living by faith

I've finally come up with a title for my blog. It's taken a while.

This accurately describes my current situation. I've been here before, heading off to Italy on a whim and a prayer and seeing great provision for my time there, the same with going to South Africa, where God provided abundantly and enabled me to bless many people out there by sharing what I had.

And now I find myself back in the UK and without means of earning money. In the natural, it's all rather strange. I'm highly qualified and yet out of work. I guess this happens quite a lot. I've applied for jobs but none have been successful. I've scrolled through pages and pages of internet adverts and this has been largely fruitless. And the thing is, while I'm hoping to hit on something exciting that will be the perfect job for me, I also have in the back of my mind a little idea that this particular search is pointless as I won't find the job for me here.

The only thing that keeps coming to me is the singular word 'WRITE' and also a very strong sense that I will be 'IN THE RIGHT PLACE AT THE RIGHT TIME'. Hence the re-starting of my blog. And so it's a waiting game.

Last week I went on a conference in Leamington Spa called 'Voices'. It was run by the Listening to God team that is part of The Well Christian Healing Centre. The main speaker was Steve Witt from Cleveland, Ohio. He shared many stories and taught us great stuff about prophecy. If you are interested, get his new book called 'Voices'. It's very good and covers a lot of what he shared with us. There's nothing like being there and experiencing God working through him live, but if you couldn't be there, the book makes up for that.

God is our heavenly Father who loves for us to play with him, like a human father wanting his toddlers to come and engage with him. He weaves mysteries into our lives so that we stop and try to figure them out and in the process draw near to him and that's when he reveals to us what the mysteries mean. It's not some strange 'I'll hide all the good stuff away' gesture on God's part, more a game of hide and seek; but God doesn't hide things very well and so it's not too difficult for us to find what he wants us to find, when we turn to him and ask him. Like Moses and the Burning Bush. There were loads of bushes burning in the desert, it was hot and things spontaneously combusted at times. The difference with this one was that the bush was not being destroyed by the fire. And it's only when Moses turned aside to investigate further did God speak to him.

2 questions to ask God in times of mystery:

• What does this mean?
• What must I do?

It's like God is there, wanting to engage with us and waiting expectantly for us to turn aside and look to Him and engage with Him. We need to chase after more of God, if that's what we want. We can be open to Him moving in our lives, but maybe 'being open' is not enough, maybe He wants us to chase after things instead, to take a step in the right direction, a step of faith, a step towards the unknown and possibly downright weird and then He moves in to meet us.

Well, now I'm at that stage of coming to the end of my official sick leave and facing uncertain times. Someone gave me a blessing at the conference which simply said 'Bless your finances - that you will not be without' (and they didn't have a clue about my situation). So I know that God's got it all under control and He will provide.

long pause

Sorry about that... there seems to have been a rather long pause since I last blogged.. over 3 months in fact.

Much has happened, too much to go into now. Here's a brief overview:

March - Trawled the internet, papers, temp agencies for a job. Looked again. Eventually got one at Aston Martin in Gaydon. Very excited.

Also, went to Germany to see the Young Zulu Warriors in concert - excellent as ever. Came home and met my boyfriend (had to mention him, he's been pestering!! ;-) )

April - Spent a nice weekend with new boyfr showing him the delights of Warwickshire. More Aston Martin - lots of part numbers and computer screens. Managed to stop the track twice (almost the equivalent of causing a stock market crash!). Not really my fault but I did press the buttons.

May - The early mornings are taking their toll and exhaustion starts creeping in. Long hours for not so long-lasting pay... spent a weekend in Belfast with boyfr with him showing me the delights of N.Ireland. We come dangerously close to Boyzone...

June - Go to a women's ministry meeting and get prayed for and anointed. The same night I dismay my housemate by getting her to take me to A&E at 3am because I'm in pain. Discover the wonders of Tramadol. Signed off for a week. Perfect timing to spend quality time with Grandparents for their DIAMOND wedding anniversary - wonderful family event with much joy and laughter.

Back to work only to collapse days later with Biliary Colic and be rushed by some nice 'paramedic' Jaguar Engineers to the occupational health dept at Land Rover to partake of yet more medical wonders - gas and air... Taken to A&E again and this time they make me wait 4 hours before deciding I have to be admitted. Thankful to see some friendly faces working there!

Spend 6 days in hospital with many phones calls, visits and lots of sleep. Realise that I shouldn't take too much oromorph - it's very effective and rather addictive.

After 4 days the Drs say they want to put something down my throat to see if there's a gallstone blocking a bile duct, because I'm rather yellow and jaundiced. Not happy. Get everyone to pray (thank you if you did) and in the end I just got to that point of being fed up and so I went into the bathroom on the ward and systematically claimed my healing over all the wrong bits in that area of my body and declared myself to wake up well the next day.

Which I did.

Result.

Thank you Jesus, another miracle.

Didn't have to have the nasty procedure and given 2 weeks to rest at home.

And that is where I am today. Back with my parents for a little while. I've come to the end of my contract with Aston Martin and as of Thursday 3rd I'm officially out of work. I'm awaiting a date to have my gallbladder removed by keyhole surgery, hopefully fairly soon. Then it'll be another recovery time.

In the meantime the price of everything in this country is soaring and my funds are going down... fast. And so I think it must be time for another miracle...