giving everything away til there’s enough room for heaven to invade :)

We’ve had a beautiful week here in Phnom Penh! Our yard has been filled with kids and the slums have been filled with laughter and the prayer room has been filled with many happy, Love-filled, pouring-out hours ☺

We had a 12-hour Burn (well, I made it to the 11th hour, but… not a bad effort!) on Friday night and… ah, it was glorious. It was our first all-night Burn and was a real journey of the heart for me! God is just coming in beautiful ways and He is flowing out from us really extravagantly into the people that we are ministering to and out from us in the prayer room… but this one was a real journey of the heart for me, personally. I’m drawing into that place where it’s that Spirit-and-Truth worship, where you worship regardless of where your circumstances or feelings or wherever are at… but where I need to come face-to-Face with Him, everytime, or it’s just not enough. The veil has been torn… I need to see His Face smiling down on me!! And I made a commitment to Him a year or 18 months ago that I would not come to meet with Him and leave before I saw His Face… and I’ve not been very good with that at all, to be honest! Well, ‘not good’ is not the best way to put it… I have not been very patient is probably more like! And so, Friday night, I just got down on my face, right at the beginning… and just told Him that He is worth waiting for. And I wouldn’t go until His Face was so close, He would be breathing my very breath… 9 hours later? He is so close my body feels like it’s self-combusting and my heart has sprung into new life and the air around me is thick and happy like jelly and all I can do is weep for His goodness to come… and if it should take another 9 hours, just to encounter Him for another moment in glory like that? It’d be all worth it and I’d be there, facedown, in a second… oh, He’s so beautiful. It’s a truth that I know in my mind and heart… but it was a real ‘test’ of my heart that night… would I wait? Do I truly believe that He is worth my cries for hours on end until He will come? And as I let go into the collapse of His Beauty in the midst of it all, I felt the sweet Smile from Papa: “you did good, darlin’.” … and it’s all worth it ☺ 

Later, He also gave me some really sweet revelation on it all… you can bet in the midst of those 9 hours that I was coming under some guilt and condemnation and lies as to why I was not entering into the glory as I know I’m created to, to experientially stand where I positionally am (in the Throne Room!) and He just spoke to me in a really simple, natural way for me to understand… and I thought I’d share it because I feel like others may also find themselves in this place and could receive the encouragement! He reminded me how, when I used to drink a lot of alcohol (back in my silly, late-teenage years), my tolerance to alcohol increased hugely and it would take me at least 7 drinks to get tipsy (scary!) at my worst point. And it’s kind of similar in the spirit… when you’ve had radical high encounters in the heavenlies with God, there seem to be 2 kind of results with it happening again (in my experience… I’m sure there’s more, but this is just me!). Basically, at some points, the entry is waaaaay easier. Because the glory releases ease on everything! And so, the higher you go… the more ease there is to slip in (and you tend to slip in at the higher level)! And I LOVE those seasons! But, right now, I seem to be on the other end of the spectrum… where, because of the wonderful, intimate encounters that I have had with the Lord, and because of what He wants to download into my heart, it’s taking me longer because the true character of my heart and the fullness of my hunger and desperation and desire is being tested… and hopefully coming forth… will I wait? Will I contend for the deeper revelation/encounter/experience or am I happy with a surface-level experience/knowledge? Do I really believe that He is worth another 9 hours worship just for a single touch from Heaven? Do I really believe in this higher reality of the Throne Room? And so it seems to be taking me longer, temporally, than it has for a while… but the Love-Drunkenness on the other end is just superb and fully worth waiting for! The Cambodian Wine is strrrrrong! I’m excited for the heart that this is developing in me… and I’ve been praying for a supernatural hunger… so, here it is! (careful what you pray for! hehe)

