Write Non Fiction In November : #WNFIN Day 30
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On this last day of the Writing Challenge, some reflection upon the last 30 days is called for. Did I see what I hoped to see during this month of November, disappointingly No.

If you remember, I had hoped to chronicle the promised great outpouring of the Holy Spirit. If it is going on right now, then it is nowhere to be found in my neighbourhood and region. In fact, compared with the beginning of November there have been more setbacks and closed doors.

Perhaps the only thing gained is a better understanding of how the prophetic words, if they are genuine, fit together. So here goes my interpretation:

Whatever is going to happen is going to be completely God initiated. The most we can do is to prepare our hearts as best we can, and continue to pray. One image used was divine fire coming down from heaven and igniting some chosen hearts and not others. Another image used was of wildfire angels bringing this transformation to individuals. Upon those for whom this happens, there will be given extraordinary purpose and anointing to accomplish that purpose, and they are likely to be young people, people who have been through trauma and times of great testing, people who are normally overlooked or ignored, and some that you'd expect to have been too worldly like socialites and members of bikie gangs.

Whatever is going to be initiated by God is going to go a long way towards denominational unity, but not without a fair bit of denominational chaos. Many of you have read the stories of how the Catholic charismatic renewal started. Think about how you would react if 20 people from diverse backgrounds walked into your church praising God like King David did, preaching, prophesying and healing people. Are you going to join them, and fall on your knees to pray for guidance in how to work with this movement or grace? Or are you going to find extraordinary new sympathy for the chief priests and elders who had to deal with the growing aftermath of the first Pentecost?

Another certainty is that it won't be taking place in a vacuum. Of the things that have happened this November the increasing secularisation of society, the public rejection of God's blueprints for happy human life, and increasingly public displays of hatred toward Christianity are quite notable. For God's people to withstand the pull to be liked and popular and safe - there has to be an increase in God's active power in the lives of believers. It is not too hard to see a separation taking place between those who actively believe in God and those who want freedom from anything to do with God – just read the comments on social media. Any middle ground between these two sides is rapidly diminishing, and everyone will have to confront the necessity to choose. Without the special graces from God no one would have the strength to endure martyrdom and persecution.

Something we have witnessed this November is the exposure and removal of corruption, especially in the entertainment industry and in politics. It stands to reason that you can't build new structures of grace to buttress a world-wide conversion to God unless you first dismantle the structures of sin and conspiracies of malice.

On the one hand we have people declaring breakthrough, and victory, and new authority and new ministries, increase and acceleration and an end-time harvest. Whether this is solely an evangelistic harvest of souls to active faith in Jesus or whether this is a harvest of all the sowing that has taken place in tears in the fields of family, parish, education and employment – or both, is unclear. I hope it is both.

What harvesting actually means in this context and how to do it, that's a mystery. All of my tentative steps to bring some God stuff into conversation have yielded nada on the scale of visible results. If the harvest is indeed great and ready, surely there would be big response to just about any effort. Maybe that's just epic fail on my part due to lack of courage to rock the boat by questioning the dubious moral situations many of my acquaintance are in.

On the other hand, there's a more recent theme in prophetic word that you won't get the goodies (breakthrough, harvest, abundance, rewards) unless you battle with the enemy to attain them. In effect, the promised goodies are the spoils of warfare.

What warfare actually means in this context, and how to do it, well that's another mystery. It could be the spiritual warfare of intercession, praying in union with others that God would bring down and destroy all the strongholds of the enemy. It could be the daily battle to believe that God cares and is preparing great and wonderful destinies when all you see around you are broken dreams, disappointments, and the aridity that comes when there are no answers to prayers and no obvious explanations for why it feels like God is ignoring you and that you have been completely abandoned. It could be deliverance ministry. It could be all of the above.

Over and over there have been other themes of surrender to God's will, of resting in Him and not striving, of seeking a deeper walk of intimacy with Him. In the light of the themes of divine fire they make some kind of sense. To be able to host the presence of God at a level like this will indeed require massive preparation of the heart.

Another recurring theme is, 'Are you ready?' This bit made more sense over the last 24 hours when reflecting on Mark 13:33-37 and the call to stay awake. Have you ever had a relative arrive home from overseas? You know they are coming, but due to customs and traffic delays, you have no idea exactly when. If you want the best bit of their homecoming and the freshest sharings of their adventures, you have to be there when they arrive. If you have dozed off and need to be awoken, you will have missed the best bit. If something happens and you only get to hear them retell their story for the 2nd, 3rd for 4th time, then you aren't going to get it all. With each retelling, it gets shorter and less enthusiastic. So in the same way, those who are ready when this great move of God happens are going to be light years ahead of the rest of us.

