a day (which it was, being 3 pm) - darkness fast approaching.

Finishing early that day meant we were ready for a longish walk the next and setting out from Brick House Farm, Linda and I knew this would be a long exposed walk around another set of marshy inlets. Gerry, bless her, had agreed to take the car to Maldon and walk to meet us. We had been around Maldon already so we could skip through the town, (despite the attraction of the Maldon Tapestry) and re-start at Heybridge Basin. Little did we know, Gerry had her own plans!

Again, the frozen grass was white under our feet and at one point the beauty of the marshes made tears well in both our eyes – or was it the freezing breeze off the frozen water? Yomping our way along, we rounded several stunning headlands (photos will appear below shortly) meeting just one lonely runner wending his way with his dog – both soaked but happy. We knew how they felt!

Burnt orange reeds topped our heads, echoing and empty in this season, but marking the path for a new year ahead. Pushing our way through their temporary jungle, the church tower of Maldon came into sight – only two headlands to go!

Gerry’s secret plan was that she’d found a path the other side of Maldon towards Heybridge Basin and felt inspired to prayerwalk that part - for which we were very glad. She would do that if we would meet her back at the Maldon front for lunch, which we did. She ferried us through Maldon in the car and we started together pushing out the other side to more wild country. I was delighted Gerry was able to carry that section for us as I want so much for her to be able to walk.

That last section resonates in my memory as special – the close of a winter’s day; cold silent boats shackled in freezing water to a frosty earth; a giant red sun setting in the west as we trudged round the end of the sluice towards Mill Beach trying to go as far as we could in the fading light but knowing we had to allow half an hour to get back.

This special feeling persists, despite a sickness that came over Gerry, leading us to wonder what was on the land – further prayer into this would be necessary for us all before we continued. Passing bijou waterfront flats and houses, beautifully situated even in winter, we rounded the empty reed-filled basin until finally we reached a flotilla of little yachts and met the eponymous elderly man with a golden Labrador. As the dog snuffled wetly around our feet and wagged his tail, we discovered there was a slip road where we could be dropped for the start of the next section towards Tollesbury Marshes.

Despite the near dark, we were all tired but happy – filled to the brim with beauty and fired up with the prospect of discovering more of God’s purpose for us walking this frontier country.
_________________________________________________

Paul Keith Davis & Marc Dupont
The Secret Place Conference Jan 2009
Dudley, Birmingham

A prophetic word for England

On the second day, in Session 5 of the conference, Paul Keith Davis was sharing and he stopped suddenly. He said the Lord was doing something:

“I don’t know what the Lord’s doing, something happened. When I stepped over here, something happened, something shifted. The room shifted. I don’t know if it’s on what I’m about to say or what I just got through saying but the Lord’s doing something. I really believe he is about to give some of you a Spirit of courage, a Spirit of boldness. This morning when I woke up - I know I promised I would finish what I started but I gotta be obedient to the rhema. This morning, as I was waiting on the Lord, he began to talk to me again about courage – about boldness. I can’t tell you how many times the Lord has told me – be a man and you ladies, that’s the same for you – you’re a son of the Kingdom, we’re not careless, presumptuous and flippant…I’m just talking about having courage! Courage is quiet, a quiet confidence…Jesus was meek but he sure wasn’t weak. He quietly walked in and demonstrated the kingdom.”

A few minutes later, Marc Dupont indicated he would like to share something and Paul Keith invited him to release it.

Marc said:

I’ve had a love and incredible passion for the nation of England – been coming a lot to England for about 20 years but ever since I was a little kid I’ve been fascinated with England and I’ve read a lot about England and am very familiar with a lot of the great English writers and also with a lot of the historical things about England; and England - despite all the jokes I make about the English empire being lost due to Nescafe and things like that – that there is an incredible – in a righteous sense (no nation is completely righteous – I’m very aware of that, being American) but there’s an incredible righteous passion that’s part of the heritage that God has given English people. One of the books I read about 20 years ago that made a huge impact on me traced about where England is today – it traced several things – it traced the rising of Darwinism and that up until about 125 years ago – even though there was lot of class distinction in the age of Victorianism and what not – the average person whether they were rich or poor in the UK were viewed to have a great value because there was such a strong Judaic heritage and that went all the way back to the Celtic missionaries and pioneers – the Celtic fire that God birthed at that time – the Celtic pioneers who spent years seeking the face of God and communing with God and then they would be released and go to various places throughout the UK - England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales.

Everywhere they went there was not just radical evangelism with signs and wonders but all society would be transformed. They eradicated illiteracy; they taught about healthy marriages healthy families and life was transformed and that has been translated in many ways and received through the last thousand years or so – just a boldness upon the English people for exploration.

Now obviously there are some fine lines between nationalism and the Kingdom of God that can get muddled so I’m not saying everything’s from God but as the age of reason which was centred around the philosophy of man, particularly Darwinism, meant that man no longer had value because they were the creation of God - meant that as Darwinism – the “survival of the fittest” – began to rise up, the average person in England began to be seen has having little value. You were only of importance if you had title or wealth or political stature -something like that - and a devaluing began to creep in to English society.

At one time up until about 125/130 years, the English worker - for example, the English bridge-builders were considered to be the best n the world – if a bridge was being built in Italy or Germany, they would bring over an English builder because there was just such a competency and such vision and endeavour.

But when Darwinism began to come in and people began to take their eyes off the person of God in a national sort of sense, a pessimism began to come in as a result of that and when World War One hit – the aftermath of that is that so many – I don’t want to say this in an absolute sense - but so many of the cream of the crop of the young men of England that were going to impact the future generation just lost themselves and just died there in the battlefields of the poisonous gas and the onslaught – just getting out of the trenches and charging the enemy and although it wasn’t quite that bad, something similar happened in World War Two.

But I have felt for years that England has a very very key part to play. It’s just like the ancient wells – even though the wells of Abraham managed to be covered over by the Philistines, it came God’s time to re-dig the ancient wells. And the first time it was re-dug, the enemy managed to steal it; and the second time; but the third time they hit an artesian well and it became a broad watering place. The word is Rehoboth and it just came up - it wasn’t striving, it wasn’t lowering the buckets to work it – it was an artesian well - because they hit a deep underground water that began to spring up as they uncovered that deep underground well of Abraham.

And I believe with all my heart (I’ve had a number of prophecies about this) I believe that right now in this year 2009 – and this church is one of the key churches that’s part of this - there are a number of them, a number of fire centres, a number of kingdom resource centres throughout the UK - this year is going to be different from any almost other year in ministry.

It’s not just a year for having good conferences not just a year for coming to have some apostolic words and prophetic experiences or even healings and not just a year for sending out on missions trips internationally.

There is something that God is opening up in England that’s part of your heritage – not out of nationalism - but out of the spiritual heritage that God has given the English people to go to the ends of the earth - but right here in England itself with the fire of God and there is a boldness and courageousness in the Holy Spirit - and this is a such wonderful place for that because this church has invested itself as well as everything else into healing and evangelism and knowing the voice of the Lord.

It has given itself over to the Father heart of God – as it says in 1 John 4.18 – perfect love casts out far and Deut 28.1 – “…with the unrighteous fear will come upon them but the righteous shall be as bold as a lion…” and I don’t have time, I don’t want to take too much time away from what God is giving Paul Keith but the Lion Heart of Judah is being restored to the saints in England and there are some tremendous wells God is going to open up this year!

And Paul Keith, you were just mentioning about this transition from Moses to Joshua and I know that’s a huge part of what you stand for – the Lord said to Joshua as he began to take that mantle and it came time to cross over “Be strong and courageous for you shall give this people possession of the land I swore to give them; only be strong and courageous to do everything according to the law” and we would say the leading of the Holy Spirit.

And Paul Keith there is something at this time for the Body of Christ in England. It’s not just another year with a few more good conferences and evangelism and healing but something is being released unto great fruitfulness and I believe God is zealous for the deposits of glory and for the character of Christ he is calling for the people of England to exhibit. Part of that is so typified by Winston Churchill who was a prophetic voice in the 1930s – he was saying ‘we have to get geared up, we have to get geared up, we hve to get prepared’ and everybody said ‘No, no, it’s a time of peace, of lasting peace’ - actually he was prophetic. When war broke out, he believed so much that was his message – it wasn’t just his strategies – he believed in England, he believed in their heritage and the English people.

When I travel most of my ministry is outside the United States and I never come to represent the US - it’s the Kingdom of God but as a representatives of the Kingdom of God, I want to say to you there are deposits of glory that also called to exhibit the character of Christ with gentleness but also with the authority of boldness but to see the Lion of Judah manifested. This is England’s time. This is England’s time and the Lord would say to you

“Focus on your nation and what God has called historically over the generations because its going to begin to emerge now in the Spirit.”

Paul Keith
We release that now in the spirit - there was really something on that.

Marc
There are 2 different prophets - Isaiah and Amos – who when God speaks said “Who cannot but hear?”

In Isaiah 42.9: “Before a new thing springs forth, God will proclaim it to you” - he wants sons and daughters who are led by the Spirit. In Amos 3.7 “Surely the Lord God does nothing unless he reveals his secret counsel to his servants the prophets. A lion has roared who will not fear it? The Lord has spoken - who cannot but prophesy? The righteous shall be as bold as a lion…” it has nothing to do with religious legalism but has to do with being right with God and being led by the Spirit.

Stand.

Prayer: If you would, put a hand over your mouth but not so tight you can’t speak - but would you repeat after me?

Father God, you are God Almighty. You love my nation because of your grace and mercy. Here are we! Raise up a Joshua company that will go forth in the boldness, the compassion and the Lion Heart of Judah throughout this nation. Here am I - send me. Jesus, I want to carry a shield and a sword in the spirit to champion you to my nation. We just speak an impartation of the Lion of the tribe of Judah.

I had an idea yesterday that I’m not sure is from God but I think it’s from the Lord. I think the Lord is going to gather some of us – I just want to throw this out to you, Trevor (Trevor Baker of Revival Fires). I think some of us - maybe you and I are supposed to be part of this – go to the four different extreme corners of this island – from the very south, to the very west, to the very north, to the very east, to the very ends – and I believe we are supposed to make prophetic and apostolic declaration now I believe this is the time for this nation.

Trevor, there is a favour upon you from the Lord for building relationship and there is going to be a non-religious gathering of relationship – I’m not talking about just conferences.

Four years ago the Lord gave me a word - I sent it out to a lot of leaders in England but the Lord is breaking up the old regime and hierarchies – even of the movements from the ‘60s and ‘70s. There is a changing of the guard happening and what God is establishing now is not bound by even being in the same network or even working together a lot, but it is a heart to heart Jonathan and David life-giving relationships in the apostolic and prophetic and I believe the Lord is calling you, Trevor, to be a catalyst in that and bringing together, not in a formal way, but in a heart way, a Holy Spirit way an apostolic proclamation over this nation and great light – even as the first example in the Bible of the Father speaking and light coming forth – there is going to be an apostolic and prophetic proclamation this year and maybe this thing of south, north east and west is a part of it I don’t know.

But there is going to be a gathering and you’re going to find a favour upon you to gather an apostolic prophetic event and some of them may be guys in their 60s and 70s and older and some may be quite a bit younger - but there’s going to be a favour upon you for gathering this. When the Lion roars, who cannot fear and when the Lord speaks who cannot but prophesy? This is the year.