So, lots of that this week for me! I am just learning to give all of myself away… that, if I truly, really trust Him to fill my tank at the end of it all… why don’t I give ALL of myself away? Why would I want to leave an orphanage with something left in my hand? Why would I want to leave the hospital with some reserves in me still? Why? Do I trust Him to fill me or not?! So it’s this sweet sweet place of just trusting His filling of my spirit so deeply that I am just laying all of me down… and seeing beautiful Love come out of it. We’ve been seeing wonderful things the whole time we’ve been here (almost 2 months I’ve been here now, wow! Time flies!), but it’s been in this last week, since this revelation has gone DEEP into my flesh and bones that I have seen the really extraordinary break out as I give all of myself to Him and cry over and hug and kiss and love the ones that need Him…

… firstly, the 17 year old guy that’s in the coma in the hospital from the moto accident? Not in a coma anymore! Can’t remember where that was up to when I wrote last, but he’s out of the coma, off life support and when I went in to the ICU to see him again the other day (after they told me I couldn’t come back anymore… then we prayed in renewed favour… and they let me in the following day!), when I started praying, his eyes started to move and he tried to speak! I spoke to the head nurse there, who speaks English and was the first to introduce me to Pholl and I asked him what the prognosis is for Pholl… and he was just lost for words. He said that it is absolutely ‘amazing’… and when I told him it was a miracle, he said that he knew. He couldn’t deny it. The doctors have no idea what has happened, but know that it has only happened since we have been going in to Pholl to pray… it’s not lost on them ☺ Basically, when I first ‘met’ this kid, I asked God how to pray… he was brain-dead and was anticipated to die at any time, just never having come out of the vegetative coma for the 2 weeks since the accident (at that point)… and the Lord just whispered to me “his spirit has left his body. Call him back.” And I’m not sure how this all works, but when someone’s spirit has left their body… they’re dead, right?! Well, I spent half an hour or so just doing just that: “Pholl, come back. Spirit, come back. Pholl, come back into your body, your time’s not up yet. Come back.” … just over and over… and now they can’t see why he won’t live and they declare him ‘amazing’! Wow, Jesus!! ☺ Please keep praying for him – no permanent brain damage, for that hematoma to dissolve and the temporal lobe fracture to be healed and for him to come into full consciousness with tales of heavenly adventures during the coma!! ☺

When I had last been in to see Pholl, the lady with her husband in the bed next to him, asked me over to pray for her husband, because she had seen the improvement in Pholl (which, at that point, was fully coming off respirators, heart machines, etc). I prayed only for a minute or so for him because the doctor wanted me out, and I didn’t know what was the problem with him, except that he had some degree of brain damage and was in a coma… so, all I really got out was “be healed in Jesus’ Name.” Well, now he’s also out of the coma with full consciousness and is seeing and hearing and speaking again! Yay Jesus!!

We went to a slum the other day that our friend, Eddie, goes to to keep friendship with this deaf girl, Paulaa that he met in there a few months ago. I could feel it deep in my bones that today was going to change this girl’s life forever… and it did. She heard for the first time in her life! And the first thing? “Our God is an Awesome God” being sung in Khmer ☺ We were praying and praying and getting to that awkward stage where nothing is happening and there’s a lot of vacant expressions and weight-shifting back-and-forth… and then I felt Jesus walk into the slum. He left His perfect Heaven to come and tread through this filthy slum that smells like rotting fish to find this one forgotten by the world… and unstopper her ears. And I saw the moment that it happened: her eyes lit up and she smiled the widest smile and I knew it was all over… Jesus did not disappoint her that day; He is exactly Who He says that He is! Please pray for her as we pray for her tongue to be loosened and for her to learn Khmer with supernatural acceleration! I’d never thought about it before, but, if you’ve been deaf your whole life and you get healed… you may be able to hear, but you have to learn your language from the beginning too! But this can also be totally supernatural, and I’m just praying that in for her… join me? This girl’s life has already changed and been turned on its head… let’s keep it rotating! 

