I'm going to Church in about an hour.
My morning has started in the less than salubrious surroundings of a McDonalds.
I love their coffee, although that doesn't justify the double sausage and egg Mcmuffin that I shouldnt be eating!
But
I love the breakfast, and I love the time I have just to think.
Hence the fact I've got my tablet out and have started tapping the keyboard and putting my thinking down on electronic paper.
It has taken four years.
But
I find myself in the unusual position of being totally healed and free.
It's a weird feeling but a fantastic one all the same.
It's taken much prayer, a little counselling, a few happy pills and a mega helping of pain, struggle and battles to finally reach the point I am at right now.
I've taken a significant rest from speaking, from ministering, from the dangers of Church going. I've battled hard to recover my life from wounds so deep they almost obliterated me.
But
Freedom has arrived like a liberator I thought would never come.
I have taught about freedom for many years on many stages and platforms across europe, yet looking back I was not taking any notice of the stuff God was asking me to impart others. I was so busy helping others I forgot about my own life.
And
I let the bad side of religion almost steal my very life.
As many of you know, I resigned from Salvation Army Officership four years ago now.
I had to.
I needed the space to really deepen my relationship with God and take it to a whole new level, and, really accept and recieve the healing he can and does lavish upon those who are desperate for it.
And
I hate to admit it, but I was desperately in need of saving.
It is easy for me to blame others for my wounds and I would be right because that was true.
But
It wasn't until I accepted that there was also an element of myself placing obstacles in my own way, that I gave God the chance to begin a restorative work in me.
I built myself a nice wall that became so formidable that I couldn't get past it.
I built it brick by brick with bricks such as, self pity, insecurity, bitterness, unforgiveness, anger, regret, shame, doubt, self loathing, you know stuff like that.
The wall got so high in front of me I became trapped behind it.
And I was glad because that wall seemed to protect me from ever getting hurt again, and I wouldn't have cared if I hid behind it for the rest of my days.
But
Deep down, as I held on desperately to the hand of Jesus, I knew that I had to find the pathway God had laid out before me.
And
I remembered the time, about fifteen years ago, that I had just finished speaking at a conference in Wales, when an old guy who had been saved during the Welsh revival in the twentieth century approached me at the end of the service. He had a word from God for me. He said this.
"You are going to hit a brick wall. It will come but God wants you to know he will get you past this wall and y.ou will find a glorious path once again."
Now, at the time I was in the midst of a really fantastic time in my ministry, we had planted Liverpool Boiler Room and I was fulfilled and happy seeing God touch lives and bring about transformation of an epic kind before my very eyes.
So I kind of filed the word away and forgot about it.
Until now.
I always thought that the wall would be built by others who hurt me and got in the way.
But
Hey
I never thought for one minute it would be me who built the wall myself.
But it was.
Once I understood that, through clinging to God, hitting the prayers like never before, and, keeping right on praying and reading scripture, even when I thought it was getting me nowhere, I began to see the obstacles that I had placed in my own way.
And
On new years day this year, I heard the voice of God.
He spoke a sentence so loud and clear I grasped it straightaway.
He said this.
"Get out of your own way."
I understood immediately.
And
I began to deconstruct the wall.
Brick by brick.
I took away the self pity and saw hope, I decided to stay so close to God that insecurity dissolved away, I forgave, I turned from a doubter to a believer, and many other things.
Eventually I have caught sight of the pathway that stretches out before me.
And
I have taken my first steps on to it.
And
Freedom had come.
So
I encourage this day anyone who is finding a resonance in this post.
I encourage you firstly to not run away from prayer but hit it harder. Secondly to take your focus of what others have done or are doing to you right now, and look at what obstacles you may be setting down before yourself.
While you are building that wall, I guarantee you that it will not protect you, it will maybe give you a false sense of security, but it will also prevent you from finding the clear pathway God has planned for you, and all the joy that is waiting to be discovered there.
You may not feel free now.
But
I can testify to the fact that there is freedom for you.
Though the grace and mercy of a God who loves you no matter what through his son Jesus Christ.
