Preparation and Learning

Irene Gleeson wrote before her death, "It's often said that to be a good teacher, one has to become a great learner. Although I was the white teacher with the western training and the alphabet charts, I had become a student of the Acholi traditions and culture."


She was referring to her early months in Uganda, adjusting to life on a harsh missionfield. As I read her statement, though, immediately I saw again the vision God gave me in 2010 as I sought guidance for the next phase of my life. I saw myself with my children sitting at elementary school desks. The Holy Spirit stood teaching at the front of the classroom, and He smiled as He gazed at us. Then unexpectedly, He came around the desks and sat at the child's desk next to me--a desk much too small for Him! As one of the children climbed into His lap, He said tenderly to me, "We'll learn together now."


I had no idea that the vision was preparing my heart for reaching my children at their level and also for the job God had for me--being a Family Support Assistant who sits every day next to a child at school in order to assist with learning and behavior. God is so consistently kind in His guidance--and sees so clearly into our futures, even when we don't understand!


I've learned that visions give us hope for the immediate present and also guidance for the future. They often puzzle us a little and always surprise us. I've learned that God gives accurate details in many visions, but other times He speaks in idioms and analogies just as Jesus spoke in parables to reach the heart. Always, the Lord is seeking to prepare and guide as He ministers hope and healing.


The Lord has shown me visions that obviously represented spiritual truth in order to give me both the desire and courage to do something completely out of my comfort zone.


During my three years at the University of Great Falls as I obtained my Bachelor's in Psychology, I had an overwhelming longing increase each semester for the staff and students on campus to come to know the incredible love of the Father's heart. One afternoon while at my parents' house, I saw myself stand up on a table in one of my classrooms and begin beseeching the people to see and accept Jesus' great love for them. The vision widened and as I preached from that table, people from all over the campus began to stream into the classroom. Then I saw the water of the Holy Spirit soak the lush lawns of the campus between the buildings, saturating like a reservoir every inch of University soil with the love and grace of God. I knew the vision represented what God could do and I told the Lord, "If You give me the opportunity, I will preach."


The opportunity came. Not as I expected, with me spontaneously jumping up before fellow students, but formerly at a service held yearly in honor of Martin King Luther Jr.  President McAllister, who has encouraged me countless times, called me personally and said how much he had been moved by my thank-you speech at the University's scholarship banquet. Since the motto of the University is Uncommon Courage and because I had been given the Courage Award, I had shared my testimony of God's grace and strength both in a closed-country and in standing up to abuse in my marriage. President McAllister asked for me to share my heart regarding the truth that we are all equal in God's sight. Jesus had given me a podium! That day I watched people stream across the campus to Trinity Chapel to attend this ceremony honoring everyone who live lives of kindness, respect, and courage.


I praised God for blessing me with this opportunity to share His heart and thanked Him for fulfilling the vision. But God wasn't done. Just four months later, the University asked me to speak again--this time at my graduation baccalaureate. Overwhelmed, I went to the Throne of Grace and asked for the Holy Spirit's words and wisdom. I wanted to encourage, strengthen, and spur closer to Jesus the staff and family members attending in honor of our 2013 graduating class.


Jesus did it. He gave me the words and gave people who had become very dear to my heart His message of hope, compassion, and right-standing with Him. He is amazing. Always, He prepares us then sends us, empowered with His strength, into a future we could never have imagined or created for ourselves.


Jesus--Our Beautiful Redeemer!

Today God Speaks

For Christmas, a friend gave me the book "Heart of a Lioness" by Irene Gleeson, a missionary to the children of Uganda for 22 years before her death in 2013. She served in the heart of a war zone, founding a school and rescuing myriad children from the brutalities of being forced to be child soldiers and sex slaves. My friend said, "When I listened to an interview by her, the Lord whispered, "Get Ayrian the book."


I began reading it with reluctance. Irene's second husband left her on the mission field when the country decided to shut down the school even after the Australian couple had endured numerous hostilities and miraculous deliverances from death. All I could think was, "How depressing."