And just another update on a precious little treasure I’d written about previously… when we first arrived, we went to this slum and met a disabled boy who could not walk, eat, speak, didn’t ever smile and was an angry boy laden with heavy burdens… sitting there in the wheelchair that first day, he was so pissed off with the world and couldn’t make eye contact… and when I told him that I loved him, he manifested like wild and wrestled to get out of my arms… Tash and I prayed for him and when we went back with Ben, Steph, Winnie and the crew? He was a different boy! Relaxed and even hints of smiles here and there! Then, that day, we just lavished Love on him and Ben sung over him for an hour or so and his body continued to stretch out and relax… and when we saw him again just the other day? He was sitting on his mother’s hip out the front of their shack, as though waiting for us. And when he saw me, he remembered me and jumped straight into my arms without any hesitation or worry and looked me right in the eyes as I told him I loved him and smiled back at me! He then sat in my lap for the next 45 minutes or so as Katie sung love songs over him (and our other precious little friend in there with Down Syndrome) and I realised that his legs and arms are fully stretched out and not bound up anymore! He is also putting on weight as he’s begun to eat heaps and is fully able to keep the food down! Wow! But the biggest thing is just the joy in him… it’s tangible and real and it’s changing him from the inside out. It’s like his body is following the progress of his heart and, as his heart gets loved on and healed up, his body is following… so… more LOVE!

These are just a few of the precious ones who I’ve felt compelled to give all of myself to this week… and I just don’t know how I’ve ever tried to do it otherwise. Like I said (and I have written), we have seen awesome stuff the whole time we’ve been here… but this week? Well, you have read for yourself. It’s new levels of glory here! Not coincidentally, we have really been calling in greater levels of His Presence this week and just spending hours with Him, unable to leave… then giving it all away… and seeing His Kingdom come. I have the best job in the whole wide world.

Tomorrow, I’m taking the team 9 hours north on a bus to Mondulkiri, to the jungles up in the north-east. It’s the ‘real Cambodia’. There are tigers and bears and elephants just wandering around wild up there (though seeing them? Pfft. Hehe) and we’re staying in this little eco-lodge up there for a few days … just to enjoy it! We’re spending the first day just playing, riding elephants, and swimming in waterfalls! Enjoying Him and His Creation, and enjoying each other’s company. The next day is a personal retreat day for us all, just us and God, one-on-One… face-to-Face time, yay! I just feel like it’s a really integral time to meet with Him and to hear His Voice clearly and to give a fresh impartation of His Heart and for what He wants for us in this season, for us here in Cambodia, for our hearts, for our futures, to heal our past wounds, etc… all of the goodness that happens when we set aside ourselves to see His Face. The next day (the Friday) is a full 12-hour Burn again! And we are just going to throw ourselves in the deep end and just press in and enjoy like crazy! We’re going to be in a geographical high place and so we’re going to step into the spiritual high places of this nation and claim back our spiritual inheritance! Yahooooo! I’ve been feeling like it’s really important to take geographical high places and claim them redeemed in the spirit… so I’m really feeling excited for this – good things are in store! 

Making lots of divine connections here… met a guy yesterday whose ministry is to start cafes to minister to New Age travellers in India and Nepal yesterday. Ahhhh it stoked the love in my heart not only for India, but just for those exact dreams that He planted in seed form in my heart all those years ago… and was a great encouragement to me that I am getting back to India sooner rather than later! I am also looking at going to Turkey August 31 – September 12 with the Burn… long story on where all that came from, but, the crux of it is? Turkey is due for revival. And there are Asian revival mantles up for grabs… so I’m so there! The world’s first revival fires were released in Turkey… and they will come again. So, still praying… but feeling good about that one!! Also, just found out that Randy Clark is going to be here in Cambodia in a few weeks, so I’m really hoping to be able to connect in with him and the Global Awakening team and to come alongside them and be a part of whatever they’re doing! I just keep thinking how he was the man who God used to ignite revival fires in Toronto that are still blazing so strong today… and he was also the one to lay hands on Heidi and tell her who she really was. And it changed her forever. I want to be wrecked, forever. And I want this country to be consumed in revival flames… burnt to a crisp, please, Jesus.

So, that’s the long and the short of my news! Thanks for journeying with me… share your news with me!! ☺ xx