The Lord says “The spiritual heritage he invested over 1500 years ago of fire and boldness out of intimacy of the Lord and out of humility before man and walking in the leading and the power of the holy spirit that is going to be manifested and restored to the church in England.”

(Transcribed directly from Track 3, Session 5 CD, with some minor alterations for written sense. Jane Almond 7.2.09)

Bradwell Waterside and on!

2008-11-17T16:20:00.009Z

Thanks, Linda for your wonderful description of our day praying in Maldon.

The Lord so confirmed to us on our very first day back walking that he was with us. The encouragement warmed us in the cold wind and set us on track to continue from where we had left off in the summer, Bradwell Waterside. A port, or something of a port, with long-stemmed yachts huddling together for the winter on an exposed coast - this was our leaving point for Bradwell, an apostolic location for the county. Always in my mind, I try to visualise this part of Essex as it must have been for Cedd, the Celtic evangelist who brought the gospel to the county. Very different, I imagine!

But the best was yet to come. Because of and despite the cold wind, we walked quickly along to the sea wall, finding ourselves sharing that high path with a resident for a short time. She said she walked that section every day for exercise, even in bad weather. What a treat! But as we progressed, we found part of it broken down and the way barred.

It was a diversion around a salt water marsh, deliberately created to allow the sea to flow in at high tide. Our first salt water marsh...an exciting moment for me.

We had read and heard so much about this anti-flood technique, but I had never actually seen one before. It's a controversial issue as many marshes are made of land that was either a nature reserve, a bird sanctuary or a beauty spot but the argument against the dangers of flooding is strong and it is a legitimate method of releasing the pressure of the sea. It is also cheaper than maintaining a high sea wall, which if one were cynical, one might believe was the real reason!

Here are some shots of this location - worth a walk, even in winter. I loved it. Perhaps you can see why.

We continued until we could go no further, and as indicated on the map, turned inland, following a road where we met Gerry with the car. She then walked back the one mile to the main road with Linda while I drove the car to the joining point. We left Essex to the flock of wild geese we saw at the saltmarsh, happy to have reached our destination for the day.

A different voice and a rainbow!

2008-11-17T15:44:00.014Z

We have gone back to walking a couple of days this week as Jane is off from school - we are now at the coast by Maldon (right). We are still walking the Essex marshes and going through some pretty bleak and isolated territory at times. All the way on this walk, we've had so many special times with God, encounters, revelations about Essex and so have so strongly felt God's smile on us.

Yesterday was another example. We decided to ease ourselves in slowly by spending the day in Maldon and praying round there rather than struggling along the sometimes difficult coastal wall which in places is broken and difficult to traverse.

Maldon is the site of a famous battle that took place in 991AD. It's where Viking invaders defeated the Saxon army and so took over this part of England under the Danegeld rule by which the Saxons had to pay incredible amounts of money to the Danes who ruled that part of England for many years.

The army in fact was led at that time by a Norwegian named Olaf Tryggvason, who later became King of Norway. Brythnoth, eorldorman of Essex under King Ethelred, who was the Saxon leader, was defeated but is still celebrated as a great hero in the battle which wiped out many East Saxon noblemen and kings of that time. This whole area of coast saw so many invasions, so much bloodshed, so much injustice and we have felt that heavily on the land.

In Maldon there is a quay and a causeway where there is a huge statue of Brythnorth looking out to sea with his sword raised. As we walked up to the statue, the heavy anointing of God came on us and we started to cry out to God about the bloodshed and the pride which had caused Brythnoth to allow the Vikings passage into the land, along a defendable causeway, for battle (he thought he could wipe them out). At that moment the son of one of our party rang on his mobile to say that there had been a power cut - yes, we think there was! As we left the statue, he rang again to say the power was back on. As we walked to Northey Island where the Vikings had grouped, we saw a sign warning us that under the causeway was a power cable.

The Vikings had gathered on Northey Island prior to the battle so we prayed on the causeway between the island and the mainland where the battle actually took place. As we stood on the uncovered causeway (left), we could feel the Viking presence - they had stood, banging their shields and shouting defiance and it felt to us like it had happened yesterday - we could almost see it.

We prayed and prayed about what the Vikings had brought into the land and I (Linda) asked forgiveness (I have Norwegian ancestry). We especially prayed about Viking idolatry and the way the Vikings made the Saxons pay for protection (we felt it could well be a root of the 'wheeler-dealer' attitude to money so prevalent in Essex). Then, a very strong anointing came when we started to pray about what they had brought in to the UK in their attitude to and excessive use of alcohol and how that had infested our land and we cried out for the young generation.

Later we found the site of the battle, inside the sea wall on the mainland side, marked by a tiny plaque. When we were finished we stood and watched as the Lord built a magnificent rainbow- a full arch with one side rooted in the mainland to the left and the other end in the land of the island with the causeway where the army would have traversed to the mainland central to the arch of the bow. The three pictures below show the rainbow clearly...in the midst of a bright blue sky!

What a site and what an encouragement!! He never ceases to amaze us!!

Towards the start of the ancient path: End Days - 21-25

2008-09-28T14:32:00.004+01:00

Days 21-25: End Days

In these days approaching the start of the ancient path and therefore the end of the beginning, I am struck by two things - how love leads us on and the question of boundaries.

It is love that leads me through this land and helps me to know it. Understanding how loving helps us to know has been a continuing quest of mine for some time. When we love someone or something, we want to know them more deeply and as I write these words, I find myself humbled by how God has shown us what it is to know this land. I want to know it better.

Paul said ‘love builds up’ (1 Cor 1) and knowing people and land, through and by love, is a fruit of the Spirit brought to bloom through perseverance. Loving generously and without limit brings us to full bloom. It builds up both us and the loved one. This is how God loves us and how he will know us - if we let him. If this love is not to be awakened until it so desires (S of S 2.7), then we must desire it to be awakened. Others, and the land, can know us because we love them; through loving, we can be known and to quote Norman McLean, ‘we can still love completely.’

Shifting into a new season, I was also reflecting on how boundaries are marked which led me to wonder if the ones we recognise are set by God. Are his boundaries, on and off the land, the same as ours and if not, how do we align ourselves with those that are his? To quote a prophetic voice, are the boundaries there because they are important or is the area important and thus it became a boundary? Did God create them to be liminal places where the boundary between the material and spiritual is thin?

In prehistoric times, the land around Bradwell was not bordered by sea but by low lying marshland, crossable in a wooden canoe. For generations, this land was tundra or polar desert but in later times, it softened as the ice receded, becoming marshy. Streams that began at Bradwell ended in Holland or fed into the Rhine which met the Thames where the North Sea is now. Awesome! Then the ice receded fully, melting, and the North Sea as we know it today was created with the water lapping at a high point – on our side, the edges of the Dengie Peninsular.

Now, the land around Bradwell is geographically bounded by sea and drained marsh, used for farming. St Peter’s chapel, out on the edge of the peninsular, is created from stones cut by Romans for their fort. Did Cedd sense that God had moved the boundary line and plant his monastery in that liminal place? Confluences and sacred landscape like this can create sacred portals.

Cedd’s Holy Spirit DNA was drawn from a Celtic understanding of God – although a bishop, he was also an abbot and one of the peregrinati – ones characterised by their compulsion to wander and share King Jesus wherever and whenever they went, to see the power of God manifested through miracles and compassion and justice released among the poor. They crossed wild boundaries to fulfil this vision. We thought to tread in their footsteps and to call for their anointing.

Their symbol for the Holy Spirit was that of the wild goose, so valid for the wild forest and marshes of the East Saxons. One of our walkers, Avril, wrote this poem for us:

Follow the honk of the wild goose
Follow the wild goose song
Carried by the wind of the Spirit
To places as yet unsung.
Listen to the beat of his wings
Distant and hushed though they be,
Follow his call to the marshes
That meet with the land and the sea.
Feed on him there in your spirit
Strong in the grace he supplies -
He will sustain and refresh you
At the pulsing of every tide.
Rested, refreshed, he’ll call you
Burning, to walk at his side,
He’ll make you a witness of glory
In his season and the turn of his tide.
Then, rise with a whisper and fly with his Spirit
Over the ancient way,
To the edge of the world with Jesus
Where he’s called you to watch and to pray.
Fly to the edge with his Spirit
Follow the beckoning call
There you will find your Saviour and Master
Your fullness – your all in all.

Walking the slender sea wall path towards St Peter’s the other day, we were aware of an increasing ‘thickening’ of the spiritual atmosphere, almost implying an opposing force. C S Lewis has described it thus:

It was such hard work that I felt as if I were walking against a headwind…a sort of invisible wall of resistance that met me in the face, (we were) fighting for each step...(Perelandra pp7-9)

At several points, this increase in density was tangible especially as Linda and I surfed three foot high grass screening baby adders for more than a mile. With the boundary approaching, humility was our watchword – and our mouths spoke ‘Glory!’ and ‘Hallelujah!’ with each step – believe me, it was the only way through!

Arriving around 4pm at Dots and Melons farm, we were exhausted with both the spiritual and material battle - and were surprised, delighted and relieved when Gerry told us the farm belonged to the family of a close friend from Romford. We'd prayed that morning that God would orchestrate any connections he wanted us to make - and should not have been surprised at his grace and strategy. Thanks for the great cups of tea, Malc!

Next morning we prayed for Malc and the land before we left, anointing him with oil - he has sown in prayer for years, calling for the Lord to come in power on the whole area. Gerry and I were walking and Linda was resting, after the battle the day before. Walking the sea wall together was such fun and finding our way along the tiny path a challenge - again, we met several baby adders and a really large one! He responded to probing with my stick by slithering harmlessly away into the long grass... After hours of enforced isolation with just grass, sea and sky, we reached St Peter’s church and Linda came with a hug and a smile to welcome us. We hallooed and praised and blew her shofar...

We imagined the many people who had visited in the past, drawing on its peace and beauty. In his day, Cedd recognised it as a thin place and today, it still draws those who have little other spiritual resource. Believing our mandate is to sow rather than reap, we came with hearts prepared to give in prayer - all we really have. As Linda’s magnificent shofar rang out over the marshland, the wind whipped our small Jesus flag into rejoicing at our arrival.

There is a phrase used today by Christian walkers that talks of ‘rolling up the ancient roads’ - we had rolled up the ancient paths of South Essex like a robe, presenting them back to the Lord as a gift for him to renew and shape afresh. In so doing, we frequently asked him to re-open Essex’s spiritual wells.

Part of our gift to the Lord involved repentance for some of the sins we knew had been committed in Essex – idolatry, especially of Seaxnot (whose symbol is the unredeemed Essex seax); bloodshed among the tribes of Celts, Saxons, Vikings and later Romans; broken covenants between tribes in the region and the immorality of power through kings and their servants like Richard Rich.

Talking with local people had made us aware how blocked up spiritual wells can become. For this reason, our team prayed first over these four core sins between the porch and altar of this ancient place of worship and then broke bread, using Celtic liturgy, with friends, Tim and Vera.

One spiritual well, the Peculiar People, were part of the people of Essex – there are some in our own community who, when young, frequently saw healing miracles. These believers were dotted around Essex in large numbers – from Barking in the west to Tillingham in the east - a deposit of the Lord into this part of our nation. One of their chapels remains in Tillingham village. Where Cedd had sowed, they harvested healings and deliverance and we need to see that inheritance re-embraced.