But I started reading with the question, "Okay, God, what is it You want to tell me?"


I read about Irene's salvation after years of rebelling against God and her recounting of the Lord's simple directives, guiding her and her husband, comforting her in loss, and strengthening her in adversity. I thought, "Well, You do that for me, Lord."


She shared about the Lord directing them to the mission field. I thought of the word God spoke to me when I realized He really did want me to go overseas: "I will give you everything you need." And He did.


She shared about God strengthening her to forgive and continue the school on her own after her husband abandoned her. I thought about the days I sat by myself in a little cabin during my DTS, struggling with loneliness and emotional abandonment. The Lord stepped into that cabin and spoke clearly to my heart, "I will never turn My back on you."


I recalled the times when God gently warned me of crisis, preparing my heart to respond like Jesus. He showed me something was wrong concerning my marriage while we were stationed in Germany, just nights before I found my husband viewing pornography. My response was filled with grief and yet forgiving.


Years later as I washed dishes, living with my children at my parents' house, the Lord placed a swift vision before my eyes. I saw a bonfire and my ex-husband burning hundreds of copies of my book Love that is Blind. The Lord said, "If he burns your book, will you forgive him?" I said, "Yes, Lord" and relegated the vision to the background of my mind, assuming the Lord had simply been testing my character. I didn't know how accurate the vision was until I discovered that over 10 boxes of my book that I had left in Oregon no longer existed. I said in shock, "God told me something like this would happen." My ex said derisively, "Serves you right."


The Lord has faithfully shown me numerous times visions and spoken words that bear witness to a current work He is doing or a direction He wants me to take for the future He has for me and the children. When I lived at my parents' home, I repeatedly saw visions of the children and I living in a two-story home with bedrooms upstairs, a white-picket fence and a tree in the yard. The visions were consistently the same but I didn't relate them to a prophecy. I just accepted this spiritual haven as a place where the Lord was gentle and kind to me, husband in my divorced state just as He had been in my hurt while married.


Then one day, I saw with my spirit my Heavenly Father's eyes twinkling as He said to me, "I have a surprise..." I tried to hear the rest, but His words trailed off, tantalizing, teasing, loving. That afternoon I received a call. There was a four-bedroom, two-bath home available for the kids and I in a good neighborhood if I wanted it. It had laundry hook-up and had been newly remodeled. I jumped at the chance, switching my deposit last minute from a much smaller home with no laundry hook-ups. That month as I climbed the stairs of my new home, the Holy Spirit opened my remembrance. I ran to the window and looked out and began to laugh with joy. The white picket fence wasn't around a large yard, but it was there, around my patio, and a small tree stood just a few feet beyond. And here I was--upstairs where the kids and I slept and prayed our bedtime prayers!


Even as I rejoiced over my new house, great distress hit me as two of my children's misbehavior at school escalated beyond my control. I cried and wept and begged God for help. The after-effects of divorce had become massive, triggering stress-related outbursts. In the middle of my day--agony a burden I couldn't shake--the Lord showed me a vision of a gorgeous orange sun on the horizon. He said, "What do you see?" I said numbly, "A sunset." For it felt like the end of hope to me. He said gently, "Look again. It's a sunrise." And as I looked again with the eyes of my spirit, the sun burst over gorgeous mountain peaks with all the beauty and promise of a brand new day.


Two weeks later as I drove the kids to school, we took a slightly different route to their new school, my heart still ached over whether I had made the right choice to transfer them and whether it would help. Just as I turned onto the street to their school, the exact replica of the vision appeared right before me in reality. My breath caught. The mountain peaks were gorgeous and snow-covered in the distance behind MountainView Elementary, and the sun was bursting up and over them with orange then sparkling yellow brilliance. How amazing! The Holy Spirit confirmed the truth within my soul and I knew with absolute certainty: I had made the right choice. We were going the right direction. Jesus would heal my children of their anger, confusion, and orphan hearts.


