Gods Promise for Families

TURNING FIFTY!

Forty years old

The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life  -  Cassius Clay aka Muhammad Ali

In a few weeks’ time I will be turning fifty years old – I will have lived on this earth for half a century.  As I reflect on the past ten years I realize how much I have grown spiritually and emotionally and how much baggage I have managed to dump on the roadside of life in the past decade.

I have started to like myself and to make friends with who I am. I am finding that I don’t really care so much anymore if I leave the house without having made my bed or done the dishes. I am developing patience and my feelings of empathy and compassion are far deeper now than they were when I turned forty.  I am really beginning to enjoy being a mother and am starting to truly appreciate the fact that I actually have the most amazing children!  They are unique and wonderful.  They make me laugh and they make me cry and they are the reason that I have such a close relationship with God – I spend hours praying for them!

I also realize how blessed I am that after 21 years of marriage my husband is still my best friend and we are still in love with each other.

A decade ago God gave me a prophesy which is being fulfilled on a daily basis.

“I began reading Exodus prior to turning forty years old.  I was filled with a sense of excitement; this was going to be the year I started to fulfil my dreams, straighten out my life, and let go of past hurts to become the person God intended.

On the morning of my birthday, I told my husband what a wonderful feeling it was to be forty years old, how I was going to release the burdens from my past and start trusting God to equip me for the future.

Shortly after I declared this, our eight-year-old daughter walked into the room.  “You know, Mommy,” she said, “God let the Israelites wander in the desert for forty years then brought them out of the desert into the Promised Land.  You are forty today”.  (Extract from God’s Promise for Families)

A few weeks ago God gave me another prophecy for the next decade, this time via Pastor Victoria Idoko.  I attended a talk she gave on “Secrets of a glorious destiny” and when she had finished speaking she started prophesying into people’s lives.  I was one of those people.

She took my hands and repeated the word ‘fulfilment’ four times.

She then prophesied that God will fulfil my expectations.

“My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my EXPECTATION is from Him.

He only is my rock and my salvation;

He is my defense; I shall not be moved.

In God is my salvation and my glory;

The rock of my strength, and my refuge, is in God

Trust in Him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before Him;

God is a refuge for us.”   Psalm 62:5-8

My expectation for the next decade is for God to continue to show me who I am in Him.  To help me to continue growing into the woman He created me to be.

My expectation is that He will fulfill the prophecies that have been spoken over my life about being a speaker and a writer and bringing His word of healing, hope and encouragement to others.

THE END OF THE TUNNEL

Imagine yourself a silent witness to the humiliation that Jesus was subjected to before his death.  The soldiers stripped him of his clothes, put a crown of thorns upon his head and mocked him. They spat on him and took a stick and struck him again and again on the head.  Prior to this he had been slapped and hit with fists and flogged.

Now, imagine Jesus standing there and in his mind’s eye he is looking through a tunnel into the future, thousands of years into the future and he is focused on one person at the end of the tunnel.  As he stands there with spit and blood running down his face, enduring the pain of being brutally hit and mocked, all he can think about is this person at the end of the tunnel.

The person he is looking at is a murderer and an adulterator, an alcoholic, a thief and a liar, someone full of pride and envy, someone who is destroying their lives by cutting themselves, starving themselves or throwing up after every meal because they think it will make them feel better.  The person is a sadist, cannot control their temper and lashes out at people, verbally and physically.  The person has so many hidden sins it is unbelievable. The person he is thinking of doesn't even believe in God and thinks of themselves as being a decent human being.  He is concentrating so hard on this person in an effort to blot out what is happening to him and he is repeating to himself “I will endure this, I will willingly go through being nailed to a cross and being separated from my Father in heaven if it means that that person has a chance of asking for forgiveness, of being forgiven and of being able to spend eternity with God and me”.

Jesus knows that the only chance that person has of having a relationship with God is through his death and resurrection because God cannot accept a sinner into heaven and have His kingdom tainted with sin.

He knows that the only chance that person has is for him to die on the cross – to take that person’s sin upon his body, to have those sins nailed to the cross and to die for that person in the hope that that person will accept him into their lives, confess their sins and because of the blood that he shed on the cross they could be forgiven and so enter into a relationship with God.

Jesus would be the bridge between this person and God.

“Forgiveness is the divine miracle of grace. The cost to God was the Cross of Christ.  To forgive sin, while remaining a holy God, this price had to be paid.” (Oswald Chambers)

You are the person at the end of the tunnel. You are the person that Jesus looked at.  You are the person Jesus died for.

I AM THAT PERSON

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life”.   John 3:16