Cedd unrolled ancient paths to carry the news of King Jesus and his resurrection, our guarantee of future liberation from death of all creation. With miracles and power, Cedd declared that a new kingdom had come and that new kingdom exists still - but has been annulled in so many ways. We puzzled over the significance of our walk’s part in re-energising that kingdom’s existence, strengthening it towards becoming a reality that releases justice and peace. Remembering the dream of a ship and the impact of a single tugboat encourages us to continue – we made a start past St Peter’s towards Bradwell power station and finally, into the tiny port of Bradwell Waterside, from where we start again in October.

Day 20 a - Visiting the River Roach

2008-08-17T18:02:00.012+01:00

Sunset over Burnham

Day 20a doesn't really exist here at all.

By this I mean that Day 20a was a Saturday and we weren't walking.

But exist it obviously did - and it was the day that the skipper of the Lady Essex III took us to see the wildlife on Potton Island. Needless to say, Potton Island is close to Foulness Island and we were going because the Lord nudged us to go. Gerry and I set off from Romford around 4 pm to catch the little boat at 6 pm, hoping to have a snack in the middle at the Essex Marina.

Arriving in good time, we boarded the already full Lady Essex and set off in a cool wind, Gary at the helm and an informed lady wildlife helper sorting out the ropes. There was a mixture of children, photographers, keen wildlifers and us - a motley crew.

Leaving the Crouch at the junction with the Roach, we stole up the Roach quietly midstream (the tide was very low tonight). We were instructed not to talk if we saw seals because although they didn't mind the engine noise, they were frightened by humans. Two other boats were already moored in the Roach and we made them rise and fall as our wash passed them by.

We saw adult and baby common seals - quite rare creatures - this is their nesting ground. In about a month's time, the adults will leave for different climes and the babies will have to fend for themselves. The adults will return next year for mating.

They were a distinctive coppery iron colour, gained from the mud around the River Roach. There were more seals further up the inlet but we couldn't reach them because the tide was so low.

On the way in, Gerry and I spotted an oystercatcher and a wading bird (white with a long bill) but mostly our binoculars were trained on observing Foulness Island - a lonely place.

At the beginning of the voyage, I had taken a moment to chat to Gary, the skipper, and told him of our answered prayer on the Friday afternoon. He seemed touched and it turned out we had a connection already - his wife is sister to a local head teacher in North Romford and actually teaches in the school part time. Go figure...(as the Americans say)

Below are some pictures I took while on the wildlife trip - the dark blotches are seals, which I'm afraid you can't see very well, but - low tide, much mud, open space, heavenly sky...you get the idea!

Day 21 - Yomping out of Paglesham...

2008-08-17T16:47:00.013+01:00

Well, we didn’t exactly yomp out of Paglesham this time but there was a spring in our steps as we retraced them, this time towards Essex Marina in bright sunlight and under a clear blue sky. This is Linda (right), enjoying the sunshine.

At least, there was a spring around until I got stung. I can feel it now, giving me goosebumps, as the insect (whatever it was) injected the soft flesh of my underarm (twice!) Praise God, I’d already taken an antihistamine tablet but, boy, did it hurt for a while…that was Thursday and today is Sunday and it’s still red and swollen with a lovely white line around it. Linda and I prayed over my arm and then we phoned Gerry and Margaret to ask them to buy some anti-bite or anthisan – and pray.

We kept going towards Paglesham Creek (left) and found our way across the edge of the field towards the road leading down to the Marina. Wending our way around past Creeksea Ferry Inn, we topped the sea wall and moseyed on down to have a look at the Marina bar, surrounded by dramatic boats of all sizes.

Gratefully, we consumed J20s and Belgian buns (well, if you’re interested, I had a Belgian bun and Linda had an Eccles cake). There we were also attacked by various forms of wasp so I retreated rapidly, finishing my bun standing up inside.

We were directed ‘down the ramp’ to wait for the Lady Essex III, a small ferry service I had arranged the day before with Gary, the skipper.

We sat on the quay in the sun, completely at ease with the world until I thought it might be a good idea to take a picture and Linda thought it would be a good idea to take a silly one – thanks, Linda!

The Lady Essex III would take five minutes to get us to the other side of the Crouch – to Burnham, where we were to meet Gerry and Margaret for lunch. When we met the skipper, he proved to be an imaginative character with imaginative ideas – ferry boat, taxi service, wildlife viewing and other various oars in various places. We chatted to him briefly as he took us over the Crouch to Burnham.

The Lord had gently nudged me to find out about the wildlife trips so I had picked up a leaflet in the Marina bar and found out that Gary was doing a trip on Saturday evening at 6 pm. The Lord continued to nudge me into pursuing this.

Meeting Gerry and Margaret at Burnham, we all concluded that this side of the river was very different from the Essex Marina side. At lunch, we discussed the possibility of going on the Saturday evening wildlife trip. Linda and Margaret couldn't do it, so Gerry and I agreed we would book two places. Gary seemed pleased when I phoned him to confirm.

After lunch, Linda and I made for the sea wall again and as we walked, we prayed for Gary's business. We felt we should pray for him to prosper and as soon as we finished, he phoned me back to say he'd forgotten something but dropped into the conversation that since I'd spoken to him at lunchtime, he'd had six phone calls booking for the Saturday evening trip. Wow, God!

This sea wall walk was glorious! We couldn’t have had better weather – warm, sun shining with a soft sea breeze. The view over the Crouch and Roach rivers was stunning and inland, the white corn waved in the breeze. It really is white, you know – although this picture was taken the week before in the dull weather, the corn head colour is clear.

We thanked the Lord for such a beautiful day, feeling rather like the lilies which don’t spin and yet are so reminiscent of God’s glorious kaleidoscope - jasper, sardis and emerald.

On then, towards Holliwell Farm and Monksale to meet the only footpath inland for another 6 miles. After walking through some difficult spots with nettles and long grass, along a path that had not been cleared for some time, we arrived on a gravelled road, which was later tarmacced. The flatness stretches for miles - a wild and lonely place, the only height being trees and the sea wall. The wooden boarded houses are upright (as you saw at Paglesham) with roofs sloped like the long low Dutch houses you often see. This one is a good example - a beautiful little cottage.

I love this land!

We had decided to do the big seawall walk to Bradwell Marshes on Monday despite the rainy forecast - with Gerry and Margaret in the car. If we complete that one, Gerry can join us on the National Trail towards St Peter’s on Tuesday.

The 'gentle' objective the Lord gave me to reach Bradwell by August Bank Holiday is almost achieved. Praise God!

Day 19 Yomping into Paglesham

2008-08-17T16:02:00.014+01:00

Okay, suffice it to say we both got very wet and cold on Wednesday! Here is a photo of me at the end of the storm, but bless God, look at the rainbow! Such a reminder of his faithful character! There is a better picture of it later on. That section was quite hard as the wind nearly blew us off our feet and the rain drops were like a million midges biting into our skin.

It didn’t help that I’d left my waterproof in the car so had little between me and the elements…but it's taught me not to do that again!

That section was also hard because there was a real sense of conflict at the confluence, where the two rivers joined (left) – we saw there had been a conflict on the land either between birds or animals as there were feathers and fluff all over the place. We prayed for peace and reconciliation at the confluence.

Walking on, however, we saw a flock of wild geese, an encouraging sign of the Holy Spirit's presence, who we’d been praying would be released over the county since the evening in Southend in July. (Sorry it's not a very good photo but they were about 1/4 of a mile away across the creek and my camera is not made for long distance!)

After the rain, we yomped on down Paglesham Creek, diverting to take the shorter route towards Paglesham Churchend (rather than going on round towards Lion's Wharf Creek) where we found ourselves in the prettiest little street you can imagine. Classic Essex whiteboard houses and Paglesham Church at the end, into which we popped to give and pray blessing for the vicar and his flock – some pictures are below.

Gerry and Margaret then arrived in a warmed-up car, bless ‘em and we soaked Gerry’s car seats all the way back to Romford where we picked up hot fish and chips to thaw us out of our frozen state!

Anyone reading this (or having done driving for walkers) will recognise what a blessing Gerry (right) has been to us with all the driving she has done. So, thanks Gerry! We love you too...

It isn't possible to walk in the way we have - around wild peninsulars with few roads - without a fully supportive servant-hearted driver and I'd just like to mention (low key) how much it has meant to us to have her serve us. That said, we're hoping to have her back to do a lot more walking herself from now on...

These are our projected walking dates for our next week:

Monday 18th August - Montsale to Tillingham & Bradwell Marsh
Tuesday 19th August - Bradwell Marsh to Bradwell Waterside
Wednesday 20th August - Bradwell Waterside to Ramsey Island
Thursday 21st August - Day of Rest (Heavy rain forecast all day)
Friday 22nd August - St Peter's & Maldon

We hope to reach St Peter’s church, the apostolic seat for Essex on Tuesday where we’ll pray, but will keep walking until Wednesday evening. On Friday, we’ll return to St Peter’s for a visit and then pick up where we left off on Wednesday and try and get as close to Maldon as we can.

The other side of the Jordan…

2008-08-17T13:00:00.005+01:00

At the end of our last week’s walking (31st July) the team took a break for a week for various personal reasons. I went on a Christian teacher training course with Christian Schools’ Trust and while I was away, was re-reading yet another(!) Brueggeman book - The Land. It describes the land as gift, promise and challenge to our faith and explores how the Israelites handled the gift, the promise and the challenge it brought. I felt the Lord asked me to read chapter four which describes crossing the Jordan. I felt it relevant to the place in which we, as the Body of Christ, find ourselves in and thus, was motivated to link it to my own walk, both literal and prophetic.

I have definitely moved across a boundary and am learning to live in a new place. I am no longer in a wilderness where God has fed and watered me. I am at the early stages of being at a place where I must ‘work’ to make the promised land produce. It is indeed a land flowing with milk and honey, a pleasant place, but it takes hard work to maintain it and the temptation in the midst of such work is to run after other gods. It’s much easier to run after other gods when we are tired and contending for fruit than when we are pushing for the boundary. The idols of this world (rewards) are much easier to run after in that situation than in the wilderness because in the wilderness, they don’t exist!

If the land (by which I mean destiny, fullness, completion) is given as a gift from God, it is a product of his grace. It is important that as a person under gift, I don’t forget his grace. It is a new way of living, a new consciousness. My involvement with Jesus requires me to be both with the fullness and with Jesus. They need to come together – one cannot be without the other.

The gifted land the other side of the Jordan is indeed the place of fulfilment but we must find the Lord anew there and cling to him so we don’t break covenant. It is not a safe place, this place of fulfilment. Once the euphoria is over and we are satisfied, we must keep listening for God’s word as without it we could lose both memory and identity. We need to keep listening and stay in celebration of his grace.

The ‘land fullness’ that we receive is a temptation – our new identity in fullness has a ‘seductive power’ and can itself draw us away from dependency on Jesus and covenant with God and his grace. Our memories help us to remember and prevent us being seduced into believing that this is how it will always be with fulfilment. We need to remember that the fullness is a gift from God and given by his grace.

