Turning around

After our adventure last week, Roger and I are now at work editing the wonderful and unexpected pieces of film that we gathered during our time in Telford & Wrekin area.

The links to our videos will appear on this blog in a day or so. We were so excited by two testimonies of young men who really had been affected by the power of the Spirit of God and had been born again into His Kingdom. They were such new believers and how we need to see and hear about the freshness of that first understanding of the love of Jesus!

Repentance

A couple of days ago I was awake early. I had the issue of repentance on my heart. How we long to see people really turn around from this present darkness on earth and see the Light.

Some of those who turn around will be prodigals; those who knew Jesus once but have wandered off in their own desires for a life that they believe will sustain and fulfil them.

Some of those who turn around will be ones who never knew God. Who thought He was just a figment of deluded imaginations, or worse.

Poetry as a response

I want to encourage you today. I’ve discovered recently that when I don’t know how to respond to something that stirs my heart, I ask Holy Spirit to help me to speak a prayer or express something on paper.

The excitement of meeting two young men whose lives had just been radically changed was the catalyst for me to want to do something in response. So, I used the gift that God has given me and wrote a poem. I don’t understand how the simple writing of a poem does something in the Kingdom. But I believe it does! I hope that, like the boy with the loaves and fishes, if I offer it to Jesus He will multiply it, using it as He chooses. If you want to share any of my poems with others at any time, please do. I’m offering them as a gift which the Spirit has empowered to do the work of the Kingdom.

My encouragement to you is to use the gifts that God has given you with a fresh hope in this season that He is going to multiply their effectiveness for His Kingdom. I believe that creative gifts come from the Creator for spiritual purposes that far exceed our understanding of their possible impact.

I’m writing to encourage you to fan into a flame and rekindle the fire of the spiritual gift God imparted to you….

2 Timothy 1:6

Repentance: a poem

What does it take to turn a heart
A heart that's grown so cold?
Just like a sheep that's wandered far 
Yes, so far from its fold...

For pastures of a different kind 
Eclipse God's pastures green 
The sheep makes do with scruffy grass
And grazes on the mean 

Connection lost, there is no truth 
For a sheep that's gone astray
From the love of God's own Shepherd 
And turned to its own way 

How shall a sheep that's so detached
Return to meadows sweet
When it is always looking at 
The scrub beneath its feet? 

Yet comes a day of reckoning 
When scrub becomes just stone 
The sheep has fully grazed its field 
And remembers its old home 

And looking up it turns around 
And sees a distant land 
Hungry and weak it seeks to go
Towards the Shepherd's hand

And, in a striking moment 
That sheep is not alone 
It's lifted onto shoulders 
To carry it back home 

The Shepherd is still watching 
The ones grown mean and cold 
His heart is still inviting them
To come back to His fold

And those who never knew Him
Who see that sheep restored
May find their hearts now turning 
To call that Shepherd "Lord"

The Shepherd has a sheepfold 
Of which He is the door 
His heart is never mean and cold
He always looks for more 

He offers you green pastures 
And water still and sweet 
He asks if you will turn to Him 
Your life laid at His feet?

You're free to go your own way
Your own path may look rich
But in the end your own path 
Will lead you to a ditch 

For you were not created
To live without your God 
He formed you to belong to Him
He knows the path you've trod 

So, take a precious moment 
To look up from the dirt 
The One who really loves you 
Can free you from all hurt

Repentance is a turning 
From all that's hard and cold 
A beautiful new life awaits 
If you'll give up the old.

https://anchor.fm/kate-stanway/episodes/Repentance—a-poem-e1egv90

A prayer

Lord, I ask that You would stir our hearts to pray for those who need to turn to You in this season on earth – the prodigals or those who have never known Your love and goodness; even those with the hardest of hearts towards You.

I’m conscious that we are in a new season and early in a new year, too. This is a time for thinking about the seeds that may be sown and the soil that has lain fallow over the winter. So, Lord, we ask for a harvest of souls this year. For, even now we know that new life is breaking through hard, cold ground.

Send Your Spirit, Lord, to stir up hearts that are still cold and bring deep conviction of all that separates them from the warmth of Your love and the joys and blessings of their true home in You.

In Jesus’ precious Name.