Standing on the shores of Charlottetown I have found a secret place. If I sit just over the bank, the rocks there are perfect chairs and the city is all around me, yet I am hidden. I am guaranteed now to meet Him here it seems, so I come here often. My obvious, yet hidden secret place. In the city, yet hidden in the cleft of the rock. I look out at the horizon where the sky and the ocean meet. Both are various shades of blue-grey. I whisper pray and feel Him asking me to lift my hands and declare His presence over this entire Island. I forget that people passing by may see a hand rising up over the bank. I am overwhelmed every time I come here by His beauty, His peace, and the way His grace crashes over me like the waves hitting the rocks. I let my feet dangle dangerously close to getting wet by the incoming sporadic waves. I am sure I feel the waves consuming me. They pull out the old self and she is taken out to sea. Each wave that hits the shore is another layer of my heart being washed by His grace. Wave after wave our city is being revived in Him.
I breathe You in, God and I can barely hold still, I feel You bursting inside of me. I pray again "Come and flood this place". Those words seem only to hold more power each time I say them. I marvel at how my life can even be used by you, and how you yourself have made me into something that you can overtake and possess. A vessel in your hands. I was cast off, rebellious, broken, dirty, and dark. Your arms pulled me in tenderly and your strength alone upholds me here before your throne where I can murmur a few words for my city. I feel so small before you, so utterly small, yet somehow you have built up my walls, I feel that my prayers are actually loosing something over this place. What if we all gathered, small before you, and asked you to flood this place like a storm?
I day dream about an army standing on the shores, broken people undone before the King, crying out for His Kingdom to invade the cost lands. They are rising up. I shout across the shores "Wake up!" I feel your people coming out of hiding to intercede for the nations. We will call them to come home. There is an army rising up. Banners wave in the sky as people choose who they are going to serve.
I am reminded of a few months ago when you asked me to raise a banner over my household, to take spiritual authority and to raise a banner that blows in the wind and waves the name of Jesus over our home. I remember when you asked me to symbolically raise up that banner, to declare the authority of Christ over our roof, and to watch salvation fall in our home. I did it, not fully understanding what it meant, and yet to see the fulfillment, it too is coming up over the shores in the waves.
Now looking over the land at the rooftops and I can almost see it with my physical eye, but more so in my spirit, red flags raised up over chosen homes that say Jesus is Lord. Red-marked by His blood, His Kingship. I call out ask say "Lift up your banners! Let His name be your strength. Let Him mark you for battle." So that's what this is. It is preparation for battle. I feel like a race horse being kept back behind a bar, waiting for the gunshot so all my stored energy can spur me forth, a freedom fighter. He strips away all the armor I thought I would need, He tells me to let go. Freedom is the armor needed for the battle of the Lord. Here on these rocks, downtown, people passing by, He has taken me away to discuss the battle, to prepare me, to wash over me with grace. Why would I ever want to be anywhere else, and how in the world am I meeting with God. Who am I that He should even be mindful of me? Yet I feel what He is showing me is that we are not nothing, we are actually His instruments and until we see ourselves as Precious to Him we cannot be used in battle. We are actually sons and daughters of the King. How is that even possible. Heaven cries out, voices declaring the worth of the Lamb. It is all about Him. That truth goes deeper and my eyes well up with tears of reverence. Two years ago I would have been bored at the name of Jesus, broken hearted, I wouldn't have thought of Him once a week. How can it be that He now consumes my every thought. He is unrelenting. An hour of meaningless thought and I am homesick. He told me something about this, that I can only love Him in response to how aware I am that He loves me. His love for me is what compels me to love Him back. He first loved us. So my heart cries "I love you", but my souls sings and I rejoice knowing that the Uncreated God said it first. Jesus the Bridegroom said I love you first. I change my I love you, to an I love you too. How humbling, and freeing, I love Him more now than before only because I see how much He loves us as His children.
I look one last time at the water and like the waves against the shore His love has moved deeper into my heart yet again. Refreshing cool, healing salt water. As I stand I say, "Come Lord Jesus come" .
Revival is coming, like a wave over our cost lands, like a tidal wave. First comes the healing oil, then comes the Kingdom. Our island will be shaken until only that which cannot be shaken remains. I see depression rates declining, empty hospital beds, churches become the place of healing, the name of Jesus will bring people of every age to tears, reverence and worship will pour out of our mouths and we will be sent out to bring the broken nations home to their First Love. PEI will be a place for the lost to be found, a place for the orphans to be loved, for the widows to be restored. Let us rise up, anointed by God, and proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.
Martina Sobey
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