Secondly, with this gift of fullness comes responsibility. It is important to recognise this and accept its weight. We partner with Jesus and his yoke is easy and his burden light, but it is still a yoke. Our modern Christian mindset is so often to reach fulfilment for ourselves and find our calling – the books point us that way – but when we reach it, we must accept its burden. Mostly, we lose sight of what it means through excitement about arriving in the land, so we rush about doing everything at once or we don’t listen to the call of the Lord to make him our strength, because in our initial zeal, we think we can do it on our own.

The memory of who we were helps us to resist the tendency to think this is how it will always be. If we seek fullness for the land too, rather than just ourselves, we cannot be complacent – we must keep after the Lord – it is after all, his gift and he can remove it. There is a multiplicity of needs to be met, so we need to choose our calling carefully as we grow up into the fullness the Lord desires for each of us. It is a place of covenant and requires stepping up to a high calling. Can we stay in the ‘fullness’ of our destiny and keep listening to God? Brueggeman calls it a bold question as yet unresolved. Some have done it but we all need to recognise we do it only by God’s grace and in no other way. The temptations abound – temptation to believe in ourselves, temptation to stop listening, temptation to be un-dependent upon God. It is perhaps because of this that many debate the readiness of the Body to move into her destiny.

Meditating on Brueggeman’s words suggests to me our protections are:

- To remember where we came from – the dependency of wilderness.
- Not to forget we came out of that wilderness; that our situation was not always one of fullness.
- To be willing, at the moment of fullness – at the very pinnacle of our destiny - to do what Jesus did and give it all away for God’s glory.
- To recall how and what God did for us in the place of un-fullness and un-fulfilment and how much we needed his grace then.

Can we, in the place of our own fullness, call more effectively for the land to break through? Perhaps. It is lazy of us to be too secure in our destiny; so secure we start to build something to our own glory and our own legacy. This life is not about us but about dwelling with God and being his people.

Unlike the Israelites, however, we live under a new covenant of grace – as we are this side of the cross. We are yoked, nevertheless, in that covenant to a life of sacrifice, responsibility and task as his people. We are also linked inextricably to the people of God – and it is our responsibility to work it out carefully and righteously with the correct degree of loving confrontation. I know I want to be always loving, if not always correct!

Our mandate is to do more than prophesy to the land – we must engage with the ‘Canaanites’ by being part of the exile as well as part of the solution. It is important we don’t avoid confrontation with the powers by staying only in the place of prayer. We entered the land with our confidence in the word released by the living God – he will not fail us. The prophetic has not always gone into the darkness experienced by those at the sharp end - sometimes it has, but not known why. Everything must cross this bridge - it is the bridge that leads to real fullness.

Once we enter the land, we don’t want to lose what we’ve gained and we must devise new methods of management and organisation for the new situation we find ourselves in. We no longer strive to enter the land but to walk in the fullness without forgetting how to listen to the Lord as we do so. It is a new place and a new way of being in it.

Days 15-18...Together again and more!

2008-08-16T13:33:00.027+01:00

Our last day this week, Thursday 31st July, started at the army encampment east of Shoebury. Linda had rejoined us bringing with her, Andy, her son, back from Toronto for a sabbatical. This is he and his mum by the side of the car at our first stop (top right).

One of our strong desires had been to walk on both The Broomway (across Maplin Sands) and Foulness Island but it's not as easy as you'd think, being a former MOD (now Qinetiq) site with live firing daily. I had tried two routes of contact, via the RSPB and through the local church - neither of which, in the end, provided a way in, but we are still praying about it. We decided therefore to walk the boundary around the mainland and even there, we had to use our Ordnance Survey map carefully, ensuring we didn't stray onto MOD land by mistake.

Having made the decision to remain on the mainland, we were still in territory once ruled with a rod of iron by Richard Rich, a former Lord Chancellor and Speaker of the House of Commons. He is recorded as 'a resolutely scheming, relentlessly bloodthirsty cad who seems to have delighted in wickedness for its own sake' (Southend Echo, 12.7.07) and unique for occupying both his posts of state at the same time. He was born in c.1496, dying in 1567 - therefore living through one of the most turbulent religious times in England's history. He qualified as a lawyer, using his position as King's commissioner to plunder abbeys and monasteries in Essex, despite being a lifelong Catholic. He found his way into the favour of Henry VIII and wilfully lied about Sir Thomas More at his trial to please the king. After Henry died, Rich persecuted both Catholics and Protestants depending upon which was out of favour. Not only did he persecute them, he enjoyed torture, according to the testimony of Anne Askew. His interest for us was his powerful ownership of more than 100 houses and land in Essex, especially around his home, Rochford Hall. This was the area into which we were heading next.

We had already visited the Rochford boundary as part of praying for Southend - South End being the southern part of lands held by Prittlewell Priory, which Rich plundered after the Dissolution for stone to build Rochford Hall.

This little church at Sutton Hall (right) sits juxtaposed to the boundary - a haven of holiness and peace and we prayed here for Southend.

Back to the present...starting at the active MOD site in East Shoeburyness, we headed out towards Great Wakering by road, past the red-marked 'Danger Area' stopping at Great Wakering church to pray. Down New Road we found Landwick Gate, where we prayed to be able to get on to Foulness, moving on across the stile to the sea wall at Fleet Head.

Joining the sea wall there, we checked our bearings carefully with both map and a birdwatcher (due to another 'Danger Area') as we headed towards Barling Marshes.

The creek scenery surrounded by marshland is really beautiful, except for the loud thumps and bangs from the firing range on Foulness, but we had a sinking sense of fear and abandonment within the land itself.

Andy, Linda and I all felt it, ploughing through it like fog, until finally we arrived at Barling Hall Farm, opposite Potton Island. Here is a selection of landscape pictures, some featuring us as we walked.

Mother and son...

Potton Creek

The seawall as it approaches Barling Marsh

Arriving safely at Barling Hall Farm, we discovered that farmers can also be fishermen who enjoy messing about in boats (this particular farmer seemed to have endless boats, large and small!) and we made our way out on the footpath past Barling Church to greet the others in the car and sit, with relief, by the roadside.

With perspiring feet, we stripped off our socks and boots as Gerry approached with a bottle of water. The Lord had already spoken to her about washing our feet and as we sat there on the grass verge, she poured cool water on our hot toes and prayed for our feet to 'take the land, little by little'.

Our last venture that day was on the return journey as we took Linda and Andy to visit Leigh Steps where Smith Wigglesworth had prayed and preached.

The steps are situated close to a church in the centre of Leigh and we prayed for Smith's anointing to be reawakened in this town and in our county.

Days 15-18 continued...a dream and some steps!

2008-08-16T11:58:00.006+01:00

I walked alone out of Southend along the sea wall on our third day - Linda was resting so Gerry and Margaret tracked me with the car. Here, to the left, you see the road before me out of Southend.

The night before, Tuesday 29th, Gerry had had a dream in which I walked alone along a gravel path. On my left hand she sensed something 'big' – not bad, but overwhelming in size. She also said that God told her in the dream 'this is bigger than you know'. So, this day, it seemed right I should walk alone to the east side of Shoeburyness – about five miles. I wasn't expecting it but as I walked God gave me an interpretation of the dream.

What I saw with my eyes on my right was the sea and on my left were houses and the land – a 'big' county! In the Spirit I saw that embedded among these houses and people, was the Body of Christ. Then he impressed upon me - a tiny tugboat can turn a great ship - it was so strong an impression I could see its 'shape' in the spirit realm - I certainly felt it as I put one foot in front of the other. I was overwhelmed but remembered the verse "I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me" (Ps 131.1) and trusted the Lord to work out whatever he wants to do.

Arriving at Uncle Tom's Cabin, I found the other two sharing cold coffee and dry cake, a poor reward for our efforts - but sharing what the Lord had showed me lifted our spirits. It was clear that despite the gay coloured flags, beachhuts and ice cream, not was all as it seemed. It was a poor place - sad for the people and the land. We prayed as we left, in a kind of numb helplessness for the people we had seen on the sands - three generations of a family clearly troubled by addictions and an old man, sick to his soul with a revolting cough - such pain, Lord!

I walked on, towards the old Garrison. I had no clue how to get across this section to the East Beach (my destination) but the Lord blessed me with a local dog walking lady who agreed to show me how to cross the fence onto the sea wall and thence into the garrison site.

Passing a few puzzled builders (they were rebuilding the sea wall - left), I found a huge site of 'done up' 18th century houses in military square. At any moment, I thought I might meet Lizzie Bennett or her sisters...as it was, I met a kind gardener who directed me again.

The Garrison site is a new middle class housing development where the former army church building has been taken over by the site marketing suite.

I prayed outside that the Lord would provide for them and leaving through the black iron gates, made my way on to the recreational East Beach (left) where I met Gerry and Margaret. They had driven to the furthest point they could before coming up against an active MOD camp which they obviously could not access. I was relieved to see them and we drove back via Leigh on Sea.

Our reason for returning via Leigh was that we had heard from Linda that Smith Wigglesworth had done much walking and preaching in the area - he often walked down from Hadleigh to Southend and frequently stopped at Leigh Steps.

He would sit on the top step and wait for tired people to get to the top and pause. He would then talk to them about the Lord and sometimes even preach! We wanted to find these steps and pray there. And we did!

Here they are (right)...not a few minutes from Leigh High Street in the one way system...but that's another story!

Days 15-18: 28th -31st July Benfleet to Barling Hall Farm, Barling

2008-08-02T15:34:00.024+01:00

It would be so easy to jump straight into writing about what took place these last four days as we walked the 26 miles between Benfleet Station and Barling Hall Farm (and I will do it later, I promise) but first…in light of my last posting on memories, I want to go back a couple of weeks to a hot tense Friday evening in Southend when a song of praise erupted as a prophetic minstrel - Godfrey B - embedded a radical idea in our minds.

The radical idea was memory too – that of the wild goose as the Celtic church’s symbol of Holy Spirit. The call was a honking song that rose up and flew over the town and the land, calling all wild geese to rise and join the arrow as it sped across the Land of the East Saxons. The minstrel, a seasoned traveller in these islands, had brought his guitar to sing over us; creating something new in the spirit realm – calling the church back to the ancient apostolic path our little team are walking through our county. Some there had little thought other than it was a rousing song but it resonated deeply within many as the minstrel took us out over the edge of the land, wheeling and gliding on the warmth of God's thermals. With nothing beneath us, we soared in the heavenlies, picturing perhaps for the first time what it must have been like for the ancient Celts as they spoke the word of the Lord and witnessed the resurrection power released by Jesus. Yay, Abba! How many of us have this as our reality? We do call for this in Essex, Lord.

Four solid days is a long time to walk the land for rather unfit middle-aged women...but the Lord knows - I woke up on Sunday morning with a song in my heart for our first day:

I wanna see Jesus lifted high,

A banner that flies across this land

That all men might see the truth and know

He is the way to heaven!

Step by step we're moving forward

Little by little we're taking ground

Every prayer a powerful weapon

Strongholds come tumbling down and down and down...

It was a unique experience to sing this at a watchtower and strategic stronghold for the south east of England - one that had actually tumbled down! Bless Mick S for providing music - he's another prophetic minstrel who can create songs without words and let our spirits rise free and strong. He strummed on his guitar weaving in and out of our group like a wandering pilgrim, making a sweet sound for the Lord and the picnickers who watched us with curious smiles.

