No one, after lighting a lamp, puts it away in a cellar nor under a basket, but on a lampstand, so that those who enter may see the light. The eye is the lamp of your body; when your eye is clear, your whole body is also full of light; but when it is bad, your body is also full of darkness.
Luke 11:33,34 (New American Standard)
Where our individual desire dies and sanctified surrender lives. We have the idea that we can dedicate our gifts to God. However, you cannot dedicate what is not yours. There is actually only one thing you can dedicate to God, and that is your right to yourself. If you give God your right to yourself, He will make a holy experiment out of you--and his experiments always succeed. The one mark of a true saint of God is the inner creativity that flows from being totally surrendered to Jesus Christ. (My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers)
I received a message from the Lord: ascend the mountain in the middle of the night. It was pitch black out, yet I found a flashlight, and walked out the front door. I was living with my parents at the time, just out of university and I spent much of my time wandering on the mountain. But in the middle of the night? I decided to obey the voice, so I walked softly over the lawn, hoping my parents wouldn't wake up. I went up my usual path on the mountain, until I reached my woodland altar. There I did what many souls have done before me, I cried out to God in a loud voice. I might have railed on heaven right at that moment. I wanted to have more in life that what the world offered, and I was willing to risk everything.
Murray Dueck had recently started a Prophetic School called Samuel's Mantle, and I was there for the very first semester. Samuel's Mantle is still training people to hear the voice of God, and excel in the prophetic to this day. He believes that everyone can learn to hear God's voice. What I felt God tell me when I went to his class might be somewhat disturbing but it took me on a path that ended me where I am now. I felt God say that I would die at 47 and have three and a half years of ministry before that point. My mother had recently given me a prophetic word reading a scripture over me; the Bible chapter of Revelation 11. I thought that this was something I could say yes to, I took it as an invitation; but I knew it would cost me everything. In doing so I turned my back on the dreams and goals of most young women; in doing so turned my back on society. Because of all that occurred, it was a long journey before I reached the age of maturity when my ministry would begin. But here we are. I minister to you when I write blogs, or play worship songs; I minister unto the Lord, first of all.
When I was down the mountain, in my twenties, I had a hazelnut cross that my husband had made for me from the hazelnut trees on his property. It was a cross made to be able to fit in my car, and also one I could carry (it was not too heavy). I felt God told me to burn the leather straps holding the two crossbeams together in the burn pit. I did. A day later I was up the mountain, when I saw a leather strap dangling from a branch over the crystal stream. I could only perceive it as a miraculous occurrence. (I called it the crystal stream because I hurled two perfume decanters made of crystal into the stream. When I did this they disappeared, and I was not able to find them again.)
My husband and I married at a YWAM base, and we ended up travelling and camping across Western Canada with the cross on the top of our car, and the dog in the back seat. When we got to the town of Golden, I said, "I'm going to carry the cross." So he drove along with me while I carried the cross over the shoulders of Golden. When I got to Calgary, the house we stayed in was an old house, that a half dozen men had rented together, but they were all friends of Joe and Christians, and gave us a room to stay in near a mountain with a nature reserve. I carried the cross around the neighborhood at six o'clock in the morning so as not to disturb anyone. I was wondering at points if people were peeking through their curtains at me in the silent still street.
One afternoon I felt God tell me to go up the mountain. I walked up the desert field, with wild animals hiding from me, and it began to snow. This was in April. I felt like a prophet of old, and figured that God probably wanted to tell me something. What he told me was only a whisper compared to how I hear the voice of the Lord today. When I came down the mountain, my husband had bought a lot of beer for everyone, and was having a wild party in the backyard. I was completely disgusted that he would do such a thing to corrupt them in my absence. I picked the last six pack that was left from their party, took it outside the gate and smashed it, bottle by bottle on the cardboard, then threw it in the trash. My husband had formerly been an alcoholic, and I had made him swear off beer when he married me. Oh how I was disappointed in him.
I felt he represented Generation X with his repeated lapses into addiction and the sub-culture. My long-term commitment to him represented my commitment to ministering to Generation X. They always fall short though. I eventually had to lower my expectations. Everything I have done in life was in obedience to the voice of God, or what I perceived as God, and it is a prophetic picture of something that people don't like about themselves (for instance, they are married to the world next), or the church. So I garnered a lot of criticism over the years.
Now I wear white and blue linen and keep my home like a temple, where everything has to be cleaned to perfection and purified as a prophetic act of priesthood. I pour out olive oil, and make liniment, and remedies, and medicines. I am a practitioner with clients too, but they have to buy their own remedies. The ones I make are only for my own use. The only real assets I have are musical instruments (piano, guitar, etc). I work to perfect the art God has given me, as a creative professions. I have published 15 books, and have another one coming out this year called Ageless. I am diving deeper into what it means to be considered one of the seven prophetesses of Israel, in Queen Abigail's case (King David's wife). In those days women were not educated as men, and probably could not read or write. Even in the case of Queen Esther, if she wanted to write a book, she would have had to dictate it to a scribe. The fact that that would even occur to her to do is avant-garde. Women did not usually write books. The question remains whether Mordecai wrote the book of Esther, or Queen Esther had it dictated in the royal palace, or both.
I was in the grocery store one weekend as was my custom; whenever it was Sunday, I would prepare my table as if it were the elements, because I believe in taking Christ to the streets. Whenever people approached my table I would pretend I was a priest in Fort Camosun (the early Victoria). Otherwise they would refuse to taste, because it was Sunday and I was not at church (this is how the Hindus are). I usually talked to 600 people a weekend, who might like to taste-test something in a marketing demo. This might be a spiritual picture too, that we are taste testing the Gospel around Emily Isaacson, seeing if it is for us. So I could imagine that for eight years, almost every other weekend I was unable to go to church, because I had to agree to work on Sunday (something scandalous without Jesus).
So I imagined I was saving large numbers of people into the kingdom who would not have a chance to interact with the living gospel usually. They said sure, we would like to go too, and stepped right up. Beyond the evangelical explanation of a conversion moment being the time at which we say, "Yes", I have no other explanation. I no longer believe to go to heaven people have to say the sinner's prayer. It is a moment where we are given an invitation to the wedding feast, and sometimes the custodian slips us in the back door.
The title The Custodian of Paradise refers to a novel by Wayne Johnston
Picture from Armstreet Clothing Company used by permission. Visit here