Which brings me to all my fears: that I will get bypassed and not included in the company of fiery ones; that those who sow will not get to reap; that I will never have the requisite praise, humility and gentleness and that whatever the criteria is that I'll never get there and never get there in time. There was a specific warning that those who have preached about and longed for these days could miss out completely due to a sense of entitlement. That rocked me to the core.

So if you have some spare time to pray for others, please pray for me and for my dearest ones.

The battle, if that is what it is, is fierce. If you have been accounted as useless and not worthwhile knowing and can't remember how long it's been since you felt God took an active interest in providing a heart-stopping encounter with His love, how can you find the audacity to believe that this situation can change dramatically for the better? Because knowing darned well without that kind of faith and trust it isn't going to happen, and that you haven't got it and it feels cruel that without any ray of light from above that you have somehow got to rise above all the hurts and wounds and get there. How is this a most loving gift and invitation from a tender-hearted God? I don’t know. But supposedly it is. You might quote, 'God only tests those that He loves', which is probably true, but not at all helpful if you are living off general promises made by Him to everyone and you have no personal, specific promise of your own from Him to cling to.

All we can do is thank Him that in the psalms and canticles there are sufficient examples of people complaining to Him and lamenting His seeming absence and disinterest in our troubles – because it means it is OK to add our own, and that they must be acceptable to Him somehow.
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Come Holy Spirit. Amen.

Write Non Fiction In November : #WNFIN Day 17
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Coming to you live, yes live, from the doldrums. It has been yet another day when we believe that God has been at work doing amazing things, but of which we have seen and experienced nothing.

I read about an image months ago, of times of transition being like going through a birth canal. On the interior side of the birth canal things are good, but growing and limited. However while the transition through the birth canal is happening, it is uncomfortable, there's no perceptible movement, it's dark, and it feels a whole lot longer than it actually is. Once the exterior side of the birth canal is reached, just about everything changes and feels totally different.

If this is true of our time of waiting for God to reveal His hand, His purpose and His direction, how I wish it were over.

Another image crossed my path this morning, this time of a tsunami. The only intimation that something big is coming is that what was once full of water becomes dry, and as this happens all the junk on the sea floor gets exposed. For a while the unexplained dryness becomes the new normal. The longer the dryness, the bigger the wave of water will be, but in that in-between time absolutely nothing appears to be happening except that everything is harder and takes more effort and yields no results. Only those with long memories know what the missing water signifies, and call for urgent preparations to be made and lookouts to be posted. Everyone else finds the promise of more water than we know what to do with extraordinarily hard to comprehend. But it gets very calm and still before the tsunami actually hits because the birds and the animals know better than we do, and they go and hide and find safe places.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of a day that should have been one of great joy, but instead became one of deep bewilderment and profound rejection. It would be a really good day to see something fresh and new begin, to balance all the other stuff, but at present all the seeds of possibility in my life are either completely dead or so dormant that they look dead.

Maybe you are in the same situation. The only good thing about it is that if change does come it will have only God's fingerprints on it, since at this point only He can bring about any positive change at all.

What can we learn from the two images about what we should do?

In the first one, resistance will definitely make things worse. So acceptance, and patience and trust - and consent to let God do whatever must be done – are about the only things that will help.

In the second one some kind of preparation seems necessary. Apart from doing nothing, the choices seems to be to get as grounded as possible (and find something to hang on tightly to) or to build something ark-like and seaworthy that will float above the turbulence to come. Of course, the really wise would be digging and reinforcing furiously so that as much of the new water to come could be kept as possible.

From the pictures we've seen on the news, the aftermath of a tsunami is chaos. Many existing structures get flattened, there's lots of debris, things look completely different and there's lots of rebuilding to be done while at the same time caring for those who got hurt because they were unprepared.

If God's promises are true, then doing nothing in the face of a tsunami of grace is not a sane option. It is probably why He has been so insistent upon us deepening our relationships with Him. The deeper it is, the more we have to cling to, and the more water we can hold. But at this level of magnitude individual reservoirs will not be enough - groups are needed to build communal reservoirs. Maybe that's why God has also been so insistent upon unity: we need to depth our relationship with Him as communities of faith also – and as communities of communities of faith as well.

It might look like a disaster area for a while when the tsunami of grace finally hits, and some may view it as tragic, but we have to look at the upside. Relationships get built at times of what looks like natural disaster that last for generations. New skills get learned and new levels of co-operation happen and new leaders emerge. And something happens that couldn't happen before, the chance to rebuild and to rebuild bigger and better and more community-friendly than ever before.

Who knows how much time we have left until God turns our worlds upside down? Let's use it wisely and do those sensible things He has been begging us to do; deepening our relationship with Him, and deepening our relationships with others.
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All holy apostles, holy Mother of Jesus, holy women and holy disciples who were present at the first tsunami of grace we call Pentecost, pray for us. Amen.