Again, the Salvation Army's Mount Zion hosted us for lunch at Table 1 (left) - bless them for providing such a haven in such excessive heat - 30 degrees! We had been joined by one or two Turn of the Tiders, part of prayer network along the South Essex coast. Tim, Gary and Roy stood in the heat with us to worship. Thanks guys! Ruth and Kathy had come (respectively) from Southend and Grays to walk to the boundary of Castle Point (Avril's territory).

Sweating our way to Leigh on Sea later, we were glad it was downhill all the way until we came across a single Mulberry tree, drooping and laden with sweet ripe fruit that Avril ate until her hands were red. I remembered the mulberry trees in 2 Samuel 5.24 and wondered if the Lord was saying the timing was now right to retry walking Vange Marshes...

Avril had to scamper a bit to catch up with us as we forged into Leigh Town and towards the Southend seafront, awash with holidaymakers and chips, ice creams and Police Community Support Officers until we reached the massive obelisk that marks the boundary between the Port of London Authority and the Thames Estuary - the Crowstone (right).

Its twin - the London Stone - sits in Kentish mud the other side of the estuary. Standing muddily at this huge boundary marker, we were blessed as we left Castle Point and blessed as we entered Southend. Our first day's walking ended there.

The second began where the first ended, as Linda and I paced the longest pleasure pier in the world - 1.5 miles out and 1.5 miles back - (left) while Gerry and Margaret rode the train.

The pier tea room proved strategic in more ways than one as we realised(!) that the Lord had co-ordinated everything. He had asked me to bring salt to the pier's end. He had told Linda to 'establish and decree' over the town. The day before, as I packed my rucksack, my eye had fallen on a list of scriptures by David V, one of which the Lord highlighted to me. It was 2 Kings 2.19-22 - again! As I poured salt out of a new cup into the estuary waters, we again declared this scripture, establishing and decreeing a healing of the waters of Southend.

After visiting several other sites in the district, we finished at the Kursaal (German for 'cure hall') establishing and decreeing 'a place of healing'. We asked God for a sign that Southend was shifting and the following day, an evening BBC News report featured a council representative standing on the pier declaring 'renewal' for the town and pier. Again, I say, Yay Abba! Now we look for things to happen.

More to follow...

Day 11: Unfinished business, memories...and Essex buttercups!

2008-07-07T18:25:00.007+01:00

Approaching our next walk on Friday 13th June, we were aware we had, at our back, unfinished business. However, we must hold this business for later as we move on. Starting this day’s report with Brueggeman (my favourite author at the moment) seems apposite:

“It is the wind of God which creates a new future. That wind is beyond any resistance from the empire or anyone else. Passionate ministry is to be able to stand in the ‘null point’ and to speak a new world and a new city against the despair of the exile.”

On 13th June therefore, Gerry, Linda and I meandered from Pitsea Station to Benfleet in bright sunshine along easy paths through fields full of horses and buttercups – a gloriously quiet day in the Essex countryside. I was reminded of how the land reflects its creator. God shared his presence – we had lost the path at one point and no sooner had I uttered the words asking the Lord for angelic help than a little lady popped out of her house in her fluffy pink slippers asking if we were walking? We’d missed the path, she said, where it slipped behind the edge of the houses and we needed to turn back and turn in. What a blessing to recover our confidence after the last outing! Tracking back for a second to those darker moments, my perspective remains similar to that on the day. That’s encouraging as it confirms our discernment about what occurred. Now we wait for the marching in the tops of the balsam trees (2 Sam 5.24) to break up the ground and get at the roots.

Back to Brueggeman…'what God does is never controlled by the status quo.' In the midst of the Roman empire, God sent John the Baptist to a people in captivity. John prepared the way for the Bridegroom. He understood he was to die, as Paul understood he was to die, as Jesus knew he was to die, and as the prophetic church must understand it is to die that we live. God’s ways are not our ways. We walk therefore to die? Perhaps. We also walk to see life come. If we were just doing it for enjoyment it would be enough but to call for life in God to come – brilliant use of time!

That morning, at Benfleet Station, four of us broke bread and prayed for Avril who has stood in the gap before the Lord and wept for Canvey Island for years. Kathy had received an encouraging word from the Lord that morning for the watch-people and intercessors, which she delivered to Avril as we prayed.

Slogging through long grass on the Canvey Island northern sea wall was, for me a joy, despite the slow-moving adder who crossed our path as we trudged towards Shell Haven. Gerry had gone off in the car to do a recce and Avril, Kathy and I plodded on despite the fence and a multiplicity of young heifers and bullocks! (Is that the collective noun for them?) Our objective was the Lobster Smack pub, one of the oldest surviving buildings on the island and very cheap! Gerry was to meet us there.

Gerry was a woman on a mission – she had found a picture on the internet of a sculpture depicting Canvey Island held in a hand and she was determined to find it. She did. It was at the centre of a garden of remembrance for those who died in the 1952/3 flood. The hand itself was rising from the sea as you can see here.

We broke bread and pleaded the blood of Jesus over the death and destruction from 1952 as Avril wept for the people. We poured the rest of the wine into the iron water from which the hand arose declaring that the island was held in the hands of Jesus and no other.

The sea wall helps to create a deception that all is well on the island – but floods could easily come again. Houses are cheaper because of the danger but the danger is denied because houses are cheap. A Spring surge tide, the North Sea and storms are a dangerous combination for Canvey Island. The island suffers under real death too – five of Avril’s former colleagues, church leaders and friends had suffered early death and many others had given up and left. One such, Jane G, had recently been hospitalised with a serious illness - possibly pneumonia but possibly not – it was something of a mystery. We had all been praying for her healing and walked inland to her church and prayed for her there – a powerful time as we broke bread and stood in unity together with her and her people. (She is now recovering well.)

Two days together are unusual for us and I was hugely enjoying myself. Gerry could not be with us the following day, but Linda H and a young friend, Morris P from Bangalore joined us. Our walk started this day at the garden of remembrance where again, we stood in unity over bread and wine. Walking on we touched the headland and found wooden Roman ruins (from the days when salt had been harvested for the soldiers’ pay in Colchester). Long abandoned now, we stood watching the tide lapping in on the marshland. Striding on through another country park and leisure area, we found our way to the sea wall again, arriving at last at Avril’s former work territory of Castle View (under the view of Hadleigh Castle across the creek - see right.)

Castle View School had been created as an environmentally-friendly experiment that went wrong – small windows let in little light, no one could wear contact lenses because of the air conditioning and children became aggressive. It will soon be knocked down and the school relocated in the centre of town. Prayer for the young people to be free brought forth more tears and we poured wine and oil on the land for its cleansing and healing. Our day ended at Hadleigh Castle Tea Room where we were joined by Avril’s husband, Andrew.

“The poet is to be feared by the empire as he writes the subversive melody of the people of God”. Poetry is provocative as walking is ambulatory. To walk the land is like a poem – it subverts the static, bringing mobility and movement. If our walk around the Essex boundaries is to do anything, it is to call for things to shift. When something shifts, it causes quakes to occur. When tectonic plates shift, the whole world is about movement. Movement is a word that is sprinkled liberally today but we, who hold the creative in our spirits, must be careful what we ask the Lord to shift. God will move and it will change things.

So, the walk is becoming like a poem. Walking with the Lord is analogous to poetry – imagine the flow as Jesus walked! I think of rhetoric and metaphor, repetition and alliteration – the rhymes in his parables. The Hebrews, a people of puns and wordplay, would have so loved his humour and rhymes. The walk has been like that – moments of high drama and quiet solitude; of times when deep connections have been made that will not easily be broken. Events of humour and fun encased with serious pain felt and expressed.

It might be possible one day to write a poem about it – what would God say? How else will I remember what happened? Brueggeman suggests that “memories throw light on the new things God is doing.” So, tapping into memories are crucial as we walk. It is not enough to step along the ancient path. As people walking it anew, we remember so that we can see the new and recognise it. Poetry can help with this as it compresses words into a different language flow. A few lines connected to our walk exist:

Where you go, I'll go

What you say I'll say, Lord

Brian & Jenn Johnson

Not written for us, but apropos all the same. Prayerwalking is also an act of praise – against the status quo, the ‘what is’ – we walk to express prophetically what is possible. For those in hopelessness, this is hopeful. For those who don’t know they are part of the ‘imperial’ scenario, we sing a walking doxology of the ability in God to move, shift and change things. We hope to be, and are, subversive, against the empire – we speak that doxology of praise as we walk, breaking fetters and chains. Being truly subversive is often unpopular but subversion is necessary where the empire attempts to define reality. The dominant voices in our culture are defining reality and the result is despair. As we walk, we call for the new thing – the poetry of Second Isaiah hums and vibrates in our hearts.

Sing, O barren woman, you who never bore a child
Burst into song, shout for joy, you who were never in labour
Because more are the children of the desolate woman
Than of her who has a husband.

Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide,
Do not hold back!
Lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes.
For you will spread out to the right and left,
Your descendants will dispossess nations and settle in their desolate cities.

Is the Lord calling for and creating something new in South Essex? Will the people of God embrace it, work with it and allow it to be released and soak in? All the work we do in the heavenlies needs expression on the earth:

Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven?

All that Jesus did was earthed and he died on the earth – he went under the earth and rose through the earth to sit at the right hand of the Father “taking captives in his train” (Eph 4.8). Who and what are our captives as we walk? We long to see salvations, healings and miracles on this land – we remember how it was in Acts and it spurs us on.

We, the poor in Spirit, the unrecognised, are the ones with the future and Second Isaiah’s words echo down the generations…

Days 9 & 10: Monday 26th & Tueday 27th May 2008

2008-05-28T16:21:00.021+01:00

Imagination vs Reality?

How is it possible to describe the last two days? I have written a lot recently about imagination and how God uses it but the reality of walking the land and finding truth outweighs by far the imagination’s picture of what can be found. Without the Holy Spirit's help, it would not be possible to explain our experiences. We – as a team – are slowly coming to terms with what the Holy Spirit has showed us. Our precious friend Tim H was not with us on this walk and how we missed him and the others who have walked with us.

However, let me tell the story of the first day. When praying over the map on Friday last, the Holy Spirit impressed on me strongly to visit the local high place (Hadleigh Castle) and a local country park called Wat Tyler Country Park. Wat Tyler Park sits alongside a creek with three names adjacent to Vange Marshes and seems to face towards South Essex. To my eyes, it was shaped on the map like a mouth speaking over the South Essex area.

We planned to walk from Stanford to Pitsea on Monday 26th May and visit both castle and park on Tuesday 27th. At the last minute though, due to heavy rain and severe winds blasting across our countryside, we agreed to do the visits on Monday and walk on Tuesday in better weather.

On Monday 26th May, when visiting Hadleigh Castle, our first stop, we met up with Avril BB, a local intercessor with an encyclopaedic knowledge of her area and people. When we got to the castle, we found that General Booth had been there one hundred years before us, and founded a ministry alongside it to support and train young people – praise God for the Salvation Army. To our delight the ministry includes a tea room and rare breeds farm which is well worth a visit.