And you know what? He keeps doing exactly what He's said. Like Irene, I've been a missionary and I've struggled through fear and abandonment. But what the Lord wanted to show me as I've read her book is that we don't have to be on or heading to the mission field for Him to lead, comfort, and sustain us. He speaks to all of us, all the time. If we're listening. If we want His guidance. If we want Him.


It's just Who He is.

Our Servant/King

“Every house is built by someone, but He who built all things is God.” Hebrews 3:4

Jesus is still building things. He’s still the gentle Carpenter from Nazareth as much as He is the King of Kings. Just as He did at the Last Supper when He laid aside His garments to wash the feet of His disciples, He still takes on the quiet role of a servant as He works in our lives.

Often when the Lord speaks to me, He gives me pictures to help me better understand a concept. In recent months, I saw Jesus working on a set of wooden stairs, descending from heaven. They were being completed top down, not yet touching the bottom floor (only God can do carpentry like that!). Jesus glanced toward me, unusually attired in blue jeans and flannel shirt. He was incredibly gorgeous, with short dark hair and a gold earring that glinted from one ear.  An earring? I was so surprised, yet I recognized Him and my heart skipped a beat.

In that moment, with the full force of Jesus’ loving gaze upon me, I felt like a spoiled rich girl, incredibly pampered by her Heavenly Father, who had just fallen in love with a Worker in His house. All I wanted to do was be with Him. I didn’t care if the project wasn’t completed that He was working on. I didn’t want to just be recipient of His work in my life; I wanted to join in.

Just like in this analogy, throughout Scripture, we see Jesus inviting us to join Him as active participants in the life of faith He’s called us to. In fact, He sometimes slows His work to a halt until we join Him because everything He does depends upon our willingness to participate in relationship with Him. 

In psychology, we learn a lot about causal and correlational relationships. Causal is when Jesus speaks and the world comes into being. Correlational means Jesus speaks and we have a choice: free will. Will we act on what He’s said or squirm away from the truth He’s imparting to our hearts? When we edge out of Jesus’ project, it comes to a standstill. He’s perfectly capable of building staircases without us, but He’s chosen to seek our cooperation. He won’t force us to accept His truth.

Isaiah 28:9-10 says, “Whom will he teach knowledge? And whom will he make to understand the message? Those just weaned from milk? Those just drawn from the breasts? For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept,  line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little.”

In this way, God stays radically committed to His plan of redemption: a people who have chosen to surrender and get on board with His ideas and His plan. The Holy Spirit reminds us in Isaiah 55:8-9, “’For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ says the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.’”

Maybe that’s why I saw Jesus building the staircase from top down, because my human wisdom isn’t going to connect me with His plans for my life. Rather He imparts His vision and His heart to me, adding to it, step by step, as I participate in faith. Oswald Chambers says in My Utmost for His Highest, “When God gives a vision, transact business on that line, no matter what it costs…. When God gives a vision and darkness follows, wait. God will make you in accordance with the vision He has given if you will wait His time.” When we get on board with God, He gets the work done in us, yet it is our great privilege to kneel down next to Him, holding the nails and boards in our hands, giving them to Him as He asks.

As for the earring I saw, the Holy Spirit whispered a reminder to me about a law in the Old Testament concerning servants. Exodus 20:5-6 says, “If the servant says plainly, ‘I love…my master, I will not go free’ then his master shall bring him to the judges. He shall also bring him to the door …and his master shall pierce his ear with an awl and he shall serve him forever.”

Philippians 2:7 proclaims the amazing truth that Jesus “made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men.” Hebrews 5:6 says of Jesus, “You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.”

Jesus truly is our Servant/King who has a bigger plan for us--a bigger work that He’s doing in our lives--than we can ever accomplish on our own. Do we have such a yearning for Him that we will join Him, no matter what He’s doing? Building staircases, washing toilets, revitalizing our hearts?

Yes, Jesus! I’ll join You. No matter where You are or what You’re doing, I choose to jump on board with Your plans. Thank You for the power of Your Spirit at work in me, accomplishing in my life what I can never do on my own. May I always give You all the glory!!!