Your destiny has the full backing of heaven and will flow out of who you really are. Your authentic life will produce your highest purpose.
On January 20, 1995 my life as I had known it came to an abrupt end as the God of the universe visited me physically in the person of Jesus Christ.
At the time I was living in an abusive marriage. I had come out of a childhood where although my parents loved me they were constantly struggling with my mom’s ongoing mental illness. After my parents divorced, witnessing and trying to emotionally support my mom through many years of nervous breakdowns, being molested by a friend’s brother, and living most of my childhood on the breadline, I had a lot of undealt with pain and need beginning to drive my life.
By the time I was fourteen I was emotionally exhausted. I began making a lot of bad choices including heavily drinking in an attempt to bolster up my confidence. I became involved in very unhealthy relationships and eventually in an abusive marriage that ended in violence, divorce and single parenthood. Through the intense stress and eventual despair I became critically ill with an incurable condition called motor neuron transmission disorder, a condition Jesus later healed me from. In it all I was searching desperately to find someone who would take care of me, who would make me feel safe and stop the pain.
To the outside world I became successful, working in London in the fashion industry, then becoming married to a millionaire as I tried to find a sense of belonging and security in wealth and success.
Materialistically we had more than most. But on the inside my life was insanity as I attempted to survive the ravages of living with someone struggling with addictions and the collective pain of their life’s history.
So on that day in January I met the one my heart had searched for all my life. As Jesus stood before me he was dressed in an ankle length beige seamless garment. His face was radiant, glowing with a soft light emanating from his being and framed by his Raven black shoulder length hair. His dark brown eyes released a light that literally engulfed my soul, as wave after wave of perfect love began to heal away every trace of my former brokenness.
In the initial seconds as he stood before me I felt excruciating self-consciousness and fear. I was aware of my sin and felt unworthy, unable to look at him. But as the waves of his love continued to pour into my heart I began to feel his total acceptance; I felt completely clean on the inside and with that sense of belonging I had always searched for.
Jesus then reached out his hands to me and said, come with me, always come and rest with me for a while. He took me up on to a hill and we sat under a tree for what seemed like hours. I wept; washing his feet with my tears and drying them with my hair as he gently stroked my head and fully healed me.
For the rest of my time with him I clung to him, his arm around my right shoulder and mine tightly around his waist. My heart, that had become fractured and numb, came alive as I found myself loving Jesus with a pure love unlike anything I had ever experienced.
As I came out of this visitation, I was so full of him that his light was pouring out of my skin and shining from my eyes. I did not want to speak or move. I was a totally new person and carrying an instruction, a holy invitation, that would keep me alive in the years that followed and ultimately become the foundation of my life. It is the gift I now give to you.
I now know the power of those precious words Jesus gave me that day, to always come and rest with him a while. It is in that place of abiding and living in him; of resting and allowing his presence to be the strength of all that we are and do, we find true freedom and peace. As we learn to live and move and have our being in the one who created us and loves us beyond our comprehension, this increasingly becomes our reality.
The more consistently we enter into the presence of the Prince of peace, through this gateway of intentional rest, the more we benefit from his soothing balm of restoration. Our souls now strengthened also increasingly experience the protection this militant force provides. As he locks garrison around our hearts and minds every negative work attempting to affect our lives is disempowered.
Romans 16:20 – the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.
The following chapters contain encounters in revelation Jesus has given me since his first visit 20 years ago. With each one he has imparted into me powerful truths and provided essential beliefs and values he wants us to live by, as we emerge into the fullness of who we really are. His plans, as he tells us through the book of Jeremiah, are too prosperous us and not to harm us; to give us hope and a future.
Jesus took the ashes of my life and has completely transformed every aspect of it. I’m now a happily married woman, married to a godly man full of passion, love and integrity. I have a beautiful, intelligent, compassionate, teenage daughter who is also a friend of Jesus. My heart is healed and at peace, I have the dearest most precious friends and the privilege of being able to serve the body of Christ every day. Of course there are situations that come and need to be worked through, but I know the one who has the answer and have learned by his grace to live in the strength of his presence and wisdom. Let my life provide you with the gift of hope. What he does for one of us he is willing to do for all of us as we invite him to take over our lives.
My greatest desire is that as you read the convicting, supernatural power of hope in who our God is and therefore the power within us to change things will rise up inside of you. My prayer is that you will find yourself hearing his voice and becoming fully convinced of truths that will literally transform your life. I believe there is about to be a massive shift of conscious awareness in the body of Christ, as faith and hope begin to bring to us the gift of freedom and the ability to consistently walk in our true identity and high’s purpose.
As we see with fresh eyes, that absolutely nothing is impossible for God, that he really is good and really is for us, we will be able to take every word he has spoken literally. We will believe in him against all the natural evidence that may be stacked against us; screaming the opposite reality. Each circumstance looked at through the lens of redemption, serves only to provide us with another opportunity through which his power can be displayed and his compassion understood. As we look at the price Jesus paid on the cross we see the value he placed on each one of us. He laid down his own life that we could become his, created anew by the very substance of his being. He chose us to be carriers of his presence!
He longs to have the closest of friendships with each one of us, where we know his heart and ours is then free in the security of his love to rest in him. A place where we can look into the eyes of our father and see who we are. We are not insignificant. We are his people, made in his own image, anointed and called the make our world a mirror image of heaven. Whether it is one Life or many nations we are called to love and influence, every God-given purpose has equal value. What matters is that we come to know his love, then respond, loving him in return as we do all he asks of us. Trusting in this way moves the heart of God and mobilizes heaven.
The truth is that regardless of how we might feel, right now we are the most valuable, powerful thing in all of creation. With my whole heart, I pray that by the end of this book, you will know this to be true with every fiber of your being. You are the inheritance of God, with a place in his heart belonging only to you and a destiny created for you before the earth was formed.
The world needs who you are. You are a vital piece of his perfect plan. There are lives you will touch that no one else can. There are aspects of his nature you are destined to know that will become the message of your life, as Jesus gently heals all of your pain and teaches you his ways; replacing every area of weakness with the strength of who he is.
Ephesians 1:4 – just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before him, and love.
Then through you he will change the lives of others as you become his living epistle. This is how heavens justice works. In the very areas we have experienced the most brokenness, as we bring our tired and damaged hearts to him, allowing his strength and ways to become ours, Jesus power will eventually release as a healing balm of hope to others struggling in a similar way.
In his presence, centered in the authority of who we really are, we find we are able to forgive the unforgivable and in so doing release ourselves from every shackle that has held us in bondage to our past. We find we can truly love and have concern for those who have hurt us. We can say as Jesus did, father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing. We will see they are hurt people, often deceived and energized by the worldview of their false identity and living in a way never intended for their life.
We find power in the experience of his unconditional love and the purity of who he is will begin to pour in, soothing and restoring our broken and imprisoned emotions. As we sit in the seat of our true identity in Christ, we find ourselves able to move with grace in the opposite spirit to how the enemy would want to fashion and form us.
This is the power the cross!
As we relinquish control and put our hand in his, stepping on the straitjacket of self preservation, the garment we wore that held in place our old nature, we’ve let go of the lie that tells us we are alone and ultimately have to survive in our own strength. Now we can step into Jesus, becoming increasingly aware of his presence within our new nature. We begin to discover our true design; that we were created as the image of the God of unconditional love and live centered in him, in the core of our being. Reconnected in this way, his tangible nature, made up of righteousness and joy, peace and strength, begins to infuse every part of our being.