Avril filled us in on local happenings and some spiritual history. Hadleigh Castle itself is now owned by English Heritage and as we ascended the hill, we were nearly blown over by the force of the wind. After some prayer and discussion, we felt there was a link with sacrifice but that the significance of the land was as a watchtower and we spent some time orienting ourselves and what we could see – Canvey Island below, the water tower on the next hill, Southend in the distance and Shell Haven to the west.

Moving on, we drove back towards Stanford le Hope to visit Wat Tyler Country Park. A little history is that Walter Tyler was the Kentish leader of the Peasant’s Revolt in 1381. This occurred following the Black Death of 1349 which killed one third of the UK population. In Essex the statutes against labourers charging more for their services were severely enforced by the lords of the land.

“The smouldering unrest flared into open rebellion over the poll tax imposed by the government to raise money for war against France. The revolt began in Essex on 30th May 1381 (627 years ago this week) when villages from Fobbing, Corringham and Stanford-le-Hope savagely attacked the king’s commissioner who came to Brentwood to revise the tax returns. The rising spread rapidly and rioting occurred all over the county, the rebels making sure they burnt the court records of their villeinage. Then there was a general movement towards London, where they joined Wat Tyler and the Kent rebels, entering the city on 13th June. The rebels met with the boy king, Richard II, who made promises of the end of servitude and trade restrictions.” (pp 40-1, A History of Essex, A C Edwards)

Walter Tyler was, however, attacked by the Lord Mayor of London, Sir William Walworth and later murdered on his orders. King Richard’s promises proved worthless and he marched with an army into Essex, reaching Chelmsford on 2nd July 1381, revoking all agreements. Despite two more risings in Essex and 500 people slain, order was eventually restored.

We were intensely aware of a sense of rebellion rising up from the land as we approached Wat Tyler park but on arrival, the park seemed rather deserted and quiet. Through a divine appointment with the park manager, we discovered what the Lord wanted to reveal. Now, let me backtrack a little.

On the way to Wat Tyler Park, in the car, I had been talking of a story I had read in London’s Forest by P J S Perceval. I could not remember the details fully then but now I quote:

“Certain lands were held of the Dean and Chapter of St Paul’s (Cathedral) by the annual service of supplying the deer used at the Feasts of the Apostle St Paul. In the 14th century, the lordship of West Lee was so held by Sir William de Baud of Corringham, not far from Canvey Island. The De Baud family provided annually a buck on June 29 and a doe on January 25 (both for Christian festivals). The delivery of the animals at the back of the cathedral occasioned a ceremony suggestive of the ritual of ancient mythology. According to Dugdale (another historian), the Dean and Chapter ‘apparelled in copes and proper vestments, with garlands of roses on their heads’ awaited the deer which was carried in procession to the steps of the high altar. The head was then separated from the body but whether decapitation took place in ancient sacrificial manner is not recorded. The carcase was straightaway sent to the kitchens to be baked, while the antlered head was affixed to a pole and borne aloft before the cross, in procession round the cathedral and out at the west door; where, standing amidst the bedecked priests, the keeper who had brought the deer sounded the “death” on his horn. Others stationed about the city, answered with their horns and the ceremony came to an end.”

The representatives of the De Baud family from Corringham were paid for the buck and this practice went on until the reign of Elizabeth 1. The writer (Camden) suggests it was perhaps a survival of the ceremony which was enacted in the Temple of Diana that formerly occupied the site of St Paul’s and that the owners of the same land were obliged to furnish the deer required for the sacrifice.

The first words out of the park manager’s mouth were ‘Do you want to see the sculpture trail?’ When we asked what this was, we were told we should go and see the totem poles and the giant deer’s head in the water feature. At this point, we realised the Lord had clearly sent us there and so after obtaining a map and instructions about the route, we regrouped and prayed at the entrance.

Our first stop was what we called the cage – a giant metal tin can surrounded by bars and featuring words in sentences written backwards. I was really uncomfortable with anyone reading those words as I felt it was what we were meant to do – so we didn’t!

After praying, one of the team shouted ‘Jesus is Lord’ three times into the tin can and we prayed protection for all the children, past, present and future, who might play around it. The cage naturally speaks of entrapment. It is possible that speaking the words ‘entraps’ a person into the spiritual mesh (mess) here.

It also reminded me of a ‘henge’ in which it is often the case that the roots are in the underworld while what is on top is on the earth. Henges form spiritual doorways into another dimension and are often intended to draw spirtual forces through this doorway encouraging them to manifest.

Next were the totems – and totems they certainly were! Totem is an Algonquin (Red Indian) word meaning ‘inanimate thing regarded and venerated as an outward symbol of an existing intimate unseen relation”. These were outward symbols of the spirits listed below.

Looking at the faces, of which I can only show you a couple on this blog, they represented hopelessness, despair, fear, religiosity, pride, shame & desperation. The right hand one we discerned as despair and the middle one as shame.

We cut them off at the legs spiritually (as again they were rooted in the ground) and prayed the blood of Jesus over them. We were shocked at the overt nature of these things and surprised anyone would want them there.

Next, we found the giant deer head and below is a picture of it, sitting in water close to one of two ‘satellite dishes’ that are so designed as to magnify the sound of spoken words.

We were not surprised that the deer head faces towards the Thames estuary, over Canvey Island.

Interestingly, we have since discovered that the white hart was the emblem of Richard II, the king involved in the Peasant’s Revolt. It is also well known that the deer is an attribute to the spiritual principality that has manifested as the Roman goddess Diana, formerly worshipped on the site of St Paul’s Cathedral. However, this type of worship goes back much further into prehistory when goddess worship was more widespread. The so-called ‘Great Goddess’ (which later manifested as Diana (Roman), Artemis (Greek), Isis (Egyptian)) had multiple other manifestations often associated with a deer. (See little picture to left here). Following further research, the team and I are convinced the appearance of this decapitated deer head, combined with whispering satellites in such a location, is not an accident, particularly given the presence of a whispering gallery in St Paul’s Cathedral in London. The Roman goddess Diana was supposed to ‘whisper words of guidance in the ears of her followers’ so there is another definite link here with the principality that calls itself a goddess.

Two of us read scriptures into the satellite dishes declaring who Jesus is and the others stood the other end and said Amen! We read from John 1.1ff - In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning and from Colossians 1.15ff – He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created; things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

The deer head appears later, on a pole, exactly as in the St Paul's story, in a small spiritually-landscaped garden at the back of the manager’s office (see picture). After the giant deer’s head in water, we came across a variety of unpleasant sculptures – a cockroach-like thing, an altar (possibly intended as a phallic symbol) in line with Corringham Church tower and just about lined up with the water tower we had seen from Hadleigh Castle. The altar had been partially knocked down and we prayed around it and cut off its power connection with Corringham Church.

Through another divine appointment with a local dog walker, we found a glade in the forest that was well hidden but quite uncanny. As soon as I walked in I felt sick – really sick as if I wanted to vomit. I can feel it again now as I write. This is what we saw.

Why did I have such a strong reaction? I believe I sensed the spiritual forces at work here and that this is a place where evil lurks. Locals call this glade "the graveyard". They may be right - it is like entering a place of spiritual death. It was guarded by three wooden watchers on the high ground. We discerned the red statues were the central ring forming a henge line which led out of the glade. Others were guards or watchers of the red ones and would soon become red ones.

We followed the red henge line which led to a spiritual garden a little way further on.

Some pictures from this are below and right but there was a living henge made of willow, some sculpted acorns that looked like giant eggs and a second black statue. This black statue (on the right) was in the disabled garden as a sensory object. It’s my belief it represents 'the crone', one of Hecate’s three faces. Hecate was another goddess manifestation of this principality - the goddess of the underworld with authority over the 'keys of Hades'. This principality competes with Christ for the keys of death and of Hades (Rev 1.18). However, the bible says that 'Christ has lordship over the cosmic powers which he has taken captive in his train' (Ps 68.18 & Eph 4.8-10).

The other image was the wall picture below right – a symbol often found where the principality lurks. This was quite well hidden at the back and we nearly missed it. This needs a bit more research which we are doing. However, it seems to show the sun's face shining down on a very dour farmer who is washing out a cloth in a bucket full of water. I have seen something similar before so will be following that up.

So, it’s clear to the team at least that the Lord has opened our eyes to see something of what is operating over our area. If this park is like a mouth speaking over South Essex, what is it saying and why? We are privileged to have been given this revelation and we need to pray for insight as to the Lord’s heart on what he wants his people in Essex to do.

An incomplete journey...

I stopped the above report after outlining our visit to Wat Tyler Country Park. To be honest, it was a rather overwhelming two days – the second day almost worse than the first. Much happened on Monday 28th May – if you’ve read the above, you will understand.

I had planned the Tuesday walk over Vange Marshes quite carefully. According to the Ordnance Survey map, there were two paths crossing the Marshes and we intended to take the shorter one. We had no trouble walking from Stanford-le-Hope to Fobbing Church, having lunch in the church gardens. However, as soon as I sat down to eat, I experienced stabbing stomach pains – a foretaste of the spiritual atmosphere?

Sure enough, as soon as we set foot onto Vange Marsh, we lost our way in confusion. The upshot was that after several hours of hot walking, confronting about ten scary bullocks, several confusing stiles, two lakes and a crossroads, as well as stubble that spat sharply at us, we were blocked by a large stinging-nettle and water-filled ditch about ten feet wide and six feet deep. It should not have been there and we could not cross it.

At this point, we sensed the blockage was not only in the natural and so, retracing our steps, left the marsh by the only exit available - Marsh Lane. It was uphill all the way so Linda and I praised God the whole mile-long lane as Gerry and Avril tracked behind. From there, we walked down the even longer road into Pitsea. Another rather overwhelming – and disappointing - day!

Remembering the research connections we had made the previous day between the deer head and its decapitation in St Paul’s Cathedral (formerly an Isis-site) and the whole area of Corringham and Fobbing, we felt the land was defiled by both this votive offering and that some of that had come through in the Peasant’s Revolt – even though we understood the pain the peasants of that time laboured under. Additionally, the juxtaposition of the waters was significant remembering Jeremiah 51.13.

In Leviticus 18.28 it says

“And if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you.”

The team felt this was what had happened to us but in reverse. The presence of God in us through the Holy Spirit had caused the defiled land itself to vomit us out. On reflection afterwards, I felt there was an ‘suppurating wound’ in the soil and that it must not be left like this – we plan to return to this spot to do some further prayer walking according to God’s timing and leading.

Looking forward to an ancient path

2008-05-09T19:18:00.004+01:00

In seeking to find the Lord’s heart for and in, the many aspects of walking, I found him revealing insights that are overwhelming. Taking time out to reflect on these is crucial – long sessions of thinking through. This blog now forms a part of that.

Martin Scott talks of a ‘sensitivity’ during and after events that enables us to reflect on what has taken place as a key to understanding the leading of the Spirit. Sharon Stone has suggested that our understanding (as well as our hearts) must be aligned with God so we can partner with him to a greater depth. I have found both these factors to be crucial. So, I’ve been asking the Lord to expand me in every area so my sensitivity and ability to understand increases. This is so that I can better receive, interpret and orientate what I do to be in alignment with him.

One way, of course, is to spend time soaking in his presence rather than being elsewhere – we see and understand by revelation so much more when in his presence. We are people of the ‘now’ and finding time to reflect in this way can mean a fasted lifestyle in a way we are not used to – a denial of our preferences and ‘zones of me’. I also begin to see how vital it is to remain hidden and move only by the Spirit. I can see now why the Lord didn’t want me to set a walking schedule – because he wanted us to move or not move depending upon him. If I write out any kind of structure for the walking, I cannot be led by the Spirit!

Our heart’s desire is that our walking to be distinguished and honoured by your presence Lord. It’s only by your presence that people will know that this walk around the county is different from any other. Unknown people walking an unknown track that leads to an unknown place with no reward other than to find or bring God’s presence – this must be the heart of any walk for God. Power is not the answer; profile is not the answer; centrality brings empire.

Firstly, I want to listen for the rhythms of grace, hope, truth, life and freedom that connect heaven and earth. We want to open portals to heaven as we walk led by the Spirit of God. As I prayed into this, I felt the Lord whisper that we must pray over each section before going there – and seek his revelation for the next stage. This is something of a turnabout in strategy, as we were previously walking to a place and then praying for revelation. Now we must pray first and then walk along the path the Lord has shown us.

Jeremiah 6.16 could be perceived as an obvious verse to pursue for this next stage but it holds a special meaning for us:

This is what the Lord says:
“Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths.
Ask where the good way is and walk in it,
And you will find rest for your souls.”
But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’

The word ‘ancient’ here does not mean just historical – it means ‘everlasting’ or ‘eternal’. Our sense as we prayed (see photo) was that we walk both an eternal and ancient path, following in Cedd's footsteps, directed by the Spirit as he was.

This is because we now walk towards Bradwell – an apostolic place for our county. It was always a liminal place – somewhere isolated, even then, situated at the margins (as Martin would say). Cedd, brother to Chad and a student of Aidan of Lindisfarne, settled his apostolic HQ there when this was still the Land of the East Saxons. It’s also true that in walking towards Bradwell, we walk an old well-trodden path - I could easily believe that Cedd walked this path several times, from Chad’s Well to his little church on the coast.

Secondly, living at the margins is not ‘a big picture thing’ or an idea just to be talked about. For each of us, it is necessary in our everyday lives. The peregrinati understood this. The ancient (eternal) path they walked was one of denial, self-discipline, fasting and service.

There is that in me that screams for the marginal liminal places – and the richness of the Spirit that comes from that is our sustenance. To share fully with Jesus, we must walk the same road. We so need training in this – how to do it, how to do it persistently and perseveringly and lovingly. It’s easy to write it but not so easy to do.

We are immediately tapping into the truth that, in our land, we are with the Israelites in lacking understanding and forgetting how the Spirit wants us to live. We so often live, not joined to the spirit, but joined to our little idols of sameness and no risk. We remain dull in our existence, without hope to energise us, as the Israelites were when Jeremiah was first called. But the Lord remembered the devotion of their youth, their fire for him, and how he was loved and followed hungrily through the desert by them.

“I remember the devotion of your youth; how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the desert, through a land not sown.” His lament follows: “What fault did your fathers find in me that they strayed so far from me? They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves.”

The land became defiled because the law dealers did not know the Lord, the leaders rebelled against him and the prophets prophesied by baal – every level of society was against God. It is entirely the point that Jerusalem forgot the Lord and did not even commemorate what had happened. Again, imagination plays a role as the Lord imagines the people returning to him (vs 21-25) and encourages them to return to him (Ch 4). As the watchman (Jer 1.11), Jeremiah sees clearly what is happening. His heart is in agony. The Lord speaks but is not heard (vs 10-11) – only Jeremiah understands the signs.

As watchmen, walking (Is 62.4 & 6) across our land, do we understand how the Lord looks at this land of the East Saxons? We are only a little way in and yet the sense of the Lord with us is strong. We walk within and without history; within the ancient paths, observing what has been done to honour God and what has not; and without honour but with the opportunity to bring a different spirit.

As I write these words, events occur that cause me to experience afresh what it means to live among the ignorant and disenfranchised. Those without a voice, who live with little dignity, are all around me. It is an encouragement that when I see these things, I know I value kindness, goodness and gentleness above material possessions. We need to learn afresh to value silence over noise, wisdom over education and experience over knowledge. I would rather dwell among those who have nothing but faithfulness and integrity; who are even mocked and scorned and suffer for doing good than among the ones who are arrogant and disobedient. It is often when our hearts are broken that we recognise what is really important. When all else is stripped away – beauty, youth, aspiration or even relationship – we realise that nothing and no one can replace the love of Jesus in our hearts.

How high, how wide, how deep is his love for us – energising and bringing hope.

Before I finish I must write about today's walk - Friday 9th May 2008. A small group of us (five in all) walked from Coalhouse Fort to Stanford-le-Hope. Our highlights today were twofold - the weather, which was wonderful, especially along the river and secondly, the Lord's ability to link us with key people in the towns through which we passed.

Before we left, we were privileged to pray with and for a gentle and stalwart man of God (Bob) at Coalhouse Fort. We were touched by his humility and grace. With him was a woman of God (Rosemary) who encouraged us greatly in our prayers.

Walking along the Thames sea wall, later, enjoying the sunshine, we were nevertheless acutely aware of the poverty of spirit that the precious people of Tilbury and Thurrock experience. Their land and their heritage has been 'dumped on' by London for centuries. Our prayers near the end of the sea wall encompassed seeking redemption for the land (its redemptive gift is to be a place of deposit, currently one of rubbish, but this land could be a well of the water of life!) and for the people - so downtrodden and rejected. We honour Tim, a local prayer warrior (among other things) who encourages and serves at great cost.

Walking from Mucking Church through Stanford Warren nature reserve towards the point of the River Thames called The Hope was delightful and so was meeting the doughty Anglican minister of Stanford-le-hope, John. Again, a true man of God with the roar of a lion simmering in the timbre of his voice. He invited us to ascend the church tower and once there, blew his shofar after which we declared,

Let God arise!
And his enemies be scattered...

As we left and returned home, I was aware how we are hearing the cry of the land through the Body of Christ.

We are the people who feel the anguish and cry out in mourning like Jeremiah, but who, like Jeremiah, have eternal hope. With confidence we can say that God is raising up people who can walk the eternal paths and pray. The Body of Christ are those who can renew ancient covenants and re-dig wells of living water - people whom God has anointed for this season.

Reflections (a little way in) Part 2

2008-05-03T13:12:00.003+01:00

Several people have asked what motivated me to start walking and I hope I’ve already explained a little about that. However, there is more that touches me in a deeper place and I hope, as I try and explain it, it touches you too.

Again, Walter Brueggeman’s marvellous writings are to the fore for me in explaining some of the Bible’s perspectives on land. This is a big claim to make but I believe, justified. I last read his book The Land in November 2005 (Oh dear! Yes, I do keep track) and I’m afraid some of the more subtle theological arguments went over my head then, but that said, I consumed the book. I've emboldened that word 'consumed' because I couldn’t read it quickly enough and yet, wanted to devour and savour every word.

One of his key passages relates to how God stands with the poor against those who seek to take the land from them. It is in this spirit somehow that I seek to identify with the land as I walk – poor with the poor – bringing nothing but wanting to give all. The challenge for me is to learn to do that – to give all and give it all the time. The land itself becomes a gift when we covenant with God to follow his restructuring of our relationship with it. We see that in the story of Joshua and Caleb who recognised the land as a gift from God 40 years ahead of their generation. We can 'take possession' (Heb. nahal) of the land - take it little by little (Ex 23.29) and the Lord will establish our borders (Ex 23.31) - there is so much in these few words to understand about occupying the land.

I am still learning how that works in our day and age and learning to conquer the feelings of inadequacy that keep rising up. The words "I will not drive them out in a single year...but...little by little" is one of the reasons for walking slowly. I am praying for the Spirit of God to release revelation about the gifting and occupying aspects of the land as we do that.

Brueggeman says

“A new word is spoken that redefines the relation of people and the land in which they already sojourn. That is what God does. He speaks to restructure the relation of land and people. What had been threat becomes promise. What had been coveted becomes gifted.”

I almost think I’d like to go back to the start of the walk and do it all again(!) but we must push on, learning as we go. And as we do so, let’s gift ourselves to the places we pass through. Jesus did not stint at giving himself because he knew to whom and where the Father was sending him and that he might not pass that way again.

Reflections (a little way in) Part 1

2008-05-03T13:02:00.004+01:00

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 released 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.

Day 3 (9.2.08) Stratford Station to Barking Abbey

2008-04-01T17:49:00.033+01:00

To my delight, my son Rob (right) wanted to walk the whole day on this prayerwalk so we set off together on a cold but refreshing day - about 8 miles altogether! We were walking down the A112 from Stratford towards the Thames and then north to Barking Abbey along the Creek.

On the left here is the Greenway track - attractive but not an option this time. It comes up later on as you'll see.

So, squaring our cold shoulders and cheeks against the freezing wind, we headed towards the Royal Docks down Prince Regent Lane to the station. As we reached it, the wind blasted us again - the open water between us and the City Airport making us much colder than before.

I could sense this would be a bit of a battle and it was. The aeroplane noise was tremendously powerful and we walked as fast as we could to reach shelter. We were heading east for the landmark Beckton pumping station at the end of Custom House Road to then turn north towards Barking Creek. Unfortunately, we couldn't walk north at all - the road was blocked so we had to hop a train to go the one stop to Beckton and then turn east again towards Barking Abbey. Coming out of Beckton Station on to Woolwich Manor Way, things got a bit confusing.

Despite this, I found Beckton quite a pleasant, upbeat and regenerated place, with allotments and nice houses so we prayed blessing and walked on. By now our feet were a little sore and we were quite hungry! But we pushed on towards the Greenway, hoping to cut across a large part of the area direct to Barking Abbey. It didn't work out quite like that as the Greenway stopped in the middle of Beckton and despite the map, didn't continue to Barking.

The right hand photo is of Rob at the other end of the

Greenway. You can see it's become a little dilapidated although many cyclists still use it in the summer.

At this point, we needed an angelic encounter because we were becoming lost - after this exit point, the path wound around and around and not only did we lose our sense of direction, we couldn't see anything due to high trees. So we prayed and God came through. A couple of German(!) cycle tourists turned up and explained how to get back to the main road we needed.

After paying a visit to the McDonalds there, we pushed on seeking our way out of the paths to Barking Abbey. After some more prayer, the Lord led us to a rubbishy tatty hidden path that ended in Jenkins Lane, the original road we had thought would take us to Barking Abbey - a totally God-arranged appointment because even with map and compass, there was no doubt we were still lost.

Jenkins Lane is an original old road running along the edge of East Ham just to the left of the A1020 (later the A406) and alongside the sewage works. The Lord led us directly to the only footbridge that crosses that road into Barking and without realising it, had taken us right alongside the Creek - all the way up.

The photo to the left here is the single footbridge that crosses the A13 below.

The photo to the right is the A13 as it goes off into Essex.

Below is the sluice gate at Barking Creek. I believe it also acts as a floodgate. These are essential around the Thames and at the moment, many are being repaired due to fear of the Thames flooding. I encountered many floodgates as I did later walks along the Thames into Essex.

You can see some of the old trawlers on Barking Creek. It used to be one of the largest fishing ports in Southern England and a local man, called Samuel Hewett, born in 1797, founded the Short Blue Fleet (England's biggest fishing fleet) based in Barking, and using smacks out of Barking and east coast ports.

Short Blue Fleet used gaff ketches which stayed out at sea for months, using ice for preservation of fish. I believe he was the first man to use ice for freezing fish.

Sharon Stone (http://www.cieurope.org/) visited Essex in July 2005. She prophesied over Barking:

God will apply the heat of his spirit to melt the icehouse – melt the frozen assets.
He will release buildings to your purposes. Be thawed, Barking!
New community standards will bring new community – removal of mistrust. Unity will come out of diversity. God will expose threatening areas in the community and secret whispers will be exposed. There will be no secret aggression against the church – put your Watchmen on the Wall!

(From notes taken at the meeting by Jane Almond)

Lord, we pray for this word not to fall to the ground and for it to be fulfilled. Melt the frozen assets, Lord. Be thawed, Barking...put your Watchmen on the Wall! Let the fish jump into the boats!

Rob and I moved on into Barking and the first thing we spotted was a stone henge formation in the gateway. Three stone shapes formed a half-henge as below, with words carved in each of the stones.

I couldn't read them all but some words on them were as follows: "A circle of stone, an island of grass beside the Roding. An old iron gate leading to the Abbey ruin, stepping into history." Then on the next one: "Gulls soar over the icy water....smell the sea...see the ...." and the last one "Barking Town quay ghost fishing fleet." The stone circle seems to have been created to commemmorate Barking's past as a prominent and successful fishing port. I prayed here that Barking's future would come into alignment with God's destiny for it.

By this time, we were within photo distance of the site of the Abbey which itself no longer exists except for the gate tower - a significant remnant. In its place is St Margaret's Church where Captain Cook was married in 1762 - a man who took advantage of gateways created by the British empire.

The photo (left) is of St Margaret's Church today. It holds the gateway into Barking and East London, being strategically positioned right alongside the Creek.

The other photo (right) is of the 1560 reconstruction of the Abbey gatehouse through the trees of St Margaret's churchyard. A stone rood within the tower of the reconstructed gateway was an object of pilgrimage in medieval times. I would suggest the stone rood was the reason for the reconstruction of the gateway as pilgrimages were fairly lucrative for the church - this was prior to the changes wrought by the Reformation, after which such pilgrimages were less popular.

As to its general history, the manor of Barking was the site of Barking Abbey, a nunnery founded in 666 by Eorcenwald, Bishop of London. It was destroyed by the Danes and reconstructed about a hundred years later in 970 by King Edgar. William the Conqueror stayed there after his coronation in 1066. In 1539, during the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII, Barking Abbey was dissolved and demolished.

Rob and I finished our walk by returning to the station, warmed by latte and tea. A good walk through east London and a greater understanding of it in context as part of Essex.

Day 2 (6.2.08) A406 to Stratford

2008-04-01T17:13:00.012+01:00

In 2006, on my first longish walk - from Whitby to York - and after we had left Castle Howard, there was a section of road through some shooting ranges where the sun beat down on my head and the tarmac road glistened before me. It was a time when I could see no one in front of me and no one immediately behind. I sensed that if I walked this road with the Lord, he would break up concrete in my life, leaving me at the margins - reliant on him. Not comfortable! All along that three mile stretch, my face burned in the heat while I bellowed his name at the trees! Fortunately, no one could hear me!

This prayerwalk outworks some of that shift and as I began today’s walk down busy Leyton High Road, a ley line, from the A406 junction towards Stratford, there was a profound echo in my spirit that more concrete needed to be broken up. This time it wasn’t my concrete but as I laid each step on the pavement, my weight reinforced a spiritual impact with extra strength and force. I knew I would have to battle my way through this day with little relief - carrying someone else's load.

Thankfully, I received two encouraging texts almost immediately – both from people praying for me as I walked. I took it as a sign God knew. Thanks guys! You know who you are and I’m looking forward to walking with you.

Peeking into flats surrounding me I could see rubbish and wet floors, creating a sense of degrading poverty and the phrase “strangers in a strange land” came to me. I was reminded of what the Lord said to the Israelites in Leviticus 19.33: “When an alien lives with you in your land, do not ill treat him. The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.” How did these aliens feel in our strange land?

The presence of strangers was confirmed because for at least one whole mile down Leyton High Road, I heard only two voices in English and they were arguing! However, there were Polish, Czech, Urdu, Hindi, Arabic and other eastern European languages I couldn't identify. I prayed for wisdom and discernment for the churches and the people of God in the area.

Ray waited at convenient spots along the route, notably the petrol station below where we had a cup of tea before I continued walking down to Stratford. (What is it about tea when you're walking? It tastes so special!)

Checking out my bearings with a Polish workman who spoke excellent English (bless him) I found I was opposite the Olympic stadium and shopping centre site, currently a huge mound of earth crawling with gigantic lorries - the other side of the railway line. Skipping between the cars to pray there, I called for the presence of God to be on the site and took a picture through the fencing (see right).

Arriving at Stratford Station, I prayed around it. It's a significant gateway for the arrival of the Olympics (it was one of the places people congregated to celebrate in 2005). There are various pointers there to the importance of its gateway location – in the right hand picture you can see the time spiral but there is also the accessibility of the Olympic stadium itself and, again in this picture and on the left hand side below, a redeveloped bus and train station.

Yet, my view is, the whole location seems rather inadequate for a global event. I don't know what I expected it to look like.

The symbols around the time spiral spoke to me of time being tied up and unable to move forward as if everything in London waited for 2012. Not a pleasant feeling...

Quite a short walk – 5.2 miles – but it had been hard going on this one – glad it’s over now but equally, so glad I did it! I love London as much as I love Essex and treasured the opportunity to walk through one of its more challenging areas.

2008-02-15T15:56:00.013Z

Prayerwalking through Essex

I live in the London Borough of Havering. Havering is a gateway area between London and Essex. I moved to London as a teenager, living in London's north, south, west and finally east, settling here in Romford, not ten miles from my childhood home on The Green in Epping. When I was nine, I asked the Lord if I could return home and he said to me "You will come back." Never for one minute did I think I would return to my home like this!

My calling to the Body of Christ is as watchman intercessor and so the Lord has me stationed on the ramparts in this gateway, watching what he is doing both here and in the nations.

The Lord promised Joshua "I will give you every place where you set your foot." (Josh 1.3) What a wonderful promise! He was then told "Be strong and courageous..." (Josh 1.6) As we left the car park in Waltham Abbey on Monday 11th February, my friend Colette and I felt anything but strong and courageous. But we knew the Lord was with us - the other half of the promise to Joshua was "I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you" (Josh 1.5)

Following much prompting from the Lord, I had finally made a start on walking the borders of Essex. It's a large county and an intimidating prospect but I know the Lord will be with me as I go - and hopefully, will call others out of the Essex body to walk with me - I would so love to have company as I walk this land.

Why am I doing it? Partly because of the Lord's promise that he'll give us the places where he sets our feet (Joshua 1.3). Partly also because it's the place where Jesus has put me and I want to engage with it on a deep level - deeper than I have yet experienced and I know from previous prayerwalks that I make that connection best when walking. I am not a great walker - yet! I walk slowly and sometimes painfully but persistently and with a real sense of joy.

I love the 'place where I dwell' and I want to see the hand of the Lord in the land of the living. I know too that things get both broken and mended when I walk and pray - that's enough...

A little history...and the importance of neighbourliness

The County of Essex is part of the former Land of the East Saxons and the three swords on the county logo are seaxes. Seax is an Anglo-Saxon word that means sword-companion. A seax is a thin knife (see below), although it seems to have developed a little(!) since Anglo Saxon times.

For 1500 years, since Saxon times, the Liberty of Havering was both in Essex and yet not of it. At that time, Essex stretched from the Channel coast as far as the Lea Valley. I n 1965, an Act of Parliament changed the Essex boundary, extending London out to the borders of Brentwood and Havering became a London Borough. So, Havering is now border country.

Martin Scott (http://www.3generations.eu/) has said

"In the border regions, it's important to speak, pray and worship in the languages of our neighbours"

I want to speak the language of my neighbours in Essex. It's a key to good relationships.

In 2001, Sue Mitchell (http://www.passion.org/) prophesied that Havering was a gateway area - a 'swing door' from London to Essex and Essex to London. However, recently, at an Essex Prayer Day I was given the word that

"the door had not fully opened and there had only

been a cat flap, but now the door would be fully open".

In 2005, during her Distinct Sound County Tour of the UK, Sharon Stone (http://www.cieurope.net/) suggested prophetically that Essex carried the following redemptive characteristics:

1. It is a command centre and garrison

2. Has a militant edge with an apostolic thrust

3. It could release a breaker anointing

4. Has an apostolic anointing for all of England

If these prophetic insights are not to fall to the ground, the Essex intercessors must pray them through and into being. It is also part of my purpose to pray encouragement over the Essex intercessors.

Day 1 (4.2.08) Waltham Abbey to the A406 junction

Day 1 started with myself, Ray (my husband and faithful support driver) and Colette Nelson from Harlow, meeting at Waltham Abbey at 12 o'clock. Ray and I had already done a reconnoitre of the day’s route. Ray took a photo of Colette and I to record the beginning.

We set out immediately but as you can see,
Ray finished his cup of coffee before starting out!
Coffee is, of course, important...

Early that first morning, the Lord had given Colette an image of a thread and the eye of a needle. She felt that on the first part of the walk, we needed to double back so "the thread could go through the eye of the needle anchoring it into the land.The thread would be shown through Essex as we walk."

When we walked from the Meridian Garden around Waltham Abbey and on into the High Street, we found a shop called "Thread It" which we felt was a confirmation of this. So, we faithfully doubled back to the Abbey, where Colette had to leave. I continued walking from the doubleback point on down through Sewardstone and into the London Borough of Waltham Forest.

As I progressed, I was becoming more and more excited about the walk and felt the Lord was showing me what he wanted from the walk. We often say we walk in the steps of Jesus but how often do we walk in the 'stops' of Jesus? I wanted to do that - to sense what he did in the 'stops' he made - to listen to the Father as he did. I trudged through the Essex countryside on the A112 to Sewardstone - a gateway town in itself.

I walked along the road enjoying the solitude and sunshine and breasted the brow of a hill to see the Lea Valley spread out below me - the four funnels of high rise flats rising out of what looked like a ship on a silver sea. What a view! My feet didn't hurt yet and I found myself laying before the Lord all the situations I and my friends faced in our lives and knowing I was heard. What a privilege to be walking and talking with the Lord as I tramped through!

Meandering down the hill, the A112 moves from countryside through the borders of Essex and the London Borough of Waltham Forest to the Thames - but I'm getting ahead of myself...suburbia ahead!

Long lines of semis with gardens and wheelie bins greeted me as I rounded the corner and plugged up the slow slope of the hill into Sewardstone, down past the golfing range and bizarrely, sheep grazing behind the back gardens on the edge of King George's reservoir. I nipped into McDonalds and then - my worst nightmare – found myself walking hot and bothered into a facing line of drivers queuing at the lights. Feeling incredibly exposed, I kept my head down under my cap and sunglasses, ploughing on into the sun.

With some relief, I reached the end of that dead straight road and rounded a corner, surprised to see my husband, smiling, holding a cup of tea – one of the best I ever tasted…